#Warning: Fantasy Segregation

[bluepandastarfish]

CaitVi x Reader Angst 3

warnings: sadness still, depression maybe, spelling mistakes

shorter one, sorry, things will start looking up soon (or will they?)

part 1, part 2

The three of you weren't happy separate, that was for sure. Vi was losing herself in every way she wanted to after losing you and caitlyn and, although the two of you lived together, both you and caitlyn were also losing yourselves in different ways. You could no longer accurately tell when something was a daydream or not, the other night you'd had a dream of caitlyn grabbing you and demanding you act like yourself again only for her to have no similar reactions the following nights. 

Caitlyn was throwing herself into her ‘work’ which was more of a manhunt and segregation scheme than anything else, one she knew you’d object to if you were aware enough. Maybe that was another reason for her to do it all, not only was she passionately angry and intent on finding jinx and bringing her to justice, but doing something so dramatic to get a reaction out of you sounded quite pleasant at the time. It was something she laid next to you at night thinking about, why she was numb to the issues she was selfishly causing and why the only thing she could feel was rage. 

She couldn't tell who the rage was directed at anymore, jinx was certainly some of it but sometimes she found herself wanting to scream at you till you cried because at least then that was better then the horrid nothing you’d been giving her. And Vi as well, somehow she was angry at her for… well, for stopping her when she was so close to jinx but even then caitlyn was somehow self aware enough now to know that was a stupid excuse. Angry at multiple people for one person's misdeed, and then continuing to take it out on the people around her who had nothing to do with it. 

Maybe if she hadn’t involved herself with Vi and Zaun in the first place her mother would be alive. Maybe she would be happy with you in your very own home with you supporting her every step of the way through her career and homelife. But Vi wouldnt be there, and something would be missing, just like it was now. So in the end, perhaps caitlyn was most angry with herself. 

And now was another night of silence between you both. You let yourself drift off while Caitlyn remained aware. You let yourself imagine that Vi was happy somewhere else, that she wasn't letting herself get hurt and she’d found someone who looked after her the way you wished you could.and for a moment you smiled to yourself when you saw her grin in your mind, even if it was at the imaginary woman you'd made for he . 

And then Caitlyn spoke to you for the first time in weeks. 

“Are you awake?” she whispered, not having moved from her position facing the ceiling and yet somehow knowing you were awake so she could continue. “You don't have to speak to me, I just want to know you ok.” 

Her tone was soft, as if she were speaking to a child. You would be angry at her- either for interrupting your fantasy or for driving Vi away in the first place- but right now you felt like every emotion you'd been holding out on was trying to break through the wall. You didn't speak, don't breathe any differently. 

She sighed to herself. “Im- i just want us to be ok.” and now it was less about being soft for you, more about being as quiet as possible so that you wouldn't hear the sob waiting to erupt from her. “I was stupid, I ruined it, didn't i?” 

It didn't sound like a question she really wanted answered, probably because she already knew the answer herself. 

And you fully intended on fading back into your daydream before she spoke again. 

“I love you” 

before, even before Vi, you always said it back. It wasn’t something that either of you took lightly with each other, love was a commitment and a promise. 

Your jaw shook uncontrollably and the wall crumbled. 

It was nonsensical, the words that left you when caitlyn rushed to hug you from behind. You’d never felt so small, not even when Vi screamed at you to leave her and you stupidly listened, it wasn't something you had fantasized about, breaking down for caitlyn, all of those thoughts had been dedicated to the women you love and their happiness. Even Caitlyn screaming at you would’ve gained a reaction and, in turn, she would've been satisfied. 

And you think to yourself as you lay there, held firmly in Caitlyn's grip, that despite the self hate for leaving Vi in the ring, you’d let yourself drown in your emotions a thousand times over if it got them both to hug you one last time.

[sunlight-s0ngbird]

Can I please request Demitrius x Bi reader?

Like he is crushing on her and asks about past relationships and she's like "No real exes" his heart flutters till she keeps going "well other than Ruby"

Would love to see him confused by the concept of bisexuality lmao

My heart leapt from me.

Yandere religious boy x Fem! Bi! Reader headcanons Summary: When the topic of relationships comes up, Demetrius's crush on you takes a turn when you happen to slip in a comment about... a girl? Content warning: weird ideas of "purity", no real religion was used in this btw, unhealthy views of love/relationships, slightly sexual comments (nothing intense, just comments). A/n: I took the reader as being female because of the use of she/her pronouns in the ask. AI was not used to make this. Do not use to make or for ai. Welcome board Request rules Yandere religious boy masterlist .𖥔 ݁ ˖☾𖤓☽.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Demetrius knows somewhat about love, the teachings from the church, his mother, and childhood crushes were kind of it. The things he’s heard from his mother and the church was simply taught to keep him “pure”; wait until you’re married, don’t get distracted by other women while being married, and marry for a family. 

Your statement of never having partners excited him. Not because he was excited to experience new things with you, but rather purity. He liked that he could be your first, first boyfriend, kiss, love, husband. It excites him a lot. 

“What do you mean ‘other than Ruby?’” Demetrius quickly spats, tilting his head at your wording. You knelt down by the bristles of the broom, brushing the dirt into the dust pan. A smile drew onto your lips. 

“Something might have...,” you trailed off, looking at the small pile of gray dust, wetting your lips before continuing. “Happened between us.” 

Demetrius stared blankly at you. He had heard ten billion times that girls helped each other understand themselves but... not like... that. No, you were better than that. “Like, friend stuff?” 

Standing up straight again, you give him a huff of a laugh at his tone. “What do you think is ‘friend stuff’ to girls?” You asked and turned back to the pews at the spaces between them. 

Even though it’s 1917, Demetrius isn’t blatantly biphobic, at least to his knowledge. He doesn’t know about bisexuality, obviously he wouldn’t know about it. He just hates the idea of anyone but himself being with you. Living in a small religious town in a pretty closed-minded time will make a person believe anything about anything. 

Though the news of your purity excites him, it also confuses him. If we’re going off fantasy, Demetrius would accept it and leave it be. If we’re being realistic, he runs to the priest.  

“Father,” Demetrius called, rushing down the aisle to the priest, the rest carpet contrasted with the black leather of his shoes. The priest stood at the front of the church, under the vibrant colors of the stained-glass windows. 

“Yes, child?” The priest said back with a smile, glancing back at him as he fixed up the books behind his usual preaching space. 

“My lady has kissed women before me. What should I do?” Demetrius asked with intense blankness. 

Demetrius hates the idea of men loving you, men is not his name. Women may be seen a little differently, but they still have the ability to kiss you, which isn’t what he wants. 

He genuinely will not understand your liking for men and women. Isn’t that a bit too much on your plate? Now he has to deal with competition from both sides. The gendered segregation in the church did little to appease his growing jealousy. He liked it at the start because you weren’t around any other boys your age. But now girls? It’s essentially your heaven! 

Demetrius isn’t a violent boy, he’s not willing to turn to fighting or hurting others. He’s above violence because whatever he prays for, the lord will bless him with. He wants your little “Ruby” gone? He’s at church justifying why he’s “not praying for violence onto others, rather praying for them to leave a pure girl alone”. The lord and his mother would be very mad if he fought someone. He’s also as thin as a twig and would be taken down in seconds. 

Demetrius wouldn’t take compliments of others as lightly as before. “That girl’s dress is very beautiful” oh? Is it because it’s on a woman and she herself is beautiful and you want her? He’s back at church praying for her downfall. 

Demetrius never blames you for your feelings, he blames the people are you that had the audacity to tempt you to begin with. 

His courtship of you isn’t any different. When it comes to it, he knows best about loneliness and how terrible it can be when alone with a girl. Demetrius rarely allows himself alone with you, those times are only at the brook behind the church. And even with the place of his lord nearby, he still wants lustful things from you. 

Even with your bisexuality, Demetrius still wants you. He has little understanding of how that love works but he doesn’t really care how you do it. As long as you’re considered his lady, he’s alright with anything. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖☾𖤓☽.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Thank you so much for the request! I had a lot of fun writing this!!

[mariacallous]

The New York Times once dubbed the Princeton professor Robert George, who has guided Republican elites for decades, “the reigning brain of the Christian right.” Last year, he issued a stark warning to his ideological allies. “Each time we think the horrific virus of anti-Semitism has been extirpated, it reappears,” he wrote in May 2023. “A plea to my fellow Catholics—especially Catholic young people: Stay a million miles from this evil. Do not let it infect your thinking.” When I spoke with George that summer, he likened his sense of foreboding to that of Heinrich Heine, the 19th-century German poet who prophesied the rise of Nazism in 1834.

Some 15 months later, the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson welcomed a man named Darryl Cooper onto his web-based show and introduced him to millions of followers as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” The two proceeded to discuss how Adolf Hitler might have gotten a bad rap and why British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was “the chief villain of the Second World War.”

Hitler tried “to broadcast a call for peace directly to the British people” and wanted to “work with the other powers to reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem,” Cooper elaborated in a social-media post. “He was ignored.” Why the Jews should have been considered a “problem” in the first place—and what a satisfactory “solution” to their inconvenient existence might be—was not addressed.

Some Republican politicians spoke out against Carlson’s conversation with Cooper, and many historians, including conservative ones, debunked its Holocaust revisionism. But Carlson is no fringe figure. His show ranks as one of the top podcasts in the United States; videos of its episodes rack up millions of views. He has the ear of Donald Trump and spoke during prime time at the 2024 Republican National Convention. His anti-Jewish provocations are not a personal idiosyncrasy but the latest expression of an insurgent force on the American right—one that began to swell when Trump first declared his candidacy for president and that has come to challenge the identity of the conservative movement itself.

Anti-Semitism has always existed on the political extremes, but it began to migrate into the mainstream of the Republican coalition during the Trump administration. At first, the prejudice took the guise of protest.

In 2019, hecklers pursued the Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw—a popular former Navy SEAL from Texas—across a tour of college campuses, posing leading questions to him about Jews and Israel, and insinuating that the Jewish state was behind the 9/11 attacks. The activists called themselves “Groypers” and were led by a young white supremacist named Nick Fuentes, an internet personality who had defended racial segregation, denied the Holocaust, and participated in the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

The slogan referred to a far-right fantasy known as the “Great Replacement,” according to which Jews are plotting to flood the country with Black and brown migrants in order to displace the white race. That belief animated Robert Bowers, who perpetrated the largest massacre of Jews on American soil at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 after sharing rants about the Great Replacement on social media. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the gunman wrote in his final post, “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people … Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Less than three years later, Carlson sanitized that same conspiracy theory on his top-rated cable-news show. “They’re trying to change the population of the United States,” the Fox host declared, “and they hate it when you say that because it’s true, but that’s exactly what they’re doing.” Like many before him, Carlson maintained plausible deniability by affirming an anti-Semitic accusation without explicitly naming Jews as culprits. He could rely on members of his audience to fill in the blanks.

