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useless-catalanfacts · 6 months

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La Pedrera. Photos from Ajuntament de Barcelona and La Pedrera.

Nowadays, la Pedrera is one of the most famous building in Barcelona, Catalonia. It's one of the most emblematic buildings in the Catalan Modernism style, and has been declared part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Works of Antoni Gaudí".

But it hasn't always been recognised as good architecture, all the opposite! In fact, take a look at its name: it's technically called Casa Milà (house of the Milà family), but locals always call it "la Pedrera", which means "the quarry" in the Catalan language. When it was built, in 1910, Barcelonians thought it looked like an ugly piece of stone-y quarry mountain in the middle of the city.

But that's not the only thing that they thought it looked like. Let's see some parodies that were published at the time:

In 1909, the popular magazine Cu-Cut! published this vignette of a mother and a son walking in front of the house, when the child asks his mom "was there also an earthquake here?". This is a reference to an earthquake that happened in Sicily the previous month, and to the house's bendy shapes that look like it was shaken.

In 1925, the children's magazine En Patufet also joined in, with a vignette where the owner realises he can't hang up curtains* on this windows.

*Note: I'm using the translation "curtains" as a simplification so that English speakers without a detailed knowledge of Catalan culture can understand the joke. The vignette actually uses the word "domàs", meaning a decorative textile that is hanged from balconies during holidays.

In 1910, Cu-cut! compared it to a mona, the cake that Catalans eat on Easter Monday, by drawing a vignette where a child says "Daddy, daddy, I want a mona as big as this one!".

Three times did the magazine El Diluvio mock this building.

First, in 1910, they called it a "Medieval architecture model, between burrow and burial, that I don't quite dislike". It described its future in the following way: "the round gaps in the façade have become dark holes where all kinds of vermin come in and out: crocodiles and rats, but also snakes, hedgehogs, owls, sea monsters... Two undulating lines wrap up the building, which stands in front of an absolutely black sky. Above it, in the rooftop, the chimneys, the air vents and the stairs' endings have stopped being whipped cream mountains to become sinister piles of skulls."

In 1911, El Diluvio striked again, comparing the building's cast iron handrails to a fish stand. Their illustration had Casa Milà with a sign saying "cod entrails sold here!".

And lastly, it made fun of the controversial statue of Our Lady of the Rosary that was supposed to go on top. The Milà family in the end decided not to place the statue (some say because they didn't like how the sculptor made it, some say it's because they were scared of having a religious symbol after the 1909 anti-clerical riots) but the architect Gaudí, who was a very religious man, insisted on having it. This caused the Milàs and Gaudí to argue, which the magazine represents with a caricature of Mr. Milà wearing a Tarzan-like loincloth and branding a whip fighting against Gaudí wearing a pith helmet, grabbing him by the hair and hitting him with a hammer. The text under the image translates to "Will the Virgin Mary stand on top of the peculiar monument? Who will win, Gaudí or Milà?".

In 1912, the popular magazine L'Esquella de la Torratxa imagined that this extravagant futuristic building could only be a garage for parking airship and air-planes. This satirical drawing is titled "Future Barcelona. The true destiny of the Milà and Pi house". (Milà and Pi were the owners of this building).

The text that accompanied this illustration wondered if this building is the Wagnerian Valhalla, an anti-aircraft defense for the Moroccan War, or a hangar for zeppelins.

What do you think? Was the banter justified?

#la pedrera #casa milà #barcelona #catalunya #història #arquitectura #arts #history #architecture #antoni gaudí #gaudí #unesco world heritage #world heritage #historical #history tag #art history #art #modernisme #travel

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deacons-wig · 15 days

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I'd prefer if we never got to see the origin of Vault Boy and Vault Tec's branding in the same way I'd rather not get a canon answer of who started the War or how. That's the point of War Never Changes.

Vault Boy is a sinister figure in his cheerful embrace of Armageddon. Giving the Vault Tec brand a face and a name and a backstory feels so unimportant to what is actually interesting about Fallout. What's important to me is the big picture pre war, and the details of what comes after.

What is interesting to me is exploring how propaganda is designed to convince people how close they are to annihilation--or homelessness, unemployment, obscurity, or being The Other and therefore destined to suffer--in hell, in oppressions, being ostracized. Honestly insert any sort of marginalization or suffering here. Crony capitalism uses propaganda to market products designed to manipulate people into buying distance between themselves and that annihilation. Putting themselves "behind the thumb" of Vault Boy, so to speak. Buying a lifestyle. Vault Boy does it with a wink and a smile, inviting those who can afford it to buy their way to safety while using capital and fear to perpetuate the cycle. I don't need the specifics to understand this.

Some ghoulnaysis below the cut:

I'll admit, my initial reaction to pre-war Ghoulgins being the inspiration for Vault Boy was funny! Mr. Cooper Howard, washed up actor experiencing an existential crisis being shoehorned into corporate propaganda that then haunts him for the next 200+ years? Selling manifest destiny, racism, the Rugged Individual, the revisionist history that cowboys were a) white and b) more than a brief footnote in the history of the colonization of North America's west. The commodification of entertainers/creatives/public figures. Selling identities to be packaged into a product that will outlive them? Only to have that person live alongside that role they regret (?) playing... kinda tasty, if we have to give Vault Boy a backstory, though I didn't get a clear sense of his actual feelings about being used as a propaganda guy which I think is a failure of the show to commit to the narrative they set up, which happens with a lot of the show's (lack of) engagement with Fallout's larger themes anyway.

But The Ghoul (stupid name!!! weird and boring choice!!!) is just such an uncompelling and repellent character to me. I love a good bad guy or even anti-hero, but honestly he lacks any interiority. He's an evil karma character (eats people, waterboards and mutilates people, sells people to organ harvesters...like? that literally makes you evil in the games...) but the narrative pushes him as an antihero or someone with gray morality because he what..."likes" dogs? And isn't as decayed or unsettling looking as other ghouls (implying handsome=good or interesting). People aren't afraid of him because he is a ghoul, they're afraid of him because he's evil and will hurt them! Sometimes for no reason! I see the callback to the director telling him to shoot his co-star and Cooper saying he's "the good guy," but is that why he becomes so fucking evil post war? Really?

I don't know why he does what he does other than...the world sucked before and sucks now so he might as well represent the basest of human behavior? That seems to be the thesis of the show--unless kindness and community is engendered (by the vaults, by Management, by a civic government, by corporations) people will descend into chaos.

So why have this poorly executed anti-hero be the origin of Vault Boy? What are the narrative choices being made here? Is it just Rule of Cool?

Personally I would like a pathetic, rotting wet cat of a ghoul, some sort of carved out husk of a washed up movie star either trying to relive his glory days, or avoid them--having given up hope of finding his family after 200 years--being dragged into Lucy's orbit and being constantly reminded of his Vault Boy fame, that she is a walking Vault Girl with her Okey Dokey's and Golden Rule. He'd be a joke, a footnote of the old world. He'd be mean and snarky, even unpredictable and uncooperative--have a public persona of friendly curiosity and a private, cynical one.

Pathetic Ghoulgins would remind audiences of the cost of capitalism and imperialism without resorting to the thesis that war never changes means that people are inherently cruel and will resort to violence, rather than existent corporate and political power structures intentionally create the conditions in which people accept perpetual cycles of exploitation and harm for the sake of their own safety and comfort, despite knowing the cost of maintaining the status quo, and not seeing or believing that distance between the status quo and total annihilation is measured by the smiling thumbs up of a cartoon mascot.

I'm sure there are other ways The Ghoul could have been a successful character as well but.... That's satire. That's interesting. That's Fallout.

#fallout #fallout tv #fallout prime #fallout tv show #the ghoul #cooper howard #vault tec #“let people enjoy things” well i enjoy critical analysis #i dislike the big picture of the show but i love fallout enough to dig through the mess #fotv critical #fallout critical

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maxwell-grant · 2 months

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I guess it's also time for the annual ask: Thoughts on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

@mirrorfalls asked: Perhaps it's time to touch the elephant in the room: thoughts on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

anonymous asked: Any thoughts on Moore's LOEG? anonymous asked: any advice on how to do a fictional character mashup story ala chimera brigade, league, etc? anonymous asked: you wrote a bit on the wold newton universe and the chimera brigade, any thoughts on league of extraordinary gentleman?

(TW: sexual assault, also a whole lot of racism)

(clip from Anti-Spook Squad by Doctor Lalve)

Let it never be said I don't love or do anything for you people because Jesus Christ what an ordeal.

