#(tw antisemitism for the this next part)

[fmluder24]

The X Files Loves Dead Jews (Part 5/7~): Fox Mulder and Paradoxes of Pain and Privilege

We are going to start closing out our discussion of Jews and Jewishness in the context of The X Files by studying the way these tropes all coalesce around Fox Mulder. For Part 1 on the appropriation of the Holocaust in the myth arc, go here. For part 2 on appropriation of the Holocaust in “The Field Where I Died,” go here. For part 3 on the Syndicate being essentially a Jewish cabal, go here. And for part 4 on Kaddish, you can go here. 

Let’s round up the ways in which Mulder is associated with Jewish tropes, in terms of Jew-as-Victim and Jew-as-All-Powerful. Basically, Mulder is repeatedly and continually associated with tropes around Jews and Judaism because that was an easy cultural shorthand for the blend of martyrdom and power they were going for in the writers’ room. Additionally, as we will explore in the next meta (I am almost done, I swear), this coding serves to make him a Christ figure, who was Jewish. Therefore, by the transitive property of Jewishness… let’s get into it.

TW for historical and contemporary antisemitism and also experiences of sexual violence

Mulder is meant to be a fairly archetypical Western hero. This means we need him to have sort of high born and low born qualities at the same time. An heir to en empire raised on a barren planet. A prince in exile after he sees the suffering of other people. A wizard raised by muggles. A demigod born into poverty. Baby Moses, a Hebrew slave and a prince of Egypt. However, TXF is not just culturally Christian in the abstract way that virtually every piece of American pop culture is, it is actually very committed to self consciously invoking Christian symbolism, particularly in the martyrdom of Mulder. Lets pretend we are in the kitchen cooking up our hero. We need him to be the lowest of the low. We need him to be persecuted and suffering as much as possible. Lets draw on the tropes and historical references we’ve already been invoking around what it is to suffer and use them in our character. Due to the sloppy nature of the writing, we are then shoveling tropes around Jewish trauma into our hero.

Mulder and Tropes of Jewish Victimhood Mulder is repeatedly associated with historical and contemporary moments of Jewish suffering. We’ve talked about most of these moments already in this meta. Here is a quick rundown mostly pulling from parts 1, 2 and 4 of the meta, although we need to take a quick detour to touch on other tropes.

Associated with Jewish Experiences of the Holocaust and WW2 He is explicitly invoked in situations where literal Nazis are after him not once, not twice, but three times. Each of these times invokes imagery of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. The first of these, that I rarely see the fandom talk about is him hiding in a piled of gassed corpses in the “Anasazi”/“The Blessing Way” segment of the myth arc. The Greys are the Jews relative to the Nazis of the Syndicate quite explicitly and he has to align themselves with their desiccated (did I mention gassed?) corpses to survive. He has to do this to avoid murder by the self-same Nazi collaborators. The second time is the monologue in “The Field Where I Died,” where he remembers his death as a Jewish woman in the Holocaust. The third, while less evocative of Jewish suffering in particular, is when he is trapped in the 1940s and facing execution by Nazis in “Triangle.” These Nazis don’t make a comment on his “looking Jewish” thankfully, but it is hanging in the air, as we are coming straight off “Drive,”  where he was captured by an antisemite.

Contemporary Jewish Experiences of Discrimination In addition to the use of tropes that tie him to historical Jewish oppression, he regularly has experiences that align with contemporary Jewish oppression. These happen in “Drive,” which I discuss here., and “Pine Bluff Variant, which I discuss here. Obviously, there is also the exchange with the antisemite in “Kaddish,” which is the most referenced incident of the antisemitism Mulder faces. It is interesting to point out that in none of these situations does he disavow Jewishness. Neither does he affirm that he is Jewish, although he does quip that he is speaking on behalf of the international Jewish conspiracy in “Drive.” He regularly is shown in situations that invoke contemporary profiling and violence against Jewish people in the modern U.S. context, strengthening the association between him and tropes of Jewish people as victims.

The Christian God uses him as a scapegoat This aspect of the character is a little hard to disambiguate from the whole Jesus thing, but suffice to say there are two separate canonical forces we can understand to be the Christian God in The X Files. The first of these is the Christian God as he appears to Scully in Catholicism episodes; the second is CSM’s function in the myth arc as the God who will sacrifice his specialest boy and impregnate the unsullied womb of Dana Scully (ew to both). We are going to focus on the “Monster of the Week” God. I’m reproducing a segment of a meta I wrote on this a while back. Basically, Mulder’s distance from God exists to improve Scully’s faith in the Christian God. To quote myself:

He is a sign [of the will of God] in the context of the show, yes in terms of his Jesusness but also in terms of how he doesn’t connect to the Christian God. Take this exchange from the end of “Revelations.”

SCULLY: Because my partner didn't see them. He didn't … he didn't believe them. And usually he … he believes without question. PRIEST: Maybe they weren't meant for him to see. Maybe they were only meant for you.

The Christian God, per the priest, did not reveal his wonders to Mulder because they were only for Scully. His lack of blessings in this regard is meant to test and ultimately strengthen her faith. Is it that far of a leap to say that a God who would not grace him with his wonders would also not grace him with his protection and intervention? A God that would possibly allow Mulder to suffer as he canonically does to ultimately strengthen her? The way he exists as a symbol of what happens when one is outside the body (politic) of Christ? He, the martyred pseudo-Wandering Jew to her questioning, yet ultimately repentant, Catholic; her, the fridged, raped, helpless woman to his action hero. It’s not empowering writing for anyone. Really, aside from a line in the revival where he says he outright doesn’t believe in God, I think the majority of X Files episodes that touch on Catholicism do establish him as a man who does believe that God exists, but that he ultimately does not find this God to be worthy of his worship. I take as evidence of this these two exchanges from “Orisons” and “All Souls” respectively:

Orisons: SCULLY: How do you prove that somebody isn't being directed by God? You don't believe that it happens? MULDER: God is a spectator, Scully. He just reads the box scores.

All Souls: MULDER: And why would God allow this to happen. Why do bad things happen to good people? Religion has masqueraded as the paranormal since the dawn of time to justify some of the most horrible acts in history. SCULLY: I was raised to believe that God has His reasons, however mysterious. MULDER: He may well have His reasons but He seems to use a lot of psychotics to carry out His job orders.

God exists for Mulder in these quotes. He has merely decided to not believe in the benevolence of said God, and therefore not give him his devotion as Scully has. This has always brought to mind for me a Phillip Roth quote from Operation Shylock.

“‘Yes? And was it for their sins,’ Aharon asked, ‘that God sent Hitler?’ ‘God sent Hitler because God is crazy. A Jew knows God and how He operates. A Jew knows God and how, from the very first day He created man, He has been irritated with him from morning till night. That is what it means that the Jews are chosen. The goyim smile: God is merciful, God is loving, God is good. Jews don't smile — they know God not from dreaming about Him in goyisch daydreams but from living all their lives with a God Who does not ever stop, not once, to think and reason and use His head with His loving children. To appeal to a crazy, irritated father, that is what it is to be a Jew. To appeal to a crazy, violent father, and for three thousand years, that is what it is to be a crazy Jew!’”

One common trope of how Christians view Jews historically is that our persecution is God teaching us a lesson. This is basically the point of the Wandering Jew, which is a European folklore character of a Jewish man who is cursed to wander until the end of world because he taunted Jesus while he carried the cross. Mulder, due to his relationship with the canonical God of The X Files, exists outside of the covenant as a sort of metaphysical whipping boy for Scully to learn from. Mulder, perhaps in a move that originates his cosmic torment, perhaps in retaliation for it, takes a very dim view of a traditional understanding of God, one that parallels certain modern American Jewish orientations towards God. So not only does Mulder take on a Jewish role in the psychodrama of The X Files, he has a stereotypically Jewish response to what is happening to him.

4. Emasculation through the Torture of Scully I considered skipping this component of what is going on, but unfortunately I think I need to lay this out. One of my least favorite things about canon is the constant need to make every terrible thing that happens to Scully ultimately about Mulder. Fanon inverts this by trying to make every terrible thing that happens to Mulder ultimately about Scully. This is also annoying. However, with the way they are written to be codependent perfect opposites that are so informed by each other and feel for each other so deeply, we do have to grapple with the fact that, yeah, what happens to her impacts him pretty deeply and vice versa. One perennial theme in The X Files is Mulder’s impotence in terms of keeping Scully safe. Specifically, he cannot save her from the reproductive and sexualized violence she faces in her abduction and subsequent conception of Emily, and then the events of “En Ami” that led to the existence of William. Of course, we can pause here and do a whole thing about how Scully should have been given the option to save herself, and that the fixation on this type of violence is really reductive to her character in canon, and all of that is very true and something I deeply agree with! But many, many meta written by many fans have covered this point well, and I am focusing on other problems at play. Does this patriarchal framing of Mulder as the man who can or cannot protect Scully as a victimized woman reflect some screwed up gender norms in the writers’ room? Yes. It, however, mirrors an anxiety around Jewish masculinity and an inability of Jewish men to protect their female counterparts from violations of sexual and reproductive autonomy. Here is a very famous quotation from the controversial poem “The City of Slaughter” by H.N. Bialik:

“In that dark corner, and behind that cask Crouched husbands, bridegrooms, brothers, peering from the cracks, Watching the sacred bodies struggling underneath The bestial breath, Stifled in filth, and swallowing their blood! Watching from the darkness and its mesh The lecherous rabble portioning for booty Their kindred and their flesh!

Crushed in their shame, they saw it all; They did not stir nor move; They did not pluck their eyes out; they Beat not their brains against the wall! Perhaps, perhaps, each watcher had it in his heart to pray: A miracle, O Lord,—and spare my skin this day! Those who survived this foulness, who from their blood awoke, Beheld their life polluted, the light of their world gone out— How did their menfolk bear it, how did they bear this yoke? They crawled forth from their holes, they fled to the house of the Lord, They offered thanks to Him, the sweet benedictory word. The Cohanim sallied forth, to the Rabbi's house they flitted: Tell me, O Rabbi, tell, is my own wife permitted? The matter ends; and nothing more. And all is as it was before.”

This is a controversial framing of the Jewish man’s experience of Jewish women’s mass rape during pogroms. They are framed here as unable or unwilling to save the women that are framed as being under their protection, concerned only with how this impacts their own sexual purity. I do not think this is a healthy framing for anyone, but it is nevertheless a thing in Jewish spaces historically that there be the anxiety or emasculation for Jewish men around the type of violence Jewish women have been subjected to. Some will say, although there are competing explanations for the practice, that the violation of the reproductive and sexual autonomy of Jewish women is a reason for the matrilineal descent rules that most Jewish communities prioritize. If a Jewish woman were raped and a pregnancy was the result, the child is still a member of the community, and the identity of the presumably non-Jewish rapist would be incidental. This is actually something you can see reflected on certain varieties of revival fix-it fic, where William may still be the result of CSM raping Scully, but he is nevertheless the child of Mulder and Scully in the ways that matter culturally.

Mulder’s emasculation by way of the constant assault on Scully’s autonomy invokes more tropes around Jewish manhood through the feelings of impotence and judgment around that impotence that ultimately fueled the development of political Zionism This is another way that Mulder is associated with tropes around Jews-as-Victims, although it may be unpopular for me to say so. Noting how Mulder suffers in the myth arc does not detract from the fact that it is ultimately Scully’s autonomy that is being violated and that she should be prioritized when it comes to the rape(s) she survives. However, there are many meta on that topic and I am looking at a different angle.

In summary The writers are pulling from a grab bag around victimhood and suffering. That grab bag of tropes is heavily infused with tropes that are associated with Jews in the Western, culturally Christian understanding. In these tropes around victimhood (historical suffering in the Holocaust, contemporary experiences of antisemitism, getting picked on by the Christian God outside of the myth arc, and being emasculated through Scully’s being stripped of her sexual and reproductive autonomy), Mulder is associated with Jewishness.

Mulder and Tropes of Jewish Power Okay okay, we don’t want our hero to be totally disadvantaged and have the shit beat out of him all the time. We gotta give him a leg up sometimes. Actually let’s give him the ultimate leg up! Coming from a group with the ultimate power and privilege. What tropes can we apply to our hero in this way?

The Cabal of it All As explored on my meta about the Syndicate, Mulder’s background invokes a lot of stereotypical tropes of Jews in power. He was born into an elite international group bent on the establishment of a new world order through white genocide, who controls the media, was involved in covering up for Nazis after the Holocaust and deliberately spreads disease amongst innocent people. While we don’t get canonical blood libel in the show, the show gets damn close by invoking just about every other popular trope around “Jewish cabals.” This is the world that Mulder stands to inherit twice over; by virtue of being raised by Bill Mulder, and by virtue of being the literal progeny of CSM.

Richie rich The various times we see the numerous homes that Bill and Teena Mulder own hint at the fact that Mulder comes from a quite wealthy background. It isn’t quite as established as the cabal nonsense, but it is there, and it’s something Fanon tends to run with. This invokes a lot of historical tropes around Jews having a lot of money, or being good with money, or controlling money, and so on.

In Conclusion In terms of tropes that align Jews with power, particularly sinister uses of power, Mulder also checks a lot of boxes. He is a rich guy born into the elite global (Jewish?) cabal. When you add in that he consistently experiences antisemitism in historical and contemporary ways, things get even more uncomfortable. When you sprinkle on top of that that he is a cheapskate (“Bad Blood”), that he hates his nose and longs for a nose job (“Sanguinarium”), and that he has an in with shady Yiddish speakers (“Fight Club”), you get another weird smear of negative tropes around Jews that are sprinkled on top of his character for no real reason.

Essentially, if you sit down in the European American world and want to write a long-suffering hero who regularly faces the ultimate evil, it’s easy to end up writing a Jew. If you sit down in the same context wanting to write a character who comes from the ultimate, most powerful, evil background imaginable, you might just accidentally write a Jew. If you do both at the same time, well. But then the drive to sprinkle on other negative tropes and have him played by a famous Jewish guy… what a mess.

In our next, penultimate installment, we will focus on how Mulder functions as Jesus in the myth arc, and how this actually reiterates a lot of the tropes around powerlessness and power that are historically associated with Jews. After that, we will discuss the move to reclaim Fox Mulder from this bullshit. Thank you for reading.

