#brimstone universe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cryptotheism · 1 year

Text

A Review of The Way Of The Shadow Wolves: The Deep State And The Hijacking Of America by Steven Segal

Alleged rapist and human trafficker, cop groupie, washed-up action movie star, and personal friend to Vladimir Putin, the paradox of Steven Segal is how he manages to stick around despite being –by damn near every account– a universally unpleasant vacuum of charisma. I could go on, but I feel that no introduction of Steven would be complete without the tale of the headlock. Legends tell of Steven’s conflict with legendary martial artist and hollywood stunt coordinator “Judo” Gene Lebell. Allegedly, the two fell into an argument on the set of the film Out For Justice. The crux being Steven’s claim that he was “immune” to being choked unconscious. Allegedly, LeBell called his bluff, and put the actor in a headlock. A headlock that resulted in Steven losing consciousness, and control of his bowels. Steven denies the story. He also wrote a book.

The book is garbage, but garbage in a way that can be easily overstated. I wanted to take a page from other reviewers of this book, and call the text what it is; a fever dream of exhausting mediocrity, swaddled in delusions of grandeur. I wanted to whale on it. I wanted to denounce it like some ridiculous fire-and-brimstone preacher of internet literary criticism. But this does not capture the core, the essence of Way of the Shadow Wolves. There is a paradox at the heart of this text, a contradiction that even now I struggle to describe. Because despite everything, despite the balls-to-the-walls premise, the disastrous prose, and the buckwild plot, this book is deeply and powerfully boring. To call it a fever dream is to imply that it might be exciting.

Some books are bad in a way that must be experienced firsthand. This is not one of those books. In a way, I feel that you’ve already read this book. You know Steven Segal. You met him in elementary school, when he told you he has “every black belt.” You met him in college when you tricked him into smoking a bag of oregano. You met him at your most recent family gathering, where you were trapped in an awkward one-sided conversation about “those people.” The bad-ness of Steven’s work is deeply familiar.

We have our boots. We have our waders. We have our shovels. But, before we wade into the shit, there is one more thing we need to get out of the way: The Shadow Wolves are real. In 1972 the United States government agreed to the Tohono O'odham Nation’s demand that border enforcement agents patrolling their land have at least one quarter native ancestry. The result being the specialized unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers known as The Shadow Wolves. In the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film, Dr. Eggman states that they are who trained him in the art of tracking.

WAY OF THE SHADOW WOLVES

Let us cook Way of the Shadow Wolves from scratch. Think of every dogshit C-list action movie you’ve ever seen. Ideally, you want the trash cuts of post-9/11 hysteria marbled with ex-cia heroes and vaguely arab villains. Drop it all into a stockpot. Next, roughly dice some comic books and kung-fu movies, the more racist the better. Now add some datura, it doesn't matter if it's edible or not, because you saw a native American in a movie make something like that once and you’re totally 1/64th Cherokee. Add a whole can of Qanon and a whole can of racism. Boil until you have pacing thicker than mud.

Way of the Shadow Wolves is a police procedural meets a spy thriller, a fast-paced action drama about elite agents on the fringes of the law who have the huge sweaty meaty balls to do what needs to be done for our country. It is Steven's attempt at the action schlock he embodies as an actor. Our hero is John Gode: Shadow Wolf. Reservation-born native American tracker, ICE agent, and Kung-Fu master. I believe he might have been described at one point. If he was, I do not care. Steven does not care. It does not matter. John Gode is Steven, and he’s the most badass dude to ever not be gay. He is: Special Agent Shaman Cop. He’s gonna beat up the deep state. That’s all you need to really need to know. In fact, it is shocking just how little you need to know about this book.

We begin in a movie theater, where our protagonist is alone, watching the end credits of a movie about the atrocious treatment of native Americans on behalf of the united states government. When the film finally ends, John says to himself “It’s about time.” He gets up to leave. The chapter immediately ends. My compliments to the chef. A delightfully bland apéritif of a character introduction. Steven uses the essential point of first contact with our protagonist to tell us vital information like “He doesn’t like it when movies are long.” or maybe “He didn’t like this movie about the trail of tears.” It is unclear. To quote English-Albanian philosopher Dua Lipa, “Go girl, give us nothing.”

I have been dancing around the quality of the writing. It seems impossible to approach without the footing of a new paragraph, an opponent that requires full-focus, an all-out assault. It is nigh-incomprehensible. I hate comparing bad writing to drugs. It feels too easy. But there is a specific air to Way of the Shadow Wolves. There is a distinct cadence, simultaneously manic and lethargic, that comes from attempting to write while day drunk on over-prescribed amphetamines. And make no mistake, if Steven was not entranced by the muse of Too Many Uppers And Downers At The Same Time, if he wrote this thing stone sober, that is worse. Small quotes will not do the writing style justice, you must see for yourself how sentences flow into each other:

“The desperado’s mind went back in time to a small town in Mexico twelve years before, where he first met his two cohorts when they were thrown together by a tragic set of circumstances. Their parents had been gunned down by a cartel who was at war with a competing cartel for control of the area, which was a pathway to the American border near Nogales, Arizona. All three had been shepherded to a local mission where they were being cared for by the Franciscans, who were becoming overwhelmed by the growing number of children left homeless due to the rampant killings by the warring cartels . . .”