It was pretty inevitable that I'd eventually have to talk about LOEG given the, niche, I made for myself here, and given I'd read and touched on all these other works that either inspired it or were inspired by it, like the Wold Newton Universe, The Chimera Brigade, Tales of the Shadowmen and etc. I'd read through plenty of different LOEG takes and fics, it's an idea that has a lot of appeal on it's own and is easy to flirt with, if not so easy to pull off.

One thing to put upfront: Kevin O'Neil was a brilliant, one-of-a-kind creator and his work here is great, it's the one thing almost unimpeachably great about the whole thing except when he's asked to draw racist caricatures, which he does quite a bit, we'll get into those. I love the collaboration between Moore and O'Neil and I frequently enjoy the little tidbits where they show up as themselves within the supplemental material. O'Neil does a lot of heavy lifting in these even at their worst, in fact especially at their worst. This comic is a legitimately impressive achievement, and I don't regret reading it, if nothing else I think it was a hell of a wake-up call in regards to all of it's warts I may have been overlooking or replicating in my work or that of others.

I'm gonna break it down by going through the individual installments:

Volume 1: One of the nicest things there is to League is that it only keeps getting better, in the sense that it starts off on the worst foot and it gets better by virtue of not really being able to get worse (yes, even with the Golleywog and Harry Potter sections and whatever). From the moment you open the book it takes about six pages for Mina to be assaulted by Brute Arab Rapist Hordes that Quatermain and Nemo have to gun down, and that pretty much sets the stage on what to expect. Volume 1 is where the series has yet to jump off the deep end in tackling all of fiction, being a more grounded adventure story based on it's premise of being a comic book crossover/hero team comprised of Victorian era literary characters. It's LOEG at it's shallowest and most straightforward, and also at it's least impressive. I'm not remotely charmed by much of what's done here, I've seen a million variants of these before and many of those weren't that great either, but their lows weren't as catastrophic.

(text comes from an essay Alan Moore wrote regarding his usage of Fu Manchu in the book, which was scanned and sent to me by @mirrorfalls, thank you for that.)

The LOEG's first enemy is Fu Manchu and the book sure likes depicting leering hordes of yellow peril cartoons for our heroes, Mr Hyde in particular, to brutally mow down. Alan Moore thought the genius trick to making Fu Manchu not-racist was to make him as inscrutable and sinister as possible so as to not even appear human, which is a great understanding of how racial caricatures work guys, the "not potentially offensive" shirt has people asking a lot of questions answered by it.

I've heard a lot of claims over the years that LOEG was intended to be a parody, or satire, and that it's using Fu Manchu to make a point as a criticism of the British Empire and imperialism, and I'm gonna make this clear before we move on: LOEG is not a parody or satire, not as a whole. It parodies and satirizes a lot of things, but it is neither parody nor satire. It is very much in love with much of it's subject matter even when it wants to burn it down. LOEG is also a frankly terrible critique of imperialism, it is one of the most imperialist things I've ever read. Part of it is because you can't just recycle problematic garbage and claim it's commentary, especially when you're going out of your way to sensationalize said garbage to be provocative or in many cases add shit that wasn't even there in the first place. Moore asked if anyone else was gonna try and criticize colonialist bigotry in fiction by tripling down on reproducing it as hard as possible, and then didn't wait for an answer before doing it.

Volume 2: Objectively an improvement over the first if only because Fu Manchu isn't there. It's also where the book kinda improves in terms of making a critique. LOEG never really has much to say about it's characters, instead developing them in service of the story or social commentary, and Volume 2 is better at it than the first. Still has a lot of the same problems as 1, it's still a shallow team-up thing that wants to have it's cake and eat it too, it's still the worse version of a concept that's been done many many times before and after. Edward Hyde gets the bulk of the focus here and he was very clearly Moore and O'Neil's favorite character to work on, he gets the most memorable sequences for better or worse. I don't wanna talk about him much and I don't wanna talk about how the book wraps up the Invisible Man's subplot (and how it's not even gonna be the last time sexual violation of a villain is played for oh-so-horrific catharsis), I'd frankly like to stop thinking about it.

The Traveler's Almanac was definitely the most exhausting part to read in full and only not a total waste of time because of Jess Nevins' annotations, which turn this into fairly valuable research material. But so do Wold Newton articles and they're really not the most riveting thing to read, and at least those have a point or constrain themselves to a single topic or character, or are briefer and come with resources on hand or have a point or even can pitch some neat/cool ideas and concepts as a whole. Jess Nevins even did the better version of this in his own WNU chronologies.

Where as this is just complete ass and there's only so many times you can read a variant of "and then we went to this place with horrible cannibal savages and then we went to the other place with beautiful cannibal savages and then we found this utopia and then we found this dystopia and then we referenced this and that and this and that", and it brings me to another point I'd also seen brought up a lot in regards to LOEG: that it's too damn anglocentric to live up to it's premise, too contradictory within itself, and it was always too big of an undertaking to be done the way Moore and O'Neill did it.

I appreciate Moore trying to make this world feel like a world, in as gigantic all-encompassing a scale as he could possibly account for, with a full world tour and internal chronology. I sure would have liked a big fiction crossover almanac with entire chapters for Africa and China and South America, but we don't get that, because EVERYTHING in them is taken from colonial texts elevated to fact. Literally, entire paragraphs taken from political and colonial texts. All the time spent dicking around with all of those Euro political texts and ancient lore that just had to be paid it's due, and then Orlando goes to China and finds Sun Wukong stuffed as a public freakshow and dismisses his mythos as a bunch of loony (but intriguing and exotic!) hogwash, and Godzilla is later brought up in one line of dialogue to mention how Hugo Hercules killed him offscreen. (I think those might be the only two texts Moore brings up that aren't from European/American sources? There might be others but good luck finding them in the annotations).

Is it unfair to expect Moore to have read all of fiction? Of course it is, but that's what he wants this to be about, he wants this to be about All of Fiction and he wants to write about Africa and China and South America with nothing but colonial texts about those places as reference. He wants to write about how the things he likes are cool and happened and are real while the things he doesn't like don't count or are garbage or didn't happen the way we were told happened. He wants to make a story criticizing racism and misogyny in fiction while writing a text far more racist and misogynistic than most of the things he's bringing up. It's irreconcilable.

Black Dossier: It's constantly jumping between different formats and having to adjust it's prose and visual style accordingly, and it does that fairly well (the beatnik section is completely fucking unreadable though, the prose sections are already a handful to get through as is but that one was too much even for me), although Tempest I think is gonna do it much better. It's got some good parts, it's also got some bad ones. Definitely more readable than the prior two + Almanac.

This is the one with the Gollywog in it and I'm not gonna talk about that thing, I think what's wrong with it is self-explanatory as is. Look, I truly love a lot of Moore's work I've read, and I think a lot of the pushback against Alan Moore painting him as just a cranky old man who hates comics is overblown and shitty and symptomatic of bigger issues with how fans discuss comics and superheroes, but his defense of the Gollywog and his response to the criticisms of LOEG was embarassing and beneath him.

Century: This is the one with Harry Potter and The Lightning Penis in it. To those of you who heard at some point that Alan Moore had done a much-maligned pisstake on Harry Potter and got curious, don't get your hopes up. It's nothing, it's not even that mean, it's just a crude crayon doodle in service of a larger and very dumb critique of modern fiction that could have been anyone. Shame that he bullseyed ahead of the schedule the cultural about-face against Harry Potter without having anything actually criticizing Harry Potter to show for it.

Century does work for me a bit better because it dispenses with the pretense of the series and has it build up to the big awful tragedy it ends on, with all of it's remaining characters miserable immortals and all the fictions having curdled up and gone sour. It works for me only because I have no love whatsoever for this world and so it destroying our characters in the service of the larger narrative about stories and fictional immortality and whatnot is a decision I agree with and I think makes it stronger, even if the social commentary / the story's criticism of modern stories compared to the old ones is frankly absurd. Century I think was perceived as Moore/O'Neill having lost the plot, but to me it feels like the plot (more importantly, the point of it) finally showing up after so much pointless dicking around.

The Nemo trilogy: Easily the one I most enjoyed reading, the Nemo Trilogy is almost like a breather set in between books, just fairly straightforward pulp adventure stories done in far less rancid a fashion than Volume 1. It feels less like a LOEG book and more like one of those LOEG fanfics made by people who like the concept and characters but are dissappointed by the books, so they fill or add or rewrite in the blanks with their own ideas, which is basically every LOEG fanfic ever made. I quite like Janni Dakkar as a character and I'm already a huge mark for Captain Nemo, one of my favorite characters ever, and I was of course very glad to get away from the extremely tiresome Mina/Allan/Orlando trio for a change. Frankly I'd even recommend these as a standalone, they're so disconnected from everything else in LOEG.