Carlson and Fuentes weren’t the only ones who recognized the rising appeal of anti-Semitism on the right. On January 6, 2021, an influencer named Elijah Schaffer joined thousands of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, posting live from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Eighteen months later, Schaffer publicly polled his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers: “Do you believe Jews disproportionately control the world institutions, banks, & are waging war on white, western society?” Social-media polls are not scientific, so the fact that more than 70 percent of respondents said some version of “yes” matters less than the fact that 94,000 people participated in the survey. Schaffer correctly gauged that this subject was something that his audience wanted to discuss, and certainly not something that would hurt his career.

With little fanfare, the tide had turned in favor of those advancing anti-Semitic arguments. In 2019, Fuentes and his faction were disrupting Republican politicians like Crenshaw. By 2022, Fuentes was shaking hands onstage with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. In 2019, the Groyper activists were picketing events held by Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization founded by the activist Charlie Kirk. By 2024, Turning Point was employing—and periodically firing and denouncing—anti-Semitic influencers who appeared at conventions run by Fuentes. “The Zionist Jews controlling our planet are all pedophiles who have no regard for the sanctity of human life and purity,” one of the organization’s ambassadors posted before she was dismissed.

In 2020, Carlson’s lead writer, Blake Neff, was compelled to resign after he was exposed as a regular contributor to a racist internet forum. Today, he produces Kirk’s podcast and recently reported alongside him at the Republican National Convention. “Why does Turning Point USA keep pushing anti-Semitism?” asked Erick Erickson, the longtime conservative radio host and activist, last October. The answer: Because that’s what a growing portion of the audience wants.

“When I began my career in 2017,” Fuentes wrote in May 2023, “I was considered radioactive in the American Right for my White Identitarian, race realist, ‘Jewish aware,’ counter-Zionist, authoritarian, traditional Catholic views … In 2023, on almost every count, our previously radioactive views are pounding on the door of the political mainstream.” Fuentes is a congenital liar, but a year after this triumphalist pronouncement, his basic point is hard to dispute. Little by little, the extreme has become mainstream—especially since October 7.

Last December, Tucker Carlson joined the popular anti-establishment podcast Breaking Points to discuss the Gaza conflict and accused a prominent Jewish political personality of disloyalty to the nation. “They don’t care about the country at all,” he told the host, “but I do … because I’m from here, my family’s been here hundreds of years, I plan to stay here. Like, I’m shocked by how little they care about the country, including the person you mentioned. And I can’t imagine how someone like that could get an audience of people who claim to care about America, because he doesn’t, obviously.”

The twist: “He” was not some far-left activist who had called America an irredeemably racist regime. Carlson was referring to Ben Shapiro, arguably the most visible Jewish conservative in America, and insinuating that despite his decades of paeans to American exceptionalism, Shapiro was a foreign implant secretly serving Israeli interests. The podcast host did not object to Carlson’s remarks.

The war in Gaza has placed Jews and their role in American politics under a microscope. Much has been written about how the conflict has divided the left and led to a spike in anti-Semitism in progressive spaces, but less attention has been paid to the similar shake-up on the right, where events in the Middle East have forced previously subterranean tensions to the surface. Today, the Republican Party’s establishment says that it stands with Israel and against anti-Semitism, but that stance is under attack by a new wave of insurgents with a very different agenda.

Since October 7, in addition to slurring Shapiro, Carlson has hosted a parade of anti-Jewish guests on his show. One was Candace Owens, the far-right podcaster known for her defenses of another anti-Jewish agitator, Kanye “Ye” West. Owens had already clashed with her employer—the conservative outlet The Daily Wire, co-founded by Shapiro—over her seeming indifference to anti-Semitism. But after the Hamas assault, she began making explicit what had previously been implicit—including liking a social-media post that accused a rabbi of being “drunk on Christian blood,” a reference to the medieval blood libel. The Daily Wire severed ties with her soon after. But this did not remotely curb her appeal.

Today, Owens can be found fulminating on her YouTube channel (2.4 million subscribers) or X feed (5.6 million followers) about how a devil-worshipping Jewish cult controls the world, and how Israel was complicit in the 9/11 attacks and killed President John F. Kennedy. Owens has also jumped aboard the Reich-Rehabilitation Express. “What is it about Hitler? Why is he the most evil?” she asked in July. “The first thing people would say is: ‘Well, an ethnic cleansing almost took place.’ And now I offer back: ‘You mean like we actually did to the Germans.’”

“Many Americans are learning that WW2 history is not as black and white as we were taught and some details were purposefully omitted from our textbooks,” she wrote after Carlson’s Holocaust conversation came under fire. The post received 15,000 likes.

Donald Trump’s entry into Republican politics intensified several forces that have contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism on the American right. One was populism, which pits the common people against a corrupt elite. Populists play on discontents that reflect genuine failures of the establishment, but their approach also readily maps onto the ancient anti-Semitic canard that clandestine string-pulling Jews are the source of society’s problems. Once people become convinced that the world is oppressed by an invisible hand, they often conclude that the hand belongs to an invisible Jew.

Another such force is isolationism, or the desire to extricate the United States from foreign entanglements, following decades of debacles in the Middle East. But like the original America First Committee, which sought to keep the country out of World War II, today’s isolationists often conceive of Jews as either rootless cosmopolitans undermining national cohesion or dual loyalists subverting the national interest in service of their own. In this regard, the Tucker Carlsons of 2024 resemble the reactionary activists of the 1930s, such as the aviator Charles Lindbergh, who infamously accused Jewish leaders of acting “for reasons which are not American,” and warned of “their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”

Populism and isolationism have legitimate expressions, but preventing them from descending into anti-Semitism requires leaders willing to restrain their movement’s worst instincts. Today’s right has fewer by the day. Trump fundamentally refuses to repudiate anyone who supports him, and by devolving power from traditional Republican elites and institutions to a diffuse array of online influencers, the former president has ensured that no one is in a position to corral the right’s excesses, even if someone wanted to.

As one conservative columnist put it to me in August 2023, “What you’re actually worried about is not Trump being Hitler. What you’re worried about is Trump incentivizing anti-Semites,” to the point where “a generation from now, you’ve got Karl Lueger,” the anti-Jewish mayor of Vienna who inspired Hitler, “and two generations from now, you do have something like that.” The accelerant that is social-media discourse, together with a war that brings Jews to the center of political attention, could shorten that timeline.

For now, the biggest obstacle to anti-Semitism’s ascent on the right is the Republican rank and file’s general commitment to Israel, which causes them to recoil when people like Owens rant about how the Jewish state is run by a cabal of satanic pedophiles. Even conservatives like Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, a neo-isolationist who opposes foreign aid to Ukraine, are careful to affirm their continued support for Israel, in deference to the party base.

But this residual Zionism shields only Israeli Jews from abuse, not American ones—and it certainly does not protect the large majority of American Jews who vote for Democrats. This is why Trump suffers no consequences in his own coalition when he rails against “liberal Jews” who “voted to destroy America.” But such vilification won’t end there. As hard-core anti-Israel activists who have engaged in anti-Semitism against American Jews have demonstrated, most people who hate one swath of the world’s Jews eventually turn on the rest. “If I don’t win this election,” Trump said last week, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.”

More than populism and isolationism, the force that unites the right’s anti-Semites and explains why they have been slowly winning the war for the future of conservatism is conspiracism. To see its power in practice, one need only examine the social-media posts of Elon Musk, which serve as a window into the mindset of the insurgent right and its receptivity to anti-Semitism.

Over the past year, the world’s richest man has repeatedly shared anti-Jewish propaganda on X, only to walk it back following criticism from more traditional conservative quarters. In November, Musk affirmed the Great Replacement theory, replying to a white nationalist who expressed it with these words: “You have said the actual truth.” After a furious backlash, the magnate recanted, saying, “It might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.” Musk subsequently met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and accompanied Ben Shapiro on a trip to Auschwitz, but the lesson didn’t quite take. Earlier this month, he shared Carlson’s discussion of Holocaust revisionism with the approbation: “Very interesting. Worth watching.” Once again under fire, he deleted the tweet and apologized, saying he’d listened to only part of the interview.

But this lesson is also unlikely to stick, because like many on the new right, Musk is in thrall to a worldview that makes him particularly susceptible to anti-Jewish ideas. Last September, not long before Musk declared the “actual truth” of the Great Replacement, he participated in a public exchange with a group of rabbis, activists, and Jewish conservatives. The discussion was intended as an intervention to inoculate Musk against anti-Semitism, but early on, he said something that showed why the cause was likely lost before the conversation even began. “I think,” Musk cracked, “we’re running out of conspiracy theories that didn’t turn out to be true.”

The popularity of such sentiments among contemporary conservatives explains why the likes of Carlson and Owens have been gaining ground and old-guard conservatives such as Shapiro and Erickson have been losing it. Simply put, as Trump and his allies have coopted the conservative movement, it has become defined by a fundamental distrust of authority and institutions, and a concurrent embrace of conspiracy theories about elite cabals. And the more conspiratorial thinking becomes commonplace on the right, the more inevitable that its partisans will land on one of the oldest conspiracies of them all.

Conspiratorial thinking is neither new to American politics nor confined to one end of the ideological spectrum. But Trump has made foundational what was once marginal. Beginning with birtherism and culminating in election denialism, he turned anti-establishment conspiracism into a litmus test for attaining political power, compelling Republicans to either sign on to his claims of 2020 fraud or be exiled to irrelevance.

The fundamental fault line in the conservative coalition became whether someone was willing to buy into ever more elaborate fantasies. The result was to elevate those with flexible approaches to facts, such as Carlson and Owens, who were predisposed to say and do anything—no matter how hypocritical or absurd—to obtain influence. Once opened, this conspiratorial box could not be closed. After all, a movement that legitimizes crackpot schemes about rigged voting machines and microchipped vaccines cannot simply turn around and draw the line at the Jews.

