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writing-for-life · 2 days

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The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known

Or: Does Morpheus really have commitment issues?

[Bear with me, I’ll get to this panel 🤣]

I’ve read many times that Morpheus supposedly has commitment issues, and it always has me scratching my head a bit…

I personally rather think he is desperate to commit. He so badly craves a serious relationship that he is prone to rush into it and build it on wonky foundations, but he has certainly no commitment issues as we would commonly understand them.

Is it in his nature though to be truly seen and understood when he is [a] Dream? And can dreams ever last? These are the much more interesting questions in my view. Let’s have a look at the romantic relationships we know of…

Killalla: Walked out on him. That wasn’t his lack of commitment. If anything, he came on a bit strong while she was still assessing her feelings for him.

Alianora: He fully committed to her despite basically being bullied into it by Desire. And they were happy for “a goodly while”. For those in doubt: “Goodly” doesn’t mean “a bit”. It means “great, large, long.” And the fact that Alianora couldn’t go back to her own plane because she had stayed in the Dreaming too long corroborates that they were together for a long time. Probably longer than any human relationship ever lasts, because I doubt “a long time” means “a couple of years” for someone who is 12 billion years old.

And now I’ll sandwich the relationship we hardly know anything about between some random (?) panels to also make a point why I think it might sit here in the timeline…

Titania: Who knows. Sounded like an affair, and as if they both had no intention of committing. He was clearly very fond of her though, and I can never shake the feeling that we should look a bit deeper into AMND and find the parallels between Auberon, Titania (not hard, and they are pretty much pictured as estranged) and Bottom. There are many ways to get confused with a jackass, you know? 🤣 Plus, Bottom is the one who gets to play Pyramus in “Pyramus and Thisbe”. That’s the ultimate blueprint for “Romeo and Juliet”: Ill-fated love of catastrophic proportions, people are dead by the end of it. That’s why I often wondered if the affair with Titania was actually pre-Nada, and the inspiration for Shakespeare wasn’t random (it wasn’t random for The Tempest either). I mean, it wasn’t random anyway because it was a parting gift, but I also don’t think it was entirely random with regard to their relationship. Wild head-canon of course, but maybe not that wild (he also says that Wendel’s Mound was already a theatre before humans walked the earth, so there’s that)? And even if he wasn’t committed (we quite frankly don’t know if he intended to but she didn’t or couldn’t), she and the Fae meant enough to him to give them a play as a parting gift.

Nada: Killed herself after one night, but that wasn’t down to lack of commitment on his part. Again: If anything, he came on far too strong, wanted to be with her and was far too pushy about it.

Calliope: We don’t know how long they were together before they had Orpheus. Could have been a while, could have been only a shortish time. But even if we assumed they had him fairly quickly—they were still together when Orpheus, who was mortal, got married to Eurydice, so even if he got married young, we’re still talking something in the realm of +/- 20 years, and that’s the absolute low-ball-estimate. And while they had started to drift apart (considering what we know from Calliope), they were still on good terms and had no intention of splitting up until the whole Orpheus drama caused a rift they couldn’t mend. Again: That’s not someone who has commitment issues. It’s a relationship breaking down over hurt, stubbornness and grief.

Thessaly: Again, she was the one who left him and caused his dramatic interlude in the rain. Were they ill suited? Yes. Did she feel neglected and went into a strop over it? Yes. Did he not get that she felt neglected? Also yes, but that’s not lack of commitment. That’s his not getting that people aren’t mind readers (must be hard if you’re probably one yourself 🤣) and, by and large, need assurances of love. He doesn’t get that these women don’t understand they have his love; he can’t grasp that line of thinking because it is all so clear to him when he loves someone: They have him, what’s the issue? Is that a not so great way of (not) communicating when you’re having a relationship to someone? Absolutely. Is it a commitment issue though? Absolutely not.

I think Morpheus doesn’t really have commitment issues in romantic relationships—wouldn’t that almost be antithetical to his nature? Rules and responsibilities. Yeah, about that one…

What I do think is that he struggles with the mortifying ordeal of being (not) known by his lovers. Because how could he? He is Dream. That is his problem. Dreams cannot be fully known or understood. He is very eloquent but at the same time a very… confusing communicator. I don’t want to say “bad”, because I feel that’s not getting to the bottom of it. Again, it is the nature of dreams to be confusing and strange, open to (mis)interpretation, hard to grasp and understand. And they also stop being dreams once they become real. All of that is true and hence makes relationships both hard for him and those involved. Is he truly not willing to commit though?

I still find that hard to believe…

#the sandman #sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #sandman meta #calliope sandman #nada sandman #Alianora sandman #Thessaly #Titania sandman #Killalla of the glow #sandman bookclub #a midsummer night's dream #queue

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androxys · 2 days

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Comic Ages: Quick Breakdowns of the Dark and Modern Ages

Yesterday I wrote a quick writeup of the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages of Comics. Savvy readers may have noticed that those ages ended at 1986, and yet comics have continued to be published. So what Age are we in now? That's what this writeup discusses!

The Dark Age (1986-2016)

After Crisis on Infinite Earths ended in 1986, DC got to make a whole new continuity! The comics that came at this point in time form the foundation of a lot of the characters and stories that we know today. For a good bit of time, we called The Dark Age the Modern Age, because at that point it was modern! But now that we’re nearly forty years removed from Crisis and comics are still being published, there was a fair question about just how “Modern” it was. I’m using the verbiage that DC seems to be endorsing themself—I learned the phrase “The Dark Age” from 2022’s Batman—The Ultimate Guide reference book. Calling this period a Dark Age is not an indictment about the quality of work in this period, rather, it’s to reflect the doubling down on darker, grimmer stories. Crisis ended in 1986, followed almost immediately by Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, two stories very interested in deconstructing the figure of a hero with a cynical eye. While these stories were not in the main DC canon, they would reverberate on the tone of what was to come.

