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unique-facts · 3 years

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Top 10 Facts About PewDiePie

Let’s talk about the world’s most successful YouTuber. Welcome to Unique Facts and today we’re counting down our picks for The Top 10 Facts About PewDiePie.

For this list, we’re looking at some of the things that make PewDiePie unique, eccentric and occasionally controversial, because you don’t make it to the top of YouTube by being ordinary.

10: His Name Is Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg

Let’s start with the basics. While many people know him as Pewds or even senpai, this YouTuber’s real life name is Felix Arvid Ulf Kjelberg. It’s a bit of a mouthful but it’s actually quite common in Sweden for people to have two middle names. Felix is a Latin word that means happy and successful, which just so happens to describe PewDiePie perfectly. You may also recognize the name from the Felix Felicis potion in Harry Potter, which brings luck and success to anyone who drinks it. So maybe, just maybe, there’s a little bit of magic behind PewDiePie’s success too.

9: There IS a Meaning Behind “PewDiePie”

Unlike the name his parents gave him, the name of Felix’s channel really doesn’t have that much meaning behind it, but it does come with a bit of funny and relatable origin story. In 2006 he created the PewDie channel but had to make a new channel when he forgot the login information, thus the great PewDiePie channel was born. To break it down Pew is to represent the sound a laser makes, die is what happens when you get shot by a laser, and pie… Well Pewds just thought it sounded funny, and he’d already started saying it as a bit of a catchphrase while gaming, so… why not? Also, who doesn’t love pie?

8: He Dropped Out of College

Surely much to his parents’ delight, PewDiePie was accepted into Chalmers University of Technology for a degree in industrial economics and technology management. This was quite an accomplishment since you needed excellent grades to get in, but it just wasn’t for Pewds. Before completing his degree at Chalmers, PewDiePie dropped out to pursue his own artistic endeavors. To support himself, he worked at a hot dog stand, and he managed to sell enough of his artwork to buy his early gaming/broadcasting equipment. It just goes to show that humble beginnings and sacrifice can create a legend.

7: He Has Two Licensed Video Games

It had always been a dream of Pewds’ to create his own video games and in 2015 that dream came true with the release of “PewDiePie: Legend of the Brofist.” The game takes you on an epic 2D adventure where you save Bros - i.e. PewDiePie’s fans - from the evil barrel army. In 2016 he released “PewDiePie’s Tuber Simulator”, which is a community game where you create your own YouTuber. You work to upgrade your office and become number one on YouTube. Both games have done extremely well, receiving high ratings and positive reviews.

6: He’s Very Charitable

PewDiePie has actually used his internet powers and substantial influence for good by raising money for charity. He has quite a few charities he’s passionate about like WWF, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Save the Children, and Product Red. In fact, in 2012 he won the title of "Gaming King of the Web" and donated his cash prize to the World Wildlife Fund. In 2014 Pewds made a video announcing that his channel, with the help of the Bro Army, had raised 1 million dollars for charity, and that number has only continued to grow.

5: He’s a Published Author

He’s a poet and you didn’t even know it. Well maybe not a poet… but he is hilarious and published! On October 15, 2015 PewDiePie released the magnum opus that is “This Book Loves You.” It has 240 pages of inspirational quotes and advice, which are paired with creative visuals. Well, technically the book is a satire on other inspirational books, but it has some fun words of wisdom like “Don't be yourself, be a pizza. Everyone loves pizza.” Truer words have never been put to paper. The book even made it to the #1 spot on the New York Times’ best seller list for young adult paperbacks.

4: He Met His Girlfriend When She Sent a Fan E-Mail

Theirs is a true modern romance if there ever was one. Back in 2011 Marzia Bisognin’s best friend innocently sent her a link to Felix’s videos. Marzia thought he was hilarious so she decided to write him and he wrote back. The two started talking through Facebook until Felix saved up enough money to visit her in Italy. They had to travel a lot to see each other but now they are a YouTube power-couple happily living in the UK. Marzia has over 7 million subscribers on her YouTube channel and she even has her own fashion line!

3: He’s Had to Move Because of His Fans

Jake Paul isn’t the only one having problems with fans at his place. Though at least, unlike Paul, Pewds didn’t share his home address publicly. The Bro Army is often a force for good, especially when it comes to charity drives, but other times their devotion to PewDiePie can go a little too far. There have been multiple instances of fans hunting down his address, and then showing up at his house. You shouldn’t show up to a friend’s place uninvited, let alone someone who doesn’t know you. Pewds has had to move more than once because of this. He’s even made a video telling fans to leave him alone, which, quite frankly, should’ve gone without saying.

2: He Increases Video Game Sales

If Pewds plays it… people buy it! This is especially evident when he decides to play indie-games. Pewds has been known to crash sites when the Bro Army flocks to a game that isn’t designed to handle so much traffic. You can thank him for putting a lot of games on the map like “Surgeon Simulator” and the addictive game “Flappy Bird”, may it rest in peace. We aren’t talking about a few dollars of increased sales either; when he played “Crypt of the NecroDancer” it experienced an increase in sales to the tune of 60 thousand big ones!

Before we reveal out top pick here are a few honorable mentions.

- He Hates Barrels

- He Has a LOT of Subscribers

- His First PewDiePie Video Was About Minecraft

#1: Controversial Content Cost Him Lucrative Deals

If you’ve ever watched a PewDiePie video, then you know that he’s got a habit of pushing the limits. It has gotten him into trouble in the past, like in 2016 when he was accused of anti-Semitism after posting a number of videos that either alluded to or invoked Nazi and anti-Semitic imagery and messages. While Felix made an apology video, the offending content cost him his deal with Disney, as well as his YouTube Red series. In 2017, he used a racial slur in a livestream of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which led game developer Campo Santo to issue a DMCA takedown of videos featuring Pewds playing their game Firewatch.

#PewDiePie #subscribe to pewdipie #tenfacts #10facts #10 facts #writing #writers on tumblr #reading #unique Facts #unique

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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So, any thoughts on The Green Lama (who unexpectedly became one of my faves), the Pulp Hero who is also a Superhero?

Much like other pulp heroes of the time, The Green Lama had multiple secret identities and a massive supporting cast aiding him in his quest for justice. Unlike his contemporaries, The Green Lama eschewed guns in favor of radioactive salts, magic, and sleight of hand. He rarely, if ever, killed his enemies. His tales also had an advanced sense of continuity, with characters growing and changing over time, plot points introduced in one story paying off several tales later. The Green Lama is a character of contradictions, driven forward by a faith he is forced to betray. It makes him flawed and imperfect, and in that way, one of the most human of all pulp heroes - The Green Lama: Scions

While not the "only" example of a pulp hero who is a superhero, The Green Lama is arguably the one who leans the most into the superhero aspect out of all the classic 30s pulp heroes that usually get brought up. I would argue that The Green Lama is the most direct answer to the question "what happens when you combine The Shadow and Superman together", considering he was modeled extensively after both in his forays into pulp, radio and comic books, and has also grown into his own character.

He's got the unique skills bordering on superpowers (that eventually became outright superpowers). He's got pretty much The Spectre's costume, except of course he came first. He's an urban costumed crimefighter wh deals with gangsters and criminal masterminds, and yet has an extremely strong stance against killing and carrying guns under any circumstance, even saying they would make him no better than the criminals he fights, which makes him by default the pulp hero that Batman would get along best with. The comics took it way further even turning the “Om Ma-ne Pad-me Hum” chant into a Shazam! transformation cry (Shazam came first, although the two debuted in the same year).

He's got a suitably punchy and dramatic origin: guy spends 10 years in Tibet and returns to America intend on spreading Buddhism's pacifist doutrine, only to witness the murder of children at the hands of mobsters the literal second he steps off the boat, and after spending restless days in the police station to see if they would find the culprit, he sees the killer walk out of the commissioner's office free, which convinces him he needs to take up crimefighting because the police are useless, and he outright calls the police "incompetent" in a letter to the papers that he uses to introduce himself to the world, which is not something you find often in 30s/40s fiction even if's an implicit part of the pulp hero/superhero fantasy.

He had a stronger sense of continuity than most pulp heroes were usually afforded. He has a lot of the pulp hero stock and trade like the assistants and the pseudo-science and the odd radio gadgets and of course the Orientalism that we'll get into, but remixed in a pretty cool way that allows him to stand out from his inspiration. He's got incredibly weird aspects to him like the fact that he gets enhanced abilities from crystallized salt or even becoming radioactive (which could be interesting to explore considering "radiation" became the go-to origin for superpowers in the 60s). He's got an allright supporting cast and Magga, while ultimately a deus ex machina, is a very interesting addition to it and I wish her mystery was played up more often in subsequent stories past the original run. There's a lot about The Green Lama that really works, he was incredibly successful at the time and he's managed to thrive over the years lot more than most of his contemporaries

Despite all the powers he wielded he felt impotent, nothing more than a rich boy playing the games of gods. He had chosen the path of the Bodhisattva, sacrificing himself for the good of all sentient beings, but even so the weight of responsibility, the lives of so many in his hands, threatened to crush him. It was tempting to turn away, to deny his calling, but the life of a Bodhisattva demanded more; and it was only recently that he had begun to realize how much it truly required.

The main problem with The Green Lama, and by problem I mean "the character works fine for his time but this is seriously holding him back from becoming sustainable again", is the fact that he's a white rich man who fights crime by going as hard into Orientalism tropes as possible, which is inescapably baked into the premise.

Now, I will argue that The Green Lama was, for his time, a progressive character. The Buddhist aspects of his character weren't just backstory fodder or an excuse for his superpowers as they were to pretty much every other character at the time, Jethro was a practicing Buddhist, who fought crime informed by his beliefs, trying to respect them (and not exactly succeeding) and offering a wholly positive perspective of Buddhism. Nowadays, it creates a problem, but at the time, it made the character stand out from every other hero who had "traveled to Tibet" checked out, because Tibet and Buddhism were heavily incorporated into the character. The Lama may have been born merely out of a desire to cash in on The Shadow's newfound radio popularity, but Crossen took it much more seriously than his contemporaries and made it an effort to instill admiration in his readers towards what he was referencing, which he was pulling from books about the subject and the Pali language. Is research the bare minimum? Yes. But it’s a bare minimum that even today’s writers don’t do even having an infinitely bigger wealth of information at their disposal.

To further cement my point: There's a particular Green Lama comic story called The Four Freedoms, which is about the Lama receiving a letter from a fan in the army who's worried about a racist private who keeps insulting the black privates while crowing about racial superiority, and so the Lama kidnaps the private and takes him on a tour through Germany so he can witness firsthand how his talk aligns with Nazi ideology, even specifically referring to Jim Crow's laws, criticizing how easily Americans fall for racial war rhetoric, and pointing out the idea of racism as a tool of tyrants to divide and conquer. It's not my place to champion this as some great representation and that's not what I'm doing, but if this all seems passe or simplistic or even problematic to you, trust me, this was still the era of Slap-A-Jap Superman, stories like this were absolutely not the norm at the time, even in other stories where superheroes dealt with racial discrimination.

He even caps off the story by stating that punching or ending Hitler is not the solution (although he lets Jones take a couple of swings) because Hitler is just one part of a much bigger problem that needs to be fought on all of it's forms. It's all very much afterschool special/anti-racism PSA, sure, but it's easier to mock those in our time. You find me a Golden Age superhero comic that shits on Jim Crow specifically while the hero tells the reader that Hitler is not the ultimate evil but merely "a cog in the wheel", part of a problem that's deeply entrenched in America's own shores (really, do, I'm genuinely curious if more of them did anything like this).

Does any part of what I said negates the fact that, at the end of the day, he's still a white man using Orientalism mysticism to fight crime? No, it doesn't. And if Iron Fist can't get away with it, if Dr Strange only just barely does, the Green Lama sure as hell can't. And you cannot downplay those aspects either lest you end up with a completely different character. It's a bit of a conundrum that makes the character tricky to approach from a revival perspective.

I completely agree with what you said here, Green Lama would benefit from a Legacy Hero approach very strongly. And Green Lama: Scions opens up an interesting possibility of Jethro Dumont not being quite what he seems, backed up by the fact that he wore disguise make-up in the original stories:

They had a lot of names for him in the papers—the Verdant Avenger, the Mysterious Man of Strength—but Reynolds had always been partial to “Buddhist Bastard.” No one had ever seen his face or, at the very least, the same face. Seemed like everyone had a different story. The Green Lama was white, he was black, he was asian, he was old, and he was young. You could fill a room of witnesses and no two would describe the same person.

Really I think if you just got rid of that one thing that holds the Lama back the most from catching on in modern times, I think he's the kind of character that lends itself a lot to long-term sustainability. He's already fairly popular as is, definitely an indispensable inclusion of any shared pulp hero or Golden Age superhero universe and definitely one of my favorites among the 30s American pulp heroes. And there’s ways to make the concept more interesting and workable.

Maybe The Green Lama is just a title that's been going on for generations, with Jethro being one of many to fill in. Maybe Magga used to be it, maybe the tulku that instructed Jethro did, maybe there's a new character with it. Maybe Jethro is just an identity used by an Asian-American adventurer to operate safely in the US, or maybe Jethro has a sort of Lamont Cranston arrangement going on. Maybe he's part of the reason why Tibet was the superpower capital of the world in the 30s or 40s, or part of the reason why radiation started granting so many heroes superpowers in the 60s.

The character's skillset has been fairly "anything goes" ever since his author made him a flying superman for the comics, and really he already started out being able to deliver electric shocks through his fingers by guzzling radioactive salts. He's a very weird character, and I will always argue that weird is what works best for the pulp heroes.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #comic books #comics #the green lama #jethro dumont #alex ross

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secretgamergirl · 3 years

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A Little Horrifying Primer on Transphobes

Some time ago, I put together a Little Fact Checking Primer on Trans People, as a basic resource for disabusing people of some of the many completely ridiculous yet absurdly widespread beliefs about trans people that simply have no basis whatsoever in reality. And wouldn’t you know it, every single lie exposed in that primer is not only still widely believed, but is presently being used as a basis to sign some absolutely horrific human rights abuses into law. So it’s high time I follow that up, in this case focused more on who keeps actively spreading these lies and why. I’m going to try and keep things as light as I can here, but we’re going to be looking at the most monstrous side of human nature, so apologies in advance if this is a dark read.

First, let me just note that there are two things I don’t plan to do in this piece. I’m not going to waste time debunking the arguments of the people I’m highlighting (much of this is already covered in my earlier primer, others have done the work in cases where I haven’t, and frankly these people’s claims should be self-evidently utter nonsense to begin with). I am also going to be very selective in what I link to, or even share related images of, as I would frankly not like to fill a post on a blog I generally try to keep safe for all audiences with media directly dealing with, for instance, child sexual assault, and much of the relevant information also involves stochastic terrorism against innocent people, and I would prefer not to throw more fuel onto such fires.

Transphobes lie constantly, about everything.

To some degree this is obvious. We’re talking about people who scaremonger about the possibilities of trans women dominating competitive sports and assaulting people in restrooms, despite the status quo already reflecting the conditions they insist would make these inevitibilities for decades and centuries respectively, and their grim visions never once having come to pass, and also constantly insisting that the woman in the photo below is actually a man, going further to say this is evident to anyone giving her the merest glance.

It goes beyond that though. There’s at least a little plausible deniablity in claims like this, or that “science is on their side” if they were simply uninformed about the world they live in, never actually looking into what laws exist, what science actually says, and never actually meeting a trans person or even seeing a picture of one of us. I’m talking really bold lies here. Like wholecloth fabricating a story that a convicted murder was trans, including anecdotes about wigs dresses and a planned name change, in a major newspaper. Or to cite an old favorite of mine, the time a pack of bigots walked up to a crowd of people peacefully picketing a transphobic legal proposal, started roughing them up and taking closeup photos of members of the crowd to stalk online when they got home, got sufficiently riled up for one to straight up assault an innocent person half her size, filmed the whole thing, uploaded it to youtube, and used stills of that assault as acomanying photos when they went home to write articles about the assailant being a “grandmother” attacked by rowdy trans women. And yes, they did monkey’s paw my wish to see that specific image on newspapers. Interesting side note, when it came to real public light that J.K. Rowling endorsed this sort of hatred, it was because she accidentally pasted some profanity laden rambling about how the imagined moral character of the other party in that incident, years after the fact, into a post praising a child’s fan art of her work.

To be a little less niche, transphobes can’t get enough of spreading the lie that the young fellow in this photo is a girl. Specifically a trans girl, providing proof that all their scaremongering about the dastardly threat of trans girls in competitive sports has finally come to pass.

To be fully clear, that’s a man (or a boy if you want to split hairs about him being 17 in that photo). Mack Beggs. A rather insidious choice for this sort of story, considering the actual context for that photo. See, Beggs attended high school in Texas, during a (still ongoing as I write this) period wherein that particular state had caved to this exact sort of propaganda, and in order to head off a wholly imagined wave of trans girls competing on girls’ sports teams, and enacted a law mandating that in all such competitions must compete under whatever gender is stated on their birth certificates. And as it happens, the first, and to my knowledge ONLY time this has come up was with Beggs here, who again, is a man, as no one with a grip on reality could argue against, has “female” on his birth certificate. Which is another way of saying he is a trans man. The guys in the same boat as trans women who we talk about a whole hell of a lot less because their existence is extremely inconvenient to the majority of transphobic propaganda. Case in point. And this is all information it is really impossible to come across if you’re coming across this photo in any sort of respectable source. Take this story, which is as unambiguous about this as you can get. And yet, in the very comments section of that story, there they are. Carrying on like this story about a trans guy, forced by a transphobic law to compete as a girl, which he absolutely did not want, and received horrific threats over, using phrases like “female to male” and bringing up that he was assigned female at birth and is on testosterone-based HRT, is about a trans woman cheating the system. Or to quote word for word, “Now also transgender female want to be male also compete in female sport. biological born“ That’s not “being confused,” that’s standing next to you in a white desert and complaining about being adrift in a black ocean, bald-faced, not even trying to be convincing just make a power play, lying through one’s teeth.

I could spend this whole article on just this point. Lying about who they are, various people’s falsified credentials, whole websites full of “anonymous parents of children who think they’re trans” turning out to be one single woman documenting the abuse of her very much trans son, or of course the people behind the whole “bathroom bill” panic candidly admitting it was all based on utter fiction. I do have other points to cover though.

Transphobes are firmly entrenched in the media.

It is extremely difficult to find oneself in a position of having to explain to people that a particular group of people is effectively in control of press outlets, as that is rather classically a claim conspiracy theorists absolutely love to toss around at various marginalized groups (including trans people hilariously enough, but of course the most common and lingering version of this is the antisemitic variant). I really can’t get around it here though. Specifically in the U.K., you honestly can say that transphobes control the media. I already touched on this with the assault case I mentioned above and the fabricated story about the murderer, but this is a pretty well-documented situation. I mean, even The Guardian calls out The Guardian on this, and that’s the outlet that gets the most attention because it’s the one with the most otherwise respected name, but every paper in the country has been running transphobic propaganda pieces on a weekly if not daily basis for years now, and while they do get reprimanded by watchdog groups and have mass walk-outs over the worst of it, it’s not like there’s some governing body with the authority to step in about it. Meanwhile the BBC is constantly inviting diehard zealots like Graham Linehan to news programs where he compares being trans to being a nazi, and hosting debates where someone just sits down and repeatedly chants the word “penis” at a trans woman.