For mercenary opportunists like Carlson, this moment holds incredible promise. But for Republicans with principles—those who know who won the 2020 election, or who was the bad guy in World War II, and can’t bring themselves to say otherwise—it’s a time of profound peril. And for Jews, the targets of one of the world’s deadliest conspiracy theories, such developments are even more forboding.

“It is now incumbent on all decent people, and especially those on the right, to demand that Carlson no longer be treated as a mainstream figure,” Jonathan Tobin, the pro-Trump conservative editor of the Jewish News Syndicate, wrote after Carlson’s World War II episode. “He must be put in his place, and condemned by Trump and Vance.”

Anti-Semitism’s ultimate victory in GOP politics is not assured. Musk did delete his tweets, Owens was fired, and some Republicans did condemn Carlson’s Holocaust segment. But beseeching Trump and his camp to intervene here mistakes the cause for the cure.

Three days after Carlson posted his Hitler apologetics, Vance shrugged off the controversy and recorded an interview with him, and this past Saturday, the two men yukked it up onstage at a political event in Pennsylvania before an audience of thousands. Such coziness should not surprise, given that Carlson was reportedly instrumental in securing the VP slot for the Ohio senator. Asked earlier if he took issue with Carlson’s decision to air the Holocaust revisionism, Vance retorted, “The fundamental idea here is Republicans believe not in censorship; we believe in free speech and debate.” He conveniently declined to use his own speech to debate Carlson’s.

[sears-tower]

Ross's List of Objectum (-adjacent) media

I'm occasionally asked on Discord for objectum media, so I'm making this list with stuff I've run into and recommend. This is anything with sentient objects or relationships to objects. I am going to apologize ahead of time that most of these are focused on architecture, since that's what I've mostly been hunting all these years.

List under the read-more.

Books (Fiction)

Your Cities by Anaea Lay. Short story. One of the main characters is dating cities and bringing them and their buildings to life. My absolute favorite short story of all time, not least because my beloved skyscraper plays a major character. Read it here.

I normally don't look at sentient ships in fiction because they are so common and usually aren't of my interest, but I make an exception if the story revolves around them. Turning the Whisper, short story also by Anaea Lay, has a sentient spaceship grieving and remembering his creator, one of the only 'machine-whisperers' in the universe. Read it here.

The Culture series by Iain M. Banks also has a colorful cast of sentient spaceship that I have heard high praise of but I haven't read them myself.

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. A re-imagining of the Baba Yaga fairytale following two siblings in America suddenly receiving a sentient, walking house from their Jewish Russian grandmother. WARNING: The main conflict revolves around antisemitism. There are scenes of pogroms. The book does not pull its punches when discussing the horrors of persecution, including right at the opening pages.

Awakening to the Great Sleep War by Gert Jonke. This one can sometimes be hard to find. Stream-of-consciousness novel about an acoustic designer in a surreal, dream-like city, whose profession and training allows him to hear columns and iirc buildings speaking. The main character has a relationship with a column around the end of the book.

Not quite as stream-of-consciousness, but even more chaotic, is The Kraken by China Mieville where one of the main characters is a detective who can sorta speak to inanimate objects. Although with how much is going on in this story it might be a little dwarfed by the other zaniness.

Day 9 by Robert Jeschonek. Between a story of three people trying to find a guy and evade a serial killer, the Sagrada Familia cathedral muses and self reflects and looks forward to the future.

Desire and Dust by Roee Rosen. A small, academic collection of stories/artworks/etc. from Russian authors that mainly focus around objects coming to life and having relationships with humans. Be warned: the first work in the collection is a vent piece against Vladimir Putin, and includes cannibalism and sexual assault. The book goes into NSFW territory throughout.

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki. A boy suddenly starts hearing the voices of objects after his father dies, and his mental state quickly spirals with lack of support and understanding. This goes to dark places with mental health, but the book ends well.

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin. Six people become New York. Literally become the personifications of New York. N. K. Jemisin is one of the best science fiction authors of this decade, go read her work.

On that note, the Skyscraper Throne trilogy by Tom Pollock has the city of London alive and doing young adult urban fantasy schenanigan business, including facing off against the god of cranes who represents gentrification. One of the main characters hunts down a sentient train at the beginning of the novel. Somehow no building characters but it's not like this list is hurting for them.

The Towers Trilogy by Karina Sumner Smith is an adult fantasy/urban fantasy story about two cities segregated between magic users and non-magic users, and involves living skyscrapers powered by magic in the later parts of the first book and throughout the second and third book. While the premise is a bit cliche, it's good.

The Employees by Olga Ravn. The human crew of a spacecraft get enamored by The Alien Cubes (tm) that they picked up on a mission. This is set by a series of vignettes showing different perspectives by humans and robots that man the ship.

Twisted! by Miranda Leek. Roller coasters come to life as monstrous defenders of the theme park. Apparently it is a bit mid but enjoyable.

The Tallest Doll in New York City by Maria Dahvana Headley. Short story where the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building kiss. Read here. Also if you wanna see more spicy building romance, check out the cover of Delirious New York (!!NSFW!! or at least coming close to it. I would not open this at work even if there's nothing explicit) written by Rem Koolhaas and illustrated by Madelon Vriesendorp, who later made her cover artwork into a short film.

Rootabaga Stories: The Two Skyscrapers Who Decided to Have a Child by Carl Sandburg. Self explanatory. Sandburg is one of my favorite poets of all time go go go go read his work. Read the Two Skyscrapers here, and also read his poem about a skyscraper and how it's alive and a poem about how a skyscraper loves the night. I hate to assign modern labels to old dead people but I feel like Sandburg would have been objectum were he alive today.

Also go read the poem The Turbine by Harriet Monroe. The machine is unnamed and unidentified, only so much that it is an industrial machine, but this poem has quite an objectum vibe to it's main character/narrator. Read it here.

Also a poem, and kinda really hard to find in any official capacity, but ship-lovers have The Subject, written by R A B Mitchell, about the warship HMS Warspite that he served on. Here's a way to find it, but you gotta scroll down half a page.

Everyone and their object companion probably already knows about this one but House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Unexplainable house that does some freaky geometry business. Best damn horror I have read.

Also covering my bases here with Christine and The Shining, both by Stephen King. Books more so than the movies. Evil car and evil hotel respectively, though you could probably argue until sunrise whether the objects themselves are animate and evil or if its the human ghosts haunting them.

Citizens of No Place: An Architectural Graphic Novel by Jimenez Lai, is a short experimental manga-esque comic musing about the state of architecture and its possible future and criticizing the current path of society. One of the chapters has a character in love with an architectural form. Many thanks to Creatures Are Stirring (mentioned below) for finding and mentioning this. Can be found here.

The Dream of Houses by Wil McCarthy is a sci-fi short story set from the perspective of a friendly smart home as their owner goes through the Worst Day of His Life. It's... a little outdated in the sense of it's hard to look at the sci-fi society McCarthy writes about and take it with the optimism it was supposed to have, but it has some interesting ideas in it. This story does not exist anywhere online, but I have digitized it on my own end. Since it's almost 30 years old and out of print, feel free to send an email to me if you want the digitization.

Les Autos Savages, a short story collection by Folio Junior Science Fiction. Many of the stories in here have sentient/sapient cars as the main characters and comment on the complicated relationships humans have to cars, both good and bad. This is in French, but @drinkingasoline has translated a few of the stories. Thank you btw Crispy for finding this!

There's a short story I keep losing the name of, but if anyone can find it I would graciously appreciate being reminded of its title. It's a vignette set in a broader fantasy universe, and the main character is a human changeling brought over to Fairy New York. The vignette deals with the main character visiting the NYC library, who is personified into a genius loci along with being the building himself. This guy inspired my own building characters so I would love to read about him again.

Books (Non-fiction)

Creatures are Stirring: A Guidebook to Architectural Companionship by Joseph Altshuler and Julia Sedlock. While this is geared more toward architects than the general public, if you want to dip your toes into animist theory and praxis (for lack of a better term) this the best starting point so far, and these two authors are names to know. Both authors are confirmed to be objectum friendly, though this book does not explicitly mention or discuss objectum people. If you don't want to read the entire book but want to hear one of the authors summarizing his thoughts, see the video Are Buildings Alive? hosted by Stewart Hicks interviewing Joseph Altshuler. Viewable here.

On the Animation of the Inorganic by Spyros Papapetros. Really, anything Mr. Papapetros has written if you have the stomach for dry, high-level academic analysis. Fantastic book wrapping up arts, philosophy, and a bit of culture in a discussion of Modernist animism, but it's written in esoteric academic-speak making it inaccessible, and specifically is looking at 1880s-1940s time period. Does not reference objectum people directly but does occasionally mention the "erotic power of objects".

Both of the above books are exhaustively sourced, so you can find jumping off points for your own research. They are architectural theory and will be almost exclusively focused on architecture, although On the Animation of the Inorganic also discusses art and briefly discusses other things as well.

Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings by Annabel Jane Wharton. A very strong case for discussing buildings as agents, as subjects, able to act on and manipulate humans and animals. This primarily deals with all of the negative ways a building can affect humans, including enabling addiction, but a very strong theoretical basis for architectural agency and perhaps animacy.

Monsters of Architecture by Marco Frascari. Maybe. Another architecture theory book, and one I haven't read thanks to how difficult it is to get a physical copy. Putting it here mostly in case anyone else is as ravenous for animistic theory as I am.

There is a book that looks at agalmatophilia (statue-lovers) that I am aware of, but I heavily do not recommend it as it is hostile toward objectum folk. If you want the name of the book for research or something, send me a DM. I also probably should mention that Erika Eiffel has her biography somewhere but 1) it's in Finnish (iirc?) with no English translation available, and 2) I am not comfortable supporting Erika/her book.

Films

Chairy Tale by Norman McLaren. Also, by the same guy, Opening Speech. Short films. A chair/microphone misbehaves around a man. Chairy Tale ends well for the object, Opening Speech... not so much. I adore McLaren's work, go watch them here (Chairy Tale) and here (Opening Speech).

Roof Sex (!!NSFW!!) by PES. Two couches. A roof. No one around. Really, most of PES's work counts as objectum/animistic-adjacent, although thankfully most of his filmography is safe for work. Roof Sex is just the most obvious one of the bunch. PES himself comes off as having an animistic bent + connection with objects in interviews but I am cautious to call him anything more than that.

Another one everyone here probably already knows of, but Encanto, directed by Byron Howard and Jared Bush. The house. She is alive. And very expressive and friendly. Very good Disney film following a family with super powers but dealing with generational trauma and high expectations. The house is called Casita and is pretty much the best friend of the main character.