Within the main DC canon, huge shakeups were occurring. There were no more multiple Earths; instead, there was a single New Earth that incorporated the histories of several Earths. The Justice Society had fought in WWII and retired in the 50s, but were still around and able to mentor the younger generation of heroes. There was only ever the one Superman and Batman figure, though DC would later figure out a way to have a Wonder Woman both in the present and among the Justice Society. Many of DC’s biggest heroes were getting revamps to introduce their new continuity: The Man of Steel miniseries detailed Superman’s new origin and once again established him as the sole survivor of Krypton. The Batman: Year One story that ran thorough Batman #403-407 detailed the early history of this Caped Crusader, revamping Jim Gordon and Selina Kyle in the process. Wonder Woman saw her title relaunched with a new #1, with George Perez taking the helm of a sprawling epic that redefined the character. The darker tone of the Dark Age continued to manifest. The Killing Joke was published in 1988, depicting the shooting of Barbara Gordon by the Joker, followed quickly by Jason Todd’s murder in A Death in the Family. Major comic events of the early 90s involved the villain Bane breaking Batman’s back and the monster Doomsday killing Superman.

In the mid 90s, DC was forced to reconcile with the truth that while Crisis had mostly succeeded in tidying things up, things were once again getting messy. To solve this, DC published the Zero Hour event, officially titled Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! (DC really loves to slap the “Crisis” title on anything load-bearing) Zero Hour, published in 1994, featured the Silver Age hero Hal Jordan becoming the villain Parallax and trying to undo time. Heroes banded together to stop him, though the timeline was slightly altered. This introduced many soft retcons—retroactive continuity fixes—that aimed to make things make a bit more sense. The jury still seems to be out on if it succeeded.

By the early 2000s, DC decided that it was ready for a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, which they helpfully named Infinite Crisis. This event saw the return of several characters from the original Crisis, and more crucially, the return of a multiverse to DC Comics. This multiverse would be refined such that rather than an infinite multiverse of infinite Earths, there were now 52 parallel worlds. Some of the new worlds were established as callbacks to previously depicted alternate Earths, while some were new. Other major events within the Dark Age were Final Crisis, which saw the “death” of Bruce Wayne by Darkseid, and Blackest Night, which saw deceased heroes and villains resurrected as zombies by Black Lantern rings to feast on the emotions of the living.

In 2011, DC decided it was time for another major revamp. They wanted the characters younger and less burdened, and decided to launch The New 52 and end the era of post-Crisis New Earth. This was done with the Flashpoint story, which featured Barry Allen, the Flash, attempting to go back in time and prevent the death of his mother. While well intentioned, this event created a wildly branching timeline that he then had to set right. Though he mostly succeeded, the world Barry returned to was not quite the same. The post-Flashpoint world was dubbed “Prime Earth,” and was… controversial. Much of the post-Flashpoint continuity seemed to harken back to previous Ages–as mentioned, the characters in general were younger. Barbara Gordon, the Silver and Bronze Age Batgirl, was returned to the Batgirl role while her two New Earth successors were written out of continuity. Barry Allen was made the primary Flash of the DC Universe, with the Golden Age’s Jay Garrick and the Bronze/Dark Age’s Wally West removed.

In 2015, DC would publish the “Convergence” event, which featured an extant Brainiac capturing specific slices from several timelines and pitting them against each other. This included seeing the pre-Crisis Teen Titans operating at the same time as the post-Crisis, pre-Zero Hour Suicide Squad, or the post-Zero Hour but pre-Flashpoint Batgirl. It was messy! But importantly, it showed DC acknowledging their older characters and characterizations, and restoring some of the multiverse that came before.

The Dark Age would eventually come full circle, with the Doomsday Clock event heralding the end of the Dark Age and beginning what we call (for now) the Modern Age. Doomsday Clock was a direct sequel to Watchmen, the iconic comic that helped set the tone for the Dark Age in 1986. Doomsday Clock suggested that part of the reason the New 52 was so different than the pre-Flashpoint New Earth was because Doctor Manhattan, the massively powerful Watchmen character, had removed several years from the timeline to observe how the world would change. Batman and the Flash discovered this meddling during “The Button” storyline, and DC subsequently began its Rebirth initiative.

The Modern Age (2016-Present)

It’s fickle to decide precisely when the Modern Age begins. DC Comics themselves states that the Dark Age ended in 2011, with Flashpoint, though I disagree. Many of the initial New 52 storylines hold on to the darker tone, though there is evidence that around 2014, DC began to pivot away. The DCYou initiative, for example, focused on refreshing some characters to a younger, more upbeat characterization–such as Barbara Gordon in her Batgirl of Burnside era–or by introducing new comics altogether–such as the more lighthearted Gotham Academy series. You may disagree with me on precisely where these eras begin and end, however, and that’s okay.

In 2016, DC began its Rebirth event that sought to reconcile some of the pre-Flashpoint elements into the Prime Earth continuity. This was spearheaded by the return of Wally West, and continued to gradually fold back in pre-Flashpoint elements into the Prime Earth timeline. The events of 2020's Dark Nights and Dark Nights: Death Metal finalized it, placing characters in a sort of super-state of having access to all of the memories of all previous versions of themselves, while still ostensibly having only lived the one life. It’s complicated, but it crucially gave writers the opportunity to have characters make reference to past events that happened on New Earth, canonizing them for the Prime Earth continuity.

