#lost anarchy magazine

[lostanarchymagazine]

Battle 4 Hell?

#heavenly trip to hell #hell and heaven 2023 #battle for hell #danny christ #mojo el diablo #youtube #lost anarchy magazine #lost anarchy #dredd #judge death #coatl #que sera #lbc #long beach #Youtube

[sashayed]

Vivas To Those Who Have Failed: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913

Vivas to those who have fail'd! And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! And to those themselves who sank in the sea! And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known! —Walt Whitman

I. The Red Flag

The newspapers said the strikers would hoist the red flag of anarchy over the silk mills of Paterson. At the strike meeting, a dyers' helper from Naples rose as if from the steam of his labor, lifted up  his hand and said here is the red flag: brightly stained with dye for the silk of bow ties and scarves, the skin and fingernails boiled away for six dollars a week in the dye house.

He sat down without another word, sank back into the fumes, name and face rubbed off by oblivion's thumb like a Roman coin from the earth of his birthplace dug up after a thousand years, as the strikers shouted the only praise he would ever hear. 

II. The River Floods the Avenue

He was the other Valentino, not the romantic sheik and bullfighter of silent movie palaces who died too young, but the Valentino standing on his stoop to watch detectives hired by the company bully strikebreakers onto a trolley and a chorus of strikers bellowing the banned word scab. He was not a striker or a scab, but the bullet fired to scatter the crowd pulled the cork in the wine barrel of Valentino's back. His body, pale as the wings of a moth, lay beside his big-bellied wife.

Two white-veiled horses pulled the carriage to the cemetery. Twenty thousand strikers walked behind the hearse, flooding the avenue like the river that lit up the mills, surging around the tombstones. Blood for blood, cried Tresca: at this signal, thousands of hands dropped red carnations and ribbons into the grave, till the coffin evaporated in a red sea.

III. The Insects in the Soup

Reed was a Harvard man. He wrote for the New York magazines. Big Bill, the organizer, fixed his good eye on Reed and told him of the strike. He stood on a tenement porch across from the mill to escape the rain and listen to the weavers. The bluecoats told him to move on. The Harvard man asked for a name to go with the number on the badge, and the cops tried to unscrew his arms from their sockets. When the judge asked his business, Reed said: Poet. The judge said: Twenty days in the county jail.

Reed was a Harvard man. He taught the strikers Harvard songs, the tunes to sing with rebel words at the gates of the mill. The strikers taught him how to spot the insects in the soup, speaking in tongues the gospel of One Big Union and the eight-hour day, cramming the jail till the weary jailers had to unlock the doors. Reed would write: There's war in Paterson. After it was over, he rode with Pancho Villa.

IV. The Little Agitator

The cops on horseback charged into the picket line. The weavers raised their hands across their faces, hands that knew the loom as their fathers' hands knew the loom, and the billy clubs broke their fingers. Hannah was seventeen, the captain of the picket line, the Joan of Arc of the Silk Strike. The prosecutor called her a little agitator. Shame, said the judge; if she picketed again, he would ship her to the State Home for Girls in Trenton.

Hannah left the courthouse to picket the mill. She chased a strikebreaker down the street, yelling in Yidish the word for shame. Back in court, she hissed at the judge's sentence of another striker. Hannah got twenty days in jail for hissing. She sang all the way to jail. After the strike came the blacklist, the counter at her husband's candy store, the words for shame.

V. Vivas to Those Who Have Failed

Strikers without shoes lose strikes. Twenty years after the weavers and dyers' helpers returned hollow-eyed to the loom and the steam, Mazziotti led the other silk mill workers marching down the avenue in Paterson, singing the old union songs for five cents more an hour. Once again the nightsticks cracked cheekbones like teacups. Mazziotti pressed both hands to his head, squeezing red ribbons from his scalp. There would be no buffalo nickel for an hour's work at the mill, for the silk of bow ties and scarves. Skull remembered wood.

The brain thrown against the wall of the skull remembered too: the Sons of Italy, the Workmen's Circle, Local 152, Industrial Workers of the World, one-eyed Big Bill and Flynn the Rebel Girl speaking in tongues to thousands the prophecy of an eight-hour day. Mazziotti's son would become a doctor, his daughter a poet. Vivas to those who have failed: for they become the river.

Martín Espada from Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, 2015

#poetry #national poetry month #long post #martin espada

[tuymoth]

Headcanon Tattoos !

This was so frustrating to do because I spent 2 hours writing everything down and then everything got deleted, so I just spent another hour redoing the whole little backstories ahhhhh, I think I'm finally done again though :) here's these three because I think they have the most connections tattoo-wise

VAL:

Anarchy Symbol: made by some drunk guy at a party once.

Guitar Pick: Was made not long after Vinyl introduced him to Volume for the first time. Volume had had experience with tattoos and stuff since he had always been interested in every form of art and self expression, so Val just trusted him with his.

Skull: After becoming close with Vinyl, Val just wanted something that wouldn't represent, but not immediately hint at Vinyl (/would also work as just a cool tattoo - mainly due to the fear of something of something happening between them that could have them drift apart).

Moon: The twins thought all the tattoo stuff was super cool and obviously wanted to try it aswell. Vaya didn't even get to do one though, since Val was pissed off enough after Vamos turned out to be a little too messy and impatient for tattoing. Yet, Val never had it re-done because at some point he did actually did kinda grow fond to it.

Three-Eyed Cat: Volume drew it in an old magazine once and Val, for some reason, really liked it. Volume was too scared to mess it up if he tattooed it himself though, so Vinyl ended up doing it.

Volume Remembrance: His only tattoo that's not a stick and poke, he got it after the war times.

VINYL:

Snake: Actually Volume's first tattoo on someone else. Due to his lack of experience back then, he had to redo it twice. It's still Vinyl's favourite tattoo though.

Anarchy Symbol: Made by Val, simply so they'd have the same one.

Evil eyes: Not much more than a test Vinyl did on his own skin before doing it on other people. To him this tattoo also means protection and good luck.

Dragonfly: Basically the twins teamed up for that one, but it ended up looking like the moon on Val's ankle, so by request, Val went over it again at some point after it had healed.

Dessert Sunrise: Vinyl made it himself, some time after Volume had died. Him and Volume had basically been best friends, they'd often just be out alone at night, just doing whatever they felt like. Many times, they even saw the sun rise again.

Black Armband: memorial for Volume and other killjoys.

VOLUME:

Waist Tattoo: his first ever tattoo. There's no deep meaning behind it, it was just out of pure boredom.

Arrow: Vinyl has always had much respect for Volume and his way of thinking. The circles on arrow tattoos often represent something a person has had to go through, while the arrow itself shows that they now heading somewhere in their life. Vinyl thought that fit really well to Volume and eventually he let him tattoo it.

Target: Val was the one to teach Volume how to use ray guns. He kinda figured out that Volume felt pretty awkward being one of the only killjoys who had never even used one before, so he didn't make a big deal out of it and just didn't tell anyone. Still, they made some pretty cool memories while practicing, thus the tattoo.

Semicolon: Volume tattooed it himself to show that despite everything that had happened up to this point in his life, it wasn't over yet and he'd keep on living the way he intended to. Ironically, that was his last tattoo. It hadn't even fully healed when he lost his life.

#ttlotfk #the true lives of the fabulous killjoys #the fabulous killjoys #killjoys #val velocity #vinyl #volume #my art

[frasier-crane-style]

As long as I’ve got Paramount Plus for Picard, I’ve been watching 1923, and I’ve come to a realization behind its popularity: it’s basically a big-budget, live-action men’s adventure pulp magazine.

I say this because there are three main storylines at the moment. The A-plot is, of course, those wacky Duttons and their ranch, with them getting into a range war with those damned goatherders. This provides an excuse for a lot of riding horses and shooting revolvers, but since it’s the 20th century, we also get Model-Ts and tommy guns thrown into the mix!

In the B-plot, a wayward son Dutton is dealing with being part of the Lost Generation (being traumatized from the Great War, of course, being among the manliest of traumas) by traveling through Darkest Africa being a Great White Hunter.

This being 2023, he’s more like a game warden who only hunts dangerous man-eaters. And though he still has native guides who still are the first to get et, he’s all bro-y and respectful with them. Also, for the sake of female audiences, there’s a hot-to-trot English heiress who is in an arranged marriage. Will she leave her dweeby fiance to attempt to heal this psychologically damaged, but totally badass, Dutton? What do you think?

This storyline is basically a 50/50 split between killing animals and banging Brit hotties. Taylor Sheridan, mad genius that he is, has the young lovers declaring eternal fidelity almost long enough for the story to stop being badass, then they will be attacked by a charging elephant, have to spend the night in a tree being attacked by ravenous hyenas, having sex before the hyenas attack and immediately after being rescued.

The third storyline is about a Native American girl being ‘educated’ in a Catholic school--one of those ‘kill the Indian’ deals--and it’s essentially one of those ‘sweaty’ stories about Nazi love camps, with half-naked girls being menaced by hot pokers and sinful dwarves, except with the torturers being, well, Catholic religious figures.

 Bonus points for a naughty lesbian nun, in case you thought the show was just trying to show how the Native American population had suffered since Columbus.

(It seems to me that, for a ‘right-wing’ show, this story makes a lot more time for a left-wing talking point like “the Native Americans sure had it rough” than most left-wing shows will spend on a right-wing position, or anything that doesn’t agree with far-left politics in the year 2023. And that right-wing audiences are willing to ‘endure’ taking in a viewpoint that doesn’t totally align with their ideology more than left-wingers would--thinking now of the anarchy that has erupted out of J.K. Rowling not marching in total lockstep with the trans mob wing of the Democratic Party. Hmmm...)

#1923

[ghosthoodie]

Hmmm can you maybe tell us a little about this au? Like how everyone reacts n stuff

HI ANON! i wanted to wait a little bit to reply to this because this post was for april fool’s and i wanted to keep the sort of surprise a secret LOL. but i’ll entertain you cuz i love making my characters suffer.

i don’t PLAN FOR THIS TO HAPPEN in my storyline for them. i want them to be alive :). but if you want to indulge yourself in some depression here you go

TW: major character death, suicide ideation.