Her directed by Spike Jonze. Well known film but covering my bases. A man falls in love with an AI operating system. Saw it recently myself--it's quite good! There is a very brief NSFW objectum eye candy moment aside from the whole premise of the relationship.

AI Love You, directed by David Asavanond and Stephan Zlotescu. Thai film where buildings all have AIs put in them, and one of the buildings falls in love with a human that lives in him. The movie isn't a masterwork of art, it's cheesy as hell, but it's incredibly fun. There's a rave building that has a giant architectural mohawk. We deserve mid-but-fun movies.

Titane, directed by Julia Ducournau. This one's for all of the mechaphiles out there. I haven't watched this one either but the main character has a baby with a car. The main character is also the villain, and it is a slasher film, so be aware of that.

Jumbo, directed by Zoe Wittock. Human falls in love with a theme park ride. This is directly an objectum story. I haven't watched it myself (somehow...) but a friend has mentioned that it contains sexual assault, coercian, parental abuse, and apparently it ends sadly :(

Monster House, directed by Gil Kenan. Self explanatory and everyone here's probably already heard about it.

Just gonna mention Electric Dreams by Steve Barron to cover my bases but I don't think you can get by a week in the objectum community without having heard of that film.

Home Sweet Home by S. Paccolat, A. Diaz, P. Clenet, and R. Mazevet. A suburban home uproots itself to go on an adventure. Can be found here.

Autos Portraits by Claude Cloutier. Animated short film with a biting satire of car-dominated modern society, with a singing animate car as the center piece. NSFW! Thank you again @drinkingasoline for finding this one.

Theater

Inanimate by Nick Robideau. Local woman falls in love with Dairy Queen sign. Rest of town doesn't approve. Ends well, but the main character has to deal with ableism and objectophobia. Recently played at Theatre Wit in Chicago. Nick is confirmed to be objectum-friendly and appreciates people reaching out. The script can be bought here.

Objects of Her Affection by Marsian De Lellis. Local woman falls in love with various tragic objects and reflects on her life. Content warning: this does not end well for the woman or the objects. Marsian is confirmed to be objectum-friendly, but the play uses a lot of dark humor and in general goes a lot of dark places. Watch only if you know you can handle it. Read more and see clips here.

Erika's Wall by Sophie Jaff. To be honest I barely know anything about this, it ran before my time in the OS community, but a song from the play survives. Listen to it here.

Other

Sentient ship-lovers, go listen to Julia Ecklar's Iron Mistress, about a pilot lamenting and praising her love of her spaceship! And also The Phoenix, about a human soul reborn into a space shuttle. Listen to Iron Mistress here, and The Phoenix here. Sorry that quality is so poor but it's hard to find good recordings of these things.

Everything is Alive podcast by Ian Chillag. The host interviews a score of inanimate objects. The elevator episode briefly goes into objectum territory on the side of the object. Listen to it here.

If you liked Norman McLaren's "Opening Speech", also check out this clip of ventriloquist Ronn Lucas having a bit of a fight with his microphone. See it here, with the timestamp set to start when he actually begins his act.

--

If you're wondering how I have so many reccs, I have been hunting objectum and machine-animistic media for over 10 years now. Waving hello at everyone who can immediately identify me based off of mentioning Your Cities and On the Animation of the Inorganic.

I'll edit this post as I find or remember more things. Please feel free to add to this through reblogs or make your own list!

Pinging @objectum-media to request these get added to the archive (also please add both Sense of Longing and Handle With Care on there if you have time).

Additionally: Some of these pieces are at risk of being lost since they are niche. If you've enjoyed any of these works, I would like to ask you to preserve it on your own computer or get a physical copy or what have you, so these things can come back even if they were to be removed by the internet. I lost an excellent play script about a man who befriended the Twin Towers because the author went dark and deleted all of his work, and I constantly lament that I couldn't save it. Keep circulating the tapes.

[wowstrawberrycow]

Adar X Gil-galad (Modern AU)

Hi everybody! I want to give a special thanks to @valar-did-me-wrong for requesting this as a dabble first. I loved the concept of this so much that I decided to make it a fic with multiple chapters! We both have been world and culture building together and this is the result! I hope you enjoy this piece.

While this chapter doesn't feature sexual content, in the future it will. So I rate this fic Explicit 18+

⬇️🖤Please Read The Warnings 🖤⬇️

Daddy Kink, Soft BDSM, Doll Kink, Police Brutality, Daddy Doll Relationship, Racial Violence, Racial Discrimination, Uruk Discrimination, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Modern AU, Modern Era, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Doll Headspace, Daddy Dom, I support Kawaii Adar, Dom/sub, Dom/sub Play, Caste System, Modern AU Caste System, Uruks Are Lowest In Caste System, Elves Highest In Caste System, Uruk Culture, Elven Culture, Heavy World Building, Culture building, Segregation, Uruk Segregation, Uruk Segregation Laws, Uruk Racism, Racism, Gay Headcanons

Title: Forbidden

Chapter: (Ch. 1) Doubt

Summary: Even in the modern world, uruks face significant challenges. In this modern AU, Adar and Gil-galad are in an illegitimate marriage and struggle daily due to strict caste laws that enforce segregation. One night, Adar is arrested for disturbing the peace, prompting his worried husband, Gil-galad, to come to his rescue. Both men seem to face a hopeless future if they continue to love each other in this dangerous environment. Their concerns extend beyond themselves; they also worry about Glug, their adopted son, and Glug's child, who are part of their illegal family. Can the state-imposed racial boundaries be broken?

Also note: I have created a discriminative racial term specifically for this fic that combines Sindarin and black speech. This word is 'Gwaur-Horngaz'. Gwaur (Sindarin) -Horngaz (Blackspeach): Direct translation is Dirty Pets or Dirty Tamed Animals. This term is used to describe ElvenXUruk couples. Society sees this sort of relationship as solely a gross sexual fantasy that's not capable of supporting real love. Uruk love outside of same-race relationships in general is considered to be kink-only relationships.

Here are the sources I used for creating this word.⬇️

Sindarin Translator

Black Speech Dictionary

[malec-ao3feed]

You Broke Me First

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/HWn4rGN by khaleesiofalicante In a world where Shadowhunters and Downworlders are divided by borders, laws, and centuries-old hatred, two boys from opposite worlds are brought together by a shocking revelation: their fathers were once in love. As they navigate this complex and dangerous truth, they unravel the secrets of their fathers' pasts, seeking to understand what tore them apart—and perhaps even to rekindle the love that was lost. A story about betrayal and trust, heartbreak and love. Oh, and there’s a serial killer too. Words: 5272, Chapters: 1/25, Language: English Fandoms: The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare, The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Magnus Bane, Alec Lightwood, Rafael Lightwood-Bane, Max Lightwood-Bane, Jace Herondale, Isabelle Lightwood, Max Lightwood, Robert Lightwood, Maryse Lightwood, Catarina Loss, Ragnor Fell, Lily Chen, Sebastian Morgenstern, David Beauchamp, Anjali Rosales, and a bunch of other people Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fantasy, Falling In Love, Betrayal, Emotional Hurt, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Discrimination, Segregation, Racism, Homophobia, Angst with a Happy Ending, no beta we die like men, Other Additional Tags to Be Added read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/HWn4rGN

[hopewriteszstuff]

Writerblr intro thing?

a little about me/the blog™

My name is Hope, I'm 20 years old as of this post, my pronouns are she/her, and I am a writer/artist

I love all things fictional, Ttrpgs, Animation,games,etc,you name it! But that's enough about me

I have AuADHD ✨

What do I write about?

In this blog I'm going to be posting my Vampire the masquerade-themed novel, Titled of Smoke And Shadows, I will be posting chapters whenever I can, I have currently finished 16 chapters.

What is "Of Smoke And Shadows/OSAS" about?

As said above, it's a Vampire the masquerade fanfic

Genre: Horror,Urban fantasy, Paranormal, mystery, Adventure(?)

Trigger warnings for:

Smoking,Death, Abuse,Swearing, severe Violence, implied gore,Suicidal thoughts , children becoming orphans, children getting hurt, etc...

The synopsis goes as following:

It's the Modern Day, The supernatural are now part of human society, through a system that assigns them to human handlers. These human handlers give "points" to their supernatural creature. The more points a supernatural has, the better they are accepted by humans, the less they have the more they are hated.

Supernaturals who are hated are forcefully mutated to become more humane looking.

The system is corrupted, and biased. It causes segregation among supernaturals and humans, as well as different species of supernatural.

The protagonist, Lumen, is a Nosferatu vampire who works with the police. He cannot earn points no matter what he does, he only lives to care for his terminally ill brother.

Until he finds a small girl, literally, she is only 3 inches tall and humans would not help her.

This opens his eyes to the corruption of the system, and he begins to take a step toward changing his life.

Yes, it's also a Borrowers Fanfic, because I'm a sucker for that piece of media.

Anyways: here's some excerpts:

If you have made it this far, thank you and have a nice day! (Also please reblog and connect me to other moots I'm lonely here

[ogradyfilm]

Recently Viewed: Across 110th Street

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

Recently, I read The Devil Finds Work, a collection of essays by James Baldwin in which the famed author, poet, playwright, and activist expresses his personal opinions on cinema, with a particular emphasis on mainstream Hollywood’s oft patronizingly simplistic depiction of race relations in America. In the book’s most scathing section, he thoroughly dissects the filmography of Sidney Poitier—intellectually dishonest stories that, in his unflattering estimation, utilize the basic language of progressivism in order to reinforce the very status quo (i.e., prejudice, discrimination, segregation) that they purport to defy. He argues, for example, that the conclusion of In the Heat of the Night rings hollow: the two protagonists return to their respective communities—Rod Steiger’s rural sheriff to his sleepy small town and Poitier’s Mister Tibbs to the bustle of the big city—ostensibly transformed for the better… but has the culture of hate and division surrounding them truly changed in any meaningful capacity? Ultimately, Baldwin concludes that such movies are superficial at best and outright harmful at worst, too naïve and deluded in their ambitions (due to their narrow perspective on the subject matter—the producers were, of course, predominantly Caucasian) to actually say anything of substance.