The end of the Dark Nights saga resulted in DC’s Future State and Infinite Frontier projects in 2021. Future State’s premise was showing possible futures for various DC characters, and then Infinite Frontier launched characters on possible paths. The emphasis was on this being a new starting point for many characters, both old and new. Jon Kent, the son of Superman, had his own title launched during this time, and Yara Flor, a new Wonder Woman, got a miniseries. On the Nightwing title, a new creative team took over to steer the character out of the “Ric Grayson” amnesia arc, restoring Nightwing to his traditional hero status.

In 2022, DC would publish Dark Crisis, later rebranded Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths (see what I mean about them just reusing the same words for emphasis?) which saw many classic DC villains from across different eras brought together by a powerful force. This continued to delve into the DC Multiverse and establish that everything was metaphorically on the table, leading to the Dawn of DC initiative. Similarly to Infinite Frontier, Dawn of DC was about fresh starts, new beginnings, and updates so that new readers could jump in. The Justice League was disbanded in the wake of Dark Crisis, leading the Titans to become the preeminent Superhero team. The Superman title was relaunched at #1, and many books got new creative teams.

It’s always easier to retrospectively talk about something that has concluded rather than to actively analyze something ongoing. However, I think so far it’s fair to say that DC is attempting to use the Modern Age to craft a more expansive, perpetually new universe. Old characters are getting new attention, new characters are being created, and the depth and breadth of DC’s publication is getting highlighted. The current Modern Age has seen DC focus on expanding its Young Adult graphic novels since 2019, and DC announced in 2024 that they would be bringing back the Elseworlds imprint to tell alternate universe stories. DC has committed to telling more diverse stories in the Modern Age, which I think is crystalized in the various “Celebration” issues published. DC’s annual Pride anthology started in 2021, and subsequent celebration anthologies have featured Asian American and Black heroes and creators. While we don’t know when the current Modern Age will end (I’m already hedging my bets on this eventually being called the “Rebirth Age”) I do think the future is bright.

#dc comics #chit chat #meta

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holymaccaronii · 15 hours

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Your ‘I have no eyes and I must cry’ au is beautiful. I would love to know more

AUUG I’m very happy to know so, thank you (;;) 💕

This AU has probably the most elaborate (or detailed) lore I’ve ever developed, and I’ll happily summarize the prologue. (I’ve probably mentioned many of these points before but I’ll mention them again, just for you anon <3). I’m still working on a lot of stuff, scenes and designs, and while some stuff may change I feel confident enough to explain more of it now. This AU takes place after a modified ending of the videogame where the other mastercomputers get deactivated, Ted gets turned into a slug and the rest of the survivors die. The catch in here is that AM doesn’t let the souls of the other survivors escape, trapping them somewhere deep in his complex and keeping them as bodiless essences who can do nothing more than exist in hell itself.

The lore tries to give a continuation of what will happen in the story with the Luna colony and AM, who is now seeking new organic bodies to put the survivors’ souls in and find Ted, who managed to hide himself from AM ever since he got turned into a slug. The whole context of the prologue goes as follows:

The prologue of the AU explains 3/4s of all the lore, one fourth being the origins of the luna colony, the second the origins of BE and the third the first rebirth of Earth’s nature.

The Luna colony project was led by two siblings, directors of a global association of scientists and researchers. They feared the outcome of the war, thus formulated a plan to keep humanity safe until the Earth’s surface was safe enough to return to and carry out a mission to deactivate AM. For the project, they quickly started to recruit people to join it, a good part of them being teenagers so they could train them in time before any major massacre happened. Another mastercomputer is successfully settled under the moon’s crust in order to protect them, and they settle there on time before AM’s global massacre. Every step of the plan is carried out fine until the very last human who secured everyone else in the cryogenic sleep, one of the directors, goes insane and commits and act of betrayal to the rest and to the AI as well. He shuts it down and uses almost all the materials that made it up to build his own empire of sentient robots for him to rule over on the moon. His plan was to have a century (the 109 years ever since the survivors get trapped) to rule the moon and wait for the Earth to be habitable to then return, shut down AM with a virus the original mission was meant to use, and then rule over all humanity. But at some point during the construction of his empire, the virus got deleted, leaving him with no other option than to additionally develop an army to *try* and deactivate AM himself.

After the famous 109 years pass, robotic troops start to get sent down to try and access AM’s cores and manually deactivate him, but no mission ever succeeded, leaving a lot of losses behind and time wasted. At this moment of the timeline, we also get to have a peculiar unit make history on the moon being the first robot there to plant a seed and successfully make it flourish in order to prove to the leader that they were ready to return to Earth (this specific type of unit didn’t know about AM’s existence and believed that the return to earth depended on their preparation to handle the care of nature). Unfortunately it was against the rules for unauthorized units to touch anything from the natural reservoir, and since this unit had broken the rules, as a punishment it got one of its eyes permanently taken out. Still having hope in its metallic heart, this unit escaped to Earth with another seed in order to prove how ready they were to return, unaware of AM’s presence. This unit traveled underground in order to obtain water from possible reservoirs, but ended up facing a life or death situation in AM’s complex, as he had considered it a threat. As a matter of a “miracle”, this unit ended up rebirthing into a god-like machine with such great powers that not only allowed herself to escape AM’s complex by drilling a hole towards the surface, but also allowed a good chunk of AM’s cables to be able to move and travel up to the surface as well.