[thequiver]

Who is.....Jonothan Starsmore | Chamber? - A Reading Guide

Jonothan "Jono" Starsmore is an X-Men affiliated mutant from Marvel comics first introduced in 1994. A native of London and explicitly connected to the grunge scene, Jono has always been the pinnacle of the "bad boy with a heart of gold" trope- the only difference being that in place of a heart he has a furnace of psionic energy. Jono is best known for being part of Generation X (the team he was introduced with) but has also been an official member of the X-Men. The manifestation of his powers left him disfigured and destroyed many of his internal organs as well as his jaw, leaving him unable to speak verbally, requiring him to utilize his psionic abilities to communicate telepathically. Jono's story chronicles one of self-acceptance and is one I'd highly recommend!

Below is a complete list of Jono's appearances as of 24. November. 2023, complete with links!

Generation X: A new team of mutants under the leadership of Sean Cassidy (Banshee) and Emma Frost (The White Queen) is formed at the Massachusetts campus of the Xavier Institute. The goal of this team is to earn an education and learn how to become the next generation of X-Men- their focus is not to fight villains.

Generation X (1994) #1-3 X-Men (1991) #41 <- This is part of Legion Quest which is expounded on here in my Legion reading guide - the whole event is covered in like 6 issues and is imo very worth the read as one section of it can be a bit confusing out of context Generation X (1994) #4-6 Wolverine (1988) #94 Uncanny X-Men (1981) #Annual '95 Generation X (1994) #7-9, Annual '95, 10-11 X-Men (1991) #49 Generation X (1994) #12-21 X-Men (1991) #Annual '96 Generation X (1994) #22-23, Annual '97 Incredible Hulk #Annual '97 Generation X (1994) #25-31 Marvel Team-Up (1997) #1 Generation X (1994) #32-40, Underground Special 1998, 41 X-Men Unlimited (1993) #20 Generation X (1994) #42-49 Generation X/Dracula #Annual '89 Generation X Holiday Special (1999) #1 Generation X (1994) #50 X-Man (1995) #50 Generation X (1994) #51 X-Men Unlimited (1993) #23 Generation X (1994) #52-56 Wolverine (1988) #141 Generation X (1994) #57-58, Annual '99, 59 New Warriors (1999) #5 Generation X (1994) #60-70 Uncanny X-Men (1981) #388 Generation X (1994) #71-75

Poptopia, a Delayed Joining of the X-Men, his own mini, etc.: Following graduation from the Massachussetts Academy, Jono was offered a position on the X-Men but declined instead going to London. After an unfortunate romantic entanglement Jono would return to the X-Men.

Unanny X-Men (1981) #395-398 The Order (2002) #5-6 Uncanny X-Men (1981) #399-400, Annual 2001, 402-407 Marvel Universe: The End (2003) #1, 5 Uncanny X-Men (1981) #408-409 Chamber (2002) #1-4 Uncanny X-Men (1981) #422-423

Defections + Countdown to Zero and House of M/M-Day: After altering reality so mutants were the dominant race, the Scarlet Witch then changed reality again, this time attempting to rid the world of the mutant gene, by casting another spell, "No More Mutants", de-powering the vast majority of mutants.

Weapon X (2002) #15-21 Generation M (2006) #1 New Excalibur (2006) #9

Secret Invasion: TW: THIS EVENT IS TIED PRETTY HEAVILY INTO ANTISEMITIC TROPES PROCEED WITH CAUTION The premise of Secret Invasion is that the Skrull empire, in a bid to take control of earth, replaces several super-powered humans/humanoids on earth with Skrulls.

New Warriors (2007) #2-20

Age of X: The mutants are almost extinct, tortured by a strike force led by Colonel Graydon Creed. The first signs of the Age of X appeared in X-Men: Legacy #244; the events were removed from the Earth-616 mainstream continuity, with no memories of the alternate lives. If you've taken a look at my David Haller Reading List you'll see this event explained as "David’s desire to be loved forces him to grapple with reality," and as a story that "places David in a role where he has to choose between a false universe where he is considered a beloved hero and reality where he must choose to be a hero despite the fear others feel about him." While that is the base of the event Jono also has some great moments to shine!

Age of X: Alpha (2011) #1 X-Men: Legacy (2008) #245 New Mutants (2009) #22 X-Men: Legacy (2008) #247 New Mutants (2009) #24 X-Men: Legacy (2008) #248 Wolverine and the X-Men (2011) #Alpha and Omega X-Men: Legacy (2008) #264-265

Avengers vs. X-Men: When the Phoenix Force approaches Earth, Hope Summers is assumed its next host. The X-Men and the Avengers are divided on how to handle the situation. The X-Men believe that the Phoenix Force will herald the rebirth of the Mutant Species, while the Avengers believe that it will bring an end to all life on Earth. This leads to a war between Marvel's two powerful superhero factions.

Wolverine and the X-Men (2011) #9-10 X-Men: Legacy (2008) #266-267

Jono's Miscellaneous Adventures: (which somehow keep involving David Haller?) This is now in with Legion: Son of X and the lead up to Krakoa! Jono does a lot of different things in this period (including Gen X Vol. 2) but things are a little more calm until War of the Realms.

Wolverine and the X-Men (2011) #19 X-Men: Legacy (2013) #2-6 X-Men (2010) #40-41 X-Men: Legacy (2013) #11-12 Wolverine and the X-Men (2011) #29 X-Men: Legacy (2013) #13-14, 22, 24 X-Men: No More Humans (2014) #1 Nightcrawler (2014) #3-4 Uncanny X-Men (2013) #600 Generation X (2017) #1-9 Phoenix Resurrection the Return of Jean Grey #1-3 Generation X (2017) #85-87 X-Men: Gold (2017) #30 Old Man Logan (2016) #39 Mr. & Mrs. X (2018) #6 Uncanny X-Men (2018) #11, 14-15, 17-18 Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2015) #37

War of the Realms: Following the return of the Dark Elf, Malekith, from imprisonment, he ignited a civil war in his homeworld of Svartalfheim and emerged crowned as king. Malekith additionally began assembling a league of allies from across the Ten Realms, eventually forming the Dark Council which included among its ranks Dario Agger, King Laufey and Loki. If this doesn't sound like an X-Men plot that's because it's not, but the X-Men sure did get a tie-in and Jono's in it.

War of the Realms: Uncanny X-Men (2019) #1-3

Krakoa at last!: The following issues detail Jono's time on Krakoa and his role on the island.

New Mutants (2019) #1-2, 5, 7, 9-11 X of Swords: Destruction (2020) #1 New Mutants (2019) #15-18 Marvel's Voices: Identity (2021) - B Story X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic (2021) #1, 3-4 Phoenix Song: Echo (2021) #1 New Mutants (2019) #24 Legion of X (2022) #1 X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic (2021) #39-40 New Mutants (2019) #26 Legion of X (2022) #3-5, 7-8 X-Men: Unlimited Infinity Comic (2021) #79 X-Men: Before the Fall- Sons of X (2023) #1

[nichenarratives]

Hurricane Heller 11

A Niche Narratives Fanficiton.

last | first | next

[TWs: Period typical antisemitism; graphic depictions of violence; gun violence; details of blood, gore and injury; minor character death (OC); murder]

11. Unsanctioned Retribution (Part 2)

It feels surreal, returning to the launderette knowing what is about to unfold. Mordecai pauses across the street from the crumbling structure as he's done a hundred times before, a hand on his lapel and the other pressed into his coat, a cool breeze shifting his popped collar against his jaw. He feels as if life is coming full circle, returning to the place he began as a different person, one with a much darker heart.

The first of many decisions he will make without Hashem's guidance, Mordecai rationally knows he should feel afraid; every decision before this was done believing his actions were sanctioned by God, almost predestined to succeed. Now he carves out his own destiny, with tools he's gathered alone, and Mordecai feels at peace knowing he's in control.

As the young feline steps off the curb, the street lamp above him flickers and dies, casting the young feline in darkness, an unheeded warning for what is to come.

He steps into the store with a jingle of the bell, drawing half a dozen pairs of eyes as the door closes with another jingle behind him. Unlike his first and many subsequent entries to the launderette, he walks unencumbered through the shop, a clicking of his loafers echoing in the suddenly silent space, eyes on his back as he keeps a casual, unhurried pace.

Rumours flowing around the newest recruit of Mr Savage's personal repertoire have already permeated through to each arm of his wider operation. The bookie turned torturer, a young man with impeccable manners to counterbalance a bloodlust he guarded behind closed doors. Mordecai hates those implications, yet they keep the enforcers effortlessly at arm's length as he heads through the back door.

Right where they belong; out of my way. 

As usual, the room is thick with cigar smoke, the gray fumes curling around a single bare bulb suspended above a table in the center. Mordecai scrunches up his nose in distaste at both the smoke and the smell of food scraps left to fester in the stuffy room. Fiores sits at the head of the table, working on a ledger, his gaze flicking up as soon as the tom enters.

Their eyes meet for the first time since the adolescent tom was headhunted for Savage. Former boss and employee at a stalemate, both finally on equal ground. Fiores closes his ledger and shifts his weight back in his chair. "Well look at that," he says sarcastically, the usual thick cigar belching smoke from between fat fingers. "Our Littlest Bookie finally came crawling back home."

Mordecai narrows his gaze and flicks an ear irritably, but he doesn't respond otherwise, back to the open doorway as the enforcers begin to gather and listen. He intends to let Fiores talk himself into a corner and the underboss obliges just as expected, pointing his cigar at the tuxedo. "You left me high and dry, boy. The guy Savage brought in was useless! I've been doing all your damn books since then!"

His voice level and hands still pressed into his pockets, the adolescent raises his chin intransigently. "With due respect, Mr Fiores, there was no opportunity to refuse Mr Savage."

"There never is, though it wouldn't have helped you to try," the overweight cat chastises, pausing to take a deep toke of his cigar. Dark smoke flows freely from his nose and mouth when he speaks again. "Heard you've made a real name for yourself though, eh? What is it now, the… Killer Kitten?" 

He chuckles at his own joke, enforcers joining in from the doorway. Mordecai doesn't rise to the bait, instead reaching inside his coat to a hidden breast pocket. Only his ears turn back to signify he heard half a dozen guns cock behind him before he extracts a photograph he lifted from the file on his  latest target. He holds it up between his index and middle fingers. "Do you recognise this young man, Fiores?"

Fiores immediately frowns, silencing any laughter from his goons with a discrete wave before leaning forward not to look at the photo, but stare the tuxedo down. "I highly doubt Savage sent you to question me, so I'm going to give you some advice; quit while you're ahead, Kosher."

When Mordecai holds his ground, the underboss sits back in his chair and takes another puff of his cigar. "He's not the type to look at ingenuity and think 'how can I use this' like me. He'll see you going rogue and cut you out like you'd cut out a cancerous growth." Fiores' frown morphs into a deep scowl. "I don't take kindly to bring accused of things by a damned kike, either. Think about that before you go on."

"This is the kid I interrogated today," Mordecai continues, unphased by the threats. He can still sense the guns on his back as he takes a few calculated steps towards Fiores to put the photograph down in front of him. "Savage put me on him because after being acquitted of some minor offenses, three of his coworkers ended up either incarcerated or dead, suggesting he's feeding the police information."

"What does that have to do with me?" The overweight man growls. "Why'd I know some poker-stacking brat?"

A tiny smile curls a corner of pale lips. "I didn't yet mention a profession," Mordecai clarifies; the man is framing himself at this point, making the tom's job far easier. He taps the photo with a claw, finally drawing the underboss' gaze down to the photo. "He worked at your casino, Fiores. You bailed 'some poker-stacking brat' out the same day he was charged, to make sure he ran his table that night. That's suspicious."

The bulbous man finally stands to face his accuser. Where he used to tower over Mordecai, they're now practically the same height, looking the adolescent dead in the eye as he speaks through grit teeth. "I can do what I want with my pay, boy. Not that it's your business, but I bailed him out because we were short-staffed. Your contrived narrative ends here."

"You bailed him out because he's your middle man," the tom refutes calmly, not even flinching as Fiores snarls and bares yellowed fangs barely six inches from his muzzle. "You feed him information, which he relays to the police, maintaining a degree of separation that protects your interests at the expense of another. You're a damned rat, Fiores-"

The punch comes fast and hard, clocking him square in the jaw. The scrawny feline stumbles back into the table with a grunt. Gingerly pressing a hand to his face, Mordecai looks up in time to see Fiores shrug off his suit jacket, letting it fall to the floor as he rolls his sleeves with a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Get up, boy," he demands with a growl. "You want to insult me, you better be ready for a good fucking beating. Now get up and take it."

He always knew it could come to blows, but he'd assumed it wouldn't  be an ambush, and how naive he feels now, forced to use the table to steady himself. Without time to prepare or draw a weapon, he's a sitting duck; a scrawny kid with practically no fighting experience, which certainly shows in how swiftly his confidence drains.

Rough hands grab Mordecai from behind and pull him to his feet, shoving him back into the fray before he can object. He's thrust straight into taking a blow to his right eye; the tom hears his pince nez shatter before the punch connects with his flesh, the dull tok of meaty fist to skull before an explosion of pain and the momentum have him once again falling, this time jarring his ribs on the table before sprawling out on the floor at Fiores' feet.

Theres a sharp kick to the ribs and the underboss snarls. "Back off 'im," he commands his enforcers. Mordecai barely registers their shadows shifting away before he's flipped roughly onto his back and a boot planted squarely on his chest. Barely able to breathe, he grabs at the ankle and tries to dislodge it to no avail, Fiores putting his massive bulk onto his leg and looming over the younger tom. "Bit off more than you can chew, did you? Wanted my job too, hm? You greedy fucking kike."

He struggles under the immense weight as Fiores takes his time returning his cigar to thick lips, then casually pulling a pistol from his waistband. Emerald eyes widen as the barrel is leveled at his forehead and recalling his letter opener, the monochrome cat scrabbles in a pocket as Fiores pulls back the firing pin with a twisted smirk. "Looks like I get to tell old Savage his favourite pet wasn't house-broken. Lucky me."