Labyrinthine. A paragraph structure that would feel more at home with Calvino, or Garcia Marquez at his most experimental, though stripped of its deft control and musicality. Segal will regularly change temporal perspective in the middle of sentences. A single run-on sentence will begin in the past, have a middle clause in the present, and then return to the past by the end. There is a downright massive cast of characters for a 200 page book. Damn near every chapter introduces three or four more names, and we are lucky if Steven describes them before discarding them entirely. This book is a slog. I find myself losing patience with Steven.

—

Some time has passed since I began writing this review. Originally, my approach was surgical disassembly. I was going to go over the plot, summarize its anatomy, pick apart its flaws with surgical precision. But the more I cut, the more I felt as if I was the butt of a joke. I was performing an autopsy on a clown, pulling sheets of colorful rope from its gut, and the cadaver was laughing at me.

There is a moment, about halfway through. A woman approaches John at a bar. An assassin, who later attacks John in the parking lot with karate. A furious series of crescent kicks, effortlessly blocked by John Gode, who punches her in the ribs and knocks her to the ground. Realizing that her martial arts are defeated, she draws her gun, but John Gode is too fast. He fires his own weapon before she can get the shot off, killing her instantly. “Her round went upward toward the sky as she fell backward with eyes wide open, seeing nothing.”

This scene stuck with me. It illustrates one of the critical flaws at the heart of Way of the Shadow Wolves. Nothing hurts John. Nothing even gets close. He does not struggle. He does not sweat. He does not bleed. Steven clearly intends this scene to be badass, a moment where his self-insert hero defeats a dangerous enemy without trying. This book is an action movie, but John’s untouchability makes every action scene read as a moment of profound and boring cruelty. This was not a contest of master martial artists. This was an adult kicking a child in the throat.

I find myself losing patience with Steven. I am running out of humorous ways to describe this vapid tripe. This is, in my mind, the greatest condemnation of bad writing. There is no hell lower than being boring to mock. I see myself as a sort of sommelier of the awkward and disastrous. I will be the first to tell you “Wait! Don’t throw that out! There are things to be learned!” But Steven repeatedly proves himself to be a sort of Alchemist of Shit, capable of transmuting theoretically interesting bullshit into just fucking nothing. If this book deserves credit for anything, it is its miraculous ability to squander its own premise.

Why write this? Any of this? Steven clearly does not read. Or, if he does, he seems to subsist entirely on a diet of comic books about monkeys that do kung-fu. Why write this? At some level it all comes down to “because Steven wanted to” right?

Right?

But I cannot shake the feeling. To call this book masturbatory is to imply that Steven might have enjoyed it. There is a desperation to the power fantasy here. To be feared by men, desired by women, revered by all, yaddah yaddah yaddah, all the same trite excretions of blunt masculinity. But there is something else. Steven wants the same thing that every conspiracy theorist wants; a simple world. A world he can understand. Steven is exhausted, overwhelmed with a world he feels he can neither effect nor understand. I am exhausted.

I fear my earlier allusions to expressionist novels may have been more spot on than I imagined. Way of the Shadow Wolves has a plot in the sense that Sunny-D contains fruit juice. Its presence is a formality, a ceremonial hat worn for tax purposes. The plot is there, but it is unimportant. This is not a text that can be debated with. Because within the world of the text, politics is not complex. It is not actually a web of interconnected groups, each with their own interests, rivalries, alliances, and historical contexts. Behind all of it is two things: Good guys, and bad guys. The good guys are all working together, and the bad guys are all working together.

I find myself losing patience with Steven. I fear my earlier allusions to expressionist novels may have been more spot on than I imagined. Way of the Shadow Wolves has a plot.