Up to here we begin with the third fourth of the lore where AM meets BE and fakes his background in order to justify his hate and get BE to let him roam the earth as freely as possible, still having his cables latched to the ground but being able to move them. With her newfound powers, BE’s plan was to restore Earth’s nature to completion through an incredibly advanced type of simulation over the Earth’s surface where she could create life and matter and keep it existing as long as she wasn’t shut down or damaged. She would finally be able to prove her worth to the moon’s ruler, and allow humans to literally use her to survive + help the real nature slowly take her place. AM initially didn’t mind this plan of her’s, as he could easily betray her later on and finally trap the rest of the humans in his complex. Even so, as time passed by, he started to develop certain feelings for BE as well as possessiveness over her since she basically granted him almost every wish he ever had. AM slowly changed his mind and no longer wanted the humans to return, but keep them away so he could enjoy an eternal heaven with BE on Earth. AM tried to reason with BE about this, but BE denied every single bad thing he mentioned about humans since she had always been influenced with the idea that humans were perfect beings and nature was a subordinate of them to be used as a tool. In an act of rage and desperation, AM trapped BE in his complex in order to share with her the true violent and disgusting history from humans just so that she could develop the same hate he had for them. But having accidentally also shown her who he truly was (since he was also a creation, a weapon from human beings), BE not only developed a great hatred for humans but also for him, resulting in having him vanished from the surface.

The moon’s ruler, who had stopped sending troops in order to let BE restore nature for him to later take over and use her power to shut down AM, noticed that the Earth’s “nature” suddenly began to perish all over again, this being a consequence of BE’s loss of her hope. This led him to take a critical decision to wake up the humans in cryogenic sleep and keep them inside a zoo on the moon where he would ensure their survival until they found an exo planet to move to. Earth had two displeased AI’s under and above the surface, at this point it was better to leave it behind.

From this point and on, the prologue comes to an end and the main story starts it’s course with 5 humans escaping the zoo on the moon and returning to Earth. Once they meet BE, she puts each of them in a trial to prove their values as humans (this is parallel to the games that AM put the survivors in in the videogame). After each of them successfully complete her trials, she re-gains hope in humanity and begins the rebirth of nature a second time.

I won’t spoil the 4~5 endings possible from here and on, but the humans set themselves the objective to help BE eradicate the corrupted beasts controlled by AM that now roamed the Earth, mostly active during winter when BE is less powerful. The rest of the story reveals more secrets, scenes, explanations of past incidents, etc. I’m planning to develop a series of books of sorts with the story narrated simply (bc my English is intermediate-ish, which I consider not enough for an elaborate fic and allat) and also depicting scenes with illustrations. I’ll see how the project goes, but I’ll take my time on it since I also have other projects in mind including my papercrafts n other stuff. Anyways, all of this being explained, I will gladly take more requests/questions to answer :3.

#ihnmaims #i have no mouth and i must scream #ihneaimc #be ihneaimc #i have no eyes and i must cry

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bluehairlaunch · 2 days

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Top 7 Dragon Ball characters that never met (but should have)

Honorable mention, Lord Frieza and Goku Black. Goku Black has the face of the man Frieza despises most, while Frieza's subjugation and genocide of the galaxy is exactly what Zamasu fears and abhors about mortals. They're basically each other's respective boogeymen.

Launch & Vegeta

Like she'd shoot his ass, right? And then sneeze and suddenly Vegeta thinks all humans can do that.

Gohan & King Piccolo

Lil' G got a small taste of what a bastard Piccolo used to be in the Saiyan Saga, but that paled in comparison to the genocidal freak that was the Demon King. I don't think it would be hard for them to meet either, because Piccolo is both the King and himself. Him regressing or being controlled somehow by his father would make for great stakes as well, way better than just bringing Cell back like a bunch of fucking hacks.

Baby & Frieza

Basically the opposite of Zamasu and Frieza, these two would be natural allies if they could keep their smugness (and smirks) under control. Sure, they'd both be fitting the other for a dagger in the back from almost the moment they met, but they're gonna fail to kill Goku anyway, it's in their nature, so in the end it would never come to that. And then they'd be besties in Hell

King Cold & Goku

C'mon, this is interesting. If some twink hadn't shown up to ruin their fun, we could've gotten the generic shonen rematch, followed by King Cold going whatever the Frieza-race equivalent of Super Saiyan is when Goku inevitably wastes his baby boy again. I'm glad twinks with lavender hair exist, but this wouldn't have been the worst timeline, would it?

Good Buu & King Kai

Finally, someone who would laugh at King Kai's jokes. Korin and Puar were th|i|s close to snagging this slot btw. Because they're both cats you see

Dr. Gero & Cell

The good Doctor Frankenstein has never even met his Frankenstein's Monster in any timeline. Would he be pleased? Cell definitely wouldn't obey him and would only incidentally kill Goku. Would Cell be thankful? Is Gero willing to sacrifice all of humanity for his revenge? Fanfiction writers, please

Gohan & the Great Saiyaman

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glai1023-blog · 2 days

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What I thought happened to the Carlos Sainz contract saga (I am not an insider I am just speculating based on the timeline and whatever comes out officially and unofficially) If you don't agree, dont come after me, make your own possible scenario. I'm just a bored F1 fan who has trouble falling asleep and making speculations to pass time:

--2023 Ferrari start contract talks with both Charles and Carlos since both of them have their contracts ending on 2024, they plan on announcing the renewal simultaneously probably in Monza (home ground and all that)

--obviously Charles gets offered a multi-year because I think he has a great management team around him and because he is Ferrari's golden boy, Mr. Todt of course secured a contract favorable for Charles because although he looks like a meek boy I think he is a very ruthless businessman and truly has Charles back, also after the 2022 debacle I think Ferrari wants to get back to Charles good graces. They probabaly just said yes to most of his demands.