Things are better in the rest of the world, but we still have right-wing creeps like Jesse Singal both writing horrific propaganda pieces (we’ll get back to that one) and blackballing trans writers out of covering trans issues ourselves (and personally stalking the hell out of those of us who try). We’ve got our Joe Rogans and Tucker Carlsons out there (no way in hell I’m linking videos here, have a real information link and a still).

The line between diehard transphobes and straight-up nazis basically does not exist.

What even is there to say here? You can easily poke around havens for nazi activity for yourself and compare the particular unique vocabulary used there to the primary bastion of anti-trans hate speech on the internet (the “feminism” section of what was originally a site for parenting tips before violent fascists took the forums over) or just peruse the follows of the thousands of people I’ve blocked on social media and see if you can sort out a clear division in the networks of channers with frog avatars and the accounts with names like GoodieXXrealwoman, or you can read up on Gab and Spinster, the two twitter alternatives that are just different portals to the same server, set up by the same guy. Maybe do some research into “the LGB Alliance,” or WoLF but any way you slice it the only real difference to be found is the general purpose nazis take a little time off now and then to watch borderline pedophilic anime and the really dedicated transphobes think to use language that sounds vaguely well-educated and left-leaning. I mean, this came from the “feminist” side of the fence:

And not to belabor the point here, but the ones claiming to be a bunch of “feminist mums” sure do let the mask slip any time they’re confronted with the fact that “women” includes black women, and oh just have a whole thread about all the weird conspiratory theories these people have about how trans people’s whole existence is some sort of Jewish plot for world domination. I swear a few months ago they were all passing around a story about some bank having an above average number of trans employees and they were all just “and we all know who controls the banks, right?” about it.

Transphobes endorse an awful lot of people who are openly pro-pedophila.

This is the part where I am really loath to link the many many specific examples I have on hand. Or to talk about this at all for reasons of good taste. Or, for that matter, to talk about this in a tumblr post when there’s an ongoing problem of people with backgrounds strongly tied to this site making baseless accusations of pedophilia against every queer person they can find, so let me be very clear just what I’m talking about while avoiding anything too graphic.

That’s James Cantor. Transphobes love him for being one of the closest things they have to a scientist on their side. And I am featuring him in a screenshot here showing that he is followed by current queen of the transphobes J.K. Rowling, while speaking to both another big name in transphobic circles, Debra Soh, and based on their names, what I’m guessing is at least one straight-up nazi. And in case you think “the P” he’s talking about adding to LGBT (or “GLBT” as weird anti-queer bigots who also have issues with women often write it) might stand for “poly” or “pan” he’s all too happy to clarify that.

This is the entire thrust of Cantor’s work and life. He is the world’s biggest pedophile rights advocate. He wants it declassified as a mental disorder, all stigma on it removed, and tirelessly pushes forward the idea that the majority of.. people who feel compelled to sexually assault children are good people who present no potential harm to anyone and should in fact be lauded.

I am not generally one to claim that someone with a PhD is spewing out questionable garbage with regard to their field, but the reason I am aware of Cantor at all is that other transphobes keep trying to hold up a particular post on his blog as "a study” (which it is not) that offers “proof” (in the form of a blurry jpeg of basically some random numbers) of some ridiculous quackery about how trans kids will “grow out of it” if exposed to conversion therapy (another way of saying torture), which Cantor himself seems to be pushing, so I am somewhat skeptical of his academic chops. And I am, of course, REALLY suspicious that all these other bigots gravitate to him purely because they’re that desperate to find anyone with a PhD in anything that backs them up against literally every scientist in a relative field, to the point that they merely forgive his particular advocacy they are plainly all aware of, particularly when such a common fig leaf used by transphobes is “keeping children safe from sexual deviants.”

And of course, Cantor is most often invoked when coming to the defense of Kenneth Zucker. This Kenneth Zucker.

Those are separate papers. Zucker isn’t controversial though for organizing panels to discuss how attractive people agree small children are (at least not exclusively). Mostly, he’s known for running a conversion therapy center which subjected gay and trans children to various sorts of torture in an effort to “fix” them, which at least for those trans "patients” I have spoken with involved a fair amount of having them strip completely naked and talking a lot about their genitals.

Zucker is something of a controversial figure with the transphobic scene, as they are extremely on board with his sexual torture of queer children, but he does actual work (for some value of the term) involving trans people and thus is not able to commit as fully as they would prefer to making life horrible for trans people, due to a professional obligation to acknowledge reality now and then. As an aside, the similarly positioned Ray Blanchard, while not to my knowledge particularly interested in the attractiveness of children, lives in a similar purgatory of trying to reconcile his career, bigotry, and sexual hangups, yielding compromises like this:

Of course, that’s just looking at the straws transphobes grasp at when looking for scientific credibility. Real leaders of the movement include Germaine Greer, author of The Beautiful Boy, which is about what you are afraid it might be, and features a very young child in a cover feature he did not consent to posing for. Or Julie Bindel, who among other things is rather infamous for writing whole articles on subjects like whether a teenage girl she came across maybe has a huge penis you can totally see if you really squint at her skirt. Again, I will not share a link to go along with that one.

Transphobes terrorize and attempt to defund charities and other unambiguously good organizations.

Graham Linehan, previously best known for cowriting some sitcoms and possibly spending a year angling to get into my pants so awkwardly I didn’t pick up on it is now best known for trying to pull the plug on a children’s charity, in a story that somehow also involves Donkey Kong. Well, and the interview about nazis. And possibly the other interview about “defending me from nazis” until it got into his head that I might not be as young and hot as he imagined. Rather not link to a far right extremist youtube channel though.

There’s also a current effort to replace Stonewall (an organization named after the location where a pair of trans women kicked off a riot which is generally agreed to be the start of the LGBT+ rights movement) as the UK’s primary LGBT+ rights organization with the “LGB Alliance.” The hate group mentioned above, with the skull face and the rifle. Closest I can find to an article on that effort on short notice that isn’t propaganda.

Transphobes paper areas in truly disgusting propaganda.

I don’t want to directly link to grown adults skulking around children’s playgrounds and bathrooms plastering surfaces with mass printed stickers of crudely drawn penises, but would encourage you to read this very long post, being sure to load all the images, to really understand how deeply strange this behavior gets.

Finally, I cannot stress this enough, this really extreme behavior I’m citing, and the specific people involved in the examples I’m giving, these aren’t random cranks on the fringe of things. The people going on televised panel discussions, writing up news stories, and testifying before lawmakers in efforts to pass horrifically discriminatory if not literally life-endangering laws (there is a major ongoing effort to legally end all medical care for trans people, and I don’t just mean care directly relating to being trans) are literally the same people involved in the sexualization of children, nazi collaborations, and roving gangs assaulting people in the street. At a bare minimum I urge people, when booking guests and handing out writing contracts, to do background checks and see if they’re platforming actual terrorists. If we could actually bring legal consequences to bear against the worst of this, that would be great too. As things stand though, the whole world is just consistently citing a bunch of racist, woman-hating, serial liars with no real credentials, and questionable attitudes towards the sexual abuse of children, as “trusted experts” and refusing to seat actual trans people or people who have legitimately committed lifetimes to academic and practical work with trans people any seats at the table.

#trans #transphobia #educational resources

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candycanesuckers · 4 years

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A Collective Post Helping Defend and Define Stormfront:

There is a harmful narrative that has formed around a (feminist) character that appeared in the newest season of “The Boys” -- her name is Stormfront. Said narrative is the falsified idea that she is a Nazi. This was started mainly by Anti-Feminists in retaliation to the fact that the character is rather vocal about social injustice. Below are definitive rebuttals to the toxic propaganda spread by these people and the others who blindly took in it.

Defining Stormfront’s Past:

The reason why the slander on Stormfront is as active and believed as it is is because it’s based on the comic (in which Stormfront was a male, and yes, was indeed a Nazi), which then influenced the past of the TV-rendition of the character. In the show, Stormfront use to be apart of Nazi Germany before (assumedly) migrating to America and donning the alias of “Liberty” in the 50s, in which she carried out violently racist attacks behind the scenes.

Something worth noting is that Stormfront is the first ever Superhero created by Vought (the man who created the company was her husband; whether she was injected with V -- the serum to give people these super abilities -- when she was a child or well within her maturity is currently unknown). Because she’s the first ever superhero, she has a unique ability that other superheroes (from our current knowledge) lack; immortality.

Due to her immortality, Stormfront outlived her peers. She watched as the culture around her changed. She eventually had a daughter, which she then lived past, and she too lived past her husband. This means that she lived past the time where Nazi’s were to some degree a social norm, and lived through the period(s) where people actively fight back against Nazi’ism, racism, and other forms of prejudice. She was thrust into new cultures, and in turn, molded her beliefs into something new over the years she had lived through. She no longer had the leader, she no longer had the support, she no longer had the option to use her voice. And because of that, she learned that her beliefs were outdated.

It could be argued that the point to Stormfront’s character is to reflect the social evolution of America -- from how racism was mainstream to now progressivism being rewarded.

The Accusation That Stormfront Said a Slur Towards Kenji and she Killed an Apartment Complex of Black People Simply Because They’re Black:

In episode three, for those who don’t know, there was a super-terrorist (the title given to super-humans who use their abilities to aid in their terrorism), and The Seven were sent out to capture and put the terrorist down. Basically: they were doing their jobs as heroes. During the attempted capture of the terrorist, Stormfront was ultimately the one to get him.

While she was chasing him, they entered an apartment complex; while on the chase, she most likely would have noted that the terrorist isn’t actually doing any active action of terrorism -- he was just running. While she knew, and The Seven knew, that he was a terrorist, the public would probably see it as a superhero harming an innocent. Of course since he was an active threat, she was fast thinking. While chasing him, she stroke down some casualties and destroyed a portion of the apartment complex building that way there would be visible evidence that the terrorist would’ve been a threat to the lives of the public. And it worked. While what she did was arguably corrupt, that’s not the point here; the show makes a point to say all the heroes are corrupt.

In her fight with the terrorist, she does say something that features unfavorable language -- she called the terrorist a “yellow bastard” -- and while it’s displeasant, it is not a slur. Yellow is a color, and he was rather pigmented. It’s a distasteful descriptor. And she was right in calling him a bastard. He was a terrorist.

The Accusation that Stormfront Didn’t Like A-Train Because he’s Black:

We can assume that Stormfront has a strong sense of morality due to her past connections to Nazi Germany -- while she no longer holds those beliefs, it would suggest that she places importance on morals due to strong “moral” senses of the Nazi party. With her now being in the modern world, her sense of morality probably evolved into applying to more current issues.

In the show, Stormfront is shown to believe in the superiority of Supes (will touch on that even more later). Due to this, is is likely that she would look down on those who have super-abilities but does stuff that would harm them or otherwise negatively impact the performance of their heroics. In season two, it was shown that A-Train -- whose whole shtick was his extreme speed -- could no longer run to such extremes before triggering a possible heart failure. This would clearly motivate Stormfront to look down on A-Train and see him as a waste -- because he is effectively wasting away his own life.

Her saying “some people have quality, other’s don’t” is a clear reference to the fact that his quality of self-control and self-worth is low. He’s an addict, and has let his addiction ruin his life and multiple lives of the people around him.

The Accusation that Stormfront Thinks Black People are Trying to get rid of White People; An In-Depth Dissection on the Conversation Between Stormfront and Homelander in Which she Explains her Past:

The scene opens with her, Stormfront, finding Homelander alone and solemn overlooking the city. He’s being callous and dismissive towards her, and even says a sly comment in which could be taken as a potential murder threat, which obviously effects her and her future plans (since it’s rather clear that she’s merely using him for her own personal agenda). Because of his cold behavior towards her, she decides to bare her all to him.

“I will never lie to you again. I will tell you everything . . . Starting with this,” She begins. Stormfront hesitantly walks to a large brown box, the stoic look on Homelander’s face never leaving as he pointedly watches her every move. She opens the crate, and in it are numerous aged items belonging to her, including her Liberty attire and a collection of black and white photos.

Out of her collection of items, she picks up the photos due to them being an outline of her history and an easy open door to the unique ability she has (since she’s either immortal or has an extended life quantity).

She shows the first image to Homelander, an image that shows her next to a much older woman (who has previously been assumed by the viewer to be her mother or grandmother). “My daughter,” she begins, “Chloe. She died of Alzheimer's a few years ago.”

Before this scene, her unique relation to aging was unknown to Homelander; the only people who knew were Starlight and The Boys. Understandably shocked, Homelander asks Stormfront just how old is she.

“I was born in 1919, in Berlin.”

There’s beats of silence between them. The information that she just revealed settles, to both Homelander and the viewer, and then she flips to the second photo.

It’s of her, dressed in a beautiful, white blazer dress, standing next to three extremely influential figures from history (further highlighting her extreme age). As she flips to the next photo, she says, “And . . . The most important man in the room . . . “ Homelander looks down, and finishes the unsaid sentence: “Frederick Vought.”

The next portion of the conversation is one of the most important, both in-context of the actual conversation but also in terms of the audience finally understanding Stormfront as a person; it gives us an insight to her mentality, it further explores her history with Vought and the relationship she has with the company, while also showing us what seems to be her intentions with Homelander. “He gave me the first successful V injection. He taught me everything. And then we fell in love, and he gave me a daughter. He made me, and his genius made you.”

This one excerpt shows us an important aspect on Stormfront and her mentality: she glorifies and idealizes Vought. The glorification she has of Frederick Vought consumes her, evident through the passion she has while she speaks on how V made her into who she is. The glorification she has for Frederick then streamlines into the next aspect of what she talks about, which is the superiority that comes from being chosen to be a superhero (which she isn’t exactly unjust in; a separate post to discuss, maybe? Although I feel as if it’s pretty obvious how people with super-human abilities that routinely save the world are clearly above just normal civilians).

Emotions are clear on Homelander’s face as he hears all the new information released by Stormfront: he’s shocked, and really just at a loss for words. He turns away from her, almost in a way dismissing the rest of the photos she has as he tries to process everything. She holds the photos to her side, now untouched for the rest of the conversation, and continues to speak: “Frederick didn’t care about all the fans or stardom or any of that shallow bullshit. We are in a war for the culture. The other races are grinding us down and taking what is rightfully ours, but we can fight back. With an army of supermen, millions strong.”

This four-sentence paragraph is the strongest example we currently have from the show that showcases the sense of superiority Stormfront has due to her super-human abilities. This specific excerpt is commonly used as a dog whistle by Stormfront anti’s to push the narrative that she is a Nazi or at the very least a white supremacist, however with the context of her relation to Vought and the fact that she highlights it being an army of supermen, it’s made explicitly clear that the “war for the culture” is a culture where supes are naturally seen as higher than non-supes and don’t have to fear the possibility of public backlash due to “othering” that’s caused by a public that may be scared of people who are different than them -- which may be why Stormfront finds it so important to build an online following who truly knows her as a person, while still being aware that she ultimately has a platform and is in a position of power.

It could be argued that her current arc and characterization of glorification and superiority is meant to be an allegory for Nazi’ism, however, I will say in my own personal opinion that it’s incredibly weak to claim. Nazi allegories need to have someone explicitly shown to be wrong in their beliefs and ideals; Stormfront though, is justified -- or at the very least has solid ground to stand on. I mean, God, it’s shown that mothers and fathers were offering up their newborns to be injected with compound V. That should speak for itself.

Lastly, after Stormfront bore her history and ideals to Homelander, she says one last thing to Homelander, one last confession full of passion and desperation: “So I love you with all of my heart. How could I not? Everyone I have ever loved is in the ground. And then I found you. We found each other. And now neither of us has to be alone ever again.”

I believe this to imply that her sense of superiority is a front that she puts up and her desire to create a culture of supe’s is to create a new race of people that are similar to her in sense of life-span, that way she no longer has to keep losing those she loves and live a life where pain is a constant. I truly do think all of this is an act of longing for a life of less pain 💔

So in conclusion: her idea of a “war on our culture” is the idea of non-supes against those who are. It’s an entirely separate thing from Nazi beliefs and / or ideals.

Discussing Stormfront’s Feminism and Why it Should be Both Admired and Wide-Spread Within our Culture:

Stormfront is a traditional feminist; she doesn’t believe that women are superior to men, but rather that we’re all on equal footing and it’s our own personality and accomplishments that make us. Quoted from episode two, “Why does it matter whether heroes have a dick or vag? I mean, shouldn’t we all just be competent at our jobs? I don’t think girls do anything better, I think chicks and dicks are in it together.” She’s able to point out the systematic advantages men have and the unfair treatment of women by the media, but she’s still able to recognize that it’s an issue of the system that forms our culture rather than an issue of men themselves. She never takes out her issues on random men, but rather at the men in positions of power who fuel this sexist attitude (and the women who stand next to these men, allowing it).

She knows her worth, both as a person and as a woman. Throughout the six she has shown up in so far, Stormfront has been outspoken whenever she has seen someone reducing women to nothing but vapid sex appeal for the male gaze – such as her call-out in episode two towards the man in charge of story-boarding the commercial. She recognizes her worth and is able to voice the issues she has with the sexist disregard for the female characters.

Unlike a lot of people, she knows when to restrict herself. This is a problem with our culture at large – we reward loud, rude behavior (primarily within men) despite the fact that they’re being unnecessarily cruel towards what is a rather harmless individual (ex: Gordon Ramsay). During the scene where Stormfront is with Starlight doing press for the announcement of her being apart of The Seven, she points out the double standard and false idea of “girl power” being pushed. Despite it being a topic she would be passionate about, Stormfront is able to keep her points restricted purely to the topic at hand that she wants to discuss. Other people would be vicious and violently insult the interviewer, and they would be rewarded for it by getting clout on Twitter with strangers gushing about how she “dragged” someone, but Stormfront addressed the interviewer appropriately – she knew he was just a man doing his job.

Another example is the end of episode three. While it is “terrible” that she called the Asian a “yellow bastard” (although it’s not like she called him a Chink or BTS or whatever), she only did so because she believed that she was alone with him. If there was another individual with them, she would have restricted herself from offensive language. In a culture full of fake feminists that spew offensive language openly, I believe she is setting a standard of what the difference between personal behavior and outwards behavior that would have an impact on the world around her is. No one is effected by her saying “yellow bastard” the way she did, since she was alone. She is aware of her platform (since the introduction of her is with her on Instagram live) and knows what she can and cannot feature on her platform.

In conclusion: Stormfront is a good, self-aware, admirable feminist. Be like Stormfront.

The Accusation That People Involved on the Show Have Called her A Nazi:

It’s true. In interviews, multiple people have referred to Stormfront as a Nazi -- however, an important piece of context that these people who are spreading these quotes always seem to miss out, is the fact that every time they have discussed Stormfront being a Nazi, it’s in relation to her past. They never say that her Nazi beliefs are something carried on from Liberty to Stormfront (they refer to her as Stormfront since it’s simply easier to, though).

