#it is meant to be a culmination of that love and legacy

[preet-01]

Couldn’t get this idea out of my head after being a political tv show binge. So we’ve got maxiel in a political au

For all the modernity and progress that the country claims one things remains true — the people don’t elect just a candidate, no they elect the entire family.

They don’t want some bachelor. It is not a sign of commitment to one’s career, but an indicator of a man that could think with his cock and have bastard children while at the highest level of public service. It is an indicator of a man that could bring ruin and shame to the most sacred position.

They want a family man. A man who is happily married with the perfect partner to bear his children. That is a sign of maturity and commitment. An indicator that he is settled.

And more so, it is an image that the people can project their own thoughts and beliefs onto. A family that can distract the public from the harsh realities of governing and politics.

It is not just politics and connections that get you elected, but also the perfect family that the people can fall in love with.

Max Verstappen fits all the qualifications for a great candidate — the perfect candidate even. Except for one tiny little thing in his opinion, but a major hurdle according to his campaign manager, Sebastian.

Max Verstappen is about as single as they come. With two cats he adores more than anything and no partner, Max does not apparently have the makings of a winning candidate.

“So just because I am not married, I cannot become president?” Max questions. His actual presidential run is still a few years away, but the framework needs to be laid out years ahead.

The presidency is all that Max has ever wanted. Every moment in his life is meant to culminate towards that. And now one tiny little detail about his life could prevent it.

“Essentially yes. Voters want someone they can love. A bachelor is not easy to love, but a family? Well that is very easy to love and root for,” Sebastian says. “But… should you not want to find a partner… on your own… there are avenues we can take,” he says, carefully picking his words.

“How?” his dad asks.

“We’re in the nation’s capital. There is no shortage of people well aware of and willing to commit to a political marriage that could be beneficial for both parties involved,” Sebastian replies, giving his dad a knowing look.

“Of course, and you have a short list?” his dad questions.

“There is a list and it is quite short,” Sebastian replies vaguely.

____

The list is two people.

A man and woman — both brunette, older, and carriers. His dad suggests the woman, he’d known her father years ago. Sebastian suggests the man.

“Daniel is… well loved in the wealthy circles in this part of the country. Personable with everyone, not just the wealthy.”

“Then we go with Daniel,” Max agrees. Sebastian hadn’t led him wrong so far in his career and he doubted that the man would ruin it all as they neared a presidential run.

Sebastian’s team makes their story. As it turns out, they have quite a few mutual friends. It’s easy to make up a story of one of them introducing them and a secret romance blooming away from Max’s political career and Daniel’s preferred social circles.

Just a week before their first public appearance as a couple, Max meets Daniel for the first time. And Daniel is… well he understands why Sebastian would suggest him.

Daniel is like something come out of Max’s deepest fantasies.

“The future president, huh?” Daniel questions.

“It’s going to be a big commitment,” Sebastian says.

“I’ll play the part, as long as my conditions are met,” Daniel tells them.

“Conditions?” Max inquires.

“We hyphenate names. This will be my legacy as much as it is yours. There are certain policy issues on which I would like a say, Seb knows. I will not become some political breeding machine. We have three kids maximum and they have to be at least 2-3 years apart. And when you make it to the presidency, I will not stand for any cheating/sex scandal. Keep it private if you must, but the moment it makes national news, I’ll be gone with any kids we have in tow and telling everyone how you wronged me,” Daniel answers.

They’re not the most unreasonable conditions, but Max does have his concerns about the second and fourth conditions. “I will ensure that those are followed,” Sebastian answers before Max can say anything.

“Perfect, now I have to go. The ambassador from Monaco is visiting,” Daniel tells them, getting up from the sofa he had been sitting on. “Seb, do come to dinner. I’m sure the ambassador would love to pick at your brain again, amongst other things,” he adds.

“Should we not practice being the loving couple for next week?” Max asks.

“Oh darling, there’s no need,” Daniel replies, giving him a sleazy grin as his eyes trail over Max. “I’ll be the adoring partner that everyone expects of a senator hoping to run for president. You’re easy on the eyes. Now toodles poodles, can’t keep Sharlie waiting at the airport lest he run off in some strangers car again,” Daniel is gone within seconds. Leaving Max alone with Sebastian and a hundred questions about his husband to be.

#maxiel #political au #daniel ricciardo x max verstappen

[vanwritesfan-fiction]

Addiction

Part Five: Love Is A Four Letter Word

Series Masterlist

Warnings: smut, language, couple fighting, references to drugs and alcohol, mentions of violence

A/N: A lot of backstory in this part...

Jack knew it was fucked up.

He knew giving you the key card, sleeping with you, starting a relationship, leading you on, while he was supposedly committed to someone else, was fucked up. An act of rebellion of the lowest form.

Jack was miserable. Had been for a long time. His life leading up till that night was a culmination of his mistakes and cowardice, and he felt helpless. He was looking for an outlet for his frustration, an escape, and it wasn't even as if he was targeting you specifically. He just saw your smile, the way you held the attention of the room, and he was drawn to you. The rest was devastating history.

You were at the wrong place, the wrong time, with the right one.

Even then, it was never his intention to hurt you. His motives weren't pure, he'd admit that with no hesitation, but the feelings he had for you were, and as much as he wanted to tell you how much he cared about you, it'd be like burning down a house after carelessly lighting a candle; it didn't matter what he intended to do once the damage was done.

He could tell you how sorry he was, that he loved you and he wished things were different, but as he watched you unravel in front of him, collapsed to the ground as he told you he was going to marry someone else, someone you both knew he didn't want to be with, he knew it would be in vain.

You don't treat people you love like this.

****

1 Year Ago

Jack and Claire's relationship read like it was plucked out of a really bad romance novel plot, by design.

They ran in different circles; Claire was a one percenter, an elite among New York's elite, and Jack was just some kid from Louisville who was clinging to the name he'd made for himself in the music industry. At least, that's what he told himself. He didn't like to think about the fact that he was complicit in the façade that was their relationship.

There was a time where you couldn't go a day without seeing Claire in the tabloids, strung out in front of 1Oak on the arm of some B-List actor. What she considered to be a normal for her 20s, meant trouble for her father. His only daughter was supposed to take over the Barbour-Beckham publishing company, his legacy, but she couldn't even stay sober for more than 24 hours. Something had to change, and fast.

Over the next couple months, Claire underwent an image change that even Lindsay Lohan's publicist would have been impressed by. She traded her nights out for charity events, hard liquor for disgusting green smoothies, and before she knew it, there wasn't a person in New York City who could remember the old Claire.

But old habits die hard, and there wasn't a photo op in the world that could change the fact that Claire was bad for business. Her future was dependent on convincing a bunch of old, conservative men that a woman was capable of leading a company. Claire knew that the only way the public would truly accept her was if she appeared to be but a mouthpiece for the board, unassuming and passive.

It was purely a business decision to pivot her image to wife and mother. It would keep her in the public eye- people love to gawk at a new wife and mother, praise or condemn how attentive she is to her husband and how quickly her post-partum body bounces back, but they would disregard her, as they do all mothers, and it was at that point she would take over at Barbour-Beckham. Now all she needed was to find someone desperate enough to agree to her terms.

She chose Jack because there was something homegrown about him. He was rich and successful, a chart topper in the music industry, but it was all hidden underneath his southern charm. He kept his nose clean, both literally and figuratively, and he didn't overshadow her. Underneath it all, he was a good person, and she could use that to her advantage.

****

They met for the first time at Atlantic Records.

Jack's career was stalling, to put it nicely, and he was desperate to climb back to the top. Sure, he had solidified himself as a bona fide rapper in the industry, but long gone were the days of letting the music speak for itself. If he wanted to stay in the game, he was forced to compete with every new one-hit-wonder who blew up on TikTok, and it wasn't how he wanted to operate. He was running late for a meeting with Jason, and as he entered the conference room, he realized quickly that this was an ambush.

"Jack, this is Mr. Beckham, CEO of Barbour-Beckham publishing, and on the board for Atlantic." Jason ushered Jack into the room when he noticed him hesitate. Jack scanned the room. He knew the face, not the name. "and his daughter, Claire." Claire he knew, at least of her. He had come across her a couple times at different clubs around the city, but based on the state she was in each time, he doubted she had a sharp memory. He nodded to both of them, taking a seat with a huff. "What is this? Some kind of intervention?" Jack let out a humorless laugh as he studied Claire's face. She couldn't hold eye contact for longer than a second, her gaze dropping to her hands.

"More like a business opportunity, Mr. Harlow." Claire's father cut through the silence. "I'm gonna get straight to the point. Its no secret that you aren't the artist you used to be a couple of years ago, Jack." Jack smirked, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "If anything, recently, you've become a liability to Atlantic Records. There is no tenure for an artist here. Either you perform or we replace you." Jack glanced over at Jason, who was visibly nervous. "This is off to a great start." He muttered out, running a hand through the curls at the back of his neck.

"If you were anyone else, we would have dropped you from the label already, but we recognize your value here, and we're hoping we can come to an agreement that both parties are happy with." Jack straightened up in his seat. "What do you want? I'm working on an album we can put out by the end of the year. I'll do the press circuit, a tour, whatever it takes."

"There will be time for all that. Right now, its more important that you prove how loyal you are to Atlantic." Jack was throwing glances at Claire, whose gaze was burning a hole in his chest. "I would say 10 years of record sales has been more than proof." He'd had enough of the stares, turning his body toward Claire, who flinched. "Is there a reason she's here?" He narrowed his eyes at her, trying to read her face.

"The company thinks it'd be in your best interest to enter into a public relationship with Claire." Jack didn't even bother to look at Jason as he spoke. "It will be good for your image to show that you're in a committed relationship with someone of Ms. Beckham's status. People love a new IT couple." Jack's stomach turned. They didn't care about his career, he was just going to be a pawn in a much larger game. "While you're dating, you will promote his album and Claire will continue to be a pillar in the community."

Jack gripped the arms of his chair, the heat creeping up his neck. There was no way he could say yes to this. It went against everything he believed as an artist and a person.

"No. There's no way that I'm going to be an industry plant. The rumors were bad enough when I was starting out, I'll be damned if I prove them right." He pushed his chair away, standing to exit the room. "Sorry you wasted your time." Jason let out a sharp breath as he watched his client walk out the door.

"Jack, wait." He heard Claire's voice trailing behind him as he walked to the elevator. He had no intentions on turning around. She caught the elevator door just as it was about to close. "Jack, I get it. Its a lot, but-"

Jack cut her off. "Does that really feel right to you? Pretending to be in love with someone just so you can look good in front of people?"

"Neither of us got to where we are now because of love, Jack. If I've learned anything, its that love is a fleeting feeling that eventually leaves you feeling empty and alone. I know you don't want to let your career die because of a feeling." Claire crossed her arms over her chest.

"You don't know anything about me." Jack bit back.

"You're right. We're strangers. But I do know my father. He doesn't like to be told no, and I have no doubt that he will step on you to get what he wants." Jack knew that was a threat. "This is so much bigger than a couple of pictures for the paparazzi. You say no to this and people will quickly forget all about Jack Harlow."

Jack bit the inside of his cheek. He didn't want to be buried, he didn't want to be forgotten. He'd worked too hard to get where he was to lie down and and let them steamroll him. If he said yes, at least he was still in the game, and he could control the outcome. There was a kid from Louisville who only wanted to rap for as long as he could remember, that he had to make proud.

"Only in public. In private, we don't talk to each other." A grin slipped on Claire's face. "Agreed. Its purely for show."

****

At first it was fine. Holding hands as they left a restaurant together. A couple strategic paparazzi photos that were conveniently sent to every major publication in the country. The thought of it made Jack's skin crawl, but his career was finally on the up and up. Jack sacrificed his privacy and in turn, Atlantic gave him access to some of the best producers and mixers in the industry, and he was able to get back to making music; the only thing he truly cared about.

Their very public first kiss was on the cover of every major magazine, and the public was starting to fall in love with them. They spent a lot of time together, for the publicity, and Claire's father suggested that Jack move into Claire's Upper East side penthouse so there were no holes in their story. Their PR relationship was quickly becoming real, and as much as he hated himself for it, he thought he was the only one who could possibly get caught in the crossfire, and he was more than willing to sacrifice himself for his career.