Grasping the letter opener, Mordecai rips it from his pocket and plunges it into the underboss' calf. 

Fiores screams and jerks backwards, pulling the trigger as Mordecai rolls to the side. Red hot pain sears down the lad's cheek as the bullet skims flesh and melts fur, but there's no time to acknowledge it. Down one weapon, he goes for his last - the switchblade in his boot straps - flicking it open with an audible snick just as Fiores yanks the letter opener out of his leg and slings it across the room.

Enforcers rush in, only to retreat as their boss turns his snarl on them, wordlessly demanding they adhere to his previous statement; back off, he's mine. Mordecai steadies himself on shaking legs as they face each other down. His right eye is already swelling shut behind the empty lens frame, cheek and jaw on fire, entire body shaking with adrenaline as the underboss levels the barrel with his chest, taking a limping step closer. "Hold fucking still, boy."

Mordecai does the exact opposite, diving towards the table at his right. Another shot ricochets dangerously close to his heels as he stumbles full-body into the table and overturns it for makeshift cover, clutching his switchblade to tightly his knuckles turn white. There's not enough space for the table to be effective cover - all Fiores has to do is limp closer, and he'll be a sitting duck - but it bides him a moment to think.

A third shot goes clear through the table, barely an inch from his hip. The tuxedo feels the air heat up, singing his fur tips as it passes, making it clear he can't stay there. He needs to disarm Fiores, but there's no obvious way to do that, time ticking past far too quickly with the click of a fresh chamber being loaded. 

If it's useless as a shield, perhaps it can be a weapon.

With no time to plan anything more elegant he pivots on his heel, grabs hold of two of the table legs and pushing back to his feet, charges the wooden table in the direction of the last bullet, using as a temporary battering ram. There's a yell of surprise and yet another shot through the table before he crashes into Fiores. 

The underboss falls flat on his back with a heavy huff of air as Mordecai flies over the table, landing a few feet away, the dull thud of a forgotten third weapon hitting his hip bone as his switchblade ricochets away. Disoriented and dazed, he tries to get back to his feet using the nearest wall and hisses when his left leg burns with pain. He doesn't looks down though, struggling to focus through a pounding headache and squinting through his remaining, crooked spectacle lens, attempting to locate Fiores.

Out of nowhere, Fiores grabs him by the neck and shoves him back against the plaster. He squeezes Mordecai's throat so tight the lad can't draw breath, his attacker gleeful as the adolescent struggles beneath his grip. "Your luck's run out," Fiores informs his prey. "Better use those last words to pray for forgiveness, though I doubt your God wants your soul back, after all you've done."

The monochrome feline pulls uselessly at that thick, meaty hand for a few precious seconds. He's suddenly very afraid to die, desperate to survive this encounter, when he recalled the tool he kept as a failsafe that knocked painfully into his hip before. Still clawing at the man's hold with one hand, he scrambles in his coat pocket and fumbles the handle of his last resort with the other, struggling to grasp it as his brain is slowly deprived of oxygen.

Dark sport dancing before his eyes, he finally gets a good grip on the claw hammer and swings.

His first strike is uncoordinated and clumsy, smacking Fiores not in the temple as planned, but the cheekbone, creating a resounding crack that echoes through the tiny room. Taken by surprise, Fiores releases his throat and stumbles with a scream of agony, pressing his hand to the fractured bone as his instincts put distance between him and his attacker.

Mordecai sags against the wall and sucks in breaths, lungs burning from the almost-fatal defect, but he doesn't wait for his head to clear. Still unsteady, limping slightly on his left leg, he follows Fiores the couple of feet he managed to put between them and taking aim this time, Mordecai strikes the man square on the temple with his claw hammer. A splatter of blood mists the tom's face and Fiores is knocked to the ground.

Fuelled by adrenaline, his near death experience and years of bitter resentment, Mordecai straddles the groaning man and slams the hammer onto his head again, and again, and again. Each hit sprays the adolescent with fresh blood he barely feels speckle his face and clothes, his weighted tool crushing the man's skull until his temple is concave and he no longer breathes.

Only then does Mordecai stand, letting the hammer drop to the floor from his shaking, bloodied hand. He stares at his former boss' corpse almost disbelieving, processing his first willing murder from an abstract perspective; it doesn't feel entirely real and yet, he can feel the blood crusting rapidly in his fur, the scents of iron and flesh thick in the air.

When he glances at the gawking enforcers, they recoil from the unarmed Kosher Butcher, not daring to approach the unhinged killer in their midst as Mordecai removes his pince nez to inspect the damage to the frames. Frowning deeply as he feels their twisted state, he sighs and replaces the bent specs on his muzzle, turning to the nearest enforcer with a chillingly cold stare.

"Contact Mr Savage," he orders calmly, glancing back down at Fiores' as he runs a now steady hand through disheveled hair and readjusts his suit jacket. "Apologize for the lateness of correspondence on my behalf, then emphasise the import of the call; that Fiores has been forced to resign."

[thatnerdyqueer]

lmao ok so I just finished watching V for Vendetta

and I have a lot of ThoughtsTM

before you read HUGE TW OK. homophobia, transphobia, racism, antisemitism

Ok so I should preface this by saying the movie itself isn't homophobic, transphobic, particularly racist (as far as I know, I'm white so I've probably missed stuff and I apologise if I have), antisemetic (but again, maybe I missed stuff) or any of that.

in fact in my opinion it was an amazing, and extrememly terrifying movie.

But, it did feel like watching a highlight reel of all the worst parts of the political climate of 1930s germany and of course of the past few years.

now onto the funny bit:

I was watching the credits and I saw that it was a Wachowski sisters movie and omfg god it immediately made SO MUCH SENSE lol

when I say that V for Vendetta was SO TRANS I mean it. Like, in ways that I can't really articulate now bc I'm too tired but I might explain later, it was so trans. So. Trans.

It was soooo white lmaooooooooo. Like it kept talking about evil conservative politics and how gay people and shit are used as scapegoats, and while that was super powerful I was kinda confused as to why they like, totally glossed over intersectionality and other methods of oppression. It was weird to watch such a "progressive" film that didn't touch on race, like, at all. The closest they came was a guy getting arrested for owning a Koran. And the guy was white. (played by Stephen Fry My Beloved, no hate to him, he was fantastic as always and also I'm super scared about that fall he had I hope hes ok :( anyways). And then the second I saw that the Wachowski sisters made it I was like ooooooooooooooohhhhh thats why it just blatantly ignored racsim and had 0 (zero) characters from ANY ETHNIC BACKGROUND OTHER THAN FUCKING ENGLAND :/ Which, yknow, aside from being hurtful to the vast majority of the population of earth, just makes for a less interesting, less vibrant, less powerful story. It's about freedom, willingness to die for a cause, and rebellion for fucks sake. It shouldn't just be white.

Ok other ThoughsTM

It was weird, but also kinda touching to have V be the "guy" that fought for it all.

I don't really have the words for it at the moment, but in as simple terms as I can.

I was surprised at the unrealistic, but also extrememly important suggestion that a striaght, white, cis guy (assuming V was all of those things, even though he was hella fruity and queer coded) could ever allow himself to become the revolution, to become something bigger than himself, and more importantly, to be selfless enough to devote himself to the liberation of completely separate groups of people.

And, look, I'm not saying that they can't do that (Neil Gaiman as a shoutout, you stand up unabashedly for queer people, trans people, refugees, women, sex workers, disabled people, people of colour, etc etc and maybe thats because you're jewish so you know what fucking happens when you ignore discrimination for a little bit and allow it to fester because it aint you thats getting attacked so why should you care and anyway thats not a rant that I want to have), but I was just surprised, and kinda dissapointed that they did

Because its unrealistic. When as a white person ever been the champion of a a movement against racism? When has a man ever been a figurehead for feminism? Etc etc.

which brings me to my next point.

V's arc still disappointingly revolved around falling in love with a woman. Which really just felt like a way to distract straight viewers from his actual character arc so it was less confronting for them and they will never actually understand him or connect with him properly. I watched it with my parents (both straight), and there were moments when I felt completely sure that they were not grasping the point of a scene, or a line, or whatever. And they felt all righteous and content because they watched a movie about gay people fighting back or whatever, but the main character was still A FCUKING STRIAHGT MAN WTF.

And let me be clear. I DONT HAVE ANY OBJECTIONS TO HIM FALLING IN LOVE. I DONT AHVE ANY OBJECTIONS TO HIS LOVE INTEREST BEING A WOMAN. I'm just annoyed that the messaging was subtle enough that straight people and allo people distracted by a heterosexual romance would miss it. Yes, his love for Evey was tragic. Yes, it was beautiful. But no scene with them was ever actually about their love. It was about something bigger. Which I don't think my parents quite grasped.

Anyway. Conclusions.

Was it a good movie? Absolutely yes!

Will I be watching it again? Absolutely yes!

Was it a terrifying documentary about the world as we know it? Yes!

But could it have been more effective by diversifying slightly more? Yes.

(btw I am fully aware that this movie was made in 2005 and we need context and shit)

So yeah. Those are my thoughts. If you made it this far, wow. You're either a bit V for Vendetta fan, very passionate about activism, or not really concentrating properly.

So uh yeah.

[what-even-is-sleep]

Finally filled out a form that had Jewish as an option under ethnicity!!!!!!!!

[moonystoast1971]

HI IM PISSED OFF AND HERE TO TALK SHIT ABOUT TOXIC MARAUDERS STANS

so i saw a "hot take" it was the coldest shit ever like girlie my fridge is broken rn pls bring ur opinions this way

basically they were mad that the marauders fandom now has more characters in it (the characters they named: pandora dorcas evan barty) and that it was now less about james sirius and remus but more about "ocs" and want to bring it back to the early 2000s

TW!!!!!!!!!!: talks about racisim, colourism, sexual harrassment, homophobia, fat phobia, lesbophobia, general toxicisity, sexism, shitty beauty standards

lets evaluate ur early 2000s:

-two ships only ever written about and they were both toxic: jily and wolfstar lets talk about that for a second: Jily was only ever written in a way that was litterally sexual harrassment! you had james sexually harrassing lily every five minutes but called it romantic. you had this girl subjected to years of humiliation and sexual harrassment - THAT STARTED AT AGE 11 AND WENT ALL THE WAY TO AGE 17! like u were telling us how cute it was to be pressured into romance. THE LOVELYYYYYY EARLY 2000S <333333333 next we have wolfstar which was litterally gays for straight ppl, remus was ur tortured little broken boy who treated sirius like literal shit- this man treated sirius as if he was an annoying ass burden, he could never do anything good, he was always treated as if his presence was killing remus. but its fine they were aestheticly pleasing and the straight girls loved to read about them. sirius and remus were ur trauma porn gays written for straights. lily and james were ur sexual harrassment turned love affair romance for the toxic love girlies.

-all ur characters were white: james occasionally got to be desi but that was fucking rare, all ur characters were skinny white ppl. if james was written as desi itd be one quick "cholatey skin" (seriously why were you out here describing his skin as food???????? none of the 4385853959 billion white ppl got that treatment) dorcas and mary eventually got thrown in but of course OF FUCKING COURSE ya'll still had mary as miss lily collins miss emily from paris and dorcas as light skin when she was dark skinned (your colourisms showing babes - dark skin girls are beautiful, don't forget that) but no yall had her as miss zoe kravits well knowing she was dark skin

-your over glorification of male characters and complete ignorance to the female characters:

Tell me why james sirius remus and snape (never peter) all got these in depth stories, all got to have feelings that got explained, lives that had meaning but lily evans was a pawn in her own love story? was used as a plot device? as personal growth for not one BUT TWO MEN she wasn't a person to ya'll she was james and snapes character development. mary and dorcas got added in and were given the personality of fucking sticks on the ground. you treated these women as if they were plot points to further the lives of men AND NOW UR COMPLAINING WE'VE GIVEN THEM PROPER PERSONALITIES?????? my brothers in christ ur sexism is showing, better cover up.

-UR TOXIC ASS BODY STANDARDS (oml this one drives me up the fucking wall):

you will be genuinely SHOCKED how many early 2000s marauders fics i've read where the second its revealed peter betrayed them he's being called fat and ugly and horrible names about his weight. james remus and sirius were these perfect little pretty boys who were basically described as gods while peter was described as ugly and surprisingly (no it fucking wasnt surprising in the slightest) fat THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH PLUS SIZE BODIES so why was that how you described him? always just "fat and ugly" what the fuck? STOP DEMONISING PLUS SIZE BODIES

-ur antisemitism: Snape was ur bad guy, so of course your "amazing" writing "talents" had to talk about how ugly he was but snape wasn't plus sized so ya'll couldn't call him fat, OH BUT LOOK GUYS HE STILL HAS A BODY PART WE CAN INSULT TO MAKE THE MARAUDERS LOOK EVEN BETTER THAN HIM!!!!!!! HIS NOSE!!!!!!! sitting here writing fucking paragraphs describing this man and always going back to his "big ugly nose" "ginormous nose" u may not like it but ur an antisemitic. you're talking about a jewish mans nose and describing it in ways to make it sound hideous JUST TO GLORIFY UR BORING ASS WHITE MEN! why was his nose the marauders favourite insult?