If you guys want to read a comic take on Captain Nemo though, read Mobilis by Juni Ba. Infinitely better than anything Moore did with the concept of Nemo, takes far less pages to actually explore the character meaningfully and has far more interesting, more humane and personal things to say and do in general, one of the best things I ever read and a tremendous palette cleanser after LOEG.

Tempest: Tempest is what I'd call the best of the LOEG books, in terms of craft and in terms of achieving what it sets out to do. Namely, it's one of the most elaborate and most artistically impressive slowly unfurling middle fingers I'd ever read, Alan and Kevin in full burning down the house mode throwing everything they've got at the wall, playing around with as many different styles and gags and ideas as they can cram into the great apocalyptic ending of their collaboration. It's a very spiteful work that has a lot of joy and humor to it, fully divested from giving a shit about it's characters and instead recasting them as the bit players they always were in the grand fuckening of humanity at the hands of our fictions.

It gets to burn down everything and also preserve everything in a big dreamy Noah's Ark forever, it plays to every strength the series had, and frankly I barely minded the detours because this thing is all detours. The superhero parody that takes up so much of it isn't really anything funny or insightful or really anything, but there's good bits in it, and I like Alan Moore talking trash about superheroes (of course, it pales in comparison to What Can We Know About Thunderman, but that one is a league of it's own). It's Alan and Kevin's farewell to comics with all the mixed feelings towards it and the industry and the subject matter they both have decades of so much experience with it. It is The End of Everything and I think it ended on the best note it could have ended with.

In summary, I think LOEG has a lot of individually cool or neat or even great ideas that I think get lost, because there is so, so much of it, and so much of it is impressively painted sludge. Sometimes it is ingenious, sometimes it is fun, it is never not visually impressive, but it's more frequently dull and grotesquely self-indulgent and far too shallow. It suffers from an almost inescapable side effect of doing this dealing with the fiction he was dealing with without accounting for taste or bothering to reign in his worst impulses, too much to cover and not enough actually being said about it. In truth, much of it doesn't feel much different than reading the wiki summaries for it I had already read forever ago. It is a unique beast taking swings that I'd never seen before that most wouldn't, probably for very good reasons most of the time. It is also guilty of literally everything it's criticizing other works of being and doing, and sometimes it actually provides it's best commentary because of that! It's a complicated thing to tackle and wrap your head around. God knows what Jess Nevins must have gone through to make the annotations for this, as they put it on the Almanac annotations.

I don't consider it wasted time because, I did really enjoy the final two installments, there are good bits scattered across the other books and I learned some good things from it as a whole, but would I recommend it in it's entirety? Unless you're really a huge fan or completionist for it's creators (although reading LOEG really disillusioned me on Moore in a lot of ways, not that this is a bad thing, if anything that's a necessary thing to really try and grasp a creator's body of work) or you're the kind of sicko who'd be in the tank for the whole thing, no, not really.

It is one of the most impressive and accomplished works I've ever read, I will probably come back to it for research purposes, but holy shit am I glad to put it behind me.

#also thank you davidmann for sending me the epilogue #replies tag #loeg #league of extraordinary gentlemen #alan moore #kevin o'neill #abc comics #comics

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thealmightyemprex · 2 months

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Sci FI Month:Why X Men the Animated series is awesome

So I binged the entierty of X Men the Animated Series and I intended to make an epic review with episode reccomendations,annnnnd it ended up too long ,so instead I am going to go over reasons why this show is Great and has an enduring legacy

1.X Men in general as a franchise has tons of characters to choose from and I think it is so wise of the show that they limit it to 9 core characters,while some fan favorites get really good guest appearences like Nightcrawler

2.The Characterization and relationships are top notch ,every character gets a spot light and each character has layers ,with each character having their own demons.Even Professor X who couldve just been the mentor figure gets fleshed out to where you understand why he does what he does .Oh if you wanna know who my fave characters are:Storm,Wolverine ,Gambit, and Beast

3.The villains are varied ,from the anti villainous Magneto ,to the brutish Juggernaut ,to the bigoted Graydon Creed ,to the sadistic Sabretooth,to the complicated Mystique ,to the cold Mr Sinister to (My favorite ) the bombastic Apoclaypse

4.As a comic adaptation I think its fun that the show doesnt limit itself to one period of X Men but pays tribute to 30 years of comics:The designs are Jim Lee inspired,they pay tribute to Lee and Kirby,the stories pull a lot from Chris Clairmount ,and several episodes were written by comic legend Len Wein

5.The show doesnt have the biggest budget but with its shading ,strong character designs and editing it still holds up rather decently

6.Voice acting is all around solid,Cal Dodd,Lenore Zahn,George Buza and John Colicos are the go to voices for Wolverine,Rogue,Beast and Apocalypse to me

7.The series is serialized with a conitinuity,which while common with modern cartoons,was kind of a new thing back then.We can thank this show for changing how action cartoons were done.Also each season has a distinct feel with the first three having story arcs(The Sentinels in season one,Magneto and Xavier trapped in the Savage Land in season 2 , andDealing with the aliens known as the Shiar Empire in season 3 )

8.The writing does not talk down to kids,in fact the writing for the show is very good not shying away from the fact this is a show about prejudice

9.I think the show has good momentum getting better and better up to Season 4 ,which is the best season of the show .Now Season 5 does feel like it is running on fumes,but it still has great episodes and contiains one of the greatest animated series finales ever "Graduation Day "

10.And of course.....The theme song is kickass

youtube

If you want me to explain my feelings more just ask me,I am more then willing to ramble about this amazing cartoon.I plan to do my top 10 favorite episodes,villains,and multi parters

@ariel-seagull-wings @the-blue-fairie @piterelizabethdevries

@amalthea9 @themousefromfantasyland @princesssarisa

@angelixgutz @theancientvaleofsoulmaking @filmcityworld1 @countesspetofi

#x men the animated series #Sci fi month #Youtube

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liz-allyn · 2 years

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Feeling greedy for your talents 📸 —v 🌻 mwah!

Oooh, thank you, Spicy @spidervee. You know what I'm greedy for? This beautiful AG right here.

Look at that baby face! Also wtf is he doing in this photo shoot? And who cares—look at his ARMS.

The more I stare at this picture, the more it becomes a different thing. It gets more complex with time. Like, it starts off as soft, innocent Peter Parker, but then there's something just slightly sinister in that look? So I'm gonna call this Workplace Rival!Peter.

enemies to lovers and something else sorta dark and nasty if you stare too hard at it, under the cut. go away if you're under 18 or you're too young to remember Phil of the Future on the Disney Channel.

Every war begins when one side fires a shot. In the case of the battle between you and Peter Parker, he’d admit that he’d taken the first one. It wasn’t his intention, but he struck a nerve.

It was during a staff meeting at The Daily Bugle. Since finally getting the staff photographer job, this was one more scheduled task that Peter had to juggle.

On that fateful morning, he’d rushed into the meeting already in progress, ducking into the back and hoping to avoid J.J’s steel gaze. They were discussing what was going to be in Sunday’s issue. There was more room for feature stories and hot-topic debates. The juicier, the better. (And more profitable, since J.J. was pleased to put them behind a digital paywall).

That’s when Peter heard you chime in. “I’m interviewing Spider-Man,” you announced, to pen drops and quiet gasps in the pit.

You—the cute little thing—bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, recently graduated top of your class at ESU’s journalism school. First tasked by Jonah to write an editorial calling for Spider-Man’s immediate arrest and for the public to stop coddling him. You huffed with disappointment at your assignment but still wrote a grand slam article. You pointed out the hypocrisy of local politicians who turn a blind eye to Spider-Man’s illegal vigilantism but refuse to decriminalize marijuana. Spider-Man gets a free pass while the police continue to sweep through impoverished neighborhoods and single-out minority populations as if they were hunting Jack the Ripper.

You.

You made a valid point.

And just like that, you were the newest writer for The Daily Bugle.

“Spider-Man’s Public Enemy Number One” Jonah proudly called you.

You kept on writing the same anti-Spider-Man bullshit. It started to get a little far-fetched.

No, Spider-Man was not secretly on the police’s payroll (unfortunately).

No, Spider-Man did not take kickbacks from the Mayor (he just doesn’t have enough evidence gathered yet to bring him down.)

No, Spider-Man does not torture chickens (that was a fucking accident and a misunderstanding and Peter would appreciate it if Mr. Cluck’s Chicken Shack would stop appropriating his IP in their ads to sell chicken sandwiches).

Jonah asked, and you delivered.

Peter felt sorry for you, honestly. It must be hard being smart, and feisty, and adorable, and elbowing your way past senior writers to the front page. Despite how annoying it was to hear your articles constantly quoted on morning news talk shows. He felt genuinely sorry.