The first hit came about six months into their relationship.

"What the hell is this?" Jack slammed the door to Claire's office closed, making her jump. He slammed a magazine down on her desk, knocking over her cup of coffee. He was fuming, his chest puffed out with each breath. "Jack, listen, I didn't get a chance to tell you yet. They just published it this morning."

"Claire Beckham saves Jack Harlow from crippling alcohol addiction", his voiced boomed through the room as he read the headline. "What the fuck? I don't have a drinking problem. I've been purposely sober for years."

"Claire stood, holding her hands out in defense. "My father thought it would be a good idea to dangle a headline out there for the public. Your music career has been tanking, so you turn back to drinking to ease your pain, until I come in. Everyone loves a redemption story. How love saved Jack Harlow from being a washup, clinging to the bottle." She spoke as if she was pitching a movie idea; the excitement in her eyes terrified Jack.

"I didn't sign up for this." Jack ran his fingers through his messy curls, raking his hands down his face. "Oh, but you did, baby." Claire lifted herself up to sit on her desk. "I didn't see you complaining when your new single went #1. In fact, I think I remember you being very excited." Jack ripped the magazine as he tightened it in his grip. "I was doing that before we ever started this shit. I'm still a good musician." The laugh Claire let out sent a shiver down Jack's spine.

"Jack, you agreed to play the game. This is it, this is the game. Its messy and its humbling, but its working. You're back at the top, and I am your perfect girlfriend." He scoffed, feeling every muscle tightening at her words.

"I want out of the game. Tell your father I'm done." He turned on his heels toward the door. "Fine. The public is going to love this next headline." Her words made him stop in his tracks. "What headline?" He threw over his shoulder. "Jack Harlow embezzles millions from Barbour-Beckham company, uses Claire Beckham to steal from her father. There won't be a record company in the country that will speak with you after that comes out."

Within a second, Jack had crossed the room. Claire let out a sharp gasp as she came chest to chest with him. His voice was a low growl. "Would you really do this just to save your ass? Are you really that fucked up?"

"I think the question you need to ask yourself is, what wouldn't I do to save myself?" Claire retorted, her gaze dropping to Jack's lips. Jack was seething, disgusted with the person in front of him. He didn't even have time to react as she crashed her mouth with his, their teeth clinking together as she roughly kissed him. Jack pushed Claire away, his face contorted with repulsion.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" He cried out, wiping at his mouth. "I thought- I thought that you-", Claire pressed her fingertips to her lips, realizing she'd read the situation terribly wrong. "You are fucked in the head if you think I could ever actually like you. You disgust me." Jack's words were laced with venom and hatred.

Much like her father, Claire was used to getting what she wanted, and she wanted Jack. Whether or not he wanted her back didn't matter to her. "Play the game, Jack, or I'll destroy you." Claire gritted out between clenched teeth. "Now, get out of my office."

Jack had to resist punching his fist through the wall, he'd never felt this much rage before. His vision began to tunnel, forcing him to cling to the wall, a sharp pain radiating through his chest. He was panicking, the ringing in his ears almost bringing him to his knees. He wanted out of this relationship, needed to get out, slowly feeling his sanity slip away, with no one to blame but himself.

****

Claire was right; Jack had never been hotter. His album was set to be the best selling of his career, and he was hitting milestones he'd only dreamt of during his early days. He should've been incredibly happy, but he was indifferent to it all, just going through the motions.

He could never admit it to himself, but Jack was terrified. He was scared that he had gotten himself in too deep and there wasn't a way out of it. There was no way he could take on Claire and her father by himself, and every day she reminded him just how insignificant he was. There was no use in fighting if you already knew you weren't going to win.

So he kept up the façade in public, and in private, he did anything he could to numb himself. He enjoyed the company of any woman that was willing to sign an NDA, and quickly became jaded towards sex and intimacy, slowly watching himself become someone he promised himself he'd never turn into.

The night he met you, he could tell that you were unhappy.

Most people would tell you there's no way you can tell someone's emotional state just from looking at them, but Jack had quickly learned over the last few months just how much sadness weighed on the body. He didn't even recognize himself in the mirror, the way his shoulders slumped over with exhaustion, the bags under his eyes reminders of the nightmares he'd been having over the last couple of weeks. You had packaged it under a beautiful face and a pretty dress, but to him, the discontent was obvious.

When you showed up to his hotel room that night, you all but signed your soul over to the devil.

You could throw a fit in front of him all you wanted, try to convince yourself that you showed up to his room out of principle, deny your wants and needs to save face, but he knew better. You were looking for someone to take command, make you forget about the monotony for even a second, and he was desperate to feel some semblance of control again.

****

The first night was a fluke. He had every intention on using and abusing you, and forgetting you ever existed.

Actually doing that proved to be harder than he expected. After you left, he couldn't focus on anything but you. He could shut his eyes and clearly see your face, his hand ghosting over the bulge in his pants. He closed his eyes and began stroking his cock to the thought of you. The way your mouth felt around him, and how pretty you looked down on your knees. The way your face contorted with pleasure as you came around your hand. How willing you were to submit to his every demand. He was cumming in his hand purely to the thought of it. Power and control were coursing through his veins, and God, did it feel good.

His eyes shot open to the sound of the door opening, Claire emerging from the doorway. Jack quickly covered himself up as she entered the room. "What are you doing here? How did you even find me?" He slipped a sweatshirt over his head, sitting back down on the edge of the bed. He'd been staying in different hotels around the city for the past couple of weeks, anything to avoid having to spend another night with Claire.

"You should know you can't go anywhere anymore." Jack groaned, knowing that he'd probably been caught leaving the hotel by one of the many paparazzi who was stalking him. "What do you want?"

"The girl in the elevator, one of your latest?" Claire's tone was laced with jealousy. He hadn't even been trying to hide his escapades from Claire. He got a sick enjoyment out of her knowing that he'd fuck pretty much anyone but her. Jack raked a hand through his curls. "That's none of your fucking business."

"It is my business if you get caught with her. Everyone likes to blame the girlfriend when the man cheats." Jack let out a humorless laugh as he stood, his jaw flexing. Claire staggering back as he walked toward her. She talked a big game, but that's all it was, talk. "Do you ever get tired of being such a bitch?", he spat at her.

"Cute." Claire pressed her lips together in a hard line. She turned on her heels toward the door, grabbing the handle before she turned back to Jack. "Make sure she signed an NDA. Can't let this fall back on us in the future when she decides she wants to capitalize on sleeping with Jack Harlow."

The next day, he knew seeing you again was a risk, but he didn't care. He was mostly doing it to spite Claire, but he also couldn't get you out of his head. Jack was quickly becoming addicted to the way you made him feel, a deep craving to see you writhe beneath him before he cut you off for good. He put the flowers on Claire's credit card, knowing she'd see the charge and put two and two together.

You came crawling back without any hesitation, and at first he felt a nagging guilt, knowing he was taking advantage of you in a vulnerable state, but as he felt you cum around him for the second time that night, he realized that you wanted this escape just as much as he did. It was so easy to get you here, to fuck you senseless night after night, because you wanted to be here. The phone call later that night all but confirmed it. He'd underestimated just how intelligent you were, but most of all, just how addicted you were to the way he made you feel as well.

You were walking into the lion's den on your own accord. You just didn't know how dangerous it was yet.

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#jack harlow #jackman thomas harlow #jackharlow #jackman harlow #jack harlow x reader #jack harlow imagine #jack harlow fanfic

[zeravmeta]

yknow limbo works as such a fantastic complement to guda in the sense that both are lesser versions of their contemporaries but guda succeeds where limbo doesn't because guda is more of a nobody than limbo is. limbo is the villain meant to be defeated by abe no seimei and always exists solely in service to that role as the empty rumor of hatred that a rival holds a mere glory kill and thus limbo has never once won in his life, he is called the most pathetic human by koyanskaya because he is fundamentally incapable of change. guda in a similar vein is also the only master left at the start of the grand order and thus the only option available to save humanity, and multiple times throughout fgo gudas lack of experience is called out, culminating in the lostbelt arc where guda is guilt tripped about their journey by koyanskaya and kadoc insults them by saying that if guda could have done it, then feasibly the rest of team A even he himself could have also done it. what kadoc and the rest failed to understand there though is that. yeah, that's literally the point.

the thing is that even when drowned in the guilt of ending the lives of the people in the lostbelts, guda still does want to live. they may be fucked up with the sheer amount of curses and promises that their soul carries, they may be slowly turning into some kind of inhuman being, but guda at the end of the day really just wants to live, wants to keep going on adventures with the people they love, wants to remain human, and in that desire they stay human despite the fact. limbo was able to break ashiya doumans spirit with the simple admission that he would never surpass seimei, that all of his efforts would be for naught and despite his position and accomplishments, he would never be able to match or surpass the rival he loved even once, doomed to a legacy of being nothing more than the shadow that followed a great man. guda on the other hand was perfectly fine being the forgotten hero of the grand order simply because it would mean that romani’s sacrifice wouldn’t have been in vain. it didn’t matter if the rest of the world would never know of their journey, because They knew, and the memories they made are far more precious than any recognition of such. limbo may not know or understand love but even then he doesn't really know what he wants either aside from a vague understanding of a need for importance, and ultimately limbo wants the name ashiya douman to mean something more than just that of the rival abe no seimei once had to cut down, filled himself with various gods and curses and names because he literally just wants to be loved in some way

guda reached their hand out to mash when she was dying and apologized because they knew mash wanted to live, and abe no seimei did the same when the pitiful ashiya douman had attempted to take his own life in despair at the thought of his own evil. limbo may not know love but at the very least, he’s taken his first step in wanting to understand it by watching gudas own path to hell. at the very least, limbo wants to reach hell alongside them. if guda could do it, if guda could reach out their hand in the face of their inevitable meaningless death, then surely the caster of limbo might be able to change as well

#fgo #fate grand order #zerav meta #limbo #guda #the double meanings.... guda is literally paired with a beast thats veiled in literal black and white symbolism #this post brought to you by 'the gudalimbo tags on pixiv and twt are going insane ever since guda got that new years outfit' #and users like you. thank you

[terapsina]

Send a Fandom: Legacies - 5, 18 / Ship: Hope/Lizzie - 20

For this ask game.

5. ...the scene from it that lives in my head rent free.

So, my mind is admittedly very one track and so yeah, the scene that's taken up place in the back of my head and built a very cozy, very permanent nest is a shippy one.

I can't believe they gave Lizzie an actual '10 Things I Hate About You' MONOLOGUE that honest to goodness culminates on an actual "And [I hate you] for making me love you, Hope Mikaelson."

There's everyday blatant shipping bait... and then there's putting Lizzie inside a 90's romcom modern adaptation of a Shakespeare play.

---

Another, less ship focused scene that has taken up permanent space in my head though might be the one with the extremely misfortunate vampire that tried vampsplaining their nature to the Mikaelson tribrid.

Hope feeling like it was a new low for her? Hilarious.

18. ...the perfect number of books/seasons/movies needed to tell this story properly.

Definitely more than 4.

They were JUST getting their sea-legs underneath them 😭.

More specifically... I think 7 or 8 seasons would have been just around perfect. It would have been just in that BtVS or Charmed sweet spot of a series that's long enough to explore the characters and their relationships properly, without losing steam and getting boring.

---

20. ...how and when they should get/should have gotten together.

I adore slow burns, I wouldn't change a thing about any of the stuff that happened between them before Hope snapped Lizzie's neck.

And I also wouldn't change most of the stuff that happened while Lizzie was sired to Hope (it was too freaking perfect). My one change here - and how I'd begin the process for them as the endgame - would probably be doing an actual acknowledgement of how Lizzie's "I love you." was absolutely meant as an "I'm in love with you.".

I'd still maintain those thirsty, frustrated Lizzie moments from whenever Hope's being all aggressively attractive and kinda mean. But maybe making them just a little bit more textual.

Or maybe by having the No Humanity!Hope taunt her about the feelings?