-ur general homophobia:

as i said earlier: WOLFSTAR WAS GAYS WRITTEN FOR STRAIGHT GIRLS TO TWIRL THEIR HAIR ABOUT

those were ur only queer characters. james was straight, peter was straight (tho some of yall mfs [2000s remadora shippers] were out here making peter the only queer character so it just worked so well when he was ur bad guy) snape was straight, lily was straight (not that it mattered bc the girl barely had a personality) the fandom was just a bunch of overly glorified straight assholes with their two gay friends who hold hands to make the straight girls horny. eventually marlene and dorcas were thrown in to apease the lesbians but all they did was come by holding hands and say hi to ur precious white men and never speak again

LETS TAKE A LOOK AT THE FANDOM NOWADAYS:

female characters are actually treated like important characters NOT JUST PLOT DEVICES (wow who knew that was something we could do 😲😲😲)

queer characters are written properly they aren't just jerk off material for straight girls

the characters arent just fucking white men and when they arent white their culture is actually fucking mentioned it isnt just a throw in to appease ppl

the characters just have more fucking personality tbh

body types are celebrated not demonised

there are so many different ships which allows representation for so many different people

NON CISGENDERED CHARACTERS!!!!!

redemption for characters that were literal children in that war (these kids were raised in households brainwashed and abused to fight in a war they were too young to even understand properly)

honestly our stories r just fucking better

QUEER SHIPS WRITTEN FOR AND BY QUEER PEOPLE!!

now last thing i wanna talk about is the added characters and the redemptions for certain characters: literally all i want to say is if u dont fucking like seeing other characters being given roles in it DONT PRESS THE FANFICS WITH THEIR NAMES TAGGED theres this special button in ao3 which allows u to exclude certain things - exclude their names if ur small brain cant see that these were literal children who were being manipulated into their ways and if ur tiny little brain cant handle so many names

please feel free to agrue with me in the comments babes id love to hear ur shitty ass old ass out dated ass opinions <33333

[normal-horoscopes]

Actually yo what the fuck is andrenochrome?? My qanon chud mom talks about it a lot and I never thought to wonder if it was one of her batshit conspiracy things

HOOOO BOY BUCKLE UP LET ME SEE IF I CAN DO THIS

THIS IS GONNA CONTAIN MENTIONS OF PEDOPHILIA, NECROPHILIA, MURDER, AND ANTISEMITISM.

SO ADRENOCHROME IS A REAL CHEMICAL COMPOUND PRODUCED BY THE OXIDIZATION OF EPINEPHRINE IN THE BODY, FURTHER OXIDIZATION CAUSES IT TO POLYMERIZE INTO A NEUROMELANIN COMPOUND

BASICALLY, IF SOMETHING EXCITING OR STRESSFUL HAPPENS TO YOU, YOUR BODY TRIES TO CREATE NEW NEURONS TO MAKE IT LESS STRESSFUL NEXT TIME. ADRENOCHROME IS A PART OF THAT PROCESS. WE DONT KNOW EXACTLY WHAT ITS ROLE IS THOUGH.

BACK AROUND 1944 A PAIR OF CANADIAN BIOCHEMSITS THEORIZED THAT THE COMPOUND WAS LINKED TO PSYCHOSIS, CREATING THE “ADRENOCHROME THEORY OF SCHIZOPHRENIA” BUT IN 1973 THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION POINTED OUT THE BLATANT FLAWS IN THEIR METHODOLOGY AND DISCREDITED THE HYPOTHESIS

THE COMPOUND SUPPOSEDLY CAN BE USED AS A PSYCHOACTIVE DRUG. ALDOUS HUXLEY AND HUNTER S THOMPSON HAVE BOTH MENTIONED THE COMPOUND AS HAVING AN EFFECT SIMILAR TO MESCALINE, THOUGH HUXLEY SAID THEY NEVER ACTUALLY TRIED IT AND ITS UNCONFIRMED IF THOMPSON EVER DID. HERES HOW THOMPSON MENTIONS ADRENOCHROME IN FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS:

“Where’d you get this?” I asked. “You can’t buy it.” “Never mind,” he said. “It’s absolutely pure.” I shook my head sadly. “What kind of monster client have you picked up this time? There’s only one source for this stuff.” He nodded. “The adrenaline glands of a living human body,” I said. “It’s no good if you get it out of a corpse.”

THOMPSON PAINTS IT AS THIS HYPER-RARE DRUG ONLY AVAILABLE TO PEOPLE WITH THE POWER AND RESOURCES TO HARVEST IT FROM LIVING HUMAN BEINGS

NOW, BACK IN THE 1940s WHEN FASCISM WAS ON THE RISE, FASCISTS WOULD ACCUSE JEWS OF THE MOST CARTOONISHLY EVIL THINGS THEY COULD IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMONIZE THEM. THIS IS CALLED “BLOOD LIBEL“ AND BACK IN THE 1940s THE HOT THING TO ACCUSE PEOPLE OF WAS DRINKING THE BLOOD OF CHILDREN IN SOME SORT OF NEFARIOUS RITUAL.

(HELLA TW FOR THIS NEXT BIT)

THIS HAS EVOLVED OVER TIME TO CONTAIN EVERYTHING FROM DRUG FUELED BACCHANALIA TO PEDOPHILIA. ADRENOCHROME HAPPENED TO FIT PERFECTLY INTO THE MYTHOLOGY. IT GAVE IT A PROFIT MOTIVE. BECAUSE SUPPOSEDLY, THE BEST ADRENOCHROME IS PRODUCED WHEN THE VICTIM IS KILLED DURING A MOMENT OF INTENSE PAIN AND/OR SEXUAL CLIMAX.

MEANING NOW IT WASN'T JUST LONE CHILDREN BEING STOLEN, FOR SECRETIVE ILLUMINATI PARTIES, IT WAS AN ENTIRE CLANDESTINE ECONOMY OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND NIGHTMARISH SECRET CHILD TORTURE CENTERS, ONE OF WHICH WAS SUPPOSEDLY LOCATED IN THE BASEMENT OF THE COMET PING PONG AND PIZZERIA IN WASHINGTON DC, THE LOCATION OF THE PIZZAGATE CONSPIRACY.

[benevolentbirdgal]

Writeblr Introduction Post: benevolentbirdgal

Shalom y’all! I’ve seen several of these as of late and thought it probably my turn!

Me: You can call me Tzipporah or Birdie. I am a 20-something woman who likes to write stuff. She/her. SFW, but probably would be rated as PG-13. Here there be swearing.

What You’ll Find On My Blog: Writing advice, OC questions (mine and reblogged), prompts (mine and reblogged), my four WIPs, occasionally other people’s WIPs, Jewish stuff, random tumblr stuff. 

My Genres: Humor, Horror, Sci-Fi, YA, short story.

Writeblr Stuff

Asks: Very open! Feel free to ask about writing stuff, my WIPS, writing advice (although I’m no more qualified than the next internet rando), or just to be chatty!

Ask Games: If I reblog or post it, you can ask me for the ask game.

Community: I am not currently in any writeblr groups or group chats or exchanges on Tumblr, but I am open to it!

Contacting Me: Inbox is open!

Fanworks/read-alongs/whatever: I would be/am immensely flattered by anyone wanting to make fanart or do readings of stuff I write. I realize I can’t enforce this, but please tag or link the original work if you want to make something with my stuff.

Tag Games: Open to tag games. No promises I’ll participate in every one I get tagged in, but feel free to tag me.

Tagging: If you want to be tagged for WIP updates, let me know. If you need me to tag for cw/tw stuff, let me know. 

My current (active) WIPS (4):

God of Cheese:

Irreverent story about hubris, found family, bureaucracy, and the love of cheese. 

Set in ancient land with heno-polytheistic pantheon of gods doing their thing. Not based around any particular pantheon past or present.

The big/important gods go to a conference (to meet with gods from other lands) and leave the God of Cheese, Colby, in charge. He's a competent dude, but like a lower-management type, not a "run the land" type. There's all sorts of minor gods and gods-adjacent critters and special humanish types that are suddenly his problem

Shenanigans ensue. 

Most of the gods have names that are dumb puns or jokes in languages I speak.

Some stuff written, still workshopping and worldbuilding. 

Unnamed Jewish YA Vampire Hunter Story/Fantasy:

Hannah (Chava) is 14 and weird things started happening after her bat mitzvah last year. It comes to a head when she learns she’s from a Jewish family of alukah & sheyd (vampire and demon) hunters, although her branch is usually focused on alukot. 

Very much an exploration of Jewish identity in the U.S. in the 2000s/2010s. 

Jewish ideas about folklore, alukot (vampires), sheydim (demons), and the spooky. 

Antisemitism is discussed, portrayed, and processed. 

Several parts written, need to edit and find requisite chutzpah to post. 

Unnamed Sci-Fi dramedy in spaaaaaaaaaaaace:

Kind of episodic. Takes place in the near-ish future, timeline intentionally unclear. Probably a 3 or 4 out of 6 on TV trope’s Sci-Fi Hardness scale.

The Earth empire, which is kind of sort of an extension of the successor to the U.N., has what is basically starfleet managing its extensive holdings around the universe. 

The story centers around three main characters in their 20s navigating employment and space. 

Includes Jewish, queer, and disability representation. Talks about class/regional values conflict through sci-fi lens. 

You can learn more about this one here, here, and here. 

Several parts written, need to edit to post. 

How To Survive Shopping

Ruleshorror stuff I write and post on reddit. I usually repost here as well, but the most complete version lives on my reddit index.

Basically, spooky one-off lists about different kinds of shopping that conceivably take place in the same universe as one another. 

Currently 20-something parts. 

[exclamaquest]

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS IS NOT MEANT TO CONDEMN ANYONE. IT IS SIMPLY INFORMATION THAT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW. I AM NOT SAYING ANYONE IS BAD FOR ACCIDENTALLY DOING THIS WITH THEIR FAN CULTS. BUT THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO KEEP IN MIND.

Under the readmore is DESCRIPTIONS OF ANTISEMITISM and INFORMATION ON HOW TO AVOID IT IN YOUR CULT CONTENT.

An anon asked me to write up this post and I am so sorry I haven't gotten to it earlier--I had to take some time to think and consult with friends as to what points I wanted to hit and how.

Despite only being in the Camp Camp fandom for a few months, I've already seen some cults that are in extremely poor taste, from a Jewish perspective. I'm absolutely not calling people out, but I've seen interpretations ranging from "a small group of people who are completely off the shits" to "a multinational organization controlling all the world's information and finances and performing blood magic. Also, they kidnap children." It's the latter group that I'm going to talk about today.

Now, that's an exaggeration. Most cults don't have all those qualities, but the ones that do are treading a very, very, VERY fine line into antisemitism. Why? We'll try to unpack that here.

First off, conspiracy theories. There's a long history of people being sure of the fact that us Jewish people control the world, the most notable one being the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is a falsified document that was first published in 1903 in Russia, and has since been spread throughout the world. It purportedly details the Jewish path to world domination. I say purportedly because it has been disproven as a hoax multiple times, but is still used in Illuminati-style conspiracy theories today.

This plays into the stereotype of Jews controlling the world. If your cult controls all the money or all the information or ESPECIALLY all the media, take a step back and think: Can I lower its influence? Not only is it just unrealistic to have a cult that has that level of influence, it can also have some nasty connotations.

Now, just that in and of itself isn't enough to point at and go hey, that's bad. While it might be slightly OP, I'm not going to immediately call someone out on having a cult that controls the world. There's more factors that play into it.

Another is specifically blood magic. In addition to positing that Jews control the world, a big part of quite a few antisemitic conspiracies is the inclusion of blood magic or blood drinking, especially in conjunction with the kidnapping of Christian children. This is why in TUA it was such a big deal that a character who spoke Yiddish (for those of you who don't know, Yiddish is a Jewish language that is a combination of Hebrew and German) to be kidnapping children.

I've seen fandom cults where they not only kidnap children but also perform blood magic rites on them, which is incredibly bad, which leads us to our next point: the blood magic.

This is a hard one to untangle. It ties into several stereotypes, the first being that Jews are inhuman. Blood magic is used in conspiracies to explain how Jewish people cast spells to make them look human despite not being so in reality. (This is in part why David Icke's theories regarding reptilians are accurately read as antisemitic.) (TW antisemitism)

It also stems from the kidnapping children part. A big thing is Jews taking good Christian children for use in their arcane blood rituals, using them to (once again) appear human when in reality they are not.

Another thing is the whole white=purity deal. While that is actually prevalent in IRL cults, it's a fine line to tread, especially when a lot of cult counterparts have Aryan features (blond hair and blue eyes). That, combined with other factors, can paint a very ugly picture. White (AS A COLOR) can absolutely be used as a symbolic representation of ideal purity, but when the cult is all blonde and blue eyed, you're toeing a line that you really don't want to cross.

You should also be careful not to introduce Jewish caricatures into your cultist designs. I am not in any way saying this is on purpose, but as people might move away from Aryan designs, it's important to remember what other features to avoid, especially when dealing with cults that have the qualities discussed here. Big hooked noses and large curly dark hair are things to be very cognizant about using in your cultist designs for example.

I'm more than happy to call it out the first time. I have called it out before, and I will continue to do so. But it gets tiring. Jewish people should not have to advocate for themselves constantly. Now that you have this information in your hands, please, please, please keep it in mind when consuming Camp Camp cult content and creating your own. It can be exhausting to be on the lookout constantly, and I hope this post can help teach people more of what to be aware of when creating and consuming content.

Again: None of these things on their own make for a bad cult, or an antisemitic one. But if a cult checks multiple boxes in this list, you really should take a long hard look on what you're doing. It's not on purpose, I trust that, but there are antisemitic dogwhistles that are deeply embedded into the general perception of cults that need to be watched out for and nipped in the bud.

Here's a great article to read (TW antisemitism) if you're curious about learning more.

[vohalika]

The Clitical Discordening

So by basically shitposting vaguely into the wind, I got involved with… something. Oh boy.

What the hell is going on?

Two days ago, a blog called “defenderofcrqueers” run by an 18 year old acequeer French girl called Sofia, calling herself tired of predatory lesbians, started a series of call out posts on a BeauYasha Discord Server which, from what I have been able to gather, is actually called Clitical Hole

The blog and the posts have been deleted

The first post was reblogged 40 times by the person who made it. 40 times. I counted.

In the posts, Sofia made serious accusations of transpbobia, biphobia, and aphobia, which some of the screenshots provided corroborated

There was also a section labelled xenophobia, which contained someone saying “fuck the French”

Put a pin in that

In between that were also “general violent behavior” or “objectifying the cast/each other” and liberate usage of trigger warnings, most memorable being “tw: lesbians”

Those posts very clearly already read as people shooting the shit with each other, making fun of being called predatory lesbians, talking about their personal relationships in sometimes maybe bad phrasing or poor taste, but that’s, you know, a matter of taste

The ratio between benign stuff and serious accusations was roughly 50:50, balanced enough for it to not be clearly discernable whether it was serious or not

Again, the blog itself reblogged this 40. Times. It got maybe 100 notes total.

