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goryhorroor · 8 months

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Upcoming horror movies (some without release years) - not in order

Longlogs - FBI Agent Lee Harker is assigned to an unsolved serial killer case that takes an unexpected turn, revealing evidence of the occult. Harker discovers a personal connection to the killer and must stop him before he strikes again.

Nosferatu - A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

Bermuda - Unknown details but it will be set in the mysterious patch of the Caribbean where planes and ships have gone missing over the years.

Twisters (ok thriller but imma count it because i can) - A sequel to the 1996 film about stormchasing scientists studying tornados.

Immaculate - Cecilia is warmly welcomed to the picture-perfect Italian countryside, where she is offered a new role at an illustrious convent. But it becomes clear to Cecilia that her new home harbors dark and horrifying secrets.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire - The film centers on the Spengler family as they return to where it all started – the iconic New York City firehouse – to team up with the original Ghostbusters, who’ve developed a top-secret research lab to take busting ghosts to the next level. But when the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second Ice Age.

Mickey's Mouse Trap - follows a group of friends who become targets of a serial killer dressed as Mickey Mouse

Imaginary - When Jessica moves back into her childhood home with her family, her youngest stepdaughter Alice develops an eerie attachment to a stuffed bear named Chauncey she finds in the basement. Alice's games with Chauncey become increasingly sinister, and Jessica intervenes only to realize Chauncey is much more than the stuffed toy bear she believed him to be.

Skeletons in the Closet - Haunted by a malevolent spirit since childhood, a desperate mother allows herself to become possessed in order to save the life of her terminally ill daughter.

Lisa Frankenstein - love story about a misunderstood teenager and her high school crush, who happens to be a handsome corpse. After a set of playfully horrific circumstances bring him back to life, the two embark on a murderous journey to find love, happiness… and a few missing body parts along the way.

Winnie The Pooh: Blood & Honey 2 - oh yay? I guess a sequel

Adrift - It is described as a supernatural ghost story set aboard a ship. It is an adaptation of a short story by Koji Suzuki

Dustbunny - It follows a young girl who asks her neighbor to help her kill a monster under her bed after she thinks it has eaten her family.

Faces of Death - follows a woman who discovers violent videos that recreate death scenes from movies online.

Heretic - two religious women who become the focus of a strange man's games.

History of Evil - In the near future, war and corruption have plagued America and turned it into a theocratic police state. Against the oppression, ordinary citizens have formed a group called The Resistance. One such member, Alegre Dyer, breaks out of political prison and reunites with her husband Ron and daughter Daria. On the run from the militia, the family takes shelter in a remote safe house. But their journey is far from over, as the house’s dark past begins to eat away at Ron, and his earnest desire to keep his family safe is overtaken by something much more sinister.

MaXXXine - Six years after the ‘Texas Pornhouse Massacre’, Maxine is now LA-based and on a driven quest to become a star in the acting world. But things take a sinister turn when bodies once again begin to fall around her.

Dracula - A futuristic sci-fi western version of Dracula.

Apartment 7A - Prequel to the 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby.

Baghead - follows a young woman who inherits a run-down pub and discovers a dark secret within its basement. Enter Baghead - a shape-shifting creature that will let you speak to lost loved ones, but not without consequence.

Out of Darkness - In the Old Stone Age, a disparate gang of early humans band together in search of a new land. But when they suspect a malevolent, mystical, being is hunting them down, the clan are forced to confront a danger they never envisaged.

Stopmotion - stop-motion animator by the name of Ella whose latest project might just be driving her to the brink of madness.

Late Night with the Devil - 1970s talk show host Jack Delroy on his last legs, wrung out by personal tragedy and in need of a ratings win. His plan to feature as a guest a young girl who is allegedly possessed seems like a Halloween night layup… until the cameras roll and all hell literally breaks loose.

You'll Never Find Me - An isolated man living at the back of a desolate caravan park is visited by a desperate young woman seeking shelter from a violent storm. As the savage storm worsens, these solitary souls begin to feel threatened – but who should really be afraid?

The First Omen - When a young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, she encounters a darkness that causes her to question her own faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate. (this might be a prequel to the omen)

Abigail - After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.

Return to Silent Hill - James, a man broken after being separated from his one true love. When a mysterious letter calls him back to Silent Hill in search of her, he finds a once-recognizable town transformed by an unknown evil. As James descends deeper into the darkness, he encounters terrifying figures both familiar and new and begins to question his own sanity as he struggles to make sense of reality and hold on long enough to save his lost love.

Infested - invasion of venomous spiders, forcing residents of a suburban building to find a way out.

Tarot - Tarot follows a group of friends who recklessly violate the sacred rule of Tarot readings – never use someone else’s deck. In the wake of broken rules, consequences follow, this time in the form of unleashing an unspeakable evil trapped within the cursed cards.

The Strangers Chapter 1 - a couple, have to survive the night while being terrorized by masked strangers in a remote Airbnb in Oregon

The Watchers - the film follows a young woman who becomes trapped with three strangers in a shelter deep within a forest in Ireland where the group must fight off mysterious creatures every night in order to survive.

Never Let Go - a family who has been tormented by an evil spirit for years as their lives become more dangerous when one of the kids questions if the evil is real.

The One - Follows character Taylor as she becomes a contestant on a reality TV dating show to find love. Taylor's experience takes a turn as she gets down to the final three and becomes terrified of not finding love (with a horror twist)

Thread: An Insidious Tale - new actors who play a husband and wife who use a spell to travel back in time to prevent their daughter's death, which has worse consequences than imagined

Weapons - The movie is about the disappearance of high school students in a small town, similar to the movie Magonlia's from 1999

A Quiet Place: Day One - New characters in New York

Alien: Romulus - takes place between the first & second movies

Beetlejuice 2 - not much is known about the plot details, but Beetlejuice will have a wife & Lydia's daughter will be in it

Speak No Evil: this is the English remake (all it really says; but it's just the 2022 movie but English?)

Smile 2 - it's a sequel but no details have been revealed

Terrifer 3 - not too many details revealed but it will take place on Christmas Eve

Wolfman - not too many details revealed but it's a new take on the werewolf tale

I Saw The TV Glow - Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.

Don't Move - A seasoned killer injects a grieving woman with a paralytic agent and she must run, fight and hide before her body completely shuts down.

Arcadian - Nicolas Cage comes back to save the day - and his children - from ferocious creatures at their remote farmhouse.

All My Friends Are Dead - College friends? Remote Airbnb? A secret murderer? What could go wrong in this classic toxic friend group killing spree? Looking forward to attending the biggest music fest of the year, this group of friends get together for what should be a killer weekend.

Monolith - It is about a disgraced journalist who investigates a conspiracy theory while trying to salvage her career.

some movies coming out maybe not this year but have been floating around: The Toxic Avenger (I think remake), Witchboard (remake), Year 2 (about werewolves), Shelby Oaks (A woman's desperate search for her long-lost sister falls into obsession upon realizing that the imaginary demon from their childhood may have been real), Salem's Lot (remake), Little Bites ('70s-set monster movie that highlights the lengths a parent will go to protect a child), The Crow (Reboot), Jordan Peele's untitled movie, I've also seen there's going to be another Saw (but it hasn't been confirmed), and another Scream (but that production is already a trainwreck so who knows)

#horror #horror movies #horror cinema #dracula #the crow #terrifier 3 #saw #scream #alien #beetlejuice 2 #smile 2

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kannra21 · 10 months

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Bc I "love" (lol) Gege so much, I gathered some info on him. Pls DM me to add more if you remember anything

Pen name: Akutami Gege (芥見下々)

Birthday: 26th February 1992 (31yo)

Zodiac: Pisces

Born: Iwate Prefecture, Japan

he went to all boy's private school

Akutami has an older brother who's married. Yuji is strongly inspired by his brother who is Akutami's opposite. He is someone who succeeds in everything he undertakes: sports, studies etc.

he was never really interested in drawing or manga until 4th grade when his older brother bought Weekly Shōnen Jump. The Jump that he read had Bleach on it and that's how Akutami's love for Bleach developed. When he was in the 5th grade and moved from Iwate Prefecture to Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture, he was surprised to see that the kids at his new school drew manga

he started drawing manga by imitating his friends' work

so his Bleach obsession started in elementary school and his Evangelion and Hunter x Hunter obsession started in middle school

he wrote a poetry analogy called "Giant From The Clouds" in middle school, inspired by the Bleach mangaka

His previous works are Kamishiro Sōsa, No.9, Nikai Bongai Barabarjura and jjk 0

Yuji was named after his childhood classmate

Geto was named after the "Geto Korean Ski Resort", located near Akutami's hometown of Tohoku

he's slightly colorblind

he's a fan of occult, mystical practices and horror

he wears glasses

he cooks somewhat

he loves hot springs and scalp massages, he goes to dermatologist to maintain healthy skin

he exercises and he's trying to get in shape despite the busy schedule, workout is not as painful as it is boring

he's very grateful for his chiropractor bc of his stiff neck, he said that if he ever time-travels and meets his younger self he's gonna tell him "get in shape, seriously", he craves afternoon naps but tries to resist by eating sweets like Pikmin gummies (why's he so contradictory haha)

when Nakamura first debuted with the jjk cast and got to meet Gege, he was surprised by how young he looked. He also said that Gege has a calming voice

hobbies: he reads a bunch of novels and watches a bunch of movies whenever he can, he's busy with work most of the time

his favorite food is crispy thai pandan chicken

his favorite onigiri flavor is mentaiko, he loves Umaibo snacks, Schau Essen, potatoes, hayashi rice, ramen and seedless grapes

He's usually not a fan of name brands but he likes Balenciaga. He also wants to support Royal Host restaurant

he likes comedy podcasts like Arabikidan group

the first manga he submitted to Jump was a gag manga

when he was a student he found studying boring but he likes doing research on things that actually interest him (like engineering facts he needed for the manga)

when he was an art student, he didn't really like making drawings where the model stayed for hours in a specific pose. He preferred to sketch in 3-4 minutes

he relies too much on sketches, rough drafts and his editors (he says he's like a dog for the editors)

he has a habit of forgetting how to draw his characters sometimes

he's self-deprecating and he's sorry that he sometimes makes people feel awkward by being overly critical of himself *hugs him*

he finds it difficult to write Yuji bc Yuji and Akutami are fairly different, Akutami doesn't consider himself particularly athletic but he can relate to Yuji for being an "airhead" sometimes and does things when people tell him not to

he thinks he's clumsy and fucks up honorifics sometimes, he talks casually with his editor Yamanaka whom he has a beef with till this day, he reminds him to "respect his elders" (he's so Gojo coded lol)

He's so funny asdfghjhgfd

he's in good relationship with his parents, he respects them and they're very supportive of him

he cares about his mom's opinion on his manga

Toji's and Yuta's personalities are somewhat based on Akutami's dad, dad also reads the manga

according to Gege, jjk should've been a lot darker but editor didn't allow it

he's an otaku, he's a fan of Marvel, has Hunter x Hunter posters on the wall and enjoys Pokémon wii games, he collected Yu-Gi-Oh cards when he was younger, he's from the generation when Gintama was popular

He never felt hatred for Thanos from Avengers: Endgame (explains why he likes Sukuna so much lol)

his favorite Haikyuu character is Tendo and his favorite BNHA characters are Overhaul and Stain

he saw Brad Pitt in person wow

Idea for the pen name: Gege worked a part time job at the cleaners and learned what it's like to be humble in the world. "Gege" translates to a "person of lower status" or a "commoner"

he claims to be socially awkward with people he's not familiar with, he's not used to public speech but when he gets drunk he does a 180 and is blabbering a lot

people call him a genius with a great sense of humor, his editor Katayama says that he's a cheery and a cool person, much like Gojo

he bought a black mountain parka (like Gojo's) that's supposed to last for six years but he put it in storage after one week

he thought about dying his hair white (Gege stop with the Gojo cosplay)

he's a procrastinator, he's mentally preparing for hours to draw a manga chapter that would otherwise take him 30min. The truth is, he's getting tired of jjk and can't wait to finish it

he chose the cyclop cat avatar because drawing one eye is easier and no one hates cats

he said that he used to have a "type of girl" in high school but the more he grew up he realized that every woman is a good woman, he likes well-groomed women (although I think he likes girls with thick tights? he's a Hwasa fan)

he thinks that world can't be divided into black and white and that it's always a blur. Villains and heroes are treated the same because each of them have their own beliefs and ideologies that are valid

he isn't emotionally bound to any of his characters, he will kill whoever, as long as the story is interesting

he's deliberately not trying to sexualize his female characters, not just because of his parents, but also because he wants to leave a respectable impression. Mangaka profession is very looked down upon. He wants to change that

his net worth is somewhere around $12 million

he wants to stay anonymous bc he enjoys his commoner life, there's a certain freedom to being a normal person, he can go in public spaces without anyone recognizing his face. For instance: he secretly went watching the jjk 0 movie in theater along with the opening comments on the first day. A fan accidentally met him but he pretended to be a staff member

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mariacallous · 6 months

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Content warning: This article includes scenes of physical and sexual harassment and assault.