Wait... ooh, I know. I'd have moved around Lizzie and Jen bonding from after the Grand Road Trip Breakup, to before. And Hope would get a bird's-eye view that would have culminated in something along the lines of petty and jealousy-flavored (not-that-she'd-admit-it) "Well, don't you move on fast?"

Then I'd move everything back to how it went down in canon (including the bits where Hope and Lizzie both were decidedly not acknowledging the sire bond and its implication after Hope's humanity came back to the forefront).

Except that when MG dropped his confession I'd have had Lizzie telling him that she's in love with Hope.

The actual getting together thing in my perfect version of events would happen in season 6 (with season 5 being Hope healing from Landon's death, and coming to terms with her developing feelings for Lizzie just as Lizzie's trying to move on).

Said Actual-Getting-Together portion would include: one badly timed almost confession on Hope's part which would fly over Lizzie's head because they'd be in the middle of dealing with the latest disaster and Hope wouldn't actually be all that clear about it; and one brief span of time where Hope thinks Lizzie's dead and goes on a very Mikaelson rampage about it.

And then bada-boom-bada-bam there's a Big Damn Kiss that sweeps Lizzie off her goddamn feet.

The last season or two would be them just being the badass power-couple of the show (exactly as they've been the entire time, actually, except that they'd literally be a couple).

And THAT is how I'd get them together if it were up to me.

#hizzie #hope mikaelson #lizzie saltzman #legacies #answers #ask game #isagrimorie #otp: we're in this 'til the bitter end #terapsina rambles #terapsina's legacies rambles #...okay so now that i've written this out i kinda actually want to fic it

[chloewatcheswrestling]

Wrestling Love Letters

The Bloodline Series: An Unfinished Story

In the world of professional wrestling, the careful crafting of storylines is what keeps fans on the edge of their seats. Wrestlemania, the grandest stage of them all, is where these narratives reach their pinnacle. However, sometimes even the most compelling opportunities slip through the fingers of creative decision-makers, leaving fans disappointed and questioning what could have been.

Cody Rhodes, a name synonymous with wrestling legacy, emerged as the perfect contender to challenge Roman Reigns for one of his coveted championship belts at Wrestlemania 39 (2023). For fans, this wasn't just about crowning another champion; it was about concluding a narrative that had been evolving for years. More recently, viewers were engrossed by Cody's documentary, "American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes," and it became apparent that the climax of his journey (and subsequently, the documentary) should have culminated in a triumphant victory on the grandest stage of all. Taking the WWE Championship that his late father, Dusty Rhodes, never secured would have been the ultimate feel-good moment. Dusty was passed over for the title in favour of Macho Man Randy Savage, and regrettably, history appeared to repeat itself. Cody’s victory would have been a powerful tribute to his father's legacy whilst also strengthening his emotional connection with the audience.

But how could this have been executed without compromising Roman's reign? One solution lies in the storytelling itself. WWE could have refrained from putting both championship belts on the line, therefore allowing Cody to secure a monumental victory without diminishing Roman's position. This approach would have maintained the excitement of the story while preserving Roman's dominance. Moreover, Cody's victory could have been the start of a captivating downward spiral for Roman's character. Grappling to retain his remaining championship, Roman's increasing desperation could have led to him questioning the loyalty of those around him. This intriguing twist would have added layers to his character, making him more gripping and complex.

An additional consequence of WWE's creative decision was the necessity to introduce a new World Heavyweight title (currently held by the ever reliable Seth Rollins), as it was now evident that Roman was truly unbeatable, WWE had booked themselves into a corner where no one was a true threat. It's difficult not to assume that Cody was meant to be victorious at Wrestlemania, and a last-minute decision led to Roman's victory and, consequently, the introduction of a new title. Along similar lines, the once-menacing Money in the Bank briefcase has lost some of its suspense, as it's now evident that, if Cody couldn’t beat Roman Reigns, instilling confidence in a successful Damian Priest cash-in is going to be a challenge. Despite Damian having the support of the Judgement Day, Roman still remains strong with the remnants of the Bloodline, and with turmoil within both factions, the threat of the briefcase is being overshadowed.

Looking ahead, there's still an opportunity for WWE to rectify the situation. Rather than drawing out the Bloodline story with unnecessary twists, it's time to embrace the potential for evolution within the faction. An eagerly awaited feud between Jimmy and Jey Uso would provide a fresh storyline and further character development leading into Wrestlemania XL (2024). A feud between the brothers would captivate fans' attention, highlighting their individual strengths and motivations. Also the idea of the formation of a brother faction with Jimmy, Jey, and Solo against Roman would give fans something to rally behind.

Finally, the enigmatic Paul Heyman's role shouldn't be underestimated. To invigorate his character, Heyman could acquire a new protégé. This could be an opportunity to bring in a rising star from NXT (or mentor a recent call up), injecting new blood into the main roster while giving fans a fresh dynamic to invest in.

In the pro wrestling universe, missed opportunities can often become catalysts for a new and exciting direction. While Cody Rhodes' Wrestlemania victory would have been a fitting tribute to his legacy, the path not taken opens doors for future innovation and the potential for a new ending to Cody’s story.

With pins, submissions, and a whole lot of heart, Chloe xoxo

23.08.2023

#wrestlemania #romanreigns #jeyuso #jimmyuso #solosikoa #codyrhodes #paulheyman #thebloodline #americannightmare #wwe #wwe fandom #wwe universe #dustyrhodes #damianpriest #thejudgementday #wwe title #wrestlers #pro wrestlers #pro wrestling #wrestling love letters #chloe watches wrestling #wrestling essays

[ncisfranchise-source]

The NCIS-verse aired its 1,000th episode tonight, and for Brian Dietzen, who plays lovable medical examiner Jimmy Palmer, “A Thousand Yards” wasn’t just the perfect way to honor the CBS show’s longevity. It was also the latest in a long line of episodes created with a team he’s proud to be a part of. 

“I love these people that I work with, and our crew that's been together with us for 21 years, a lot of them all the way through from the beginning to now,” Dietzen tells Entertainment Weekly. “I think you can see that camaraderie and the comfort and familiarity. It comes through to viewers.”

In a season shortened by the Hollywood labor strikes, Dietzen says the cast and crew turned lemons into lemonade with an inventive 10-episode season that culminates in a pulse-pounding finale.

“As per usual with NCIS, it's gonna leave a lot of people with their mouths wide open after the credits start to roll,” Dietzen teases. “I think everyone's pretty damn proud of what we put together.” 

Below, the actor and writer, who co-authored this season’s emotional tribute episode to Dr. Mallard and David McCallum, talks about this major TV milestone, the shape of the season to come, and how the medical examiner in the Harry Potter glasses evolved into a romantic lead over 21 years.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Congratulations on the 1,000th episode! How does it feel to be a part of that legacy?

BRIAN DIETZEN: Oh, my gosh, think about 1,000 episodes. That's some pretty rare stuff. It feels very humbling to be a part of something so humongous, you know, and to have any small part in helping in its success. So yeah, it's incredible. It's definitely some “pinch me” type of stuff.

I imagine! Well, I'd love to talk about the episode itself. Let me start by saying, poor Leon Vance [Rocky Carroll]. That man has suffered.

No kidding. We've got a few people like that on our team who've gone through the wringer, but I think none more so than Leon Vance. And, you know, you couldn't get a better actor than Rocky Carroll to play him. I mean, he just embodied that man and like you said, he’s gone through the wringer over the last 16, 17 years. I just love watching Rocky Carroll. I could listen to him read out of a phone book. So good. It's always an absolute pleasure to have a story where Vance is a central character.

The episode throws it way, way back. How important was it for everyone involved in the show to honor the deepest of those deep roots?

Well, I think you’ve got to honor everything. There are a lot of people. Those 1,000 episodes don't happen without over 1,000 people working behind the scenes over the course of these 21 years, not just on our show, but on our sister shows as well. So I was really, really happy when I was reading this script to see some shout-outs to past characters that are no longer on the show and also past storylines that meant a lot to the fans and meant a lot to us as NCIS family members.

The ending, it just got me. It’s one thing to read it in script form, but then when you get to see it, and see how visually it all comes together with the music swelling and you're showing some of these seminal moments from the history of NCIS and also simple moments like Gibbs helping a kid build a tree house. You know, the stuff that made NCIS what it is for two decades. And you're reminded that this is how we got here. Yeah, it definitely got me.

I would love to talk about the evolution of Jimmy Palmer over 20 seasons. What is it like as an actor to embody a character who’s growing professionally and personally over two decades?

It's really interesting. Obviously, it's not something that's generally done in most actors’ careers, you know? With procedural television like this, that character has a new story to tell each week, and he has to remain similar enough that people can recognize him as the character they've grown to love. But he needs to change a bit over time because that's what it means to be human, right? We grow and change. As an actor, what makes it interesting is to find those changes that are gradual and really playing the long game with it so that it doesn't seem like just overnight, oh, gosh, Jimmy's changed so dramatically from season 10 to 11, or from season 20 to 21, that those things make sense and still seem organic. It’s been a delightful challenge to play. And it’s not just me accepting that challenge.  It's our writers who are looking constantly at ways for our characters to evolve and to push us as actors. It’s definitely a group effort.

When you started on NCIS at the end of season 1, did you anticipate your character being the core romantic pairing on the show at some point in the future?

Yes, we all saw this coming. From season 1, the assistant to Donald Mallard, we were like, “That guy. That kid right there. The guy with the Harry Potter glasses. That's the guy that's gonna have the lead romantic relationship.” [Dietzen laughs.] No, of course not. That was never a thing. It was kind of a punchline that no, there's no way that guy could be the one to get the girls. But it's been nice to see that evolution for Jimmy for sure, and for him to find happiness has been great.

What Jimmy brings to the show is a huge part of what makes me love NCIS, that kindness and patience and optimism. Do you see that as an important component to a show with as much action as NCIS generally has?

I think it's vital. I really do. You can have an episode of NCIS and it's very action-filled, and you'll have people say, “I wish they had more comedy in this.” You'll have one that's very silly and people will say, “I wish they'd be a little more serious.” But that’s what makes our show go. Those things complement each other really well. And when we have that light-hearted nature, that optimism, it does set up the audience pretty well for a sucker punch that happens here and there that takes your breath away. Like when Vance falls to the ground and he’s been shot [in “A Thousand Yards”]. That’s not something you saw coming. I think the show does a really good job of setting up those moments, and the comedy, the light-hearted nature and the optimism, is integral to that type of storytelling.

What is it what is it that made you want to include writing in your arsenal of skills? [Dietzen co-wrote “The Helpers” in season 19, “Old Wounds” in season 20, and Ducky’s season 21 tribute “The Stories We Leave Behind.”]

I've always loved writing, and I have a huge appreciation for our writers and what they do. This show is not an easy show to write. Anybody who steps up to the plate and says, “Hey, I want to try this thing,” I say hats off to you. Including the history of the characters, the interactions, the optimism, the heart and the soul of what the show is, it's hard to get all those things together. 

So I was really happy when I submitted some writing samples to our showrunner Steve Binder and he said, “Hey, if you want to try it, go ahead.” So I teamed up with Scott Williams for “The Helpers” and we just went with it. I wanted that optimism, that thing that NCIS does so well, which is people looking after their own. I was really happy with the way that it turned out. And I was happy that I got to write again, two more times in the next three years.

I’m curious what kind of discussion went into putting you in the writer's room for the Ducky tribute episode.

Obviously, that was the episode that no one wants to write because it means we've lost someone that's so near and dear to us, a member of our family. And Scott, from what I understand, stood up and said “If we're going to do a Ducky tribute episode, I'd love to be a part of that.” Scott's has always been so good at writing for David, and he said, “I think that it's only right if Brian joins me on this. We’ll write this thing as a team.” I had already said I don't need to be taking scripts away from anybody else when we have such a such a truncated season, but everyone in the room said “No, that seems right that Brian should be a part of it considering how closely he and David worked over the years and how close they were as friends, too.” So I was beyond honored to throw my hat in the ring for that and to add whatever I could to it.

Have you seen a difference over the show's run in how people react to you when you're just walking down the street?

I have to say, those glasses did a lot of work for a long time. It was one of those things where I never got recognized, but now when I'm traveling to see my family in Colorado and/or Illinois, I definitely get stopped, a bit more so in the Midwest than I do in Los Angeles. But it's great. People don't stop you because they hate your show. People only stop you because they like it. So it's really been nice.