I found this because a friend linked it in our 4 people discord after she got it from the mod of another discord

This led me to make two posts; one just vaguely making fun of how badly you can fuck up a call out post, and another explaining to an anon what had happened.

I stand by all of the points made in there, under the assumption that this was someone trying to do what has recently been done to a Fjorester discord server and failing miserably, while the members of the server largely treated it as a joke

Parts 2 and 3 were published, too, not reblogged 40 times. They contained more of the same, with some of the usual ace discourse you see all over tumblr in it

You know, claims that aces want to be oppressed to badly, acehets aren’t lgbtq, just the usual stuff you see everywhere which made it look pretty genuine.

Members of the server in question largely considered this a joke and trolled the author of the posts on the blog.

There were hints of a 4th post coming, including racism and antisemitism. You know, things a tad bit more serious than a bunch of lesbians being horny towards each other.

After sleeping on it for another day, I made a third post. Again, everything is now deleted, but keep in mind there were serious accusations and some pretty disgusting things in the screenshots.

This post was updated after the “saviorofcrqueers” blog and everything on it was deleted

Now I’ll have you know that my 3 posts on the subject had maybe 30 notes between them, largely by the same people. That’s fewer times than the blog self-reblogged the first post!

And yet somehow my posts were screenshotted and posted by the server in question, leading to of its members to contact me to clear the air

I will stress that these members have been nothing but polite to me

After talking things over with them and asking a few choice questions I’ll get into later, a new blog, “notallwhatitseems”, which is still up at the time of writing this, reblogged my most current post, owning up to all of this having been a prank to get back at the server for insulting her home country of France

So everything about that server is fake?

Well. Mostly?

For the record, I am not a member, have never been a member, and have no interest in ever being a member. It is not my ship and the general tone is not my vibe. In fact, they are very much against my ship, out of everything the fake call out included the 52 pages of BeauJester hate are probably the least manipulated and the most real, and you know what? That’s their prerogative. As I said in my first post, back in my days, people would raid tags with hate and then get raided back. Making your own community to hate on rival ships to your community is progress here. Godspeed.

(Ship hate, of course, rarely exists in a vacuum and can feature other shit, blah. I’m talking about it in isolation here. This is seriously not the most pressing issue by a long shot.)

The general tone of what I’ve seen from the server, even when it was kinda funny sometimes, is also just, plain and simple, not my cup of tea. Very frequently in what I consider to be poor taste. And that is fine, too. I’m not here to police how anyone talks to their friends in a private space outside of, you know, actual bigotry. To quote one of the people who got in contact with me:

So the two members who got into contact with me after seeing my post on the server. Source S is more of an outsider looking in, source Y is, from what I can tell, very much involved with this and was featured in some of the screenshots.

They both, independently of each other, confirmed to me that the transphobia and biphobia weren’t real, either manipulated or taken out of context, and that there’s actually a lot of trans people on the server. They also both reported that no one knew what the alleged racism and antisemitism would have been; probably members of color or Jewish members making fun of themselves.

So. Is that legit? I’m inclined to say sure. Three people confirmed this. Until anyone else comes forward, this is as far as it goes.

Except for the aphobia.

Source S told me unprovoked that there is indeed very standard aphobia going on in that server. I asked source Y about it, here’s what she said:

However, I would be amiss not to mention that the only person in this situation who identifies as asexual has said the following:

And, like. It is probably not my place to speak over what an actual ace person thinks about this, is it?

Wait, is that?

It sure is! I figured if I was already talking to primary sources here, I could as well talk to the primary primary source. Which I will now post unabridged.

At time of writing, there has been no response to that. And that conveniently also answers the probably most pressing question:

Why are you even posting this?

Or, in the words of an anon I received this morning in Germany and also France:

Anon, I’m not gonna delete shit.

Why? Because I think this is kinda important.

As you can see in the conversation up there, it really, really rubs me the wrong way when you abuse call out posts as a prank. Like, yeah, I am aware the whole concept has been meme’d to death on tumblr anyway and really bad call out posts have a long tradition. However, you kinda gotta put this into context, don’t you?

We’ve had a discord server called out for saying vile shit in this fandom before. First of all, the willingness to even hint at (and then reblog yourself for 40 times) another discord server being similar kinds of bad, toxic, and possibly harmful is pretty callous. Like, yeah, the post got no reach and I have even less, but throwing a community you apparently care about under the bus like that is, you know, not a very nice and actually kinda callous thing to do.

And second, fake accusations of bigotry hurt everyone affected by that bigotry. Yes, even in tumblr call out post format. The comical overuse of trigger warnings, a concept that is wildly mocked and misunderstood in the first place, is already in very poor taste. Manipulating content to believably depict pretty violent transphobia? Crosses a few lines.

Like, if you’re gonna do it for a joke, stick to posting the things that made members of the server celebrate themselves in the comments as “the funniest bitches on the internet”. And maybe don’t reblog it yourself 40 times, that shows a certain kind of conviction, doesn’t it?

I’m not gonna comment any further on the motivation behind this; as I said, my brain does not compute patriotism and I find it equally likely that “Sofia” is fucking with me, as she was with everyone else. I entertained the thought of this post being fake kinda from the beginning because the identities so perfectly fit several things being called out; xenophobia against the French at the forefront, of course.

Like, the only thing that made me believe in this being a genuine but misguided attempt at a legitimate call-out was the apparently manipulated content out of context and the fact that the OP apparently believed in their own post enough to reblog it 40 times.

So what my issue is here comes down to a crying wolf kind of thing: A fear that this goes down as a great prank, and the next time someone comes forward about fucked up things going on in a fandom space, everyone has gotta wonder if the tw: lesbians insulted France again. Something that by my estimation happens about five times an hour on the internet anyway.

Everyone, call out responsibly.

  (Yes I know I am basically contributing to how this incident will be remembered here. But at least it’s, you know, full of a whole lot of context.)

(Also, Sofia has used two throwaways, so at least that’s something she’s smart about. It’s why I don’t feel too bad about not censoring her name here. I expect the “notwhatitlookslike” blog to be gone by morning. Well, maybe afternoon, it is a little late in both Germany and France.)

[ambrosia-win3]

Rules

WARNING!! This blog contains references and the like to the following: blood, gore, death, rot, light drug/alcohol consumption, and derealization. All of these will be tagged accordingly.

- Bigotry will not be tolerated here. Homophobia/transphpbia, racism, antisemitism, sexism, all of that shit does not fly here. Get the fuck out.

- In a similar vain, PROSHIPPERS FUCK OFF. That shit is disgusting and I will not under any circumstances tolerate that bullshit here.

- Do not reblog threads you are not a part of.

- Magic Anons. M!As are well accepted and encouraged! All I ask is that the time limit does not exceed a week just to make things easy on me. If there are any lingering threads after an M!A has ended, they will still be completed so fret not my friends!

- Ideas and morals represented by these characters are not always a reflection of the mun.

- Reblog the meme from the source. Notifications from rp memes being reblogged from me clogs my inbox, which makes it more difficult to keep track of asks and response. So unless the meme says to reblog from me, please reblog from the source.

- Triggering content will be tagged! I will trigger any content that could be a possible trigger, but please let me know if I miss anything! Trigger warning/content warnings will look like this: //tw: [insert here] //cw: [insert here]

- I am fine with shipping as long as it’s been discussed prior. I absolutely adore seeing my muses get into weird antics with possible partners, and if two muses have chemistry I would love to see how their relationship can develop! But I do request you discuss it with me first to make sure the feeling is mutual.

- My activity will vary depending on the day. I have a life outside of roleplay, so I may not get to you right away! Feel free to nudge me if it’s been too long since I last replied. Please wait at least three days before poking at me, though.

- No godmodding. I feel this goes without saying, but just to be safe I’m putting it in. If for the sake of plot progression, a little bit is needed, I will make an exception as long as it's been discussed first.

- Sinday Content. Sinday content is allowed on this blog, but only on Sinday. Asks sent in after will be ignored until the next. Sunday and suggestive content will be tagged accordingly, for example: //nsfw, //nsft, //sinday, //suggestive, etc

If a muse is a minor or asexual, any asks directed to them will be deleted and the sender will be blocked. I do not rp Sinday related content with minors.

Thank you for reading the rules! Please send “Where did you go?” to the ask box to let me know you’ve read them :)

rules are subject to change

[anaxolotladay]

( big fucking word dump to get my thoughts together; TW for antisemitism and a lack of editing

tentatively titled, “Lucky”, ‘til i can edit it to the essay i want to write )

❝  We didn’t know much about Jesus of Nazareth at all, but wasn’t that guy Jewish, too? He wasn’t as lucky as I was.  ❞

it took a while for me to be able to joke about being the “token jew friend”. because really, what was so “token” about it? ever since i stopped wearing my star and keeping my hair tied up, it’s harder to tell. i’ve been teased about “pointed ears” and my family’s long-passed-down “jewy nose”, but with these thick rimmed glasses, it takes the attention away. i’m aware of the privilege my skin color affords me. nobody looks too hard; i’m passing. i’m lucky, something i’ve always been told by every generation of family i meet. i’m lucky, and i know it.

my elementary schooling was private hebrew schools (on scholarship for our low income large family, where my mom worked as a school employee) between two different states. i grew up in so many jewish communities and with such a large family, i never thought of it to be so different.

that was lucky.

fifth grade- the first year of junior high- we couldn’t afford private school any longer, nor could the majority of my sixteen-person grade level. three of us switched to the same public middle school. nobody knew where we came from, but that was alright until somebody asked. Dan H. in art class asked if we were “hebrews”, because “oh, i thought ‘jew’ was a bad word”. the three of us laughed! that was hilarious! until he started interrogating us, asking us if we knew it was OUR people who killed Jesus.

we didn’t know much about Jesus of Nazareth at all, but wasn’t that guy Jewish, too?

he wasn’t as lucky as i was.

throughout middle school, more and more students had just started to learn about the Holocaust and Hitler- aka my second grade history unit, aka my family history-- and all the jokes they’d heard and read about began to make sense. the “shoah”, the “fire”, the “ovens”. hilarious. the wise words of my old hebrew teacher echoed in my ears: as long as we don’t forget, it will never happen again. but i started wondering why we had to teach THESE kids about it, and fuel THEIR jokes. middle school, it was mostly all just poorly timed jokes in bad taste.

THAT was lucky.

come high school, i shared a bus with the only other jewish kid in my neighborhood, Ari J.-- a year younger than me, left our old hebrew school a year later than me. he was a bully and i hated his guts, yet, he was kin. we didn’t talk in all my four years of high school. but at the back of the bus sat another group of boys, the ones who wore shirts that read: “That’s nice, babe, now make me a sandwich”, and called eachother “f*gs”, and told jokes in racist accents. they were larger than Ari and i combined. we kept our heads down.

they dared not crack the same racist jokes in the hallways of school-- there were black, indian, AND asian teachers around, who could call their parents, god forbid!-- but the gays and the jews of the school? outnumbered and quiet. i heard nazi jokes shouted two hallways down. i heard the laughter that followed.

one day, boarding the bus about four seats in front of Ari, the ringleader of Back of the Bus Bad Boys waltzes up the steps and shouts, “HEY, you Jew in the back!!!” i felt my blood run cold, and sat completely still as he stormed down the aisle. i smelled his gym sweat as he breezed past my seat, and exhaled a relieved sigh. except, turning around to see who he was referring to, i couldn’t believe my eyes: the lot of them had slid into and behond Ari’s seat, were tousling his hair, were shoving his shoulders and laughing. “Pretty hot outside, but not as hot as those ovens, am I right?” i couldn’t hear if Ari replied. i didn’t know what to do. the bus lurched forward and the insults were hurled louder: “Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy, y’know? Just incompetent. He never carried through, but he had the vision.” when i got home that day, i cried and cried. the next morning, i reported them to the counselor, but begged her to wait a few days to take action; what if they thought it was Ari who’d reported it? what would they do to him?

would he be so lucky again?

a year later, i’m on a trip to New York City- the second time i’ve been, but the first time alone with my mom. it was a busy day over school break, and the city was bustling-- walking back to our lodging, there was a pro-palestine rally occurring about a block away. flags were waving! people were shouting for justice! it was amazing! we raised our fists in support and kept walking. but after packing our bags and leaving the same way we came in, we stepped to the sidewalk and heard louder noise down the road. the streets were stuffed to gills, police officers stood with their backs to the rally, face to the crowd. the proud rally had turned angry, blaming not israel for their troubles, but their “rabbinic leaders”. new flags were hoisted, depicting the magen david, star of david, crossed out in red. their faces were pink with righteous fury, shouting against the ears of the officers to let them march, to take vengeance on their jewish oppressors. my mother and i ducked to the back of the crowd, removed our star necklaces, and kept our heads down. i felt the points digging into my palm. i wore it a few times afterwards-- the star i’d fawned over at our Yom Ha’Atzmaut festival, supporting local israeli immigrants, bought for me in surprise by my bubbe-- but after the chain broke, i couldn’t find it in me to wear again. i’d never felt so scared, but i emerged unnoticed and unharmed.

that was the luckiest i had ever been.

during my first year of community college, i had a class with a nazi apologist. nobody thought about it too hard, since he was also the best designer in our group, but walking to our class, i’d hear him shout from behind me: “What’s up, you fucking kike?!” i’d never heard it out loud before. when i whirled around, it turns out he was greeting his “buddy” further up in front of me. i walked a little faster to class, hoping he wasn’t suspicious of me now.

he wasn’t. how lucky of me.

on that same campus, i heard more jewish slurs than i could even recognize at the time. some i’d only read of. others were learned of in hindsight. ignorance was bliss. past tense.

i told my family these stories, face burning. my zayde’s eyebrows would raise and my mother would shake her head, recounting her own stories. my siblings had never been familiar with these terms. i wish i could apologize for teaching them.

they were pretty lucky, too.

when i transferred schools, it was during election season. i never brought up my judaism until the high holidays-- early in the school year-- when i’d need to miss class, and would be returning home to NY for a few days. even then, i told my roommates and teachers, that was it. i was alone for some of those holidays for the first time ever, and there was no community to be found. it was an irrelevant secret.