Until you turned out to be a little liar.

“Interview?” Another writer scoffed in disbelief. “With Spider-Man?”

Everyone turned to you, stunned. Waiting. As did Peter.

“Of course,” you stated with resolve.

Jonah’s face was lit up like a Christmas tree. Peter’s brain was melting. “Trash Sunday’s front page! Wait—when do you have this interview?”

“Um,” you replied, with the slightest bit of hesitation, “Friday night.”

“Trash Saturday’s front page!”

“Spider-Man wouldn’t interview you,” Peter blurted out. It was like a record screeching to a halt. All eyes turned to Peter, including yours. Burning with anger.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you sneered.

It was a standoff. Peter immediately regretted opening his mouth. But it was done. “Well, y’know… I know the guy, and—”

You bit off. “You take pictures of him for money.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m… I’m also sorta—I know ‘em pretty well by now, and—”

“Are you his personal assistant, too?” you coldly replied. “Do you manage his appointments? Do you sync calendars, pick up his suit from the cleaners, and get him soy lattes?”

“Uh… I…” Peter didn’t know how to respond to that. Except that he was an almond milk kind of guy. He decided against adding that.

“Don’t worry about my leads,” you said, ending the conversation. The public part, anyway.

It was after the meeting when you dragged him into an empty cubicle and whispered a threat through gritted teeth. “Don’t you ever call me out like that in front of our colleagues again, do you hear me?”

“I’m just surprised, s’all,” Peter defended, keeping his voice low. “He always told me he’s weird around reporters. Considering how much shit you give ‘em, I’d think you’d be the last person he’d wanna talk to.”

“I disagree,” you shot back. “I think he’d welcome the discourse. Unless he’s a coward.”

His eyes flashed angrily. “Look, I know you’d love to build your whole career on his back,” he sneered, “you should reconsider your occupation if you have to lie about it.”

Your face turned red. “A liar? Really?”

“Yeah, s’what I said. I call ’fake news.’”

“That’s rich coming from you, Parker.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, considering that you’ve been getting paid by the Bugle to lie about your photos for years!”

His heart skipped a beat. Suddenly wary. “Wha-what are you talkin’ about?”

“I checked the metadata on the last images you sent,” you sneered. “That bank robbery on Columbus? There’s no way that you could’ve taken those photos from the ground, with those settings, milliseconds apart. That means only one thing.”

Peter’s eyes went wide.

“Spider-Man took those photos of himself, and for some reason, he’s letting you take all the credit!”

Peter swallowed thickly to silence his sigh of relief.

“I bet it’s not so bad getting cash for your little charade!” You shoved your finger into his shoulder. “Must make you so popular with the ladies, being ‘friends with Spider-Man.’”

The lump in his throat bobbed. But that was all the evidence that you needed to know that you’d struck a nerve.

You glared at him. “How about this? Stay out of my way, Parker. And your secret’s safe with me.” You marched off, leaving a burning trail in your wake.

And that’s how the war escalated. That’s when his rivalry became an obsession. You were checking his metadata? (He can’t believe he forgot to wipe it on export.) Are you insane? What are you, a stalker?

Two could play at that game.

By Friday, you were visibly stressed, although you were an expert at not showing it. Peter could hear it in your heart from across the room.

By contrast, he was as relaxed as he’d ever been. Maybe a little excited, even.

Peter heard a lot of things around the office. Gossip. Rumors. Too much personal information.

Once he’d heard Ned talking about the details of the Bugle’s IT security and filtering system. Of course, Jonah would trust the cybersecurity of one of the most controversial publications in country... to one guy, in a chair. When asked directly, Ned filled Peter’s ear with tons of information about how the system worked and could monitor any computer connected to the wifi. All you needed was the IP address.

With this valuable information, Peter learned three things.

One. You were lying about having an interview with Spider-Man. He wasn’t exactly sure how you were going to get out of that one without throwing yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge. But Peter did see the email in your inbox about Jonah finally letting you take on different stories in addition to writing about Spider-Man, if you delivered a sold-out edition.

The motive, he could understand.

Two. Using the Bugle’s internet safety system (and Ned’s borrowed login), he was able to read your every keystroke. He could watch you through the webcam. He could even take control of your computer. Peter felt like a kid watching you freak out as the cursor on your screen started moving of its own accord as you typed in the middle of a paragraph. Your cursor pulled up a note, and the blinking line typed out a message to you.

TONIGHT. 11:30 PM. COME ALONE.

- YOUR FRIENDLY, NEIGHBORHOOD PUBLIC ENEMY, SPIDER-MAN

Your face was priceless. You jumped up out of your chair and started looking left and right, with no idea that the messenger wasn’t even in the room.

The message on screen vanished, and a set of numbers appeared instead. Coordinates. You grabbed a sticky note and started scribbling frantically. Once he was satisfied that you had them down, the note was deleted and you had control of your computer again.

Peter knew you were smart, but you were also unable to turn down a challenge. You wanted to be a writer—a good one, and you’d do anything to be taken seriously. At least that’s what you’d say when you’d text that boring guy you were dating—Peter could figure out your phone’s IP address too. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t going to last long between you and boring man. And that led him to his third discovery.

Three. You were a great writer.

At 11:00 PM, you were pacing a construction site anxiously. You checked the coordinates again and again, but they led you to an unfinished development of skyrise condominiums. The skeleton of the building soared into the sky at least 60 stories. A building without walls, the framework left exposed to high winds.

You thought this had to be a joke. You were seconds from turning back and going home when on your third lap around the block, you noticed the lock which secured the gate was broken. The gate swayed in the wind, chain ripped apart and discarded on the ground. On the gate was a lined sheet of paper with scribbled handwriting.

47TH FLOOR.

The note was fixed to the gate by webs.

A chill went down your spine. He wanted you to go up the elevator to the 47th floor. Of a building that hadn't been built yet. You stood at the cracked-open gate, bouncing on your toes, weighing your ambition versus your fear of heights. You bit your lip and tip-toed inside.

On your way up the lift, you prayed that 47 was one of the floors that was finished. It wasn’t. And once you timidly stepped out of the elevator shaft, you spotted the masked, red-and-blue figure leaning carelessly across a steel beam.

You couldn’t believe your eyes. Spider-Man in the flesh, with arms pillowing his head, and nothing else but air beneath him and the unforgiving ground. You stopped in your tracks.

“I honestly wasn’t sure if you’d go through with it,” he greeted you casually. “I was worried. I’d hate to miss an opportunity to meet my favorite writer.”

There was a slight chill in his tone. He could hear the way you gulped, probably realizing just how stupid this idea was.

“Don’t worry, love,” he sat up straight and came to a stand on the beam. With a leap, he forward-flipped onto the exposed subflooring, landing with a thud. “I’m not planning on throwing you off the building,” he jested. “It would look a little suspicious.”

Your shoulders released some tension, but only a bit. “You... how...? How did you....?”

“Not so good with words now, are ya?” Spider-Man replied, sauntering closer to you. You were separated by the empty floorspace, but your feet were plastered to the ground by fear. “Heard you had a big interview with Spider-Man tonight. Hope you don’t mind if I join?”

You stared at him with wide eyes. “I... I’m... I didn’t...” You gulped again. “I-I tried to find you. I even looked through old photos at the Bugle for hours, trying to look for any clue—”

“So, if I didn’t show, you were just gonna... make the rest up?” He crossed his arms, leaning his weight on one hip.

“I-I’m sorry,” you blushed, genuinely. “I would’ve... I would’ve been nice. Respectful. Um, I wouldn’t have written anything, uh...” A breeze threatened to blow you over, and you caught yourself on a support beam. Squeezing your eyes shut, you continued with a tone of attrition. “I just— I-I didn’t think I’d get to actually meet you.”

Your hands were shaking. He remained a statue, gazing you with that expressionless mask. “No harm, no foul.” You watched him stroll to a stack of plywood as he hopped up on it to sit. “So let’s do this. I know you’ve got burning questions.”

You blinked in confusion, as if you’d forgotten what you were there to do. In a daze, you reached into your bag, pulling out a recorder. One that Spider-Man snapped out of your grasp with a line of webbing. You watched it crumple like an empty can as he crushed it mercilessly in his palm.

“Off the record,” he stated, unphased by the vandalism of your property. The recorder clattered to the floor and your eyes followed it down. “If it’s no difference to you, I already know what you’re going to ask.”

You glanced up at him, puzzled. He lifted a gloved hand and began counting on his long fingers.

“Early 30s... Leo... Bi, and... honestly, it depends? I like being able to look into your eyes, that raw connection, y’know? But there’s something about doggy style that just... does it for me.”

Your brow furrowed, face heating up.