The trouble in Antarctica started in Boston. It was August 1999, and Stanford geologist Jane Willenbring was then a 22-year-old self-described “country bumpkin.” She had just arrived to start her master’s in earth science at Boston University. As an undergrad with an oboe scholarship at North Dakota State University, she’d studied beetle fossils found in Antarctica and learned how, millions of years ago, the now frozen continent once pooled with freshwater lakes. “That’s not so different from the conditions we might expect in the future,” she says. She wanted to explore this critical science. “It seemed really important for future global climate change,” she says.

Of all the geologists, few were more renowned than the one Willenbring had gone to Boston to study under: 37-year-old David Marchant. Marchant, a scruffy professor at BU, was a rock star of rock study. He was part of a research group that rewrote Antarctic history by discovering evidence of volcanic ash, which showed that Antarctica had been stable for millions of years and was not as prone to cycles of warming and cooling as many thought. To honor his achievements, the US Board on Geographic Names approved the naming of a glacier southwest of McMurdo Station, the main research base on Antarctica, after him.

Willenbring says Marchant had insisted on picking her up at the airport, an offer she thought was nice but strange. It got stranger when he started making her feel bad for his gesture, which she hadn’t asked for. “I’m missing a Red Sox game,” she recalls him chiding her. “You really should have picked a better time to fly.” He asked whether she had a boyfriend, how often she saw him, and whether she knew anyone in Boston or would be alone. In a few months, she’d be heading with him on a research trip to Antarctica and the region with his big chunk of namesake ice. “It was almost like a pickup line,” she recalls, “‘I have a glacier.’”

But it’s what happened in the glacier’s shadow that led Willenbring to take on Marchant and become the first to expose the horrors faced by women at the bottom of the world. A report released in August 2022 by the National Science Foundation, the main agency funding Antarctic research, found that 59 percent of women at McMurdo and other field stations run by the US Antarctic Program said they’d experienced sexual harassment or assault. A central employer, Leidos, holds a $2.3 billion government contract to manage the workplaces on the ice. One woman alleged that a supervisor had slammed her head into a metal cabinet and then attacked her sexually. Britt Barquist, a former fuel foreman at McMurdo, says she had been forced to work alongside a supervisor who had sexually harassed her. “What was really traumatic was telling people, ‘I’m afraid of this person,’” she says, “and nobody cared.”

With a congressional investigation underway, Willenbring is sharing her full story for the first time with the hope of inspiring others to come forward and claim the justice they’ve long deserved. But even now, decades after she first got into Marchant’s car, she can’t help asking herself how, and why, the nightmare happened in the first place. “You never hear a women-in-science panel where people are talking about stuff like I do,” she says, “because they’re smart enough to fucking run.”

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unoriginal-and-dumb · 6 months

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Decided to redraw my first oc (ON AGGIE BECAUSE ALL I FUCKING DO IS DRAW ONAGGIE APPARENTLY)

It’s name is Suit-009 😁🥳

If you are curious I will quickly explain its lore and uh that’s it yah. (I don’t rlly post my ocs like ever but I dunno hour long drive got me being thoughtful as usual)

Before everything I MADE THIS WHEN I WAS 14 THIS PREDATES AMONG US AND LETHAL COMPANY DO NOT SAY THAT IM RIPPING IT FROM THOSE I DID IT FIRSSTTT

Humanity is on its last limb, the earth is practically an unlivable husk especially due to immense overpopulation

So basically, there is a group of 9 scientists tasked with finding a habitable place that human can colonize or a place that can be harvested for resources

The team lands on an alien planet and begin research. They are all scientists and all are capable of running and surviving on a spacecraft or in a hostile environment, so that’s not particularly a worry.

The ninth crew member, suit numbered 009, was recruited specifically for his scientific studies, yea they are all scientists but he’s like THE scientist. The guy that’s goes hmm yes nod nod URETHRA! All that.

Anyway they find some crystal fragments and decide to do some extensive research on it due to energy signals coming from it. Having something that creates energy like said crystals would be extremely useful if they could replicate it in some form

009 goes and studies it yea yea whatever. Idc. But like it starts taking awhile and the crew leader 001 (she does have a name it’s Hailey but I dunno abt anyone else I WAS 14.) anyway she goes and is like hey buddy how pal pick up the pace you’re taking long as hell

And he’s like SIR YES SIR, but it’s been a while now and he’s kinda being freaky deaky. None of the other crew realy took notice of him kinda acting tweaked out since they were never really close beyond coworkers unfortunately

But UH OH! The crystals actually have some dumb shit that like attracts things/people to like investigate it (the energy thing) but what it actually does is kinda cause people constantly around it to be like overly obsessed with it and also kinda become stupid

So the thing with the crystals is that if it somehow gets into your blood stream it starts forming more crystals as like a way to grow. They aren’t particular just an inanimate object, it has a goal to grow and it can’t just grow from nothing sooo

Anyway 009 is like tweaked out because it’s actually just a suit with a corpse and crystals piloting it

Eventually Hailey realizes this but I mean it’s not gonna go out without a fight

So suit-009 grabs a fire axe and axes down the entire crew, once it’s finished it just folds over, using the surrounding and remaining biomass to consume and grow yaaaay

Oh just some thing I thought was neat, if you were to pop off the hazmat mask the head would be absent and replaced with a horrible mass of bloody crystals isn’t that exciting

That’s pretty much it yea. Hey by the way did you know I love Dead Space 2, Don’t Escape 3, The Thing, and Alien? Haha yea anyway I LOVE SPACE I LOVE SPACE I LOVE SPACE I LOVE SPACE I LOVE THE HORRORS OF SPACE I LOVE SPACE I LOVE SPACE SO MUCH SPAAAAAAAACEEEEEEE WOOOOO YEA SPACE!!!!!!!!!!!)!)

#actually nvm tags are only worth fandom stuff 🗣️

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tracesofdevotion · 27 days

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there’s this phenomenon called the Bystander Effect. in the early 70s, a woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked in the hallway of an apartment. 38 people heard the attack and did nothing to help her - it was thought that because a large group of people witnessed the event, they all thought that it was someone else’s responsibility to intervene.

what I’m learning through school and personal research is that the Bystander Effect is very similar to something called Learned Helplessness.

in the 1950s, there was a study done to examine how helpless animals feel when placed in a hopeless situation. basically, dogs were shocked and punished with no way of avoiding the shocks. they discovered that once the dogs realized there was no way to prevent the shock, the dogs stopped attempting to escape and accepted their fate. they could have avoided the shocks from the beginning by just not going inside, but because there was no other choice they were stuck. they developed Learned Helplessness. the effect is more complex than that, but that’s the gist.

now look at the Bystander Effect. Kitty was dying in the hallway and the other people didn’t help because they likely also felt helpless. they figured their intervention would be futile, so it was probably left to other people. maybe they didn’t feel like a single person in a group of 30+ others would make a difference. they thought that since there was a crowd of people, someone else would have to be the one to take action.

the Bystander Effect is Learned Helplessness. in a large group in a hopeless seeming situation (a situation in which you are helpless) people stop attempting to escape or fix the situation because they think the outcome would be hopeless anyway,

but what happens if you change the situation from a group of 38 people to one of two? the Bystander Effect isn’t nearly as prevalent when the responsibility to act is shared with only one other person. the Bystander Effect happens less frequently when there are a smaller number of people. someone takes the lead.

now imagine this: if we all had the mind set that it was our responsibility, in every hopeless situation, to be the one to act, to help, we wouldn’t have Learned Helplessness in the first place. think of how much stronger and more resilient we would be if we all agreed that it was our personal responsibility to help others.

imagine how many things we could get done or people we could save if we weren't so resigned ourselves. imagine living in a world in which nobody looked at another person and though "that's not my responsibility, someone else will do it."

i want to live in a world where we all look at the horrors and pain and despair and say "that pain is mine. that loss and hurt and grief is all of our loss. that is our responsibility to fix or at least minimize. that person who is dying or lonely or hurting, even if we don't know them: they are our family."

we all have Learned Helplessness because somewhere along the line, we decided the world wasn't our problem.

#learned helplessness #bystander effect #be better #the world #and humanity #need us #writeblr #writing #writer stuff #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #creative writing #writers of tumblr #poetry #poem #poets on tumblr

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jellyfishbeansontoast · 1 year

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10 things I hate about you

I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare

omg ok the long awaited second part i am so sorry for dragging this out i’ve genuinely been so busy but i hope you enjoy! it’s a bit shorter than the last one but we’re ramping up to the angst <3

previous part

Steve regrets offering the kids a lift home as they interrogate him about his plan. The two boys and El squished in the back. “You do have a plan, right?” Dustin questions.

“Of course I have a plan.” he lies.

“Let’s hear it then.” Mike pipes up.

“It’s a secret.”

“You don’t have one.” Both boys speak at the exact same time.

“Look, I’m a busy guy, I don’t spend my time researching how to get El’s scary sister to go out with me so that you two” he looks accusingly at Mike and El “can go out.”

“Good thing we have.” says Max from the front seat. Steve groans, slamming his head into the steering wheel. “You need to play the long game, there’s a party on Saturday.”

“How is that relevant?”

It’s Max’s turn to groan “Are you seriously that stupid? Ask her to go with you, dummy.”

Thankfully, you see him before you reach your car. His arm is stretched over the top of your window as he leans backwards on it. You take a breath and prepare for the task of removing Steve off of your car so you can peacefully drive home.

“Steve.”

“Y/n.” he lowers his sunglasses.

“To what do I owe the pleasure.” the sarcasm drips off your tongue.

The training El had given him kicks in, ignore the sarcasm. “There’s a party on saturday.”

“I’m aware.”

“Wanna go with me?”

Your scoff answers his question, “Please get off my car.”

“But-”

“Off.” Steve admits defeat this time, and he would call it quits full stop but he remembers El and if he’s honest he’s a little bit scared of what the group will do to him if he doesn’t at least try again.

Steve’s face greets you when you shut your locker door. “Funny seeing you here.”

“This is my locker.” you lean against it, huffing in annoyance.

“Right.” he clears his throat “about the party.” You push yourself off the locker, propelling yourself as far away as you can get from the persistent boy and his incessant badgering about the party on saturday. He jogs after and you’re disappointed to see he’s a fast runner. “It’s just one party, we don’t even have to go for that long, maybe just an hour”

“An hour I won’t get back.”

“You’re sure you don’t wanna come?”

“I am certain I don’t want to spend an hour with you.”

“Ouch.”

You regret being so harsh almost instantly, casting him an apologetic look “Sorry I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Let me know if you change your mind” he winks before walking away from you.

The bell rings, alerting Steve to begin his spiel “Welcome to Family Video, how can I help you today?” He lifts his gaze from where it had been focused on a game of noughts and crosses with Robin. “Y/n? Change your mind so soon?” a cocky grin replaces the shock on his face.

“As if.” you head towards the horror section, Steve trails behind you.

“That one’s pretty scary, you want some company?”

“What do you want, Harrington.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He leans against the rack of films.

“Quit the act Steve, you treat everyone like shit but now suddenly you’re all interested in me? This a dare or something?” he stays silent “You can tell Tommy and Carol you lost.”

“I don’t hang out with them anymore.” he mumbles, his confident demeanour disappearing.

For once it’s your turn to look shocked “King Steve without his cronies?”

“I don’t act like that anymore either” he studies your face for a reaction “I’m serious. I genuinely want to take you out.”

“Ok..” you decide to drag it out a bit, torturing him just a few seconds longer “I’ll give you a chance. Pick me up at seven?”

Steve lets out a relieved breath, quickly replaced by a pang of guilt, he’d forgotten the reason for convincing you to go out with him. Who was he to fuck with your feelings like that? He pushes the guilt aside, that’s a problem for later, you’re still standing in front of him expectantly. “Yeah, seven’s good.”

taglist:

@johnricharddeacy @midnghtprentiss @idli-dosa @lilsunshine1092 @hollandweather

#steve x reader #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve stranger things #stranger things x reader #ten things i hate about you #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x y/n #steve x y/n #steve x you #steve #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington angst #stranger things fluff #stranger things angst #10 things i hate about you

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punch-love · 1 year

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Could you give us some of your fic recs as well? 🙏🏼

I've been waiting for this ask. * is for all time favorites.