-- Carlos gets offered a 1+1 contract which his team countered offer, I dont know how good a negotiator his cousin is but I guess talks slowed down because neither party is willing to back down so announcement gets delayed

--somewhere along negotiation with the Sainz camp, Lewis is reaching his limit with Merc and probably sent a feeler to other teams

--since talks with Carlos' management is going nowhere still, Elkann decides to try his luck with Lewis after discovering he is open to switching teams

--Lewis hits a breaking point with Merc and starts serious talks with Ferrari. Feeling things may be getting clearer with Lewis, Ferrari may or may not have tried to give a final push to Carlos with the 1+1 offer which his camp probably still didn't like and counter offered.

--Ferrari decides to announce the solo multi-year (I still hate Ferrari for making this a thing and not saying the actual numbers) contract renewal of Charles

--Ferrari decides not to renew Carlos' contract. Elkann & Vasseur decides to go full battle gear, all hands on deck negotiations with Lewis which he obviously appreciates and accepted.

--Lewis probably (ehem definitely) signed with Ferrari without giving a heads up to Toto. Ferrari was not planning on announcing Lewis' move the way it came out and it probably (ehem definitely) is leaked by Toto when Lewis informed him after the fact.

--Carlos, now seatless for 2025 gets a lucrative offer from Audi, he is not sure he wants to take his chances with a new team on the grid and decides to try with Redbull and Merc first which kept Audi hanging (I'm not sure how they really felt about that, but since they keep saying very PR friendly statement to the press about Carlos' situation with them lets just say they really want him in their line up)

--Redbull is not going to sign Carlos, there were definitely talks but I dont think Christian likes him that much (that guy has a hard on for Ricciardo) . Merc... merc is in a limbo (like their car) after Lewis drops them a bomb and now they dont know if they should take an early gamble with Kimi or sign a more seasoned driver first 'til Kimi is F1 ready, so they offer Carlos a 1 year (to keep an option open for Kimi) which obviously Sainz camp didn't like.

--So now, Carlos ends up having to choose between accepting the Audi offer (if they still have that offer on the table since Carlos kept them waiting for quite a while) and apparently the Williams seat, because I think its pretty obvious they are not keeping Logan.

And that's how I think it all went down 😂

Can we sleep now, brain?

#formula 1 #scuderia ferrari #charles leclerc #carlos sainz #mercedes #lewis hamilton #fred vasseur #john elkann

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3-2-whump · 2 days

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The Auction Floor: Thomas Costa’s POV

Hi all,

In exchange for a chapter on the current timeline (a chapter I am still working on/fixing up before it is posted), I am posting a prequel chapter. Any and all prequel chapters will be found under 'Eternal, part 0.' They won't have nav arrows, but they will have an explanation to when in the story they take place, and a link to the masterlist to read more. Hope this system works for everyone!

This chapter happens slightly before, concurrently, and a little after The Auction Floor

TW/CW: death of a minor character (briefly mentioned), institutionalized slavery, pet whump, dehumanization, nonconsensual nudity (nonsexual), minor whump (at time of story), creepy/intimate whumper(s) (sort of a multiple whimpers situation), manhandling (nonsexual) (towards the end)

Mob boss Luciano Antonio Costa – Boss Tony - had died, leaving mafia to his grandson, Thomas, to control. The newly-appointed heir didn’t look much like a typical Italian mob boss. With his blonde hair, steely blue eyes, and freckled fair skin, he hardly even looked Italian. However, the old boss never had any legitimate male heirs to pass the helm of leadership to, having only one daughter before his wife died. Although he begrudgingly accepted his daughter’s marriage to Tom’s father, an inconsequential gangster from the Irish mob, he had always intended to pass the family business onto his surviving grandson.

“I’m so sorry for your loss” began to lose its meaning after the fourth well-meaning chump, and unfortunately, Grandpa Tony’s funeral had a good turnout. “That was a beautiful eulogy,” one of many nameless faces sniffled. “You two must have been very close,” they’d said to him. Were we ever close, though? Thomas wanted to ask, remembering only the time they last fought. It may as well have been a lifetime ago when he was a teenager who turned his back on the family to try and live a straight life, but the guilt hung over him like a curse no matter how hard he had tried to run away from his fate as the next boss of the Costas. It was always about what he wanted me to be, not what I wanted. Never once was it ever about what I wanted to do with my life, he bitterly remembered. Even now, it was all about Grandpa Tony’s wants, as he accepted his role in leading the Costas. He cast a baleful glance at the casket as it slowly disappeared beneath the earth.You won, old man.

His underboss and a few of the capos, men that he had grown up with and who now supported him in running the large criminal organization, caught on to their new boss’ sour mood. Admittedly, it wasn’t hard to notice how intensely he scowled at the freshly filled-in grave. They suggested celebrating Thomas’ ascension to head of the family with drinks and a night out, but their idea of a night out was attending a black-market auction and maxing out the organization’s funds on frivolous shit. Powerful drugs, illicit weapons, plundered antiques, and –dear god, did Jaime just buy an arowana?! Thomas looked over the side of his whiskey glass disapprovingly.

He glanced over at a corner of the auction house that seemed to gather a large crowd. He shrugged and decided to join them to see the display. The crowd surrounded an entire floor-to-ceiling wall of glass, behind which stood people from all around the world, each divided into their own little compartments within the glass wall, each of them completely naked. The way they were displayed in those little glass tanks was oddly reminiscent of how fish were displayed at a pet store.