What can you tell us about what’s in store for the rest of this season? 

There's plenty in store there. It's only a 10-episode season, right? It just kind of feels like each of our writers kind of only gets one at-bat, and they're really swinging for the fences and they are not disappointing. One that's coming up pretty soon here highlights Gary Cole's character Parker in a way that, to me, is some of the funniest stuff I've seen in a long, long time on the show, just situationally funny. Having read it, I can't wait to see what Gary does with the material. 

Will you be glad to get back to a more traditional season next year, or are you hoping this will roll over into “let's keep swinging for the fences” with some new approaches?

Our cast and, more importantly, our crew really depends on working day in and day out on our show, and we really, really love it. I'm proud of the season that we put together in spite of two major strikes in Hollywood, and I can definitely speak for our crew and the rest of our cast when I say we're looking forward to a full slate of 22 shows, 22 different stories, and a full season's worth of work for all of us. Maybe we can take some of the lessons that we learned this year and apply them to a full 22, yeah. I'm hoping that we hold each other to high standards and we keep making some good stories because it’s hard to get a better gig than this when you're working with people that you care for, and you really love what they do artistically as well. I'm very, very excited for everyone to join us next year to have 22 fresh episodes — you know, building toward episode number 2,000.

#ncis #interview

[soapskneebrace]

u know my biggest gripe with reboot mw3?? the fact that both shepherd AND graves came back for literally no reason... the "jokes on you... i was never there to begin with!!!" trope they pulled with graves is already annoying but then he didn't really do anything LMAO (the most he did was create tension between farah and price and they didn't delve into that like at all other than one conversation that lasted all of three minutes if that)

at least shepherd had potential to be an interesting party in this game but then again they goofed up his part in the story too because he isn't integrated into anything worthwhile

just. man. they goofed this story up HARD there was so much potential for the story to be good but then they shoved three games worth of story into a 3 hour campaign

Yeah Graves and Shepherd were dummy grenades at best. Neither of them paid off as secondary antagonists. This game desperately needed to be two separate games, each twice the length, in which first Shepherd and the Shadows could be dealt with and then Makarov and the Ultranationalists.

IF I were rewriting mw3. Which I am not. But IF.

Makarov would show up once or twice as a prison transfer of some sort at most, MAYBE with a flashback mission to demonstrate what he was capable of at the height of his power. He was not alluded to enough in mw2 to present a credible threat—the reboot relies far too much on the original trilogy to foreshadow its plot. Why the fuck should I care about this squirrely frat bro I've never heard of? I know fuck all about the OG Makarov and I am not going to waste more of my precious time on this green earth watching three more games stuffed even more full of anti-Arab prejudice and pro-US imperialist propaganda.

I digress. Makarov's face would be shown in my mw3, but he would not be as active as he is in "canon". Instead, Shadow company, Graves, and Shepherd would take center stage as antagonists—I would utilize their alliance with the ULF to heighten the tension between Price and Farah. Shadow company would be taking advantage of the ULF's need for its support, perhaps, and meanwhile antagonizing Russian outfits on the outskirts of Urzikstan which are meant to serve as either surveillance or reconnaissance for a second invasion.

I imagine, coincidentally, those Russian outfits would be Ultranationalist in nature, because as mw3 suggests, Makarov has been scheming even in the gulag. Graves, of course, is poking the bear because war is good business for him. An Urzikstan at peace does not need a PMC for an ally. Shepherd will have been allowing it because, as has been established in 2 and 3, he's a glory-obsessed war dog whose primary priority is his own military legacy.

Interspersed would be plenty of moments for the characters to comment on what the hell is going on. Farah could reckon with Price's grudge against Graves. Gaz could further develop as Price's right hand man. Soap and Ghost could make out nasty style with tongue. Alex could continue to be the simp we all know he is. (I'd love to shoehorn Alejandro and Rudy into the plot but let's be honest, there's no room for them here. RIP vaqueros, we love you.)

All of this would CULMINATE with Makarov's escape from prison. Probably after Soap finally gets to set Graves on fire for real he would roll up with his hundred dollar haircut, call everyone stupid, and then Urzikstan would go right back to war because that's how this shit works. Russia and the US get into constant pissing matches and the Middle East serves as the convenient battleground.

All of the antagonizing Graves and Shadow Company have done would serve to galvanize a Russian public against the US, positioning Makarov as its very own Churchill and imbuing him with phenomenal cosmic power. Bada bing, bada boom, WWIII. Perfect scene-setting for MW4.

I maintain that if anyone has to die it will be Price. Price is the only one with the charisma to go toe-to-toe with Makarov from a leadership standpoint, so he has to go if we really want the stakes to feel high. In the VERY end, after 4 and whatever games follow it, Gaz would be the only man left standing of the 141. Having finally learned the kind of price that must be paid when the gloves come off.

Again. Blizzard-Activision. Pay me eight billion dollars and I will fix your games.

#answered #teehee this was an ask from my previous live reaction but i saved it for a special occasion

[oshiawaseni]

Processing chapter 362

I just wanted to check in with the thoughts I have now on Kacchan’s situation. His fate won’t be updated for a few weeks so some people might be feeling a bit at a loss. I hope you find a little comfort from reading.

In the past few chapters Kacchan has been literally taken down to hell, his body twisted and tortured, mentally torn asunder by provocations that once would have stabbed him very deeply and had the core of who he is brutally attacked in a sadistic test that culminates in an unexpected (painful, potentially self destructive) quirk evolution.

But his moment to shine is far too brief, like a very fleeting sparkler that’s snuffed out as soon as it’s lit without getting any satisfaction of enjoying it and then his life supposedly ends, just like that. Without the person who admires his spark the most to witness any of this and gush to him about how much he loves him?

And instead, he’s all alone… leaving us with his heartbreaking desire to win and stay true to himself, to the person Izuku always saw in him, wondering if he has what it takes to keep up with him yet, just so he can faithfully stay and fight by Izuku’s side… and being denied that opportunity with a death blow? Bro. 😭

What we’ve seen in these latest chapters, generally speaking, is him being physically, emotionally and spiritually beaten to a pulp and hung out to dry. Have his entire life shredded up like the previous 360 chapters of character building never meant anything. He never got to have another, long time coming, awesome moment with his best friend or share his true feelings with Izuku and vice versa. They always showed their love to other people but almost never to themselves and I’m expected to believe that one-sidedness is also the way he’s going to go out? All unfinished? Like a prettily wrapped present that will never be opened? I shall impart with you some of the wisest and most ancient words that hail from the spirit of my people, an emphatic: Yeah, Nah.

He’s not done. This isn’t the end for him because his character has been dragged through hell and for what? Angering and hurting Izuku to weaken him is never going to be an acceptable reason to end his life. Kohei didn’t have him choose not to leave the village just to now throw bnha’s AND Izuku’s most beloved character under the bus with the most horrifying angst-filled end for him you could possibly imagine. I really don’t think so. Because all of this that I’ve been talking about? This seems far too sadistic and unbelievable to be all that’s left of Katsuki. It is completely unimaginable that this devastating nightmare he’s been put through is to be his legacy.

What we’ve seen so far is nothing short of disrespect to his character and what that means is we simply haven’t seen the complete picture. He, who breathes lifeforce into the word “victory,” still hasn’t won.

The 2nd movie with them fighting together comes to my mind like a beacon of hope that can’t be ignored. It tells me that while the real ending is going to be different, the essence at its core will be the same. Winning to save and saving to win: these two ideals, these two people’s hearts, merging together as one. This is how he envisions the bkdk climax. The two of them joining as one to become the greatest Hero that not only rivals All Might, but surpasses him. Katsuki said he would from his start line and I don’t care how down bad things appear to be right now, I believe him.

Izuku had made the mistake of trying to be too much like AM but fortunately Katsuki was always around to tell him, essentially ‘F* being like him or just as good, you damn well surpass him!’ And I think that’s what sets them both apart from Shiggy/AFO.

He talks like “Do you think that would be enough to hurt All Might” and has consistently made comparisons to him throughout the series like he only ever wanted to be good enough to go toe to toe with him. He’s completely stuck on AM being the absolute ceiling of hero excellency, the highest plateau of power that looks down on everyone else and that closed mind set limits his potential and will be his downfall.

He never had a Katsuki pushing, no, turning around to face him, taking him by the hands and pulling him into running plus ultra alongside him and their class mates.

Some quick final thoughts: Bakudeku triumphant ending yes. Fusion of ideals/body/spirit/hearts/mind yes. How this all plays out not really sure but reading and thinking of theories is fun and I’m sure that Kacchan’s going to be amazing when he kicks AFO’s ass with Izuku and very hopeful that his body will be healed somehow before the end (and his soul stuff returned if he has been yoinked to suit the stories purposes)❤️ ijou

#bakudeku #Bnha 362 #op #Katsuki bakugou #Bakugou Katsuki #Bnha meta #ish #I hope this post helps some people recover from the sadness somewhat #I’m feeling a lot better because this horrible thing we’ve seen will not be Kacchan’s legacy 💥🥺 #la la la la kohei 🙈

[winged-wolf-dreamer]

Some (Unorganized) Musings On A Year In the Unoverse

With Worlds 2023 over, it has been officially a year, more or less, of me having become a fan of Shoma, as I started following him at Worlds 2022 (so not exact year but I figured Worlds is easier to track than exact dates, sue me), so I felt like sharing some unasked for thoughts.

So this whole mess started with the Olympics, when figure skating was trending just about every day on tumblr. “But Wolf,” you might say, “Didn’t you say you became a fan of Shoma at Worlds?” Well, yes, cause see, it wasn’t Shoma that caught my attention, it was Yuzu. I saw gifs of him and people stressing over him showing up and found it mesmerizing, so I decided to follow along with his short. 

Well, we all know what happened at the short. The cursed hole.

Anyway, I watched a few of his other performances, mainly Notte Stellata and Hope & Legacy at Worlds 2017 and Ballade No. 1 at the 2018 Olys. And during all this, the doping scandal was going on and I got to watch, real time (I would look at live updates on the figure skating subreddit) as all that drama unfolded and got to witness the nonsense that was the IOC and ISU. Well, that soured me some, I feel, that plus the Olys being in Beijing and not having the energy to watch it all for one skater meant I didn’t watch the free, alas. I tried watching the gala, but that was my first real experience with how garbage skating coverage is in the US, but I did get to see Haru Yo Koi. It was beautiful.

And, by all indications, that was going to be it.

But wait, isn’t this supposed to be about Shoma? We’re getting to that, be patient! Why are you reading this anyway, I’m not important. This is just me rambling. Unorganized rambling where I’m getting the order of things and the exact circumstances confused...

Anyway, fast forward to Worlds a month later. I didn’t really care, tbh, I was still watching the subreddit, I think. And thing is, Yuzu wasn’t quite clicking with me. He is an amazing skater, but something wasn’t clicking with me that clicked with other people. I still liked him, and I loved watching his performances, very moving, but something was... missing for me. And as he would retire after Worlds, I may very well have left my brief look into figure skating at that.

Unfortunately, I saw this other Japanese skater wearing this gorgeous red costume do happy hops after completing his short at Worlds and I went, “oh I love him.”

AND I WAS DOOMED, I TELL YOU, DOOMED.

That was Shoma after finishing his short at Worlds. I don’t know if I saw it on twitter (twitter, that site I hadn’t logged into for over a year at that point and would wind up deleting once ownership changed, but I could still browse) or reddit or here, but I saw it and I loved it. Something about that grabbed me. I watched him do his free, I watched that glorious step sequence at the end and him claim his first World medal. I was hooked. My attention had been grabbed.

Why did Shoma catch my attention when Yuzu hadn’t, when I didn’t even watch Shoma’s performances at the Olys? I don’t know. Maybe it was cause Yuzu would wind up retiring after Worlds. Maybe it was something about the triumphant nature of Bolero at Worlds. Maybe it was the costumes. Maybe it was *sigh* the atmosphere of Yuzu’s fanbase was... not something I particularly liked. Maybe it was Shoma’s story of him going through a tough coachless year and him finding Stephane and how it all culminated, ultimately, in that first Worlds medal. Maybe it was cause, while Yuzu seemed like a spirit of the ice given human form to grace us with his beautiful skating, Shoma seemed like Just A Guy who went out there and Did His Best (and turned out his best was damn good), and I found him more relatable, ultimately, as I learned more about him as a person who loves sleeping and eating meat and hates vegetables. Mood.