John Gode finds a human tooth in the desert. It belongs to a body, a body of a woman described in lurid detail. Nearby, he meets a young native American man, a man who calls himself Sweet Tooth. The body is missing teeth, missing hands, missing feet. A trademark cartel killing. A young native American man. “I’m gonna be like, your assistant right?” A buddy cop dynamic. Meeting the task force. Tailing an ICE van full of cartel soldiers. A hostage situation. A shootout in the desert. Far away, faceless men in suits with masonic ranks plan a mass killing. Some sounded like they had Arabic accents. Freemasonry. Interrogation with a snake. The corpse was a woman. The woman was a reporter. She had the evidence on a flash drive, evidence that proved the existence of the deep state. What if its all connected? A sex scene, or almost a sex scene. A sex scene interrupted. A shootout in the desert. Kung Fu assassins at a bar. A cartel defector. A shootout in the desert. What if its all connected. They’re working with the Jihadists. The USA is already “half latino.” The government is paying the cartels to ship Jihadists north across the border. They’re well-trained and well armed. You can’t trust anyone. A terrorist defector who hears the voice of the prophet. The ghost of John’s grandfather. The sun sets over the Sonora. A shootout in the desert. They kidnapped John’s mother. Bring them the flash drive. They’re planning to bomb the casino. A shootout in the desert. The police chief was a traitor. The Catholics are in on it. Its all connected. A shootout in the desert. Assault by night. Rescuing the hostage. A knife dipped in pigs blood. A pit of vipers in the sonora.

Steven ends a chapter with the line. “They had functioned like a well-oiled machine that had just saved two innocent lives. All lives matter. Do they not?”

I am tired. I find myself at a neighborhood block party, trapped in a conversation I’ve had a thousand times. This time the man on the other end is a sweaty divorcee in range glasses who looks like a sunburned thumb. Last week, it was a woman with a necklace of crystals and blonde hair bleached blonder. “Haha yeah” I say, looking down at my phone. “Burgers look good this year huh?”

Thank you to my Patreon supporters who made this review possible.

#Steven Segal Review

6K notes · View notes

iamanoccasionaldoodler · 2 months

Text

John makes me fucking crazy because like. Hes God, right? But he's also a millennial who lived in the era of Twitch. He KNOWS who God is. Depending on circumstance hes probably read at least some of the bible (i think he mentions having gone to Catholic school?) so like. All of this jesus shit thats going on? He knows. He gets it.

He is literally a capricious god of fire and brimstone, punishing humanity for a generations-ago original sin, absolutely refusing to forgive. He IS the old testament God right now. Kill-your-children-for-me God. And to some degree I'm sure he knew that, but hes got other things on his mind. Like the aforementioned revenge. Its probably not top of the list to consider the biblical implications of destroying planets and evaporating people.

And then. This God. Who will not forgive. Who refuses to shed his blood. Looks into the eyes of a girl conceived through a miracle, his own flesh and blood, and she /has already died for humanity/. It already happened. Its Holy Saturday. He wasnt ready to forgive, but she was. She was and she did in the very salt water that he abandoned in search of vengeance. And those gold eyes look up at him from her personal tomb and he must understand that here, at the edge of the known universe, his very own brand of personal aestheticism has come to /bite him in the ass./

Oh, you wanted to be God? Here's Jesus. She's already dead. Good luck.

Christ, I'd be on a bender too.

#john gaius #the locked tomb #tlt #gideon nav #tlt spoilers

215 notes · View notes

cuubism · 2 years

Text

Dream makes Hob Prince Consort in the Dreaming, but does not tell Hob because why would he ever communicate anything. It's just ceremonial anyway. Right? Right.

Anyway Hob lives in blissful ignorance for several years. Sure all the Dreaming denizens are super nice to him but that's just how dreams are, right? It's cool. Nothing weird here.

Then Dream goes missing. Hob's freaking the fuck out -- the last time Dream went missing was fucking Not Good after all -- and as if that wasn't bad enough, Lucienne comes up to him and is like, so... Lord Morpheus left you in charge of the Dreaming in his absence.

Hob: this better be a fucking joke

Lucienne: no, you're prince consort so according to the royal scriptures of the Dreaming you're in charge.

Hob: hang on I'm WHAT so I'm WHAT

Hob: was Dream AWARE of this when he made me consort

Lucienne: *derisive look*

Hob: but I'm just a GUY I can't run a dream realm *shakes fist at absent Dream* my beloved asshole you can't just drop this shit on me oh my GOD

Lucienne: well someone's gotta do it. To be honest I'm still tired from last time.

Hob: well. Uh. *shrugs* guess I'm running the Dreaming now?

----

A year later Dream returns. Hob's been looking for him the whole time but it was kind of fucking difficult when he also had to run a whole REALM.

Turns out Dream was fine he just went on like, a jaunt to another galaxy for dream inspiration and forgot about time dilation in space travel. No big deal. Anyway.

Dream gets back and he's like oops hope Hob hasn't struggled too much, that was only supposed to be three days... lol...

So turns out Hob is not very good at being a King in the way Dream is but he IS very good at just bringing major Dad Energy to all the little dreams and nightmares, just being like the Cool University Professor of the entire Dreaming. So Dream gets back and Hob has managed to befriend EVERYONE in the Dreaming. He's hosting "family dinner" at the palace? He's doing Forums where people can bring their complaints? He instituted set work hours to create work life balance?