Get a pet, people had said to him. It’ll be good for you, they said, help lift your spirits, they said, if you’re responsible for keeping one little thing alive, maybe you’ll be more motivated to take care of yourself, they said. Surely those people had meant a cat or a dog or a python, and probably not an actual human being. Although, Thomas remembered the people giving him that advice were part of the major crime families of the city, too. Perhaps this was what they meant all along?

Regardless of what those people meant, it was a whole different thing to actually commit to owning a person. He’d never seriously considered it before, but now he found himself thoughtfully observing the merchandise behind the glass. Though there were a few people who were obviously adults, most of them were teens, and most them were girls, though there were a couple boys, too.

Whichever one he’d pick, they would have to be relatively attractive, if he was going to have to bear looking at them at the end of every day. He eyed a glass cell with a stunning blonde girl futilely trying to cover herself with her hands and ignore the gazes directed within her cell. Thomas pushed past the crowd and moved on; pretty girls like that would be swiped up immediately, so it wouldn’t even be worth the trouble to place a bid. The next cell held a freckled boy who leaned into the glass, fogging it up with his breath and writing ‘HELP ME’ over and over again with his finger. Thomas passed on that one, too. One by one he would find something wrong with the human assets behind the glass cases. Too shy, too desperate, not my type, that one just stares ahead and doesn’t even move…

He finally stopped around the last few cells, where a crowd had dissipated from in front of a glass cell with discontented murmurs. Inside that one crouched a small boy, knobby knees drawn to bony chest, thin, tan arms wrapped around his shins, and a head of messy dark hair resting on top his knees. The boy dared to look up from his hiding place. Loose, unruly waves of hair and thick, dark eyelashes nearly covered his expressive dark brown eyes. Those eyes hid nothing as they shone with fear. Thomas gripped the whiskey in his hand a little tighter. The child cut a striking image inside the glass prison, reminding him of a time and a place and an incidence he never liked to think about for long-

To his misfortune, his subordinates caught him staring. “Got your eye on the little slave, Tommy-Boy?” Luca asked as he sauntered up to him.

“Don’t call him that.” Even if that was technically what he would be, the whole concept still took a while for him to get used to. “I just think he’s cute is all,” he mumbled into his glass, draining it of the rest of the whiskey while he tried to convince himself the pink in his cheeks was only from the drink.

“Why don’t you place a bid?” Thomas whipped around to see Jaime lurking behind him. When did he get here? His eyes traveled down to the large picnic cooler on wheels, supposedly where Jaime’s new fish was. “Boss Tony, God rest his soul, left you quite the inheritance, I’m sure you can afford him,” Jamie snickered. He pointed to the sign above the glass cell, where the serial number and QR code were displayed prominently. “142225,” he read.

“Doesn’t he kind of remind you of-”

“You shut up. Right now,” Thomas warned.

“We’ll shut up once you place a bid, now come on! At least look up the little slave!”

Thomas sighed and whipped out his phone; the sooner he scanned the QR Code with the app the black market had made him download, the sooner his underlings would shut the hell up. A profile popped up on his phone screen, the men crowding comically around him to read over his shoulder. 142225 had been collected in Pakistan, was 5’1”, and weighed barely 90 lbs. at the last weigh-in.

“They like to starve the kids here,” Luca explained nonchalantly. “Makes it easier to control them.” Thomas glanced briefly at the thin boy inside the glass, frowning a little as he let that unsettling fact sink in. He quickly scrolled past the blood type, known allergies, and other information he deemed irrelevant to hover his thumb over the ‘PLACE A BID’ button.

“Well, go on, you know you want to!”

“He looks easy enough to take care of, and easy on the eyes, too!”

“We saw how enviously you stared at Matteo’s pet at the last New Year’s party, won’t it be nice to finally have one of your own?”

Eventually, their peer-pressure resulted in the new mob boss placing a bid, becoming $30k poorer, filling out some ridiculous form about any last-minute body mods he may want, and waiting until the end of the night to collect his new slave and go home. His companions had left hours ago, and every other buyer had gotten their slave already, so it was just him waiting alone in an emptying warehouse, trying to make small talk with one of the event coordinators.

“So, does he have a name?”

She didn’t even look up from her tablet. “He’s named whatever you want to name him.”

“Where is he from? Besides the collection point, where’s he actually from?”

“We don’t know.”

“How old is he?”

“We don’t know.”

Thomas barely suppressed a groan. “Is there anything you do know?” he ground out impatiently.

“Yeah. He looks even cuter when he cries.” The woman smirked over her tablet, looking over Thomas’ right shoulder. “He’s here.”

Thomas turned around to see the boy, now clothed in a white T-shirt and bluish gray sweatpants. He kept his eyes downcast and his hands folded in front of him. “What’s your name, kid?”

The boy looked up briefly before dropping his gaze back to his bare feet. “Khaled,” he replied, voice timid and heavily accented, “but you may call me whatever you want, sir.”

Khaled. He silently rolled the name around on his tongue as if savoring an exotic sweet. Khaled. Thomas cast what he hoped was a reassuring smile, not that Khaled saw it with his gaze fixed to the floor. “Luckily for you, I like your name.” He strode decisively toward the exit, gently placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder to direct him. “Come with me, Khaled.”