Maybe I’m just gay and thought Shoma was more attractive than Yuzu. Maybe this all happened cause I’m very shallow.

Regardless, I became part of the Unoverse. I wound up keeping up with a lot of relevant twitter accounts even though I could only observe, wishing all of them were on tumblr. I followed several Unoverse tumblrs here (special shoutouts to @myjunkisyuzuruhanyu and @vilyae for all the info and pictures and such), I read the figure skating subreddit. I watched the fans deal with... an annoying amount of hate from others for reasons that infuriated and befuddled me. I learned way too much about the season schedules.

I watched Turandot at the 2018 Olys. I watched his triumphant DOMO at JNats 2019 (god, those twizzles. And that utter happiness during the step sequence). I watched La Vie En Rose at MoI 2019 (that skate is so beautiful and gentle...). I would slowly watch all of his programs at least once over the year and fall that cantilever every single time...

I watched his videos on his own YT channel where he could not do English, even as I myself didn’t understand a word he said. I watched Unowan and him constantly being attacked by puppies. I saved way too many pictures to my phone (as of this writing, 2434 photos).

I watched as the fans waited for him to announce his programs for the season. I watched the first performances of Gravity and Aria in shows. I then... got to experience the joys of watching figure skating in the United States without a VPN or Peacock. I wound up watching Aria from Skate Canada on NBC’s “highlights” broadcast, but for every other performance of the GP (INCLUDING THE GPF, WHY WASN’T THE GPF PROPERLY TAPED FOR A BROADCAST ACROSS ALL DISCIPLINES) I had to stick to embed videos on twitter, ultimately, besides maybe a few here and there on youtube (for whatever reason, it seems to me his programs this season are really hard to find on YT versus every other program he has, it’s annoying). I got to see him finally win the GPF. I got to finally watch a good performance of Padam, Padam from JNats on YT (before it got taken down).

And then I got to witness the emotional roller coaster that was this Worlds as he struggled with injury and I prayed he wouldn’t injure himself further and hopefully take the victory and defend his World Champion status.

And he did. I didn’t watch it live cause time zones, but I watched Aria on NBC’s highlights and saw it. It was a good thing to wake up to. The utter joy and finding out he’s the first Japanese man to win consecutive golds in Worlds.

And now here we are. There’s still WTT, but I still wanted to write this, now. Then the season will be over and we’ll be in the offseason, waiting for shows (including him and Yuzu skating together at SoI!), waiting for new program announcements. For it all to start again. There was a small article about him winning Worlds in my local paper today, and I was so happy. I hope to keep it.

I am... still not all that invested in figure skating as a whole, ultimately. If he retired tomorrow (he’s not retiring, for the record), I would peace out then and there. Even without the... Everything regarding the ISU and such (please don’t let Russia back in...), watching this sport in the US is... hard, and I don’t have investment in other skaters to make an effort, for better or worse. That’s not a slight on them, I just have other things in my life.

Still, I’ll be here until he does retire, and I hope that he’ll skate as long as he’s happy and healthy doing it. And maybe he’ll make it to the 2026 Olys and finally get that gold.

Ganbatte Shoma!

#shoma uno #figure skating #my way too long musings on this past year sigh #I did not edit this for the record please excuse any mistakes #also my memory is bad please excuse if I messed something up #long post

[sataniquepanique]

Painkiller - Part 4 Cries In The Night

Summary: It's the end of the year, and Eddie goes missing after Chrissy's death. You are the only one who knows where he could be hiding.

Genre: slow burn, fluff

Warnings: language, mentions of drug use

Word Count: 2.2k

Notes: I have one final part after this, and yes it is finally smut (I just love slow burn romance, okay?)

Six months had passed since you started your senior year in Hawkins. It was honestly pretty hard to believe that in less than 2 months you would finally be graduating. You had applied to a few colleges in the surrounding area, but the one you really wanted to get into was in New York City, back on the East Coast. You hadn’t told anyone, especially Eddie, that you had even applied there, worried about his reaction. Spring break officially starts tomorrow, and you can’t wait to spend an entire week with Eddie. Your feelings for him had grown over the past few months, but you couldn’t muster up the courage to admit them to yourself, let alone him, over the fear that he wouldn’t reciprocate. He never looked at other girls, apart from the occasional passing glance, and you could never tell if it was lustful or just because he had sold drugs to them in the past. 

“You still coming to my art show tonight?” You look up at him from your lunch. 

“…I wouldn’t miss it for the world…” he said, distracted by a magazine he was reading. 

“Can you believe this shit?” He mutters, flipping the page and reading the headline out loud, “Dungeons and Dragons…studies link violent behavior to the game, saying it promotes satanic worship, ritual sacrifice, sodomy, suicide and even…murder!” He snarks as he slams the magazine down onto the lunch table. He was really revved up today. “We’re the freaks because…we like to play a fantasy game?” He stepped up onto the table, his voice getting louder. “But as long as you're into band, or science, or parties, or a game where you toss BALLS into LAUNDRY BASKETS!” He shouted over towards the basketball team’s table, where Jason stood up and yelled some vague threats back at him. Eddie turned around after taunting Jason, and walked his way back down the table towards you. “It’s forced conformity. That’s what’s KILLING the KIDS!” He exaggerates as he hops off the table. “You boys…” he points to Mike and Dustin, “…are the future of Hellfire, you need to keep the legacy going. Jeff graduates this year, Gareth has a year and a half, and me…this is my year. ’86 baby! Before you know it I’m gonna walk that stage, flip Principal Higgins the bird, snatch that diploma and run like hell outta here.” He came and sat back next to you. 

“Didn’t you say that last year?” Gareth says. 

“…and the year before?” Jeff chimes in. 

“Yeah, and I was full of shit!” Eddie snaps back. 

“Eddie, are you really going to graduate this time?” You look at him suspiciously. You had tried to help him this year, studying and making flash cards and pushing him to try and apply himself. He wasn’t stupid by any means, he just didn’t feel like doing the actual work. He promised that the two of you would graduate together this year though. 

“I am army crawling my way toward a D in Ms. O’Donnells. If I don’t blow her final, I’m outta here.” He says, flashing you a huge smile. 

“Eddie…a D? Seriously?” You groan. He just keeps smiling, unconcerned. The bell rings, and you stand up and throw your bag over your shoulder, “I’m going to be setting up my gallery wall after school for the show tonight, so no need to wait up. I’ll see you around 8 at the show…?” 

Eddie looks up at you, his deep brown eyes making your heart flutter,  “Like I said, I wouldn’t miss it even if the world ended.”

The end-of-year art show was being held in the library, since the championship basketball game was occupying the gym. It was the culmination of everything you had been working on in your AP Art class all year. Eddie understood how much this meant to you, so he didn’t mind when you bowed out of tonight’s Hellfire meeting. You wait by your gallery wall, smiling as parents and students walk by and scan your work, talking about how talented everyone is. You check your watch, 8:15pm. Eddie hasn’t shown up yet. Hellfire Club ended at 8, so he should’ve been here by now. The show goes until 9:30, maybe he just got held up with one of the Hellfire kids, he still has time to get here. You spend the next hour nervously tapping your foot, arms crossed, staring at the door waiting for him to walk in. 

9:15 and still no sight of Eddie. You’re furious. How dare he? He knew how important this was to you. You grabbed your denim jacket and left the show in a hurry. When you get home, you ask your mom if anyone called for you as you throw your car keys on the counter, she says no and you roll your eyes. Once upstairs in your room, you toss your jacket onto the floor in anger and lay on your bed, furious and upset. You fall asleep thinking of all of the things you’re going to say to Eddie tomorrow when you see him.

You and Eddie had plans to meet at your spot in the woods the next day at dusk to celebrate the first day of Spring Break with a smoke session. You showed up a little before sunset and sat at the picnic table, trying to steady your breathing. You were still pissed from the night before. Time passes, and Eddie still hasn’t shown. The sun had already set, and you were sitting in the dark woods alone. You’re not doing this again. You’re not waiting around for some guy that clearly wants nothing to do with you. You stand up and walk out of the woods to your car, trying to control yourself from driving to his trailer to kick his ass. 

As you enter the lot outside of the woods, you see a BMW ripping into the parking lot, coming to a screeching halt in front of you. Dustin hangs out the front passenger side and screams “GET IN! GET IN NOW!” You slide into the backseat, confused and alarmed, next to Robin and Max who you recognize from school. Steve Harrison, Dustin’s “best older male friend” (his words, not yours), is in the drivers seat and tears out of the parking lot while you look between Dustin and the rest of the group. 

“…does anyone want to tell me what the fuck is going on?” You ask in an annoyed tone. “Eddie’s in trouble…” Dustin says, looking back at you. You feel the blood drain from you face. He looks over to Max, who then fills you in on the events from last night: Eddie bringing Chrissy to his trailer, Chrissy dying, the police looking for him as a suspect, and Eddie going missing. You shake your head in disbelief, shoving the thoughts of him with another girl to the back of your brain. 

“Eddie wouldn’t kill anyone or anything. He didn’t do this.” You say desperately, feeling awful for being so furious with him.

“We know, which is why we need to find him and help him,” Dustin responds, “Do you know where he could be?” 

You think for a second. Where would he go where he knew no one would think to look? 

“…Reefer Rick.” You blurt out, everyone staring at you, confused. “He’s at Reefer Rick’s house! He gets his weed from him.” You say as you lean forward to give Steve directions. 

You pull up to Reefer Rick’s lakeside house and you scan the surrounding area. It’s pitch black, and the house is dark. You and the rest of the group walk up to the front door, shining flashlights into the windows. 

“…I don’t see anything…” Max whispers as she peers into a window. 

“REEFER RICK! REEFER RICK!” Dustin starts banging on the front door while Steve shushes him. 

You walk to the corner of the house and look around back. You notice the door to the boat house is cracked open a little. “Guys….” You motion to the boathouse. Robin pushes past you and leads the group over toward the lake. She slowly pushes the boathouse door and you all cautiously follow inside. It’s empty. There’s no one inside, except for a rowboat bobbing along in the water. Steve grabs an oar and starts poking around inside the tarp covered boat, while the rest of you shine flashlights around looking for clues. 

“…hey, look over here. Someone’s been in here.” Max says, holding up an empty bottle. You walk over to her to inspect further, while Steve continues to jam his oar into the tarp.

“…maybe he heard us? Got spooked, and ran…” Robin says. 

“Don’t worry, Steve will get him with his oar!” Dustin muses sarcastically. Steve gives him an annoyed chuckle, “I know you think you’re being funny Henderson, but considering almost everyone in this room has nearly died about a hundred times, personally, I don’t find it funny—” 

Suddenly, someone pops out from under the tarp and slams Steve against the wall, broken bottle to his throat. 

It’s Eddie. You’ve never seen him like this, and your heart stops the second you see him. He’s visibly distraught and terrified, hand shaking as he holds the glass shard to Steve’s neck. “WHOA, WHOA, WHOA EDDIE! IT’S ME! IT’S DUSTIN!” He holds his hands up to Eddie, trying to calm him down. “Steve, why don’t you drop the oar?” Dustin says calmly, “We’re on your side, we’re here to help!” 

Steve throws the oar down beside him.

“…Eddie?” You call quietly from the back of the group. He snaps his gaze over to you and immediately drops the bottle to the floor when he see’s you. You push past the others and wrap your arms around him, squeezing as tight as you can. He grabs back, one hand clutching the back of your jacket, the other tangled in your hair. He’s crying softly into the side of your neck. “Oh Eddie…what happened” you whisper. 

“You won’t believe me…” he sniffles, pulling back to look at you. 

“Try us.” Max chimes in behind you. You put your hand on Eddies cheek and he leans into it, “you’re safe now” you promise. 