Sicily is rightfully devastated. after Kaity is confirmed dead, she immediately calls off the whole campaign. she tries to keep her cool, but as they prepare to leave, Pearl woefully tells her they can’t keep the body because it’s at risk of bringing the coral disease to the surface. this sends Sicily over the edge. she curses out Pearl and Marina, telling them that if she were here this would’ve never fucking happened, and that they should be fucking ashamed for their negligence. how Kaity was fucking everything to her. when she runs out of words, she screams until her lungs and eyes run dry, leaving her a husk curled up on the ground. Pearl, after recovering from the pure sting of the yelling, plucks Kait’s ring off of her necklace and gives it to Sicily. she grips it tightly, wordlessly.

when she returns, she starts painting again. she paints kait. she studies every photograph she has of her and wishes she took more. she learns every angle and every curve of her body. all she sees on her canvas is kait, modeling for her as if nothing were ever wrong. when she’s not painting, she’s sleeping. she yearns for her presence through any means possible. any.

Caroline is traumatized. she knew the effects were something to be concerned about, but she didn’t know it would go this far as to kill her. she mentally kills herself that she didn’t notice any effects sooner. she moves out of the apartment she shared with Kaity and moves in with Sicily, of course bringing all of Kait’s stuff with her. she moved partly because she couldn’t stand the ghost of someone’s prescence in their home, and also to keep an eye on Sicily. she can’t look at the number 8 anymore. Kirakira doesn’t know how to react, but after some thinking starts planning a memorial. he stays stone faced until the day comes, when he can’t control his emotions. he’d never cried like that in his life before, ever. after about a month he opens the memorial to the public, and lets a bunch of news companies know. eventually it even gets to the Anarchy Splatcast. her makeshift grave is stacked high with flowers, octopi merchandise and octoling models from magazines, and letters written from the public. he reads and views everything given to Kaity, and eventually stores and files it all away. he’d always been a fan of organizing things, especially with Kaity. he looks at it as them spending time together. Trikaya and Mitsuo are left distraught. they didn’t know Kaity that well, but instead notice the difference in Sicily’s behavior. she was no longer someone who they thought indestructible. she was hollow. left without a source of stability, and brought down by the heavy mood of the death of someone they didn’t know, they struggled to socialize with anyone from the NSS. eventually, callie and marie take the responsibility of taking care of them from Sicily. they still write her letters and make her trinkets, to which she sometimes writes back. Sicily would never want to worry anyone by saying this, but they’re the only forces keeping her alive.

Pearl and Marina mourn her as if they had lost a child. they feel guilt and grief, with each of them experiencing it totally differently.

Pearl becomes very protective of Marina. she almost sees a similarity in their past and current behaviors, and fears the same thing may happen to Marina, too. she takes her to every doctor and uses any and every method of science and pseudoscience to make sure Marina’s body is clean of coral. she also invites Sicily and Caroline to these outings, of which they went to the doctors’ appointments but not to any of the experimental things.

Marina becomes pretty depressed. she loses her sweetness and sassiness, and all of her emotions become filled with a sad twinge. she puts up with Pearl’s obsession so long as she gets cleaned too, she says. she keeps her ink color as Kait’s in memorial.

#if anyone wants to draw sicily screaming IM HERE FOR IT. ill get to drawing it eventually hheeehehe #thanks for ask! i teared up writing this lol #my hubris…. its killing me #ask #anonymous #sicily(3) #kait(8) #caroline(4) #kirakira(8) #trikaya(3) #mitsuo(3) #tw major character death #tw suicide ideation #splatoon #splatoon headcanon #splatoon oc #wooden speaks #side order #agent 24 #pearlina

[collapsedsquid]

Trump supporters dream of bringing America back to a vague fictitious past, some combination of the Reaganite 80s and a 1950s America that only existed in magazine ads. Bolsominions are much more specific. They want to bring back a military dictatorship and they’re not afraid to say it.

There are strains of America’s right wing that fantasize about a military takeover expunging their various political enemies. This is a huge thing, especially, for QAnon supporters, who spend all day posting online about putting random celebrities in military tribunals. But it’s far less vague of a goal for Bolsominions, many of whom remember Brazil’s last dictatorship, which began with a coup d’état in 1964 and ended two decades later in 1985. And like all effective populists, Bolsonaro knew how to tap into the nostalgia the bored middle class had for that era and repeatedly praised Brazil’s dictatorship days during his campaign in 2018.

It seems like the plan on Sunday was for his supporters to create so much anarchy and chaos that the military would have to step in and take control of the country, just as they did in the 60s. This led to a particularly embarrassing moment in Brasilia yesterday when Bolsominions cheered for the military when they showed up, only to be immediately arrested by them.

The Oath Keepers seemed to have the explicit goal of having Trump invoking the insurrection act and declaring martial law, it’s difficult to say how many of the actual protestors believed this but it was circulating among many of the people I saw before the date wanting to Stop the Steal

Also, while the most shocking images came out of Brasilia yesterday, this was not a one-location event the way January 6th was. Bolsominions have been shutting down highways, amassing weapons, and experimenting with low-level attacks on the country’s infrastructure since Bolsonaro lost the election on October 30th. Most of these Freedom Convoy-esque incursions have resulted in little more than public humiliation and a few Bolsonaro supporters getting their asses kicked for causing a traffic jam before an important soccer game. (There was also the one guy who got stuck on the windshield of a semi.) But yesterday, the stakes were raised considerably.

January 6th was also not a one-location event, there were little uprisings at state and local governments all over the country, it’s just that nobody cared once the capitol was stormed.

#I get you want to make the point that everything isn't about america #but these were clear parallels

[sunfl0wer71]

chapter eight

pairings: eros x ofc (matilda stark)

wordcount: 6.2k

warnings: hiya lovies! so, i know i've been taking quite a while to post each chapter, but as I mentioned in the beginning, I'm posting as I write, which means that as soon as I am done and have somewhat proofread, I post them for you to read. I don't think this chapter has any triggers, but if you do, please let me know! again, feedback and likes make me extremely happy so please drop me a comment!

i’d like to add that if you are in ukraine, then I hope you stay safe. i love you.

STORY MASTERLIST

Once upon a time, Matilda wanted to be a lawyer. Then, she wanted to be a florist. Most days she still wants to be a florist, truth be told. For a while, she truly believed she could follow those dreams. But that was until she nearly lost her father three times in a row - from kidnappings to poisonings to aliens invading Earth, reality hit her hard to show her that maturing fast was a need.

At the ripe age of 13, the ownership of a whole empire was already in the process of being transferred to her, as the whole world watched as a grieving teen wept over her supposedly dead father. The media circus surrounding her was overwhelming, but it also served as a much-needed introduction to what the real world would look like. By the time Thanos arrived, she had no idea who she was: in the end, she was either the businesswoman her father envisioned or the trust fund baby Emmett desired – somewhere in the middle, she saw a socialite.

But as the world fell apart, so did she. The Maria Stark Foundation was her lifeline. Thrust into the anarchy that Thanos left behind, people desperately needed help that not even the wealthiest countries could provide. That was when they came in – the guilt was too heavy on their minds, especially when at every turn there were people mourning loved ones, turned into dust or empty houses where entire families were dusted. Orphans, widows, and parents who would outlive their children. While they couldn't bring them back, they could offer aid, housing, schooling, and security. And so, for the past six years, the Maria Stark Foundation was everywhere. Building schools, offering green energy to less developed countries, and since the reversal, helping with the reinstatement of those who for half a decade were believed to be dead. Not easy tasks, but in her grief, this was all she had.

Still, the world never stopped seeing her as nothing more than a socialite, only now a more philanthropic one. Which was why she was not surprised by the notifications and text messages she woke up.

"Let me guess, we're the cover of a couple of magazines?" There's an undeniable shift in the dynamics at the Compound. For one, they all seem to have set personal grudges aside, because she hasn't witnessed a proper fight in about a month and two, more than two-thirds of the residents and guests are at the communal kitchen when she wouldn't usually find more than a couple there at the same time.

She receives a couple of chuckles, a scoff or two, plus some questioning glances. By now she knew better than to bet on her anonymity. With a playful smirk and a breathy chuckle, Steve grabs the remote and changes the channel, dismissing some of the more displeased groans and protests it warrants. They cut in right in the middle of the commercials, as usually was her luck. No whimsical happenstance made sure that everything fell into place and in the order that she wanted it to.

It doesn't take long, though.

Just as she expected, she was right. Sure, the photos weren't the best quality, most likely amateur shots, but they were clear enough. It was rather funny how they had chosen to only capture some of the members of the group. Despite there being five of them, most of the shots were clearly focused on her and Eros. Key in point, the photo the two commentators were focusing on, was a 'lovely' close up shot where the redhead held her coat by the lapels, waiting for her to put it on, with the most endearing look on his face.

Somehow, she had missed it. Hadn't even noticed him looking at her, too busy keeping her head low and trying to leave without being accosted. But it was loving enough to send the gossip rags into a tizzy.

MATILDA STARK ENJOYS A NIGHT OUT AT THE OPERA WITH MYSTERY REDHEAD – WHO IS HER NEW BEAU?

She doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, because they keep changing photos and good lord, when did they even manage to take so many shots? A nightmare. Someone had obviously been following them on their way back to the Tower because they even have shots of them distractedly strolling through Times Square, her hand softly tucked in the inner part of his elbow, the other hand pointed at the billboards as Eros looks gleefully at them. It was also worth mentioning that he looked amazing under the lights, dimples so pronounced and with a smile so blinding. Even in the photos where he's holding her purse and grabbing her arm as she bends to pull at the ankle strap of her shoes, there's a loving glint in his eyes. It terrifies her.

Even in the only photo they show of the whole group, they still manage to find one where his arm is firm around her waist, obviously choosing to focus on that, even if Matilda's own attention, at the time, had been on her phone, as she texted her father. Their agenda was clear.