Classics/Required Reading:

Between Apollo and Arachne. / He is Soundless From Afar. / Blood Sickness. by elastic honey (infernoconcealed)

I got into this fandom specifically because of this author. I think all of their work is incredible but, these three are my favorites and also the first bookmarks I ever made. I like the ways they explore their dynamic, and they often explore darker scenarios between the two of them with a lot of heart and nuance.

How To Get Physical by Wilt

I like their writing as much as I like their art, but this one in particular is a consistent re-read for me. It's a trans Peter written by a clearly trans writer, and it's soft and kind and good-hearted in a way that really, really sells the history between them.

Up to the Sun (Full Speed Ahead, Mr. Parker) by SleepsWithCoyotes

The first AU I really enjoyed and also one of the best. Eldritch horror Wade that goes from a massive tentacle creature to an off-putting mercenary that gets attached to Spider-Man. It's great. The whole verse is great.

for the wrong reasons by orphan_account

This is one of my favorite Wade character studies of all time. He gets hit with a truth serum and ends up at Peter's apartment. It's sad and complicated and perfect, and I've read it more than a few times.

gunpowder and firewood / steel and flint * by periodically_puzzled

This is forever one of my favorites. It's the best first-person POV in the fandom hands down and is just so fucking good. It's got everything, idenity porn, grindr, complicated explorations of emotional manipulation, bromance, and it's so very funny.

Snake Oil by BunsofHoney

This was so good that my writing group chat temporarily re-named our chat after it. Peter is a preacher and Wade is a possessed snake oil salesman. It's very good, and also you will learn something about the 20s as it is immensely well researched.

Blazed (Smoking Weed is Gay) * by GreendaleHumanBeing

This is one of my all-time favorites. Peter is coping with his midlife crisis by being a huge stoner, and Wade has mellowed out and joins him for long smoke sessions. It's very slice of life, intimate, slow burn friends to lovers. It's one of those reads that just feels really, really good and relatable.

Paradise (spread out with a butter knife) by Sarah_Sandwich

A soulmate/slice of life work that really will make you feel something profound by the end of it. I read this one at four in the morning and didn't sleep until I was finished with it. It made me feel something big.

Dog Years by androgynousdouche

This is the only unfinished work on this list but man, is it a hidden treasure. They really build a foundation for the relationship and the intimacy between these two is so....it's really good. I wish it was finished, but even though it's not, I still think it's worth the read.

Porn:

Tip of the Tongue * by TimidTurnip

I think this is probably the work I go back and re-read the most. It's got everything. Peter Parker's insane oral fixation, his inability to come to terms with his own bi-sexuality, homies who are mean to each other dynamics, and worship based blow jobs. It's great. You should read it.

i could show you and stop (don't stop) by jilliancares

I think this is probably two of the most infamous smut works in the fandom but they both really, really deserve the hype. The first is the eating out fic of all time specifically for me but also for a lot of other people and the second is my favorite situational porn.

Meeting Minutes */ Pitter Patter by WhoopsOK

These are hands down the best watersports fics in the entire fandom. I've read the entire tag, I would know. The first has Peter being hit by a truth serum and telling his fantasies to Wade who intentionally does not sleep with him, and it's hot and good dynamic wise. The second is just a very hot scenario where Peter pisses in Wade's mouth while he works behind the counter. Great stuff.

a luxury few can afford by three-fingered (calciseptine)

I love the way this author writes them so much. It's fun and fresh and so good at building up some good old-fashioned tension. It also has some great character study moments inbetween blow jobs (my beloved)

Fucked Up Shit:

she's not going to die today / Songs for the Zombie Apocalypse / Need You Like A Gun To The Head * by (zerospoons_onlyknives)oprime

I also consider these classics/required reading but they are all very dark and go places that fans of the classic dynamic might be surprised by. SNGTDT is the best and darkest soulmate AU you'll ever read. SftZA is not only an incredible zombie AU but also one of my personal favorite pieces of zombie fiction period. NYLaGttH is one of my favorite smut fics of all time and one I often re-read (the title should be taken literally)

twisted, baby by jilliancares

The Peter "adrenaline kink" Parker work. It's dubious and intimate and exhilarating in a way that never gets old.

tap out whenever by periodically_puzzled

also known as "the fic that triggers me so bad that I've never commented on it despite reading it eight times" this is like. One of the darkest works in the fandom, hands down and if you can relate at all with the content, will put you in some sort of headspace. It's excellent. It's horrifying.

Because You're Mine *- WaterMe

I absolutely love this one. It's a sex-pollen turned non-con work that is very dark (mind the tags) but if you want to go there, this is the place to go. I always come back to it and find something new to appreciate. Also the only second person work I've ever enjoyed/felt affected by in the way I think second person is supposed to do. (honorary mention by this author: their Arbor day fic)

Sinking by coveryourheads

This one is hard to describe, but if you're interested in some really nuanced work on sexuality, this one will sit with you for a while. Peter and Wade are in an intense D/s relationship that is both abstract and personal in ways I've never really read about before.

#mailbox #spideypool #long post #listen I don't care that this is long I have a lot of love in my heart #rec list #making a pinned post soon and this will probably be on t #fic rec

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monstrouslyobsessed · 1 year

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A tribe composed only of men in a tropical forest. They are cannibals and eat members of other tribes and trespassers. Reader and her group was captured and since the chef and the other members found her cute and breedable, they decided to not eat her and make her the "mother" of the tribe. Thanks! —anonymous

—a/n: hm, im a lil iffy doing this one due to potential xenophobia and cultural insensitivity (regardless of what one may think of certain customs, the tribes who inspired this such suggestion are still people who deserve a measure of respect), so i’ll be changing the species and incorporate it in my beastfolk au instead to hopefully avoid offending anyone.

also, this turned into a fic (plus me making it into beastfolk au so no claiming without permission) lmao so not really a concept anymore. sorry about that! im keeping the format tho.

also, I wanna make a note for you for the asterisk marking in the tag list. the word i made up (Ce’ne, specifically) basically meant both ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and can be passed as gender neutral, to have/give children. to be safe though, im marking it as gendered language.

—tw / tags: gn reader, brief use of gendered language*, language barrier, injuries, horror, implied maneating, gore, multiple deaths, implied trespassing, implied beastfolk trafficking, kidnapping, confinement, body painting, teratophilia, exophilia, general yandere themes, sfw? —readers are advised to read at their own discretion.

—featured character(s): the jaguars tribe / the ‘Jags’, the Scarred One —word count: 2.1k

—this is part of my beastfolk universe! —zoo era.

Everything hurts, especially the excruciating pain in your back. It felt as though your flesh had been flayed and then set ablaze, the agony akin to acid being poured into open wounds. You groggily dragged your eyes open with a whimper choked out from your dusty throat. Needles of numbness buzzed on your damp skin and the only sound you could hear was the pounding of your own heart in your ears.

It was dark when you came to, but not pitch-black as you could see thin gaps of light creeping through wherever you were currently. The flickering golden light was in a constant motion, casting dancing shadows across the space. You could smell a smoky scent of burning wood and the air was heavy and damp, hanging on your skin like a winter blanket. Your brain was still groggy and the answers to where you were and why, were not forthcoming.

At hearing your groans, someone hissed out for your attention, “—! —! Are you okay!?” They kept their voice low, as if they were trying to avoid alerting anyone outside the threshold you were placed in.

You could barely see with the blur of pain fogging your eyes, but you slowly shook your head, “I…I don’t know.” You desperately searched for the owner of that voice, but you found nothing but a shifting blob of shadow some feet away from you. You couldn’t move, your arms tied to what felt like a wooden pole and your ankles bounded together with bushy ropes. Your head was ringing loudly and you moaned, “Wh—what happened?”

“T-the d-director fucked over all of us, —!” Their reply was edged with a sense of betrayal, “He was one of ‘em fuckin’ zoo hunters, using us to get close to the Jags—!”

Fuck. You remembered with a contorted grimace. As an up-and-coming researcher with a vested interest in studying the feral beastfolks and animals, you had ambitions and dreams realized. You had been honored to have encountered and even personally met a handful of tribal people. Although It was no grand merit, you learned enough about their customs and languages to set up a survey to map out the possible locations of local tribes.

As you’d learned, this knowledge was a dangerous thing to have.

The director must have been after a specific tribe of the feral beastfolk; the whiskeredfolks with ringed spots in their golden fur that you and your colleagues had nicknamed 'Jags.'. Unlike the timid, long-legged tribe you had befriended with and the one with thick-maned people with whom you had more tenuous relationships with, this particular one was notorious for being dangerous and killing the outsiders on sight.

Without a doubt, you and your expedition group had flown too close to the sun and got burned for it. Despite your frequent warnings, the so-called director convinced everyone to take just a 'few steps closer' to the Jags’ territory. In a blink, all hell’s broke loose.

You remembered the sound of roaring and the sight of bodies scantily clad in animal skins launching themselves at you and your people, weapons in hand. You felt a searing pain in your back and then darkness consumed you. The last thing you saw was gruesome, with a spear tearing through a fellow researcher’s chest.

The vision still burned within your mind’s eye and tears stung your bruised cheeks.

“S—shit,” You dug the soles of your bare feet (what happened to your boots?) into the wet dirt and thumped your head against the wooden pole. You tried counting what you could see, but there was only one. “w-where is everyone else?”

Your colleague went quiet. The jeering laughter and a sole human shrieking followed your question. The screaming sounded suspiciously like the director’s—and your blood went cold when that cry abruptly ended to a gurgle.

The shadow blob nodded, their motion solemn in the darkness, “We made him confessed when ‘ey tossed us in here when you were still out. Since ‘en, ‘em cats started picking us clean one by one. ‘e bastard was the first one to go, probably because he’s big and meaty.”

You caught a hitched breath and heard them shuddering, “We’re ‘e last ones. Why didn’t we listen to you?” Your colleague choked.

Why didn’t they, you’d wonder about this for the rest of your remaining life, but now, your brain could barely function with your back throbbing in pain. You could feel the back of your shirt being soaked through with your warm blood and your body slowly going cold. With a rasping breath, you rolled over your heavy head to your fellow researcher, “H—hey, at least…at least we’re dying doing what we loved, right?”

It was a shit joke, but it was enough to get them to snort.

“Hopefully ‘ey’d put us out quicker ‘an what ‘ey did to ‘e bastard.” They mumbled.

A whispering flap of the tent’s entryway fluttered.

A flickering light blinded you, casting shadows across the dark enclosure and preventing you from seeing who had entered. Several footsteps grinding into the dirt and a brief warmth pressed against your knees. You heard a mumbling in another language, oddly approving, and a short shuffling from where your colleague was.

The light was gone and you found yourself alone in the suffocating darkness. With a slow groan, you braced for your inevitable end, hoping that at least everyone in your group had met a quick demise.

Sans that fucker of a director who lured you all into a death trap.

You closed your eyes, not expecting to see another day.

When you woke up, you saw the daylight creeping inside the gaps of the woven palm leaves and blinked in confusion. When you turned your head, you realized you were resting on a soft bedding, of dried leaves and colorful fabrics, and was staring at the knitted canopy. Weren’t you tied up to a support pole earlier, with your back gaping and bleeding?

A moan tumbled out from your lips. From the corner of your eyes, you saw movement and you jerked when a voice bellowed not too far away from you. As if they were raising an alarm—or calling for someone’s attention. Fear struck your heart—

And you so wanted to move. Your body was too stiff and your muscles soft from exhaustion and strains from your injuries. Absently, your skin itched and you somehow found enough strength to glance down your body.

You swallowed thickly at your current state.

Where had your clothes gone? Why were you half naked and wearing patterned animal skins? Why had they tended to you at all?

On your skin, leaves and odd colored globs were plastered over your injuries. Why had they spared you?

“R’oa,” a deep voice entered your ears and drenched your spine with a shiver.

Hello, you absently translated from knowing some of the local common tongue. You slowly rolled your head over and blinked at the sight of the kneeling figure. Your heart jumped to your throat when it dawned on you on who he may be.

His face and body were marked with striking decorations of rosettes and bright painted patterns you recognized as his people’s custom. He wore ornate accessories, including a heavy ring through his flared nostrils, to signify his rank in the tribe. Towering over you with ease, he was large and his presence nothing but raw power and his naked torso coiled with rippling muscles.