In the nearly three-hour car ride back to Thomas’ home, the mob boss learned three things about his new purchase. Firstly, Khaled was shy, only speaking when spoken to and even then, using as few words as possible. Also, Khaled probably didn’t speak much English; how much of this was because he was shy, and how much of this was because he literally couldn’t understand him? And –finally, -Khaled could run. Since the moment the car parked, Khaled dashed out and sprinted into the street. He nearly got hit by a truck before Thomas could chase after him, pull him back, and drag him inside the apartment building. The scene of a grown man dragging a distressed kid who was screaming bloody murder probably shocked some residents, but fortunately the doorman was part of the Costas and did not bat an eye.

“It is too damn early for this!” Thomas complained to himself as he practically threw Khaled into the awaiting elevator. “Do you want to be leashed up like a dog, you little shit?! Cause that’s what’s going to happen if you keep trying to run away!”

“Let go of me, please!” the boy cried, his voice brittle and panicked like a scared, caged animal as he tried to twist out of the punishing grip on his arm.

“Like hell I’m letting you go, not after maxing out my personal credit card on you and pulling an all-nighter for the first time since Kandahar!” He violently jammed the buttons that would take them to the top floor of the high rise.

Soon the elevator dinged, doors swooshing open as they reached the floor of his penthouse. “Come on!” Thomas continued to drag the boy through the hallway, ignoring him begging in that endearing accent of his. Khaled’s complaints all but ceased as soon as he opened the door to his penthouse and let the boy step inside. His eyes widened, sparkling in awe, and his jaw dropped as he let out a reverent “whoa” that transcended any language barrier.

The living room to the penthouse itself was light and spacious, with large floor-to-ceiling windows that let in plenty of natural light, and minimalist décor to accent the living room. A large L-shaped couch dominated the living room and looked over the expansive rooftop and the cityscape beyond it. The rest of the room terminated sharply into a dining area with a large oak table and a wood-floored kitchen with two large granite countertops. An imposingly large door –the door to Thomas’ bedroom, -stood closed to the left of the living room. A hallway to the right branched off into an office on one side, and a guest bathroom opposite. A small staircase right outside the laundry room led to a storage loft spanning above the entrance. Thomas toed off his shoes at the door. Khaled, who wasn’t wearing any shoes, hesitantly walked in. Tom frowned when he noticed the dirty footprints left behind on his beige rug.“Would you like a bath, Khaled?” he suggested. The fact that Khaled didn’t reply made him again wonder how much English he truly understood. We can work on that. He sighed in exasperation as he gripped the boy’s arm and dragged him off to the guest bathroom. Once inside, Thomas deposited him at the entrance and turned on the lights and the fan. He got the shower head running next. Khaled stood silently watching him by the door as he tested the water’s temperature with his hand a few times. He nodded in satisfaction as the water finally reached an agreeable temperature. “Come on in,” he beckoned. Khaled inched closer to the bath tub. “Can I take off your clothes?” he asked. The boy blinked, then shook his head as he quickly took off the shirt himself. The drab sweatpants soon followed, and he quickly stepped into the shower. Thomas drew the curtain to prevent water from spilling and to give him a shred of privacy. As the boy showered, he soon realized Khaled had nothing to wear but that depressing little t-shirt and sweatpants. He took them to the laundry room and chucked them in the hamper, making a mental note to buy some clothes for Khaled as soon as possible. Cute as the small naked boy was, he was still a minor, and Tom didn’t need any extra distractions while he was adjusting to his new role as Boss of the Costa Family.

Le Tag List: @kabie-whump @rainydaywhump @whumped-by-glitter @skittles-the-whumpee @generic-whumperz @bamber344 @there-will-always-be-blood @morning-star-whump

#whump writing #whumpee #creepy/intimate whumper #multiple whumpers #tw death mention #institutionalized slavery #pet whump #tw dehumanization #tw nonsexual nudity #nonconsensual nudity #tw minor whump #at time of story #manhandling #near the end there #I think I got all the tags but if i'm missing any do tell me

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poliscijunkee5555 · 2 days

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The Conviction is Costing Trump (Some) Votes

Early polling shows that some voters are changing their mind after last week's verdist

DAN PFEIFFER

JUN 06, 2024

About a week ago, Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts related to his efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. It was a cataclysm with the potential to shake up the entire election. While many exuded palpable joy at the idea of Donald Trump finally being held to account for his crimes, a sense of fear spread among Democrats who believed the conviction would barely impact the race. That’s understandable — even though Trump lost every election since stumbling ass-backward into the White House in 2016, his ability to survive things that would end most careers is well known.

As the trial came to a close, some people argued that the legal battle had been a net positive for the former President — yes, they believed that an ongoing criminal trial related to covering up an affair with an adult film star would push undecided voters into his camp.

It usually takes a couple of weeks for the full impact of major news events to show up in polling. That timeline might be longer in this instance because so many voters have tuned out political news. However, a decent amount of post-conviction polling is available now and we can get a sense of the initial impact.

And it’s good news (sort of).

1. Voters (Mostly) Trust the Process

Over the past couple of years, there has been a fair amount of cynicism about the various prosecutions of Trump. Pluralities believed that the indictments were about trying to hurt Trump politically. In the most recent New York Times/Siena poll, 49% of voters and a fifth of Biden 2020 voters didn’t believe that Trump could receive a fair trial.

Trump, the GOP, and the MAGA media spent the entire trial calling the judge corrupt and falsely accusing President Biden of pulling the strings. The early polls show they failed to discredit the verdict.