You spend the night with Eddie in the boathouse to make sure he was okay. You slept on the wooden floor, wrapped in his leather jacket, holding onto each other. 

Eddie refused to let you stay with him the next day, after he found out the police were officially searching for him as a murder suspect. He said he didn’t want you to get mixed up into all of it, and forced you to leave to go back home no matter how hard you protested. Steve drove you home that afternoon after he came to drop off food and supplies to Eddie. Once you sat in the passenger seat you broke down in muffled sobs, face buried in your hands. You had held it together for Eddie’s sake, but with him out of sight you couldn’t hold the fear of losing him inside of you anymore. 

Steve dropped you off at your house, giving you a hug and a sad smile as you went inside. 

You didn’t hear from anyone after that. 

The next 48 hours were filled with panic and worry as you watched the entire town of Hawkins turn Eddie into a murderer. You were questioned by the police multiple times, regarding him and the rest of your friends, each interrogation ending up with you screaming at them that they were wrong. 

You had never cried this much in your life. You assumed the worst after 2 days of not hearing from Eddie, or from anyone for that matter, and you were inconsolable. You finally decided to get high one night, hoping it would help you fall asleep and not have nightmares. Laying in bed, you started to drift off but are startled awake when you hear tapping on your window. Assuming that you’re hallucinating, you ignore it you and roll over, your eyes met with the photo of the Hellfire Club framed on your nightstand. You stare at it, glance over your friends faces, until you meet Eddie’s. His smile warms your heart, but also breaks it into a million pieces. The tapping starts again, and you get up to see what’s going on. You open the window and peer out to find Eddie standing below, soaking wet throwing little rocks at your window. “Christ…Eddie…” you motion for him to climb up the lattice, and he clamors through your window. You take him in, noticing that he’s covered in blood and scratches. He looks like he’s been through hell and back. He just stands there, defeated. You lead him over to your bed and peel off his jacket, having him lay down while you curl up next to him. You start to cry as you trace your fingers over his arms and see how cut up he is. 

“…I thought you had died…” you whisper. He groans as you accidentally touch one of the cuts, “almost…but I had to make it back here…I couldn’t leave you alone.” He kisses the top of your head as you bury your face in his chest. You want to hear the story of what happened, about the trauma that Eddie has been through the past few days. But for now, he was safe and you both drift off to sleep in each others arms. 

#Eddie munson #Eddie Munson fanfic #Eddie Munson edit #stranger things #stranger things 4 #stranger things fanfic #Steve harrington #Eddie Munson x reader

[magnuficent76]

Quick! I need a comprehensive guide to all of your OCs right now or I'm going to start biting soon <– a guy totally not possessed by a werewolf

OUHHGHOOHOHOHH indulging me ..... OKAY theres a lot of them, BUT here's the basics ! It's written very informally but it should give you an idea for who everyone is !

[Solar Years] {This is the longest story I have written, and it has many other substories going on within it simultaneously. Big ole’ universe with tons of stuff going into it, not always connected to the main thing. High fantasy and Gods and all that jazz happening in the background of a slice of life story.}

★ Baltazar (They/He) is the protagonist of Solar Years and also my favourite little blorbo of all time. He's very big, a farmer (ex professional sports player), and also an immortal being that's been coming back to earth for 3 million years and counting, which are all normal things to say in succession. They have no sense of self preservation and desperately need to give themselves some grace for once <3

♤ Luis (He/Him) is the co-protagonist of the story, adopted from another story as a way to honour someone I greatly care about. In terms of personality, he's very much Baltazar's opposite, but ironically enough they've been coexisting for their entire lives. A long time ago, he accidentally cursed himself (through power of sheer rage and spite alone) into being immortal by falling into the Void, and nowadays he makes that Literally Everyone's problem. 

Some other characters in this story include Lazarus (She/He/They), Marsh (He/They), Andromeda (Any pronouns), Anastasia, Anne (Both she/her),  The Void Gang, and many many others. 

[Caede Tales] {Fan-story for Borderlands focusing on my ocs, which are essentially background characters to the main story, and exploring a little bit of what happens to just the regular people of Pandora. It's mostly meant to be a comedy but there's also The Horrors <3.}

♥︎ Jonah (He/it) and M3PH1ST0 (Mephisto) (They/It/He) are the same guy but a few arcs apart, also one of these eats people. One of Three protags, his side of the story focuses more on personal struggle of wanting to do better in a world that is inherently hostile to kindness, and how it slowly becomes more and more like its environment the more he realises the whole being nice thing isn't going anywhere. He's Normal (lie)

♣︎ Melaine (She/Ze) is a doctor from Promethea who came to Pandora to help the locals, and is also a direct parallel to Jonah in many ways. Her morals slooowly get more and more muddled as the story goes on and she loses a big part of herself in service of her work and the legacy she wants to leave behind, until it all culminates in her mutating herself to be a big bug. She's my everything.

◇ Archer (He/Him) is Jonah's brother and possibly the most repressed man   in all of history. He goes from a bandit to a famous rich businessman in a stroke of sudden luck, and has to grapple with his identity and everything he's leaving behind by going to another planet to do so. Local White Man. 

Some other characters in this story include Mary (She/Her), Lucio/Lucifer (Don't refer to this guy (He/Him)), Salt (He/They), Penelope and Cassandra (both She/her… for now.) Several Coworkers and many others.

[Gaslighting Fires] {Gaslighting Fires is all about Eris, a true businesswoman (stand in for criminal) at heart, and her many antics as she climbs her way to the top of the food chain. Dramedy if it was Cool (can you tell its my favourite genre)

♡ Eris (She/Her) is the protagonist and she Sucks So Fucking Bad. Girl who is gonna doom everyone else in the narrative and not take any responsibility for it. It's okay though she's awesome and gorgeous and I love drawing her so her crimes are forgiven. Lots of focus on her personal struggle in doing what she does and the relationships she accidentally keeps building with people. Whoopsies ! Your stupid ass got attached to the people you were planning on manipulating didn't it !! Cringe

♤ Lilith (She/He) is the Antagonist ! Generally speaking, her morals are still extremely questionable, but she's still a pretty decent person compared to whatever Eris got going on. His whole deal is that he's supposed to stop Eris, but due to Situations the only way to do that is to become worse than her, involving him in tons of other unrelated cases that lead into further spiralling into crime. And then they kiss and it's awesome. Don't worry about the spiralling into crime bit its enriching for her.

Other characters in this include Pandora (It/She), Jinx (They/It), Raque (She/Her)l, Gabe (He/him), Snappy (the turtle), Mallory (He/Her), Ophelia (She/Her) and some others !

[Computing Legacy] {Story set in a (dangerously close) future where Things are going to Shit so we're gonna create the matrix. Except creating the matrix actually helped a lot of people and it delayed the apocalypse a lot because of all the scientific breakthroughs it caused. Awesome ! Sure hope we don't have Repercussions Of Creating The Matrix in here or something !} 

♧ William (He/Him* for now.) is the protagonist and he sucks. Hate this guy <- loving. My horrible no good son who NEEDS to shut the fuck up more often but whom I adore nonetheless. His deal is that he's a hacker and programmer who's WAY over his head, and needs someone to get him out of there because it's making him lonely and depressed as shit. Guy who's probably nonbinary but is also in university so he Really Can't Worry About It Right Now.

♥︎ Althea (She/They) is the Co-protagonist and Queer-Platonic interest, love this girl <3 She's Will's opposite in every way, and for a while she's antagonised for it, but it's okay they get over it. They're also a very talented programmer, even though it wasn't their original career path (more of an artist), and they're trying Really Hard to make it through this world normally without exploding or disappointing their family. She's very nice to her own detriment and this gets a lot of focus in the story and how she slowly but surely becomes more ruthless thanks to their Horrible No Good Situation so people stop trying to take advantage of her <3

Some of the other characters in this include Ubel (He/It), Fox (She/It), Ferdinand (He/him), Autumn (She/Her), Randy (He/They), Mariana (She/Her), Stanford (He/Him), Ezra (She/Her) and many more.

[HELLBREAKER] {Very much still a work in progress. This one is more of an ambition project so I don't wanna share too much, but basically: It's set in hell and the protagonist Really Has To Escape. Kinda like OFF if it was made by a guy who's fascinated with religion purely aesthetically.}

☆ Maria (She/Her) is the protagonist, and she just went to hell babyyy. Well, not technically: She lands in purgatory, and is given the choice to either do her time in there or to traverse through all the layers of the underworld in order to ascend to Heaven. And based on the name of this project you can guess which she chose.

And the other characters, The Sins, Lucifer, and the many characters you find along your journey to help you !

#magocs #my oc stuff #original character #audience participation #oc masterpost #technically #solar years #gaslighting fires #computing legacy #caede tales #HELLBREAKER #im not tagging everyone im lazy but TYSM FOR THE ASKKK I'VE BEEN MEANING TO COMPILE THESE GUYS #im so sorry it took. so fucking long #infodump #Lore dump Tag

[mariacallous]

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, died in Moscow, on Tuesday, at the age of ninety-one. In the last two decades of his life, he rarely granted interviews. So, in 2010, when he agreed to speak to someone from a Moscow magazine that I edited, I felt both awe and some misgivings: here was a unique opportunity that would almost certainly be wasted. Gorbachev was a notoriously terrible interviewee. He rambled; he went off on tangents; he almost never finished a sentence. In a desperate move, my colleagues and I asked readers to send in questions. Someone asked, “What could bring you joy now?” This time, Gorbachev was ready with a concise answer. “If someone could promise me that in the next world I will see Raisa,” he said. “But I don’t believe in that.” Raisa, his wife of forty-six years, had died, of leukemia, in 1999.

“I don’t believe in God,” Gorbachev continued. Raisa had not been a believer, either, but “she progressed faster than I did in this direction.” What he seemed to be getting at was that Raisa had stayed in step with her country, becoming a post-Soviet Russian, while Gorbachev remained a fundamentally Soviet man. His was the quintessential life story of an apparatchik: plucked from the southern Russia countryside by the Party when he was still a secondary-school student, university in Moscow, and a series of Party jobs that culminated with his appointment, in 1985, as the General Secretary of the Central Committee, the highest job in the U.S.S.R. At the time, Gorbachev was fifty-four—shockingly young. He was surrounded by octogenarians who expected deference and gratitude. But he had a greater love in his life, and a loyalty that superseded any debt he had to the Party and its doddering leadership. Gorbachev lived and worked to impress Raisa. They had met as students at Moscow State University, where he studied law and she studied philosophy. Raisa’s classmates were an extraordinary cohort of postwar Soviet thinkers, and that, perhaps more than anything else, helped shape the policies that will forever be synonymous with Gorbachev’s name: glasnost and perestroika.

Within weeks of becoming General Secretary, Gorbachev announced his intention to reform and modernize the Soviet Union. In June, 1987, he announced a new concept: perestroika, or restructuring, of Soviet policies in every area. Although he didn’t explicitly say so, what he meant by restructuring was liberalization: the Soviet Union would legalize limited private enterprise and relax censorship, allowing public discussion of topics that had previously been taboo. Censorship laws were never abolished, but the loosening of restrictions—the explicit aim of glasnost—produced an unprecedented explosion of writing, publishing, filmmaking, performance, and music. Obscure journals that published long, quasi-academic articles saw their press runs soar. People lined up to read the new issues of papers such as the Moscow News or to get into a theatre to see a newly staged play by, say, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. The reason, more often than not, was that the journal, the newspaper, and the playwright tackled the previously censored topic of Stalinist terror. For the first time since Stalin’s death, in 1953, Soviet citizens were publicly talking about their past.

Years later, Gorbachev wanted to preserve this part of his legacy. In 2008, in coöperation with the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Gorbachev formed a working group to try to create a museum of Stalinist terror. As General Secretary, he said, he had received full access to the archives. This was when he had learned that terror had been truly random, that people had been arrested and executed not for any wrongdoing, nor on suspicion of wrongdoing, nor even on specious accusation of wrongdoing, but simply because every local law-enforcement entity had to fill its quota of arrests and executions. He had also learned that at the height of the terror, when thousands of people were executed every day, Soviet leaders had signed off on these executions by the page—with dozens of names per page. Gorbachev, who had created a commission that ultimately reviewed millions of cases from the Stalin era and repealed hundreds of thousands of guilty verdicts, seemed to shudder in disbelief as he talked about the things he had learned. Here was another quality that set him apart from any Soviet leader before him: he could be shaken. His world view could be challenged and changed; he himself, it seemed, could change. The same could not be said of his successors: it soon became clear that the museum Gorbachev wanted to build could not exist in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which was busy eliding the memory of Stalinist terror from its own version of Russian history.