But they were also in hysterics, obviously surprised that they had yet to manage to identify him, thirteen hours passed. That was the silver lining: unless they had a spy or a seriously good hacker, they would find it impossible to figure out who he was. Hopefully. She can't begin to imagine the meltdown and revolt people would have if they were to find out Thanos' little brother was on Earth, giggling happily at the bright billboards or sitting at the Opera. She predicted a mess.

"Well, at least that explains the texts."

"Who texted you?" She turns so fast it gives her whiplash.

She'd been so focused on the photos and commentary on the screen, that she never noticed her mother's presence on one of the furthest sofas. The brunette stutters over her words for a moment, before plopping on the nearest couch, fumbling with her phone and wondering whether to disclose it. She also knows that if she doesn't, her mother will help herself to her brain and memories and tell her father, who, she noticed now, sat at the breakfast bar not far away, a tablet in his hands, discarded, as he chose to focus on the gossip.

So, with a defeated sigh, she unlocks it and gets to it.

"Emmett did." Silence proceeds her. Sometimes she forgets that secrets and privacy were not a real thing at the Compound; everyone knew everything. Her parents, specifically, look dismayed. After reversing the snap and losing the one sliver of hope she'd held onto for months, the tears that she had expected to have run out of, were more than many. So, for about two months, she took turns between homes, crying in her childhood bedrooms, hoping no one would hear. She knows that hearing her ex-fiancés' name didn't bring happy memories to them.

She reads the message drily.

"Matilda, I hope this won't catch you during a bad moment. As you know, I'm going to be a dad. That's all I ever wanted, as you must remember. I need your assurance that everyone will be safe. The entire world depends on you." Matilda sighs, so demotivated that even her shoulders slump.

Like Pavlov's experiments, the smell of tea perks her up right away, as the filters in from behind her. The armrest next to her collapses under the bodyweight of the man, and she reaches blindly for the mug, sipping it.

"I don't know what's worse, frankly." She starts. "That he tried to guilt-trip me with our shared past and my inability to give him a family or with the expectation of the whole world." The brunette scoffs.

She stares at the screens. The two women were still rambling about her and Eros, micro analysing the photos of the two of them. She blinks, surprised when a clip starts playing. She must have been either too tired or too focused on whatever they were discussing at the time not to notice such blatant recording.

Matilda scoffs. What a waste of emission time. Busy getting lost in her thoughts, she is startled by her father's sudden bark of a laugh.

"Oh yes. You missed the beginnings of our daughter's strangely domestic mating ritual with an alien."

Her mouth hangs open. Her father looks far too proud of his remark. He and everyone else in the room, snickering under their breaths. Dismayed, she swivels her body, chancing a look at Eros. The alien looks distant, too busy staring at the television screen as he sips his own tea, one leg dangling from the armrest as the other was flexed, his foot close to her back. She is hurled back to the first time she truly paid attention to him, as his face was bathed in the sunset, glowing warmly, his lips bitten plump shaped into a cocky smile.

Somehow able to feel her gaze, he turns to her, meeting her eyes. Time doesn't stop, the world carries on turning, and the noise is still all around her. There are no butterflies in her stomach or sudden heart palpitations. But she does get a sense of relief and security she isn't sure where from. It might have to do with the way his eyes soften in adoration when they focus on her or the way his nose scrunches when she rambles. Or even the way he pets her hair as he watches her work. Maybe it might even be because he's perfected her tea. Too many factors for her to consider. Her more rational side works to come up with an alternative for what her more emotional reasoning is trying to explain.

He smiles and she looks away, embarrassed, only to get caught under her mother's knowing gaze. Knowing, because she is certain that her mother had been peeking into her brain. Matilda groans, wondering when it could be considered reasonable for someone to start digging their own grave because she was certainly deep below ground metaphorically. Emma is obviously trying to comprehend the situation playing in front of her, pouting when her daughter blocks her skilful attempts at getting the information from her.

Even if her mother had the best intentions at heart, she still deserved and needed some privacy. Less kindly assured, if need be.

She takes her chances and looks at the screen again. The two women were still going at it, gushing at the photos and pointing out random small touches that the photos made seem much more meaningful than they were. It feels foreign even if it actually isn't. In truth, she had been the object of these types of microanalyses for decades, but since her slight disappearance after the Snap, they had become significantly lesser. And even if they did talk about her, she usually paid no attention.

"Damn, they really act as if weren't there..." Sam shakes his head, arms crossed over his chest.

"Don't feel too bad, we're just better looking, clearly."

Eros says it so nonchalantly that it's almost as if he's letting them know that the water is wet. It's followed by silence, before the other man belatedly reacts, befuddled, spluttering random interjections to the fact.

Matilda herself can't help but laugh, at first measuredly, under her breath and mostly huffing small puffs of breath from her nose, but then brightly with her whole body into it. It was such a ridiculous thing to laugh at, but the severity of the moment they lived and the state her mind had been in, made it sound much funnier than it probably was to the others.

Still, she manages to reign herself in, to steady her breath and her voice.

"Couples sell more." Realising her grave mistake, she rushes to add – "As do rumours."

"And we're better looking." The redhead nudges her with his foot, winking at her when she turns. He looks awfully cosy and warm and, secretly, she wants to snuggle up to him. And even if she knows that, in theory, she could, she chooses not to. It was intriguing enough that she'd allowed him such proximity in such little time and with so little care. She didn't want to feed into the wild theories she had heard around the Compound the past weeks. No matter how much she craves it, she stays put.

"Why would he text you that, anyway?" It was funny, how genuinely appalled Steve was to know her ex had gotten in contact with her. Once upon a time, the two of them had been close – while Steve found it hard to connect with her father, he hadn't found the same difficulty with her, gracefully accepting her help in adapting to the modern world. It was safe to assume that the betrayal she had felt when his lies and omissions came to light had been more than overwhelming. Now, she didn't know how to start a conversation with him. Isn't even sure of what they'd talk about.

"To remind me there's more at stake. That there are expectations and hopes." She stops, chuckling. "And I guess to assure himself and his ego that he can still strike me, even from afar."

Their pity is so tangible she can feel it enveloping her from all sides. A bit like smoke sticking to her clothes and hair. The brunette chooses not to look up and face them – it's one thing to know they are looking at her with pity, another to acknowledge it.

A finger pulls at her hair softly, where it seems to be tangled, startling her. Especially so seeing as when she turns over her shoulder, there is nothing there. No hands, no fingers, no nothing. Just air and emptiness. She turns back around, but then something caresses the back of her neck. Matilda stays still, body taut and ultracareful, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Relax, please. It's just me.

She tries not to let her eyes show how shocked she is. Eros is relatively distant, and his arms are limp on his lap, it makes no sense to her that he'd be able to touch her when he is still. It confuses her even further when there's another phantom touch, just below her ear, right where it meets her neck, and she can clearly tell that he hasn't moved.

How are you doing this?

Even her thoughts sound flabbergasted.

I did tell you there was more that I could do.

He shrugs his shoulders, amused. Raising an eyebrow, she stares him down.

Yes, but particle manipulation is not the same as controlling hormones or reading peoples' feelings. We're talking about controlling atoms, Eros.

The redhead nods, silent, nose scrunching and jaw tense. It takes everything in her not to pursue his thoughts.

I'll tell you more when we're alone. I promise.

Matilda can't help but pout and bat her eyelashes at him, trying to persuade him to give in and reveal to her whatever he was hiding. Instead, he smiles wide, bunny teeth peeking through his full lips and shakes his head, amused at her antics.

No. But in the meantime, do I have your consent?

Oh, how her mind runs with it. The images it provides are sacrilegious and she knows they won't leave her anytime soon. She swallows through the static lump in her throat, nodding. The sly smirk she receives doesn't help whatsoever, but she can't help but chuckle, amused.

Does this mean you understand the concept of consent better now?

Behind her, Eros' body shakes with silent and subdued laughter that he hides behind his mug.

I would say so, yes. FRIDAY has been most helpful in my learning endeavours.

Matilda couldn't say she was surprised – FRIDAY enjoyed learning about as much as she enjoyed participating and helping with others' learning processes. While JARVIS was helpful and ready to aid with whatever questions one posed, he would often not go out of his way to help everyone (his circles of loyalties were certainly smaller and far more reserved), especially not with FRIDAY's child-like glee. It made sense, she was one of her father's youngest creations, programmed with a learning curve projected to be much steeper than JARVIS'. Matilda often felt that the AI would never leave the "Why" phase, so characteristic of toddlers.

Soon enough, she feels the air around her head change, become denser and harder to move against, before it finally makes contact with her, pressuring, once again, the spots right below where the ears meet the neck, raising her skin all over her body. Her eyes instinctively want to roll back and her back wants to curve, right before she melts into her puddle. But because she can't raise that much suspicion, and because she doesn't want everyone's eyes on her, she instead allows a small breath to fall past her barely open lips, feeling her face grow red.

God, how touch starved could she be to be so overwhelmed over someone using atom and particle manipulation to touch her?

For a second there she wants to throw her carefully constructed tentativeness to the wind and let him follow with his plans. She wonders what it'd be like if she played into his innuendos or basked under the warm feeling of his compliments. What it'd be like if she didn't pull away when he glued his body to hers for no apparent reason, head tucked into her neck, or when his eyes strayed to her lips for a moment too long. She will continue to wonder because, in truth, those were actions she couldn't and most likely wouldn't take no matter how inviting the two emeralds often gazing upon her seemed to be.

Across the room, James burns them with his eyes. They hadn't been speaking properly since his lash out over her apparently suspicious approximation to the Eternals (or, specifically, Makkari and Eros) a couple of weeks earlier and she is certain the only reason he joined their party at the opera the previous night had been to keep an eye on them, for both security and lack of trust in their guests.

Anyhow, Matilda didn't feel it was fair or even justified for him to control who she befriended. While they were close (even in the biblical way), she was her own person and most certainly did not depend on him to vet any potential friendships. For him to even assume he could do as such was preposterous. Or at least it felt that way to her.