Dream is like What In The Democracy Is This. What have you done to my realm.

Hob's like We're Vibing! :) Come on we're having a blast!

And drags Dream to a fucking party going on at the palace? There are drinks? They're doing karaoke? Is Dream having a stroke?

It's all so foreign that he almost calls down a tornado and just obliterates the palace. But Hob pulls him close and makes him dance to the music, and leans in and says, "You know it doesn't have to be all fire and brimstone and seriousness all the time. It's okay to show them you love them."

And Dream is like "I DO love them they're my creations."

And Hob is like, "I know but it's also okay for them to SEE it."

Dream looks around at the ridiculous party. True to Hob's words, the dreams and nightmares look more relaxed and happier than they've been in a while-- at least, when Dream's been around. He wonders what else he doesn't get to see. What they're afraid to show him.

He says, "I went to the Andromeda galaxy for new dream inspiration, but perhaps I should have been looking in you, Hob Gadling."

Hob's like "aw that's sweet-- hang on you went to the WHERE???"

Dream just chuckles and doesn't elaborate, and Hob gives up and pulls him close again, holds him and dances them to the beat of the swing music one of the Music Dreams has just put on. Dream says, "I see that while your leadership skills are... unconventional... I made the right choice in leaving you in charge of the Dreaming."

"Yeah, about that, next time you're gonna spontaneously make me Prime Minister of some place can you let me know in ADVANCE??"

"Well, you wanted fun. Where would the fun be in that?"

#the sandman #dreamling #more shitposting and dumb headcanons!

3K notes · View notes

buckyscombatboots · 2 years

Text

Monstertober Day 8

Careful what you wish for 🕯

Pairing: Incubus!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Initial Somnophilia, dub con, kind of rape, insults/degrading language, biting, scratching, marking, mentions of blood, womb tattoo/sigil, dumbification, aphrodisiac, vibrator, p in v, overstimulation, cunnilingus, demon summoning, beefy!bucky, condescending!Bucky, dark!bucky, praise, fluff

Nicknames: Angel, Doll, sweetness

Word count: 2.5k

A/N: I’m so sorry this is late, I was extremely busy on Halloween with teacher training and university work. But this concludes Monstertober, I have some exciting things planned for November.

༻𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐚𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫༺

Candles…You look around your floor surrounded by heaps of softly glowing candles, their flames waning and brightening again and again as the flame danced in the draft of your room. “Check.” you murmured, casting your eyes back to the grimoire’s aged pages; squinting in the darkness of your room trying to see the faded ink more clearly “stupidly complicated pentagram that took me multiple attempts and almost two hours to draw. Check.” You huffed glaring down at the pentagram drawn in white chalk on your floor, the edges smudged ever so slightly from where you’d repeatedly rubbed it away, only to redraw it wrong again. “An offering.” The book had not specified the offering that you had to provide for the demon, it simply said offering in intricate calligraphy “,how very helpful.” Grumbling you crouched to your knees, placing the grimoire down and scooping up your pile of “offerings” depositing them at random in a small circle inside your pentagram. Your offerings, if you could even call them that, consisted of a some loose change you’d found under and behind furniture, some candies you had lying around from halloween that the children hadn’t taken, a lock of your hair and a deeply personal item—which was the only clear instruction in the list, and you had chosen your trusty pink vibrator. Looking at the pink vibe on the floor made you want to crawl out of your skin in embarrassment, but it made the most sense since it was very deeply personal.

You picked the book back up and seated yourself in the centre of the summoning circle, you could feel your heart rate spike as you glanced down at the page for the summoning words. Your hands shook, palms growing cold and sweaty as you began “Heed my call, hear my cry may it lead you to me from your realm far away. I command you to my side so that we may make a contract.” You bite down on your finger drawing blood and swipe it across the floor “See me now and let me see you.” You blow out the candles around you and wait. You gulp as you sit cross legged in the dark, waiting. The sound of your breathing and your blood rushing makes the silence unbearable.

Nothing happens.

After sitting there for five minutes, you climb to your feet defeated. Tears on your waterline as you throw the book to the floor and flop into bed. You felt so stupid for even thinking that something like that would work, you feel the full weight of your adrenaline rush crashing to ground as curl under your covers rocking yourself to sleep s you mentally prepare for the rent payment tomorrow.