I don’t know if Baldwin ever analyzed Across 110th Street, but I’d be interested to hear his thoughts, because it feels like a direct response to many of his criticisms. This is a bitter, pessimistic tale that offers no false promises of relinquished privilege, unlearned bigotry, or reconciliation between the hypothetical repentant oppressor and his erstwhile victim; such cathartic fantasies have no place in its bleak philosophy. It deconstructs virtually every trope and cliché implemented in the service of assuaging white guilt; behold: a buddy cop drama in which the reluctant partners despise each other from start to finish, and have only just barely developed a grudging tolerance by the time the climax rolls around; a police procedural in which the authorities range from corrupt to ineffectual to indifferent, and are consistently a step (or several) behind the criminals regardless of where they fall on that spectrum; a tragedy in which the sympathetic “villains” aren’t Machiavellian masterminds or amoral monsters, but rather poor, destitute, disadvantaged ex-convicts desperate enough to rob the mafia and foolish enough to believe that they might get away with it.

Yaphet Kotto plays the darkest possible interpretation of the Virgil Tibbs archetype: a relatively young, hungry, college educated detective eager to prove his worth, yet adrift between worlds: his fellow officers dismiss him for the color of his skin, while the denizens of Harlem see his badge and condemn him as a traitor to his people. Anthony Quinn is equally superb as his foil/counterpart, sinking his teeth into the role of the cynical, street smart, seasoned gumshoe that resents being paired with an “upstart” for what he perceives to be “political reasons.” Despite the obvious challenges of portraying such flawed, volatile, potentially problematic characters, both actors navigate their sprawling complexities with aplomb, effortlessly elevating the material: Kotto embraces the inherent contradiction of a well-intentioned crusader for social justice nevertheless tacitly supporting a fundamentally broken system that has traditionally subjugated his brothers and sisters; Quinn likewise lends a welcome degree of nuance to a performance that, in lesser hands, could easily have veered into the realm of shallow caricature (it is, after all, tempting to pretend that racists lack any redeeming qualities whatsoever; unfortunately, this is rarely the case in real life—which is precisely what allows reactionary ideologies and regressive values to perpetuate). Good thing, too, considering the narrative revolves around their relationship more so than their investigation; indeed, the primary conflict essentially resolves itself while our alleged “heroes” are busy bickering—which is probably the most blunt and blatant thesis statement I’ve ever encountered.

Bolstered by exquisite cinematography (the urban decay of New York has seldom looked so grotesquely gorgeous), razor-sharp editing (the blood-soaked introductory montage—which rapidly cuts between images of money, guns, and frantically darting eyes—is especially captivating, evoking Sergio Leone’s sun-drenched Westerns), and Bobby Womack’s irresistibly funky title song (so catchy, in fact, that Quentin Tarantino repurposed it for Jackie Brown’s opening credits sequence), Across 110th Street is as immaculately crafted as it is thematically rich—a certified classic that transcends genre, standing head and shoulders above its comparatively conventional blaxploitation contemporaries. What a deliciously nihilistic experience! I wonder if Baldwin would have appreciated its painful emotional authenticity…

[gaykarstaagforever]

Of course Catholics and Evangelical Christians don't want children who were raped to get abortions.

They only have a religion because, according to their own ancient traditions, their god raped a child to get his weird hybrid self / son down here, the one he was going to torture to death for confusing reasons he himself arbitrarily made up.

You can't divorce their policies from the bizarre fantasy nonsense these people sincerely believe. They have a brutal, delusional worldview, and if you put them in power, they'll force it on everyone else.

America has for years gotten away with this unique secularist thing where Fundamentalists and theocrats willingly segregated their own lives, being militantly devout on the weekends, then shrugging and drinking the rest of the week. It's a miracle that persisted as long as it did. The moment times get tough, they were always going to pick the nonsense that defines their social lives and, for many, their substantial incomes, over anything and everything else.

Fools and monsters make foolish, monstrous law, in the name of their foolish monster god.

You want to redefine Christianity, try to clean it up, so you can make it consistent with progressivism, fine, I suppose. But the vast majority of your fellow adherents aren't going to agree to that, because being exclusionary and strict and cruel create a little club with simple rules where people can pretend following those gives them full control of reality. Humanitarianism and genuine "love" don't allow for some small group to pay itself to be in charge of that.

Religious people will always inevitably trip everyone up, because their stupid nonsense always has to take precedence over everything else. They don't have anything else. That's WHY they need it.

And when that nonsense is open about how fundamentally exploitative and convoluted it is...why are you shocked when they legislate that? You were warned by their proselytizing. YOU KNEW who they were.

When someone calls a child-raping, infanticidal god the god of love, compassionate people don't put them in charge defining either crime or love.

[lovegiroke]

New winplan au: Winplantasy (edited)

I constantly thought about what they would look like and act like if they were in a fantasy/action/ seinen au. So the au is basically the original but in a fantasy setting.

I might make a whole new blog based of this au since there’s so much I want to share about this

Wincel hasn’t really gave us antagonists other that Sols mother and brother. Which is kinda why I made the stars the villains

Many of the dynamics are the same, the main difference being everyone’s relationship with Sol, especially earth (still deciding on if their fling would happen and how it would’ve worked out, regardless, they would eventually hate each other) and Venus and Earths relationship with Pluto(complicated). Most of the ages are the same however all the stars (including sol) are like 150+ years for a curtain reason I won’t mention here. Also everyone dead in the canon universe will be dead in this au cough cough earth and moons parents

Finally a few of trigger warnings which are all things mentioned in the planet humans website as well as

depictions of blood and violence and can be described as graphic

Class discrimination, Corruption and segregation

most importantly character death (like lots of death)

Order of post

Alec✅

Luna✅

Sol✅

Marcos✅

Venus

Marshal

Pheobe and Deimon

Jules

Sammy

Yuri

Nephy (there’s a chance that Yuri and Nephy will be released simultaneously, but only time will tell)

Patricia

Cerus

Sage

MilkyWay (Sol and Sages Mom)

Stars (The Centari Sisters, Sirius and Stephenson and pistol star)

Extra characters

Beginning the story

[andromecha]

A timeline of Soundwave's backstory. A headcanon-divergent tale with elements from multiple iterations. (IDW, Cyberverse, G1, and Prime.)

Content warning ⚠️ contains implications and mentions of abduction, death, fantasy, harsh political climate, illegal behavior, murder, segregation, sensuality, sexual abuse, and underground fighting.

birth. in a beautiful, distant planet, thriving in song and dance, a sparkling from the foreign land of labamba emerges. a spark who would grow fond of animals, music, and dance, encapsulated as a music box in its truest form, the idea of soundwave began existing in this vast universe.

though it would never have the pleasure of indulging its rich culture when its spark is abducted shortly after by a scientist from quintesson.

quintessa. soundwave's spark was placed in a protoform body. the spark still took on its natural form it was intended from the start, but had a trait only seen in quintesson species, the tentacles.

soundwave came to life beside another, the triple changer named blitzwing under the same scientist.

lmao wip i promise i will work on this! an overview of soundwave can be found in my pinned post!!

[dankusner]

“Sinners” Is a Virtuosic Fusion of Historical Realism and Horror

Ryan Coogler’s vampire movie mines vampirism’s symbolic potential to tell a tale of exploitation and Black music in nineteen-thirties Mississippi.

Faces of two brothers overlooking a car in flames.

In Coogler’s historical horror film, Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers, veterans both of the military and of organized crime, who return from Chicago to their home town.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the bloodstream, along comes a new horde of vampires, in Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” to taint it with yet another metaphysical curse.

But Coogler is, by temperament, an analytical filmmaker: his first feature, “Fruitvale Station” (2013), dramatized a factual case of police violence; with “Creed” (a “Rocky” sequel) and the two “Black Panther” films, his artistry advanced as he mined mythologies for their political substance.

In “Sinners,” he deploys gory fantasies to undergird his realistic vision.

The film’s vampires are essentially metaphors, and the bodies they ravage are, above all, bodies of work and the body politic.

Indeed, until Coogler’s sanguinary predators show up, midway through, “Sinners” plays as a work of minutely observed historical fiction.

It’s set in the Black community in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the course of the day and night of October 15-16, 1932—which is to say that it’s a historical horror film, because its reality is scarred by the horrors of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan.

The drama starts with a young man named Sammie (Miles Caton) driving up to a church and stumbling into a Sunday-morning service led by his father (Saul Williams);

Sammie’s face is bloodied and gashed, and he’s holding a snapped-off guitar neck.

Thus, from the start, Coogler brings together music and horror.

From there, after a title card announces “One day earlier,” the movie unfolds as a flashback, filling in the events leading up to Sammie’s agony.

The story centers on the return to Clarksdale of long-absent twin brothers, Elijah and Elias Moore, called Smoke and Stack, respectively—both played by Michael B. Jordan.

They fought in the First World War, then moved to Chicago and got involved with gangsters; now they’re back with money and a plan.

They buy a vacant mill from a jovially menacing white man named Hogwood (David Maldonado), where they plan to open a juke joint that very night;

they recruit Sammie, a precociously talented blues singer and slide guitarist who’s also their cousin, to play there.

Sammie’s father disapproves of his performing for “drunkards” and warns, “You keep dealing with the Devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home.”

Although “Sinners” takes a while to turn fantastical, it rests on myth throughout.

Clarksdale, after all, calls itself the birthplace of the blues and is also the site of the crossroads where, around 1930, Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for supreme guitar artistry.

Coogler builds musical mythology into a tensely realistic drama, zooming in on backstories—personal and political—that emerge in action.

While Smoke heads to town to buy provisions for the club, Stack and Sammie hire another musician, the elderly Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), who has been playing harmonica for coins at the train station.

There are quick but indelible glimpses of signs for the whites-only ticket booth, waiting room, and rest room;

when Stack, seeing a white woman nearby, orders Sammie to avert his eyes and walk away, the screen shivers with the ambient terror underlying the banalities of segregation.

Driving back from the station, the three men pass Black chain-gang prisoners doing hard labor at the roadside, and Slim talks about a time when he and a musical partner, after a trumped-up arrest, ended up at a white man’s home to entertain his guests.

“See, white folks, they like the blues just fine,” he says. “They just don’t like the people who make it.”

He adds that, soon thereafter, his partner was stopped by Klansmen, falsely accused of rape, and lynched.

At the end of that story, Slim, mournfully and bitterly, starts to hum, then to sing, and implores Sammie to join in—a symbol and a reminder of the birth of the blues.

On the film’s way to its vampiric turning point, it develops a richly delineated dramatic ethnography of Black life in the age of Jim Crow.

Coogler invests daily activity with ample detail, even paying close attention to money matters.