That's probably why she pretends not to notice his narrowed and suspicious eyes, choosing instead to focus on the phantom hand and on keeping her composure (which was, safe to say, not easy). Whistling under her breath - she certainly thought that such an attitude would make her seem calmer and more collected, but if the way Eros adds more pressure (and nearly obliterates her mind and nervous system) is anything to go by, it doesn't work nearly as well as she'd like -, she grabs one of the books she'd left lying around the common room.

It was a small one, focused on cultural aspects of Ancient Greece, and therefore a mix of English and Ancient Greece. She'd mastered Greek at thirteen, after buying her first mythology book at eleven and, being so fascinated with it, she was unable to control her constant craving for more information, something she could often only find in its original language. It was something that never left her.

At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus, and deep Tartarus. Earth, the air and heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.

She can't help but laugh. It had completely skipped her mind that Eros' name was not that common. It was a god's name. Here it was, in a passage from Aristophanes, in a play first performed in 400 something BC.

"Hey, was Eros, the Greek God, named after you or was it the other way around?" Matilda jesters but deep down it's a genuine question. The Eros must be about as old as the first recorded mention or portrayal of Eros, the God, so if they were both true, they would be around the same age, she wagers.

"I'm actually named after the God." And her brain couldn't make sense of that. Did that mean there were actual Gods out there? So many weird things had happened through the years, from aliens to Asgardians, this shouldn't surprise her. He is certainly amused by her wide excited eyes and nervous lip trapped by her lower teeth.

"How come?" She turns, swivelling on her seat, tucking her right ankle below her left leg, which dangles from the couch and choosing to focus on the man. She shakes her head in confusion, eyes begging him to tell her. She's fully prepared to pout, believe it or not – even bat her eyelashes if need be. Instead, Eros smiles mirroring her body and facing her fully.

"Well, my birth name was Eron, just a regular Titanian name. But when I was about five, my abilities started to manifest, and my parents renamed me. I became Eros since that day." Suddenly, he leans into her. Her breath catches at the proximity and at his bitten lip, so close to her. – "My father used to say it was because of my interest in the opposite sex."

Her heart seems to skip a couple of palpitations. If she were a cartoon, she's certain she'd be audibly swooning, with pink beating hearts for eyes. Palm under her chin and everything. Frankly, she's not sure that's not happening then and there, but if it is she'd rather not acknowledge it.

Anyhow, Eros seems to notice it as the atoms manipulated by the man seem to tangle in the tresses of her hair, pulling so lightly it's barely noticeable – to the people surrounding them, that is, because her nerves send tingles down her spine.

"Should I call you Eros or Eron?" – she whispers. – "Or perhaps Your Royal Highness."

Matilda leans on the nearest couch cushion with her shoulder, resting her tilted head on it, mirroring him and trapping her bottom lip as well. His eyes follow the movement closely, throwing one arm over the top of the couch and behind her neck, leaving her head to rest on the muscle of his arm, her flyaway black rebellious hairs tickling his wrist and elbow, as the static forces them in all directions.

"Well, that's up to you. Or to the occasion."

She is ready to throw caution to the wind. And she is about to when Yelena pipes up, from where she laid sprawled on another couch across the room.

"Oh, God. Please don't. I don't want or need to watch you two exchange spit. The dialogue is already disgusting enough, spare me, please." The blonde proceeds to fake gag and the moment is ruined. Go figure that the one time she is ready to give in to the weird dynamic someone would ruin it. Deep down, she knows she ought to be grateful for it, this certainly wasn't the time or place.

Eros doesn't seem to agree, however, if the frown on his face and the glare he sends Yelena's way is taken into consideration. Matilda tries not to laugh too loudly at his annoyed pout.

Everyone seems to move on rather quickly after that. She takes a deep relieved breath when they change the channel.

A stranger walks into the room. He walks next to Phastos, so she can only assume this is his husband. Rather handsome, he is. Tall and lean and the two of them make a lovely couple. She smiles at the sight, happy to know his family had made it safely to the Compound.

He stops right in front of her, widening his eyes and she is about ready to fuse with the sofa and disappear. But then a tear falls from his eye, and she is static.

"Miss Stark?" – his voice wavers and Phastos rushes to place a caring hand on his back, caressing it. Matilda wonders if Eros could tell she was nervous because the pressure on her neck becomes less and instead, she feels something like fingertips running through her scalp. She wishes she could lean back into it.

She stutters.

"Do I know you?"

He shakes his head, before smiling softly and wetly at her.

"No, but I do know you. My name is Ben Stoss. Phastos' husband." - His smile turns tender at the small mention of his marriage to the man who looks at him as if he was the one to set the sun high in the sky every morning. A small burst of jealousy burns deep inside of her, as she yearns for the day she can look and be looked at in that same tenderness.

"But before I met him and started our beautiful family, I was living with my mother in a small house on the outskirts of Chicago." – his smile becomes bitterly sad once more; she can't help but fear what will follow. – "When Thanos came, she lost her job, and I was neck-deep in financial debt. We thought it was the end. The bank was ready to take the house."

A tear runs down his face and Matilda desperately wants to hug him. As usual, she remains still.

"A friend sent me the address to the Maria Stark Foundation. I didn't think we'd hear back, but I was so desperate for help, I sent it anyway. Can't even remember what I wrote." – His chuckle is more of a sob. Phastos rubs his back.

"But you did. You paid for the house mortgage, for my student loans and you gave my mother a job at one of your community support centres. That was where I met Phastos, actually."

She's the one crying now. When the dust settled, and the grieving finally took residency inside of her, what followed was a strong sense of resignment. Thanos was dead, beheaded far away from Earth and without any way to reverse it, Matilda truly felt there was not much to be done.

That was until she saw the way the survivors were left. Even if there were in theory more jobs and vacant houses, the risk of loans soared and just as many bosses as workers were ripped from them. There was chaos as governments ran themselves ragged trying to come up with ad hoc solutions that only helped a few and were unable to solve the problems at hand.

So, she started helping people. Opening help centres where food and medicine were distributed. Where health care could be easily accessed. Where children could learn. Throughout the world, where she felt they were most needed, Matilda made sure they existed. But she had never been face-to-face with a recipient of the aid the Foundation provided.

The brunette's bottom lip quivers and she rapidly wipes her tears away.

"I never thought I'd get to thank you. So, thank you." – Matilda can't reply to that. She is speechless. The work was never done with the goal of recognition. Most of it was kept far from the press and that was mostly because she was in no state to deal with that. Instead, she nods with a small smile.

Ben and Phastos walk on, choosing to seat on a sofa closest to Druig and Makkari. Matilda doesn't stop smiling.

*****

"Can I steal you for a minute?" Yelena glares James down. Honestly, it's Matilda's fault – Yelena is her closest friend at the Compound and every so often, like everyone else, the Stark heiress felt the need to vent. And the Russian woman was not only deadly but also overprotective.

Matilda nods, nevertheless, because even if there was a far too large gap between them now, James was still one of the closest people to her in her life. She lets him drag her to a small alcove by their indoor garden, happily soaking in the few sunbeams filtering through.

She remains silent, diligently waiting for James to start talking. He seems conflicted, unsure of what to say and what route to take. But he also seems resolute and with a deep, shuddering breath, he gets to it.

"I'm sorry." – She doesn't need to read his mind to know he means it. His eyes tell her how earnest he is. – "Sometimes I forget there are more people in your life and that I do not need to protect you from everything and everyone. You are a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. If you want to be friends with Makkari and Eros – Hell, if you want more than that! That's entirely up to you. I'm sorry it took me so long to come to terms with it."

He ends his speech with a simple shrug, folding in on himself as if he expects her to react badly. She could never, truly. He means entirely too much to her, and so she leaps, hanging to his neck as if her life depended on it, demanding a hug. Slowly, he wraps his arms around her, tentatively hiding his face on the curve of her neck, tucking his nose into her skin.

All is well. Even if his apology had been smaller, less wordy but still genuine, she wouldn't have thought twice before accepting it and putting his mind at ease.

He shuffles them side to side, keeping her wrapped in his arms. Just as Matilda was getting pleasantly comfortable in their position, he sets her down and lets go of her. With eyebrows raised, clearly finding something humorous, James steps back.

"Your boyfriend's behind us." – He whispers, obviously trying to contain his laughter. – "Don't wanna make him jealous."

Matilda turns around, noticing that Eros is behind them indeed, resting by the doorframe. He doesn't look jealous in the very least. She wonders if it's because he's capable of reading her emotions and knowing she holds no romantic feelings for James (only occasional lust) or if he's that secure of the hold he has on her.

"Trust me, he's not jealous." – Matilda bites her cheeks to hide her smile. Then, she sighs when she realises the trap she'd just fallen into.

"So, you don't deny -"

She interrupts James before he can finish his sentence, knowing she is already far too flustered.

"I keep falling for that one, I know. He's not my boyfriend." The brunette crosses her arms over her chest, looking over the former assassin's shoulder and trying not to pout in petulance like a small child.

"Not yet at least." - Ah, there it was, Eros' cockiness. Her occasional lover chuckles, clearly finding the whole situation and her embarrassment amusing. Matilda closes her eyes and tries to come up with a way to put an end to her mortification.

Sucking in her lips, she opens her eyes and fully faces James sheepishly. – "Do me a favour? Go tell Yelena all's good again? We don't need her scooping your eyes out while you sleep at night."

James can read right through her. Still, he nods, kissing her head before leaving with a smile. With only the two of them in the room, she continues with her back turned to Eros, stubbornly choosing not to show her face.

He moves closer, so much closer that she can feel his body heat radiating into her, forcing a reaction out of her as her heart beats faster and her skin rises. So close she can feel his warm breath on her neck. Matilda can't help but startle when the redhead rests a hand on her hip, so big and large that his thumb reaches the centre of her waist. At that point, she is a mess of small gasps, baited breaths and panting without any rhythm.

Had this been part of what he meant when he asked for her consent? Heavens, she had not expected any of this. Her pants and gasps become more frequent when the totality of his chest glues to her back and his chin drops to her shoulder.