The blown out candles relight simultaneously as he steps out of the red swirling portal “You called?” He looked down expecting to see the person who summoned him, but he found the chalk pentagram staring back at him. He bends down, picking up the book you’d thrown harshly to the floor with a frown. He dusts off the grimoire, tracing the embossing in the leather cover with his blackened fingers, turning down the heat of his brimstone skin so the book doesn't burn. From the corner of his eye he catches your body shifting under the covers. He sets the grimoire gently on your chest of drawers and pads over to your bed “Wake up my little sleeping Angel.” He whispers in a gravelly tone, forming an ‘o’ with his reddened lips and blowing a stream of cold air against your ear lobe making you stir. He seats himself on the edge of your bed trailing his hand across your sleeping form “You’re wearing too much for my liking. Let me help you with that.” He threw the covers off of you and turned you more on to your back so he could peel your baggy shirt off, moving as quiet as a mouse. You were left only in a pair of panties, your comfortable pair that you wore when you knew no one would be seeing them, Bucky smiled at them thumbing the fabric adoringly. He ran his fingers across the middle of your panties till a soaking crease was visible. “Already so horny for me, naughty little human.” Bucky pulled down your panties, taking them into his hand to see the clear, sticky proof of your arousal. He tossed the panties already able to smell the thick scent of your arousal, he knew he had to taste you. He dipped his head down, running his tongue through your folds, groaning at the taste of you. He decided there and then he was going to claim you as his. He sucked on his fingers, getting them wet, before inserting them inside of you. Your walls drew him in, clamping so tightly around his fingers that he could barely move them. His hardened cock twitched as he imagined sliding into you, pounding you awake watching as your pleasured cries turned into pleas for him to stop. He had to stop a wicked grin from spreading across his lips. “You’ve been neglected for so long, Pet. Bucky’s gonna change that don’t you worry sweetheart. Who would neglect such a pretty pussy, so fucking tight.” His fingers start to glide through your spasming walls as they adjust to the thickness of his fingers. He targets the spongy spot inside you, debaucherous wet sounds filing the sleepy silence of your room. He paused as a soft mewl left your lips, your body shifting and your fisted hands tightening their hold on your pillow. He continued his ministrations even as your eyes fluttered open and you finally came to, your pleasured babbling pausing. You stared, horrified at the man sitting at the edge of your bed. Your eyes travelled up to the black horns on his head that looked like a ram's horns then down his red eyed that even in the darkness stuck out like a sore thumb, they shone like road studs in headlights stealing your attention before he opened his mouth displaying sharp, white teeth “Thanks for summoning me, Angel. I can see why you needed an incubus. You seem to be very pent up, but I can fix that for you.” His deep melodic voice made the initial stress you felt drift far away. You gaze drops downwards following the muscle of his neck down to the imposing bulk of his shoulders and arms, the rise and fall of his burly chest becoming hypnotising as his scent reaches your nostrils a mix of myrrh and musk that has your head swimming making you completely forget what he said. The feel of his rough palm cupping your cheek anchors you “I said, thank you for summoning me, Angel.”

“I didn’t summon an incubus. You- You have the wrong house.”

“No need to be coy. It’s fine to need a bit of help.”

“No, I genuinely didn’t summon an incubus. I wanted to Summon a demon that could help me. I'm working two jobs, I’m exhausted, the cost of everything is rising and I just can’t anymore. I'm running myself into the ground. I must have summoned the wrong type of demon.”

“Ah, that's Ari’s department. I’d contact him, but he’s a bit busy with a few cultists. So I guess you’re stuck with me for the time being, but I can help you in a different way, Doll.” His other hand reaches to the side of him and heat floods your cheeks as your eyes lock on the pink vibrator he has between his fingers. He pops it into his mouth like a hard candy and sucks it a little before spitting it back into his palm, pressing the button to turn it on “Nice and ready for you.” He chides, slipping his fingers out of your tight heat replacing the emptiness with the warmed, whirling vibrator. You feel your stomach constrict in pleasure as he guides the pink bullet in further with his fingers, positioning it right against your sweet spot. Shooting you a knowing smile as you sob your walls fluttering around his fingers as you convulse “Such a good girl for me, coming all over my fingers.” Bucky coos taking the vibe out from inside you bringing it to the head of his weeping cock moaning as he rubs it against his precum leaking slit, pumping his length with his other ashen hand “Time for you to take me sweetness.” You try to scramble away from him but he was much quicker than you, sensing your fear before it had even registered inside your brain. His warm rough palm seized your thigh pulling you back in position.

“It won’t fit! You’re going to tear me in two. Please can you just forget I summoned you.”