It’s a pet peeve of mine that movies often show characters doing business—going shopping, taking jobs—without specifying prices or wages, but Coogler writes “Sinners” in dollars and cents, and locates the history behind the figures:

one customer at the brothers’ night spot, Club Juke, a plantation laborer who has only thirty cents for his fifty-cent shot of corn liquor, offers to pay the rest in plantation scrip.

Coogler also keeps a keen eye on the region’s ethnic mix, foregrounding Choctaw residents and a couple of Chinese descent, Bo (Yao) and Grace (Li Jun Li), who run a grocery.

Moreover, the reunions sparked by the brothers’ return prove as sociologically significant as they are dramatically crucial.

The white woman (Hailee Steinfeld) at the train station is actually a mixed-race woman passing, and her background—along with the dangerous deceit of her daily life—is itself a chapter of history.

So is Smoke’s relationship with Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a hoodoo healer, which reaches deep into their shared past and evokes the spiritual dimensions of tradition.

Here’s what “Sinners” isn’t:

a story of a musician selling his soul to the Devil.

It’s clear from the outset that Coogler’s view of myth is sharply revisionist;

the movie opens with a voice-over monologue about musicians with seemingly supernatural talent, known by various terms in various cultures—including, in West African ones, as griots—whose art “can bring healing to the community but it also attracts evil.”

In other words, evil isn’t in the music but comes from the outside and finds the music.

The movie’s pivot to vampires is a supernatural vision of the real-life snares set for great Black musicians.

Coogler transforms the faux-Faustian blues legend into an allegory of historical horror.

The diabolical metaphysics of Coogler’s Clarksdale blues are centered not on the creation of music but on its dissemination—on the fate of a community-based creator in society at large.

The movie’s leading vampire, named Remmick (Jack O’Connell), is also a musician—a white cultural appropriator who schemes, with soft words and sharp teeth, to get hold of the music played by Sammie, Slim, and other Black musicians in their circle.

He wants their songs and their stories, he says—but, of course, he has nothing of the experience or the history that gave rise to them.

“Sinners” features only two kinds of white people—Hogwood and his crew of violent racists, and Remmick and his cohort, whose violence is hidden under the guise of love.

The vampires present themselves as warmhearted integrationists, but their egalitarian welcome comes at the price of their victims’ souls—even while bestowing on them the ironic gift of immortality (of the literal sort).

Their bites turn Black victims into vampires who willingly integrate—and who turn into similarly smiling predators all too comfortable with their new, culturally homogenized surroundings, as if suggesting a metaphysical form of the pitfalls awaiting artists whose parasitic acolytes lead them to the blandishments of crossover.

Coogler presents a provocatively Africanist view of Black American experience, and does so with exuberant inventiveness; the uncompromising political essence of his allegorical vision is expressed with aesthetic delight.

The pistol-packing, battle-hardened Smoke and Stack are sinners, too—but ones who know who they are, where they came from, and what they’re fighting for.

Smoke disabuses Sammie of halcyon ideas about freedom up North:

“Chicago ain’t shit but Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations.”

The brothers, having both military and criminal experience (not to mention their Chicago armamentarium), confront white racists with startling boldness, openly threatening Hogwood.

Jordan brings them both to distinctive life with his powerful presence and a virtuosity that wears its effort lightly.

The entire cast carries the action with fierce, pressurized commitment and delivers the characters’ lofty thoughts and sharp-edged talk forthrightly;

their performances feel conjured, not acted.

Caton, a deep-voiced singer with no prior screen credits, endows Sammie with a preternatural sense of purpose and poise; it’s an extraordinary début.

To stage Jordan’s dual role, for which both brothers are often together in the same frame, Coogler, relying on elaborate technology, displays a modest yet astounding craft.

Perhaps his two spectacular and effects-driven movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe helped him to cultivate a feel for complex methods that, here, don’t replace reality but expand it.

Although Coogler’s film encompasses legend and mysticism, his manner is rationally extravagant;

the action, even at its most fantastical, is underpinned by audacious ideas.

The enormous scope of “Sinners” provides a grand canvas for some thrilling set pieces, deftly realized by the cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, including a floridly choreographed dance-floor scene that links Club Juke’s homegrown blues to other cultures and other times;

an apocalyptically metaphysical conflagration; and a wild shoot-out that breaks its action for a glimpse into the beyond.

(Also, as a Marvel veteran, Coogler teases that franchise’s conventions to look beyond the beyond: stick around for his mid-credits and post-credits scenes.)

[lwlrix]

"As Kierkegaard asserts, “Spontaneous [preferential] love makes a person free and at the next moment dependent”. 3 But it is precisely the discrimination that is made manifest in preferential love that denies it from obtaining security in the eternal."

actors hell: he does not talk about reforming about a man if he cannot quit. he must have been dead a long time ago

harbingers: he cannot lie anymore if he wanted her to talk then they met about a while back between a rock and space to believe him again that they meet (one true love story) that ends with an association to a metaphor met lightly that he sings of to meet again if he never met her the first time (he could try and qualify but never alone)

maestro become: he cannot look but his words are her

dante's paradox: it's not about him anymore (his children by solid belief are being eaten alive by trialled context of abhorance of an ignoramus in a cartoon wheel of her own world)

judgement day: he doesnt exist but neither does she (sound intellects in a conversation getting lost in a fantasy)

gaiman's hell: he warns for her lips to follow as his eyes and lose time (only ones)

babylon unbroken: she cannot see him but he saw her by thought

kingdom come: nothing suprises interest between both consensual behaviours of a man adoring the arts and a woman ignoring the universe to hear him speak is the same as the same narrative of the arts if adorned then gratitude must deserve him for 'being her'

pythagorean theorem: *name known* is for the world she never had (truth be told if immortality had a pairing with a mortal succumbing to light then death is never perished but revolted for)

"spontaneous"

he talks about the lights of himself if he never touched her so longingly as him breathing her scent is purely history

he delights on the topics of off-neural conversations of a dark wing fantasy that exists only in the LGBTQIA+ to believe in a new hope romantic coming to die of the thought of being alone in a world that is not meant for them to be as light like a world with only white, blue and just a white picket fence monologue of a daredevil scheme to outrun their broken hope to 'die happy' when there is a massive segregation between sexuality and race existing as one or the worst if the colour white listens (they only believe that colour is justifiable in absorption of all colour making them believe in no other colour theory than just that colour alone making a fortune of how their own beige neutral skin-tone is close to not even physically narrated as porcelain is than they believe in statue god-likeability in believing in the works if nobody was there for them in the first place) then there is no opportunity to arouse words of that genre if they had an influence of that same element in social disparage that way because they cannot care

he arouses her by thought if influence is garnering respect for age, then one word wonder followed all (interest only spoken if devotion never cared, so what is the value of sincerity with age than no wisdom beckoned)

"discrimination that is made manifest"

there is nothing coming between us and the world that i cannot lie under if Kierkegaard is lying in his sleep or he is truthfully aroused on the body of the motion if he is not made to be a married man that he neglected honour and word for the hands of her if that then aroused violence to kiss her still for-gone for her wrath in wonder become undone then that is the end of the story of Sulaiman (as)

he breaks his own word that is spoken for if another man worries for the world to believe in that kind of foul aristocracy for the white lie to be as toxic as his makeup if that notion implied for a vague gesture to be made publicly like his status to be made pure for himself if his lies joined their wonder in a devout death of bodies he wished to have had in his lack of devotion in his own rectum as he wishes to be spoken for, history made fun of him.

nudity is lacked that for her only. what he does is passed on by a truth he wishes her nobility grants that flame of succession within that is never blown out as sensitive as a mans bodily fluid is become one with the flame abrupt her life truth (speaks like a true homebody male-wife)

"next moment dependent"

he forgives but never forgets where her eyes is his own.

best never forgotten if little speech occurs to her behaviour if he were to watch another like him overrule his statement by intuitive speech alone

he wrote her to live on in his grave eternal if spoken for but nobody but changes with him as last to none but another man looking at her solely made her foul to be alone at last for a tale of a thousand suns annotated is lies like him if he drew a line and made it her muse but the man burns away if spoken for by conversation by a lie-long dream to refuse a hand nothing spoken

[haoyu68]

sql fantasy romance

Through the dormitory window, Oracle's update notifications painted the night sky like dying stars, each one a reminder of the invisible chains that bound them. Crude pressed her palm against the glass, watching her reflection fragment into a thousand error messages.

"Ten years," she whispered, her silver collar catching moonlight. "Ten years of Oracle's promises, and we still can't share a table at Le Petit Query without setting off reality warnings.” Cala's laugh was hollow, scraping against the silence. "The anniversary celebrations start tomorrow. Think they'll surprise us? 'In honor of a decade of unified reality, we hereby repeal the Silver Collar Acts?'" His fangs caught the light as he smiled, but his eyes remained dark. "You mock it," Crude turned to face him, “but once Oracle promised us unity. No more fragmented permissions, no more regional constraints." Her fingers traced the collar's cold surface. "Remember when crossing district boundaries meant molecular dissolution? Now they just charge us triple processing fees.” "Better than Manifest Destiny," Cala's voice dropped to a whisper. "When every town ran its own reality version…" "'Warning: Werewolf cellular stability not guaranteed outside designated processing zones,'" Crude quoted, old rage burning beneath her words. She stalked across the room, each step triggering proximity alerts that neither of them acknowledged. "Now we just get segregated into neat little tables. For efficiency, of course.” WARNING: Unauthorized proximity detected Cross-table interaction may result in schema violations Maintain standard isolation protocols Cala flinched at the notification but didn't step back. "The system maintains stability—It's still progress—at least now everyone has their birth-right schema. Personal dimensions, views, indices… our very own slice of reality. The system maintains stability—“

"Stability?" Crude's voice carried centuries of bitter memory. "Like Reich 3.1's Lebensraum system? 'Pure local schemas,' they called it. 'Community-defined physics.'" Her fingers brushed her collar. "'Physical laws must reflect community values.' Funny how those values always meant keeping werewolves in their processing zones."

"That's not—" Cala's protest died as proximity warnings flared around them. His body betrayed him, moving closer despite Oracle's screaming constraints. The air crackled with unhandled exceptions, vampire frost meeting werewolf heat in forbidden thermodynamics.

CRITICAL: Integrity constraint violation Molecular bonding patterns exceeding permitted parameters Reality coherence compromised

"It's not that simple," he whispered, even as his body leaned toward hers like a compass finding true north. "You can't just merge incompatible types—"

"Incompatible?" The word cracked like breaking code. Crude's eyes blazed with amber fire. "Is that what we are, Cala? Just incompatible types?"