during election season, however, were the pro-Trump rallies. the protests. the women’s marches and the mud slinging. some of my friends saw words on the news that they’d never heard of before. the mistake i had made was explaining them, outing myself. again, it was no big deal at the time, my friends were supportive.

but from then on, i was referred to as one of their “minority friends”. and that was annoying, because i didn’t have the right to claim that title. i wasn’t being “oppressed”. i had just started to learn about “privilege” and “oppression” and politics and diversity. i knew i was privileged, i never had the RIGHT to claim oppression. i didn’t experience racism daily and i never would. there were people of color who were harassed and discriminated against and denied service because of the way they LOOKED, things they could not change about themselves. i will never experience that. it was 2016, i was not oppressed!

multiple times, i was introduced to others as the “jewish friend”. and it stopped bothering me, because it wasn’t untrue. apparently, jews were a rarity in these parts. it was funny. it was part of my identity. and for the most part, people didn’t care. 

then, our 45th president was elected.

within three days, over four dozen synagogues, campuses, homes and vehicles had been vandalized with swastikas. jewish cemeteries were torn apart. hasidic civilians were punched in the faces. i couldn’t bring myself to call home for an entire week, because that would mean admitting out loud that i was scared. my research writing essay that semester was a small 8-page essay, analyzing and documenting the rise in jewish hate crimes, and where they happened. i had to stay in the know. i brushed up on jewish history. i listened to family stories. i relearned everything i could so i knew how to navigate arguments, debates, and accusations. afterall, i’d been pretty sure i was the only jew on campus.

within a year, i met another one. it shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but my excitement was tangible. we’d throw yiddish back and forth and tease eachother in brooklynese or russian-bubbe accents. he knew what holidays i would refer to. it wasn’t a big part of the friendship, but it was nice to have some familiarity.  i was brought into a new group of friends who were curious, and eager to learn. i’d never thought about judaism as a culture or history before that, until these discussions ensued and i realized just how MUCH my life was shaped by it. and it was fun to share stories and meals and holidays with people who wanted to celebrate with me.

this past semester was the first time i didn’t go home for the high holidays. i found a synagogue in the next city over, and two whole other jews who wanted to celebrate with me on campus! on yom kippur, we met up to break the fast. they were clearly as excited to meet another jew as i was.

unfortunately, i was a girl. a “nice jewish girl”, if you will. their view bled into the conversation. and on top of that, one of them wanted to chant the barucha, loudly, OUT LOUD, in the middle of a dinner-busy campus dining hall. the other guy and i mumbled it with our heads kept down. suddenly, we were tense. we were scared. my roommates asked me why that was. i told them that you can’t just chant hebrew in public in this day and age!  why was that? have you ever heard of muslims speaking arabic in public and being labeled terrorists? do you understand the kind of danger semitic languages entail?!

we had been ignored, but some folks aren’t so lucky!

a week ago, i was walking down the hall of my class building. it was mostly empty, save for one or two other students. out of the blue, i hear one of them say loudly, “Shalom!” i spun around. “excuse me?” the girl walking behind me laughed and said, “it’s just something he does”. we walked down the hall for a few more min, chuckling about it. i asked if she or he was jewish, she said neither of them were, but thought it was hilarious when i explained how the guy had managed to say “shalom” to the only jew in the department.

i let out a breath i hadn’t realized i’d been holding. funny, right? he never would’ve guessed.

yesterday, at 9:50 AM, a synagogue was shot up an hour and a half away from me. but not just any synagogue. one of the most well known conservative shuls in the Squirrel Hill area.  in particular, the one my pittsburgh family were members of. the one i had watched my two cousins become bat and bar mitzvahs on the bimmah of. the one i had, for the first time, met three branches of family from my adopted uncles’ side, family who had welcomed me to their congregation and introduced me personally to the rabbi: “Yes! She’s our brothers’ niece! Our family has come such a long way to celebrate with us, tonight!” and then-rabbi, Rabbi Chuck, laughed a booming sound and shook my hand with both of his, cracking jokes and telling me how happy he was i was here.

yesterday, at the Tree of Life--Or L’Simcha temple, there was a baby naming ceremony- a time in jewish tradition where a new baby of the community is spoken into the family and recognized by the congregation. the rabbi will speak its names-- english and hebrew-- and the world rejoices under them.  yesterday, there were twins to be celebrated. yesterday, three congregations had come together under one roof, so many families and friends supporting and celebrating the new arrival.

yesterday, a celebration of life turned into a vigil mourning death.

eleven shulgoers were not so lucky.

i have never met Rabbi Hazzan Myers, but i know he’s taken care of the community since then. i can’t imagine the fear he must have felt, after hosting the tight-knit community he’s helped build, harbor, and lead. i can’t imagine walking back into that building a week from now and continuing to read torah, the way i know he will.

Rabbi Hazzan will forever remember how lucky he was, to make it to next week’s torah portion. living in a community that has always been safe, and hospitable, and embraced eachother as neighbors, the remaining minyan will never forget how lucky they were, as well.

my family in pittsburgh-- aunt janice, uncle steve, and cousins hannah and tyler-- were so lucky to have stayed home, yesterday morning, and i am so lucky that we live in a day and age of cellular devices.

i was on the phone with my father and grandfather, both in florida, when dad received a group text between his brothers, their sister janice, and him, assuring everyone that they were home safe. he asked me to look up what happened in pittsburgh.

i never thought it would be my family.

i never thought it would be their home.

12 casualties could have been 16.

i’m so lucky it’s not my family sitting shivah, this week.

[make-c4]

Rules

WARNING!! This blog contains references and the like to the following: blood, death, light drug/alcohol consumption, and Epithet Erased canon typical violence. All of these will be tagged accordingly.

- Bigotry will not be tolerated here. Homophobia/transphpbia, racism, antisemitism, sexism, all of that shit does not fly here. Get the fuck out.

- In a similar vain, PROSHIPPERS FUCK OFF. That shit is disgusting and I will not under any circumstances tolerate that bullshit here.

- DO NOT REBLOG THREADS YOU ARE NOT A PART OF.

- Magic Anons. M!As are well accepted and encouraged! All I ask is that the time limit does not exceed a week just to make things easy on me. If there are any lingering threads after an M!A has ended, they will still be completed so fret not my friends!

- Personals. I do not roleplay with personal blogs, but I understand that tumblr is a bit wonky about sending asks from sideblogs, so please let me know what your rp blog handle is so I can tag you appropriately! My ask box is open to everyone, but lengthy threads are reserved for rp blogs only.

- Ideas and morals are not always a reflection of the mun.

- Reblog the meme from the source. Notifications from rp memes being reblogged from me clogs my inbox, which makes it more difficult to keep track of asks and response. So unless the meme says to reblog from me, please reblog from the source.

- Triggering content will be tagged! I will trigger any content that could be a possible trigger, but please let me know if I miss anything! trigger warning/content warnings will look like this ((tw: [insert here])) ((cw: [insert here]))

- I am fine with shipping as long as it’s been discussed prior. I absolutely adore seeing my muses get into weird antics with possible partners, and if two muses have chemistry I would love to see how their relationship can develop! But I do request you discuss it with me first to make sure the feeling is mutual.

- My activity will vary depending on the day. I have a life outside of roleplay, so I may not get to you right away! Feel free to nudge me if it’s been too long since I last replied. Please wait at least three days before poking at me, though.

- No godmodding. I feel this goes without saying, but just to be safe I’m putting it in.

- Sinday Content. Sinday content is allowed on this blog, but only on Sinday. Asks sent in after will be ignored until the next Sinday. I do not rp Sinday related content with minors.

rules are subject to change

[sparklyjojos]

I’ve finished reading The World is Made out of Closed Rooms a few weeks ago, but didn’t really feel like talking about it. Which should already tell you that yeah, uh, this wasn’t the best Maijo I’ve read. Sure, there are some interesting meta tidbits here and there that I’ll write more about later, and it has some really good parts (as well as some infuriating ones), but mostly it was... eh. I’ve been told it’s important to know this before reading Disco Detective Wednesday, though. So here’s a summary, just to get this out.

(tw: suicide, sibling death, dysfunctional family, an obnoxious case of Dead Lesbians, mentions of nazi violence and antisemitism)

--

The narrator is Nishimura Yukio, a boy who lives next to the Banba family and is good friends with Banba “Runbaba” Junjirou. They knew each other since they were kids. When Yukio was thirteen and Runbaba twelve, they witnessed Runbaba’s 19-year-old sister Ryouko fall from the family house’s roof onto the concrete below, and the grave injuries caused her death a few days afterwards. The boys had actually been on the very same roof at the time, but couldn’t do anything to stop her. They weren’t even sure whether it was suicide or an accident.

After her death, Runbaba closed himself in his room for a few days, and because of stress developed a nasty psychogenic rash that soon landed him in the hospital. (And it served for a lot of juvenile gross out humor which I really didn’t like.) Only after he was discharged, it really hit him that his sister was dead.

Ryouko had always been smart but withdrawn, and used to run away from home a lot, walking wherever her feet took her, often to distant prefectures. (’Everything’s better than staying home,’ Runbaba said once after he and Yukio met her on her way out of town. The book never really states outright what’s happening in the Banba family, but it’s obvious that something’s off). This caused their father, Banba Kouji, to fit iron bars in her room’s windows, but it still didn’t stop her from getting on the roof that fateful day. As Runbaba and Yukio investigated her room, they found a hidden hole in the wall leading to the adjacent room - the father’s study, from which one could go up on the rooftop. They also found a lifesize doll that Ryouko probably wanted to put in her bed to hide her absence.

Up on the rooftop, Runbaba realized what had killed Ryouko: a power line running close to the roof, which in places lacked protective coating. Back on the ground, they found a discarded fishing rod that belonged to the family’s father, and they remembered that Ryouko had been holding something long when they saw her on the roof. She must have tried to use the rod to swing herself on the power line to escape, but tragically chose the wrong place to do so.

She hadn’t wanted to die; in fact, it was her burning will to live that led her to attempt to escape the locked room her father made, again and again and again.

---

A few years later, when Yukio was 15, the boys went on a school trip to Tokyo. When during free time Yukio was away from the group, he witnessed a fight between a woman and a man which quickly turned physical, and developed into the woman mercilessly beating up the man. Yukio tried to stop the fight, but it only resulted in the woman hitting him on reflex. While Yukio was dazed, the scared woman took him in her car to her house in Urawa, Saitama Prefecture to look after him. Which was a weird way to act, but it seemed the woman was just this kind of a weird person.

Her name was Inoue Tsubaki, and she had a younger sister Enoki. They lived alone ever since their parents died in an accident. The man Tsubaki beat up earlier was her boss Taniguchi Tooru with whom they had a fling behind the back of Taniguchi’s wife Marie. [Lore note: Taniguchi Tooru was the name of one of the Angel Bunnies in Tsukumojuku, namely one of the two “murderers” in the Seventh Story]. Obviously their relationship was pretty much over.

Tsubaki spent some time babbling about all her life problems before Yukio managed to convince her to arrange him a ride back to Tokyo. On the way he met Tsubaki’s younger sister, Enoki, and they mainly talked about how Tsubaki was a weird person. Yukio came back to the hotel in Tokyo that his school group stayed in. As it turned out, Runbaba had been so worried about him that he actually detectived his way after Yukio all the way to the Inoue sisters’ house, and also fell victim to their weird hospitality. He returned to the hotel later, just like Yukio having mixed feelings about the sisters, but in the end they ended up keeping in touch with them.

---

One day Yukio got a call from distressed Enoki, who said she and Tsubaki had to flee their home in fear of Taniguchi Tooru coming after them, and they were headed for Nishi Akatsuki. Yukio immediately brought that news to Runbaba, who suspected a link to a case that happened four days prior. A certain Taniguchi Marie and her young sons Kento and Kanji had been stabbed to death, and their bodies were then dragged all around the house for unkown reasons. Two remaining members of the family went missing: Marie’s husband, Taniguchi Tooru; and Marie’s unborn third child, who had been cut out of her stomach and taken away. That baby’s name was Saburou.

[Lore note: this Saburou’s name kanji are 三朗, slightly different from Natsukawa Saburou’s 三郎. Both are common names for a third son, so this may be just a coincidence... or is it?]

Before Runbaba took a closer look at the Taniguchi case, he took some time to close the previous serial murderer case he’d just solved. Runbaba figured out that in every crime the victims’ bodies were arranged to form a mitate of one of four paintings of Edward Hopper: Cape Cod Morning, Morning in a City, Morning Sun, and Nighthawks. [Runbaba briefly explains what mitate is in a way very similar to Tsukumojuku’s explanations - “you know, like the design of Japanese gardens where a pond represents the sea, and a stone is a mountain?”]. All of the “paintings” could be seen from outside the crime scene through a window, and Runbaba believed the serial killer would live somewhere from where he could safely observe the first scene, likely the next building over. He instructed the police to investigate the man living there, Sugawara Yuu.

Back to the Taniguchi case. Runbaba considered many possibilities as to why the bodies had been moved back and forth through the house - was the culprit scared of what he’d done and tried to help them, or did he want to draw a giant symbol with blood, or did he need the combined weight of the three bodies for something (At one point Runbaba voiced the option that maybe the culprit had wanted to use them instead of a pickle stone, and at this point even Yukio’s like, dude, be serious, and Runbaba’s like But I am serious! Detectives, man).

---

Since they couldn’t solve anything by just sitting around, the boys caught a train to meet the Inoue girls halfway. They successfully found Enoki, who told them that because of a fight with her sister they sat in different compartments, and Tsubaki would probably show up soon. As it turned out, Enoki hadn’t known anything about the Taniguchi murder case; the sister fled home because of Taniguchi Tooru’s stalking, which had been going on for over two weeks.

They noticed Tsubaki in the crowd, but she seemed to avoid them, and it took them a good while of trailing her to find out the reason: Tsubaki had taken a tiny baby with her on the train and kept it a secret even from Enoki. That baby was little Saburou. Tsubaki had been in the Taniguchi house on the day of the murder, and managed to at least save the baby. Runbaba and Tsubaki went to a hospital to check if the baby’s alright (it was perfectly healthy), pass it to the police, then take steps to make sure the sisters’ house is safe. Meanwhile, Yukio and Enoki stayed at a hotel.

