#i think i have to start some vincent propaganda now

[tatsumisheep3]

OH MY GOD ADRIAN IS CATCHING UP IN THE MELLIOT BRACKET??

THIS IS TERRIFYING

[hotvintagepoll]

Welcome to the HOT AND VINTAGE MOVIE STARS bracket! we are currently voting on the HOTTEST and VINTAGEST male movie stars from 1910-1970. (we will do the ladies next.) Submissions for hot vintage men are now closed, but we are accepting propaganda for those already in the bracket.

Round 3 of the Hot & Vintage Men Tournament will be posted Saturday, January 20th, with some spillover to Sunday, and will last a week. All the round 3 polls can be found and voted on under the tag #round 3. All polls—including previous rounds, the now-finished shadow bracket of hot men who didn’t pass round 1, plus fun mini polls—can be found in the #hotvintagepoll tag. Every poll in the Hot & Vintage Men Tournament is tagged with the hot man in it if you need to search for a hot man in particular.

Between rounds—so any point up to the night of Thursday the 18th—any propaganda for a round 3 contestant sent to my asks may be added to the poll descriptions. I accept video links, photos, and text propaganda, but not gifs at this stage (I can’t copy them into the posts without problems). Once rounds start, any propaganda sent in is posted as its own separate post, searchable under the hot man's tag.

FAQs:

"Where is [my favorite hot man]?" It depends. Have you checked all the polls in the tag? Have you done a tag search for him? If you still haven't found him, either nobody submitted him or he did not fit the criteria of being a movie man from 1910-1970.

"Can I still submit hot men?" No, the submission window has closed. Please do not send in men you wish had made it into the bracket. I can't do anything with those asks and they just make me sad.

"I have hot women to submit!" Amazing! I've posted the submission form for that bracket. Asks submitting ladies don't count—you need to wait until the submission form. DO NOT tag me in hot lady propaganda yet! Do not send any to my asks! Anything that's not put in the submission form doesn't count at this stage.

"I have additional propaganda for the hot men!" Great! Send me an ask or reblog the poll and add your propaganda to it. I don't boost all the propaganda I see or receive, but I try to boost the best of the best.

If you're submitting propaganda for your hot man, I don't accept propaganda that's from beyond the end of this tournament's era (ie don't send me pics of them in the 70s onwards). I also don't accept them performing in TV shows unless it's clearly a cameo where they're playing themselves.

I don't post or boost negative propaganda about any hot man. If you really hate that a certain hot man is winning, send me positive propaganda for their hot opponent. If you think a hot man shouldn't even be included in the bracket because of scummy things they did in their lifetime, please read my take on it here.

If I see repetitive, trolling, and/or bigoted remarks in the comments, I may block you from this bracket. If you want to point out a hot man's flaws or misdemeanors, that's fine, but if I see consistent bad-faith trolling, you will be blocked.

"My FAQ isn't on here :(" send me an ask! I love hearing from you guys—just please check these basics first.

"WHERE ARE THE HOT MEN. I want to see all the hot men competing in one place!!" You can find all the round 1 matchups here (thank you @markwatnae!), and everyone who made it to round 3 below the cut. Thank you for being here! Enjoy the tournament.

Round 3 Hot Vintage Men:

Marlon Brando

Anthony Perkins

James Dean

Omar Sharif

James Shigeta

Sidney Poitier

Jeremy Brett

Cary Grant

Buster Keaton

Gregory Peck

Paul Robeson

Sessue Hayakawa

Michael Redgrave

Vincent Price

Gary Cooper

Conrad Veidt

Ronald Colman

Rock Hudson

Basil Rathbone

Laurence Olivier

Toshiro Mifune

Christopher Plummer

Harry Belafonte

Johnny Weismuller

James Stewart

Gene Kelly

Peter Falk

Clark Gable

Fernando Lamas

Errol Flynn

Tyrone Power

Humphrey Bogart

[green-mug-tomato-juice]

finished watching warrior nun and i think. i have thouhghts in my head

i liked season one. i thought ava was a super annoying protagonist at first, especially her internal monologue ws agonizing, but i liked the way she was forced to grow and mature and did it at her own pace. the OCS was a cool idea that wasn't fleshed out very well but i liked where they were going. also in season one the show played a lot with moral grey areas, touched on sensitive topics regarding christianity, the catholic church and it's intersection and drama with people of the sciences, and became quite critical of both the church and the science. i really liked the tendency towards agnosticism how the truth about god and the afterlife stayed a mystery in this season.

in the s1 finale ava confronts angel adriel and they have this long interesting discussion about the catholic church and how it abuses and controls people by withholding scientific evidence of the existence of god and the afterlife because it gives them the power to claim to speak through god and i was like ohmygod. wow this is so cool omg. what's gonna happen now

and then season two is just uhhhhh catholic church propaganda

the plot twist at the end of season one was awful. it felt like a plot twist just for the sake of it. basically the twist is that actually the catholic church is innocent and the bad guy in this is some playboy satan from the underground. why would vincent betray them for this cheap satan knockoff? they barely touch on his motives. cheap satan knockoff is the WORST. maybe the worst villain i've ever seen. he is just cartoonishly pure evil and completely overpowered. and then the best part is he starts like the worst religious campaign of all time and the entire world starts praising his as their no.1 daddy. the pope gets grilled on national tv and now five nuns have to save the whole world all by themselves the end

i'm just so disappointed, i thought season one was very promising. but the way the worldbuilding was advanced in season 2 just fucked it up for me and i don't know if that can be fixed. the finale wasn't completely terrible so maybe if there's a season 3 it won't be so bad. but for now i'm just mad

well at least we get gay nuns

[thomas-jefferson-miku-binder]