"I'll be leaving for a little while."

She stops breathing. Could it be possible that she had gotten so used to his presence in a fortnight that she could not imagine the man leaving them (read: her) behind without it paining her? How could she have awarded him so much influence and power over her, so easily? Breaking free from his soft and loose hold on her, she turns around, creating some space because otherwise, she is certain the tips of their noses would be touching.

He is certainly much taller than her. Matilda had not paid much mind to that yet, well aware that she was relatively small, with a frame no bigger than a meter and sixty centimetres (or as her father liked to point out 5'2) while he towered over her, clearly well over 1.80 meters tall. A 6'1 giant, compared to her.

"Where are you going?" – She curses herself for still sounding breathless. Thankfully, there is no jesting in his eyes, just pure fondness.

"Quite far. Outside of Earth's orbit."

Her heart beats so fast that she is afraid it will jump out of her chest. He was leaving. The one person she had let herself get attached to was leaving her behind, probably when she needed him much. Hot tears gathered in her eyes, and it took immense willpower not to let them fall. Goes as far as biting her lip so as not to let it quiver.

"Not for long though. Just enough to get my ship and come back." His voice is terribly soft but not as soft as his touch when he rests his hands on her waist and pulls her closer once more. Matilda is speechless. Not only he was coming back, but he was also leaving to retrieve something he had tried his very best to keep safeguarded – the one thing he still had from home – and was apparently willing to risk and share for their survival.

"Are you sure you want to do this? No one needs to know it even exists." Her words are muffled by his chest and clothes, she is certain. He still hears her clearly, however. Said chest that rumbles when he chuckles sadly.

"Yes, I am. If I may have the means to keep you safe and alive then I would rather use them than leave it to the hands of fate." If it were any other man, she would start complaining, claiming she was most certainly not a damsel in distress. But she also knew that was not how Eros meant it – he had the awful habit of projecting images and thoughts onto her, painting a clear picture of how strong he knew her to be. How he seemed to see her as a force to be reckoned with, as a storm he seems to want to brave.

(Once upon a time, she compared herself to the winds inside Pandora's box, released and untamed on a rampage. She wonders if Eros simply wants to be the one to lock them back inside their beautiful box or if is keener on running free with them.)

"I'm sure that will take a while to come back." She desperately wishes her voice sounds more certain and surer now.

"About two hours, give or take. I'll be back before you're having dinner, that I am certain of."

She can only blink, confused. Noticing her perplexity, he just laughs, kissing her head before letting go and rapidly moving away, ready to leave her behind. He is already by the door when he addresses her again.

"Don't worry, your boyfriend will be back!" And just like that, he leaves.

Matilda hated not having the last word. And she won't make an exception for him.

"You're not my boyfriend!"

"Not yet!"

Huffing, she turns to the windows across from the small garden, waiting for him to walk into the open hangar. When he does, he smiles up at her, before somehow levitating from the ground right before her eyes and disappearing inside a rainbow wormhole that she quickly identifies: an Einstein-Rosen Bridge.

She can only blink. That sounded like something else for them to discuss, might as well just add it to the atom manipulation he'd surprised her with. Blowing a raspberry, she shakes her head: might as well head to the lab – science waits for no woman.

#eros x reader #eros x ofc #starfox x ofc #starfox x reader #harry styles x reader #bucky barnes x ofc #fanfiction #harry styles #harry styles x oc #marvel fanfiction

[blowflyfag]

ECW Magazine: February 2000

Order Before Anarchy

ECW faithful flock to Fan Fest

ON THE DAY BEFORE ANARCHY RULZ, there was a semblance of order for Extreme Championship Wrestling fans wanting to meet their favorite performers. To show appreciation for its fans, ECW held a fan convention at the Odeum in suburban Chicago on Sept. 18.

[Vito LoGrasso is all smiles.

Fans line up for Joey Styles’ autograph.

Roadkill shows off a magazine he signed.

‘Smart’ fans display their literary tastes by holding up copies of ECW Magazine.]

About 2,000 fans lined up for autographs and posed for photos with many ECW stars, including Justin Credible, Lance Storm, Spike Dudley, Nova, Little Guido, Francine and Dawn Marie. THe three-hour convention also features speeches by several personalities, including New Jack, Axl Rotten, Balls Mahoney, Tommy Dreamer and Joey Styles. 

Highlights included New Jack declaring that he and Rotten were back to “kick some ass” and Mahoney taunting Styles about his favorite football team, the New York Jets, which had just lost its starting quarterback, Vinny Testaverde, to injury.

The enthusiastic crowd at the convention foreshadowed what would turn out to be record attendance for an ECW live event the next day, when more than 6,000 people packed the Odeum for the pay-per-view. 

[Mic skills: Tommy Dreamer addresses the ECW faithful. 

Spanish Angel mingles with the fans.

Justin Credible, with Kendo stick, poses with admirers.

LEFT: Find the wrestlers in a crowd of fans.

Extreme choices: A wall of ECW shirts provides a style for everyone.]

#ecw #extreme championship wrestling #ecw magazine #magazine scan #magazine transcript

[sirlawrancealot]

Copywrite

As an anarchic system of

networking information

by electrons, rather than,

for instance, human beings

(speech, letters, telephone, newsprint,

books), the internet is open entirely

to electronic network design, production,

and systemic implementation, including

intervention in similar sub-internet products.

 Internet control by those who can purchase

enough software capability to normalise

electron flow in this way yields

a clear option of interventionary

co-option of other such sub-system

products. For those who can afford

a threshold level of electronic control

and its systemisation within

the existing loose “parent system”,

the more they can afford

the more they can control

the original planned anarchy of the internet.

 Where we can always turn off the tv

or radio, and throw the magazine or newspaper

in the bin, quotidian informational dependence

conditioned with the ideological lures of

“access” and “control” by the individual are

easily instrumentalised to reduce internet’s

supposed communication value

to online non-stop streaming of undeclared

and itself “anarchic” commercial “cold calling”.

Traditional advertising becomes increasingly

historical artefact as information itself

is lost to the non-stop electronic streaming

of cold-call marketing. Data, on one hand,

and Knowledge, on the other, simply fall away

from the “channel of communication” proposition

of the net, as reduced to continuous digital disruption

of endless breadth and depth by the

commercial profit industry.

       It reduces the

infamous practice of “hacking” to

the IT equivalent of shoplifting.

Difficult for humans to even

speak to each other without

risking potential copyright

litigation from digital marketing’s

copywriters (or, more likely, their

employers). Luckily, there is still no

copyright on performance😉.

(So far, anyway… it will be an

interesting test case when it comes.)

 Richard Lawrance

© 12Jan2023

[wiisemary]

Charlie Hunnam’s avatars (200*320px)

#charlie hunnam #actor #king arthur #arthur #sons of anarchy #Jax Teller #Jackson Teller #pacific rim #Legend of the Sword #Raleigh Becket #The Lost City of Z #Percy Fawcett #Crimson Peak #photoshoot #2017 #New york times #magazine #avatars #200*320 #200x320 #wiise

[maxwell-grant]

I was gonna put the Spy Kids quote here but then I’d probably get an ask if they or Sharkboy & Lavagirl are pulp heroes. 

Okay, jokes aside I can’t put it into words just how much I appreciate the feedback and reception I get from you guys, never in a million years did I think I would ever get the notes I get or the amount of asks I receive. I can’t believe I’m nearing 200 followers as is, that’s insane to me. I am eternally grateful that this place lets me finally put out my essays somewhere people will read them and that you guys actually humor my ramblings, and frankly I don’t think I’m ever going to find an outlet like this elsewhere. Please don’t hesitate to send questions.

But I’m gonna have to start rapid firing a couple of those 50 questions so they don’t pile up more, and for these “Is X a Pulp Hero”, I’m gonna start off by pointing that I made a chart specifically to address this question, to try and at least give the cat I let out of the bag a structure to work with so it doesn’t destroy the furniture (not that it ever stopped my cat). Although again, the chart is just a basic attempt to put this on working order, sometimes it really is just a particular vibe that a character or property gives off. 

Anyhow, on a case by case basis:

Santa Claus: Not a pulp hero, waaay older than those, but has appeared in pulp stories (I mean, it’s Santa). There have been pulp stories that featured Santa, there’s a murderous Santa Claus in the canadian pulp Guy Vercheres, the Jimmieboy short stories had him meet Santa, and The Shadow’s killed at least one criminal dressed like Santa as well as posed for a holiday picture with the real one in Edd Cartier’s final drawing before he passed away, which is as official as a crossover could possibly get.

Samurai Jack: Maybe. The most directly pulp thing Genndy Tartakosvky’s done yet is Primal, that is just 100% cartoon pulp, the Conan/Lost World stuff bleeds through the screen. Samurai Jack is kinda near that ballpark but that’s because Samurai Jack has a zillion influences and pop culture references, most of it seems taken straight from comics.  Pulp stuff is in there but that’s because pulps run in the blood of everything, and it doesn’t make everything pulp. The whole premise of Samurai Jack is designed for the contrast between an old-fashioned samurai coming to face and adapting to whatever wacky future nonsense and pop culture archetypes Aku’s throwing at him that week because that’s what they felt like doing for the episode. There’s gangsters and Lupin and Star Wars and historical fantasy and robot violence and...shit, it really is pulp, come to think of it. Still not gonna say a definitive Yes to Jack being a Pulp Hero but the vibe is definitely there and maybe that’s all that really counts.

The Belmonts: Maybe. There’s definitely Simon, because Simon is Conan. Julius Belmont also gives off a strong old-school adventurer vibe. The others are a lot more distant but they are definitely a lot closer to that ballpark than most videogame heroes, characters like Richter and Alucard wouldn’t look that out of place fighting monsters next to The Spider or Elric. Again, there’s not many actual connections to pulp properties or periods, but the whole point of Castlevania is that you get to cartwheel through graveyards and whip your way through exploding skeletons and Frankensteins so you can give Dracula a wedgie. So I’m gonna actually say a Yes to this one. 