He pointed directly at you, “You nailed one thing, though. I’m definitely a giver. And I’m proud of that. Although I never necessarily came while eating someone out before.” Your jaw fell open as he tilted his head playfully, a lighthearted smirk in his voice. “Not yet, at least. Now. Do you want to take off your clothes, or should I just rip them off with my ‘rigid, gloved hands’?”

Your heart skipped for so long, he was certain that you died in that moment. Luckily, you roared back to life, a stuttering, babbling, frenetic ball of confusion.

“Oh, I’m sorry, which publication is this for?” he said with a chuckle. You were dumbstruck, unable to form words. “This is for your Spider-Man blog, right?”

In that moment, you did die. Every muscle in your body seized. Your breath caught in your throat. The horror on your face was absolutely delicious.

Peter knew that you were a much better writer than anyone gave you credit for. He’d spent the week monitoring your keystrokes and tracking your URLs. Ned told him that the system is designed only to catch obviously problematic URLs, and even then he only chooses to investigate half of them.

“Like, if you’re looking at PornTube from your work computer, obviously—that’s stupid and you’re gonna get caught. It’s the other sites, that are less obvious that, honestly sometimes it’s better just to let it slide. It becomes a whole thing,” Ned explained. “Because then, I’m having to go through Dennis from Accounting’s whole computer history for like, a year... make copies of his hard drive... figure out why he keeps typing the words ‘foot,’ ‘feet,’ ‘toe,’ and ‘toenail’ into his computer 70% of the time, and trust me... it’s better not to know.”

“What about a blog?” Peter asked, purposefully.

“Like Tumblr?” Ned scoffed. “Yeah, honestly, I’d let that be.”

“That is you, right?” Spider-Man asked you knowingly, with a cheshire grin hidden behind his mask. “You’re TheBlackCatxxx69.” Your eyes were so wide they could’ve swallowed the island of Manhattan. “You’re the one who writes all that Spider-Man erotica?”

Your brow furrowed, automatically shaking your head. “Uh.... I....?”

“You’ve got quite the library. I’m impressed. Is this for Sinful Sunday or Thursday Thots?”

“I-I... don’t.... I don’t know...”

He was on his feet in moments, stalking toward you. “You mean you haven’t written dozens of tales about Spider-Man webbing you up and making you come on his fingers and on his... or, my tongue? You haven’t explicitly described in every juicy detail what it would be like to have my cock splitting you open on a rooftop?”

Every sentence came out darker and deeper than the last, and yet his voice was softer than a feather across your skin.

“You mean you don’t write naughty stories about being Daddy’s Good Girl while I sneak into your room and steal your innocence away?”

Peter stopped just inches from you, waiting for you to breathe again. You looked like you were going to pass out. Or drool. Both. He waited. Watched. Until your eyes got red. He could smell the salt of your tears even though you refused to let them fall. Your blood was pumping. Furiously.

“Is this your idea of teaching me a lesson?” you whispered bitterly. You spun on your heel, legs wobbly, as you moved back towards the elevator.

“Hey!” Peter called after you.

You kept your eyes on the ground to keep from seeing the skyline. Or seeing anything at all. “I’ll stop writing about you,” you said, crossing the threshold of the elevator doors. "You win."

Your weight was pulled from your feet with the sound of a thwip. With a shriek, you were launched backward. He pulled you into his arms. You struggled against him, thrashing until he held you steady, your back to his chest.

He could feel your pulse thrumming beneath his hands. The rage you felt wasn’t really directed at him, and you knew it. It was meant for you.

“I wasn’t trying to embarrass you,” he replied, extending an olive branch. He sounded so gentle compared to his sadistic vitriol moments before.

You seethed. “So what is this? Payback? Blackmail? To get me to stop writing?” You felt like you were going to erupt, like a stick of dynamite in his hold. He heard you huff and pictured the pout on your face. You attempted to jerk away again, until he spun you around and pulled you up against his torso.

“Keep writing,” he replied, with genuineness in his voice. “You’re good at it. Just try to remember that you and I are on the same side? We’re both trying our best to fix things.” It was the sincerity in his voice that got to you. He was asking, not threatening. “Just think about maybe writing the truth once in a while?”

You scowled, about to take offense again, put paused before you blew up. You noted how your chest heaved against his. The proximity between you. His fingers gripped your upper arms, tight enough to leave a small mark. Your eyes locked on the emblem of his suit and the rigid muscles rippling beneath. You gazed around at the empty floor, a realization settling over you.

Your eyes landed on a pair of sawhorses with a length of wood laid across. The board was secured to the bases with webbing. This was... familiar. All that was missing from the scene was you—your writhing, mewling, howling, naked form.

“The construction worker request from two weeks back,” Peter explained. You stared up at him, jaw agape. “I figured we could start there?”

You pulled away from him and took a step backward, looking up in horror. But was it really horror? Peter waited. You considered.

The longest pause settled over you.

“I... I’m... seeing someone,” you replied, lifting your chin slightly.

Peter scoffed. “He doesn’t know about your blog.”

Your cheeks flushed and your brow furrowed. “What makes you think that?”

He snickered beneath the mask. “Because he doesn’t make you come like I do.”

A/N: Hey, now, there's a PART TWO.

Show your support for fandom writers! Cheer us on with a comment and/or reblog! And thank you 💜

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loverofcats14 · 2 years

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My Embarrassment is Yours to Share Mc x Lucifer

The Anti Lucifer League thought of a prank that went south real fast.

"Argh Lucifer needs to shut it with all the RAD meetings it's getting to the point it's inferring with my naps!" Belphegor groaned as he was sleeping on the lunch table. "I swear Lucifer is just a lap dog for Diavolo. It makes me sick one of the most powerful beings is doting to Diavolo-" Satan stated as he ate an apple while reading.

"Mhm we should get back at him!" Belphegor shot up,having one of the most sinister ideas as he smiled. "I think it's time to bring one of the big guns Satan."

"Again why did you bring me into this-?" You sighed as you walked home with Belphegor and Satan. "As a member of the Anti Lucifer League you HAVE to!" Satan laughed holding your books. These two always brought you into their petty pranks. You just hope Lucifer wont be too pissed so you wont hang from a wall."Okay Mc here's the plan!" Belphie and Satan said smiling at you.

As you saw Lucifer leaving for his meeting with Diavolo you ran up to him. Lucifer looked over confused in why you're talking to him so hastly. "I need to go into your study room to get a book for my history test." you lied through your teeth as Lucifer raised an eyebrow. "You can wait Mc I need to assist Diavolo with a predicament." "Please Oh Great Lucifer I'll get straight "A"s if i pass~" you said in a high pitched voice. "Fine Mc just don't go around snooping or you will be punished." Lucifer sighed as he walked out.

You texted in the group chat updating the scheme at hand

Satan- Really that was easy Mr Oh Great Lucifer psh

Belphegor- Mc go and do it now he'll probably put the spell back on the room in a hour ish.

You- Fine fine

As you raced into Lucifer's study you steadied yourself knowing Lucifer uplifted the spell of no trespassing would go off in a hour or so. You found his coat and placed a small sized condom in the pocket. As you took a picture in your DDD sending the picture to the group chat as insurance. To be fair the prank was sorta funny. You laughed to yourself as you grabbed your DDD and walked out Lucifer's study and hoped for the best.

"And Lucifer we should also attend to-"

Ding,ding,ding...

Diavolo realized he got a notification from you as he picked his DDD up. "Lucifer Mc is texting give me a second." Oh? Why would you text Diavolo-? Lucifer thought as all of a sudden he saw Diavolo snicker. "Diavolo what's the matter-? Lucifer asked trying to get a better view by moving his head. "Oh um- it's nothing! Haha-" Diavolo covered his mouth in amusement.

You sended Diavlo a picture of the condom looking as if you took it out from his coat. With a caption saying "This is probably why Lucifer has a big fat ego to make it up in size." You snickered As Diavolo was trying to hold his laughter as you dialed him.

"Ah Lucifer Mc is calling let me have a moment haha-" Diavlo pressed his DDD to his ear as you called. Lucifer thought this was strange but payed no attention just thinking you sent him a funny post from Devilgram. "Diavolo do you have the picture-?" " Ah yes Mc, haha it's rather amusing I never knew." Diavolo laughed into the phone.

"Diavolo can you put Mc on speaker they asked me for a book I just want to know if they found it considering their tallness." Lucifer chimed getting passive aggressive as he saw Diavolo laugh.

"Ah yes sure Lucifer-" Diavolo put the DDD on speaker without you knowing-

"Thats probably why Lucifer has such a big fat ego Diavolo! To make up for his small skinny dick! Haha!" Diavolo and Barbatos were in shock realizing what you just said out aloud. But Lucifer realized what just had happened and even if he didn't see the picture, his pride was shattered. Considering Diavolo was laughing at this comment beforehand.