“Oh, Doll, that’s not how this works. You summoned me, I have duties to fulfill and in exchange for said duties I get your soul. I’m not leaving, this will not be forgotten. Regardless, you need to breathe; I’m not going to ‘tear you in two’ that sigil on your womb will make sure of it and make it pleasurable whilst I do. So calm down for me, I don’t like it when humans make my job more difficult than it has to be so behave and you’ll be rewarded.” His threats wrapped up in a sweet tone making it seem as if he wasn’t patronising you. Despite this you began to calm down, wrapping your legs around his hips and controlling your breathing. Your eyes drifted down his muscular torso, focusing on the intricate tattoo like patterns on his skin to relax your mind. The tattoos brought you down to the deep ‘v’ line of his pelvis and back to his veiny member which he was prodding to your entrance. You were pulled out of the trace-like state that his prominent veins had put you in, as he bottomed out in you until your walls were stretched taut around his meaty shaft. He stays still until the burn subsides, watching as your eyes gain a hazy, spaced out glaze and your mouth drops open in an inaudible moan. He pulls out and thrusts so hard into you that your bed scoots under the force, the sound of skin slapping skin echos through your small room as Bucky snaps his hips into you pushing himself deeper and deeper each time, his movements are slow yet rough making you feel every inch of him as he fucks into your tight heat. A surge of heat spread all the way from your hips to the sole of your feet and the tips of your fingers, you felt almost drunk on pleasure, every single thrust of his hips renewing the heat. Your whole body tingles as he presses the vibrator to your clit “God!” You scream as your legs wrapped around his waist begin to shake.

“Oh no sweet little Angel, God isn’t here. In this room, right now, I am your God. You worship me. I give you pleasure.” He purrs, swirling the vibe on your pulsing pearl as he angles the tip of his cock to hit your sweet spot over an over, drawing the orgasm building inside of you to the surface making you cum with a whimpering cry.

The sound of your blood rushing in your ears filled your senses as you came down from your high, even as you came back to your senses you felt much more distanced from reality; your body felt as if it was submerged in a warm bath, and slowly but surely you were sinking below the water. Your break was cut short by Bucky continuing his thrusts, his hand pressing the vibrator to your now throbbing clit didn’t budge—he instead pushed down more harshly on your clit making your legs quake uncontrollably “Hnng! Please!” Was all you could force out before your tongue became useless, lolling out of your mouth. You came again with a shout, clawing Bucky’s back with your nails as you threw your head back into the pillow, your back arching even further into the air. You came so hard you forgot how to breathe, a heavy weight crushing your chest, as you slumped back into the mattress trying your hardest to breathe Bucky finally removed the vibe from your raw little nub. His palm flattened against your stomach where the sigil was placed rubbing a slow circle that set your nerves on fire, before he brought his hand up to the bulge in your stomach and pressed harshly with his thumb tearing a whimper from your throat.

“Fuck you can see me inside of you, Angel. I’m all up in your guts rearranging them. Turning you into the perfect little cock sleeve, gonna make sure I ruin you for any other man. Oh wait, you won't be taking any other man after me. Because; You. Belong. To. Me.” Her punctuated every word with a rough thrust, bashing your cervix which would usually hurt but whatever he did gave you a supreme, otherworldly amount of pleasure “the sigil is almost full, one more orgasm and my seed should be enough to fill it. Do you think you can take it?” He questions a small smile gracing his lips as he awaits your answer, but all you can do is mumble “So fucked out that you can’t even form a sentence, your heads probably so empty right now, my little fuck doll. It’s okay, you don’t need to think, Angel, let me do that for you; can’t expect a dumb little human like you who can’t even read the pages of a very clear, simple book correctly.” His hand slithers up your body towards your neck, wrapping around your throat before he starts to apply pressure—observing as your body begins to melt into the mattress. His thrusts continued and paired with the lack of oxygen bright flashes of white flicker across your vision. All your nerves began to thrum as you felt another orgasm coming, your wall clamped around him as you got closer to the edge. You could feel his cock twitching inside you, he released your neck allowing air to flow back into your lungs as he dipped his head down to your shoulder inking his teeth into your skin. The overwhelming sensations of lightheadedness, pleasure and pain threw your senses into orbit as you came your pussy squeezing his cock as you raked your nails across his back hard enough to draw blood. Bucky gave a few more weak, uncoordinated thrusts before he painted your insides with a wanton moan gripping the pillow hard enough for it to tear. You could barely comprehend your surroundings, you felt as if you were made of air and if Bucky let go of you you’d dissipate. Your heart hammered against your rib cage, as you stared up at Bucky’s handsome face; his sweat darkened hair glued to his forehead. He let out a chuckle, his hand caressing the sigil at your womb “Happy Halloween, Angel. This is the last one you’ll ever have to spend alone. The contract has been made and now, you belong to me. Forever.”

Tag list: @alina02 @winterslove1917 @unabashed-lover-of-fictional-men @petesey @getwellsoontana @feyfantome @alexxavicry @ashenc-blog @floral-recs @renster05 @redbloodedgurl @shrekwreck @sweetwrathoflilith @cjand10 @flamefoxxrecs @addie5587483 @little-bunny0523 @sojuxxi @adoreyouusugar @teambarnes72 @wintasssoldier @gryffindorqueensworld @aerangi @itwillgetbetter @taramaria @anniellacinamon @inlovewithremusjohnlupin @teddybearsgrr

3K notes · View notes

twelvemonkeyswere · 9 months

Text

I re-read Good Omens via audiobook and I just collected my favorite details

"Crowley rather liked people" is a quote I still love so much. Even though he is a demon with the job of making people upset each other, he likes humans. The contrast between what they make him do and how he experiences Earth.