Scrooge McDuck: Yes. He’s in the chart already, and really I probably could have placed him in the True Neutral section considering Scrooge was created in the 1900s-1950s time period and was pretty explicitly modeled after a pulp magazine kind of adventurer. 

The Joestars: No. I don’t consider Joseph a Pulp Hero in the first place, it’s really more Battle Tendency having an Indiana Jones globetrotting vibe than Joseph himself, I put the characters in the Radical Pulp Anarchy section as extreme examples to show how far you can conceivably stretch the term based on superficial connections. But I don’t get neither much of a pulp vibe from any of the Jojo parts besides Part 2, and pulp material has never been within Araki’s influences, and I obsessively catalogued all of them in my Jojo phase. You could maybe make an argument for Jonathan since he’s the old-school adventurer of the bunch, and maybe Jotaro since he’s both the wandering warrior type as well as Clint Eastwood in a school uniform, but at this point you gotta separate what’s “genre” and what’s “pulp”, and they can intersect without being the same thing. 

Fast and the Furious: No. Pretty hard no, actually. I don’t think there’s even much of an argument there other than I guess they both have a reputation for being trashy low-class entertainment, but that kinda goes for way too many things to ever be placed under an umbrella term. The terms “high class” and “low class” don’t even really see much usage anymore in media discussion, they died and it’s a good thing we killed them.

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Stratemeyer Syndicate was pretty specifically centered around hardback publications of juvenile adventure series, which means they could not be considered pulp characters in their time despite being from the 1930s, and in fact were pretty specifically defined as being the opposite of the pulp publishers of the period. Still, that distinction hardly matters much once people started talking about serial and radio and comic characters as pulp heroes, and currently a lot of what it takes for a character to be considered a pulp hero is just being from any kind of 1930s fiction. I wouldn’t include them in any listings but, you do you.

Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction: I mean, it’s kinda the big thing you get when you even look up the terms “pulp” or “pulp fiction”, by sheer osmosis it’s replaced the things those terms were created to define in pop culture popularity. It’s been forever since I watched it and I don’t particularly have any interest in watching any Tarantino movie, but I guess the fact that this is a movie with several different stories interconnected on crime drama and doomed love affairs and philosophical hogwash and bantering men of action is very much structured like a typical pulp magazine, which usually consisted on an anthology format that I suspect is what the movie may have been homaging. Either that, or it’s just named Pulp Fiction because it’s sleazy and gorey and shamelessly excessive and those are terms that are very much associated with the pulps, for better or worse. 

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #jojo tag #jjba #scrooge mcduck #santa claus #samurai jack #tf2

[lostanarchymagazine]

#marshal law #the boys #batman #the batman who laughs #dredd #judge dredd #judge death #judge death vs the batman who laughs #fight club #fight club 2 #fight club 3 #lost anarchy magazine #lost anarchy #mojo el diablo #danny christ #dc comics #dark horse comics #2000ad #homelander #Youtube

[captainseaweedbrains]

The Dance of the Color Guard, Op. 64 Ch. 4

Katniss and Peeta used to be best friends when they were kids, but now in high school, they're barely on speaking terms. It isn't until they are forced together as the titular star-crossed lovers for their marching band's field show that they will have to face their past mistakes and try to get along if they ever hope of defeating the notorious Capitol Height's Imperial Marching Crusaders in competition.

It's all about winning and if that means pretending to be in love with Peeta Mellark, so be it.

A/N: Thank you to @rosegardeninwinter​ for editing and helping push me to finish! You are the best and any mistakes found are mine. :) 

Start at the beginning on Ao3: X

Ch. 4 Ao3: X

June

“Peeta really isn’t that bad,” Madge said for what felt like the millionth time. Katniss rolled her eyes and flipped the page of her magazine. Ever since learning that Peeta was going to be the Romeo to Katniss’ Juliet, Madge had been defending him every chance she got. “He’s really not. And he’s so smart, Katniss. Picks up on things real quickly. So all this moping around you’ve been doing all week is stupid.”

Katniss frowned and shoved her sunglasses further up her nose, preferring the screams of the children running around them on the pool deck to Madge defending Peeta Mellark to her once again. Was she being overly dramatic about this? Maybe. Was Madge right that Peeta wasn’t as bad as she made him out to be? Perhaps. But it still sucked and she couldn’t stop complaining about it.

“I know you’re Team Peeta,” she sighed, “but would it kill you to see things from my perspective just this once? Isn’t that what girl friends are supposed to do? Side with their other girl friends?”

“Maybe if you were right about him being a bad person, I would,” Madge sniffed, picking up her own gossip magazine to flip through. “But as of right now, you’ve provided me no evidence in support of your claim.” It was times like these Katniss wished her friend wasn’t the daughter of a prestigious lawyer.

“Gale sides with me,” she argued, pointing at her tall friend standing in line between two twelve-year-old kids for their slushies. “Doesn’t that count for anything on my behalf?”

“Gale’s an idiot.”

“An idiot you’re dating.” Madge stuck her tongue out at that, unable to refute her long-standing relationship with Gale and Katniss smiled. Of all the relationships she’d seen throughout the years—and band romances had provided plenty of weird, random romances, the weirdest being Johanna Mason and Melinda “Cashmere” Hewitt—Madge and Gale’s was the only one she saw that made no sense on paper yet made complete sense in person. The spoiled rich girl with a heart of gold and the rough-around-the-edges boy from the bad part of town? She never used to buy it in the movies, thinking the concept too ridiculous, but Madge and Gale proved her wrong time and time again.

Even when they had broken up sophomore year, claiming they were just too different, Katniss was still proven wrong because they couldn’t shut up about each other—griping about how she just didn’t understand and he always has to be right and I can’t believe I lost my virginity to that, a fact Katniss could have gone her whole life not knowing. When they got back together, it was hard to say who was more thrilled about it: the happy couple or Katniss.

“Come on, Madge,” she sighed, flopping back in her lounge seat. “Why must you always be the diplomatic one?”

“Someone has to be between your impulsiveness and Gale’s anarchy attitude.

“Did someone say anarchy?” the anarchist himself joked, handing Madge her lime-flavored slushie with a kiss on the lips for a tip. He handed Katniss her watermelon one and jokingly asked where his tip was. Katniss threw her three dollars at him with a “Keep the change” rebuttal. Gale laughed and pocketed the cash, lifting Madge’s legs up and over onto his lap so he could sit.

“So what did I miss?”

Madge snorted and offered her boyfriend a sip of her slushie. “Here’s a hint: it’s Katniss’ favorite subject.”

Gale rolled his eyes and accepted the drink. “Mellark again?” He took a large sip and winced at the sudden brain freeze, handing the large cup back. “God, I’m so sick of hearing about that guy. Katniss, get over it and move on already.” Even Gale was getting sick of her talking about it? Somehow, that hit lower on the pathetic scale. Gale was her complaining companion. Her bitch buddy. The person she reserved all her annoyances for because she knew he’d have his own trivial things to complain about. Hell, their friendship was founded upon complaining, starting in 8th Grade Science when their teacher kept giving them busy work to cope with the very public scandal of his wife sleeping with their school principal. They complained about everything with each other.

And now even Gale had said enough.

Well this sucked.

“Fine,” she said, not really feeling fine about it. “I won’t talk about it anymore.” Her friends looked doubtful. “I mean it! No more talk of Peeta Mellark and how my whole summer is practically ruined because I have to have extra practices to teach him how to dance on the field. And I’m not going to talk about how that cuts into my shifts at Aunt LuLu’s store, which means my spending money is going to be next to nothing by the time school starts. So if you two ever want to do anything more fun than hanging around the school parking lot, I guess you’re shit out of luck.”

Gale smiled sweetly at Madge. “I’m so glad she’s not talking about it anymore.” Katniss scowled and gave them the middle finger, causing them both to laugh.

“I think you both are very biased over this whole thing,” Katniss said after a while. Gale and Madge didn’t say anything, too focused on tanning and summer reading homework. That didn’t seem to stop Katniss from continuing. “You’re both too friendly with him because of classes and band. He’s gotten to you.”

“One of us is biased,” Gale said, “and it’s not us. It’s you. You’ve hated him for as long as I’ve known you.”

“With good reason!” she huffed, crossing her arms. They didn’t ask her to elaborate on that, already making it clear they were done talking about Peeta Mellark and all the annoyances he brought to her life, and she hated the fact that she did want to keep talking about him. About marching band. About the whole stupid situation. But she kept her promise and kept her mouth shut. 

No one said anything further until Madge declared herself starving and Gale suggested they stuff their faces with greasy burgers and fries at Sae’s.

**********

Sae’s Diner was packed with its usual lunch crowd—men and women from the factories nearby on lunch, sitting at the worn pastel-colored counter; a couple of kids they recognized from school goofing off in the corner booth, shooting straw wrappers off the straws; and a book club filled with women in their fifties discussing some brick of a book over coffee and Sae’s famous blueberry and cream pie sitting in the center of the small diner. The old woman herself smiled warmly at them when they’d walked in, asking if they were wanting the usual. 

“You’re the best, Sae,” Gale thanked as they waved and headed to their booth next to the front door. 

As they waited for their cheeseburgers and chocolate milkshakes, Gale chatted about some war movie he and his brothers saw that sounded god awful boring, no matter how much he tried re-explaining the plot to them. Madge and Katniss rolled their eyes and told him if he wanted to see the movie again so badly, to go see it by himself. “I’m not going to the movies by myself like some weirdo,” he scoffed, taking his hands off the table as the waitress deposited their plates of food and drinks. 

“Why not?” Katniss asked, picking up a french fry to dip into her milkshake. “I do it all the time.” 

“Because you hate people.” 

“So do you.” He shrugged, not having much to argue there, and picked up his burger. 

“So what time is Trinket summoning you tomorrow?” Gale asked, changing the subject completely, and tearing into his burger. Grease dripped down his hands and Madge tossed a pile of napkins at him. He accepted with a smile and slid his side of pickles over to her, something he purposely ordered more of because he knew how much she liked them. Madge happily bit into one, her eyes gazing at him with such adoration, Katniss rolled her eyes. Their coupling was too much for her sometimes. 