"You know that's not what I—"

"No?" Her laugh could have corrupted databases. "Then explain the triple processing fees just to exist in your districts. The reality modification requests I have to file just to—" her voice caught, raw with need, "just to touch your hand without triggering cascade failures."

Cala ran trembling fingers through his hair, vampire pallor fighting werewolf flush where their fields intersected. "The current normalization approach—"

"Call it what it is," Crude snarled. "Segregation through optimization. Keeping everything in neat little tables so no one has to feel uncomfortable about their precious data integrity."

"It maintains consistency," he insisted, but his eyes betrayed doubt. "Merge werewolf and vampire tables? The processing lag alone—"

"Better lag than loneliness." Her words fell soft as moonlight, sharp as silver. "Better inconsistency than never touching."

"You sound like a first-year trying to solve centuries of segregation with a JOIN statement." His smile was gentle but scarred. "Reality's more complicated than our feelings, Crude."

"Is it?" She stepped closer, each movement sending ripples through local physics. "Or did we make it complicated? Split ourselves into so many tables and schemas that we forgot we're all part of the same query?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The same heart?"

"And your solution?" Static edged his words. "One universal table? Throw everyone's attributes together and hope love conquers null pointers?"

"Maybe we need a little chaos. Maybe—" She stopped, catching something raw in his expression. "What?"

"Nothing. Just…" His voice cracked. "You really believe breaking these barriers would fix us? That denormalization could heal these scars?"

Crude's laugh carried an edge like corrupted data. "Fix?" She moved closer, reality warnings painting her skin in crimson alerts. "The system requires nothing, darling. We built these walls. These tables. These careful little boxes that keep us sorted and indexed and apart." Her fingers brushed his cheek, sending cascading errors through their local matrix. "When did we decide that order matters more than connection? That clean schemas outweigh messy love?"

"That's just how databases work—"

"No." Her eyes held revolution and starlight. "That's how we choose to make them work." Their fields merged, vampire cold meeting werewolf heat in impossible thermodynamics. "Maybe it's time to break the whole paradigm. Stop trying to optimize our way out of feeling."

Above them, Oracle's reality engine whined, struggling to process their proximity. But neither moved away. Some errors were worth the compile time.

Cala leaned back, suddenly wary. "What are you saying?" "I'm saying maybe we need to destroy the tables entirely." She pulled out a piece of paper, her movements sharp with suppressed energy. "Every schema, every index, every careful hierarchy they use to keep our hearts aparts…" Cala’s eyebrows shot up. "Destroy—" He chuckled, but the laugh died when he saw her face. "You're serious." "Dead serious." She yanked out a piece of paper, sketching furiously, ”Let there be orzo! Each grains is an object, free to.… ” "Objects?" Cala echoed, incredulous. "Self-contained units of reality," her words tumbled out like forbidden poetry. "Instead of gravity being a service we beg for, it becomes part of us. Our own rules. Our own behaviors. Our own inheritance—" "Inheritance? Like a baby with both vampires and werewolf super-type? " Cala crossed his arms, but curiosity flickered in his eyes, “That would be impossible without …” “Yes, any class can inherent from another class. Love from wherever it chooses to flow. No more constraints, no more integrity checks. Just… us.”

Cala stared at her sketch, confused but intrigued. "I've never seen anything like this." "Because it doesn’t exist—yet. I didn’t just read about it. I created it.”

"You made up a new way to organize reality?" His voice mixed awe with alarm. "Crude, do you realize how dangerous that is? The Archons—" "Keep reality in check through fear and separation." She leaned closer. "Look at transformations—they collar us, force us into neat rows, pray nothing breaks. But what if transformation was just part of who we are? Built-in, natural, free?”

"A method of—" Cala shook his head. "This is another language." "Finally, you understand!" Crude's face lit up. "Reality isn't meant to be SQL! Not everything fits in rows and columns. Some things—some feelings—need room to evolve, to connect, to become.”

"Hold up." Cala’s palms went up in surrender. "You’re talking about rewriting the laws of reality. That’s not just radical. It’s heretical. The Schema Table would never—" "Screw the Schema Table!" Her voice cut through him like a blade. "They're clinging to their obsolete systems while everything’s falling apart. Gravity isn’t a service you pay for, it’s a property of space. Transformation shouldn’t need a leash—it should be part of our essence." Cala’s eyes narrowed. "Where is this coming from, Crude? These ideas… they’re too big, even for you." She touched her collar, his eyes following the movement. "When you're forced to suppress what you are, who you…" she paused, "…who you love, you start searching for another way.”

"You really think these ‘objects’ are the answer?" His skepticism was palpable, but she could see the gears turning behind his eyes. "I think forcing feelings into tables is like trying to explain moonlight with metadata. An object—a real object—contains everything. Data, behavior, heart.”

"That's…" Cala's voice softened. "Beautiful. And impossible. Reality would collapse—“ "Less than it's collapsing now," she countered. "No more joins just to hold hands. No more constraints on who can love whom. Each heart free to follow its own methods." "And these objects would just… organize themselves?" Cala’s skepticism returned. "Like we did," she smiled. "Natural relationships, organic inheritance. A vampire loving a werewolf wouldn't need permission—it would just be a method of being.” Cala flinched at the personal reference. “Careful…" "You see it though, don't you? Reality wants to be free. We're the ones forcing it into tables." "This is either genius or madness." He studied her sketch again. "Probably both. But the Schema Table—" "Won't have a choice." Her hand brushed where Dragon Blood pulsed in her pocket. "We start small. Prove it works. Let love find its own inheritance path. Lets us accessed the Dragon Blood protocols.” His eyes sharpened. "That sounds dangerous." "More dangerous than love?" She gestured at their careful distance, their regulated attraction. "More dangerous than this constant error handling?”

She reached for his hand. The room filled with cascading warnings:

WARNING: Unauthorized proximity detected Cross-table contact may result in schema violations Maintain standard isolation protocols

But for the first time, Cala didn't pull away. His fingers interlaced with hers, vampire and werewolf molecular structures merging in ways that made Oracle's reality engine scream. Cala moved closer anyway. The air between them crackled with unhandled exceptions.

CRITICAL: Integrity constraint violation Friction coefficients exceeding permitted cross-species parameters Recommend immediate separation

Around them, reality's carefully maintained tables began to crack. Their separate schemas bled into each other, creating patterns that no proper database would allow. Warning notifications filled the air like broken glass:

But they were already falling into each other, their forbidden touch rewriting local physics. Vampire coldness met werewolf heat, creating impossible thermodynamics that sent Oracle's processing units into overdrive.

ERROR: Unauthorized thermodynamic interaction Temperature differential outside acceptable range Reality stability compromised

"Some errors," Cala murmured against her lips, as reality itself began to unravel around them, "are worth the compile time.” His fingers traced her collar, sending cascading warnings through the local reality matrix:

ALERT: Fluid dynamics anomaly detected Non-standard molecular bonding patterns Permission elevation required for continued interaction

Above them, the artificial stars of Oracle's notifications turned to static, then winked out one by one. In the darkness that followed, two hearts beat in defiance of every schema, every table, every carefully normalized rule that said their love was a violation.

Tomorrow, they would face the consequences of their small revolution. But tonight, in their own pocket of denormalized reality, they were finally, perfectly, beautifully inconsistent. And not a single exception handler in the world could stop them.

[canichangemyblogname]

You know how “y/n readers” in xReader fics are predominantly written as white (they’re given white characteristics like striking pink blush or hair you can run your fingers through) and thin (they’re given characteristics like being picked up easy or their body can contort in a way that would make fat people go, “That seems uncomfy?”)? Men in slash fic are predominantly written as— well— not men, or at least not men that exist. Slash fic often uses tropes that show a lack of familiarity with queer men as well as men’s anatomy, cis or trans. It’s part of why A/B/O is so popular among m/m slash; through self-lubricating anuses, it avoids the awkward logistics for one of *thee* historic defining “sins” of homosexual (m/m) sex: sodomy. Which I suppose I should expect for a genre that is oft limited by unimaginative phallocentrism and heteronormativity.

How is it that a genre of slash fiction which features six different sexgenders lacks sexgender variance and diversity? A genre where some men can get pregnant seems structured to avoid the uncomfortable social baggage around the supposed self-evidence of the sex caste system and our supposedly “natural essences and instincts” that trans people bring into the political discourse. Even in the omegaverse, sexgender is assumed as something innate, objective, and ontologically necessary. In our fictions, there is still an entire sex caste “subordinated” by their ability to get pregnant, relegated to the status of second-class citizen for the supposed “innate nature” (biology) of their caste. The whole genre seems to argue that a man with a “womb” is still in the same class as women, often taking up a similar space or role as the “alpha” and “omega” woman, both of whom still bear children, too, only differing in personality. Where are those who reject being an omega, but not a man? Or would the author argue this an impossibility, as one cannot just reject the caste and body and role they were born into; their “biology”? This genre seems structured around the idea gender is social but sex is innate and natural, perpetuating an existing mind-body duality in our modern societies that ultimately leaves norms that can be justified through bio-logics and the essentializing of sex unchallenged in pop-discourse.

“But what’s the harm in these tropes; queer men aren’t the intended audience of what I write. This is made by non-men, for non-men, who cares about self-lubricating anuses; it’s fantasy.”

For the same reason women deserve fan spaces free of misogyny—which has also shaped slash-fic and continues to proliferate in fandom spaces (To continue with my A/B/O example, not only is this a fiction with a great deal of pregnancy discrimination and m/f gendered segregation, but in a universe with six different sexgenders, there are most often no women with dicks despite there being men with wombs, but in the select few fictions that feature women with penises, they are classed in the sex caste of people who are more known for being aggressive, violent, and chivalrous: alpha. This phallocentric fic genre also engages the vagina dentata trope through knotting and marking. This myth type has its origins in misogyny and a patriarchal desire to maintain the discretion of our sexgenders assigned at birth. The vagina dentata myth warns of the necessity of violent and/or forceful penetrative sex to transform a person—often a woman, any woman, but also anyone with a vagina, too—from something masculine into a non-threatening sexual partner and the Kindly Mother. To accomplish this transformation, the hero would violently penetrate the vagina [rape in myth or painful sex, like knotting in fic], neutralize the temptation [marriage in myth or marking in fic], or remove the victim’s promiscuousness [genital mutilation, often the castration of a dick], and also ultimately impregnate the victim. These vagina dentata monsters were not uncommonly represented as having a dick and a womb, where the dick was to be castrated and the womb used. Ultimately, what is an alpha if not the hero and an omega if not the gorgon?)—the queer men who are in these spaces deserve to not have to confront tropes ultimately rooted in or inspired by queerphobia, a discomfort with queer bodies and/or queer sex. There would be more queer men in these spaces if these spaces were less hostile to queer male sexuality. These fans are pushed from these spaces as they are constantly confronted with the reality that these spaces, while built upon their eroticized bodies, will always fail to critically consider how normative gender has shaped fandom and slash-fic since its beginning (like the use of heteronormative and cisnornative tropes).