That scene with the ducks where Crowley almost drowns a duck and Aziraphale is like "I say, my dear" and Crowley is like "Oh yes I forgot myself" and allows the duck to return to the surface. Crowley is usually very polite about the most unhinged things which I just find endearing

All the times Aziraphale calls Crowley "dear boy"

The fact Aziraphale has "exquisitely manicured" hands lmao. I like to think he does go to the manicurist, same as he has a proper barber in the show

Aziraphale blushes sometimes and often gives mean looks to customers to push them out of shop

I like the on-going theme in the Good Omens universe of wanting to build a better world for loved ones, but how that drive, when taken to an extreme, is self destructive. Adam says he'll make the earth good for the Them, and will make sure the Them will be protected and happy in it. But the Them don't want it, they understand Adam is acting out and is not thinking things through. There is no point in trying to possess something and bend it to will forcefully. It wouldn't be good. It wouldn't be of free will. It would make them just another of his whims and no one, either the Them or Adam, actually want that

Aziraphale thinks Crowley is a creature of God when you "get right down to it", which is a thought both meaner and kinder than he realizes

Crowley is described to have "a voice so laid-back you could lay a carpet on it"and it's my most favorite thing ever lmaooo

"You're seducing women here!" /"I think perhaps you got the wrong shop" is always a brilliant line

Even though everything in the Bently turns into Queen's Greatest Hits, I love that Crowley actually loves music, and keeps his collection of records highly organized

Also love the fact that Crowley keeps his apartment orderly, though that's probably in big part because he doesn't really live there

I do appreciate that Crowley sleeps because he wants to, not because he needs to. Truly a relatable guy.

There's a big HOLY SHIT moment in the audiobook - the speech the American evangelist gives about the apocalypse. It's fucking incredible. The actor is amazing, delivering fire and brimstone and absolute hatred and certainty until Aziraphale pops inside of him.

Death really is Azrael, literally the angel of death

Aziraphale comes up with the solution at the end but ONLY because of Crowley, who challenged Aziraphale about the difference between the great plan and ineffable plan at the very beginning of the book

There are many moments where both Crowley and Aziraphale are thought to be a gay couple, but it really made me laugh that they are at the end of the world, telling each other it's been a pleasure to know each other all this time, and then Shadwell interrupts to call them "Nancy Boys"

Everyone in the Good Omens fandom is right, I do love that in the book, the wings of demons and angels are the same color

Crowley thinks the biggest battle will be heaven and hell vs humanity. This has got me thinking a lot. I figure this is because at some point humanity will rebel against any divine intervention, once we figure out that heaven and hell have been playing dice with us. But we'll see.

It does warm my heart that the story begins and ends with a garden and with the eating of the apple - Adam doesn't know why the old man hates people touching his apples so much, but the world would be a lot less interesting if he didn't. It's a fitting end for a fitting beginning.

#good omens #wendy reads #aziraphale #anthony j crowley #good omens 2

481 notes · View notes

racefortheironthrone · 6 months

Note

What did you think of X-Men Blue Origins?

(I may turn this into a People's History of the Marvel Universe later today, so keep an eye on this space.)

X-Men Blue: Origins and the Power of the Additive Retcon

(WARNING: heavy spoilers under the cut)

Introduction

If you've been a long-time X-Men reader, or you're a listener of Jay & Miles or Cerebrocast or any number of other LGBT+ X-Men podcasts, you probably know the story about how Chris Claremont wrote Mystique and Destiny as a lesbian couple, but had to use obscure verbiage and subtextual coding to get past Jim Shooter's blanket ban on LGBT+ characters in the Marvel Universe.

Likewise, you're probably also familiar with the story that, when Chris Claremont came up with the idea that Raven Darkholme and Kurt Wagner were related (a plot point set up all the way back in Uncanny X-Men #142), he intended that Mystique was Nightcrawler's father, having used her shapeshifting powers to take on a male body and impregnate (her one true love) Irene. This would have moved far beyond subtext - but it proved to be a bridge too far for Marvel editorial, and Claremont was never able to get it past S&P.

This lacuna in the backstories of Kurt and Raven - who was Kurt's father? - would remain one of the enduring mysteries of the X-Men mythos...and if there's one thing that comic writers like, it's filling in these gaps with a retcon.