But, none of his features stood out as much as his scars littering his skin—and one of which had left a long, jagged pit down his cheek and left his eye an striking grey hue. He was a well fought warrior, perhaps the best in his tribe.

Without a doubt, you were in the presence of one true predator.

Shakily, you nodded with a quiet return of his foreign language.

He seemed pleased by how submissive you were being.

There were no other option left but to humor the person who could easily shallow you whole in several gulps.

“*Canu zuhs nu i'ars nuus nil zuazsu.” He grasped on your forearm, the pads on his palm were coarse and hard on your skin, and tugged you off your bed.

Come...meet…people? You groggily tried to translate, as you went along with the whiskeredfolk’s whim. A yelp darted from your lips, when he swung you into the crook of his arm and pain rung around your eyes from the sudden movement and your injuries feeling like they were being split open once more.

“Tuil i'asu uhrthisus, ilai rsizuhs ail!” Another voice snarled out, and you flinched as you distantly heard a slap on the whiskeredfolk's person. You glanced upward and saw him wearing a crossed brow.

Injured…that was all you understood from their exchange.

With his ears folded back to his skull, the scarred male grumbled something back to the owner of the other voice. He quietened at the growling reply, and you still trembled from the way his voice seemed to burrow deep inside your skin. You could feel his foreign words through his chest, vibrating into your aching ribs.

The other voice sounded feminine, possibly aged, and you wondered if they were the one who had nursed you back to health. You had no energy to crane your head over the scarred one’s bicep to see, catching a brief glimpse of a strange hood over their head.

The scarred one took you outside, pushing the flap aside, and you winced at how bright the dabbled sunlight was. When your eyes readjusted, you blinked and regretted every decision you’d ever made in your life. Your stomach curdled at the sight and your nose stung.

Within the ashy pit, still smoking from the previous night’s bonfire, black skeletal remains hung on their respective stakes. There was little meat left on their bones and their skulls were missing. You did not wish to dwell on why and ripped away your tearful eyes from your colleagues’ bodies.

Why were you spared?

Oh, gods, the stench in the air was foul, smelling like burnt meat and melted plastic. Smothering your hands over your lower face, you gagged the exact moment the scarred male barked out. You grimaced, trying to make sense of the words he shouted out.

“Mil zuazsu, I si'ass izar suu!”

People, call.

You were so distracted by the gruesome sight that you hadn’t realized how quiet the settlement was. Initially, the only whiskeredfolks you could see were several teenage males, looking at you with curiosity in their eyes.

When you blinked, more whiskeredfolks emerged from their homes at the scarred one’s call. They quickly surrounded you, keeping a respectable distance, their eyes burning holes into your bare skin. Some had hunger in their gazes, others quiet rage, and a few were wide-eyed and curious.

You gazed across your whiskered audience, noting their muscular body shapes, and realized that most were males. You could count the females with both hands, and a sense of dread sank into your stomach. Instinctively, you knew why you were spared, but your mind screamed in denial.

The scarred one thumped his feet and swished his tail, “Tu Ce’ne phsi'asus ir i'asus i'a sarph si'ars!” His tone was exuberant, eager, and his tribe erupted in an excited murmur.

You furrowed your brows, but you could only understand Ce’ne, which meant both Mother and Father. But, who was Ce’ne?

He jostled you to your feet and kept a grip on you when you wobbled. The scarred one leaned over you, his jagged teeth beaming in the sunlight. “Na nasu zuhss ais zuazsu rius suhsssurr,”

You jumped as the entire tribe erupted in a loud roar of joy. Their eyes glittered with delight and you could feel your fear intensifying. You felt colder than you were back in the throes of blood loss from the night before. Your heart shuddered at the way they looked at you.

“sa szuhrssu zuhsais i'a Ce’ne sa phsi'ars ir sir!” the scarred one finished and clapped both of his large claws on your shoulders. He herded you closer to the mass, as if to showcase every inch of you.

Grant us cubs. That was all you could make out from what the scarred male said. Your eyes widened at the realization and a strangled whimper rose from your parched throat.

There was no escaping this, was there?

You couldn't move as the weight of the leader bore down on your shoulders, his talons cutting into your skin. Tears welled up in your eyes as a hooded female appeared with a strangely shaped bowl in her hands. You were shaking like a leaf, when she dipped her fingers into the dark, coagulated liquid within.

You sobbed the moment she smeared the tribe’s pattern onto your exposed chest, as if marking you as their property.

The Ce’ne. You were the Ce’ne.

—end

fictional translation: Canu zuhs nu i'ars nuus nil zuazsu. —Come with me and meet my people.

Tuil i'asu uhrthisus, ilai rsizuhs ail! —They are injured, you stupid boy!

Mil zuazsu, I si'ass izar suu! —My people, I call upon thee!

Tu Ce’ne phsi'asus ir i'asus i'a sarph si'ars! —The Mother/Father graced us after a long last! Na nasu zuhss ais zuazsu rius suhsssurr, sa szuhrssu zuhsais i'a Ce’ne sa phsi'ars ir sir! —No more will our people suffer childless, to dwindle without a mother/father to grant us cubs!

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child-of-the-sky-people · 11 months

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hi Ali! im looking for a new narrative podcast to get into, what's your current rec list? :)

Oh god it’s so long 😂

Horror:

Human Error - this one is mine so of course I’m recommending it 😂 it’s about a found family of survivors going on a road trip during a zombie apocalypse 12 years after the world ended!

We’re Alive - also zombie horror and was the show that got me into audio dramas! It’s very long and looks overwhelming but I promise it’s good!

Darkest Night - anthology horror where you find out how people died but each case is actually related and there is a bigger mystery and this show lives in my head rent free lol

The Waystation - found footage style show about a group of people on a space station that all died (the story is trying to piece together what happened). It’s along the same lines as The White Vault

DERELICT - a research group are studying a door at the bottom of the ocean, and then shit goes sideways. I binged this series super fact and I need season 2 immediately lol

The Eleventh Hour episode called The City of Statues - I made this! It’s about a group of survivors trying to make it out of a city filled with statues trying to hunt them down 👀

Someone Dies in this Elevator - mix of horror and thriller I think. It’s an anthology series where every episode someone dies in an elevator 👀 I composed for a few episodes and it’s v fun 🤩

Thriller

The Liberty Podcast - made by the same folks behind The White Vault and VAST Horizon. It’s an anthology series of stories taking place within and surrounding a tower where a civilization lives. Some episodes might lean more towards horror but I personally consider it more thriller

The Walk - made by the same folks behind zombies run! In this show you the listener are the main character, an individual making their way across Scotland with a package they were mistakenly delivered. I love this show so much omg

Primordial Deep - scientists are finding extinct dinosaurs alive and well under the ocean and they’re trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. I fucking love this show omg

Spines - woman wakes up in the middle of a cult ritual with no memories and is trying to figure out who she is and where she came from. Also there are powers!

Mirrors - same person behind Spines! Three women from three different centuries (who are all related to each other) discover they can communicate with each other through ghost like figures. It has a bigger mystery and the ending made me cry it was so good

InCo - a woman finds a prince from a world that shouldn’t exist floating in space. This show is a delight and is a micro series and I love the humor within it so much omg

Where the Stars Fell - the Antichrist is roommates with their guardian angel and they’re trying to stop the rapture

DUST - anthology series about science fiction and technology! Season 3 is definitely my favorite as it is one story but the entire show as a whole is very good

Feel Good/Light Hearted Shows

Unseen - this show lives in my head rent free and I ache for it to be real. It’s about magic existing in the real world and is an anthology! It’s made by the same folks behind Wolf 359

Joy to the World - holiday series I helped produce! It’s about an astronaut named Joy talking with different people on Earth about the holidays! It’s an anthology and v warm and I highly recommend it as a holiday series

Sidequesting - a person who is totally not the hero is avoiding the main plot and going on a bunch of side quests! It’s charming and lovely and made by the wonderful Tal

Back Again, Back Again - a woman is retelling her stories of his magical world she was transported into and about the prophecy she became involved in

If none of these are your jam lmk and I can suggest some more! If you tell me what you like to listen to/what kinds of stories you enjoy I can make a more personalized list

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homosexuhauls · 1 year

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By Vidya Krishnan

GOA, India — My niece was just 4 years old when she turned to my sister-in-law in a packed movie theater in Mumbai and asked about gang rape for the first time.

We were watching the latest Bollywood blockbuster about vigilante justice, nationalistic fervor and, of course, gang rape. Four male characters seized the hero’s sister and dragged her away. “Where are they taking Didi?” my niece asked, using the Hindi word for “elder sister.” It was dark, but I could still make out her tiny forehead, furrowed with concern.

Didi’s gang rape took place offscreen, but it didn’t need to be shown. As instinctively as a newborn fawn senses the mortal danger posed by a fox, little girls in India sense what men are capable of.

You may wonder, “Why take a 4-year-old to such a movie?” But there is no escaping India’s rape culture; sexual terrorism is treated as the norm. Society and government institutions often excuse and protect men from the consequences of their sexual violence. Women are blamed for being assaulted and are expected to sacrifice freedom and opportunity in exchange for personal safety. This culture contaminates public life — in movies and television; in bedrooms, where female sexual consent is unknown; in the locker room talk from which young boys learn the language of rape. India’s favorite profanities are about having sex with women without their consent.

It is the specific horror of gang rape that weighs most heavily on Indian women that I know. You may have heard of the many gruesome cases of women being gang-raped, disemboweled and left for dead. When an incident rises to national attention, the kettle of outrage boils over, and women sometimes stage protests, but it passes quickly. All Indian women are victims, each one traumatized, angry, betrayed, exhausted. Many of us think about gang rape more than we care to admit.

In 2011 a woman was raped every 20 minutes in India, according to government data. The pace quickened to about every 16 minutes by 2021, when more than 31,000 rapes were reported, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. In 2021, 2,200 gang rapes were reported to authorities.

But those grotesque numbers tell only part of the story: 77 percent of Indian women who have experienced physical or sexual violence never tell anyone, according to one study. Prosecutions are rare.

Indian men may face persecution because they are Muslims, Dalits (untouchables) or ethnic minorities or for daring to challenge the corrupt powers that be. Indian women suffer because they are women. Soldiers need to believe that war won’t kill them, that only bad luck will; Indian women need to believe the same about rape, to trust that we will come back to the barracks safe each night, to be able to function at all.

Reports of violence against women in India have risen steadily over the decades, with some researchers citing a growing willingness by victims to come forward. Each rape desensitizes and prepares society to accept the next one, the evil becoming banal.

Gang rape is used as a weapon, particularly against lower castes and Muslims. The first instance that women my age remember was in 1980, when Phoolan Devi, a lower-caste teenager who had fallen in with a criminal gang, said she was abducted and repeatedly raped by a group of upper-caste attackers. She later came back with members of her gang and they killed 22 mostly upper-caste men. It was a rare instance of a brutalized woman extracting revenge. Her rape might never have made headlines without that bloody retribution.

Ms. Devi threw a spotlight on caste apartheid. The suffering of Bilkis Bano — the defining gang rape survivor of my generation — highlighted the boiling hatred that Indian institutions under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, have for Muslim women.

In 2002 brutal violence between Hindus and Muslims swept through Gujarat State. Ms. Bano, then 19 and pregnant, was gang raped by an angry Hindu mob, which also killed 14 of her relatives, including her 3-year-old daughter. Critics accuse Mr. Modi — Gujarat’s top official at the time — of turning a blind eye to the riots. He has not lost an election since.

Ms. Bano’s life took a different trajectory. She repeatedly moved houses after the assault, for her family’s safety. Last August, 11 men who were sentenced to life in prison for raping her were released — on the recommendation of a review committee stacked with members of Mr. Modi’s ruling party. After they were freed, they were greeted with flower garlands by Hindu right-wingers.

The timing was suspicious: Gujarat was to hold important elections a few months later, and Mr. Modi’s party needed votes. A member of his party explained that the accused, as upper-caste Brahmins, had “good” values and did not belong in prison. Men know these rules. They wrote the rule book. What’s most terrifying is that releasing rapists could very well be a vote-getter.

After Ms. Bano, there was the young physiotherapy student who in 2012 was beaten and raped on a moving bus and penetrated with a metal rod that perforated her colon before her naked body was dumped on a busy road in New Delhi. She died of her injuries. Women protested for days, and even men took part, facing water cannons and tear gas. New anti-rape laws were framed. This time was different, we naïvely believed.

It wasn’t. In 2018 an 8-year-old Muslim girl was drugged and gang raped in a Hindu temple for days and then murdered. In 2020 a 19-year-old Dalit girl was gang-raped and later died of her injuries, her spinal cord broken.