Even with that though, sometimes the intent of an author (or producer, or actor, etc.) does not translate to the actual finished product. What we see has more weight than what we’re told; we’ve been told that she’s a “Nazi white supremacist” but what we’ve seen is a deeply flawed character with a troubling past who’s actively working on making herself a better person. The producers, writers -- whatever -- have not translated their intent properly, so, therefore, it is invalid. Their interpretation of the character is wrong.This is something that happens a lot -- where the author means one thing but the product says another. A good example is JK Rowling; she intended to have Snape die with his sins absolved and being a martyr, but all he ended up being was an abusive creep with a vendetta against some child. Do you get it?

The Accusation That Stormfront Caused A Shooting:

So let’s just be clear: Stormfront clearly condemned the actions by the terrorist who shot the convenience clerk; she clearly doesn’t stand by that behavior nor support it. Using it as fuel for your little Stormfront hate-boner is weird and unfounded.

The Accusation That Nothing Shows Stormfront Had Changed as A Person From When she was Liberty:

A lot of people claim that Stormfront has showed no change from in comparison to her present-self to how she acted in the flashbacks, “proving” that she is still a Nazi. However, there are multiple examples that show she has actively became a better person; there are some major elemental changes to her as a person throughout time -- we know this by comparing what we know of her currently to what she used to be.

Firstly: She explicitly says that she “changed with the times,” which is a clear indication that she’s taken purposeful strides to change her values (since racism is no longer something we deem acceptable).

Secondly: While she had the mantle of liberty, she purposefully went out looking for minorities to brutalize them. While we don’t know if she ever said explicit slurs (such as the N-word or the C-word), she did make it apparent that her attack was on the basis of their ethnicity. However, in modern times, her attacks are purely motivated to fuel the reputation of Vought / because she was told to (and with one exception, which was to manipulate Homelander); this is: when she killed Kimiko’s brother, which was because he was deemed a super terrorist, and when she killed the apartment complex, which was to add to the narrative that he was a terrorist, and the exception is when she pushed Homelander into killing the white man (which was to make Homelander believe that the justice system is unjust . . . Which she is right in, to be fair).

Thirdly: Her study in creating a race of literal super-humans was diverse; it included people of all ethnicities and skin tones.

Fourthly: Stormfront herself shows, although not in a direct way, that she has actively changed. In episode five, Starlight confronts her on her past. Stormfront says, “going against your own people,” and clarifies it even further once Starlight assumes she means ‘white people’ with, “Starlight, superheroes. Don’t be racist.” While she was being condescending in what she said, the weight behind it still remains.

The Accusation That Stormfront Admitted to Being A Nazi by Saying People Love What She Says but Hates the Word Nazi:

In the finale, Stormfront’s past was exposed to the public. Because of how sensitive that information is, she got rightfully mad at whoever it was that leaked it. With the fact that Starlight had already tried to antagonize her before, Stormfront knew it was her. She found Starlight, and the two proceeded to fight.

However, before the fight, Stormfront said that before her past was revealed, people liked what she was saying. They listened to her. They just simply don’t like the word Nazi. She said it in the sense that “Nazi” is a word used to discredit someone, regardless if their views would make them a Nazi or not. You see it a lot now, politically, the opposing side (on both ends) call each other Nazis simply because they don’t have aligning political views. And because Nazi is such a strong word, calling someone one of them would have an impact on their public reception regardless. Stormfront isn’t a Nazi anymore, but people were still calling her one regardless, so the public reception to her changed. Nazi is a strong word. Stormfront was right -- people did like what she was saying, they were listening to her every word, up until she was slandered as a Nazi.

The Accusation that Stormfront Said A Racist Remark About Edgar:

In the finale, Stormfront and Homelander are privately discussing who they believe could be behind a recent terrorist attack that quite clearly was perpetuated by a Supe. Homelander suggested that it was planned by a man called Edgar, and Stormfront said “it’s possible, he is smart. For his kind.” A lot of people have slandered Stormfront further by saying “for his kind” was in reference to his ethnicity. However, with the audience already knowing her superiority complex around Supes, we can understand the remark was in terms of him not having any abilities (that we know of).

The Accusation That Stormfront Believes in The “Great Replacement” Theory:

In the finale, it’s found that Homelander’s son -- Ryan -- is having issues connecting with his powers and triggering them. Homelander says that he found it easy to use his powers by imagining an enemy, a person he hates. However, Ryan tries to do that too but finds that he really just doesn’t hate anyone.

Stormfront, being quick-thinking, delicately says that people are against them because of their skin color, “it’s called white genocide.” While it was tasteless and questionable for her to tell a child, she believed that Ryan needed a clear enemy in his mind and she was simply suppling him with a vague idea that would trigger his abilities for at least one time. No where does she actually say she believes in the outlandish theory; she was simply saying it because she believed it would help Ryan overcome an obstacle he was facing.

The Accusation That Stormfront is Named After A White-Nationalist Site:

There’s a lot of discourse over her name; a lot of people think a name is a valid reason to call someone a Nazi. I don’t believe I need to point out why that is insane, but I will explain the reasoning behind Stormfront’s name:

Stormfronts powers are based in electricity. They are bolts of electricity that come from the palm of her hand, and can light things of fire, burn people, throw them around, etc. They resemble lightening from a storm, hence her being called Stormfront.

#The Boys #Stormfront #The Boys Season 2

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rebelwheelssoapbox · 4 years

Text

Why I'm Voting For Biden (As An Activist On The Left)

Now, before I begin, despite what Trump likes to insinuate, Biden is not a part of The Left. And if this needs to be said, he has no connection to Antifa. Antifa, is not some dangerous terrorist group. It isn't even a group. It's a philosophy, that means you are anti-fa or anti-fascist.

[image description: colorful image based on a vintage ad. the background is a collage of floral images, but the main image is a field of flowers, with a blue sky of flowers. There is a vintage illustration of a young woman smiling, holding up a green bottle on the right. The text reads (top) "Fascism Is Bad". (lower left) "Nazis are fascists. Hitler was a fascist. Antifa ='s Anti-Fascist. Antifa is swell." Under the F in the word fascism on the top text, is a vertical white line that goes down the side of the image. Under the word swell, is a horizontal line that leads you to the image of the young women. Behind the young woman in the far right corner is a diagonal black square. ] So, I am not voting for Biden because I am on The Left, I am voting for him, in spite of the fact that I am on The Left. And believe me, Biden was not the one I was rooting for. I wanted Warren, Castro and Sanders to unite as The Unity 3, but the idea never took off.

[image description: a graphic featuring Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro and Bernie Sanders. On top it reads : The Unity 3. Underneath their photos, the text reads “It’s time to come together”] And if I am to be honest, when I see videos of Bernie Sanders, it still breaks my heart because of what could have been. If you’re like me, you were angry when Biden joined the presidential race. I knew he would be a distraction from real progress, and he was. I mean, with the 4 years of massive protests across the nation, with the progress we made, with the #MeToo movement, this is what the old school democratic party have to offer? In the words of Bob Dylan Your old road is rapidly agin' Please get out of the new one If you can't lend your hand For the times they are a-changin' But they didn’t get out of the way. Part of me strongly feels that the old school corporate democrats (not to be confused with newer more activist-based democrats) are way too content to remain the lesser of the two evils. I am often convinced that the old school corporate democrats don’t actually want real change. And what about Tara Reade? The woman who said that Biden assaulted her. I can’t just ignore that or brush that under the rug. And yet today I filled out and sent my absentee ballot where I voted for Biden/Harris (under the Working Families party.) So, how did this happen?

[image description: photo of my absentee ballot, where I have filled in the circle next to Biden / Harris under the working families party] It was something I thought long and hard about. To say I felt immensely conflicted, is a huge understatement. Part of me was resistant to the idea. But I also know as an activist, that in the present state of the system, there is never a time where you can be truly pure with your ethics and activism. There are always hard choices to make. It’s crappy, but it’s what is, and to say otherwise is not living in our present reality. At best, we can do the least harm. Now, does this mean that another world is not possible? No. It is most definitely possible, but it’s going to take time. Does it mean that we should just settle for what the democratic party is offering us? No, but I do think that as activists, and people who want better for this country, we have to dig ourselves out of the current mess and pending sinkhole, which we are slowly sinking into, before we can work to change the system, so it’s a system for the people, not just for the few.

The way I see it, Biden is a ditch, Trump is a sinkhole, and it’s just easier to create change from a ditch, then from the depths of a sinkhole that has swallowed us whole, where we can’t even openly protest without federal troops attacking us (as they did in Portland, Oregon.) We saw what happened the moment Trump seemingly suddenly discovered the existence of the executive order button. That is just a taste of what is to come, if we don’t defeat Trump. I hate that we’re in this mess, and I greatly resent the options, but this is where we are at. And I know, for myself, the idea that I somehow stayed true to my ethics and beliefs, will not comfort me nor my community, nor the other marginalized communities, when we are neck deep in fascism. That’s the truth of it. So let me say this. You don’t have to feel excited to vote for Biden. You can even be immensely conflicted, and vote for Biden. I am voting for Biden because I feel that if Trump wins, we will have a fascist dictator running this country. And that is terrifying. As a fellow activist recently said, it is much easier to quell and dismantle fascism when it’s at the start, then it is when it’s full on in power. I know some people who don’t like it when I really speak my mind on this particular issue, as they are scared that I am going dissuade people from voting for Biden. Like I am somehow obligated to sell it to people. I sometimes feel this social pressure to portray myself as more excited about voting for Biden than I am. And I get the fear. A lot of us are afraid for the future, and we are all dealing with it in different ways, so I am not disparaging people’s coping mechanisms. And maybe in a way, in the name of avoiding full on fascism, we do need to “sell it”, but I am not going to do so in a way that is not authentic. And so, I will leave things with the words of Bernie who is planning on voting for Biden, despite the fact that Biden is certainly not his first choice.

youtube

[image description: A video thumbnail showing Bernie Sanders next to Joe Biden. The text reads Listen to Bernie. The background is a collage of various images like windmills and possibly the sun - not sure what that is to be honest. In the upper right hand corner, it reads Really American] P.S My grandparents lost a lot of family back in the day in Austria & Poland when the Nazis rose to power. I don’t even know how many people we lost, as it was too painful for them to talk about, so we didn’t. So, I’ll be damned if I don’t fight the rise of fascism in 2020.

#voting #voting for biden #leftist voting #why I am voting for biden #crip the vote #disabled voter #disabled writer #disabled activist #biden harris #bernie sanders #elizabeth warren #andrew yang #Julian Castro #pete buttigieg

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thwip--thwip · 4 years

Note

Hey, I was looking for some new reading material and wondered if you could give me some recs? Please and thank you sm!

ho BOY anon, COULD I! I’ve got over 2,000 bookmarks on AO3 - what are we looking for? I’m going to assume IronDad, or at the very least Peter Parker-centric; short or long? MJ or Gwen Stacy? Angst, fluff, whump? Sorry this took a minute; I went into the vault for you and pulled out some rare gems:

LONG FICS

In the Home by @captainkirkk | 68k

The Avengers have been infected, turned violent and aggressive against their will. And Peter, the only one unaffected, is trapped inside the Tower with six feral teammates.

“Natasha,” Peter says cautiously, “what happened here? Steve attacked me, and if there was ever a sign that something was wrong, it’s having the embodiment of Truth, Justice, and the American Way throw you across the room—”

Natasha comes closer, her stride controlled. Nothing necessarily out of the ordinary, but there’s something in her face, in her eyes—

Natasha lunges across the space, and slams into Peter, hard.

This just…hoo. A classic if I’ve ever seen one. There’s going to be plenty of aloneintherain on this list because she’s the bomb dot com and its no secret I’m in love. we Stan in this house; this might be my favorite Spidey fic ever written.

POW Avengers by Punny_Puck |122k

Tony Stark is thrown into a new Nazi POW camp. It’s his fifth–or sixth–and he’d really like to make it to his fiftieth escape attempt this time. But Stalag III isn’t like any of the other POW camps he’s been in. He suddenly finds himself facing an impossible task: Getting two-hundred and fifty men out of the camp in one massive escape attempt. And dammit if he’s not going to make it work.

Very impressive, very lengthy and detailed historical AU set in WWII. This one is more Tony than Peter, and quite a fair bit of Loki (this author does a great job with all the different POV’s, that’s why it’s so long!). Nice and juicy!

5 Times Peter Fell & Tony Caught Him, and The 1 Time He Didn’t by eva7673 | 35k

Peter has a nasty habit of falling. And Tony, bless him, will catch him every. single. time. Until the day he can’t.

I love this series with all of my heart, but especially this first fic! It’s the perfect amount of whump and IronDad, and oh man, that last time? GETS me. Eva definitely put in so much work on this series, and it SHOWS!

Twelve Days of Peter Parker by @upcamethesun | 27k

In each of the twelve days leading up to Christmas, Tony runs into one Peter Parker — for better or for worse.

In other words, an excuse for this author to write gratuitous Peter fluff/angst/nonsense with a Christmas theme, because ‘tis the season.

This fic is so cute I Die. Perfect bit of holiday nonsense! I read it every year lol. It’s got everything you’re looking for and more, to scratch the itch you didn’t know you had.

ever in your favor by @iron–spider | 153k

Peter startles awake when someone shakes him.

“Sorry, honey,” May says. Peter blinks a couple times and she comes into focus, her hair pulled back from her face. She’s trying not to look a certain way, but he can see it in her eyes anyway. She clears her throat, keeps talking. “But it’s…” She glances away, wets her lips. “You gotta get ready.”

He remembers what day it is, and his heart beats like a drum at someone’s execution. But he tries to put on a mask, make it all seem normal. It’s everything but, despite the fact that he’s been dealing with reaping day since he was born, between himself, Ben and May. That fear that one of them could be taken away. Sent to surefire slaughter. But now Ben is gone, taken despite never having his name drawn from a bowl, and May’s finally safe. Now Peter’s name is in there alone. The last Parker sitting on the chopping block. He doesn’t know how to be. He doesn’t know what normal is, when the Hunger Games are looming on the horizon.

I mean…how could I possibly do a fic rec list without this on it? Iron–spider’s latest masterwork, and it truly is a masterwork. The Hunger Games AU your soul has been crying out for, and quite possibly the greatest AU to ever live. Do yourself a favor and get settled in - you’re in for a ride.

Magazineverse by @copperbadge | 56k

Heroes In Manhattan: From Captain America’s Hidden Talents To The Truth About The Hulk, We Debunk The Myths And Expose The Daily Lives Of The Avengers.

Avengers-centric, takes place post-2012. The Avengers team we deserve! The whole series is amazing, and I definitely didn’t see the twist coming (SO original, and you totally got me. Well played.)

MEDIUM FICS

devil in a sunday hat by @captainkirkk | 14k

Peter wishes he hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t be reduced to this—limp-crawling through the rabbit burrows that is Oscorp Tower, a monster of a man on his heels, bloody and bruised and choking on a panic attack.

This series really speaks to Peter, and his experience as a street-level hero. I don’t think I’ve ever not cried reading this series - it’s really beautiful. Aloneintherain always manages to capture how much weight and anxiety sits on Peter’s shoulders - and how dire his consequences can really be.

5 things that change for Peter after the end of the world by @iron–spider | 14k

…and one thing that always remains the same.

(SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR)

Peter knows he’s different now.

The first three months were like a bubble. He didn’t think about the newness of his old life, he didn’t think about the state of the world now that it had been saved—he just worried. Worried about Tony and Steve recovering. Worried about May worrying about him. Worried about everything in general—he didn’t allow himself specifics because specifics didn’t make sense, not yet. He just focused on his routine, kept it normal, the same schedule every day so he didn’t throw himself off.

It felt like the bubble popped when the party ended, and everything became clearer. The differences in who he is now were highlighted, like there was a spotlight on his every move, like everybody could see the invisible scars the world-ending experience left on him.

The first thing he notices is the sleeping. Or lack thereof.

(a follow up to my story “the rattle of their hearts” from Peter’s POV. You can read this one without having read the original, but it would make more sense if you have read it!)

Everyone knows Rattle, and if you don’t, definitely read the first fic in this series! But this second one is really special to me (and MJ never fails to make me laugh out loud, every time). Peter’s PTSD is dealt with intimately in this fic, and I love it to bits.

the conspiracy kids by @tempestaurora | 13k

WHO IS SPIDER-MAN?

The screen showed Peter Parker, sixteen years old and determined to prove the identity of Spider-Man over the course of the three-part documentary he was making, unknowing that it would become viral within days of the first part being released. Behind the camera, way off screen, was Harley Keener, Tony Stark’s other prodigy child, grinning like crazy as Peter started the documentary. Only a few people knew what was to come, and those few people were about to have a great few weeks.

“My name is Peter Parker, and with the help of my friends, Ned Leeds, Harley Keener, and my Aunt, May Parker, who provided me with a lot of red yarn for this project, we’re going to uncover the identity of Spider-Man.”

“what if peter just decided to fuck with everyone who didn’t know he was spider man and make a documentary about him trying to uncover the Truth.”

Looking for a fun, Peter-and-Harley-being-ridiculous-teenagers fic? This is the One For You. I can see it all in my head, and it never fails to make me laugh. Delightful piece of fluff and probably the best social-media-esque fic I’ve read.

Primary Reason Tony Stark Would Throw Down With An Anti-Vaxxer In The Street by @caraminha | 12k

Prompt from my Tumblr: Have you heard of tetanus? I’m studying it for school and it’s got lots of angst potential - it causes severe, seizure like muscle spasms which can break the patient’s bones, but they’re conscious and fully aware of what’s happening. It also causes fever and lockjaw, and difficulty breathing. I’d love to see an angst fic where Peter has bad tetanus and Tony and co are looking after him whilst his symptoms get worse and worse.

Looking for some Peter!whump? This fic is so sweet. Tony is Dad. What more do you need?

SHORT FICS

Come Together by @captainkirkk | 1.8k

From the ground, Tony squints at Thanos and the young heroes the villain is chasing through the city. “Are they…” Tony begins.

Steve, being lifted onto a gurney by starstruck paramedics, laughs a little. “Leading the man who almost destroyed the Earth in a wild goose chase?” In the sky, Johnny Storm sticks his tongue out at Thanos, ducking and weaving out of the villain’s grasp. “Yeah. I think they are.”

Didn’t I promise she’d be on here a billion and one times? All of her stuff is so good, for every fandom. Go READ this queen who’s been killing the game for years. This fic is such a sweet one, an Endgame fic before Peter was even in the MCU. It’s perfect.

Only Road by @garamonder | 2.8k

A rare breather between fighting should have been a relief for the Avengers. Instead, one small comment triggers a confrontation Peter had been avoiding for months.

Oh wow this one…this dialogue between Peter and Tony is incredible. One of my favorite things in a fic is a good argument, especially one where Peter has a distinct and mature point.

Every Penny and More by Princessfbi | 1.2k

She forced herself to inhale air and hold it before releasing it from her lips. She grounded herself in the cheap vinyl in a crappy diner that she wasn’t sure she was ever going to be able to look at the same way again. She thought of the life Peter would have if she said yes because she knew that’s what all of this was about: Tony asking her permission to let him do this.

May and Tony co-parenting Peter is…oh, be still my heart. This is such a sweet little fic of something that definitely happened off-screen :’)

5 Times Spider-Man Saved An Avengers’ Ass (and the 1 Time They Saved Him) by TunaFishChris | 7.2k

What it says on the tin.

Going through an angsty Spider-Man phase. I regret nothing.