Gorbachev is both credited and reviled for the dismantling of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But he never set out to change the world in that way. In 1987, he released all Soviet political prisoners, who numbered several hundred at the time. (Russia is currently holding more political prisoners than it did in the nineteen-eighties.) His policies of glasnost and perestroika enabled critics of the Soviet structure to be heard. Andrei Sakharov, a dissident who was elected to the Supreme Soviet after Gorbachev released him from internal exile, argued against the monopoly of the Communist Party. Galina Starovoitova, an academic ethnographer turned politician, argued that the empire must be dismantled, and proposed a union treaty to replace the Soviet colonial structure. Gorbachev rejected both notions.

In 1989, Gorbachev’s Soviet Union released its grip on its European satellites—the countries that Moscow had effectively ruled since the end of the Second World War. One after another, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and others brought down their pro-Soviet governments. But, when Russia’s internal colonies—the countries that had been forcibly subsumed by the Soviet Union rather than simply dominated by it—reached for independence, Moscow reacted with violence. In April, 1989, authorities brutally crushed pro-independence protests in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, killing at least twenty-one people and injuring two hundred and ninety. In January, 1991, Soviet troops killed pro-independence activists in Riga, the capital of Latvia, and Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, after the Baltic countries, which had been occupied by the Soviet Union during the Second World War, declared independence. Many tributes to Gorbachev have credited him with presiding over the “bloodless” dissolution of the Soviet Union—forgetting that blood was and, in some cases, continues to be shed in conflicts in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and elsewhere. In March, 1991, after not only the Baltics but also Russia and Ukraine—the largest Soviet republics—voted to secede from the Union, Gorbachev staged a referendum on preserving the U.S.S.R. Six of the fifteen constituent republics refused to participate, but Gorbachev claimed that the remaining nine validated the continued existence of the empire.

In August, 1991, a group of elderly hard-liners attempted a coup. They placed Gorbachev under house arrest at his summer residence in Crimea and declared a state of emergency, restoring censorship. Three days later, the coup had been routed, but Gorbachev returned to Moscow a lame duck: he had been supplanted by Boris Yeltsin, the leader of an independent Russia. In December, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus negotiated the end of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev resigned his post as the head of a country that no longer existed. He had been willing to use violence and rigged votes to try to maintain the country, but he made no attempt to use such tactics in order to stay in power himself.

Gorbachev was that rare sort of politician who acted on the belief that the world and the people in it—including himself—can be better than they often appear to be. The ultimate tragedy of his political life is that, for the past twenty-three years, Russia has been ruled by the opposite sort of politician. Vladimir Putin believes humanity to be rotten to its core, and all of his acts, in one way or another, are designed to validate this world view. Putin was a relatively junior K.G.B. officer in Dresden, in East Germany, for most of perestroika. He was not in Russia when the streets seemed to fill with the intoxicating air of freedom, but he was in East Germany when Moscow let it go. He has never forgiven Gorbachev for abandoning K.G.B. officers in Dresden, the satellite country itself, and the dream of a giant European empire. (Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said, on Tuesday night, that the Russian President would be issuing his sincerest condolences to the family.)

In his resentment of Gorbachev, Putin is in agreement with most Russians, who commonly associate the former General Secretary with instability, chaos, and the end of everything that once felt familiar. With some exceptions, the intelligentsia, who arguably benefitted the most from glasnost, dilute their fondness for Gorbachev with disdain—for his crackdowns on pro-independence movements, to be sure, but also for the way he talked. In the West, where Gorbachev was once revered, he spoke through interpreters, who turned his ramblings into orderly sentences. In Russia, people heard a man who could never finish a sentence or get to the punch line—and whose accent marked him, to the end, as a country bumpkin.

After leaving office, Gorbachev largely stayed out of public life. He started a think tank called the Gorbachev Foundation. He did charity work. He tried and failed to create that museum of Stalinist terror. In 2013, after Putin cracked down on protests and shepherded a number of laws that would make protest itself almost impossible, Gorbachev exclaimed in an interview, “Don’t be afraid of your own people, goddammit!” But he never spoke out against the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 or the invasion of Ukraine. In the end, he was the most un-Soviet of all Soviet leaders, but he remained the flesh and blood of the Soviet system. He was limited by his imagination, not the beliefs and institutions of his youth, which had crumbled quickly. But, even as Russia waged an aggressive colonial war, Gorbachev seemed unable to imagine what his country could be, if it wasn’t an empire. ♦

[burlveneer-music]

Takuro Okada - Betsu No Jikan - some more of that “ambient ecstatic jazz” I was on about a while ago; opens with a fascinating interpretation of “A Love Supreme” with Sam Gendel on sax

In 2013 a new kind of sensation began to make waves in Japan’s Indie Rock scene known as “Mori Wa Ikiteiru”. Formed by a group of university students, the precociousness and sound of “Mori Wa Ikiteiru” captivated many fans then– likening the band’s sound to a modern-day “Happy End” (Haroumi Hosono, etc.) until the band broke up after its second album. Despite the band’s split, the band left its legacy and its leader with new direction– Takuro Okada began his solo career with the release of two original albums, “Nostalgia” and “Morning Sun.” Exploring his musical prowess in the following years, Okada became not just a singer-songwriter but a sound producer, film composer, guitarist, improvisational musician, with undoubtedly more to come as he continues to develop. Challenging what contemporary pop meant then and today, Okada releases his first album in two years. “Betsu no Jikan” since his 2020 masterpiece “Morning Sun.” Through this time of Okada’s own discovery, he questioned what it meant to be “musical” in this day and age— “Betsu no Jikan” to be released this coming summer, is the culmination of this two-year exploration. Improvisation with the likes of drummer Shun Ishiwaka, Jim O’Rourke, to name a few, were revived and collaged into “Betsu No Jikan.” The album features artists from both within Japan and abroad including Shun Ishiwaka, Carlos Nino, Sam Gendel, Jim O’Rourke, Nels Cline (Wilco), Marty Holoubek, even Japanese legends like Haroumi Hosono (Happy End, Yellow Magic Orchestra), etc. The improvisations and collaborations of artists with such range into Okada’s contemporized musical pieces were selected and captured by such talent because of their unique approach to technique and interpretation. Okada’s own techniques has given the work a unique treatment that emphasizes each note in its contrast, highlighting the sound of each note. This method echoes that of the “postmodern pop” sound, an engineering method similar to that of the older “sampling music” sound. Similar to the improvisational sound of Miles Davis Group, it seems to follow the great success of Davis’ collective improv, skillfully restructured by Theo Macero who highlighted the texture of each note. “Betsu No Jikan” opens with a cover of Coltrane’s “Supreme Love,” interpreted in this Macero-like approach. From his time with "Mori Wa Ikiteiru” up and through “Betsu No Jikan,” Okada’s ambition and curiousity intersecting with his evolution as a musician have led him to this question at the crossroads– “what is pop? credits

#Takuro Okada #ambient ecstatic jazz #electronic #jazz #experimental #sam gendel #new age #carlos nino #spiritual jazz #haruomi hosono #2022 #japan

[thessalian]

Thess vs The Grind

No, not the employment-related one. I mean the grind that seems to come standard with so many video games these days. Because apparently the employment-related one isn’t enough for people.

When I first played Dragon Age: Inquisition, I was trying to do it spoiler-free, and ended up flailing so very hard that I missed out on a lot of stuff. Some people I needed to talk to didn’t get talked to, some side quests didn’t even trigger... Let’s just say it’s a really good thing that the Trespasser DLC wasn’t out at that point because I entirely missed Bull’s loyalty quest the first time through. (Though I am still annoyed that they sold us the actual ending as DLC later; so tired of shit like Legacy and Trespasser ripping out stuff we really need to understand future games and then selling it back to us for more money. It’s one thing when a game comes out in chapters; at least you know you’re buying the next installment when it’s chapters. But of course they’re not going to tell us, “Oh, by the way, we’re not giving you the real ending until you pay us more, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff you might need to know about for the next game to make any sense that you can only get if you pay us even more.” It’s ... kind of disgusting.)

Anyway. Point is that when I first started playing Inquisition on the very first run, I had no idea exactly how completionist you had to be to get the entire story. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed until I played a second playthrough with spoilers and walk-throughs and all manner of other shit. I don’t think that should be necessary, y’know? I don’t think you should have to go through the Wiki or be a completionist of the highest order just to get through a game, and I sure as hell don’t think you should have to hack through ninety-eight thousand miles of sweet fuck all in order to get through everything. And yet, that’s exactly what you have to do most of the time in Inquisition. A friend of mine put it best - I like the game that’s buried under the busywork. It just means I have to really be in the mood for the busywork before I can pick up a playthrough again, so it generally takes months to finish one, because I set it aside for weeks on end until I feel like pushing through.

Suffice to say that I finally finished most of a playthrough with an elven mage, something I haven’t really done since my nearly abortive first spoiler-free playthrough when it first came out. In that one, I didn’t get half the loyalty missions done, I never locked in the romance with Cullen I was after (which I think meant I was one of the first in my Tumblr circle to discover that Josephine turns up to offer a friendly shoulder if your Inquisitor’s single during that whole thing in the Winter Palace) ... and Trespasser wasn’t even a thing at that point. I’ve finished Jaws of Hakkon and Descent (I always do that before endgame, even if I don’t want to bring Solas, because I like being heavily overlevelled when I kick Corypheus’ ass - I KILLED HIM ONCE AS HAWKE AND REALLY RESENT HAVING TO DO IT AGAIN; FUCK’S SAKE, COULD WE PLEASE HAVE FINAL BOSSES STAY DEAD?!? DO NOT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE END OF ABSOLUTION), and I’ve only got Trespasser to go. I don’t know what the Fade sections of that look like for an elven Inquisitor ... and I hear rumours about a Cullen wedding before everything goes to the “Dead Qunari” place. I loved the Sera wedding, and I will admit to loving the whole thing where, at the end of the main game, the advisors bow and then Cullen is, “Okay, don’t care if we’re supposed to be dignified and official, I AM HUGGING YOU NOW”, so I’m looking forward to the culmination of that ... even as I hope he’s still surrounded by mabari puppies. (I may dislike Greg Ellis immensely, but I’m not taking that out on a very well-written character who Ellis just happens to voice.)

Honestly, I am still of the opinion that Dragon Age 2 should have been the open world free-for-all and Inquisition should have had a similar (if at least slightly less copy/pasted) structure to Dragon Age 2. I would have been happy to traverse ninety-eight thousand miles of sweet fuck all with Hawke because frankly that’s what Hawke was about, particularly in the first act - trying desperately to make ends meet in Kirkwall as a refugee. Hawke’s story was a sprawling thing where they ended up in the right (or wrong) place at the right (or wrong) time to be pivotal to changing the world, and wandering around doing random grindy shit is part of that. Whereas an Inquisitor should be getting letters at all hours telling them to go to a rather less huge area to fix a thing. Isn’t it funny how, while Dragon Age 2 was the rushed game of the two, Inquisition is the one that leaves you spending a lot of time poking through the turnip and wondering where the meat is, and being told you can’t  have your dessert until you eat at least most of said turnip? DA2 just has the higher story-to-faff ratio, when it feels like that should have gone the other way.

I have hopes for DA4. (No, I am not calling it that idiotic name; Dread Wolf is two words anyway.) I don’t know how high they are, but I have them. There’s the meat of a good game in the stew that is Inquisition, once you get through the turnip. I just hope they fix the story-to-faff ratio in DA4, is all.

#Thess plays video games #Thess liveblogs Dragon Age: Inquisition

[fennharel]

Self-Paragraph: And the Chancellor breaks

when: sometime after meeting Titania where: the Fall Court, in a hidden clearing trigger warnings: suicide mentions, violence, gore, blood, suicidal ideations

Fen’harel breaks.