The fear, particularly of gang rape, never fully leaves us. We go out in groups, cover ourselves, carry pepper spray and GPS tracking devices, avoid public spaces after sunset and remind ourselves to yell “fire,” not “help” if attacked. But we know that no amount of precaution will guarantee our safety.

I don’t understand gang rape. Is it some medieval desire to dominate and humiliate? Do these men, with little power over others, feeling inadequate and ordinary, need a rush of power for a few minutes?

What I do know is that other men share the blame, the countless brothers, fathers, sons, friends, neighbors and colleagues who have collectively created and sustain a system that exploits women. If women are afraid, it is because of these men. It is a protection racket of epic proportions.

I’m not asking merely for equality. I want retribution. Recompense. I want young girls to be taught about Ms. Bano and Ms. Devi. I want monuments built for them. But men just want us to forget. The release of Ms. Bano’s rapists was about male refusal to commemorate our trauma.

So we build monuments with words and our memories. We talk to one another about gang rape, keeping it at the center of our lives. We try to explain to our youngest, to start protecting them.

This is how the history of the defeated is recorded. That’s what it all boils down to: a fight between forgetting and remembering.

#rape culture #radical feminism #indian feminism #vidya krishnan #misogyny

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cookietrains · 3 months

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Some more Killer Klowns headcanons

These goofy silly guys have me in a choke hold send help Might Delete Later~

Tw: Discussion of sickness (serious sickness - rabies), Klown weaponry / death, and NSFW at the very end.

- Klowns CAN get sick. Regular flu and cold symptoms can easily be taken care of (like the day they get sick), but they have a version of Rabies, and it's spread just like how human rabies is spread (being bitten by an infected animal). It's incurable, and it makes them Supreme Frantic ™️. They sweat a lot, getting extremely warm within a few minutes of getting bitten. They vomit a lot, and their eyes water really badly/ they'll have a deep purple hue to their eyes (basically bleeding from the eyes). The final form of this is cannibalism, where they go completely nuts and try to bite every living thing that comes near them (including other Klowns) with the intention to kill them and eat them. This is not a common occurrence, and it's always noticed far before it gets too wild. But just like with humans, it's terrifying for Klowns, too. This is the ONE sickness that brings Klown doctors to tears. The Klown that gets infected, depending on when they're caught, is either mercy killed (bc this illness is also super painful for the subject) or they're studied. Klowns are desperate for a cure for this, even if it's not too common.

- Klowns are super buoyant in water. Water rolls right off of them, so it's near impossible for them to drown. If they're put in water, their skin releases an oily substance that keeps water away from them. They still can't swim for shit. They just flail and float. They love the beach, though, because they take little dust baths like chinchillas. If, for some reason, they're put in water and they get wet (oil deficiency), water can be super harmful to their skin.

- Some Klowns, for research purposes (Rudy would probably do something like this), will sneak over to Earth during the fall and pretend to be a scare clown at a haunted house. They go in small groups to take notes on what scares humans and how they react to being scared. They learned very quickly: Fall is for scares, Winter is for jollier clowns dressed in reds and white, and any other time, regular circus clowns are more common. They could go during any time to research humans, but they find it easier to fit in when everything is centered around scary. It's more of a safe than sorry thing.

- Klowns make their own weapons and can make weapons out of. Literally anything. There are specific Klowns who specialize in rerouting weaponry and teaching others how to use it. One way to know it's a Klown weapon is how colorful it is ☺️ they also really like being creative with their weapons. *Klowns using a weapon against another Klown is a death sentence, UNLESS it can be proven it was an accident* if it was an accident, however, said Klown gets banned from using weaponry permanently. They also can't go out in the field if they choose to go on another invasion. They'll be in charge of looking after the popkorn on the ship, probably forced to stay close to either another Klown or the big boss.

- Klowns do have holidays. They have a holiday that celebrates when the invaders come back to their planet (like a one day event, but it celebrates the invaders). They have one kind of like Halloween, except it's a half year long celebration. They have one that is about the older Klowns, and they have one celebrating new/ younger Klowns. These are all separate days (sometimes months long), and sometimes their holidays are random. Just a huge party on their planet for the most mundane things.

- Klowns have movies and televisions. They're more advanced than human tvs, being incredibly thin, lightweight, and can adjust to light. Their version of entertainment mostly comes from Klown drama, Klown circus acts, and Klown made horror films.

- All Klowns like having their nails painted. Whether they're male or female, it's a form of bonding to them. Their nails are so tiny, though, so ya gotta be careful. They take dust baths, though, so a full-on spa day might not be ideal. I like to think Klowns take dust baths to clean them from other planet parasites and to help them not get sunburned during the day.

‼️ Another NSFW Section ;; 18+ ONLY‼️

- Klowns hide their penises in a pouch under their lower belly area when not in use, so it looks like they don't have genitals on a regular basis. They can inflate and deflate like the female Klown breasts to impress mates. When they're erect, Klown penises look thicker than human penises, and a tad bit bigger than human penises (because Klowns compared to humans are bigger anyways, being 7+ ft tall). Their penis are covered in light (non-harmful) barbs to help them stimulate their mates, helping in reproduction. Males can control their erections and the females can control when their breasts inflate.

- Male Klown cum sticks inside the female. It still has a watery slime texture, but the way the females are built, it hardens and sticks when ejected. Also helping in reproduction. Human mates are a bit harder for this to happen, and it's the reason it's a bit harder for them to mate. If a Klown stays inside for a bit afterwards, the cum will eventually harden after a few minutes, whereas female Klowns - it's immediate. If a male Klowns cum is exposed to air, it keeps the watery appearance and they cum a good amount each time. It looks and feels just like watery slime.

- Until Klowns have mates, they don't really engage in sexual activities (with other Klowns or themselves).

- Because of the last point, when Klowns do mate, they drool uncontrollably. Part of the reason is to use their saliva as a lubricant, and the other reason is because they can't handle their pleasure levels. Expect lots of drooling, guttural throat noises (growling, hissing, grunting, exct.), and aggressive behavior. They can't help it. They're gonna scratch and bite, and they're gonna be a fountain of saliva. Klowns in general are pretty drooly, but during..the ✨️ act ✨️ it's excessive.

- If a Klown male successfully reproduces with a human female and they make a child, Klown males and females are equally involved in their mate and child's life. Klowns insist their pregnant mate stay in the home the majority of the pregnancy, and they bring things to them. Things that would make them more comfortable (like soft blankets and fun games or puzzles to keep them busy) and TONS of food. Female Klowns might bring their pregnant lover toys for the baby and flowers or balloons for their mate.

- It's possible for Klowns to change their sex. They can easily go from male to female and vice versa. Some Klowns even opted to have both genitals (not as common, but it's possible)

#kkfos #killer klowns #killer klowns from outer space #killer klowns headcanons #headcanons #off the cuff headcanons #i thought of these on the spot #all in good fun ✨️

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athina-blaine · 10 months

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Bloodweave Fic Recs (12/8/2023)

I've been devouring fic lately and I figured I may as well do something productive with it.

Format from @inevitably-ineffable-husbands fic rec lists, check out some of their Good Omens fic recs if you're a fan ♥️

Four Eyes by trashmaven (G, 1.2k w || Light Angst, Pre-Relationship, Fluff) Gale has a secret.

Of Jackpots and Sticky Fingers by Asidian (G, 2k+ w || Humor, Banter, Gambling) "The nerve," huffs Gale. "Imagine setting a jackpot and then punishing anyone who won it fair and square!" Astarion's eyes flicker from the stalking lizard to Gale, and then back again. It's entirely too innocent of a look.

Hoarding Tendencies by Asidian (G, 4k+ w || Hoarding, Trust Issues Past Deprivation, Past Abuse, Misunderstandings, Starvation, Gift Giving) "My word," says Gale, caught between taken aback and genuinely impressed. "Where does this all fit in your pack?"

Letters From Gale by Modmother (G, 5k+ w WIP || Epistolary) A series of letters from Gale Dekarios to Astarion spanning the year after the defeat of the absolute.

Out of Breath, Out of Time by SadinaSaphrite (T, 1k+ w || Asphyxiation, Strangulation, Hurt/Comfort) Gale is caught in a meazel's garrote and needs some rescuing.

Might Just Make It by lavvyan (T, 2k+ w || Alternate Universe, Canon Divergence, POV Outsider) The group (sans Tav) meet Astarion by the beach. They don't meet Gale. If you ask Astarion, that just means they have to look harder.

in your arms I lie till dawn by shroomonabroom (T, 3k+ w || Hurt/ Comfort, Fluff, Sleep Deprivation) Gale hasn’t slept in several days; Astarion makes things better via food and almost cuddles.

A Practical Guide To Camping by Lunarwench (T 4k+ w || Pre-Relationship, Friendship) How the hell do these idiots have so much stuff when they were all abducted by a flying squid; A Character Study

Come To Mind by ZiGraves (T, 7k+ w || Memory Loss) Something has happened to Gale. Who was Gale, anyway? Well, Gale was himself, obviously, but what did that entail?

In the Dark by LeaXIII (T, 7k+ w || Whump, Light Angst, Tight Spaces, Blood and Injury, Impalement, Blood Drinking, Sexual Tension) Gale and Astarion are caught in a cave-in and no one has a good time. Takes place somewhere in Act 1.

Weakness Coming On by bloodweaving (shipwreckblue) (M, 5k+ w || Enemies to Lovers, Humor, Autistic Gale, Banter, Getting Together) Astarion’s expression settled into an alarming rictus of forced nonchalance. “Oh, please, darling, did you think I was serious?"

The things lost along the way (The things gained at the end) by ThatKorka (M, 14k+ w || Body Horror, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, UST) I can smell what’s under those bandages, Wizard, You’re all rot and ruin!

Deliverance by porcelain (E, 2k+ w WIP || Incubus Astarion, Angst/Hurt, Religious Guilt, Minor Character Death, Alternate Universe, Trauma/PTSD, Priest Gale) Third row, on the right, between a now awake grandfather and a nodding teary-eyed mother and bored children and still untouched scriptures. The red of the man’s irises narrow, and he flashes a smile at him, wicked in a flash of dagger-like teeth. He doesn’t look away, even when Gale does.

Rest, Indulge by ZiGraves (E, 6k+ w || Consensual Somnophilia, Blood Drinking) The slow, drowsy way that Gale’s eyelids flutter before they open fully is its own particular pleasure, and he leans into Astarion’s hand while still half-dozing enough to luxuriate without thinking. Consciousness comes back in a slow rolling wave, free of the stresses of their old camp life that might necessitate instant wakefulness. Astarion watches each moment as it builds, crests, breaks, until his wizard is awake and meeting his eyes with warm curiosity.

Friday Nights by SadinaSaphrite (E, 23k+ w || Alternate Universe, College/University, Modern with Magic, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Blood and Injury, Violence, Fluff, Medium Burn) Professor Gale Dakarios loses his research, his magic, and his lover Mystra all at once and only has himself to blame. When he goes to drown his sorrows, he meets a pale stranger with mysteries of his own.

The stars began to burn by peregrinefeathers (E, 33k+ w WIP || Alternate Universe, Canon Divergence, Slow Burn, Past Sexual Abuse, Psychic Bond, Emotional Manipulation, Blood Drinking) After two centuries of torment, Astarion has given up hope of escaping Cazador's clutches, until a chance encounter with a stolen book introduces him to the disembodied voice of a wizard named Gale of Waterdeep. With the fate of Baldur's Gate in the balance, they must confront their demons and win their freedom - together.

Let me know if you'd like a specific rec or want to share some recs of your own!

#bg3 #bloodweave #still have like 40 fics in my to reads so this isnt the last youll see of me #yall are doing amazing sweeties

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mariacallous · 11 months

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In the first half century of his career, Robert Jay Lifton published five books based on long-term studies of seemingly vastly different topics. For his first book, “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,” Lifton interviewed former inmates of Chinese reëducation camps. Trained as both a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst, Lifton used the interviews to understand the psychological—rather than the political or ideological—structure of totalitarianism. His next topic was Hiroshima; his 1968 book “Death in Life,” based on extended associative interviews with survivors of the atomic bomb, earned Lifton the National Book Award. He then turned to the psychology of Vietnam War veterans and, soon after, Nazis. In both of the resulting books—“Home from the War” and “The Nazi Doctors”—Lifton strove to understand the capacity of ordinary people to commit atrocities. In his final interview-based book, “Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism,” which was published in 1999, Lifton examined the psychology and ideology of a cult.