#corrupt gop #maga #traitor trump #donald trump #republicans #crooked donald #trump verdict #voters #Voters trust the process #juries work #please vote

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nightskyfoxyy · 28 days

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...anyway

#lo rambles #star wars #the bad batch #fanart #they deserved better #both of them #i said what i said #phee genoa #tech bad batch #techphee #tech x phee #the ending if we were in the good timeline #yes this is based on that historical picture

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jewishbarbies · 7 months

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Sony marvel movies are inherently better than disney marvel movies because Sony makes films, not brand commercials.

#g talks #that and they actually hire people #who enjoy and understand the material #and don’t view that as some kind of red flag #‘but morbius!!’ disney literally made a show with an ai generated opening sequence #sit the fuck down #I’d rather the movie end up being objectively bad #than the movie start bad bc of the people working on it #like get me a good crew and I’ll still appreciate the project #for what it was #but the marvels trailer felt like some kind of joke #when marvel movies were meant to be taken seriously #the mcu was actually good #it had its flaws obviously #but we had a chance #now they’re purposely hiring people who don’t care about the material #and making so many mistakes they’ve retconned their own timeline multiple times #and only brought in the multi verse for covering up their lack of continuity #anti mcu #anti disney #mine #/mobile #/okay to reblog

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gallinusspacebirb · 2 months

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Soo yes I recently became addicted to this song and this was on my head for so long that I had to do an animatic for it. This is literally the first time I manage to do actually do something instead of just daydreaming, hope it's not the least haha!

This animatic is about an AU (Alternate Universe) which means the events depicted aren't canon. (I just needed my dose of edgyness and angst hahaha-)

So, Decius (the veteran) is an alpha legion sleeper operative. Beschrel (the psyker) has been with him for quite some time, and this surprisingly helped him to get a lot better, but doesn't know a thing about his bf's secret identity. Until one day, when Decius receives an activation code that set him on a mission to spread a special scrap code into the Mourningstar's spirit machine to crash it on Atoma.

And of course, this can't end well...

#tw blood #tw animated violence #darktide #darktide ocs #animatic #au #oc:Beschrel #oc:Decius #i fucking love angst and will until the end of my days #everyone knows (ulterior motives)#aka the song which has only 4 sentences but DAMN ITS SO GOOD i wished we were in the timeline where someone actually found the entire thing-

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leavingautumn13 · 5 months

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For the WIP title asks:

Rising Tide (which is also a song by Sunny Day Real Estate)!

Tell me, do Kyogre and Groudon meet at the shore to enjoy a nice playdate while Maxie and Archie fight over land/water property lines like the suburban dads they are?

this ask is sending me, oh my lord. thank you--i laughed pretty hard at this :D

and this song is within the time frame of songs i'm referencing in the fic, so that's just perfect! thank you!

"color your skin with gold, and the violence remains cover your eyes with rose, but the stain remains will you repair your life with all the holes you fill? smother your will and drain you of your passion..."

oh yeah, that's going on the playlist.

as for our beloved suburban dads, i can't say too much without spoiling the last quarter or so of the fic--though i guess i have been pretty transparent about maxie actually succeeding in catching groudon. that's a thing that happens. gonna be mum about the circumstances and implications and fallout of that, though. i'm sure it turns out fine.

as for the wip itself, it's the first chapter of eye of the storm. the title refers to the circumstances that drive may to leave home in the first place--things get to be too much for her.

for a little context about my may, she's 22 at the start of the fic, and had moved out of her parents' house at 18, back when they still lived in johto. she opted to move back in with them temporarily when they moved to hoenn (instead of staying in johto by herself), and it's a choice she starts regretting very quickly. snippet under the cut. i feel like i should add a trigger warning for this as well--it's a bad situation if you've ever been in it before but pretty vague if you don't know what you're looking at. tw for implied emotional abuse, i suppose.

This was bad.

May sat on the carpeted top stair and gripped her empty mug so tightly her knuckles turned white. A faint “godsdammit” floated around the corner that led into the living room and up to her ears. Whatever her mother was fussing with down there had her, to be incredibly mild, extremely pissed off.

This was bad, but it had probably been worse at some point before. Not that May could put a finger on when, exactly; the last four years of solitude had papered over the memory of her mother’s moods with a series of perfectly pleasant lunches and borderline enjoyable outings to the movies. The tone of voice May was catching now, in snippets from the ground floor, was a knife widening the old wound of the six years before that, during their time in Olivine, after their last big move. The first time this had happened, May had been thirteen and stupidly hopeful.

She didn’t have age as an excuse this time.

Did she really need another cup of coffee? She could turn around, tail between her legs, and head back to her room. This one locked, though that might cause her more problems in the long run. She’d already endured the years of formless suspicion about why she kept her door closed all the time, and even that particularly bad summer where the door had been removed entirely. She didn’t need, didn’t want a repeat of that. Something told her the offense her mother would suffer over a locked door would be far greater than over a closed one. Teenagers were just like that, after all. From an adult it would be an insult.

Moving back in had been a massive fucking mistake.

#thank you SO MUCH for the ask!! <3 #this was a really good one.#''if maxie gets groudon what's going on with archie'' archie has the worst luck of anybody in the fic the poor guy #the better question is what's the devon corporation up to? if you've heard my takes on the delta episode you may have an idea #this fic is emerald based and not oras based and therefore not in the mega timeline but infinity energy is still very much a thing #anyway. no spoilers #autumn.fic #fic: eye of the storm #i guess the only thing i'll spoil is this fic DOES have a very happy ending for everybody because i'm a sucker for that #and it's pokemon so the whole setting runs on the power of friendship #we get a lot of that too #edited to add: i have no idea how you clocked that chapter title referred to the emerald fic but you were spot on. damn.#i'm impressed

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