There is no poetry to the breaking, no musical quality to the cracking. This is not the breaking you hear about in romantic tragedies, nor in stories with a happy ending. There is no catharsis as the pieces shatter in glittering shards, no relief to the fall of the Chancellor, just pure unadulterated grief and loss. It’s self-destruction, millennia in the making. Years upon years, she had built a legacy she would be proud of. Decades upon decades, she built a legacy she thought she would be proud of. Centuries upon centuries, she built a legacy she no longer knows she can be proud of. 

Millennia of work culminating on the simple realization: Titania had known. 

She had known, but had not stopped her. 

She had known, and loves Fen’harel still. 

There is a high keening noise building at the back of her throat at the reminder of her reality, the breath leaving her lungs as a hand grasps at her chest, not knowing whether she wants to protect her heart— stop it from disintegrating in the relentless barrage that cannot be stopped — or if she wants to rip it out, still beating, still broken. 

Titania loves her still. 

Innocuous words, sharp words, meant to surprise, but not to shake. And yet, she had been. Somehow, after all the years, after all the anger, it had been those words that had shaken her to the core, her resolve cracked and her worldview shaken. Titania loves her, despite believing them to be selfish and greedy and ruthless beyond comparison. She loves her, when Fen’harel can infer no one else will be willing to, once the truth is revealed. 

There is a maelstrom of emotion cradled upon her chest, the flames of fall fires licking the drying tree husks settled around her. The clearing is quiet, but for the high keening noise she cannot let escape, the noise that is slowly building into a scream that will not be contained no matter how much she tries. The clearing is silent, as the Fall Chancellor finally crumbles, after years of denial. The cracks on the dam she had built around her chest spread, as she was forced to feel everything she had kept at bay in the name of a higher purpose. 

Grief, misery, loneliness, disgust, horror. 

Emotions kept at bay to fuel her anger, hidden behind walls in order to bolster the lie she has been telling herself since she rebuilt her being from the ashes. 

She is strong, unfaltering. She was meant to be, but she is not.

She has to be, for if she is not, she is nothing. 

Once upon a time, Fen’harel had been a child, but even that had ended early. 

She had been a child by her species standards. A child that had seen a fraction of what they should have before the weight of the world was delivered upon her fragile shoulders. She had been a child when her parents died, alone and without a Warder, for she had lost him too. A child, and yet older than any remaining Fall Noble. A child, but looked at for direction and protection. A child without a home and without a family, delivered as a sacrifice to those who wanted her to protect them. 

There was no foundation from which she could build her Court, everything had been swept away by the wave of blood and violence brought forth by those their leader had once created. The very clearing in which she had been born turned to ash by human cruelty, eyes haunted by the corpses of her kind. 

                                                                                            Her kind wasn’t meant to die.

And yet, they did. Over and over again, leaving her behind to pick up the pieces of her people, never allowing her time to pick the pieces of herself she had given away to survive.  

First, her Warder, lost in a human war to human hands. Then, her mother, blood falling upon a human blade as life left her eyes. Finally, her father, weighted by his failed duty, by his grief, chooses his own ending rather than looking for a new beginning. 

And Fen’harel? What could she do but pick up the pieces of her court, of her people? What could she do but prioritize her eladrin, rather than her own heart? 

At the end, there was no one left to pick up the pieces of the Fall Chancellor’s heart. Not when there were more important things to be done. Not when there were more important people to be lost. 

Fall is the season of endurance, the season of change.

So she endured, time upon time upon time, ignoring her bleeding chest wound, even as it showed no sign of healing. She endured, building a dam around the concavity within her chest where her heart used to be, stopping the bloody reservoir from spilling over. 

Fen’harel endured, for there was nothing else she could have done. 

She endured, and when the opportunity for change presented itself?

She lost herself to the idea, leaving behind her love for her people, her care, her hopes, all in the search for a greater purpose. A greater meaning. A reason why everyone she had loved had die, and yet she remained, a sole survivor to the cruelties of time.All in the search for something to fill the gaping wound that remained where her heart used to be. 

Grief, misery, loneliness, disgust, horror.

They remained unacknowledged, decades upon decades, centuries upon centuries, millennia upon millennia. The hole in her chest never stopped bleeding, but it coagulated, it darkened, it rotted, as she forewent her principles and her morals and her laws. 

Little by little, Fen’harel changed, all without noticing. Little by little, her reflection stopped showing her the once carefree girl, turning into the Dread Wolf that had devoured her instead. 

Little by little, she had become the monster that had once haunted her nightmares. 

“How many of our kind was worth it to you? To see me put in my place?”

Fen’harel had not answered Titania then, too afraid to acknowledge the truth. 

“I don’t know,” she chokes out against the silence, voice hoarse from the scream she won’t let out. Dull blue eyes watch the burning clearing, the yellow-orange-red leaves going up in flames even as thunderstorm clouds gather above. “I don’t know. How do I not know?”

The realization had hit her in a flash of lightning, the cracks on the walls of the dam widening and spreading until the entire entire structure teetered in the precipice of destruction.

“I don’t know how many died in my greed, because I refused to look.”

The confession meets the silence of the clearing, the flickering flame, and disappears into the air, even as the cracks become holes. 

How many had died, just so she could win?

How many died because she had turned away from her morals in her search for progress?

                                                              She didn’t know.

The admission is devastating.

She had only wanted to help.

Her mouth opens against her will and the keen whine turned ragged scream shatters the silence as she falls to her knees and the clouds above release their weight, the rain sweeping away the flames and leaving behind only devastation and desolation. 

An apt metaphor for her current state, she muses darkly, as she closes her eyes and gives into the pain on her chest. 

As the rain weights down her clothes, as her dress is soaked by ashes and mud, as lightning illuminates the skies, Fen’harel closes her eyes and does what she hasn’t allowed herself to do since the moment her father took his final breath. 

                                                           She feels. 

Grief, misery, loneliness, disgust, horror. 

Grief, as she remembers watching her father grip the iron sword. Grief as she knows she cannot stop him, as she watches the sword raise and rest against his throat. Grief, as she meets his hopeless and dull eyes and knows he is already dead. 

Misery, the sight of the ashes of the settlement fading away in the distance and she can’t look. She has to be strong, she has to be steady, she has to, she has to she has to. Can’t look back, can’t miss what is gone, can’t be weak, can’t cry. She can’t she can’t she can’t. 

Loneliness, the growing heartache as more and more of her friends are lost to the darkness, to the fate of a drow. They were meant to be eternal, everlasting, dancing away the seasons year after year, but now all she can see is youth untouched by the grief of war. Familiar faces hide deathly intentions, the nostalgia of youth shredded by a killing blade. 

Disgust, at the way her hands drip red beneath the sins she has committed in the name of progress. Disgust, as she turns her back to her people again and again and again, all towards a goal she tells herself is righteous. 

Horror, at the monsters she has helped free. Horror, at the monster she has become. Horror, at the realization she did it willingly. Eyes wide open as she stepped deeper into the hell she made, every step precise and deliberate as she walked into the dark. 

The Courts need to change, she knows this. 

                                                                      She thinks this. 

                                                                                                   She hopes this. 

If they don’t, everything will have been in vain, and she cannot stand the thought. 

Not when her search for progress is the only reason she had chosen to keep living until now. 

The rain is torrential, falling upon her frame relentlessly, mirroring the tears sliding down her cheeks. 

Fen’harel remains kneeling for a long time, drawing from the well she had shut away since her father’s death and drinking from it. Drinking the coagulated, rotted blood, acknowledging the grief, the misery, the loneliness, the disgust, the horror, until there is nothing left.

Until there is nothing left of her but her shell. 

Then, she does what she does best. 

Empty and lifeless, the Fall Chancellor picks up the pieces of her masks, putting them together even as the edges catch on her palms and cause them to bleed. She picks up the pieces of who she had been, and forces them back into place to hide what she has become. Gone is the anger, the determination, leaving behind an overwhelming emptiness that consumes everything in its path. 

She wants to die. 

She wishes she could.

She cannot. 

There is still work to be done. She had to ensure her mistakes do not cost her kind everything, ensure that there is a court once the dust settles, she has to has to has to. 

She cannot die, for that would be easy. 

She cannot kill herself for that would only give the drows another blade. 

So Fen’harel picks up the pieces, and builds her masks.

All the while hoping no one notices that all that is left is a hollow marionette. 

#{ drabble } #{ fenharel } self-paragraph #tw: suicide mentions #tw: violence #tw: gore #tw: blood #tw: suicidal ideations

[gamergoo]

random question about starfighters

tie advanced v1, tie defender, tie avenger. in general, how would you rank these from worst to best

Thank you for the question!!! I love answering these types of questions!

I’m first gonna rank them by utility in a navy. I think examining that, the tie defender wins out. The advanced v1 and the avenger are both specialty vehicles for important people and as such were very expensive and not useful within the larger imperial navy, the defender was intended for the tarkin doctrine but the empire being obsessed with the Death Star meant that wouldn’t happen. If the defender had reached full production the empire would’ve gone unchallenged for a few more decades. If this were about the advanced x1 instead of the v1 then MAYBE it would be different, but as it stands the defender was just too useful and powerful to lose that.

Now aesthetically, I can’t say I really like any of these ships.

The advance v1 is interesting to be sure, but it feels more like a republic or separatist design than anything., and otherwise it’s just a regular tie fighter that’s supposedly shielded and has a hyperdrive, personally I think it’s an example of real world designers not really thinking about the space those take up. The x1 is bulkier, so of course it has space for those, and it’s got larger solar panels so it can power them! This doesn’t have those design traits and just kinda doesn’t do it for me.

I’ve said before but the defender just has too much going on for me. It also has shielding and a hyperdrive, and imo only really has space for one of those. I think it doesn’t even make sense to have a hyperdrive given its intended role, but I digress. The inverted interceptor wings are. Interesting? But the ball is too isolated for me to like it. It feels kitbashed certainly, but it feels kitbashed in universe, not by a designer. It’s interesting but not amazing, but that’s okay because it’s an updated legacy design!

So full disclosure, I had never actually seen this design because it’s not canon, and I generally think legends designs are, frankly speaking, fucking silly(the e wing and k wing come to mind) but this one is actually very impressive! I’ve chosen some fractalsponge renders in favor of official game material because they’re higher res and not stretched. This has the body of the TIE advanced x1 with the wings of an interceptor but mirrored(some renders don’t have that rear notch, and I get the impression the front points are longer and at a shallower angle but it’s inconsistent.) this is squarely in that Important Guy Special TIE Model but it’s a cool evolution of the Advance line!(it’s actually the culmination of that line in legends!) something interesting about it is that it’s got warhead launchers? I believe some canon tie models are equipped with concussion missiles, but warheads generally refer to like proton torpedoes which is very cool because legends makes references to it taking nods from rebel ship design which is something I find starkly missing from a lot of scifi. I think, doctrinally, it’s a good move to see what your opponent does right and incorporate it into your doctrine and philosophy, so it’s very cool this does that visually!

Bonus content: Vesta’s Favorite TIE variants!

This is the TIE Reaper! Probably the most unique variant because it’s not a strike craft! It’s a cargo/troop transport or support ship! I just think it’s a fucking inspired design

Also the squadrons interior is soooooo sexy it makes me feel like a trucker!(still on my type 10 defender grind for elite dangerous, might snag a type 7 first to do my hauling. The corvette is like. Okay at cargo transport)

But my all time favorite TIE series design is actually the TIE Silencer from the last Jedi!

This is like the perfect first order design extrapolation, and it’s actually probably an adaptation of the ORIGINAL TIE Avenger

You can see the wide cockpit works better all angular like that.

The Silencer has room for 2 heavy lasers in addition to the standard wingtip lasers, so it’s very well armed. It has the standard bits, shields, hyperdrive, missile and torpedo launchers, BUT!!!!! As the name suggests it’s very stealthy! It has a “stealth generator” but idk what that means and we never see it used. Either way, I fucking ADORE this design it’s SO sexy!

Anyway, thanks for the question! I love answering stuff like this, and since you made it to the end of the post, as always, I will reward you with a cool little picture!

#vesta’s ship design rants