"What was that Mc? I have a what now?" You immediately realized Diavolo must've put you on speaker. "WELL DIAVOLO GOTTA GO HAHA-" you hanged up and immediately ran to find Satan and Belphegor.

"Mc you'll be alright! It's just a harmless prank!" Satan tried to comfort you as he locked his room. "Mc I'll give you 300 grimm if you survive his punishment." Belphegor said as he hugged you thinking you wont be able to walk in a long time. The DDD dinged as all three of you looked at the notification.

Mc in my room now. Don't make me search for you.

"Rip our member Mc may they die peacefully." Satan and Belphegor chanted as you shot them a dirty look.

As you walked to your demise you knocked the door to the study room. "Come in." His voice very deep and melancholy. You opened the door to find him working on his stack of papers. He didn't even look up at you as his tight gripped his pen. "Sit on the chair." You immediately sat in hoping he didn't realized you were shaking so hard.

"Now Mc, it's obvious you weren't the one to put this ahem prank into action, so who directed this idea. Was it Satan or Belphegor?" He asked standing up with a smile looking at you shaking in your chair. "Belphegor! He was tired of the RAD meetings so he wanted to embarrass you in front of Diavolo! I'm sorry Lucifer! Please forgive me!"

You sighed as Lucifer walked up to you his form overbearing your head. "Ah, poor Mc you were influenced by my brothers, so much so they made you decieve my trust hm? This poor sheep influenced by demons disobeying her shepherd. I forgive you Mc. You were made to disobey me sadly but I forgive you." He smiled as he saw you in confusion gripping the arm chair for life.

You were thankful he wasn't punishing you however, you were still skeptical on his intentions. As his hooded eyes showed just half his eyes. His smile widdened as he rambled on his speech.

Using his gloved pointer finger under your chin propping you head to meet Lucifer's. "However sheep must learn from their mistakes so you will learn my sheep."

Its been 3 hours since Lucifer called you to his study. Satan and Belphegor were figuring out what to do to make it up.

"If Lucifer wasn't a kill joy Mc could've been here right now with us hanging out." Belphegor sighed with his pillow. "No Belphegor, it's just Lucifer's stupid ass nature I swear one day he will pay for what he's doing to Mc." Satan vowed as he paced his room.

Until they heard a knock on Satan's door both members opened it in anticipation. Seeing you there they felt relief. "Oh Mc we thought you were gone! Thankfully you're in once piece!" Satan said looking at you up and down. Belphegor knew something was wrong though and his intuition was right as you took out your DDD.

"Mc, show your neck to those two." Lucifer sadisticly hummed as you pulled down your RAD shirts collar. The two members were confused on what was happening until they saw it. The hickeys all over your neck. "Mc what did he-" Satan was interrupted.

"Now open your mouth Mc." You opened your mouth as Lucifer's cum was still in there spewed all over your mouth. "Oh grosss-!" Belphegor and Satan almost gagged. "Now the message."

"Lucifers dick is so big and wide I sucked it so hard I'll want more." You shamefully told them as you closed your mouth with their shocked faces. "Now my dear brothers remember that next time you pull something." Lucifer cackled as he hanged up leaving the Anti Lucifer League in the embarrassment Lucifer felt.

#obey me brain rot #obey me smut #obey me brothers #fanfic #lucifer fanfiction #lucifer x you #smut #lucifer smut #anti lucifer league #obey me requests

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kierrasreads · 5 months

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A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes #1) by Arthur Conan Doyle Review

Plot

Our first meeting with Sherlock Holmes. And John Watson's too! The young doctor is astonished by Holmes' many idiosyncrasies, including his talents on the violin.

But it's not long before Sherlock Holmes, with Watson in tow, is working with Scotland Yard investigating the murder of two Americans whose deaths have some mysterious connection to sinister groups gathering power in both Britain and America.

Here's where it all began, 'A Study in Scarlet.' Meet Sherlock Holmes, one of the world's leading consulting detectives - fictional of course!

Discussion

We meet again, Mr. Holmes! Like many fans of this iconic detective, my first introduction to him was through the BBC adaptation of the series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. I was obsessed with this show! Then, my interests shifted and I left this British character in the past. My interest in the series got ignited again fairly recently. One day after work, I was browsing the Roku channel and saw that the platform had many Sherlock Holmes films from 1939, with Basil Rathbone portraying Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce portraying Dr. John Watson (I believe all 14 films from this series are available on Roku). Anyway, the point is that I decided to read the Sherlock Holmes novels again and stick to them this time. This first Sherlock Holmes story totally captured my interest. The first part of this novel (Dr. Watson's reminiscences) proved to be fairly interesting and I was surprised at how fast Sherlock Holmes was able to solve the case.

The second part of the book focused on Jefferson Hope's past and took place in Utah (I'm sure some of you can see where this is going). I was utterly shocked at the portrayal of the Mormons, especially Brigham Young. I'll admit, I know next to nothing about Mormonism, its history, etc., but the whole second part of the novel read as..well..anti-Mormon. I couldn't help but wonder if Doyle had a grudge against the religion/group in general, or used this as an opportunity to let his grievances be known, but let's just say that I was relieved when Jefferson Hope finished his story and the focus shifted to the trail/conclusion. I'll have to research to see why he chose this particular lighting to portray the Mormons (of course, I realize that every story with revenge and murder must have a villain, otherwise it would be a completely different type of novel).

That's all I have to say about that! It was a good, brief read that got me back into the Sherlock Holmes fandom.

Rating

5/5

#kierra's reads #bookblr #sherlock holmes #john watson #a study in scarlet #dr john watson #arthur conan doyle

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rinseveryday · 8 months

Note

Hello! I have so many thoughts and theories in my mind, especially I want to ask you the one. What do you think about the Demon King Rin? In the last chapter we saw how all pieces of the puzzle is coming together....

Hello! Thanks for the ask! I also have so many thoughts, please ask away anytime.

Massive spoilers for chapters 139 (138? I don't remember) and above!! Putting my response under the cut because it is long :> Like, I had to sit down for over an hour, long.

Demon King Rin my beloved boy

You know what's funny about life is that I fell in love with him way back in 2013, and he ended up becoming exactly my type of character 10 years later. I kept up with the series, but I discovered my tastes through other media so it was a huge shock to me when Demon King vigilante Rin shows up in canon. I was/am OBSESSED with the anti-hero or jaded hero types, like Daredevil and Deadpool just to name a few (I had a Marvel phase) as well as serieses like Devilman and Chainsaw man on the anime side. A monster with a human heart, bonus points if they live in a world that doesn't accept them. Now why am I talking about other shows? (Bc I wanna, that's why)

Well, Blue Exorcist didn't start as an adult rating, morally gray, anti-hero series did it? It was a fun, cliché Shonen show for teens set in an academic setting with all the typical school festivities and classmate crushes you can expect. Kinda different than Daredevil. But it's slowly been creeping towards darker, more serious topics over the years because Katoh's specialty lies in her ability to twist clichés into her own thing. AoEx's plot runs a lot deeper, and more sinister than your typical devil shonen manga. I still see a lot of theories about AoEx that still think it'll follow a Shonen plot, though, where the end will be a big fight against Somebody and then they'll all go home, become exorcists, and move on.

But really, Katoh's already said that Rin is a character that, if she's not careful, becomes real dark, real fast. I bet she had been wanting to add an anti-hero plot to the story for a while. He's no Naruto. He is the fox.

And so, newsflash! Rin's biggest antagonist isn't a demon. It's himself. Not demon!Rin, but Rin, as a whole. The plot isn't anywhere near being finished. Right now he's not the Blue Exorcist quite yet. He's a guy (level of humanity questionable) wreathed in the flames of a demon god. The day where he must choose between Assiah or Gehenna, is coming closer.

We see in the timeskip chapters a world where the current day has become Rin's tragic anti-hero backstory. Where he made choices that led him away from his human allies. Where he chose to embrace his demonic nature and fight against the corrupt human organizations.

I used to think that someone else was leading Rin, using him as a puppet leader of a resistance with his friends kept away as blackmail. Because how could Rin be so organized as to lead any sort of resistance right? Did his friends die which made him go rogue? What did Paku see? Was it related to Rin's reasons for becoming the Demon King?

However, now with the things Rin brought up in the most chapters, I don't know. I still find it hard to believe Rin would lead anything, but maybe he was just doing his own thing and the demons followed on their own *shrug.* If Rin's friends were still in the picture, he'd go to the ends of the Earth to get them back. So that leaves us with either a) they're dead or b) he chose to leave them.