Then there’s a weird part in which we learn the content of a video tape, allegedly made by Taniguchi. It’s a short stop-motion movie, but done with the corpses of the Taniguchi family, moving around the house as if they were alive. (It’s described as “Pingu, but with corpses” Thanks for that visual, Maijo.) At one point in the movie Tsubaki appears at the front door, falls down [I guess she was knocked out?] and also gets to “star” in the animation. The plot of it follows Tsubaki coming clear to Marie about her affair with Tooru, and while Marie at first seems to take it in stride, she and the kids end up mercilessly beating Tsubaki, the end. I’m calling this part weird because after reading the entire book I can’t for my life figure out who made it and why and I feel like I’ve missed something.

---

Runbaba called Yukio soon after, informing him that Taniguchi Tooru had been found dead in the girls’ house, and that it seemed to have been either suicide or a locked room murder. Judging by the clues, Taniguchi got stabbed (stabbed himself?) with a knife in the kitchen, then moved to the dining room, and he or someone else moved the furniture and closed the door and windows. Then Taniguchi (or someone else?) removed the knife, cut his own carotid artery and bled to death. Next to the body there was a single symbol written in blood, あ [hiragana for “a”].

Once Yukio and Enoki joined them at the scene, Runbaba explained a few more things he had figured out. First: the investigation found undisputable pieces of evidence that the murderer of Taniguchi Marie, Kento and Kanji was actually Taniguchi Marie herself. Second: that case was probably what you call a “forced double suicide”, as his family’s death maybe pushed Taniguchi Tooru to commit suicide as well. (So there’s no trick to this locked room; it was just suicide.) Although it’s possible that he really got stabbed by someone else who ran away, and only then he went into the dining room, made the locked room, and finished himself off. But who would stab him?

Enoki pointed out that  あ was a symbol Tsubaki had used to secretly mark the dates she was to meet with Taniguchi back when they had been dating. But Tsubaki was with Runbaba at the time of the crime, so she had an alibi. Then Enoki realized that there was another lover Tsubaki had nowadays, Koizumi Mitsuo, who was similar in looks to Tsubaki and used the same perfume, so it’s probable that in the dark of the night Taniguchi mistook Koizumi for Tsubaki, so he felt heart-broken when she stabbed him in protection / anger about him stalking Tsubaki.

She, because yep, Koizumi was Tsubaki’s girlfriend. Tsubaki’s bisexual, which the boys apparently had known about all this time but didn’t share with the reader for some reason. They had a short conversation about this with Enoki. Runbaba at one point said that he didn’t think there were any gay people in Nishi Akatsuki or at least in his school year [Hey, uh, Runbaba? Buddy? Pal? I’m sorry to break it to you, but if you’re seriously this ignorant about society, that just shows you’re not a very good detective]. At least Enoki countered it saying that this sounds very strange, since it’s something that a certain percentage of people are regardless of the situation, you know!

[Even with Runbaba’s comment and Yukio’s overall I’m-a-teenage-boy-as-straight-as-a-board narration, at this point I was pretty happy that we got a confirmed bisexual character and her girlfriend...]

---

[...and then the very next scene had both Koizumi and Tsubaki dying horribly because Koizumi attacked the police car escorting Tsubaki (since she had saved little Saburou the media was bothering her) and set it on fire and both women burned to death.

God, I can’t believe how blatant the Dead Lesbians trope is in this book. It takes place just PAGES after they were confirmed to be wlw, and without any fucking narrative reasoning as for why it even happened. Like, sure, we’re told that the last email from Tsubaki to Koizumi was basically “I just realized what’s precious to me in life and I’m breaking out with you, bye” so I guess this was supposed to be revenge/”if I can’t have you no one will” on Koizumi’s part, but... really, Maijo? Really? You wrote so many fucking pages about Yukio thinking very Straight Teenage Boy thoughts and expected me to relate to them and then you pull THIS shit off?!

So yeah, this is the moment when this book absolutely plummetted for me and never quite recovered.]

---

After Tsubaki’s death [grrr...], Enoki came to Nishi Akatsuki to live with Yukio’s family. When Yukio and Runbaba were high school seniors, they investigated another case. This one involved a set of four weird square buildings in the mountains of Nishi Akatsuki, built next to each other like this (white rectangles are windows, black ones are doors):

Inside each building were a few several weeks old corpses, coming up to a total of 14 between the four locked rooms (very locked, since the boys had come here before the police, so nobody had went inside yet). Some of the bodies were arranged in weird scenes that Runbaba recognized as something like a very morbid 4koma. From bottom right clockwise: there once was a rich guy, there once was a woman, they fell in love, and finally had a violent falling out:

There’s one more corpse lying outside between the buildings, and Runbaba assessed that the man had somehow died of hunger. Runbaba also noticed that the crosses in one of the rooms [upper right in the picture] were taken from what looked like a very old cemetery in the forest. Then he climbed on top of one of the buildings, found the murder weapon - a knife, now stuck in a tree trunk high above the ground - and found a way to open a hole in the roof, which must have been how the murderer got outside after locking the door and window.

Runbaba explained the case to Yukio. The murderer was Sugawara Yuu, the same man who had arranged the Edward Hopper-inspired “paintings”... and the same man who died of hunger between the buildings. Sugawara hadn’t made or owned the buildings, he just found and used them for his fucked up art expression. This time he didn’t base it off of someone else’s paintings, though, but off of his original work. [Runbaba has an interesting opinion that this shift from merely imitating others to expressing oneself may be how people can  “grow up” / achieve “growth”.] One of Sugawara’s paintings (actual paintings, not crime scenes) had a similar layout, but portrayed stages of life. Clockwise from top left: 1) birth/childhood, 2) inevitable conflict with parents when growing up, 3) reconcillation with parents when one’s at the peak of one growth, 4) formation of a new family.

Runbaba then explained that the nearby old cemetary was likely a remainder of the chaos that had swept through Nishi Akatsuki around WWII. Back then, a lot of Jewish people came to the village to live in hiding [as we may remember from Smoke, Soil and Sacrifices which talked about it briefly in context of Hans Natsukawa], but unfortunately they were followed by the Germans, which resulted in a great deal of violence. Runbaba didn’t know which side the graves belonged to, but somebody, likely the caretaker of the mountain, was still leaving flowers on them. [I’d say it’s obvious which side these graves belong to considering the crosses and flowers. Then again, as fucked up as it is, ignorant gentiles sometimes do put crosses on old Jewish graves because they consider a cross to be a general symbol of death (no it isn’t, PLEASE don’t do that), so I guess this isn’t completely out of question if the mountain’s owner’s ignorant enough. ...Or it’s just Runbaba who’s very ignorant about yet another thing. HOW are you even a detective, dude. Just how.]

The four buildings were also connected to that bloody past; they may have been interrogation and torture rooms, or a small prison, or something like that. Runbaba pointed out that each roof had what looked like a giant kanji 王 - lord / king, maybe referring to God? [or if we go for meta interpretation, the first kanji of “Otaro”?...]. You could opening the triangular sections of the roof, as shown here (that stickman in the middle is the murderer’s body):

Then Runbaba demonstrated that pressing a hidden switch on the wall allowed the buildings to be rotated. Rotating the four buildings so their corners touched, and then opening all the roofs parts so the pieces of the 王 kanji touched each other, would put those pieces together in an entirely different symbol - the swastika.

[...yeah. Uh. Alright. I’m uncomfortable. I am VERY uncomfortable. More so because I remember the hidden purpose of the triangle warehouse from Smoke, Soil and Sacrifices, and the fact this new set of buildings is clearly meant to be similar to the warehouse (or even inspired by it, if you consider the meta theory that Closed Rooms may have been written by Natsukawa Saburou) is, uhhhhhhh... I don’t like this one bit. So while I know I should probably post the next picture so people can better visualize how the buildings and the roof tiles move, I’m not putting swastikas my blog, no sir.]

Anyway... this rotation maneuver made the walls of the buildings touch each other so that a fifth locked room was formed inside, and that’s where the criminal, Sugawara, was closed in by someone after the murders. After Sugawara starved to death, that mysterious someone set the rooms back to their original positions as if nothing happened. Who was that person? Maybe the same one who left flowers on the graves. Runbaba decided he’d need to talk with the mountain’s owner - Mr. Natsukawa (!) - to figure out if he didn’t have anything to do with it.

But nothing came out of the investigation, and in the end, while the case was technically solved, Sugawara’s murderer was never found.

---

Eventually, Yukio and Runbaba graduated high school. Runbaba wanted to keep on being a detective and didn’t consider going to college, which his father was upset about. Things escalated and Runbaba’s father just like years before put security bars in his kid’s windows, to make him “focus on learning for the entrance exams”. Runbaba stayed home, and slowly Yukio lost contact with him.

Yukio couldn’t quite understand why someone as smart as the great detective Runbaba 12, who could solve difficult locked rooms cases left and right, would be so helpless against the locked room made by his family.

Eventually, Yukio went to the Banba house, and got into an argument with Runbaba’s parents about how their son wasn’t a child anymore and that he’d have no problems being self-reliant as a detective. When all arguments failed, Yukio yelled that Runbaba’s father would only drive his son to death, just like it had been the case with his daughter Ryouko. The father answered that well, not really, because there’s a difference between Runbaba and Ryouko, and it’s that Runbaba is not an idiot. That line made Yukio snap, punch the dude in the face and yell about how Ryouko was a good kid, that her parents never even tried to help her, and that the only complete idiots here were them, and then he stormed off back to his house leaving the completely shocked couple behind.

Later, Enoki - who apparently had been regularly sneaking up on the roof near Runbaba’s window and talking with him for days now - commended Yukio for his verbal throwdown, and according to her Runbaba was pretty amazed too. (Also, Yukio starts thinking the two are dating because he misinterpreted Enoki giving a cute encouraging forehead kiss to Runbaba for romantic interest or something.)

The iron bars disappeared from the windows after that. Maybe a month later, on the anniversary of Ryouko’s death, Yukio saw Runbaba standing on the roof, in the very same spot Ryouko had been standing that tragic day seven years prior, and burning pieces of paper. Terrified that Runbaba was about to either jump to his death, or set the house on fire, Yukio told Enoki to bring help and then got on the roof himself. He asked what Runbaba was thinking about (”about Ryouko”) and what were the papers he was burning (”Locked rooms. Ideas for them.” He came up with fifteen different ones, apparently.). Yukio said that burning them was a waste of ideas (”Maybe I could write a book using them?” “Hey, don’t steal my ideas! Come up with your own.”). Runbaba finally admitted that they were ideas on how to kill his parents, and Yukio agreed that yeah, maybe it’s better for these to burn.

At this point some people Enoki had alarmed gathered in front of the house - Yukio’s parents, random neighbours, though not Runbaba’s parents, as they had gone to visit Ryouko’s grave - and pleaded with Runbaba to come down, but he didn’t listen.

Finally Runbaba said, “Yukio? Go back alone. I’m going to fly now.”

[Okay, I have to give the novel credit: this entire finale is really great at keeping up a great amount of tension even through their seemingly relaxed conversation. At this point I was legitimately worried.]

Runbaba then opened the secret passage Ryouko had once used, retrieved two items -- the life-sized doll Ryouko had made, and a crowbar -- then suddenly broke into a run and jumped off the roof. The gathered people screamed in terror, but soon realized that what hit the ground was just a doll, and the real Runbaba had hooked the crowbar onto the edge of the roof to keep himself from falling. Apparently Ryouko had had a similar idea seven years prior -- to just pretend like she’s falling to scare her parents, but really just swinging herself on the power line.

Yukio helped Runbaba get back on the roof and was like “so it’s fine, right? you’re coming back down now?”, but Runbaba only got very quiet. So Yukio told him that there was indeed a difference between him and Ryouko - and it was that Runbaba had people who were more than ready to help him. To prove this, he climbed back to the ground and asked everyone to bring their mattresses and pillows. Soon a giant pile had accumulated in front of the Banba house.

“Let’s go!” Yukio yelled. “Fly, Runbaba!”

“Let’s go!” Runbaba yelled back, and unexpectedly continued, “The reason-- the reason why I’m calling myself Runbaba 12-- it’s because Ryouko died when I was twelve, and it’s like a part of me got stuck back then--!”

“Hey, hey, no self-psychoanalysis now, just fly!”

“That’s anticlimactic!” Runbaba argued, but jumped, and landed perfectly safely on the pile of mattresses. He was fine, but cried a lot afterwards, and apologized a lot to Ryouko for not helping her all those years ago. When his parents came back, he also punched his dad, “for Ryou-chan”, and the dad endured it without a word. And everyone lived happily ever after.

--

[To sum up, this book actually had a really tense and heartwarming and sad and even funny at places finale that I liked. If you took just the Banba family conflict plotline and put it together as a short story, I’d probably love it. I’d even tolerate the deluge of immature humor because yeah, I get it, the protagonists are teenage boys, and Yukio is quite self-aware that his main method of trying to defuse tension is to say stupid jokes and hope they stick. But then the middle of the book ranged anywhere from “eh, it’s fine” to “oh fuck OFF Maijo”, and I mostly enjoyed what few meta references were there.]

[xsprxsso]

Rules

WARNING!! This blog contains references and the like to the following: blood, gore, death, rot, light drug/alcohol consumption, and derealization. All of these will be tagged accordingly.

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rules are subject to change

[thestuckylibrary-bigbang]

Canon ‘Verse

This post contains sbb2017 works that fall into the category of canon compliant. They are sorted chronologically by when the story takes place.

The categories are Pre TFA, TFA Era, Post TWS and CACW/Post-CACW. Take your time and look through what authors and artists have been working on since June!

AU Part One | AU Part Two | AU Part Three | Masterpost

Pre TFA

The Olive Groves by AgentCoop

Rating: Teen and Up

Words: 25k

Archive Warnings: Major Character Death, Graphic Violence

Tags: 1940s, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Feels, World War II, Musician Bucky Barnes, Artist Steve Rogers, Living TogetherMutual Pining, Off-Screen Major Character Death, Angst, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts

Summary

In the summer of 1942, war is on everyone's minds. Jobs are scarce, and boys are shipping out daily, but Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes have each other.

Steve wants to fight, and Bucky doesn't. In the end, it won't much matter.