“I thought you didn’t want me talking about marching band,” she said innocently enough, taking a bite into her own burger.

“I didn’t want you talking about Mellark,” he said pointedly, wagging a fry at her. “Marching band is different. Less annoying and less boy drama. So what time does Miss Cream Puff have you coming in?”

It irritated her that Gale simplified her great dislike for Peeta Mellark as mere boy drama because it was far more complicated than that, but there was no point trying to explain it to Gale. He understood a lot about her, but when it came to Peeta… Well, it was best to let him believe whatever he wanted. “Eight a.m. sharp,” she said sourly, dipping another french fry into her milkshake.

Gale winced. “That sucks. Why so early?” 

“Peeta couldn’t get out of working his afternoon shifts and it was either that or not have a single weekend off until November.” She was still bitter about the change in schedule. Originally Miss Trinket wanted them twice a week outside of color guard’s normal rehearsal times, but with Peeta’s work schedule not being as flexible as Katniss’, she’d decided to make it morning rehearsals and make those shorter, which forced them to add another day of rehearsal to make up for the cut time. Now instead of having rehearsal four times a week, Katniss had five with her weekends full of shifts at Aunt LuLu’s shop for the extra cash she desperately needed. This summer was going to blow.

“I still think you should’ve been picked for Juliet,” Katniss told Madge teasingly. “You and Gale, maybe?” she cooed. “The true star-crossed lovers of Athens Ridge.” 

Gale scowled. “I’d rather drop dead than have to deal with Trinket when she’s in choreographer mode. She’s a total tyrant.” 

“She’s not so bad once you get used to her.” 

“Tell me what you think after dealing with her for a whole season, oh captain, my captain.” 

Point taken.

Much like at the pool, they talked for a bit about things going on in their lives—Madge taking some online French class because her grades last semester weren’t great; Gale’s successful find for parts with Thom in the junkyard. Katniss didn’t say much as she munched on her burger and fries, afraid Madge would lecture her again on Peeta Mellark and her inability to let things go with him. That and she promised she was done talking about him. But outside of marching band and him, not much was going on in her life. She felt a bit pathetic about that. 

Conversation picked up when Sae came over, asking how things were doing. The three smiled at the old woman, happy to fill her in on all the small details of their lives. Sae was the unofficial grandmother of the Seam. Always there to show her support for her kiddos. Her small diner was covered with pictures of sports teams she’s sponsored over the years, pictures of her and kids dressed in dance gear, holding certificates. 

“Did you hear the news about Katniss, Sae?” Madge asked when the topic of marching band came up. Sae was always interested in that, loving watching her talented kids play as they wove around the field. “She’s going to be our Juliet this year! Isn’t that exciting?” 

Sae’s grey eyes warmed, turning to Katniss. “Is that so? Captain and the lead part?” She shook her head in astonishment, her salt and peppered colored hair coming loose from her hair tie. “You were always so talented with those flags. I’m not surprised. Who’s your Romeo?” 

“Peeta Mellark.” The name felt lodged in her throat, but thankfully, it squeezed out without too much of a squeak in her voice. 

Sae didn’t know all the kids on the west side, but she definitely knew Peeta. He would often tag along with her and her dad on their trips to the woods, stopping at the diner after for hot chocolate and pie. In fact, his picture was one of the first ones you saw coming in—Sae and six-year-old Peeta smiling at the camera, her arm around him as he proudly held up his lost baby tooth. Her dad had taken the picture, she remembered, and if the camera’s lens had shifted a little more to the right, it would have also captured five-year-old Katniss pouting on the side, upset that he kept losing his baby teeth when she’d lost none. It was a picture her gaze avoided whenever they visited Sae’s, unable to stomach the sight of an old friend turned asshole, the memory of her dad’s laughter as he took the photo. 

“Oh, Peeta,” Sae chuckled, the familiar twinkle she always got in her eyes when he was around. The old woman doted on him when they were kids and he ate up her attention like there was no tomorrow. “How is that boy? Staying out of mischief, I hope?” 

Gale and Madge looked to her with knowing smiles, wondering what she would say. Katniss cleared her throat and looked down at her half-eaten plate for a moment. “Fine, I guess. We don’t hang out anymore. You know that, Sae.” 

She did know that, but it never stopped her from asking whenever he came up. “Aye, girl, I do. I suppose you aren’t happy with Effie Trinket’s choice, then?” 

Gale snorted. “Happy? More like obsessively pissed. She hasn’t shut up about it since May.” She glared at her friend and he shrugged, popping a fry in his mouth. “What? You haven’t.” 

Sae gave one of her warm, crooked teeth smiles. “Maybe this is the push you kiddos need to kiss and make up.” Katniss’ cheeks warmed at the mention of kisses, remembering Leevy’s comment how they were so going to have sex by the end of the year. She still hadn’t fully forgiven her friend for that suggestion.

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Sae,” she said, her voice still a little strained. “We’re just too different.”  

“Ah, well. I suppose we grow in different directions sometimes,” the woman sighed with a shake of her head. A woman from the book club table called for her and Sae gave them a parting wave and smile. “Tell Peeta ol’ Sae misses her boy and that he needs to come in more. I haven’t seen him in ages.”

Katniss pointedly avoided Gale and Madge’s amused smirks, focusing on the burger in front of her. “I’ll be sure to pass the message along,” she muttered, taking a big bite of her food to avoid continuing this conversation. She loved Sae. Thought of her like a grandmother. But there was no way in hell was she telling Peeta that. No way. Then he’d think she was gushing about him to anyone who would listen, thrilled to be his Juliet, a role many girls at school would kill for (Probably. Maybe. She thinks.), and then his stupid ego would just get bigger and he’d be even more obnoxious to deal with. No, best not to mention anything and lie next time she saw Sae. 

A small part felt guilty at that, though, because Sae was like a grandma who wanted the best for her, and Peeta too, she guessed, but again, Sae didn’t know what happened between them. And Katniss wasn’t going to fill her in on their broken history six years too late. 

Her phone next to her plate vibrated, signifying a text message just came in. Wiping her greasy hands, Katniss frowned, picking up her phone. Who was texting her? Everyone who’d text her was either sitting right across from her or were busy at work or camp. The little text message lit up at her touch, showing it was from an unknown number, and her frown turned into a scowl as she read it. 

Hey!!!!!!!!!1!1111!!!!!!! the message read with a thousand typo-filled exclamation marks. God, who text like that? Trinket gave me ur ######## Hope thats cool. Thought Id give mine!!!!!!!111111 🤗 Ill see u  Mon dearest Juliet ❤️❤️❤️❤️!!!!!!!!!!!!111!😘😘😘😘!!!111!!!!!! 

For the briefest of seconds, Katniss swore her vision blacked out. One moment she was staring at her phone. The next, darkness. Like her brain couldn’t process the simple text on her phone and chose to shut down instead. When her vision cleared, the message was still there, glaring brightly at her with those thousand exclamation/number marks. 

Peeta Mellark texted her. He had her number.

         Her stomach churned and now she feared that what her mother always warned about Sae’s greasy food would come true now and she’d throw it all up. 

Peeta Mellark texted her. It was truly official. He had her number and she had his and they were partners now. If she had any doubts about this whole thing before—as if she had dreamt the last four weeks of her life—they were wiped clean now. Replaced with this typo-filled text message from the very boy who hurt her. 

“You okay?” Madge asked.

Katniss nodded and clicked out of the message, tossing the phone into her bag. She’d deal with it later.

#Everlark #Everlark Fanfiction #The Hunger Games #The Hunger Games fanfiction #Everlark fanfic #The hunger Games fanfic #THG #It's been a while and I'm sorry #Life amirite? #My writing #The Dance of the Color Guard #The Dance of the Color Guard Op. 64

[forbidden-sorcery]

I think most anarchists, including myself, tend to prioritize the “breaking away from” tendency. A necessary and understandable response to our condition as civilized humans. But, I think we are often intimidated and lost when we attempt to advocate for, and even more so, connect to, anything. We become hyper-critical of everything. While it is essential to move with constant critique, if it is at the level of paralysis and absolute pessimism, it is ultimately useless. Hyper-anything is typically a sign of overcompensation concealing an emptiness, rather then an open-ended, yet clear and precise understanding and actualization. The concept of “rewilding” can bridge this gap in theory and practice. I tend to think that “rewilding” has much to do with decivilizing our minds. Allowing ourselves to open up to situations and experiences without the ceaseless baggage of civilization (or at least consciously minimizing the unhealthy appendages) is essential in initiating the experience of going feral. For many, however, it remains solely an intellectual and rhetorical procedure, with most practice avoided because of its impurity, or effort required. If it does get physical, it typically repeats certain survival skills over and over. Practical skills like starting fires, building shelters, skinning roadkill, etc, are significant, but more involved explorations and connecting to the world we inhabit seem to require a long-term immersion into living in a place and with people. Beginning to know our world is a slow process, one we are coming into damaged. Those who are born into connected relationships do not learn through scar tissue, but through eyes which have never stared blankly upon a computer screen, or maybe even a printed word. They develop relationships with their world with ears that have never heard a jackhammer or the beep of an alarm clock, but instead, the sound of wind approaching, a critter chewing, or a fire crackling. They explore their world on feet that have never walked on the unforgivingness of concrete, with hands that have not been trained to push buttons and type on keyboards. They kiss with mouths that have never uttered useless rhetoric and digest foods in stomachs which do not know processed sugars or mass produced starches. They come into the world whole and, hopefully, remain there. Despite our impediment, we too can connect. But we need to start somewhere, some place.

Sal Insieme - Connecting to Place In the Land of the Lost: Questions for the Nomadic Wanderers in All of Us (Green Anarchy magazine)

#Sal Insieme #anarchism #green anarchy #anti-civ

[nicklloydnow]

"“My definition for mysticism,” Rohr said, “is experiential knowledge of the Holy, the transcendent, the divine, God—if you want to use that word, but I’m not tied to it.” Experiential knowledge, which differs from textbook knowledge, “will always be spoken humbly, because true spiritual knowledge is always partial. You know you don’t know the whole mystery. But even one little peek into one little corner of the mystery is more than enough.”