YES give me Peter x Avengers team! Peter gets a great moment with each of the Avengers, proving himself a capable hero (and getting assistance when he needs it the most :’) baby makes some friends!). Really cute, a fun little romp.

unbearable loss by @iron–spider | 1.6k

“Peter…he was so afraid, Pep,” Tony says, his voice breaking. “He…he just lunged for me, he was so afraid, he wanted—he needed someone to be there for him. And I tried, I tried—I held him, I told him he was alright, which was a—goddamn lie, and the only fucking thing that came out of my mouth. The last thing I said to him.” He shakes his head, swallowing hard. “The last thing I said to him was a lie.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Pepper says, quietly.

“I do,” Tony says. “He trusted me. That kid trusted me, and I failed him every possible way I could have. I couldn’t save him, I couldn’t—he died in my arms and I couldn’t do one single solitary thing about it. And I couldn’t—me, the human fucking chatterbox—I just stared at him. He was dying, turning to fucking dust and apologizing to me and I just stared at him, like a moron.”

This fic Fucks. Me. Up. Iron–spider’s Tony angst is unparalleled. It hurts me every time, and the dialogue between him and Pepper is just…it’ll get you.

yesterday, I saw a change by @captainkirkk | 6.8k

Inspired by prompt: ‘Peter is unmasked on live television, and everyone goes berserk—you’ve already heard this one but here’s the twist—he’s wide-eyed, staring into the camera, frightened, but not because of his own safety. The first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Someone please, please protect my Aunt May.” And the entirety of New York cries out simultaneously. Heroes and neighbours and fellow students rain down on the Parker house, ready to defend her.’

This is - surprise! - a May Parker fic. This fic will move you. You will probably cry. I love it with all my heart. If I ever need a refresher on who May is and how she feels - how New York feels, about Spiderman - this is my go-to.

Hope that gave you some new stuff to check out! I have more, do I ever have more. Enjoy & remember to leave comments for all of these wonderful writers!!!

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la5t-res0rt · 4 years

Note

Okay but it literally, LEGALLY, isn't classified as sim cp. You don't have to look at it if you want. And none of those things on that list are okay: antis shouldn't be sending death threats, babes shouldn't be either. Name calling is also out of the window because its childish and stupid. And making fun of people or invalidating their identities is wrong too. But I dlnt think you understand that /both/ sides do all that. You cant sit here and have a double standard like that.

oh i understand perfectly well

i just dont think you do

yeah the behavior in both sides can be pretty crummy but if you literally think that people shouldnt be called out for tolerating this sort of behavior that is literally harmful to so many people myself fucking included like oh fuck would i have loved to have never had to look at the content but its all the fuck over the place and so many of the shippers are so fucking entitled and so conceited that they are actively ASKING for it that one chicks ask box is a fucking taunt she lives for the attention good or bad

at this point I have a side that i favor because the other side sent my friend death threats sent me threats of violence belittled my mental health stole my friends art and maliciously reposted and edited their artwork that same side made incredibly upsetting artwork about causing harm to an actor i

the same side that bullied a fourteen year old after they had the nerve to speak up about the shit going on the same side that came for me for not knowing every single detail of said fourteen year olds very complex and not at all my business mental illness

the side that took something that gave me so much comfort and happiness and made me remember the abuse i endured when I was thirteen i hate that the internet is still such a ducking shitty place to be a lonely kid who just wants to be liked

the same side that writes romanticized rape and writes a black lgbt+ character being a subject of abuse the same side who thinks stories of characters of color need to struggle and endure pain for it to be a valid piece of writing or the side that talks down to young people and minors and then turning around and writing graphic content involving a teenage girl

a side that includes a transmed guy who is so vile that i honest to god use the word hate to describe me feelings for him

but yeah the side that pointed out that maybe saying that you basically only view women as sex objects in that you would perform sex acts for compensation with them but not actually pursue relationships with is a problematic statement or maybe the jewish teenager who asked someone to stop throwing the term nazi around THOSE are the real villains of the story theyre the ones that need to be taught a damn lesson jesus h christ

if you are still talking about the rae biphobia fiasco literally none of us ever said she wasnt bi that I know of i know i didnt we simply pointed out that what she said was an inherantly biphobic statement being lgbt+ doesnt mean you cant belittle other identities look at nasti and how he feels about the trans experience as if he owns the damn thing ugh fucking hell you made me mention these people by name thats how cranky i am

basically on top of all the shitty things done to me and my friends I dont want people using their shit triggering content to hurt people like i was hurt

also in the United States simulated cp is only okay if it passes this thing called the miller test and buddy pal chumbo nearly all the work ive had the great misfortune fails at least one of the three prongs of the miller test the whole area is very murky and not well defined but our neighbor nation of Canada (if youre in the us) is full stop no cp of any kind no ifs ands or butts

why dont you go tell nasti to shut his yap about solar or tell rae to gather her cronies and fucking chill and stop bugging me because im getting very sick of having to tell people how i feel and why i do what i do if you really think both sides are that bad why do t you go try and talk to them because im not budging that shit is wrong and i wont sit by in silence as if it isnt

if youre a beetlebabe shipper trying to get my to badmouth antis fine yeah we can be a bit intense and yeah there have been antis who’ve done shitty things in the past but if anyone is caught being shitty its over dude you are ejected from the good graces

and if youre a neutral youre doing a great job at being neutral but it is making me very angry and neutrality is comparable to complacency so im not in your camp at all

thanks again for writing in im not really sorry for being harsh but i really am sick of this shit so maybe go try talking to someone else for a little bit like literally any beetlebabe and see what they say back to you id love to see it

editors note because i couldnt fit this anywhere but if an anti does something wrong in the same vein as the beetlebabes and i hear about it im done with them full stop they dont get my support or anything and i wont state publicly who they are but there are several people that have been cut off because of their behavior

the thing is i dont seem to see the bad stuff they do or maybe i just dont see what they do as bad because in my book telling someone pedophilia is wrong isnt harassment its just a statement of fact anyway if you have receipts of antis being as hateful as babe shippers* im all eyes pal but dont give me the same stuff ive covered because ive made my stance on those things quite clear

*threats of violence belittling mental illnesses harassing a mentally ill 14 year old making fun of eating disorders and many other bad things

(Note: pointing out the inherant biphobia of a phrase is also not harassment)

bye

#i side with my friends #im not neutral #I can recognize the flaws and things and still be a part of it for example I am a US citizen #discourse

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whiteliesuk · 4 years

Text

White Lie: Churchill is a wholly good war hero; we should continue to endlessly make the same WWII movies about him as the grumpy, difficult, irate, but oh-so-loved Prime Minister

The reality:

Anyone who’s followed me on any social media platform for any period of time will know how much I despise Churchill. In fact, I sit here restraining myself from launching into a massive tirade… In the interest of keeping some level of decorum and in the hope that readers will take me with some level of seriousness, I’ll refrain from calling him a shithead.

It instils a sense of rage knowing that Churchill was posthumously voted by Brits as the greatest Briton when you know his true colours. The removal of his bust from the White House was enough to create a political scandal on both sides of the pond. Dear god spare us from yet ANOTHER movie/TV series about the man saving Britain in the Second World War. Last week I watched the Darkest Hour to get over a sudden and frustrating break up. Did the movie add anything new? Absolutely not. But note to all womenkind: watching movies about reprehensible men will help you get over reprehensible men.

Politicians have scrambled to be equated to Churchill as though it’s a mark of pride and honour: Blair was compared to Churchill after dragging us into the 2003 Iraq war; Johnson has identified as Churchillian. To be fair, in both these instances, the comparison to Churchill is not entirely misplaced: the former was warmongering and terrorised innocent civilians in an illegal war while the other is a racist reprobate.

You can’t learn about the true nature of British colonialism and not be disturbed by the British obsession with Churchill. An obsession that’s driven by an insistence to see him as a one-dimensional war hero who saved Britain from fascism. This is not to say that Churchill didn’t play a part in saving Britain from fascism (I plan to dispel the myth that Britain alone won the war, without a MASSIVE helping hand from its Empire), but that there is so much more about Churchill that makes him deplorable.

Churchill’s well-documented white supremacism & bigotry

It takes a simple Google search to clue oneself up on Churchill’s racism. There was no two ways about it, Churchill was a white supremacist. Born in 1874, educated at Sandhurst and a Harrovian (always be wary of this lot), he was brought up believing the simple story that superior white men conquered people of colour and brought them the benefits of civilisation.

An explicit example of his beliefs in white superiority was recorded in US Vice President Henry Wallace’s diary: in 1942, Wallace challenged Churchill’s beliefs on Anglo-Saxon superiority during a meeting. Wallace wrote in his diary that Churchill had drank ‘quite a bit of whiskey’ and said in retort: ‘why be apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority, that we were superior, that we had the common heritage which had been worked out over the centuries in England and had been perfected by our constitution.’ And neither was this merely a drunken slip. Churchill was never shy to utter some of the most racist and vile things: he hated people with ‘slit eyes and pig tails’; people from India were ‘the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans’; he admitted that he did ‘not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people’; and that ‘Aryan stock was bound to triumph’.

But he only said racist things, right? Even Johnson admitted that Churchill sometimes expressed opinion that would be ‘unacceptable to us today’, but it’s what he did, namely his defeat of the Nazis, that matters. To many, Churchill is the equivalent of the racist, old, white boss/manager/CEO who belonged to an older generation, who of course believed and therefore said those things. As long as he didn’t act upon them, then it’s all fine. This prevailing belief explains why the country voted for our currently unashamedly racist prime minister (lest we forget Johnson once referred to ‘cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies’; to African people as having ‘watermelon smiles’; and saying that Muslim women in burqas looked like ‘letter boxes.’)

I would challenge the notion that it’s fine for your boss/manager/CEO, let alone Prime Minister, to be racist in what they say. In fact, Paul Weston, Chairman of the Liberty GB party (a far-right anti-immigration, Islamophobic political party), was arrested in 2014 on suspicion of racial harassment after reading aloud from Churchill’s own book The River War: ‘How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is dangerous in as many as hydrophobia [rabies] in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exists wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.’ Clearly, simply saying what Churchill did could be considered a hate crime.

But I’ll humour those that take the ‘actions speak louder than words’ line and set Churchill’s diatribes against his context and actions:

Churchill was not merely an armchair aristocrat who waited to achieve his political ambitions, but a soldier who set off as soon as he could to take his part in ‘a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples.’ And kill Churchill did: Churchill raided and laid waste to the Swat Valley (now part of Pakistan), destroying houses and burning crops; in Sudan, he bragged of personally shooting at least three ‘savages’. In South Africa, where ‘it was great fun galloping about’, Churchill defended British built concentration camps for white Boers, saying they produced ‘the minimum suffering.’ The death toll was almost 28,000, and while at least 115,000 were swept into British concentration camps, Churchill wrote only of his ‘irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men.’ (Shock, horror, the British were guilty of using concentration camps too. A blog post on this to come.)

On that note, we return to Churchill’s bust in the White House: George W Bush had left the bust near his desk in an attempt to associate himself with Churchill’s heroic stand against fascism (Bush joins the ranks of politicians who deserves an association to Churchill, but not in the sense he intended). Barack Obama had it returned to Britain because his own paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was one of the 150,000 rebellions Kikuyus forced into detention camps during Churchill’s post-war premiership: when the British government began its campaign to suppress the alleged 1952-60 Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, all to protect the privileges of the white settler population. Approximately 11,000 Kenyans were killed and 81,000 detained. In that light, we’ll allow it, Obama.

In 1920, as Secretary of State for War and Air, Churchill advocated for the use of chemical weapons on the ‘uncooperative Arabs’ involved in the Iraqi revolution against British rule: in an official memo he stated that he ‘[did] not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas… I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes. It would spread a lively terror.’ Historians have bent over backwards to excuse this particular comment: Warren Dockter, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge and the author of Winston Churchill and the Islamic World, said that Churchill was only ‘proposing to use in Mesopotamia… lachrymatory gas, which is essentially tear gas, not mustard gas.’ Don’t worry all, he wasn’t actually intending to kill people, just to commit a terrorist act. Oh, and Churchill was in favour of using mustard gas against Ottoman troops in WII, Dockter admits, but that was at the time when other nations were doing it too, so it was obviously alright for him to actually intend to kill the masses then.

Finally, as Colonial Secretary, Churchill offered the Jews Israel, although he thought they should not ‘take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience.’ Simultaneously, he dismissed the Palestinians already living in the country as ‘barbaric hoards who ate little but camel dung.’ In an address to justify why Britain should decide the fate of Palestine to the Peel Commission in 1937, Churchill was again outspoken about his white supremacist ideology. Specifically, he sought to justify the British displacement of peoples throughout history: ‘I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that was, has come in and taken their place.’

In thoughts, words, and actions Churchill was racist, and his position as a politician meant that his white supremacism had real, tangible effects. Many of which still has relevance today. Despite this, Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s most revered biographer, said that in writing Churchill’s story: ‘I never felt that [Churchill] was going to spring an unpleasant surprise on me. I might find that he was adopting views with which I disagreed. But I always knew that there would be nothing to cause me to think: ‘How shocking, how appalling.’ History is not only written by the victors, but also by historians who are willing to excuse those victors’ vile and abhorrent behaviour.

And I’ve not yet mentioned how Churchill’s so-called heroic actions during WWII killed an estimated 1.5 to 3 million people. Part 2 to follow.

#blm #blacklivesmatter #churchill #britishhistory #worldwarII #racism

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mx-jinxous · 4 years

Text

Day 4: Coffee shop

Barry didn’t know what he had expected to change after the crisis, in this strange world he didn’t understand. After they defeated the Anti-Moniter, Barry had been informed by Joe that he didn’t work for CCPD anymore. He’d lost his job over not “filing” his impromptu sabbatical correctly after Savitar, from the chief not Singh, so at least he hadn’t burned a bridge with the new chief. Instead now he worked at Jitters, after Iris pulled a few strings for him with her old boss....and Barry sucked at his job. Even with super speed he sucked at making coffee and still couldn’t master what he’d been able to do before. He was so happy he was stuck on the register today, he needed a break and he was sure everyone else needed one after a week of Barry’s messes, not to mention Barry’s nightlife was strange too, still learning the layout of the new Central and the new villians.

His life wasn’t getting any easier, his body was also feeling different, like his connection to the speed force was different, but he figured that’s because an infinite number of worlds were erased from creation and now every speedster on the other earths ceased to exist. Barry sighed, his thoughts going to Jay and Joan, his parents dopplegangers. He had just met Joan, and it was like looking at his mom and dad again, he’s sure Joan would have been like a surrogate mother like Jay had become to him. He’d just gotten them in his life, but now they were gone again, just like everyone from the other earths that weren’t on earth 32. He lost Harry, Sherloque, Jessie, Ray, Leo, all the other Wells. He knew he’d never get them back, even if by some miracle some were carried over to the new earth they wouldn’t know Barry. He wished Oliver was still alive, wished he could talk to him and get some kind of pointers, feeling like that excited and scared young man that had first met Oliver Queen.

Sitting in the back breakroom, Barry sniffed, hiding his eyes as tears started to escape. He wondered if Kara, Kate, or the Legends, even Jefferson were feeling as lost and helpless as he was. It was something he couldn’t explain to the other, sure they had their memories back thanks to J’onn, but other than the other Paragons they couldn’t really feel as displaced as Barry. Deep in their subconscious they had memories that came with the new world, Barry didn’t have that luxury, he didn’t know all that changed, all he knows is that some friends were back. Iris wasn’t married to Barry, she was married to Eddie, Ronnie also back, even professor Stein was alive. Since the multiverse didn’t exist that meant that Stein hadn’t been killed by Nazi’s, instead he retired happily, Barry meaning to visit him. It was awkward with everyone on team Flash on a regular basis, Iris and Barry having to work through the awkwardness of knowing they’d been married, had slept together many times, were supposed to have Nora, but that all was gone, just a distant dream.

Barry still hasn’t figured out where he lived, his apartment he lived at before moving in with Iris being one of those things that changed with the new layout. For a while he stayed at Star, having one constant thing still in his life to keep him sane before he took refuge at Joe’s house, luckily his old room the same as it always had been. “Hey Barry, you feeling okay?” Barry jumped, looking back to see his Boss Taylor looking at him worried, having given him many of those looks after his sudden change in work performance. She thought it was all because of an injury from a meta attack that Barry had apparently made up before in prime timeline.

“Hey, yah. Just a long week.” Barry said, not looking as he wiped his eyes away as fast as he could at a normal pace.

“If you need a couple days off I understand. They won’t count against you.”

“I couldn’t leave you guys hanging.” Barry stood, catching a glimpse of his puffy red eyes. “It’s fine.” Barry said, the “It has to be” staying silent.

“If you’re sure, just promise me if you need to leave you’ll let me know.”

“I will.” Barry said, Taylor nodding as she turned and walked out of the breakroom. Barry mourned the memories of their work relationship, of all his co-workers because he doesn’t know these people, other Barry does. Taking a deep breath Barry walked out, getting behind the register and starting to take orders to help get the line down.

Once Barry had gotten the line down he was out on the floor, cleaning the tables, wishing he could just speed through all this. As he cleaned one table he felt eyes on him, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, the speedster feeling a hand touch his elbow. Turning Barry backed away from the person, or people he should say, the young speedster’s eyes widening when he saw Leonard Snart and Hartley Rathaway both looking at him with worried eyes. “You a little jumpy, Scarlet?”

“Snart? I-I thought you were...with the Legends.” Barry said, deciding not to mention pre-crisis Snart’s fate. He looked like he had the last time Barry had seen him, helping him with King Shark, but he seemed to have lighter features. Hartley, Hartley looked different, his hair was a bit longer, a wavy side bang slightly obstructing his eye. He no longer had his big framed glasses on, his eyes clear of any cover, and Barry’s sure he’s never really looked into the metas eyes. His eyes were a sky blue, deep enough to fall in if you dared to stare long enough, Barry tearing his gaze away to avoid it.

“Snart...huh?” Len looked a little taken back, but collected himself immediately. “I haven’t been with the Legends in years, I promised I’d stay away from the band of merry men...we haven’t seen you for a bit.”

“Called and you didn’t answer.” Hartley said, folding his arms in the way Barry knew he did to protect himself, or least how he had on Earth 1. Maybe they were both possibly on Team Flash now, just waiting to be called back to the field.

“Look, can we just fight this out on the field in our nightlife gear. I’m trying to work right now.” Barry grumbled, folding his arms, needing one less headache.

“Fight? Is that what we’re doing?” Hartley said, now both of them on defense.

“Care to elaborate about what our fight is on this time Scarlet?” Len asked, Barry sighing and shaking his head. This new life was exhausting, his body feeling aged as he could only guess what they meant.

“I don’t know, whatever you're here to talk about. I don’t feel like dealing with the Rogues Gallery at work while I’m trying to make a latte.”

“Rogues? You know damn well the Rogues are dormant. Someone going on their own accord I can talk to, but don’t take it out on us.” Len said, Hartley pressing his lips together as he tried to hold back his tongue.

“We’re just trying to figure out why you haven’t been home or taking a call from us in over a week. Figured you were busy, but I can see you’re just ignoring us.” Hartley mumbled, looking at the ground, Len wrapping an arm around his waist, Barry getting even more confused. “Look, if we can talk it out we’d like to know what’s going on in your head. Don’t shut us out again.”