People wear masks to hide. He doesn't need to hide his identity because his flames give it away so... Maybe he's hiding from shame.

His face went from sad to blank when he realized Paku was around. Rin Okumura? With a blank face? Our Mr. Wears his heart on his sleeve? Dude who cries from manga and slaps his knee when he laughs?

The blank face is a coping mechanism, just like the mask. He's probably disassociating so he doesn't have to deal with the painful memories she brings. Memories of his friends... Memories of being human.

Which brings us to the question, What did Rin remember when he woke up? I have a feeling he never reconciled with his demonic nature in that future, which led him to be at odds with exorcists. (RIP Malchidael Miku, you were too annoying to live). He probably didn't see the same future Mephisto did, but considering he does have all the same powers Satan does, he definitely saw Something.

Rin is right in that he was wrong to cage his so-called "demonic side." Or, if you read the raws too, he called it the "demon me." Everyone has anger and violence and desire and scorn in them as part of their survival instincts. That's not even a purely "demonic" thing. Rin forces the embodiment of those feelings, demon!Rin to yield and stay put. He doesn't understand why demon!Rin lashes out so strongly nor why he wants to take over.

Uhmmm sounds real healthy right? *Checks watch* demon!Rin should be back any chapter now~ It really begs the question, is demon!Rin the evil one for wanting to break out? Or is human!Rin the evil one for forcing demon!Rin to keep seething in jail?

Going back to the topic, it seems that Rin doesn't want to become the Demon King this time but he also isn't sure what to do. He knows he needs to do something about his burning questions and he knows the key to truly taming himself lies in knowledge and understanding. He has only caged himself, and has yet to reach Yuri's level of taming. Demon!Rin will come back. He'll always be there to protect Rin when he needs him the most.

While I sure love me some villain and anti-hero AUs, I do hope my beloved Rin Gone Wrong to stay in those chapters. He deserves a happier True Ending than becoming a Demon King 🤧

Well, there's some of my thoughts on Rin as Demon King and the plot. This got super long and was actually longer before I cut out all the unnecessary rambling.

Tl;dr he scares me

#ask #theory #it was hard to write with my brain exoloding #rin okumura #aoex #idk if i wanna put this in the big tags bc i dont even know if im coherent #been busy freaking out over my new job so it was nice to just think about Rin for a few hours

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unfortunately-obsessed · 6 days

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X-Men 97' S1 E7 spoilers

Gosh I love that they mention other heroes. We have more than mutants on this universe! Rogue easily entering a place that was made to keep Hulk out? Love her for that (but also humans tend to overestimate themselves and their capacity)

Bashing Rogers for being a boy scout more than once WOOOHOOO Gambit and Genosha deaths truly mattering?? Having weight on the narrative? That's what I'm talking abojt

The Avengers always getting stuck in bureaucracy. And I saw his bike and went captain america but thought nahh they won't show him And then he's there! He's such an idiot!

Rogue yanking the Steve's shield on Canada?? Will be thinking about this for weeks.

Emma Stone in her diamond form yesss!!! But Madelyne truly died 😭 and Scott also being affected by this? Loved it

Mr. Sinister and Bastion. Shit shit. And OZT?? Operation Zero Tolerance? And not the next three episodes being named "Tolerance is Extinction"? Yeah we can see what's going to happen

Wish we saw Rogue anti-hero? Scott anti-hero? Anti-heroes!!! Especially because those two are clearly fed-up with the whole situation

Nightcrawler comforting Rogue :] Also Nightcrawler doing Gambit's funeral? Nice too

Cable remembering Madelyn as her own person and not only as Jean clone? Loved it.

Trask citing Bagavadeguita? 🙄 Be for real. Get a grip

Magneto is alive!!! Not like I thought he really died. But still! Now remember that I said they keep using the old openings on purpose? Yeah Magneto still keeps going against the X-Men in the opening and now I think Bastion will be making him a Sentinel too

We will not be having more rogueneto 😞 it was good while it lasted

But overall they're doing the comics soo well I'm loving it all. Loving the rhythm, loving the pace

#xmen 97 #x-men 97 #xmen 97 spoilers #me!xmen

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rotzaprachim · 6 months

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Brazil Cracks Down on Surprising New Threat: Neo-Nazis - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

By Julia Vargas Jones

Reporting from Nova Petrópolis, Brazil

Nov. 7, 2023

By Julia Vargas Jones

Reporting from Nova Petrópolis, Brazil

Nov. 7, 2023

Leer en español

In southern Brazil in July, Laureano Toscani and João Guilherme Correa were smoking cigarettes along a busy road in their prison-issued garb, shorts and sandals, waiting for a ride after seven months in jail.

Mr. Toscani was once convicted of stabbing a group of Jewish men, and Mr. Correa has been accused of murdering a couple leaving a party. But this time, they were behind bars for attending what they said was a harmless barbecue.

The Brazilian authorities, however, say it was something far more sinister: a meeting of the Hammerskins, a neo-Nazi group founded in Dallas in 1988 that they say has recently found its way thousands of miles south, to Brazil’s most starkly conservative region, reflecting a surge in far-right extremists in Latin America’s largest nation.

In September 2022, the state police in Santa Catarina began trailing the Hammerskins as members strategized on how to attract new recruits.

Two months later, as eight men met at a farmhouse outside the coastal city of Florianópolis, a police hate-crimes unit burst in, arresting everyone under anti-discrimination laws and accusing them of being members of the Hammerskins. Two other accused members were arrested weeks later.

On the members’ phones, the police said, they found antisemitic and racist content, including a message that one had sent in a group chat saying that “Black people need to die every day.” The police said they believed the group was aided by at least two American Hammerskin members who had traveled to Brazil several times.

The raid was part of a larger crackdown on neo-Nazi groups amid a rise in extremist movements and sentiments in Brazil that has spurred a greater number of school shootings and stabbing attacks, including at least 11 this year.

In February, a 17-year-old boy wearing a swastika armband was accused of throwing two homemade explosive devices into a school, but no one was injured.

In March, authorities said a 13-year-old boy fatally stabbed a teacher while wearing a skull mask commonly worn by an American neo-Nazi group.

And last month, a 16-year-old boy was accused of firing at a school, killing a classmate and wounding two others. Another student was injured trying to escape. The teenager had previously posted a photo of a swastika drawn on his face, the authorities said. In the three cases, which all occurred in or around São Paulo, the authorities arrested the boys.

The authorities say they have thwarted hundreds of other attacks.

Many of the attacks did not target Jewish people specifically. Brazil has roughly 100,000 people who identify as Jewish, according to estimates, or just one in every 2,000 people.

But researchers believe that those who have carried out or planned such attacks often turn violent after consuming extremist or neo-Nazi content online that frequently exhorts violence against any person who is not white.

In April, Brazil’s new justice minister, Flávio Dino, ordered the federal police to investigate what he called the growth of “hate and intolerant speech by neo-Nazi, neo-fascist and extremist groups.”

“If you mention Nazism, neo-Nazism, threaten a school or say you will attack a school, we will call for your arrest,” Mr. Dino added.

Brazil’s federal police have opened 21 investigations involving neo-Nazis so far this year, the same amount as in the three prior years combined.

Data on the size of Brazil’s neo-Nazi movement is sparse, but most researchers agree that it has been growing. One researcher tracking neo-Nazi groups, Adriana Dias, an anthropologist at the State University of Campinas, estimated that the number of groups increased from the hundreds in 2019 to more than 1,000 last year.

SaferNet, an organization that helps the Brazilian government combat online crime, has been collecting reports of neo-Nazi activity online since 2017, when it recorded almost 1,200 complaints. By 2021, complaints had grown to nearly 14,500, but they have since fallen as neo-Nazi groups have increasingly migrated to private-messaging platforms, researchers said. Still, there were 945 complaints in the first half of this year.

Antisemitic attacks have risen around the world, including in Brazil, since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out last month. Last month, the Brazilian Israelite Confederation received 467 reports of antisemitism, compared with 44 in October last year.

Some researchers linked the rise in neo-Nazi activity in Brazil to Jair Bolsonaro’s four years as president. Much like how American extremist groups gained strength during Donald J. Trump’s presidency, the Brazilian far right latched onto Mr. Bolsonaro’s inflammatory rhetoric as tacit approval of their views, researchers said.

After a state visit to Israel in 2019, Mr. Bolsonaro’s first year as president, he said that Nazis were leftists and that “we can forgive but not forget” the Holocaust, drawing criticism from his Israeli counterpart.

In 2020, Mr. Bolsonaro’s secretary of culture was forced to step down after giving a speech that was so similar to one by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s chief propagandist, that parts seemed to have been copied.