Lifton is fascinated by the range and plasticity of the human mind, its ability to contort to the demands of totalitarian control, to find justification for the unimaginable—the Holocaust, war crimes, the atomic bomb—and yet recover, and reconjure hope. In a century when humanity discovered its capacity for mass destruction, Lifton studied the psychology of both the victims and the perpetrators of horror. “We are all survivors of Hiroshima, and, in our imaginations, of future nuclear holocaust,” he wrote at the end of “Death in Life.” How do we live with such knowledge? When does it lead to more atrocities and when does it result in what Lifton called, in a later book, “species-wide agreement”?

Lifton’s big books, though based on rigorous research, were written for popular audiences. He writes, essentially, by lecturing into a Dictaphone, giving even his most ambitious works a distinctive spoken quality. In between his five large studies, Lifton published academic books, papers and essays, and two books of cartoons, “Birds” and “PsychoBirds.” (Every cartoon features two bird heads with dialogue bubbles, such as, “ ‘All of a sudden I had this wonderful feeling: I am me!’ ” “You were wrong.”) Lifton’s impact on the study and treatment of trauma is unparalleled. In a 2020 tribute to Lifton in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, his former colleague Charles Strozier wrote that a chapter in “Death in Life” on the psychology of survivors “has never been surpassed, only repeated many times and frequently diluted in its power. All those working with survivors of trauma, personal or sociohistorical, must immerse themselves in his work.”

Lifton was also a prolific political activist. He opposed the war in Vietnam and spent years working in the anti-nuclear movement. In the past twenty-five years, Lifton wrote a memoir—“Witness to an Extreme Century”—and several books that synthesize his ideas. His most recent book, “Surviving Our Catastrophes,” combines reminiscences with the argument that survivors—whether of wars, nuclear explosions, the ongoing climate emergency, COVID, or other catastrophic events—can lead others on a path to reinvention. If human life is unsustainable as we have become accustomed to living it, it is likely up to survivors—people who have stared into the abyss of catastrophe—to imagine and enact new ways of living.

Lifton grew up in Brooklyn and spent most of his adult life between New York City and Massachusetts. He and his wife, Betty Jean Kirschner, an author of children’s books and an advocate for open adoption, had a house in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, that hosted annual meetings of the Wellfleet Group, which brought together psychoanalysts and other intellectuals to exchange ideas. Kirschner died in 2010. A couple of years later, at a dinner party, Lifton met the political theorist Nancy Rosenblum, who became a Wellfleet Group participant and his partner. In March, 2020, Lifton and Rosenblum left his apartment on the Upper West Side for her house in Truro, Massachusetts, near the very tip of Cape Cod, where Lifton, who is ninety-seven, continues to work every day. In September, days after “Surviving Our Catastrophes” was published, I visited him there. The transcript of our conversations has been edited for length and clarity.

I would like to go through some terms that seem key to your work. I thought I’d start with “totalism.”

O.K. Totalism is an all-or-none commitment to an ideology. It involves an impulse toward action. And it’s a closed state, because a totalist sees the world through his or her ideology. A totalist seeks to own reality.

And when you say “totalist,” do you mean a leader or aspiring leader, or anyone else committed to the ideology?

Can be either. It can be a guru of a cult, or a cult-like arrangement. The Trumpist movement, for instance, is cult-like in many ways. And it is overt in its efforts to own reality, overt in its solipsism.

How is it cult-like?

He forms a certain kind of relationship with followers. Especially his base, as they call it, his most fervent followers, who, in a way, experience high states at his rallies and in relation to what he says or does.

Your definition of totalism seems very similar to Hannah Arendt’s definition of totalitarian ideology. Is the difference that it’s applicable not just to states but also to smaller groups?

It’s like a psychological version of totalitarianism, yes, applicable to various groups. As we see now, there’s a kind of hunger for totalism. It stems mainly from dislocation. There’s something in us as human beings which seeks fixity and definiteness and absoluteness. We’re vulnerable to totalism. But it’s most pronounced during times of stress and dislocation. Certainly Trump and his allies are calling for a totalism. Trump himself doesn’t have the capacity to sustain an actual continuous ideology. But by simply declaring his falsehoods to be true and embracing that version of totalism, he can mesmerize his followers and they can depend upon him for every truth in the world.

You have another great term: “thought-terminating cliché.”

Thought-terminating cliché is being stuck in the language of totalism. So that any idea that one has that is separate from totalism is wrong and has to be terminated.

What would be an example from Trumpism?

The Big Lie. Trump’s promulgation of the Big Lie has surprised everyone with the extent to which it can be accepted and believed if constantly reiterated.

Did it surprise you?

It did. Like others, I was fooled in the sense of expecting him to be so absurd that, for instance, that he wouldn’t be nominated for the Presidency in the first place.

Next on my list is “atrocity-producing situation.”

That’s very important to me. When I looked at the Vietnam War, especially antiwar veterans, I felt they had been placed in an atrocity-producing situation. What I meant by that was a combination of military policies and individual psychology. There was a kind of angry grief. Really all of the My Lai massacre could be seen as a combination of military policy and angry grief. The men had just lost their beloved older sergeant, George Cox, who had been a kind of father figure. He had stepped on a booby trap. The company commander had a ceremony. He said, “There are no innocent civilians in this area.” He gave them carte blanche to kill everyone. The eulogy for Sergeant Cox combined with military policy to unleash the slaughter of My Lai, in which almost five hundred people were killed in one morning.

You’ve written that people who commit atrocities in an atrocity-producing situation would never do it under different circumstances.

People go into an atrocity-producing situation no more violent, or no more moral or immoral, than you or me. Ordinary people commit atrocities.

That brings us to “malignant normality.”

It describes a situation that is harmful and destructive but becomes routinized, becomes the norm, becomes accepted behavior. I came to that by looking at malignant nuclear normality. After the Second World War, the assumption was that we might have to use the weapon again. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a group of faculty members wrote a book called “Living with Nuclear Weapons.” There was a book by Joseph Nye called “Nuclear Ethics.” His “nuclear ethics” included using the weapon. Later there was Star Wars, the anti-missile missiles which really encouraged first-strike use. These were examples of malignant nuclear normality. Other examples were the scenarios by people like [the physicists] Edward Teller and Herman Kahn in which we could use the weapons and recover readily from nuclear war. We could win nuclear wars.

And now, according to the Doomsday Clock, we’re closer to possible nuclear disaster than ever before. Yet there doesn’t seem to be the same sense of pervasive dread that there was in the seventies and eighties.

I think in our minds apocalyptic events merge. I see parallels between nuclear and climate threats. Charles Strozier and I did a study of nuclear fear. People spoke of nuclear fear and climate fear in the same sentence. It’s as if the mind has a certain area for apocalyptic events. I speak of “climate swerve,” of growing awareness of climate danger. And nuclear awareness was diminishing. But that doesn’t mean that nuclear fear was gone. It was still there in the Zeitgeist and it’s still very much with us, the combination of nuclear and climate change, and now COVID, of course.

How about “psychic numbing”?

Psychic numbing is a diminished capacity or inclination to feel. One point about psychic numbing, which could otherwise resemble other defense mechanisms, like de-realization or repression: it only is concerned with feeling and nonfeeling. Of course, psychic numbing can also be protective. People in Hiroshima had to numb themselves. People in Auschwitz had to numb themselves quite severely in order to get through that experience. People would say, “I was a different person in Auschwitz.” They would say, “I simply stopped feeling.” Much of life involves keeping the balance between numbing and feeling, given the catastrophes that confront us.

A related concept that you use, which comes from Martin Buber, is “imagining the real.”

It’s attributed to Martin Buber, but as far as I can tell, nobody knows exactly where he used it. It really means the difficulty in taking in what is actual. Imagining the real becomes necessary for imagining our catastrophes and confronting them and for that turn by which the helpless victim becomes the active survivor who promotes renewal and resilience.

How does that relate to another one of your concepts, nuclearism?

Nuclearism is the embrace of nuclear weapons to solve various human problems and the commitment to their use. I speak of a strange early expression of nuclearism between Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr, who was a great mentor of Oppenheimer. Bohr came to Los Alamos. And they would have abstract conversations. They had this idea that nuclear weapons could be both a source of destruction and havoc and a source of good because their use would prevent any wars in the future. And that view has never left us. Oppenheimer never quite renounced it, though, at other times, he said he had blood on his hands—in his famous meeting with Truman.

Have you seen the movie “Oppenheimer”?

Yes. I thought it was a well-made film by a gifted filmmaker. But it missed this issue of nuclearism. It missed the Bohr-Oppenheimer interaction. And worst of all, it said nothing about what happened in Hiroshima. It had just a fleeting image of his thinking about Hiroshima. My view is that his success in making the weapon was the source of his personal catastrophe. He was deeply ambivalent about his legacy. I’m very sensitive to that because that was how I got to my preoccupation with Oppenheimer: through having studied Hiroshima, having lived there for six months, and then asking myself, What happened on the other side of the bomb—the people who made it, the people who used it? They underwent a kind of numbing. It’s also true that Oppenheimer, in relationship to the larger hydrogen bombs, became the most vociferous critic of nuclearism. That’s part of his story. The moral of Oppenheimer’s story is that we need abolition. That’s the only human solution.

By abolition, you mean destruction of all existing weapons?

Yes, and not building any new ones.

Have you been following the war in Ukraine? Do you see Putin as engaging in nuclearism?

I do. He has a constant threat of using nuclear weapons. Some feel that his very threat is all that he can do. But we can’t always be certain. I think he is aware of the danger of nuclear weapons to the human race. He has shown that awareness, and it has been expressed at times by his spokesman. But we can’t ever fully know. His emotions are so otherwise extreme.

There’s a messianic ideology in Russia. And the line used on Russian television is, “If we blow up the world, at least we will go straight to Heaven. And they will just croak.”

There’s always been that idea with nuclearism. One somehow feels that one’s own group will survive and others will die. It’s an illusion, of course, but it’s one of the many that we call forth in relation to nuclear danger.

Are you in touch with any of your former Russian counterparts in the anti-nuclear movement?

I’ve never entirely left the anti-nuclear movements. I’ve been particularly active in Physicians for Social Responsibility. We had meetings—or bombings, as we used to call it—in different cities in the country, describing what would happen if a nuclear war occurred. We had a very simple message: we’re physicians and we’d like to be able to patch you up after this war, but it won’t really be possible because all medical facilities will be destroyed, and probably you’ll be dead, and we’ll be dead. We did the same internationally with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize. There’s a part of the movement that’s not appreciated sufficiently. [Yevgeny] Chazov, who was the main Soviet representative, was a friend of Gorbachev’s, and he was feeding Gorbachev this view of common security. And Gorbachev quickly took on the view of nuclear weapons that we had. There used to be a toast: either an American or a Soviet would get up and say, “I toast you and your leaders and your people. And your survival, because if you survive, we survive. And if you die, we die.”

Let’s talk about proteanism.

Proteanism is, of course, named after the notorious shape-shifter Proteus. It suggests a self that is in motion, that is multiple rather than made up of fixed ideas, and changeable and can be transformed. There is an ongoing struggle between proteanism and fixity. Proteanism is no guarantee of achievement or of ridding ourselves of danger. But proteanism has more possibility of taking us toward a species mentality. A species mentality means that we are concerned with the fate of the human species. Whenever we take action for opposing climate change, or COVID, or even the threat to our democratic procedure, we’re expressing ourselves on behalf of the human species. And that species-self and species commitment is crucial to our emergence from these dilemmas.

Next term: “witnessing professional.”

I went to Hiroshima because I was already anti-nuclear. When I got there, I discovered that, seventeen years after the bomb was dropped, there had been no over-all, inclusive study of what happened to that city and to groups of people in it. I wanted to conduct a scientific study, having a protocol and asking everyone similar questions—although I altered my method by encouraging them to associate. But I also realized that I wanted to bear witness to what happened to that city. I wanted to tell the world. I wanted to give a retelling, from my standpoint, as a psychological professional, of what happened to that city. That was how I came to see myself as a witnessing professional. It was to be a form of active witness. There were people in Hiroshima who embodied the struggle to bear witness. One of them was a historian who was at the edge of the city who said, “I looked down and saw that Hiroshima had disappeared.” That image of the city disappearing took hold in my head and became central to my life afterward. And the image that kept reverberating in my mind was, one plane, one bomb, one city. I was making clear—at least to myself at first and then, perhaps, to others,—that bearing witness and taking action was something that we needed from professionals and others.

I have two terms left on my list. One is “survivor.”