“If we’ve done something Barry let us know and we’ll talk about it...I don’t want to break up.” Barry froze, staring at the two as the wheels in his head began to turn. Break up means they’re together, like romantically together. Barry’s stomach felt like it was going to drop, the realization crashing down on top of him like a brick wall. The reason why he couldn’t find a place with his name on it was probably because it was under one of their names, and they were dating. Air seemed thin as he turned, trying his best to run out of Jitters at human pace, catching Taylor’s eyes as he rushed out. The woman gave a small nod of understanding as Barry ran out and into the alleyway, flashing away as he heard Hartley and Len yelling after him.

Barry didn’t know where he flashed to, only that he was standing in front of a plain white door, hyperventilating as he banged on the door. It was thrown open to show Caitlin and an angry Ronnie, which melted when he saw Barry was a mess. Pulling him inside Caitlin sat him on the couch, trying to talk him down from his breakdown, Ronnie walking out of the room and returning with water as Caitlin managed to calm him down. After a few minutes of silence and tears, Barry drank the glass of water before he spoke.

“Sorry for barging in, I didn’t even know who’s door I was at.” He asked, curled up on the couch with the two lovers sitting beside him.

“It’s fine Bare, but what happened?” Ronnie asked, gripping Caitlin’s hand.

“More post crisis stuff, it’s just been a lot.”

“Want to talk about it?” Caitlin asked, glancing at Barry worriedly, the speedster shaking his head.

“I just don’t know who I am anymore. This earth-prime Barry is not me, I’m earth 1 no matter how hard I try to change with this new world.”

“We get it, you’re lost and need guidance.” Ronnie said, looking at the younger man that had become like a brother to him. “Probably on some stuff we can’t help you with, but Kara’s just a jog away. I’m sure she’s feeling the same.”

“I don’t know. I think I should just go have a nap at the lab, then work on Gideon a bit to clear my mind.” Barry said, his mind flickering back to Len and Hartley, his insides twisting.

“Just take it easy, don’t over work yourself. Remember we’re here if you need somewhere to stay for a bit.” Ronnie said with a smirk, Barry nodding before speeding off, Caitlin’s hair whipping Ronnie in the face.

Barry collapsed onto the couch in the lounge of Star Labs, nodding off with his face pressed against the cushion, the exhaustion over taking him. When he woke up it was dark outside, now on his back, his body covered in a blanket from the infirmary, voices talking in the background, possibly some bickering. Barry let out a groan, shifting on to his side as he tried to nod back off, someone shushing. A hand pushed his bang out of his, another giving a light grip to his calf, Barry cracking his eyes open to catch a glimpse of Cisco leaning against the coffee bar, the hand still patting his head.

“Make yourself useful Ramon and find some of those bars you made for him. He’s probably starving.” A sharp voice said, Barry looking up to see Hartley brushing his hand through his hair, smiling down at him. Looking down at his legs he saw Len sitting with Barry’s legs across his lap, the older man now rubbing up and down his leg, he almost nodded back off.

“Hey sleeping beauty, are you hungry.” Hartley said lightly, Barry taking a second to let his mind catch up to him. When earlier events came back Barry shot up, speeding over to Cisco, who seemed as spooked as the other two men.

“So, still mad?” Len said, leaning back against the couch, Hartley scooting over to him and leaning against him. Turning Barry looked at Cisco, the other man looking just as weirded out by the two Rogues cuddling on the couch.

“It’s weird right? I haven’t told them anything.” Cisco whispered, Hartley perking up.

“You know I have sonic hearing right?” Cisco rolled his eyes, not taking his eyes off of Barry.

“Are you going to talk to us about anything?” The young meta asked, looking at Barry, the speedster patting Cisco’s shoulder to dismiss him. It was silent for a moment and it was times like this he wished he could get drunk, wondering if Caitlin has a bottle of the special booze in her office. After a moment of silence the older of the three spoke up.

“Look, if you really want to call it quits on us we’ll stop bugging you, but you have to talk to us about it, none of us can read your mind.”

“We’re not together!” Barry snapped, still staring at the coffee machine. “You can’t break up with someone you’ve never dated.”

“Wow, shit move.” Hartley sounded cold, taking a deep breath. “You can be a real dick sometimes Allen, but you can’t deny three years together.”

“What’s gotten into you? What happened to the speedster that loves us?” Len said, Barry turning to see both men standing, Hartley looking on the verge of crying while Len looked angry.

“He doesn’t exist anymore! I’m not your Barry and trying to find a place in a world you don’t know is kind of hard!” Barry growled, both men taking a defensive stance.

“Where’s our Barry then?”

“He’s me now. This new world isn’t the earth I lived on, this is strange.” Barry says, Len and Hartley still giving him dirty looks.

“Have you been time traveling again?”

“I wish, but no this is much worse.” Barry said, sliding down the counter, throwing his head in his hands. Both men stared at Barry as silence befell the three men.

“Explain right now what’s going on or I’ll assume you're a clone or something and blow you through that bar.” Hartley warned, Barry’s shoulder drooping.

“There was this crisis, a wave of antimatter swept through the multiverse and erased infinite numbers of earths, including my earth, earth 1. Oliver died and created this new world, earth-prime. Things are so different here, I’m not a CSI anymore, dead people on my earth are alive here, my parents grave is missing, I can’t find my house, and my wife is married to my friend on this earth. I can’t figure anything out and there’s almost no one that can understand what I’m going through because unlike everyone else with memories of the multiverse I wasn’t given memories of this life. I lost a daughter last year and now I’ll never get to meet her again.” Barry broke down crying, hiding his face in his knees. He hears footsteps, and slowly two pairs of arms wrapped around, Barry leaning into them.

“Take a second to calm down, let it all out Scarlet.” Len said, Barry leaning his head down, against Len's shoulder. It took a few minutes, but Barry managed to calm down enough to sit up straight. “Okay, ready to talk?” Len asked, nodding Barry cleared his throat.

“So you’re telling me that an infinite number of worlds were erased from existence and this earth is what replaced them? There are so many issues with that, you’re crushing together all these worlds into one world.” Hartley said, Barry looking over at him.

“Only three earth have been smashed into one, that’s all we found so far.” Barry mumbled, looking at the other meta.

“Okay so you said you were married to someone.”

“Iris.”

“What about us?” Hartley motioned to him and Len.

“You, last we talked, were fixing your relationship with your parents, then you set up a center to work with people that had been affected by the particle accelerator. You also opened up a few shelters for kids that had been kicked out by parents for their sexual orientation.” Hartley smiled, nodding.

“Sounds like a great person, but my parents are homophobic pieces of trash.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty terrible still, but they were trying.”

“What about me? Still with the Legends?” Len asked, Barry casting his eyes down.

“You died a hero, saving Mick from a self sacrifice. You held down the detonation on something called the Oculus, blew yourself up with these guys called the Time Masters. I’ve met your doppelganger, Leo Snart. He was married to Ray Terrill, a man that was a ray of light. They lived on this world run by nazi’s...they’re all gone now.”

“You must have lost a lot in exchange for what you have now.” Len said, pulling Barry for cuddling, Hartley rubbing up and down his thigh.

“I feel so displaced in this world, I’m not the Barry you guys love.”

“Sure you are. You are the same, sappy hero, with a great ass. Just because you don’t remember us, doesn’t mean we can’t be together. We can start again.” Hartley says, Barry looking at both of them.

“I just want to go home.” Barry said, Len placing a kiss on Barry’s forehead.

“We’ll take you home.” He whispered, the next thing he knew he was being carried in Len’s arms, Hartley taking the lead with the car keys.

Barry followed the two lovers into the house, keeping quiet as he took a look around. “I’ll start dinner, any request Barry?” Hartley asked, watching Barry pick up a photo from their anniversary. “I can make your favorites?”

“A banana?” Barry mumbled, staring intently at the picture. They looked so happy, sitting at a diner Barry didn’t know, leaning against each other.

“A banana?” Hartley asks, nose scrunched at the idea of just fruit.

“It’s all Iris could make that was edible.” Barry said, sitting the picture down.

“Well we all can cook, how about I make you some tacos?”

“Okay...what ways is the bedroom?” Len pointed the way, Barry taking off towards the back room, Len joining Hartley in the kitchen.

Barry took his time looking around, seeing many of his belongings around the room. The closet door was opened, Barry going through it to try and get a glimpse of what their life was like. When he got to the back he came across a familiar parka, behind that a newer looking costume that Barry was sure belonged to Hartley. A smile came to his face seeing the costumes, glad to have some familiarity in his life. Pulling away Barry turned to face the rest of the room again, eyes settling on the bed, his body moving on autopilot. Barry found himself sitting on the bed, a small tingle of familiarity coming over him. Reaching under the bed Barry found the old shoebox full of photos of his parents and his life at Joe’s. Dragging the box out Barry hoisted it up on the bed, the old box dusty. Flipping it open, Barry saw the messy pile of pictures of his childhood, bringing a smile to his face. He heard giggling coming from the kitchen, a chill running up his spine as he started pulling pictures out of the box, starting to come across ones with the three of them.

The first one was after Savitar, Barry could tell by the way they were dressed, Hartley’s costume was still the old one that Barry had known. Len had his same old parka and goggles on, apparently being the picture taker as Hartley and Barry were wrapped around him. There were a few pictures like that in there from over the last three years, ones Len shouldn’t have been present in.

Closing the box Barry slid it off the bed, leaving it on the floor as he laid down on the bed, resting his head against a pillow. Breathing in the first thing he smelled was the scent of Hartley’s shampoo and conditioner, the smell taking over his senses. Rolling over Barry was met with Len’s scent on the other pillow, smelling like his after shave. Barry laid there for a moment, thinking over what his new life entailed, what he’d lost and gained.

A knock came to the door, Barry shooting up to see Hartley smiling from the door, dishes clanking in the other room. “Hey, dinners ready. Len’s setting the table now.” Nodding Barry stood, following the young meta out of the bedroom and into a dining room Barry was sure was covered in stolen art.

“Hey Scarlet, if you don’t like the cooking I got a banana for you.” A smile crept to Barry’s face as he took a seat across from Len.

“So what do you guys do in this timeline for work?”

“Kind of working at Star Labs, if you're worried I’m still thieving don’t. You gave us that choice a while ago and we decided to go straight.” Hartley said, nudging Barry’s foot.

“I’m a consultant for the CCPD, what’s a better way to figure out a theft than from a thief.” Len said as he served himself.

“How’d this all happen? The Hartley and Snart of my world hardly knew each other.”

“Well when you wanted to move the metas and I betrayed you Hartley and I just..clicked. Later down the road and many team ups later we decided to make it a party for three.”

“I’d like to try and be part of your guys’ world, it’ll take time, but I want memories of this new world that aren’t all negative.” Barry said, two hands reaching over and gripping his.

“We’ll go at your pace okay, no pressure.” Hartley smiled, both he and Len looking at Barry with understanding and patience.

#baweek2020

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tvdversefanfiction · 4 years

Text

Canary Carnage

Fandoms: Arrowverse, DC Universe, TVDverse and The Originals

Chapter Twelve: A Far Cry from Earth X

Warnings: I don’t own any of the rights, content or characters belonging to any of the DC content I use within the story along with not owning any rights, content or characters within The Vampire Diaries, Originals or Legacies.

18 Rating: Moderate/Graphic displays of violence, sexual innuendos, sexually charged scenes, SMUT, mention of Nazi’s due to Earth X storyline, strong language and potentially triggering scenes.

Pairings: M/M, F/F, M/F.

Lucas Thomas Wayne may have been the Earth X doppelganger of Lucas Lance, but they were to very different people Lucas Lance was the Red Canary and Lucas Wayne was the Blue Canary.

Lucas Thomas Wayne was dumped on the doorstep of Earth X’s Batman after his biological mother Earth X’s Laurel Lance aka Siren X abandoned him to continue her ruthless crusade. He is the biological son of Earth X’s Bruce Wayne aka Batman and was raised by his father eventually joining him in his crusade to make Earth X a better place.

Earth X’s Lucas was resilient, strong and ready to save his world from the darkness that surrounded it under the guidance of his father Batman but having the same meta-human power as his mother leading to Batman himself naming him the Blue Canary.

Lucas Lance was the villain and Laurel Lance was the hero in that story whereas on Earth X Lucas Wayne was a hero and his mother Laurel was the villain on an earth with far too many villains so when the fate of the multiverse was at risk it was only a matter of time before Earth X would be no more.

Unbeknownst to him his father had planned a back up plan so that he could live after hearing rumors about Earth Blood from other earths he had visited in the past and eventually learning that somehow Earth Blood existed out of the multiverse meaning if all else failed he could at least save his son and all else did fail.

Lucas Thomas Wayne couldn’t be any more different than his doppelganger who died on Earth Blood but he was soon about to learn all about him as he found himself teleport-ed to Earth Blood via a fail-safe breaching device that his father had installed into his phone scheduled to teleport him after Earth X was wiped out by anti-matter.

A lot had changed on Earth Blood over the five years that went by following the death of the Red Canary: the entire vampire community now knew the Black Canary as Laurel Lance spent most of her time travelling the world and using her superhero alter ego and Sara Lance had taken over New Orleans Voyage Hotel renaming it the New Orleans Lance Hotel in honor of her family deciding to stay in New Orleans and adjusting to no longer being the White Canary and being a vampire.

The Mikaelson family were of course still the Mikaelson’s as immortal beings who lived for over a thousand years, five years wasn’t really much to them although they did have some momentous changes such as: Kol Mikaelson reuniting and marrying his true love Davina Claire, Hope Mikaelson being accepted to and now going to Columbia University in New York City, Rebekah getting her revenge on Marcel Gerard by trapping him for good and the tragic and shocking death of Hayley Marshall which left everyone devastated especially Elijah and Hope.

The last thing the Lance sisters or the Mikaelson family were prepared for was the return of Lucas, or rather their introduction to Earth X’s Lucas Wayne the heroic Blue Canary who was ready to cause all kinds of carnage to any wrong doers.

“Where am I?” Lucas Wayne wondered as he opened his eyes to find himself in a hospital room laying in a hospital bed with a nurse standing over him. “What’s going on?”

“You were found on the side of the road unconscious but we’re as of yet trying to find out why you were there.” The male nurse replied to him. “Do you know your name?”

“Last thing I remember is being at home with my dad…” Lucas began to say before he realized Earth X was no more before tearing off the cables connected to him, climbing off the bed and rising to his feet much to the nurse’s concern.

“I’m going to have to ask that you sit back down! You’re not in a state to be going anywhere.” The nurse advised him, as Lucas was too concerned looking at his hospital gown which revealed a little too much in the back.

“What earth are we on?” Lucas asked, knowing the chances of the nurse knowing anything about the multiverse were slim.

“Yeah I don’t know what you’re talking about…I’m going to need you to sit back down!” The nurse answered the Blue Canary, eager to get his patient back into his bed.

“I figured that was a long shot…well I’m going to need my clothes.” Lucas replied to the nurse before looking him up and down. “Your clothes will do if you can’t find mine.”

Lucas Wayne waited for a moment as the nurse stared him down making it clear he wasn’t going to let him go easily forcing Lucas to release a canary cry in his direction with just enough force to send the nurse flying into the corridors giving him just enough time to make an escape and try and figured out what the hell was going on.

Lucas knew that for him to be on this strange earth that his own earth must’ve been destroyed by the anti-matter waves and wherever he was now was going to have to be his new home but he had no idea of the people he lost or the people he was about to find.

It was the fifth year anniversary of Lucas Lance’s death and although he died on Lian Yu, Laurel decided to have him buried in Lafayette Cemetery within New Orleans where she would reunite with her sister Sara each year on Lucas’ anniversary to mourn him as they honored not what he became but who he once was.

It was a tradition that brought Laurel comfort and helped eased her guilt, regret and pain about losing a son and choosing not to return to Star City to stop him even being born knowing saving the world had to come before being a mother but that didn’t make her feel any less guilty.

At first she had no idea why her younger sister Sara Lance chose to stay in New Orleans despite the fact she was hated by the Mikaelson siblings for killing their beloved sister Freya Mikaelson but as the years went by their hate for Sara grew smaller as Rebekah Mikaelson surprised them all by forming a friendship with the White Canary, a strong friendship built on forgiveness, loss and honesty.

Laurel Lance knew there was good in Rebekah and Elijah from the start and following his marriage to Davina Claire she learned Kol had good in him too as she began blurring the lines between good and evil, learning that the world itself was not so black a white which was a lesson she wish she had learned five years ago.

“I had a feeling this is where you would me Miss Lance, it’s always a pleasure to be in your presence.” Elijah greeted Laurel as he sped into the cemetery to stand beside her, as Laurel stood in front of her son’s tombstone.

“I don’t even understand why I always come here each year I mean with the way the future changes he’s probably vanished by now just like Talia al Ghul did when he died.” Laurel admitted with a saddened sigh, freely opening to the noble original before turning to face him. “I enjoy your company too Elijah.”

“It’s soothing to have a place to grieve for what we’ve lost and also a place where we feel we can reconnect with them momentarily at least.” Elijah replied to the Black Canary. “I may not have been with you in your choices with your son, but I understood them, nonetheless. You can’t keep torturing yourself forever Laurel.”

“I could say the same to you over Hayley it’s not on you what happened to her and it’s not on you to keep your life on hold because she’s gone…you two weren’t even together in the end.” Laurel told him, trying to comfort the original why he tried to comfort her. “You two shared a great and epic love for each other but that doesn’t mean your life has to be over…you’ve lived on pause for a thousand years Elijah maybe it’s time to press play.”

“We are as bad as each other.” Elijah admitted with a sly laugh, smiling at Laurel. “Neither of us will take the other’s advice and yet we keep advising each other anyway.”

“Well that’s where your wrong as of today my days as the Black Canary are well and truly over I’m even considering joining Sara at the hotel I mean she wants it to remain somewhat of a family business…the irony being my son literally murdered his way into owning the hotel.” Laurel replied with a sly smirk.

“This world needs the Black Canary don’t let her go for some attempt at a normal life you were never meant to be normal Miss Lance.” Elijah advised Laurel, hoping she didn’t give up being the Black Canary, knowing how much it meant to her.

“How is your brother Klaus?” Laurel asked, instantly making Elijah chuckle, both knowing she didn’t care about Klaus, she just wanted to change the conversation.

The Lance sisters had grown closer to the Mikaelson over the last five years to the stage where both Laurel and Sara even tolerated Klaus which to them was quite the hard task but Laurel and Elijah wound up getting a little too close and that’s where their problems began.

From the moment they met they had buried feelings for each other feelings that they eventually acted upon which would have been perfect if their moment of passion didn’t happen the same time Hayley Marshall was killed making Elijah blame himself and his feelings for Laurel for not being there for his former love’s death.

Both Laurel Lance and Elijah Mikaelson were both filled with guilt over their past, but both wanted to help each other and so they were at a painful halt in their angst-ridden relationship with happiness for either seeming highly unlikely.

Klaus Mikaelson was king of New Orleans once again thanks to Rebekah’s revenge against Marcel and although he was particularly thrilled that a man he once loved like a son was wiped off the map or the fact Rebekah wouldn’t reveal his exact location he was more than thrilled to have New Orleans to himself.

Marcel Gerard was the only thing on that entire earth that could kill him and him being out of the equation made the original hybrid and his siblings truly immortal once again or so that’s what he had come to believe.