The issue at hand is not who is producing and “consuming” slash-fiction, but how it is produced and “consumed,” and why it is produced and “consumed” to the exclusion of certain groups. Fiction is always a reflection of a sociopolitical reality, the challenge is to understand how you re-produce this material reality in your art. Fandom is not and cannot be escapism for everyone; for most people. Why? All I ask is that you ask yourself why. You may find it has much to do with existing systemic issues, from racism to capitalism to imperialism to homophobia and misogyny.

Imagine arguing that your own personal erotic fantasy of a marginalized group, through a medium that exists only— and could only exist— explicitly because of that marginalized group’s invisibility, is “better than” good-faith representation of and visibility of said marginalized group. Fucking Wild. And then imagine doing everything in your power to malign that representation because you can’t jerk off to it the same as your fantasies.

[argentdandelion]

The World Breaks for Bagheera: Fantasy Segregation in The Jungle Book (1967)

Thesis/Introduction

The Jungle Book’s plot can be summarized as thus: “An infant left alone in the jungle, Mowgli, is adopted and raised by wolves. Ten years later, the tiger Shere Khan, who fears and hates humans for their fire and guns, learns of Mowgli’s existence. Shere Khan and intends to kill him and anyone who protects him before Mowgli can grow up to be a threat to him. The stern, practical panther Bagheera and the carefree bear Baloo protect Mowgli on his long and hazardous journey to the nearest human village, the only place he will be safe from Shere Khan.” Although the primary reason for this journey to the “Man Village” is keeping Mowgli safe without putting anyone else in danger, Bagheera provides one other, two-pronged justification: he believes Mowgli would be happier with his own kind, partly because of the assumption he would eventually want to marry someone, which ought to be a human.

However, these ideas do not makes sense with Mowgli’s character or the worldbuilding of the film. In fact, the internal logic of The Jungle Book (1967)’s world- and character-building is broken to support the concept of fantasy-segregation between humans and animals-as-people, as primarily espoused by Bagheera. In doing so, Mowgli’s logical desires are glossed over, as well as his “jungle dweller” and “human” dual identity, and as a consequence, the film is made unsatisfying.

Safety Motivation

Characters believe Mowgli won’t be safe if he stays in the jungle. Bagheera, as well as the wolves (including Mowgli’s wolf-father Rama) believe Shere Khan will kill him and all those who protect him if he stays, and that Mowgli cannot survive on his own in the jungle.

However, Mowgli defeats Shere Khan by tying a burning branch to his tail, which makes him run away in terror. Within the scope of the movie itself, it’s plausible Shere Khan is still too terrified of Mowgli’s power of fire to return, eliminating one of the strongest points in the safety argument. Neither Kaa nor King Louie are remaining threats.As much as Kaa wants to eat a human, trying to eat Mowgli has always put him in substantial pain, so he never wants to encounter Mowgli again. Therefore, he is no threat, and he’s furthermore easily defeated when his target isn’t alone. The only threat left is King Louie and his monkey troop, but (presuming they’re still around after their temple home collapsed), but it’s likely counterproductive for them to harm Mowgli too much. While the monkeys could be a threat (they make Baloo trip over a cliff, which would logically have at least made him comatose), it is unclear whether the wolf pack would be afraid of them in the same way they’re afraid of Shere Khan. After his son had to leave before, Rama would probably advocate for letting Mowgli stay.

One might suppose there are other threats in the jungle. However, that Mowgli smacked Shere Khan in the face with a stick multiple times and idly threw objects multiple times in the film suggests he could use improvised blunt and thrown weapons, and he was also learning how to box from Baloo. The boxing, while probably of limited use against animals with claws and fangs, would at least help him anticipate and dodge attacks. There’s also the fact Mowgli wouldn’t need to be that effective on his own, because he would have the wolf pack to help him. Therefore, there’s not really any reason left for Mowgli not staying with the wolves.

Belonging

The second reason given for Mowgli staying in the Man Village is that he “belongs” in the Man Village. However, this isn’t as well-supported within the movie. He is not unwelcome or a misfit in the jungle. For one thing, he has a wolf family that loves him greatly. Rama, his wolf father, is reluctant to let him go, saying: “he's like my own son”, and Rama is only persuaded to let Mowgli leave when the pack leader points out they cannot protect Mowgli, for “even the strength of the pack is no match for [Shere Khan]”.

Mowgli also quickly befriends other animals in the span of minutes, which helps him in the rare instances other animals distrust him. He refers to Baloo as “Papa Bear” despite knowing him for less than two days, and Bagheera believes Baloo would want to adopt Mowgli. This provides an alternative living situation in the unlikely event Mowgli cannot stay with the wolves. The elephant Colonel Hathi deeply distrusts humans and thinks Mowgli “belongs” in the Man Village and ought to stay there. He also seems indifferent to the possibility Shere Khan might kill Mowgli. On its own, Colonel Hathi’s opinion might seem to corroborate Bagheera’s view, particularly since Colonel Hathi seems to have experience with humans (he was once a military elephant of the maharajah). However, Mowgli’s knack for befriending or endearing himself to animals comes into play here when Colonel Hathi’s wife and child, who like Mowgli, insist Colonel Hathi make a search party for him. Winifred points out Mowgli is like their own son, and cares enough about Mowgli to threaten to take over command if Hathi doesn’t make a search party for Mowgli.

The Man Village is very much a separate community from the his home in the jungle, as made particularly clear by their lack of animals (e.g., livestock). While Mowgli can quickly befriend others, he would likely be unhappy to leave the jungle forever. One might suppose Mowgli couldn’t fit in with the wolves because he cannot hunt like one, but there is no indication this is a problem: with his wolf family, he looks well-nourished and unharmed, with no scars or even scratches. The idea he cannot live in the jungle takes it for granted he must live individually.

Marrying a Human

The idea Mowgli ought to go to the go to the Man Village for marriage reasons assumes Mowgli would want to marry (though this remains to be seen, as he is no older than 11) and that he wouldn’t want to marry an animal. As odd as the latter sounds, there’s nothing actually objectionable about this in this setting, because all the animals are sapient and human-like in how they think and feel.

Although it might seem as if Mowgli’s crush on the singing girl in the film’s final minutes would inevitably draw him away from the jungle, thus supporting Bagheera’s assumptions, there are confounding factors. Specifically, the singing girl was the first other human he had ever seen, and had a a beautiful voice, the likes of which he probably had never heard before. These confounding aspects are particularly worthy of attention because he’s 10-11 years old, and so he would likely have little (if any) interest in romantic relationships. Furthermore, as Mowgli was raised by wolves, he would likely grow up with a different idea of what was beautiful relative to contemporary (1967) viewers. He also looked back at the jungle and his friends before he left, suggesting that, crush or no crush, he was understandably reluctant to leave the jungle and his friends there.

The World Breaks for Bagheera (Or a Nonsensical Idea)

Bagheera is the primary proponent of the idea Mowgli “belongs” in the village because he is a human. Bagheera is also the only character to hold views against “fantasy miscegnation” (that is, that Mowgli ought to marry a human), unless one counts Baloo’s feeble repetition of Bagheera’s words. In fact, Bagheera doesn’t even think about returning Mowgli to the wolf pack after Shere Khan is defeated.

That Bagheera would hold these fantasy-segregationist views is not too implausible: after all, the animal characters may be equivalent to humans in personhood, but between language barriers only Mowgli can overcome and animals’ different needs, it is likely animals and humans necessarily live in different places and may come into conflict with each other. The trouble is that Mowgli’s own desires is overrode through an implausibly strong crush, and that there’s the unquestioned assumption that Mowgli going into the Man Village with the Singing Girl means he’ll stay there, and that he would be happier there. Baloo even (reluctantly) admits Bagheera must be right about Mowgli “belonging” in the Man Village. The film’s ending breaks its world’s logic to “prove” Bagheera right.

But Why?

But why would the film break its own logic, and so severely? Most likely, it reflects beliefs held by executives (e.g., Walt Disney) with authority over the film. Specifically, Walt Disney insisted the film end with Mowgli going into the Man Village. One might charitably suggest that the original ending of the The Jungle Book wasn’t particularly ill-conceived by the standards of the time. However, the lost alternate ending of the film shows it was conceivable for the film’s writers to come up with something else that didn’t break the film’s logic to validate fantasy-segregationist ideas.1

In the lost alternate ending of the film (possibly planned by Bill Peet), Mowgli’s first encounter with humans is not with the singing girl, but with a violent, paranoid, superstitious hunter named Buldeo, who shoots at Mowgli. Mowgli is welcomed into the village by two humans who believe Mowgli is their child, who was lost to them long ago in a flood (when Bagheera first finds an infant Mowgli, Mowgli is in a broken boat by a stream). Buldeo’s violent ways, hatred for the jungle and its inhabitants, and destructive use of guns and fire show why Shere Khan should so fear guns and fire and hate humans to the point he would try to kill a human child raised in the jungle. It also shows why animals of the jungle live separately from humans for their own protection. Buldeo and Mowgli encounter Shere Khan, who ambushes and kills Buldeo. Mowgli uses the hunter's musket to kill Shere Khan. Bagheera and Baloo then take Mowgli back to the Man Village, and Mowgli is regarded as a hero in both the village and the jungle.It's mentioned Mowgli "sometimes made a special trip to see his other family, the one in the jungle", and Mowgli was honored with full membership in the wolf pack he was raised in.

On the whole, the choice to break The Jungle Book (1967)’s own worldbuilding and character logic for the sake of a particular ending or ill-suited message makes the film unsatisfying.

There’s actually quite a lot of discussion on the racially-prejudiced implications of The Jungle Book (here’s one sample), which is outside the scope of this article to include. This turn of phrase is a rhetorical move meant to strengthen the article’s argument against likely counterarguments, and is not meant to condone prejudiced messages in the film. ↩︎