(...)

As Rohr tells it, the contemplative mind went underground during the Protestant Reformation. It was still being taught in some monasteries as late as the fifteenth century, and in isolated places such as Spain there was “an explosion of contemplation” through the mystical writings of Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross. But then came Luther’s sola scriptura and Descartes’s cogito ergo sum, both of which placed the dualistic, egoistic mind at the center. Guigo the Carthusian, a twelfth-century monk, spoke of three levels of prayer: oratio, or spoken prayer; meditatio, using the mind to reflect on a piece of scripture; and contemplatio, the wordless prayer of the heart. This is the moment, Rohr explains, when “you shed the mind as the primary receiver station. You stop reflecting. You stop critiquing or analyzing. You let the moment be what it is, as it is, all that it is. That takes a lot of surrender.” After the Enlightenment and its Cartesian dualisms, the contemplative mind—“our unique access point to God,” as Rohr describes it—“was pretty well lost.”

(...)

So many of the mistakes in American Christianity, Rohr told me, are a result of dualistic thinking, which is “inherently antagonistic, inherently competitive. You’re forced within the first nanosecond to take sides. Republican-Democrat, black-white, gay-straight . . . go down the whole list of what’s tearing us apart—the dualistic mind always chooses sides.” He is sympathetic to those who disaffiliate from religion. But he still believes in faith’s power to instill awe, to bind and heal, to return us to ourselves, to God, and to one another. At the center of that return lies the contemplative mind.

(...)

I was also reading Cassian’s Conferences and considering the author’s role as chronicler of the early Christian monastic movement in Egypt, a kind of fifth-century immersion journalist of the soul. Cassian describes Christian life as a journey toward puritas cordis: purity of heart. If that is the destination, the vehicle is silent prayer.

Ontological wonder, tenderness, puritas cordis, pondering scales of mercy: these seemed like activities worthy of my meager efforts, and I felt a similar hunger for those things among other contemplatives, those who were also leaving the barnacled, empty supertanker of Christendom and boarding smaller, more nimble vessels.

“Does mysticism need a church?” In his introduction to the Conferences, the Cambridge historian Owen Chadwick poses this as a central conundrum in early monastic thought, a question that was very much alive among the modern contemplatives. “The individual experience of the divine is overwhelming,” Chadwick writes. “It passes beyond the memory of biblical texts and every other thought. . . . Might it be that holy anarchy is nearer to God than ordered ecclesiasticism?”

Like Cassian, I was more drawn to holy anarchy. And yet, in the process of fleeing broken ecclesial institutions, didn’t the new contemplatives also constitute a body politic? What was the Universal Christ conference if not a new form of church? It’s possible to see organized religion as a necessary evil, something that could be dispensed with once individuals reach some higher plane of awareness, but that seems facile. Humans depend on patterns and structures. Forms change, but we still need them to provide some kind of continuity of thought and praxis, just as we depend on forms to build community, which is the other piece missing in the laissez-faire approach. In an essay titled “The Mystical Core of Organized Religion,” the Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast readily acknowledges that “mysticism clashes with the institution.” And yet, he admits, “We need religious institutions. If they weren’t there, we would create them. Life creates structures.”

(...)

In his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Merton describes an incident he experienced in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 18, 1958, as he stood on the corner of 4th and Walnut Streets.

“There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun,” he writes.

I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes . . . It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven . . . I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

It is striking that Merton’s epiphany occurred not in a monk’s cell or cathedral alcove, but on a busy street in Louisville. Sartre famously said that “hell is other people,” but for Merton, and for Holmes, Bucko, McCrary, Rohr, and so many of the contemplatives I met, other people are not hell; they are portals to paradise.

One paradox of the contemplative life is the way in which it engenders, even demands, participation in a community. “The life of a Christian is not a solo act,” McCrary told me. “Jesus went to the desert alone to pray, but he was always building community. It’s a both-and.” The reverse is also true. Rohr: “How you relate to your spouse, your children, your dog—that’s how you’ll relate to God.”

The gate of heaven opens for us all, but the hinge swings outward as much as inward, leading not into some hermetically sealed chamber, but a spacious meadow where we find every person we’ve ever known, a field of solitaries loved beyond measure, a destination as near as our next breath."

[bighousela]

MODERN ART chronicles a life-long rivalry between two mavericks of the London art world; the rebellious art critic Peter Fuller and Michael Minas the most expensive living artist of all time, as they cut their path from the swinging sixties through the collapse of modern art in Thatcher-era Britain.

WRITER’S STATEMENT Peter Fuller was my late father and I wrote this Biopic screenplay based on his memoirs, private letters and journals from the archive held at the TATE. This project has allowed me a dialog with the father I never knew. The story really came together when I created the character of Michael Minas out of Peter’s best friends and rivals, and my own adaptation. Comparisons have been made to two of the most popular streaming series this year; THE CROWN, which has brought a context to 20th Century British political and cultural history like never before. And breakout series QUEEN’S GAMBIT which has popularized the game of chess, an otherwise niche field, whose participants are obsessive and yet the story is entirely character driven. These are equally the aims of MODERN ART. 2020 has only proven we need art, now more than ever. Peter Fuller was like a punch in the guts to the art world from 1969 to 1990. I want for this film to reach the person walking into an art museum for the first time knowing nothing about the paintings in front of them and hit them emotionally just as hard as the collector with five Picassos on their wall. This is an inside look into a world that is a closed door to the average person, I want to kick that door down with this piece. Laurence Fuller, 2020

SYNOPSIS INTERVIEWER: Michael Minas, your latest piece, a car wreckage made of solid gold at Deutscher Galleries, has made you the most expensive living artist of all time. Can you tell our readers what you believe is the state of Modern Art? MICHAEL: This moment, as we all know, is missing someone. He was my oldest friend and greatest adversary. Thirty years on and we still feel his absence stronger than ever. He pulled himself to the centre of this carousel and watched the horses dance for his pleasure, wincing at the neon lights. PETER FULLER… This is all your fault. When my assistant found Peter’s journal in my studio this morning, there was no more hiding the origins of my work. The radical 60s; John Lennon plays guitar with Che Guevara, Vanessa Redgrave rallies a protest in Trafalgar Square, Peter and I were there for it all and we had the scars to prove it. Shaggy hair and anarchy everywhere. Art was the centre of this game and art was radical. It was time to question everyone and everything. And yet, Peter was struggling to find his voice amongst so many competing agendas. Peter was a terrible painter, I kept encouraging him to write instead, none-the-less he insisted on having a solo exhibition, for which he sketched his first wife the sensual COLETTE as the Venus De Milo. The show was a critical disaster in all the papers across England, I should know, I wrote one of them. Peter’s confidence as a painter was shattered, but it was that day a critic was born. Britain didn’t need another painter, it needed a writer. I connected him with the revolutionary journalist Tariq Ali who inspired him with the words “Write our revolution. Seize the time.” Peter’s fierce and prolific columns inevitably led him to JOHN BERGER. There was no greater critic at the time. After an invitation to join Berger at his home in France, they talked for days, Peter became fascinated by the man, who became his surrogate father. I am ashamed to admit it now, but I was jealous. The three of us locked in a power struggle: Two brothers fighting for the father’s approval. At Berger’s request to find out which side he’s really on, he asked me to keep an eye on Peter. I watched him in the hungry hours of the art openings. I watched him feed his demons at the late night whipping houses and horse tracks where he spent his last pennies on the strangest hopes. Little did I know, he was watching me just as closely. I took it upon myself to steal his journals. I could not do this alone. I had to enlist the help of the person closest to him, Colette. As I read them feverishly, of course I knew it was wrong, but what was he hiding? I was obsessed with trying to figure him out.

Anxiously I read in Peter’s journals how he wrestled with his father in the tormented dreams of his childhood where we first met at boarding school. The older boys could be unusually cruel back then. Failing to comply with their authority we were tied to a fence in a bull paddock and whipped within an inch of our lives. Reading his account again inspired me to create the exhibition MINOTAUR’S SONG in 1986. I knew I could never beat Peter with words, but my art would torture him and force him to rebel against us. And he did by publishing brutal columns. John felt as though he had lost his son, he turned to me. Colette could no longer bare Peter’s anguish and the marriage was ripped apart, she turned to me. Peter went mad with jealousy and confronted Berger and myself at the exhibition. Our next debate was televised and it was merciless. Peter turned his back on all of us. He was black listed across the entire art publishing trade, except for his own passionate glossy MODERN PAINTERS. The magazine tore the entire establishment apart on both sides of the divide. There, revealed at its centre, was Peter holding the curtain open to the dying light of beauty. At the launch neither Berger, nor I were spared in the most intense debate I have witnessed let alone been a part of, as nobody could use language as a weapon like Peter. Finally, he had undeniably found his voice. I did not see his final letter until after the car crash which claimed his life so abruptly. Of course Peter’s final move in this game is a crescendo which reveals the purpose of beauty and the preciousness of life. Who better to deliver me this message than my assistant, but did she know more than she was letting on? George Mackay Michael Minas MICHAEL MINAS - 30s Caucasian Male (British), Peter’s lifelong best friend, though rougher round the edges, the two are locked in a constant cycle of camaraderie and rivalry. The emotional rollercoaster of their relationship escalates from adolescence through the revolutionary 60s, into passionate televised debates of the 80s, sensational art openings and betrayals of love and loyalties, played out on the art world’s stage. LEAD JOHN BERGER - 40s-50s (British), a handsome man with a large presence and a wisdom that is expressed in the lines of his face and the openness of his heart. John Berger was the leading art critic in England throughout the 20th Century. Notorious and internationally recognized for his controversial perspective on art criticism which was also deeply personal and autobiographical. He was Peter’s mentor and over time his surrogate father as their intense relationship sent ripples throughout the art world. LEAD

Modern Art Script Trailer