There is a distinction I make between the helpless victim and the survivor as agent of change. At the end of my Hiroshima book, I had a very long section describing the survivor. Survivors of large catastrophes are quite special. Because they have doubts about the continuation of the human race. Survivors of painful family loss or the loss of people close to them share the need to give meaning to that survival. People can claim to be survivors if they’re not; survivors themselves may sometimes take out their frustration on people immediately around them. There are all kinds of problems about survivors. Still, survivors have a certain knowledge through what they have experienced that no one else has. Survivors have surprised me by saying such things as “Auschwitz was terrible, but I’m glad that I could have such an experience.” I was amazed to hear such things. Of course, they didn’t really mean that they enjoyed it. But they were trying to say that they realized they had some value and some importance through what they had been through. And that’s what I came to think of as survivor power or survivor wisdom.

Do you have views on contemporary American usage of the words “survivor” and “victim”?

We still struggle with those two terms. The Trumpists come to see themselves as victims rather than survivors. They are victims of what they call “the steal.” In seeing themselves as victims, they take on a kind of righteousness. They can even develop a false survivor mission, of sustaining the Big Lie.

The last term I have on my list is “continuity of life.”

When I finished my first study, I wanted a theory for what I had done, so to speak. [The psychoanalyst] Erik Erikson spoke of identity. I could speak of Chinese Communism as turning the identity of the Chinese filial son into the filial Communist. But when it came to Hiroshima, Erikson didn’t have much to say in his work about the issue of death. I realized I had to come to a different idea set, and it was death and the continuity of life. In Hiroshima, I really was confronted with large-scale death—but also the question of the continuity of life, as victims could transform themselves into survivors.

Like some of your other ideas, this makes me think of Arendt’s writing. Something that was important to her was the idea that every birth is a new beginning, a new political possibility. And, relatedly, what stands between us and the triumph of totalitarianism is “the supreme capacity of man” to invent something new.

I think she’s saying there that it’s the human mind that does all this. The human mind is so many-sided and so surprising. And at times contradictory. It can be open to the wildest claims that it itself can create. That has been a staggering recognition. The human self can take us anywhere and everywhere.

Let me ask you one more Arendt question. Is there a parallel between your concept of “malignant normality” and her “banality of evil”?

There is. When Arendt speaks of the “banality of evil,” I agree—in the sense that evil can be a response to an atrocity-producing situation, it can be performed by ordinary people. But I would modify it a little bit and say that after one has been involved in committing evil, one changes. The person is no longer so banal. Nor is the evil, of course.

Your late wife, B.J., was a member of the Wellfleet Group. Your new partner, Nancy Rosenblum, makes appearances in your new book. Can I ask you to talk about combining your romantic, domestic, and intellectual relationships?

In the case of B.J., she was a kind of co-host with me to the meetings for all those fifty years and she had lots of intellectual ideas of her own, as a reformer in adoption and an authority on the psychology of adoption. And in the case of Nancy Rosenblum, as you know, she’s a very accomplished political theorist. She came to speak at Wellfleet. She gave a very humorous talk called “Activist Envy.” She had always been a very progressive theorist and has taken stands but never considered herself an activist, whereas just about everybody at the Wellfleet meeting combined scholarship and activism.

People have been talking more about love in later life. It’s very real, and it’s a different form of love, because, you know, one is quite formed at that stage of life. And perhaps has a better knowledge of who one is. And what a relationship is and what it can be. But there’s still something called love that has an intensity and a special quality that is beyond the everyday, and it actually has been crucial to me and my work in the last decade or so. And actually, I’ve been helpful to Nancy, too, because we have similar interests, although we come to them from different intellectual perspectives. We talk a lot about things. That’s been a really special part of my life for the last decade. On the other hand, she’s also quite aware of my age and situation. The threat of death—or at least the loss of capacity to function well—hovers over me. You asked me whether I have a fear of death. I’m sure I do. I’m not a religious figure who has transcended all this. For me, part of the longevity is a will to live and a desire to live. To continue working and continue what is a happy situation for me.

You’re about twenty years older than Nancy, right?

Twenty-one years older.

So you are at different stages in your lives.

Very much. It means that she does a lot of things, with me and for me, that enable me to function. It has to do with a lot of details and personal help. I sometimes get concerned about that because it becomes very demanding for her. She’s now working on a book on ungoverning. She needs time and space for that work.

What is your work routine? Are you still seeing patients?

I don’t. Very early on, I found that even having one patient, one has to be interested in that patient and available for that patient. It somehow interrupted my sense of being an intense researcher. So I stopped seeing patients quite a long time ago. I get up in the morning and have breakfast. Not necessarily all that early. I do a lot of good sleeping. Check my e-mails after breakfast. And then pretty much go to work at my desk at nine-thirty or ten. And stay there for a couple of hours or more. Have a late lunch. Nap, at some point. A little bit before lunch and then late in the day as well. I can close my eyes for five minutes and feel restored. I learned that trick from my father, from whom I learned many things. I’m likely to go back to my desk after lunch and to work with an assistant. My method is sort of laborious, but it works for me. I dictate the first few drafts. And then look at it on the computer and correct it, and finally turn it into written work.

I can’t drink anymore, unfortunately. I never drank much, but I used to love a Scotch before dinner or sometimes a vodka tonic. Now I drink mostly water or Pellegrino. We will have that kind of drink at maybe six o’clock and maybe listen to some news. These days, we get tired of the news. But a big part of my routine is to find an alternate universe. And that’s sports. I’m a lover of baseball. I’m still an avid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, even though they moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1957. You’d think that my protean self would let them go. Norman Mailer, who also is from Brooklyn, said, “They moved away. I say, ‘Fuck them.’ ” But there’s a deep sense of loyalty in me. I also like to watch football, which is interesting, because I disapprove of much football. It’s so harmful to its participants. So, it’s a clear-cut, conscious contradiction. It’s also a very interesting game, which has almost a military-like arrangement and shows very special skills and sudden intensity.

Is religion important to you?

I don’t have any formal religion. And I really dislike most religious groups. When I tried to arrange a bar mitzvah for my son, all my progressive friends, rabbis or not, somehow insisted you had to join a temple and participate. I didn’t. I couldn’t do any of those things. He never was bar mitzvah. But in any case, I see religion as a great force in human experience. Like many people, I make a distinction between a certain amount of spirituality and formal religion. One rabbi friend once said to me, “You’re more religious than I am.” That had to do with intense commitments to others. I have a certain respect for what religion can do. We once had a distinguished religious figure come to our study to organize a conference on why religion can be so contradictory. It can serve humankind and their spirit and freedom and it can suppress their freedom. Every religion has both of those possibilities. So, when there is an atheist movement, I don’t join it because it seems to be as intensely anti-religious as the religious people are committed to religion. I’ve been friendly with [the theologian] Harvey Cox, who was brought up as a fundamentalist and always tried to be a progressive fundamentalist, which is a hard thing to do. He would promise me every year that the evangelicals are becoming more progressive, but they never have.

Can you tell me about the Wellfleet Group? How did it function?

The Wellfleet Group has been very central to my life. It lasted for fifty years. It began as an arena for disseminating Erik Erikson’s ideas. When the building of my Wellfleet home was completed, in the mid-sixties, it included a little shack. We put two very large oak tables at the center of it. Erik and I had talked about having meetings, and that was immediately a place to do it. So the next year, in ’66, we began the meetings. I was always the organizer, but Erik always had a kind of veto power. You didn’t want anybody who criticized him in any case. And then it became increasingly an expression of my interests. I presented my Hiroshima work there and my work with veterans and all kinds of studies. Over time, the meetings became more activist. For instance, in 1968, right after the terrible uprising [at the Democratic National Convention] that was so suppressed, Richard Goodwin came and described what happened.

Under my control, the meeting increasingly took up issues of war and peace. And nuclear weapons. I never believed that people with active antipathies should get together until they recognize what they have in common. I don’t think that’s necessarily productive or indicative. I think one does better to surround oneself with people of a general similarity in world view who sustain one another in their originality. The Wellfleet meetings became a mixture of the academic and non-academic in the usual sense of that word. But also a sort of soirée, where all kinds of interesting minds could exchange thoughts. We would meet once a year, at first for a week or so and then for a few days, and they were very intense. And then there was a Wellfleet meeting underground, where, when everybody left the meeting, whatever it was—nine or ten at night—they would drink at local motels, where they stayed, and have further thoughts, though I wasn’t privy to that.

How many people participated?

This shack could hold as many as forty people. We ended them after the fiftieth year. We were all getting older, especially me. But then, even after the meetings ended, we had luncheons in New York, which we called Wellfleet in New York, or luncheons in Wellfleet, which we called Wellfleet in Wellfleet. You asked whether I miss them. I do, in a way. But it’s one of what I call renunciations, not because I want to get rid of them but because a moment in life comes when you must get rid of them, just as I had to stop playing tennis eventually. I played tennis from my twenties through my sixties. Certainly, the memories of them are very important to me. I remember moments from different meetings, but also just the meetings themselves, because, perhaps, the communal idea was as important as any.

Do you find it easy to adjust to your physical environment? This was Nancy’s place?

Yes, this is Nancy’s place. Much more equipped for the Cape winters and just a more solid house. For us to do all the things, including medical things she helps me with, this house was much more suitable. Even the walk between the main house and my study [in Wellfleet] required effort. So we’ve been living here now for about four years. And we’ve enjoyed it. Of course, the view helps. I wake up every morning and look out to kind of take stock. What’s happening? Is it sunny or cloudy? What boats are visible? And then we go on with the day.

In the new book, you praise President Biden and Vice-President Harris for their early efforts to commemorate people who had died of COVID. Do you feel that is an example of the sort of sustained narrative that you say is necessary?

It’s hard to create the collective mourning that COVID requires. Certainly, the Biden Administration, right at its beginning, made a worthwhile attempt to do that, when they lit those lights around the pool near the Lincoln Memorial, four hundred of them, for the four hundred thousand Americans who had died. And then there was another ceremony. And they encouraged people to put candles in their windows or ring bells, to make it participatory. But it’s hard to sustain that. There are proposals for a memorial for COVID. It’s hard to do and yet worth trying.

You observe that the 1918 pandemic is virtually gone from memory.

That’s an amazing thing. Fifty million people. The biggest pandemic anywhere ever. And almost no public commemoration of it. When COVID came along, there wasn’t a model which could have perhaps served as some way of understanding. They used similar forms of masks and distancing. But there was no public remembrance of it.

Some scholars have suggested that it’s because there are no heroes and no villains, no military-style imagery to rely on to create a commemoration.

Well, that’s true. It’s also in a way true of climate. And yet there are survivors of it. And they have been speaking out. They form groups. Groups called Long COVID SOS or Widows of COVID-19 or COVID Survivors for Change. They have names that suggest that they are committed to telling the society about it and improving the society’s treatment of it.

Your book “The Climate Swerve,” published in 2017, seemed very hopeful. You wrote about the beginning of a species-wide agreement. Has this hope been tempered?

I don’t think I’m any less hopeful than I was when I wrote “The Climate Swerve.” In my new book [“Surviving Our Catastrophes”], the hope is still there, but the focus is much more on survivor wisdom and survivor power. In either case, I was never completely optimistic—but hopeful that there are these possibilities.

There’s something else I’d like to mention that’s happened in my old age. I’ve had a long interaction with psychoanalysis. Erik Erikson taught me how to be ambivalent about psychoanalysis. It was a bigger problem for him, in a way, because he came from it completely and yet turned against its fixity when it was overly traditionalized. In my case, I knew it was important, but I also knew it could be harmful because it was so traditionalized. I feared that my eccentric way of life might be seen as neurotic. But now, in my older age, the analysts want me. A couple of them approached me a few years ago to give the keynote talk at a meeting on my work. I was surprised but very happy to do it. They were extremely warm as though they were itching to, in need of, bringing psychoanalysis into society, and recognizing more of the issues that I was concerned with, having to do with totalism and fixity. Since then, they’ve invited me to publish in their journal. It’s satisfying, because psychoanalysis has been so important for my formation.

What was it about your life style that you thought your analyst would be critical of?

I feared that they would see that somebody who went out into the world and interviewed Chinese students and intellectuals or Western European teachers and diplomats and scholars was a little bit eccentric, or even neurotic.

The fact that you were interviewing people instead of doing pure academic research?

Yes, that’s right. A more “normal” life might have been to open up an office on the Upper West Side to see psychoanalytical, psychotherapeutic patients. And to work regularly with the psychoanalytic movement. I found myself seeking a different kind of life.