Klaus walked the streets of the French Quarter like he did many nights taking in the city he loved so much when he noticed Lucas Wayne for the first time stood next to a jazz band performing a musical ensemble in the middle of the street.

Immediately he believed that Lucas Lance either survived the day he died and deceived everyone including himself or that the Red Canary had somehow found a way back to the living, knowing the canary was capable of both.

“I didn’t take you as a lover of music, but you always were full of surprises.” Klaus said to Lucas after walking over to stand next to him, as the two of them continued to listen to the beautiful jazz music being performed live.

“You’ve clearly mistaken me for someone else or rather the same person but different earth.” Lucas replied to the original hybrid. “Tell me who am I to you in this strangely fascinating world?”

“Are you seriously expecting me to believe that you’re a doppelganger of Lucas Lance?” Klaus scoffed, believing Lucas was trying to trick him somehow, after all he was quite the master of manipulation in the past.

“Seriously? You know who I am in a world that’s already much better than my own and nobody has heard about breaching devices which allow you to jump portals?” Lucas quizzed the strange man he was highly suspicious of. “Clearly you either know about the multiverse and are lying boldly to my face or you are somebody completely useless to me…no offense meant unless you’re a liar that is.”

“Are you really not the same man who died at my sister’s hands five years ago?” Klaus wondered, struggling to know whether to trust Lucas’ words.

“This world really is fascinating!” Lucas said with excitement in his eyes as an innocent smile appeared across his face making Klaus realize this wasn’t Lucas Lance. “I’d love to hear the story of how this earth’s doppelganger met their demise seems like there’s a chance of a lesson being learned there…tell me stranger do you know Bruce Wayne?”

“I have no idea who he is, but your mother is in this very city in fact she’s only recently returned.” Klaus informed the Blue Canary, as he tried to work out what Lucas’ otherworldly doppelganger was doing in his world. “Sara Lance too.”

“Figures the man whose sister killed me works alongside Siren X makes sense that ruthless bitch would survive the literal end of the multiverse. I just need to find out if I’m on this supposed Earth Prime or this Earth Blood my father talked about.” Lucas revealed to the original hybrid just in time for the band to take a break. “You better tell your boss I’m coming for her and this canary isn’t so easy to kill.”

Before Klaus Mikaelson could even process the realization he had just met the doppelganger of a former flame Lucas Wayne sped his way out of sight clearly without a worry of being noticed for his powers which was a far cry from the other canaries arrival on Earth Blood.

Klaus had no idea what world this Lucas came from but he already knew this one was different to the Lucas Lance of his past despite their many similarities and he couldn’t help his urge to want to find out more like; was this Lucas also the Red Canary? How different was he to the Lucas he knew? What the bloody hell was Siren X? Was Laurel or Sara Siren X on this Lucas’ world? Was this Lucas a threat to his loved ones and beloved city?

Klaus knew one thing for and that was it was time to sit down with the two canaries in the city that he did know, knowing either Sara, Laurel or both Lance sisters would quickly solve the mystery of Lucas 2.0.

To find out the brother you grew up with was actually your son was a reveal very rare but it is a discovery Laurel Lance made before she went on a mission to kill that son for the greater good only to later on reconsider what was good and evil and whether her son truly deserved to die.

Laurel Lance was still traumatized from watching her son Lucas Lance die at the hands of Rebekah Mikaelson, so traumatized that when she learned of the news about a doppelganger of her son now being in New Orleans it had her reliving all the pain and regret once more as she began to fear what awful fate this version of her son would meet and whether she or her loved ones would be the ones to deliver it to him.

She wanted so badly to run away and continuing running so she never had to face another Lucas or her duties as the Black Canary ever again but deep down she knew that despite everything she was first and foremost a canary and she needed to make sure this Lucas wasn’t a danger to others or himself, hoping desperately this outcome would be better than the last time she had to put a world before her own child.

“I can’t believe that there’s another version of Lucas out there…although with all the parallel universes it makes sense that he’d be born in at least a few other worlds within the multiverse but what doesn’t make sense is why the hell he is here.” Laurel reluctantly confided in Klaus, as the Black Canary and the original hybrid sat on the edge of his bed within his room in the compound both nursing a glass of whisky each.

“He said something about the multiverse being dead that there was only Earth Prime and Earth Blood now which I found rather strange, but I don’t pretend to understand the multitude of worlds that you meta-humans come from.” Klaus replied while taking a sip from his drink. “He also mentioned Siren X he believes I work for this person I believe he’s referring to either you or your sister.”

“Me…or at least the Earth X evil doppelganger of me.” Laurel revealed to Klaus. “Figures some version of my son would be working alongside an evil version of me.”

“I don’t know he didn’t seem like a big fan of Siren X if anything I think he’s more than likely an enemy…he had a look of hate when mentioning her name and that particular look can’t be faked.” Klaus informed Laurel as he finished the whisky in his glass. “Maybe in this bizarre world he comes from the roles are turned around between you and him.”

“You mean in a world literally run by freaking Nazi’s my son is a hero?” Laurel laughed at Klaus before downing her drink. “Why tell me about this? You’re not one to tell me anything especially regarding my son.”

“I wanted to know if it was possible or if Lucas was just playing yet another game with us all.” Klaus admitted as he stood up from the edge of his bed. “I don’t particularly want to play in the past not when the future is mine!”

“It’s highly possible my Lucas is back but it’s also highly possible that this isn’t my Lucas.” Laurel replied to the original hybrid as she too stood up from Klaus’ bed. “I’ll meet with this Lucas but if he’s not my son then he’s your problem not mine.”

“In other words, if you don’t kill him I should.” Klaus answered with a sly smirk.

“You were the one trying to save him last time around so don’t start playing the big bad wolf to me Klaus!” Laurel snapped at him. “I said I’ll sort it and I will.”

“Yes, well Lucas Lance amused me and that’s rare for anyone to do but if this isn’t him then he’s merely some cheap copy from some maddened world that I don’t intend on getting to know.” Klaus replied, making it clear to Laurel he was ready to kill if he needed to.

The mere idea of Klaus Mikaelson killing her son infuriated her and not because his sister Rebekah had already murdered one version of him before but because it seemed so easy for him, which served to strengthen her dislike for the original hybrid as she continued to believe he was more monster than man.

Laurel Lance doubted any chance of any version of Lucas being a hero having dealt with the Red Canary’s crimes first hand but this wasn’t the Red Canary and this wasn’t the son from her future or even her world and if she was to take him out then she would in fact be the villain this time around.

Lucas Wayne grew up in a cruel world a world in which the Nazi’s had won but that didn’t stop his father Bruce Wayne from donning the cape and suit and becoming Batman if anything it drove Batman to be the hero not only Gotham City needed but the world itself as he worked alongside a group of freedom fighters eventually enlisting his own son Lucas into the group under his heroic alter ego Blue Canary.

Earth X’s Batman had traveled to many different worlds most far better and some far worst but he never gave up on the hope of one day saving his own earth that was until he heard tales of the death of the multiverse and everything changed for him and his son.

The Blue Canary had turned down many of his father’s pleas to go to either Earth Prime or Earth Blood with a device that not only allowed him to breach to another world but also transport him to another time but Lucas Wayne was very much like his father and wanted to save his earth, the problem was Bruce was never going to allow anything to happen to his son meaning Lucas Wayne was now in a different world in a different time completely and utterly alone.

Lucas wanted nothing more than to return to his awful world just to be reunited with his father but he knew Earth X was gone now and if he was going to honor his father’s sacrifice he had to continue being a hero no matter what world he was in.

“You know you were always pretty morbid but visiting your own grave is a whole other level even for yourself Lucas.” Sara told Lucas after vamp speeding into Lafayette Cemetery to stand beside him, finding Lucas stood in front of his own grave, or what she believed was his own grave.

“I don’t know why I was drawn here but I was…it was like his spirit was calling out to me somehow.” Lucas replied as he continued to look at Lucas Lance’s tomb, looking haunted by his own doppelganger’s grave.

“I heard your playing the doppelganger card, but I’ve got to admit you’re really committing to the role little brother.” Sara said completely disregarding the theory that this wasn’t the man who she was raised with.

“Brother?” Lucas stated as he turned to face the White Canary. “In my world I’m an only child well I was the only surviving child…yet you know me as brother and I’m not aware of any siblings looking like you which only means you’re her daughter.”

“What the hell are you talking about Luci?” Sara questioned him, not sure whether to be more confused or more suspicious by Lucas’ words.

“My name is Lucas Wayne…I’m guessing yours is Sara Lance which means you are my half-sister I won’t blame you for your mother considering she’s mine too or at least she is on my now extinct world.” Lucas replied to the woman he believed was this earth’s Laurel Lance’s daughter.

“Wayne…shut up!” Sara said in shock, realizing this version of Lucas wasn’t her Lucas. “You’re the freaking son of Batman!”

“I guess identities are just as badly hidden in this world.” Lucas scoffed. “Yes, I am but, on my Earth, they tend to call me the Blue Canary…tell me are you evil like our mother or is this a world where she’s a canary instead of a siren?”

“Firstly, Laurel Lance isn’t my mother she’s my sister, secondly I’m the White Canary and I’m not your sister I’m your aunt.” Sara informed the Blue Canary, while trying to get her head around his revelations. “Also, this isn’t my earth or Laurel’s but we’re both the good guys here…this world isn’t like the others.”

“Well I gathered that on the whole fact that there’s only two worlds in existence now within two entirely different multi-verses which I know is as confusing as it sounds so I’ll just ask is this Earth Prime or Earth X?” Lucas replied with more questions for the White Canary.

“Earth Blood…What do you mean the other worlds are gone?” Sara quizzed her nephew’s doppelganger, desperate to find out more about the supposed death of the multiverse.

“Do you always answer questions with more questions?” Lucas retorted with a smile on his face.

“I could say the same for you…my sister says you come from Earth X or at least that’s what she suspects considering the Siren X name drop you gave to Klaus.” Sara stated to him. “Are you as batshit evil as my Lucas was or did Batman become a good influence on this version?”

“I do come from Earth X yes but I’m not part of the evil that world is run by your sister is however, I worked alongside my father until…” Lucas began to explain before taking a painful pause, as he was reminded of the death of his father, his friends, his loved ones and the only world he had known as home.

“Until the death of the multiverse…you’re the only survivor from your earth, aren’t you?” Sara asked sympathetically, knowing the answer by the pure look of devastation of Lucas Wayne’s face and the tears forming in his eyes.

“All the worlds from our multiverse are gone…completely wiped out except for the newly reborn Earth Prime…in time there will be more reborn, but our worlds are gone forever!” Lucas cried. “I knew it would one day come to this, but I thought I’d be gone too.”

“We should probably go somewhere to talk about all this something tells me we’re both going to need one hell of a drink.” Sara suggested to Earth X’s version of her Lucas, wanting to stop his cries, distraught to see a soft side to any version of her brother.

“My father said not to trust anyone…but he was highly paranoid, and you are a fellow canary after all.” Lucas replied while drying his tears. “Let’s just keep your sister out of this one!”

Sara Lance had sought out Lucas fully expected to find the man she loved like a brother to be fooling them all but instead she found a good hearted and vulnerable Lucas Wayne, one not too dissimilar to the Lucas Lance she once knew before becoming the Red Canary.

She knew she could trust the Blue Canary as she recognized the pain in his eyes, the loss he must of felt and the loneliness he was now suffering from following the death of his entire world but just because she was willing to trust Lucas Wayne and he was willing to trust her didn’t mean it would be so easy for everyone else.

Sara Lance had been convinced that the man she found in Lafayette Cemetery was in fact the Earth X’s Lucas Wayne, the Blue Canary and the son of batman and decided to take him back to her own Lance Hotel within the French Quarter of New Orleans going as far to take him up to her own private bedroom within the hotel so they could have some privacy.

Sara ordered some much needed beers for them both via room service before they both walked out to Sara’s private balcony, both holding bottles of beers as they looked down on the city of New Orleans taking in the beautiful view that the city had to offer.

Lucas Wayne was taught to never trust anyone but he wasn’t anywhere near as distrusting as his father in fact he liked to believe he was a great judge of character and his judgement for Sara Lance was that he could trust her, a gut instinct which he wasn’t wrong about as she willing divulged information about his doppelganger Lucas Lance.

“I don’t mean to be cruel but I can’t help but see irony that the Laurel you know was determined to stop your Lucas’ evil ways considering I’ve spent most of my life cleaning up after a mother who abandoned me and the evil acts she committed on my earth.” Lucas scoffed at Sara while taking a sip of his beer. “Although I guess your Lucas was also abandoned by his Laurel in a way luckily, I had my father to raise me honestly and not under a cloud of deceit.”

“It wasn’t exactly like that it was a future version of Laurel in our world and she was trying to protect you.” Sara defended her sister while still feeling sympathy for this version of her nephew. “I know you’ve lost a lot and I know Siren X was a wicked bitch but my Laurel’s not like that she’s a hero…just like you.”

“It must’ve been difficult being part of a mission to kill a loved one for the great good I’d like to believe I’d be that honorable if I were ever in that situation.” Lucas replied with sincerity, making it known to Sara he didn’t hold her or Laurel responsible for his Earth X fate. “My whole life has been a never-ending battle fighting side by side with my father with the quest for freedom and now the war has ended…everyone lost…and all I want to do is find another battle to fight.”

“I get that for many years I was an assassin with the league of assassin’s my life was far less honorable but it was a never ending battle nonetheless and upon leaving the league I had to fight someone I called a brother.” Sara comforted Lucas before they both took drinks from their bottles of beer. “My war ended about five years ago and it was hard at first…don’t get me wrong things are never quiet around here, but this life really is an improvement to my previous even if I am a vampire.”

“You’re a vampire!” Lucas said in shock before laughing at the White Canary. “I think I can safely assume that this is Earth Blood then.”

“Lucas…” Laurel spoke with a sense of shock and heartbreak in both her voice and on her face, as she walked into Sara’s hotel room forcing both Lucas and Sara to walk back in from the balcony to greet the Black Canary.

“Judging by you looking not much older than I am that I’m also in the past instead of the present of Earth Blood.” Lucas stated, correctly assuming where and when he was, while Laurel continued to look at her son with tears forming in her eyes.

“He’s not our Lucas, he’s really not but he needs us Laurel.” Sara revealed to her older sister. “I think we need him too…I think you need him too.”

“So, you’re really from Earth X then?” Laurel managed to say as she held back her tears. “You must hate me even more than my Lucas did.”

“Well as long as you don’t try to kill me on numerous occasions, I’m fairly sure you and I will get along in some shape or form.” Lucas replied to the good doppelganger of his evil mother. “You’re not her I can’t hate for actions someone else made.”

“Wow you really aren’t my Lucas!” Laurel both cried and laughed, unsure if she was happy or not by the discovery of the good doppelganger of her evil son.

It was hard for Sara Lance not to see the little brother she grew up alongside when she looked at Lucas Wayne knowing that despite him looking exactly like Lucas Lance he wasn’t that man but he did share many similarities with who her adoptive brother Lucas was before becoming the Red Canary before Lucas Lance gave into evil.

Laurel Lance was resistant at first to get to know this doppelganger of her son but she knew he was innocent and as long as any version of her son needed her help she was going to be there for him even if it caused potential carnage between her and her bonds with the Mikaelson family, knowing Klaus would definitely have something to say about another Lucas being in New Orleans.

Nyssa al Ghul had decided to stay on Earth Blood five years previous creating a league of assassins of her own and claimed the island of Lian Yu for herself and her assassin army using her chance to break free from her father once and for all and both Sara and Laurel had been living on Earth Blood for quite some time too but they were far from alone.

Upon the death of the multiverse Lucas Wayne wasn’t the only one to find a way of escaping erasure by the anti-matter wave and Bruce Wayne wasn’t the only one to learn about the strange world of Earth Blood and the Blue Canary wasn’t the only one who used this world as an escape from their own deaths although he was the only one anyone would be happy to see.

In fact quite a few people from multiple worlds managed to find some way of escaping the death of the multiverse bringing them all to Earth Blood which may not have been a huge concern for the Mikaelson’s but it was certainly about to put the lives of all the canaries in definite danger.

“Well Puddin you don’t quite look like my Mr J but you sure as handsome!” Harley Quinn stated as she walked up to the gates of Lafayette Cemetery to find a different version of The Joker stood there waiting for her, knowing by the look of him he was just as sinister as The Joker she knew.

“Well you look exactly like the Harley Quinn I’m used to.” The Joker replied as he walked slowly towards a doppelganger of his sinister lover. “Now don’t tell me you’ve disappointed me and came alone now.”

“Don’t be silly now I’m a very smart broad and I know if we’re going to take this city by storm then we’re going to need accomplishes…although alone time with you is definitely on my schedule right after some chaos and carnage.” Harley answered with a menacing look in her eyes as Poison Ivy, Ra’s al Ghul and Killer Frost appeared from out of the shadows, each of the three looking just as sinister as delighted with themselves as the others.

The Joker simply replied with a manic and continuous laugh clearly beyond ecstatic to have escaped death once more, eager to rid this world of any good that resided within it knowing his twisted team were more than prepared to take out anyone that got in their way even if Batman himself somehow managed to follow them.

Now truly was the time for some true carnage and The Joker was more than ready to inflict it on everyone that got in his way.

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girlactionfigure · 5 years

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"Magneto’s Jewishness is central to his character

According to recent rumors, Marvel intends to give Magneto – the iconic Jewish supervillain – a fresh coat of paint. But what exactly is meant by “fresh coat of paint” here?

Put simply, it is alleged that they intend to cast a “POC” actor – or actors – as Magneto in any future appearances.

Why is this a bad thing? Well, it’s not. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that Magneto is a Jewish Holocaust survivor. He is already a POC, at least insofar as indigenous Middle Eastern populations are considered to be such (which Marvel undoubtedly does), and they arguably should have been using Jewish (or other Middle Eastern) actors from the get-go. However, since it’s highly unlikely that Marvel actually considers diaspora Jews like Magneto to be Middle Eastern (even though they are Middle Eastern, by definition), and since there are no other notable anti-Jewish genocides in the past 50 years to draw inspiration from, the implications of this rumor could not be more clear: they may very well end up erasing Magneto’s Jewish origins.

I’m deeply bothered that Marvel is even considering this – that the thought of it has even entered their heads, let alone their board room discussions. And I’m even more bothered that it’s being framed as a bid for “diversity”, as if this is really “no different” than changing Ariel’s race. It absolutely is different. In fact, these scenarios couldn’t be any more different if they tried to be.

There are many reasons why changing Magneto’s origins would be damaging and oppressive to Jews, especially in light of anti-Semitism’s meteoric rise and resurgence in mainstream culture. For starters…

Magneto’s Jewishness is central to his character

His experience as a Jew – as a survivor of the Nazi death camps and a member of one of the most despised ethnic groups on Earth (not just in the United States, but in the entire world) – is the main impetus for Magneto’s actions. It’s why he is who he is. Magneto is an extremist because he sees the way mutants are treated as parallel to the way Jews are treated. His realization that humans will never accept mutants also parallels Herzl’s realization that Europeans would never accept Jews. And Magneto’s proposed solution, while certainly 100x more extreme than Herzl’s (whose solution was to repatriate Jewish exiles to their indigenous homeland, to liberate it from foreign rule, and to regain sovereignty therein), is borne of a similar distrust and cynicism towards those who hate his kind.