Enter the Draco

Before I get into the most infamous story in all of X-Men history, I want to talk about retcons a bit. As I've written before:

"As long as there have been comic books, there have been retcons. For all that they have acquired a bad reputation, retcons can be an incredibly useful tool in comics writing and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Done right, retcons can add an enormous amount of depth and breadth to a character, making their worlds far richer than they were before. Instead, I would argue that retcons should be judged on the basis of whether they’re additive (bringing something new to the character by showing us a previously unknown aspect of their lives we never knew existed before) or subtractive (taking away something from the character that had previously been an important part of their identity), and how well those changes suit the character."

For a good example of an additive retcon, I would point to Chris Claremont re-writing Magneto's entire personality by revealing that he was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. As I have argued at some length, this transformed Magneto from a Doctor Doom knockoff into a complex and sympathetic character who could now work as a villain, anti-villain, anti-hero, or hero depending on the needs of the story.

For a good example of a subtractive retcon, I would point to...the Draco. If you're not familiar with this story, the TLDR is that it was revealed that Kurt's father was Azazel - an evil ancient mutant with the same powers and the same appearance (albeit color-shifted) as Kurt, who claims to be the devil and is part of a tribe of demonic-looking mutants who were banished to the Brimstone Dimension, and who fathered Nightcrawler as part of a plot to end this banishment.

I don't want to belabor Chuck Austen, because I think that Connor Goldsmith is right about his run actually being a camp cult classic in retrospect. However, I think we both agree that the Draco was a misfire, because of how the retcon undermined Kurt's entire thematic purpose as established in Giant-Size X-Men that Nightcrawler was actually a noble and arguably saintly man who suffered from unjust prejudice due to the random accident that his mutation made him appear to be a demon, and because of how the retcon undermined the centrality of Mystique and Destiny's relationship.

X-Men Blue Origins

This brings us to the Krakoan era. In HOXPOX and X-Men and Inferno, Jonathan Hickman had made Mystique and Destiny a crucial part of the story in a way that they hadn't been in decades: they were the great nemeses of Moira X, they were the force that threatened to burn Krakoa to the ground by revealing the devil's bargain that Xavier had struck with Sinister (and Moira), they were the lens through which the potential futures of Krakoa were explored, and they ultimately reshaped the Quiet Council and the Five in incredibly consequential ways.

This throughline was furthered after Hickman's departure, with Kieron Gillen exploring the backstories of Mystique and Destiny in Immortal X-Men and Sins of Sinister, and both Gillen and Si Spurrier exploring their relationship with Nightcrawler in AXE Judgement Day, Sins of Sinister, Way of X, Legion of X, Nightcrawlers, and Sons of X. One of the threads that wove through the interconnected fabric of these books was an increasing closeness between Kurt and Irene that needed an explanation. Many long-time readers began to anticipate that a retcon about Kurt's parentage was coming - and then we got X-Men Blue: Origins.

In this one issue, Si Spurrier had the difficult assignment of figuring out a way to "fix" the Draco and restore Claremont's intended backstory in a way that was surgical and elegant, that served the character arcs of Kurt, Raven, and Irene, and that dealt with complicated issues of trans and nonbinary representation, lesbian representation, disability representation, and the protean nature of the mutant metaphor. Thanks to help from Charlie Jane Anders and Steve Foxe, I think Spurrier succeeded tremendously.

I don't want to go through the issue beat-by-beat, because you should all read it, but the major retcon is that Mystique turns out to be a near-Omega level shapeshifter, who can rewrite themselves on a molecular level. Raven transformed into a male body and impregnated Irene, using bits of Azazel and many other men's DNA as her "pigments." In addition to being a deeply felt desire on both their parts to have a family together, this was part of Irene's plan to save them both (and the entire world) from Azazel's schemes, a plan that required them to abandon Kurt as a scapegoat-savior (a la Robert Graves' King Jesus), and to have Xavier wipe both their memories.

Now, I'm not the right person to write about what this story means on a representational level; I'll leave it to my LGBT+ colleagues on the Cerebrocast discord and elsewhere to discuss the personal resonances the story had for them.

What I will say, however, is that I thought this issue threaded the needle of all of these competing imperatives very deftly. It "fixed" the Draco without completely negating it, it really deepened and complicated the characters and relationships of both Raven and Irene (by showing that, in a lot of ways, Destiny is the more ruthless and manipulative of the two), and it honored Kurt's core identity as a man of hope and compassion (even if it did put him in a rather thankless ingénue role for much of the book).

It is the very acme of an additive retcon; nothing was lost, everything was gained.

I still think the baby Nightcrawler is just a bad bit, but then again I don't really vibe with Spurrier's comedic stylings.

#xmen #xmen meta #raven darkholme #kurt wagner #irene adler #xmen blue #nightcrawler #mystique #destiny #chris claremont #si spurrier #krakoa #retcons #xmen spoilers #hoxpox

243 notes · View notes