Tell me about the moment when you decided to seek a different kind of life.

In 1954, my wife and I had been living in Hong Kong for just three months, and I’d been interviewing Chinese students and intellectuals, and Western scholars and diplomats, and China-watchers and Westerners who had been in China and imprisoned. I was fascinated by thought reform because it was a coercive effort at change based on self-criticism and confession. I wanted to stay there, but at that time, I had done nothing. I hadn’t had my psychiatric residency and I hadn’t entered psychoanalytic training. Also, my money was running out. My wife, B.J., was O.K. either way. I walked through the streets thinking about it and wondering, and I came back after a long walk through Hong Kong and said, “Look, we just can’t stay. I don’t see any way we can.” But the next day, I was asking her to help type up an application for a local research grant that would enable me to stay. It was a crucial decision because it was the beginning of my identity as a psychiatrist in the world.

You have been professionally active for seventy-five years. This allows you to do something almost no one else on the planet can do: connect and compare events such as the Second World War, the Korean War, the nuclear race, the climate crisis, and the COVID pandemic. It’s a particularly remarkable feat during this ahistorical moment.

Absolutely. But in a certain sense, there’s no such thing as an ahistorical time. Americans can seem ahistorical, but history is always in us. It helps create us. That’s what the psychohistorical approach is all about. For me to have that long flow of history, yes, I felt, gave me a perspective.

You called the twentieth century “an extreme century.” What are your thoughts on the twenty-first?

The twentieth century brought us Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The twenty-first, I guess, brought us Trump. And a whole newly intensified right wing. Some call it populism. But it’s right-wing fanaticism and violence. We still have the catastrophic threats. And they are now sustained threats. There have been some writers who speak of all that we achieved over the course of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century. And that’s true. There are achievements in the way of having overcome slavery and torture—for the most part, by no means entirely, but seeing it as bad. Having created institutions that serve individuals. But our so-called better angels are in many ways defeated by right-wing fanaticism.

If you could still go out and conduct interviews, what would you want to study?

I might want to study people who are combating fanaticism and their role in institutions. And I might also want to study people who are attracted to potential violence—not with the hope of winning them over but of further grasping their views. That was the kind of perspective from which I studied Nazi doctors. I’ve interviewed people both of a kind I was deeply sympathetic to and of a kind I was deeply antagonistic toward.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you about?

I would say something on this idea of hope and possibility. My temperament is in the direction of hopefulness. Sometimes, when Nancy and I have discussions, she’s more pessimistic and I more hopeful with the same material at hand. I have a temperament toward hopefulness. But for me to sustain that hopefulness, I require evidence. And I seek that evidence in my work.

#I think there's a lot of really interesting and thought-provoking moments in this interview

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fleshthing · 21 hours

Text

Prologue

Content warning(s): Body horror, gore, violence.

Shrill sirens painfully pierced the amorphous entity’s auditory sensory neurons as it mobilized itself through a ventilation passageway. It was pure persistence that the tightly screwed on protective grate in its enclosure had come off, and now Eris was free to do as it pleased. Before releasing the others, along with the offspring that the facility had non-consensually created from one of its eggs, it was going to pay a visit to whatever researcher it could get its tendrils on first as a way of gaining much needed sustenance.

Cold air languidly blew past its crimson, writhing biomass as it shoved its way through. The metallic passage was uncomfortable against its flesh, making for a quick getaway to the nearest exit. Eris could hear the vibrations from many human voices to its right, and swiftly turned down a smaller offshoot. Its biomass wasn’t as large as it had been before the capture, since it had deteriorated from the lack of nutrients during a forced inactive state that the humans had put it in, but it would make sure to build itself back up over time. Its current size was still barely small enough to fit inside of the vent, but once its plan was in action, it wouldn’t need to hide in the walls like a rat anymore.

Relief washed over it as the artificial light from a room filtered in through the ventilation grate. Whispers were shared amongst a small group of humans, their glossy eyes flicking around nervously. These creatures were peculiar to Eris. It had never seen such a being until a few moons ago when they had ripped it from its home world to study a handful of its species. As interesting as they were, they were harmful and needed to be dealt with, and Eris was going to make sure that they wouldn’t get in its way while it looked for a path out of the structure that it had been a prisoner in.

Having only been fed a diet consisting of small mammals and scraps, the entity didn’t have the strength that was required to take down a group of this size, so it would need to go about its plans differently. Fortunately, Eris had other methods of feeding, and one in particular that would keep it hidden in plain sight.

Small tendrils were formed from its biomass to reach through the quant gaps in the grate, dexterously unscrewing it from the wall. It knew better than to cause a ruckus, and carefully placed the metal plate behind it, using many tendrils to carry it towards the back. Six inky eyes watched the group of nine humans that were huddled together, pleased to see that none had yet noticed its arrival. Eris had been lucky to slip away before anyone had made it into the containment observatory, but it wasn’t even halfway done with its plans yet.

One human broke off from the group, walking towards where Eris lay waiting, allowing a storage rack to distance him from the others. The room was quite dim, and cluttered with many boxes full of human objects, the perfect place for it to attempt to blend in as it oozed down the wall. The man seemed impatient over something, and was fiddling around with a rectangular piece of technology in his hands. Eris made its biomass as sleek as possible as it slowly neared the brown-haired human. A few beady eyes kept the group in veiw, constantly making sure that they hadn’t noticed anything suspicious yet.

“This damn thing never works when I need it to! I don’t know why Biome couldn’t have just let us keep our own phones.”, the man grumbled out, but the group barely paid him any attention, and were too focused on their own conversation. Frustration shone in his mossy eyes as he glared back down at the screen, completely unaware of the thin, carmine tendril that was inching towards his throat. Without warning, the appendage shot forward at lightning speed, piercing his pale skin with the stinger that had been exposed beneath unfurled biomass. Another wrapped around the entirety of his neck, crushing everything beneath it to keep him from calling out for help.

The phone clattered to the concrete floor as his hands reflexively reached up for his throat, but the other Biome employees didn’t hear the struggle over their chatter that had slowly been growing in decibels over the past few minutes. Eris wasted no time in shoving its biomass into the humans largest orifice, causing his jaw to almost detached from the tendons. Any injury caused could be repaired later on, so the amorphous entity cared little about any damages done in the process. The neurotoxin that was intravenously injected had already partially paralyzed the human, making it so that he wouldn’t be able to speak or fight back until Eris’s biomass was integrated enough with his system to take control. His arms now hung limply at his sides, green eyes staring at the ceiling with agony-induced tears welling up in the inner corners.

Once fully inside, Eris started consuming his internal workings, absorbing the tissue directly into its biomass and converting the cells into something more useful. It was no doubt that such a process was painful for the man, but Eris was indifferent towards his feelings; this species didn’t care when their caustic chemicals burned its biomass, or when they let it starve just to watch its desperate, visceral reactions while they teased it with sustenance behind a thick, glass wall. It was a kill or be killed world, and Eris would never allow something as pathetically weak as a human to takes its place at the top of the food chain.

A thin stream of bloody saliva trickled from the corner of the brunet’s thin mouth, trailing down his jaw. His muscle tissue and organs were quickly replaced with infectious biomass as he stood paralyzed to the ground, his coworkers not even twenty feet away, ignorant of it all. Eris made sure to consume his brain last, just for the guilty pleasure of making him feel everything else being absorbed first. Due to the workings of its neurotoxin, his body hadn’t shut down from shock yet, making him fully aware that something was liquefying him from the inside out.

The human cells gave Eris plenty enough biomass to convert them into whatever it needed for its own survival. A reproductive system was not necessary at the moment, since most of the energy was needed in modifying its digestive system, making it more efficient and protective against foreign substances. Any sustenance here on out would go through its maw first, since absorbing other organisms on Earth could be risky if they contained the strange chemicals that the humans were so enthralled with.

Eris knew that it didn’t have a lot of time to blend in; its genetic defect would soon manifest on the outside as the human cells were all completely converted to its own for mimicry. The inside of the host didn’t need to obtain a specific appearance, but the outside had to appear the same as to not cause suspicion. Unfortunately for Eris, any cells that are used for replication cannot properly create pigment, causing any creature that it attempts to assimilate to appear colorless, making it stand out amongst others of their kind. The defect had always been a nuisance for the shapeless lifeform, but mimicry wasn’t necessary for hunting on its native planet, so the mutation hadn’t been an actual issue up until now.

Not wanting to wait a second longer, it started piloting its newly attained human form, curling the slender arms and long fingers inward, and inhaling scents through a freshly replicated olfactory system. Eris had never consumed a human prior to this, and would have loved to try out its new body if it weren’t for the fact that eight other humans stood nearby, hiding in plain sight from the very thing that had been in the room with them for the past forty-five minutes.

Eris couldn’t believe that they hadn’t noticed their colleague’s strange behavior or absence from the huddle for the duration of the assimilation, but it meant that this next part was going to go smoothly. Clumsily on unfamiliar legs, it clambered towards them, eyes dead set on one particular human as it began to detach its lower jaw. His hazel eyes stared back at who he thought was his coworker, and they narrowed with confusion as to why his ex-colleague was walking so strangely.

“You okay there, Sven? Are ya drunk or somethin?”, Troy asked jokingly, voice uneasy as it got closer. It was too late once the researcher noticed the blood that had pooled onto Sven’s shirt from when Eris entered his body. Dread shadowed over his features the exact moment that the bloodied shirt tore open from the sickle-like teeth that protruded from its new maw. The vertical opening reached up to its now-split lower jaw all the way from the lower abdomen, creating a scene to the group that could only be described as an abomination.

Its execution was messier than it had wanted, but it couldn’t risk waiting around for its biomass to fully merge with the host. These humans had the ability to damage its cells to an extreme level with their strange, fire-powered contraptions and chemical injections, and Eris wasn’t sure when backup would arrive to help the group that it currently had cornered in the storage room.

“You don’t have to do this. Just let us go.”, Troy pleaded, his dry lips quivering. His pitiful body language made Eris feel a tinge of smugness over the fact that it finally had the upper hand over its tormenter, and he would pay dearly for the last few months of repetitive experiments. Eris’s head snapped to the left as someone else attempted to speak up, but the uncanny movement silenced them almost immediately. Everyone’s hands were shaking, and Eris could smell their bitter sweat as it leaked from each pore.

Four saliva-slicked tendrils shot out from the depths of the vertical opening, hurtling towards Troy. The others scattered like terrified roaches, but the keratinous arrows at the end of each appendage made sure that Troy stayed put, no matter how violently he writhed around. It was most unfortunate that he wouldn’t know who was doing this to him. Eris hadn’t had the time to learn to speak yet, but it desperately wished it could communicate exactly how much hatred it had for the vile lifeform that called itself Troy.

More tendrils formed underneath the human façade from the hidden biomass, vying for the other seven humans that were looking for a way to get it off of Troy, while the main four ropes dug into his chest cavity like burrowing worms. His screams ended abruptly as his larynx was viciously torn from a tendril that had crawled into his throat, and Eris allowed his body to slam into the ground below. The brooms and boxes that a few of the others were using to fight it off did nothing to deter it from crouching over Troy’s body and impatiently pulling his limp, but still very conscious form into the maw.

Bones and sinew crunched in-between the three rows of teeth as the body was pulled inward, allowing gummy viscera to spill out onto the ground. Eris’s entire face split open like a fleshy flower, completely connecting to the rest of the digestive entrance, allowing for more room to consume a meal that was larger than it was. The rest of the remaining, foolish humans finally gave up their brave attempt at scaring it off, and ran off into the hallway, screaming for help.

If Eris wanted to exit the facility unscathed with the others, it would need to quicken its pace. Tendrils worked vicariously to pull every last bit of organic material inside, engorging itself to the point of becoming temporarily bloated. The clothing that Troy had been wearing was torn off as the process continued, and was discarded onto the floor in ragged, soaked pieces along with his leathery shoes.

Several strands of the chocolatey hair that fell into its face was already losing pigment, turning them a stark white. Eris growled in frustration at the sight, causing the remainder of Troy’s blood in its malformed larynx to gurgle. The ear-piercing alarms were still sounding throughout the facility, and backup had to be on the way by now, if they weren’t already there. Releasing the other four of its kind was the only way that its species had a chance at survival in this strange, new place, so back to the containment room it went, leaving a sanguine trail in its wake.

#eh #got tired of re-writing the entire story in different ways #so I'm just posting shit now #malignant #scifi horror #body horror #alien #not a professional and dont have a beta sorry #sorry if I cant formulate a sentence that makes sense lmao #there might be mistakes #beta reader not beta sorry lmao

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