And at a news conference in 2021, one of the former president’s aides made the “OK” hand gesture in front of cameras, a sign that has been appropriated to signify “white power” in white supremacist circles. He was charged with hate crimes, but the case was later dismissed.

The “gesture started appearing in the Brazilian far right, even among groups that do not explicitly identify as neo-Nazis,” said Odilon Caldeira Neto, a professor of contemporary history who studies the far right at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. That, he added, helps neo-Nazi groups “get pulled into the political center.”

While the Bolsonaro administration investigated neo-Nazi groups, the issue has become a priority under the leftist president who defeated Mr. Bolsonaro last year, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Raids on neo-Nazis groups have taken place in at least 10 states this year.

In July, the Brazilian police carried out a four-state operation against 15 people connected to a neo-Nazi group called the New SS of Santa Catarina, which used 3-D printers to manufacture handguns.

In one raid, the police were met with gunfire as they entered a rural home in Nova Petrópolis, a picturesque mountain town of about 20,000 people, many of whom are descendants of German immigrants.

The person firing at the police was a woman alone with her toddler and an infant. No one was injured and the police said they found two handguns, 96 rounds of ammunition and a trove of Nazi materials, including a swastika armband, German World War II memorabilia, the flag of an international neo-Nazi group and supplies to produce merchandise for a local neo-Nazi group.

The woman was arrested after firing at the police, but she was released on bail hours later.

Later that evening, belongings were still strewn at the home and the front door was busted. The woman who had been arrested said the items that the police had taken were personal belongings bought while traveling.

Many investigations have been concentrated in southern Brazil, where 73 percent of the population identifies as white, versus 43 percent nationally, and 62 percent voted for Mr. Bolsonaro last year, versus 49 percent nationally. Some researchers believe neo-Nazi groups are attracted to the region’s German history.

Before World War II, from 1928 to 1938, Brazil had the largest Nazi Party outside Germany, with 2,900 members across 17 states, according to Brazilian scholars. After the war, Brazil, like other South American nations, became a refuge for Nazis fleeing prosecution.

In 2020, the city of Porto Alegre, a southern state capital with a population of 1.5 million people, renovated a park to include an original design from the 1930s on the pavement. The design resembled a swastika, and residents complained. An investigation by the city concluded that there was no link between the design and the Nazi symbol. The design has since been vandalized.

Under Brazilian law, it is a crime to discriminate based on race, religion or nationality, as well as to display a swastika for the purpose of spreading Nazi ideology. Both crimes can lead to yearslong prison terms. All 10 people accused of being Hammerskin members have been released from jail with ankle monitors while they await court hearings.

Waiting for his ride from jail in July, Mr. Toscani said they had done nothing wrong. “They arrested us for throwing a barbecue,” he said. “You know what they found when they arrested us? A machete and a book.”

The book was “The Turner Diaries,” a classic of the extremist canon that Timothy McVeigh said inspired his bombing in 1995 of the federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.

Arthur Lopes, the chief of the Santa Catarina police hate-crimes unit, who arrested the accused Hammerskin members, said some were covered in extremist tattoos. “Everything but the swastika,” he said.

Jack Nicas contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

#news #brazil #neo nazis #anti black racism #antisemitism #link is acting strange but. oh well

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 6 months

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Brazil Cracks Down on Surprising New Threat: Neo-Nazis

The Brazilian government has raided neo-Nazi groups across 10 states this year, part of a push by the new Lula administration to prosecute far-right extremists.

In September 2022, the state police in Santa Catarina began trailing the Hammerskins as members strategized on how to attract new recruits.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #anti nazism #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

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infinitysisters · 8 months

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“Moral grandiosity seems to have infected the nomenklatura class of giant corporations. It is not enough for them to ensure that the corporations make a decent profit within the framework of the law; they must claim to also be morally improving, if not actually saving, the world.

So it was with Alison Rose, the first female chief executive of the National Westminster Bank, a large British bank 39 percent owned by the British government. When first appointed to the position, she said that she would put combatting climate change at the centre of the bank’s policies and activities. Whether shareholders were delighted to hear this is unknown.

But the bank, under her direction, went further. Its subsidiary, Coutts, founded in 1692 and long banker to the rich, compiled a Stasi-like dossier on one of its customers, Nigel Farage, before “exiting” him from the bank, to use the elegant term employed by Ms. Rose. (Defenestration will come later, perhaps.)

Farage is, of course, a prominent right-wing political figure in Britain, as much detested as he is admired. There was no allegation in the dossier that he had done anything illegal; indeed, in person, he had always acted correctly and courteously toward staff. What was alleged was that his “values” did not accord with those of the bank, which were self-proclaimed as “inclusive” (though not of people with less than $3.5 million to deposit or borrow). Farage was depicted as a xenophobe and racist, mainly because he was in favour of Brexit and against unlimited immigration. That anyone could support Brexit for any reason other than xenophobia, or oppose unlimited immigration other than because he was a racist, was inconceivable to the diverse, inclusive thinkers of Coutts Bank.

Ms. Rose saw fit to leak details to the BBC about Farage’s banking affairs, claiming to believe that they were public knowledge already. She did not mention the 40-page dossier that her staff had put together, about Farage’s publicly-stated views. The Stasi would have been proud of the bank’s work, which comprehensively proved him to have anti-woke views.

Whatever else might be said about Mr. Farage, no one would describe him as a pushover, the kind of person who would take mistreatment lying down. Even the Guardian newspaper, which cannot be suspected of partiality for him, suggested that the bank and its chief executive had questions to answer.

It was not long before Ms. Rose had to beat a retreat. She issued a statement in which she said:

I have apologised to Mr. Farage for the deeply inappropriate language contained in [the dossier].

The board of the bank said that “after careful reflection [it] has concluded that it retains full confidence in Ms. Rose as CEO of the bank.”

The following day, Rose resigned, admitting to “a serious error of judgment.”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 $𝟏 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧.

The weasel words of Ms. Rose and the bank board are worth examination. They deflected, and I suspect were intended to deflect, the main criticism directed at Ms. Rose and the bank: namely, that the bank had been involved in a scandalous and sinister surveillance of Mr. Farage’s political views and attempted to use them as a reason to deny him banking services, all in the name of their own political views, which they assumed to be beyond criticism or even discussion. The humble role of keeping his money, lending him money, or perhaps giving him financial advice, was not enough for them: they saw themselves as the guardians of correct political policy.

It was not that the words used to describe Mr. Farage were “inappropriate,” or even that they were libelous. It is that the bank saw fit to investigate and describe him at all, at least in the absence of any suspicion of fraud, money laundering, and so forth. “The error of judgment” to which Ms. Rose referred was not that she spoke to the BBC about his banking affairs (it is not easy to believe that she did so without malice, incidentally), but that she compiled a dossier on Farage in the first place—and then “error of judgment” is hardly a sufficient term on what was a blatant and even wicked attempt at instituting a form of totalitarianism.

This raises the question of whether one can be wicked without intending to be so, for it is quite clear that Ms. Rose had no real understanding, even after her resignation, of the sheer dangerousness and depravity of what the bank, under her direction, had done.

As for the board’s somewhat convoluted declaration that “after careful consideration, it concluded that it retains full confidence,” etc., it suggests that it was involved in an exercise of psychoanalytical self-examination rather than of an objective state of affairs: absurd, in the light of Ms. Rose’s resignation within twenty-four hours. The board, no more than Ms. Rose herself, understood what the essence of the problem was. For them, if there had been no publicity, there would have been no problem: so when Mr. Farage called for the dismissal of the board en masse, I sympathised with his view.

There is, of course, the question of the competence of the bank’s management. Last year, the bank’s profits rose by 50 percent (I wish my income had risen by as much). I am not competent to comment on the solidity of this achievement: excellent profits one year followed by complete collapse the next seem not to be unknown in the banking world. But the rising profits under Ms. Rose for the four years of her direction seem to point to, at least on some level, of competence. How many equally competent persons there are who could replace her, I do not know.

Still, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬, as illustrated in this episode, is worrying. Would one trust such people if the political wind changed direction? Their views would change, but the iron moral certainty and self-belief would remain the same, like the grin of the Cheshire Cat. How many meetings have I sat through in which some apparatchik has claimed to be passionately committed to a policy, only to be just as passionately committed to the precise opposite when his own masters demand a change of direction?! The Coutts story is one of how totalitarianism can flourish.”

—

Theodore Dalrymple

#the new totalitarianism #political righteousness #totalitarianism #secular religion #moral exhibitionism #apparatchiks #professional managerial class mind virus #ideological fundamentalists #insane in the membrane #Theodore Dalrymple #western decline #Neil Farage #persona non grata #the new inquisitions #barbaric #national Westminster bank #the self anointed

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