Magneto is a Jew. That’s who he is to most fans, especially to Jewish fans who grew up with him and identified with him for much of their lives. Why take that away from us? Especially now?

Magneto embodies Jewish anger, fear, trauma, and pain like no other character, before or since. You can’t just treat that as if it’s some trivial thing, or if it’s just “white” people crying about their “privilege” (which, it must be emphasized, Jews do not have). Changing him now would be horrifically insensitive and immensely disrespectful to Jewish fans, especially to children/grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.

If it’s Magneto’s age people are worried about, I’m certain Marvel could come up with something. If they can prolong Wolverine’s life for as long as they have, there’s no reason why they can’t do so for Magneto.

And if there’s another minority out there whom they feel is “more deserving” of representation, they can simply create a new character. Problem solved.

Jews deserve representation too

Like it or not, we’re minorities too. And we don’t exactly have stellar representation, contrary to common belief.

We’re all but invisible outside of some very stereotypical characters. I mean, what else do we have besides lonely nerds, gold diggers, terrorists, bankers, and eccentric rabbis?

We have this…

Yup, that’s right. Gargamel, the main villain of the Smurfs, is supposed to be Jewish. And if his Levantine features didn’t make that painfully obvious, he also had a mezuzah in his house in his first few appearances.

There are exceptions to this rule (e.g. Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman), but that’s all they really are: exceptions.

I know what people are going to say next… “But what about these Jewish actors who’ve done characters like Indiana Jones and Jackie Kennedy? They even did blackface back in the day.” Well, here’s the thing: they weren’t Jewish actors playing Jewish characters. They were white-passing Jewish actors (and usually only half or even 1/4 Jewish, like myself) playing white characters. That’s not representation, and referring to it as such is essentially tantamount to whitewashing. It is every bit as absurd as saying Indians are “white”/”well-represented” because Ben Kingsley played Adolf Eichmann (yes, that Adolf Eichmann), or that Arabs* are because Lebanese actor Danny Thomas (to name one example) did blackface and other white roles, or that Latinos are because Cesar Romero did The Joker.

*Speaking of Arabs, Jewish actors who are more obviously/visibly Jewish (particularly those who aren’t half or 3/4 non-Jewish) are very frequently cast in Arab roles. And no one even notices. Why is that?

It’s because…

Ashkenazi Jews are not white people

Non-Ashkenazi Jews exist, of course. That is undeniable. But since Magneto was born in the Jewish diaspora communities of Central Europe, it is quite obvious that he is Ashkenazi.

And Marvel’s assertion that they intend to rebrand Magneto as a “POC” is a pretty clear indication that they have a piss-poor understanding of (if not utter contempt for) who Jews are.

Magneto isn’t white. He’s a Jewish Holocaust survivor. Jews are an indigenous ethnic group and nation of the Levant, so it makes little sense to refer to Magneto as white unless A ) he is a convert (which he’s not) or B ) one views all indigenous Levantines as white, which is highly unlikely (at least in Marvel’s case). Ergo, Magneto has always been a POC.

However, all of his live-action portrayals were done by white actors, and this suggests that whoever was responsible for their casting sees Jews as nothing more than a religion. And for someone whose view is that Magneto is an “ethnic Pole” or “ethnic German” whose family “just so happened to practice Judaism”, it’s not too far of a leap (or even a leap at all) to cast white actors in that role. This view is, of course, patently absurd.

This popular narrative that Ashkenazim are “white”, and that we are therefore already “over-represented” and don’t “need” characters like Magneto, is the reason why things like this keep happening. Were it not for that, the idea of replacing Erik Lensherr with a “real” minority would have never entered their heads.

Just because we’re not black, doesn’t mean we’re white. And you can’t treat this as if it’s somehow akin to rebranding Ariel as a black woman. It’s just not comparable.

It indicates that Marvel does not see Jews as a “real” minority group

Marvel is a politically progressive company. And the progressive left has been infected with its own form of Jew-hate – distinct from its right-wing counterpart, but similar in many ways. One thing they both have in common is that they both feel Jews are “hyper-powerful” and absolutely swimming in “privilege”, and are therefore not oppressed or marginalized in any meaningful way – and that if anything, we’re the oppressors. And for this reason, it is argued that we do not “deserve” the same respect or consideration that other oppressed outgroups do, and this argument naturally extends to representation in media. After all, this isn’t the first time Marvel whitewashed a character’s Jewishness (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver), and it likely won’t be the last.

And it is precisely this line of thinking that facilitates antisemitism and contributes to its growth.

Bottom line: Magneto is Jewish. He is a Holocaust survivor. He is an ethnic Middle Easterner. And despite his (typically) villainous portrayal, he has done more to give Jews a human face than any other character. And if there’s anything we need right now, it’s for people to see our humanity.

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chiseler · 4 years

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The Head -- It Just Won’t Stay Dead

In the early 1960s, the overwhelming majority of European horror films imported to the United States were either British or Italian, the British films being easily understood and the Italian ones frequently pretending to be of British origin. Examples of French horror were rare (odd for a country whose cinema was so rooted in the fantastique), reaching an early apex with Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960), which came to the US in a well-done English dub called The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus during the Halloween season of 1962.

Seldom paid much attention in retrospectives of this fertile period in continental horror cinema is a rare German example, Die Nackte und der Satan (“The Naked and the Devil,” 1959), which came to the US retitled The Head almost exactly one year before the arrival of the Franju masterpiece. Critics like to refer to The Head as “odd” and “atmospheric,” words that seem to disregard deeper consideration, never really coming to terms with it as anything but a sleazy shock trifle. However, it was in fact the product of a remarkable and rarely equaled concentration of accomplished patrimonies.

Consider this: The Head starred the great Swiss actor Michel Simon, renowned for his roles in Jean Renoir’s La Chienne and Boudu Saved From Drowning; it was directed by the Russian-born Victor Trivas, returning to his adopted homeland for the first time since directing Niemandsland (1932, aka No Man’s Land or Hell On Earth), a potent anti-war statement that was all but obliterated off the face of the earth by the Nazis when he fled the country, and who furthermore had written the story upon which Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946) was based; it was photographed by Georg Krause, whose numerous international credits include Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957); its sets were designed by Hermann Warm, the genius responsible for such German Expressionist masterpieces as Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921), as well as Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932), and its score is a wild patchwork of library tracks by Willy Mattes, the Erwin Lehn Orchestra, and a group of avant garde musicians known as Lasry-Baschet, who would subsequently lend their eerie, ethereal music to Jean Cocteau’s The Testament of Orpheus (1960). If all this were not enough, The Head was also filmed at the Munich studios of Arnold Richter, the co-founder of the Arri Group, innovators of the famous Arriflex cameras and lenses.

Though made after the 1957 horror breakthroughs made in Britain and Italy (Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein, and I vampiri, co-directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava), The Head represented a virtual revolutionary act in postwar Germany, where horror was then considered a genre to avoid. The project was proposed to Trivas by a young film producer named Wolfgang C. Hartwig, head of Munich’s Rapid-Film, whose claim to fame was initiating a niche of exploitation cinema known as Sittenfilme – literally “moral movies” – which, like many American exploitation films of the 1930s, maintained a higher, judgmental moral tone while telling the stories of people who slipped into lives of vice (prostitution, blackmail, drug addiction), their sordid experiences always leading them to a happy or at least bittersweet outcome. Though it goes quite a bit further than either Britain or Italy had yet gone in terms of sexualizing horror, The Head nevertheless checked all the boxes required for Sittenfilme and was undertaken by Hartwig in early 1959 as Rapid-Film’s most prestigious production to date.

After the main titles are spelled out over an undulating nocturnal fog, the story begins with a lurker’s shadow passing along outside the gated property of Prof. Dr. Abel. With its round head and wide-brimmed hat, it looks like the planet Saturn from the neck up. When this marauder pauses to pay some gentle attention to a passing tortoise, we get our first look at the film’s real star - Horst Frank, just thirty at the time, his clammy asexual aura topped off with prematurely graying hair and large triangular eyebrows that seem carried over from the days of German Expressionism. More bizarre still, he later gives his name as Dr. Ood, whose explanation is still more bizarre: at the age of three months old, he was orphaned, the sole survivor of a cataclysmic shipwreck .

“That was the name of the wrecked ship,” he explains. “S.S. Ood.”

The ambiguous Ood takes cover as another late night visitor comes calling: a hunchbacked woman wearing a nurse’s habit as outsized as an oxygen tent. This is Sister Irene Sanders (the screen debut of Karin Kernke, later seen in the Edgar Wallace krimi The Terrible People, 1960). Though Irene cuts a figure as ambiguous and unusual as any Franju ever filmed, she owes her greatest debt to Jane Adams’ hunchbacked Nina in Erle C. Kenton’s House of Dracula (1945). As with Nina, Irene lives in the hope that her deformity can be eradicated by the skill of a brilliant surgeon.

When Irene leaves after meeting with Dr. Abel, Ood presents himself with the written recommendation of a colleague he previously, supposedly, assisted. A burly old walrus of a man, Abel (Michel Simon) already has two younger associates, Dr. Walter Burke (Kurt Müller-Graf, “a first class surgeon”) and the handsome, muscular Burt Jaeger (Helmut Schmid), who hasn’t been quite the same since an unexplained brain operation. Both associates share a creative streak; Burke is also “an excellent architect, [who] designed this house,” while Jaeger “designed my special operating table; it allows me to work without assistants.” (So why does he have two of them? With names that sound the same, no less!) Given the high caliber of Hermann Warm’s talent as a production designer, Burke and Burt together are every bit as skilled in architecture as was Boris Karloff’s Hjalmar Poelzig in Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934). The main floor of Abel’s sprawling house is dominated by a vast spiral stairwell, striking low-backed furniture, a mobile of dancing palette shapes, and an overpowering wall reproducing Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virtuvian Man.” Down in the lab, Burt’s robotic surgical assistant looks as if it might have been conceived by the brain responsible for the Sadean mind control device in Jess Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965) - a film that, along with Franco’s earlier The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), seems considerably more indebted to Trivas on renewed acquaintance than to Franju. The film was shot in black-and-white and at no point inside Abel’s abode do the silvery, ivory surfaces admit even the possibility of pigment.

Adding to its effect, the music heard whenever the film cuts back to Abel’s place is anything but homey. It consists of a single, sustained electric keyboard chord played in a nightmarish loop that seems to chill and vibrate, its predictable arc punctuated now and again with icy spikes of cornet. Though I don’t recall reading any extensive discussion of the film’s music, The Head represents what is surely the most important advance in electronic music in the wake of Louis & Bebe Barron’s work on Forbidden Planet (1956). Though the film’s music credits list bandleader Willy Mattes, Jacques Lasry and the Edwin Lehr Orchestra with its music, the most important musical credit is displaced. Further down the screen is the unexplained “Sound Structure, Lasry-Baschet.”

Lasry-Baschet was a musical combination of two partnerships – that of brothers Francois and Bernard Baschet, and the husband-and-wife team of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry. The two brothers were musicians who played astonishing instruments of their own invention, like the Crystal Baschet (played with moistened fingers on glass rods), the Aluminum Piano, the Inflatable Guitar, the Rotating Whistler, and the Polytonal Percussion. The Lasry couple, originally a pianist and organist, began performing with the Baschets on their unique devices in the mid 1950s. Some of the music they produced during this period is collected on the albums Sonata Exotique (credited to Structures for Sound, covering the years 1957-1959) and Structures For Sound (credited to the Baschet Brothers alone, 1963), a vinyl release by the Museum of Modern Art. These and other recorded works can be found on YouTube, as well; they are deeply moving ambient journeys but I cannot say with certainty that they include any of the music from The Head. That said, the music they do collect is very much in its macabre character and would have also fit very well into Last Year At Marienbad (1961) or any of Franju’s remarkable films.

When Ood meets with Abel and expresses his keen interest in experimental research, the good doctor mentions that he has had success copying “the recent Russian surgery” that succeeded in keeping the severed head of a dog alive – however, his moral code prevents him from taking such experimentation still further. After leaving Abel, Ood finds his way to the Tam-Tam Club, a nightspot where a life-sized placard promotes the nightly performances of “Tam-Tam Super Sex Star Lilly.” This visit initiates a parallel storyline involving Lilly (Christiane Maybach), who supplements her striptease work as an artist’s model, and is the particular muse of the brooding Paul Lerner (Dieter Eppler), a man of only artistic ambition, much to the annoyance of his father, a prominent judge who wants him to study law. Maybach reportedly won her role the day before she began filming. According to news reports of the day, the actress originally cast – the voluptuous redhead Kai Fischer – had signed on to play the part, after which producer Hartwig decided she must also appear nude. Fisher sued Hartwig for breach of contract in March 1959 and he was sentenced to pay out a compensatory fee of DM 4,000 – in currency today, the equivalent of about $35,000. As it happens, Christiane Maybach doesn’t appear nude in the film’s final cut either.

The English version of The Head opens with a credit sequence played out over a shot of the full moon taken from near the climax of the picture. Unusually, the German Die Nackte und der Satan doesn’t present its title onscreen until Lilly is ready to go on. It’s superimposed with inverted commas on pleated velvet curtains that suddenly rise, revealing a stage adorned by a single suit of armor. Lilly dances out, stage right, garbed in a medieval conical hat, scarves, a bikini and a black mask, performing her dance of the seven veils around the impervious man of metal. She only strips down to her bikini but her dance ends with her in the arms of the armor we assumed empty, which tightly embraces her as its visor pops open, revealing a man’s face wearing skull makeup. Lilly screams, the lights go out, and the house goes wild with applause – a veritable blueprint for the striptease of Estella Blain’s Miss Death in Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965).

The music heard during the film’s Tam-Tam Club sequences was recorded by the Erwin Lehn Orchestra, evidently with Jacques Lasry on piano, though its emphasis on brass is its outstanding characteristic. Erwin Lehn was a German jazz musician and composer who established the first German Big Band Orchestra for South German Radio. Brass was a major component of his sound – indeed, he made pop instrumental recordings credited to The Erwin Lehn Beat-Brass. You can find their album Beat Flames on YouTube, as well.

Backstage, the beautiful Lilly is a nagging brat, drinking and flirting with patrons while berating Paul’s lax ambitions on the side. Dieter Eppler, a frequent player in the Edgar Wallace krimis and also the lead bloodsucker in Roberto Mauri’s Italian Slaughter of the Vampires (1964), makes for inspired casting; he looks like a beefier, if less dynamic Kirk Douglas at a time when Vincente Minnelli’s Lust For Life (1956) would have still been in the minds of audiences.

Once Ood joins the payroll, Dr. Abel confesses that his heart is failing rapidly. The only means of saving himself and perpetuating his brilliant research is by doing the impossible – that is, transplanting the heart from a donor’s body into his own, which he insists is possible given his innovation of “Serum X.” What Abel could not foresee was that his own body would die during the procedure. Ood tells Burke that the only way to save Abel’s genius is to keep his head artificially alive, which his associate rejects uncatagorically, pushing Ood over the edge into murder. Then Ood proceeds with the operation, working solo with Jaeger’s robo-assistant passing along surgical tools as he needs them. When Abel revives, Ood breaks his news of the procedure gently by holding up a mirror and exclaiming that he’d had “one last chance – to perform the dog operation on your head!” Abel screams in revulsion of what he has become. The conciliatory Ood gently cautions him, “Too much emotion can be extremely dangerous now.”

The severed head apparatus is a simple yet ingenious effect, shot entirely in-camera and credited to Theo Nischwitz. It utilizes what is generally known as a Schufftan shot, a technique made famous by spfx shots achieved by Eugen Schufftan for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). Essentially, Michel Simon was seated behind a pane of mirrored glass with all the apparatus seen from his neck up. The silvering on the reverse portion of the mirror was scraped away, allowing the camera to see through to Simon and the apparatus while reflecting the apparatus arrayed below his neck, in position for the camera to capture its reflection simultaneously. In at least one promotional photo issued for the film, Simon’s shoulders can be transparently glimpsed where they should not be.

Irene returns to meet with Dr. Abel and is surprised to find new employee Ood now alone and ruling the roost. When he offers to perform her operation himself, she instinctively distrusts and fears him – but is reassured after hearing Abel’s disembodied voice on the house’s sophisticated intercom.

After the killing and burial of Burke, whose body Bert Jaeger later finds thanks to the barking of Dr. Abel’s kenneled hounds (a detail that one imagines inspired Franju’s use of a kennel in Eyes Without a Face), the film introduces the dull but nevertheless compulsory police investigation, headed by Paul Dahlke as Police Commissioner Sturm. Sagging interest is buoyed by a surprise twist: when Dr. Ood returns to the Tam-Tam Club and asks the perpetually pissy Lilly to dance, he refers to her in passing as “Stella,” prompting her to recognize him as “Dr. Brandt” (the scorecard now reads Burke, Bert and Brandt), who has inside knowledge pertaining to her poisoning of her husband! Given that his earlier writing projects include Orson Welles’ The Stranger and the bizarre Mexican-made Buster Keaton item Boom In the Moon (also 1946), in which an innocent shipwrecked sailor is rescued from his castaway existence only to find himself confused with a serial killer, Victor Trivas would seem partial to characters who live double lives.

Though Ood/Brandt’s aura is basically asexual through the first half of the film, the second half requires him to take an earthier interest in the female bodies finding their way into his hands. He takes the already tipsy Lilly/Stella home for a drink and some mischief.

“What’s in the glass?”

“Drink it and find out.”

“I hope it’s not poisoned.”

“That’s not my specialty, is it?”

Lilly/Stella becomes the necessary auto parts for Irene’s pending operation. In a nicely done montage, the film dissolves from Lilly’s unconscious body to a glint of light off the edge of Ood’s poised scalpel. It cuts to a curt zoom into Abel’s scream at being forced to watch a procedure he abhors, then a dissolve from his mouth to the spinning dials of a wall clock, followed by some time-lapse photography of cumulous clouds unfurling from an open sky, before Irene awakens in her recovery room with a decorative choker around her throat. She is able to gain her feet and covers her nude body in a sheet. She finds Ood lounging in Abel’s old office. He walks toward her as the sheet tumbles off her bare shoulders.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Well, I… I’ve a strange kind of feeling, as if my whole body were changed, as if my body didn’t want to do what I wished.”

Therefore, Ood has not only taken away her deformity but her responsibility for her actions, as well. Though she has never smoked before, she craves a cigarette. As Ood lights one for her, her wrap falls further, undraping her entire bare back and thus exposing a birthmark on her left shoulder blade that becomes an important plot point. Ood confesses she’s been unconscious for 117 days, during which time he has passed the time by performing numerous enhancing procedures on her inert body. When he compliments her superb figure, she self-consciously covers her legs and recoils from him.

“Why run from everything you desire?” he asks. “You can’t run from yourself.”