Told in four parts, this story encompasses a year in Steve and Bucky's life prior to Bucky's draft notice, his time on the Italian front, his life for the next five years as he tries to pick up the broken pieces of his shattered mental state and put everything back together,and his inevitable return to Brooklyn for Steve.

TFA era

a perfect soldier by SouthSideStory

Rating: E

Archive Warnings: Graphic Violence

Words: 20,243

Relationship: Steve Rogers / Bucky Barnes

Tags: canon-compliant, WWII fic, suicidal ideations, implied/referenced suicide, period-typical homophobia, antisemitism, descriptions of past torture, PTSD, unhealthy relationships, minor Bucky/OFC

Summary: Steve looks like a stranger these days, but at least the way he smiles at Bucky is the same: soft, fond, and a little bit smitten. It used to bother him, that the friend he considered a brother didn’t see him the same way. He’s never thought any less of Steve for it, but he also wasn’t quite comfortable with being the object of his affection. Now Bucky couldn’t care less how Steve loves him, as long as it means that Steve loves him most.

fanvid by shirasade | youtube | tumblr

gifset by shirasade​ | tumblr

Meet Me On The Darkest Night by Cryofreeze

Rating: Teen and Up

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Words: 70k

Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers( But she really just flirts with him)

Characters: Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes, Peggy Carter, Howling Commandos, Colonel Phillips, Arnim Zola, Howard Stark

Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Blood and Gore, World War II, Captain America: The First Avenger, Canon Compliant, Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve’s identity crisis, Rescue Mission

Summary: 

“I know you think it wasn’t my fault, Buck…”

“You had to make a decision, there was no right or wrong choice.”

Steve blinked miserably at the stone step beneath his knees, grinding grit into his so-called uniform. “Maybe I’m not cut out to be a Commanding Officer.” He forced back a lump in his throat threatening to constrict his voice. “Or Captain America…”

~ ~ ~ ~

After the Howling Commandos’ last mission goes awry, Steve questions his morals and self worth as a soldier… and as Captain America. He struggles to believe in himself and the man he thought he was, but being thrust back out on another dangerous mission gives him little time to choose between his own self-doubts or giving his all to save 1,000 prisoners of war from Hydra’s clutches.

With the aid of Peggy Carter and the unwavering support of Bucky Barnes, they set out on a rescue mission inside the confines of a medieval fortress in WWII Europe. However, Steve isn’t the only one to find the ghosts of the place crawl under his skin…

There’s angst, action and an emotionally driven core to the tale of how Steve Rogers is forced to come to terms with what it really means to be Captain America.

Art by @samthebirdbae (10 black and white drawings)

Art by FieryEclipse (AO3) is embedded in Chapter One of the fic

The End of a Century by whatthefoucault (tumblr)

Rating: M

Archive Warnings: None

Words: 20,000

Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli, Mr. Proctor/Rebecca Barnes Proctor, Rebecca Barnes Proctor/Original Female Character, Peggy Carter & Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter & Rebecca Barnes Proctor, Howard Stark & Rebecca Barnes Proctor, James “Bucky” Barnes & Rebecca Barnes Proctor & Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson

Tags: Slice of Life, Period Typical Attitudes, Recovery, Artificial Intelligence, Jewish Bucky Barnes, New York City, Canon-Typical Violence, Hospitals, Sexual Content, Pregnancy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)

Summary: This is the story of a sister and her brother.As the shadow of the war fades and gives way to new conflicts, Becca Barnes battles the constraints of the twentieth century: an education, a marriage, a career, with the ghosts of her youth never far from her memory.  As the twenty-first century barrels on through its awkward teenage phase, Bucky Barnes builds a new life, with new friends, and a burgeoning relationship with his lifelong companion Steve, the erstwhile Captain America, as they struggle to find their place in the world.

The last time Becca saw her brother was on the eve of war; neither of them expected, some seventy-something years, a hip replacement, and one new arm later, to be reunited.This is a story about family.

Art by @samthebirdbae

Art by @blue-pointer

The Rabbit in the Hat by poppyfields13

Story by @poppyfields13fic​(AO3) Art by @kikisloveschocolate​ (AO3) Art by @ewburnthatshit​ (AO3)

Words: 37586 Rating: Explicit Tags: Alternate Universe–1940s, WWII, Bucky Barnes-centric, veteran Bucky Barnes, bisexual Bucky Barnes, skinny Steve Rogers, Gay bar, roommates, friends to lovers, friends with benefits, pining Warnings: Graphic violence, battle scene, PTSD, disability, period typical ableism, ableist slurs, period typical homophobia, Bucky/OCs, emetophobia trigger, smoking Summary: What if Bucky doesn’t meet Steve until the night before he leaves for the war? Bucky didn’t think he would ever see Steve again, after their one night together. But when he returns from the war, injured and struggling to readjust, he advertises for a roommate, and is surprised when Steve is the one to answer. Bucky realises he wants more than just friendship from Steve, but he doesn’t know if he’s ready, or if Steve even feels the same way about him.

Post TWS

Cause Two Outta Three Ain't Bad (But Three Outta Three Is Better) by AdelenMontgomery

Rating: Teen and Up

Words: 25k

Archive Warnings: None

Tags: Non-Graphic Violence, Period-Typical Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Happy Ending, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence

SummaryBucky Barnes could tell you the exact moment he knew what love felt like. Not love in the family sense, or the friend sense, or anything like that, but in the love of his life or we’re soulmates kinda way. Not that he knew it at the time, of course, because how could he have possibly known? He knew it was love, sure, but how could he have known that it was the kind that was life-altering? But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

Ceremony of Innocence by @velvetjinx

Rating: E

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 22.8k

Relationships: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes

Tags: alternate universe: canon divergence, no cryo for Bucky, Captain America: Civil War spoilers, Fluff and Angst, Shameless smut, emetophobia, canon typical/compliant violence, choking, Bucky Barnes-centric, Bucky Barnes recovering

Summary: After saving Steve Rogers from the river in the wake of the failed Project Insight, Bucky is on a mission to find himself. As the memories come back thick and fast, he has to figure out exactly who he is now. But when someone blows up the building where the Sokovian Accords are to be signed and the Winter Soldier is blamed, he finds his new life at risk and realises that, for him, the fight may never stop.

Vid by @dracusfyre

Meridian

by

tippet 

Artwork

by

theladymania

Rating: T

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 31,700

Relationships: Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers

Tags: Natasha Romanov, Sam Wilson, post-CA:TWS, standard winter soldier warnings, recovery, ft. a literal long and winding road

Summary: The finding goes both ways. (Steve goes missing; the soldier goes after him.)

Stop and Say You Love Me by eyesofshinigami 

Rating: Explicit

Words: 20k

Tags:Fluff, Smut, Light Angst, Mentions of memory loss, lots of book talk, Friends to LoversTen points to anyone who gets the book references 

Summary: Bucky doesn't ever remember he and Steve's shared past. Steve doesn't fault him or blame him, it just is what it is. They're dealing with it together, even though their friends don't always seem to understand. None of that stops them from figuring out how they used to fit together. It's not the same, but maybe it's something even better than before.

The Grand Plan by velleities

Rating: M

Words: 25k

Archive Warnings: Chose Not To Use

Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Some angst, Dealing with PTSD, Some Alcohol Use, Bucky Discovers This Brave New World, Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Pre-TFA Relationship

SummaryThe Soldier doesn’t mean to be menacing, even if it's become the impression he naturally gives off. He wants to be a person, first and foremost, but he wants to be the right kind of person too, and that leads him to one irrefutable conclusion: he owes an apology to Captain America– an apology that he has to deliver, if the Soldier wants to be who he aspires. It’s just proving out to be a little harder than he thought...

CACW and post CACW

A Song for Eurydice by Optimustaud @optimustaud

Rating: M

Archive Warnings:  Chose not to Use Archive Warnings

Words: 19999

Relationships:  Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes

Tags: cursing, torture, medical experimentation, suicidal ideation, mental illness, body horror, cannon divergence, motown and soul

Summary:  Ten years after the events of The Winter Soldier Steve tracks Bucky to an abandoned Hydra base in Siberia.  

Read the fic on AO3

Art by @riakomai / @artbyria

in these times of dying By: Marley Mortis

Rating:  M

Warnings: Graphic Violence

Tags:  Depressed Steve, Suicide Attempt, Self-Harm, Codependency, Binge Eating, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with A Happy Ending, Asexual Steve Rogers

Relationships:  Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes

Summary:  Steve’s fine. Bucky would rather be in cryostasis than anywhere near Steve Rogers, but Steve’s doing a-okay. Who cares if he’s angry all the time? He’s just peachy. Those weird fevers he’s been getting? Nothing to worry about, because Steve’s finer than frog hair. All he’s gotta do is destroy the last remnants of Hydra, figure out a way to disable Bucky’s code words, grieve Peggy’s death, and figure out what in the Hell to do with himself now that he’s not Captain America and Tony wants his head on a silver platter. Still fine, though.

A canon compliant character study into Steve Rogers’ mental state following the events of CA:Civil War.

Art By: Turn_turn_turn

Mirrors in the Smoke by JudeAraya

Tags: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Dissociation, Mental Breakdown, reference to past torture, steve has repressed feelings, Therapy, CBT, EMDR, Psychotherapy, reference to food triggers, Dom/sub Undertones,Happy Ending

Summary

Steve told Sam and Natasha once that even when he had nothing, he’d had Bucky. The truth, he realized, was that without Peggy and Bucky, without the world he knew, Steve couldn’t even be Steve. But he could be Captain America. Steve’s been a stranger in a new world for a long time and Captain America was his best secret keeper.

Having Bucky back should be the thing that puts him back together, right? Finding him, being with him – it’s everything Steve’s pinned his hopes on. It’s a fucker of a truth now, to find this out – that Steve needed Captain America as much as anything else.

Only, Steve gave him up. Steve is no longer Captain America and he is definitely not well.

~*~ My contribution to the 2017 Stucky Big Bang. Spans from 2012 (post Steve coming out of the ice) to past Civil War

Perilous Underside of the World by eyres

Rating: Mature

Words:52k

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Tags: Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Action/Adventure, Competence Kink, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort

SummaryAfter Steve becomes an unwilling subject in Ross's pet weapons project to make a next gen super soldier, Bucky is awakened from cryo to join a daring rescue operation to save Steve from an impenetrable government base on the Antarctica coastline. When things go belly up, Steve and Bucky must strike out on their own across the hostile landscape, with Ross's men close behind.AKA 'The one where Steve throws a snowmobile at a helicopter.'

The Way to a Man’s Heart by TetrodotoxinB

Rating: E

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Words: 54k

Relationships: Sam Wilson / Bucky Barnes / Steve Rogers

Tags: Torture, Disordered eating, PTSD (multiple characters), Medical procedures, Suicidal ideation and behaviors, Steve/Sam/Bucky, hurt/comfort, Canon typical violence, Happy ending, Smut!!!!

Summary: Bucky wakes up from cryo in Wakanda eight months after the Accords and the fracturing of the Avengers. With the collective scientific genius of Stark, Banner, and Pym, Bucky has the priming sequence erased permanently from his mind. No longer the Winter Soldier, and having been cleared of his crimes following a dissolution of the Accords, Bucky returns to the states to try his hand at a normal life, or at least at doing good in the world. That normalcy is shattered when, after a mission gone wrong, some of Bucky’s conditioning reasserts itself and he’s forced to start back at square one. Bucky fights the physical and mental pain of his conditioning to learn to eat again after years of never being allowed solid food by HYDRA. At the same time, Steve is forced to confront his longest held beliefs. Through all of it, Bucky, Sam, and Steve fall together in different ways as they are forced to face their troubles and their pasts.

Art by TheRothwoman and ICouldDoThisAllDay

things of dry hours by jinlinli, 

Rating: T

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 32,154

Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers

Tags: Canon Compliant, Angst, Slow Burn, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Mid-Credits Scene, Painting, Art History, Character Study

Summary: Bucky’s clothes rustle when he pulls a pocket knife from his jacket. He eyes the scratchings in the trees before carefully carving his name next to a crude stick figure with a gun. “You remember what it was like,” Bucky says, knife still in hand. “Don’t you?” Steve thinks of the flat surface of an ocean, the dreams of floating. A lukewarm sea lapping against his knees as he drifted alone. Water dripping off his chin. His eyes opened in a strange bed and a strange world. “Just a little, yeah.” Bucky nods. “I don’t feel cold anymore.” “I—me too.”

In the year after they leave the bunker in Siberia, Steve and Bucky find solace in painting, and maybe in the process, relearn how to be around each other again.

Oil paint colors art by Artbyria

Bucky’s self portrait art by artbyria

Two Idiots and a Baseball Game by RealTJHammond 

Rating: Mature

Archive Warnings: Chose not to Use Archive Warnings

Words: 20k

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Trigger warnings :Light to medium BDSM,Spanking,Anal sex,choking,Homophobes.

Important Tags: post-civil war, bdsm, spanking, anal sex, pet play, homophobia, library, ptsd

Summary: It’s a year after civil war, I’m working a library just to kill time and so that I don’t have to deal with Stark complaining at me. Stark’s pranks get worse, so I stay near Steve, slowly falling in love with him, feeling the assassin part of me slowly disappearing. Steve and I fall more and more in love, soon getting together. I love when Steve gets dominant and soon we find out we want to have a BDSM relationship. I stay at Steve’s feet during movie nights,dinner, wherever and whenever he wants. Art by chalenmimi-frenchtoast  (http://chalenmimi-frenchtoast.tumblr.com)

Unspooling by mage_girl

Rating: T

Archive Warnings:  Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings

Word Count: 53K

Relationships:  Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes, Thor & Jane, Clint Barton & Laura Barton

Tags: Geeks, Star Wars, Reconnection, Meta

Summary: After the events of Civil War, after Bucky is free of his trigger words courtesy of Wakanda, after the rescue from the Raft, the former Avengers get together for what Steve hopes is the beginning of a reconciliation and the mending of friendships.Bucky has never seen any of the ‘Star Wars’ movies so they decide to watch the movies together.Cue loads of conversation, geeking out, inside jokes, and maybe, just maybe, some resolution.

Art by whatthefoucault