He draws Irene into a surprising deep kiss, which – to her own apparent horror - she returns. Ood then tries to take things further but she refuses. After a brief (and surprisingly curtailed) attempt at abduction, he releases Irene, who dresses in a black cocktail dress and heels left behind by Lilly and returns to the humble apartment she kept in her previous life, where a full-length mirror stands covered. In a scene considerably shortened by the US version, she rips the cover away in a movement evocative of a symbolic self-rape, and glories in her new reflection. The score turns torrid, brassy, and trashy as she admires her shapely terrain, fondling the curves of her breasts and hips in a prelude to a gratifying personal striptease. She then goes to her bed, where she tries on an old pair of slippers; she laughs and kicks them away, delighted at how small her feet now are. When she wakes the next morning, she finds a pamphlet for the Tam-Tam Club in Lilly’s old purse, which leads her body back to its former place of employ. When she arrives, another striptease artist is working onstage with a bed. This performance appears to burlesque Irene’s own motions from the night before; she kicks off one of her shoes as Irene had done.

From the moment she walks into the club, still wearing Lilly’s clinging black dress, Irene evokes a black widow, a kind of Alraune – the femme fatale of Hanns Heinz Ewers’ novel, filmed in 1930 with Brigitte Helm and in 1952 by Hildegarde Knef. Like Alraune, she’s the beautiful creation of a mad scientist’s laboratory, but unnatural. In this case, she’s not really a soulless artificial being out to destroy men; on the contrary, she is soulful, starving for some insight into who she is, what she is. In this way, she particularly foreshadows Christina, the schizophrenic subject of Baron Frankenstein’s “soul transplant” played by Susan Denberg in Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein Created Woman (1966).

She quickly attracts Paul’s artist’s eye, just as the now-topless dancer onstage swirls into a swoon on a prop bed – unconsciously mimicking Lilly at the only time she ever saw her, when Ood gave her a sneak peek at the unconscious woman on his living room couch. She asks about Lilly, whom Paul mentions has been dead now for three months, her body (in fact, Irene’s former body) found maimed beyond recognition on some railroad tracks. He asks her to dance, but Irene refuses, as she has never danced, never been asked to dance before. But he insists and they both discover that she can: “You must be a born dancer!”

Beautiful and irresponsible, she allows herself to follow Paul back to his studio, where drawings of Lilly are displayed. Paul asks to draw her, and when she turns her back to bare her shoulders, he recognizes Lilly’s beauty mark. She flees from the apartment and confronts the unflappable Ood.

“You must have grafted her skin on my body!”

In the movie’s most hilarious line, he fires back, “You have a poor imagination!”

She rejects his true account of the procedure and demands to see Dr. Abel, so Ood takes her down to the lab for a personal confirmation from the man himself. Ashamed to be seen this way, Abel pleads with Irene to disconnect him from the apparatus. She is driven away before she can accomplish this, and tries to shut away the horror of the truth that’s been revealed by losing herself in her new relationship with Paul – but the old question arises: Does he love her for her body or her mind? There seems to be one answer when he first kisses her, and another and his lips venture further down her front.

I should leave some things to be discovered by your own viewing of the film, but it demands to be mentioned that Irene – the triumphant climax of Ood’s genius, so to speak – actually survives at the end of the film to live happily ever after. Think about this. This is something that would have been considered unacceptable in any of Hammer’s Frankenstein films at the time – indeed, through the following decade. So, although Ood is ultimately destroyed (you’ll need to see it to find out how), the mad science he propounds is actually borne out. It’s left up to Paul and Irene, as they walk off together toward a new tomorrow, how they will manage to live with the fact that the two of them are in fact a ménage à trois. Will they keep the details of her existence a secret? Will medical science remain ignorant? Should they ever have any, what will they tell their kids?

The Head was hardly the first word on severed heads in horror entertainment. In his own admiring coverage of the film, Euro Gothic author Jonathan Rigby likens the film to the story of Rene Berton’s 1928 Grand Guignol play L’Homme qui à tue la mort (“The Man Who Killed Death”): “There, Professor Fargus revived the guillotined head of a supposed murderer and the prosecutor lost his mind when the head continued to plead his innocence.” Earlier such films would include Universal’s Inner Sanctum thriller Strange Confession (1945, in which a never-seen severed head is a main plot point), The Man Without a Body (1957) and The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958), the latter two proving that the concept was actually trending at the time The Head was made. Also parenthetically relevant would be She Demons (1958), which involves the nasty experiments of a renegade Nazi scientist living on an uncharted tropical island, who removes the “beauty glands” of native girls to periodically restore his wife’s good looks. Though The Head wasn’t the first of its kind, many of the traits it introduced would surface in similar films that followed – not only in Franju’s Eyes Without A Face or Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof and The Diabolical Dr. Z, but also in Anton Giulio Majano’s Italian Atom Age Vampire (1960), Chano Urueta’s The Living Head (1963), and most conspicuously in Joseph Green’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, not released until 1962 though filmed in 1959, some six months after The Head.

It must be mentioned that the film’s unusual quality did not go unrecognized by its American distributor. Trans-Lux Distributing Corporation advertised the film that took a most unusual approach to selling a horror picture. The ads did not promise blood, or that your companion would jump into your lap, or shock after shock after shock. Instead, Trans-Lux promised that “At The Head of All Masterpieces of Horror [my italics] That You’ve Ever Seen… You Must Place… The Head.”

Of course it was an overstatement, but the size of its overstatement would seem to have narrowed appreciably with time.

So why has The Head, with its rich pooling of so much European talent, been so neglected?

A key reason may be that horror fans like their actors and directors to maintain a certain consistency, a certain fidelity to the genre. Horst Frank (who died in 1999) would appear in other horror films, but never again played a lead; he pursued his career as a character actor and singer, maintaining a career on the stage and keeping close to home, never making films off the continent or appearing in productions originating from England or America. After The Head, Victor Trivas made no more horror films. The other four features he made had been produced a quarter century earlier and the majority are impossible to see in English countries. Those who remembered him for Niemandsland would have considered The Head an embarrassment, an unfortunate last act. It wasn’t quite a last act, however. The following year, he returned to America, where he sold his final script to the Warner Bros. television series The Roaring 20s, starring Dorothy Provine. Though the show avoided fantasy subjects, it was a voodoo-themed episode entitled “The Fifth Pin,” directed by Robert Spaar and televised during the series’ first season on April 8, 1961. The guest stars included John Dehner, Rex Reason, Patricia O’Neal and, surprisingly, beloved Roger Corman repertory player Dick Miller. Trivas died in New York City in 1970, at the age of 73.

The English version of The Head is considered to be a public domain title and has been available from Alpha Video, Sinister Cinema and other PD sources. This version was modestly recut to create a new main title sequence and to remove certain erotic elements unwelcome to its target audience in 1961. Happily, a hybrid edition – which, in a fitting fate, grafts the English dub onto the original uncut version from Germany – was recently made available for viewing on YouTube.

In the immediate wake of The Head, producer Wolf C. Hartwig pushed another erotic horror film into production, Ein Töter hing in Netz (“A Corpse Hangs in the Web,” 1960). Scripted and directed by Fritz Böttger, the film (Böttger’s last as a director) was first released in America as It’s Hot In Paradise (1962), sold as a girlie picture with absolutely no indication of its horror content. It was later reissued in 1965 as Horrors of Spider Island (1965). Under any of its titles, the film is notably lacking all of the artistic and aesthetic pedigree that made its predecessor so special and, indeed, influential.

Sixty years further on, The Head warrants fuller recognition as a spearhead of that magic moment on the threshold of the 1960s when so-called “art cinema” began to be fused with so-called “trash cinema,” leading to a broader, wilder, more adult fantastique.

by Tim Lucas

[1] Victor Trivas’ Niemandsland may be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-4XhNMWoyw

[2] Rapid-Film’s later successes would include the German film that was subsequently converted into Francis Ford Coppola’s directorial debut (The Bellboy and the Playgirls, 1962), Ernst Hofbauer’s Schoolgirl Report film series (1970-80), and Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron (1977).

[3] You can see Lasry-Baschet perform and be interviewed in a French newsreel from January 1961 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awaFd6gArLg&t=46s.

[4] Well, as “recent” as 1940, when footage of a supposedly successful Soviet resuscitation of a dog’s severed head was included in the grisly 20m documentary Experiments In the Revival of Organisms. The operation was performed (and repeated) by Doctors Sergei Brukhonenko and Boris Levinskovsky, making use of their “autojektor,” an artificial heart/lung machine not unlike the contraption seen in The Head. A close look at Experiments reveals that it really shows nothing that could not have been faked through means of special effects. (When George Bernard Shaw learned of the Soviet experiment, he’s said to have remarked, “"I am tempted to have my own head cut off so that I can continue to dictate plays and books without being bothered by illness, without having to dress and undress, without having to eat, without having anything else to do other than to produce masterpieces of dramatic art and literature.") Experiments In The Revival of Organisms has been uploaded to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap1co5ZZHYE.

[5] Rigby, Jonathan. Euro Horror: Classics of Continental Horror Cinema (London: Signum Books, 2017), p. 79.

[6] Joseph Green also worked in motion picture distribution and later formed Joseph Green Pictures, which specialized in spicy imported pictures, some from Germany. It’s possible that he saw the Trivas picture when it was still seeking distribution in the States. When Ostalgica Film released The Head on DVD in Germany under its Belgian reissue title Des Satans nackte Sklavin (“The Devil’s Naked Slave”), the disc included The Brain That Wouldn’t Die as a bonus co-feature.

[7] A fine quality homemade experiment, it runs 91 minutes 47 seconds and can be found at: The Head (Die Nackte und der Satan) 1959 Sci-Fi / Horror HQ version!.

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entamewitchlulu · 4 years

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so i did a reading challenge this year and i wanna talk about what i read

transcription under the cut

i did Popsugar 2019 and wanna talk about what i read: Book Reccs and Anti-Reccs

1.) Becoming a Movie in 2019: Umbrella Academy (vol 1) by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

4/5. A fascinating take on superpowers, dysfunctional families, and the apocalypse. Can get pretty gory, confusing here and there and you have to pay close attention to panels for lore, but overall an entertaining romp.

2.) Makes you Feel Nostalgic: Circles in the Stream by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Middle grade novel about the magic of music, belief, and of course, friendship. Definitely written for kids, and has some unfortunately clumsy Native rep, but overall an absolute joy to dive into once again.

3.) Written by a Musician: Umbrella Academy (vol 2) by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

4/5. Ramps up the confusion to ridiculous degrees with some absolutely bonkers, unexplained arcs, but still fun to watch this dysfunctional family do its dysfunctional thing.

4.) You Think Should be Turned into a movie: All That Glitters by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Continuation of Circles in the Stream, but with more unicorns, more rainbows, and more fae, which makes it automatically even better than the first.

5.) With At Least 1 Mil. Ratings on Goodreads: 1984 by George Orwell

1/5. I understand why it's important and all but wasn't prepared for some of the more graphic scenes and the overall hopelessness of the message. Would not recommend or read again.

6.) W/ a Plant in the title or cover: The secret of Dreadwillow carse by Brian farrey

5/5. A fantasy world where everyone is always happy, save for one girl and the princess, who set out to solve the mystery of their kingdom. Poignant and great for kids and adults.

7.) Reread of a favorite: Cry of the Wolf by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Yet another installment in the Avalon: Web of Magic series, which clearly I am obsessed with. Please just read them.

8.) About a Hobby: Welcome to the Writer's Life by Paulette Perhach

5/5. A welcome kick in the pants, chock full of great advice told without condescension, and full of hope and inspiration for writers both new and old.

9.) Meant to read in 2018: The Poet x by Elizabeth Acevedo

4/5. Absolutely beautiful coming of age novel told in verse. Do yourself a favor and listen to the audiobook version.

10.) w/ "pop," "sugar," or "challenge" in the title: Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy

2/5. I think maybe I just don't understand this genre. Or maybe the translation was weird. I was confused.

11.) w/ An Item of Clothing or Accessory on the cover: Our dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani

4/5. It had a lot more slurs/homophobia than I was prepared for, but otherwise is a very touching, relatable collection of queer characters living in a heteronormative world.

12.) Inspired by Mythology or Folklore: Ravenous by MarcyKate Connolly

3/5. A girl goes on an impossible quest to save her brother from a child-eating witch. Really wanted to like it more because I loved the first one, Monstrous, but it dragged a little.

13.) Published Posthumously: The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones

3/5. I adore Diana Wynne Jones, but this one was missing some of the magic of her other books. Not sure if it was because it had to be finished by someone else, or if I just grew out of her stories.

14.) Set in Space: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

4/5. Powerfully written story of a girl straddling tradition and innovation, who wields power through mathematical magic, surviving on a spaceship alone with a dangerous alien occupation after everyone else has been killed.

15.) By 2 Female Authors: Burn for Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

2/5. Ostensibly a story about a revenge pact in a small island town, but leaves far too many dangling threads to attempt alluring you to the sequel.

16.) W/ A Title containing "salty," "bitter," "Sweet," or "Spicy": The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

3/5. It's okay but I literally just never know what anyone means at any time. Are they being reticent on purpose or do i just not understand communication

17.) Set in scandinavia: Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura

2/5. Technically and historically accurate and well made, but the story itself is not my cup of tea. Very gory.

18.) Takes Place in a Single Day: Long WAy Down by Jason Reynolds

4/5. A boy goes to avenge his murdered brother, but ghostly passengers join him on the elevator ride down. Stunning and powerful character-driven analysis.

19.) Debut Novel: Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

4/5. Charming and then surprisingly heart-breaking comic about Nimona, a shapeshifter who wants to become a villain's minion. Really love the villain/hero dynamic going on in the background, along with the dysfunctional found family.

20.) Published in 2019: The Book of Pride by Mason Funk

4/5. A collection of interviews with the movers, shakers, and pioneers of the queer and LGBTQ+ community. An absolutely essential work for community members and allies alike.

21.) Featuring an extinct/imaginary creature: Phoebe and her Unicorn by Dana Simpson

4/5. Incredibly charming, Calvin and Hobbes-esque collection of comics featuring the adventures of Phoebe and her unicorn best friend.

22.) Recced by a celebrity you admire: The Emerald Circus by Jane Yolen

2/5. Recced by my fave author Brandon Sanderson. An unfortunately disappointing anthology proving that any story can be made uninteresting by telling the wrong section of it.

23.) With "Love" in the Title: Book Love by Debbie Tung

4/5. One of those relatable webcomics, only this one I felt super hard almost the entire time. Books are awesome and libraries rule.

24.) Featuring an amateur detective: Nancy Drew: Palace of Wisdom by Kelly Thompson

4/5. REALLY love this modern take on Nancy Drew, coming back home to her roots to solve a brand new mystery. Diverse cast and lovely artwork, though definitely more adult.

25.) About a family: Amulet by Kabu Kibuishi

4/5. Excellent, top tier graphic novel about a sister and brother who have to go rescue their mother with a mysterious magic stone. LOVE that the mom gets to be involved in the adventure for once.

26.) by an author from asia, Africa, or s. America: Girls' Last tour by Tsukumizu

4/5. Somehow both light-hearted and melancholy. Two girls travel about an empty, post-apocalyptic world, and muse about life and their next meal.

27.) w/ a Zodiac or astrology term in title: Drawing down the moon by margot adler

3/5. A good starting place for anyone interested in the Neo Pagan movement, but didn't really give me what I was personally looking for.

28.) you see someone reading in a tv show or movie: The Promised NEverland by Kaiu Shirai

4/5. I don't watch TV or movies where people read books so i think reading an adaptation of a TV series after watching the series counts. Anyway it was good but beware racist caricatures

29.) A retelling of a classic: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Rey Terciero

5/5. We can stop the Little Women reboots and retellings now, this is the only one we need. In fact, we can toss out the original too, this is the only one necessary.

30.) w/ a question in the title: So I'm a spider, so what? by Asahiro Kakashi

4/5. Cute art despite the subject matter, and a surprisingly enthralling take on the isekai genre. Love the doubling down on the video game skills.

31.) Set in a college or university campus: Moonstruck (vol 2) by Grace Ellis

2/5. An incredibly cute, beautiful, and fascinating world of modern magic and creatures, but unfortunately falls apart at the plot and pacing.

32.) About someone with a superpower: Moonstruck (vol 1) by Grace Ellis

4/5. Though nearly as messy plot-wise as its sequel, the first volume is overwhelmingly charming in a way that overpowers the more confusing plot elements.

33.) told from multiple povs: The Long way to a Small, Angry Planet by becky Chambers

4/5. Told almost in a serial format, like watching a miniseries, a group of found-family spaceship crew members make the long journey to their biggest job ever.

34.) Includes a wedding: We Set the dark on fire by Tehlor kay mejia

4/5. Timely and poignant, a girl tumbles into both love and resistance after becoming one of two wives to one of the most powerful men in the country.

35.) by an author w/ alliterative name: The only harmless great Thing by brooke bolander

3/5. Much deeper than I can currently comprehend. Beautifully written, but difficult to parse.

36.) A ghost story: Her body and other parties by Carmen Maria Machado

4/5. It counts because one of the stories in it has ghosts. A sometimes difficult collection of surrealist, feminist, queer short stories.

37.) W/ a 2 word title: Good omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

4/5. Charming, touching, and comical, probably the best take on the apocalypse to date. Also excellent ruminations on religion and purpose.

38.) based on a true story: The faithful Spy by John Hendrix

4/5. Brilliantly crafted graphic biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and his assistance in fighting back against Nazi Germany.

39.) Revolving around a puzzle or game: the Crossover by Kwame alexander

4/5. The verse didn't always hit right with me, but the story is a sweet, melancholy one about family, loss, and moving on.

40.) previous popsugar prompt (animal in title): The last unicorn by peter s. Beagle

5/5. Absolutely one of my all-time favorite books, it manages to perfectly combine anachronism and comedy with lyricism, melancholy, and ethereal beauty.

41.) Cli-fi: Tokyo Mew Mew by Mia ikumi and Reiko Yoshida

4/5. Shut up it counts

42.) Choose-your-own-adventure: My Lady's choosing by Kitty curran

3/5. Cute in concept, a bit underwhelming in execution. Honestly, just play an otome.

43.) "Own Voices": Home by Nnedi Okorafor

3/5. The storytelling style was definitely not my style; while the first book was slow, too, it felt more purposeful. I found my attention wandering during this installment.

44.) During the season it's set in: Pumpkinheads by rainbow rowell

3/5. Cute art, but precious little substance. The concept simply wasn't for me in the first place.

45.) LITRPG: My next life as a villainess: All routes lead to doom! by Hidaka nami

5/5. An absolute insta-fave! Charming art, endearing characters, an incredible premise, and so much sweet wholesome fluff it'll give you cavities.

46.) No chapters: The field guide to dumb birds of north america by matt kracht

3/5. It started out super strong, but the joke started to wear thin at a little past the halfway point.

47.) 2 books with the same title: Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roger

4/5. A brave and enduring personal story of growing up in and eventually leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. Really called to me to act with grace and kindness even more in the future.

48.) 2 books with the same title: unfollow by rob williams and michael dowling

1/5. How many times do you think we can make Battle Royale again before someone notices

49.) That has inspired a common phrase or idiom: THe Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

4/5. Definitely good and deserves it's praise as something that pretty much revolutionized and created an entire demographic of literature.

50.) Set in an abbey, cloister, Monastery, convent, or vicarage: Murder at the vicarage by agatha christie

3/5. I just cannot. physically keep up with all of these characters or find the energy to read between the lines.

ok that's all i got, what did y'all read and like this year? (oh god it’s gonna be 2020)

#book reccs #lulu booktalks

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