A while ago I made a post about the Dream SMP characters' surnames. A lot has happened since then and I felt like I should make a second updated version. You can check out the first outdated part here if you feel like it

Tommy Danger Careful Kraken Innit according to himself. Tom “Tommyinnit” Simons is also an option, tho little to no evidence supports this as canon.

Techno Blade. Was confirmed as canon during his Visiting Dream stream. Some characters have also referred to him as Mr. Blade before.

Philza Watson Minecraft.

Wilbur Soot. Pre-SMP he was Wilbur Minecraft. Soot is Sally's last name

Sally Soot.

Fundy Soot, although he signs Fun Jonatahan Micahel (yes, he wrote it like that) Vincent Georgina James Sus Dy, there’s little to no indication supporting this as canon. Still, it can’t be completely discarded.

Tuberculosis “Tubbo” Underscore according to himself. It is unknown if Tubbo altered his name to Tuberculosis “Tubbo” Underscore Beloved after his marriage.

Ranboo Underscore Beloved. Previously Ranboo My Beloved.

which makes of Michael “Michael Underscore Beloved”

Dream Was Taken

George Lore Found

Alyssa Found, since her username is alyssawasfound. Alyssa and George siblings headcanon pog? Which would result in “Alyssa Lore Found”.

Purpled Bedwars because duh

Punz Bedwars (they’re brothers, obviously)

Hannah Rose. Hannah Bedwars Rose could also be an option. This post was actually just an excuse to promote Bedwars Siblings propaganda. Depending on wether you believe it’s a found family or they’re actual siblings, Rose could still be her original surname.

Samuel “Sam” Dude. Awesamdude is a nickname, possibly an inside joke with Ponk.

Ponk By Drops. Fantasizes about becoming Ponk Dude Drops.

Jack Thunder TV Manifold. Tries to hide that he has 2 middle names at all costs and that one of them is Thunder

Bad Boy Halo

Skeppy Ahmed Boy Halo. His and Bad's relationship is really complicated, but even if they’re not married, Skeppy definitely uses Boy Halo as his surname. It’s unknown wether Bad is aware of this or not

Sapnap Halo. Was to be Sapnap HQ Halo Jacobs, but his relationship with Quackity is falling apart. Might become Sapnap Halo Jacobs.

Karl Jacobs. Was to be Karl HQ Halo Jacobs, but his relationship with Quackity is falling apart. Might become Karl Halo Jacobs.

Alex Quackity HQ. Was to be Alex Quackity HQ Halo Jacobs. Changed his name to simply Alex Quackity to disassociate himself completely from his relationship with Karl and Sapnap. Previously Alex Quackity HQ Schlatt.

Connor Eats Pants

As of now, Charlie doesn’t really have a name—let alone a surname. His most used nicknames are Meat, Slime, Slimeboy and Buddy.

Niki Nihachu.

Eret Alastair. Wants to change it to Eret Soot to honor Wilbur, Ghostbur and Fundy, but is afraid of being disrespectful

Antfrost Is Cake. If I wrote anything other than this I feel like Velvet would hunt me down and murder me

Callahan. No one knows his full name because my man doesn’t talk. Headcanon that since he doesn’t speak, George just started calling him Callahan out of the sudden and it stuck

Liam “Hbomb94” Heneghan. He wants to appear younger than he actually is, so that’s why his nickname has the supposed year he was born in. Was disappointed to find out people still think 27 is old.

Icky Vickey Vikk Star.

Lazar Gingerbread Beam

Johnathan Jay Schlatt. Never told anyone about his first name because haha Johnathan you’re banging my daughter.

Captain Puffy Underscore.

Michelle Puffy Underscore.

Foolish Underscore Gamers.

Foolish Underscore Gamers Jr.

Enjoyers of the Tubbo is Puffy’s son headcanon, here’s some food: Foolish and Tubbo both have underscore in their names. You decide what to do with this information

Michael Chill. Fantasizes about becoming Michael Was Taken.

[survivors-of-barovia]

DM session recaps: Krezk pt.2

The shadows are gathering around Krezkov's house; at the same time, Lady Wachter arrived to Krezk with her husband's corpse for resurrection and demands to be let in. Party quickly checks on Ilya to make sure he is safe, finds him visibly unwell but at least not a murderous monster (yet). Edena turns on her See Invisibility and meets a friendly ghost of Dmitry's elderly mother, who reminds her that nobody should be hungry once the winter comes. Edena tells her about the shadows, and the ghost gets visibly worried, telling her that hungry shadows are dangerous but can be repelled with salt. Party sends their familiars to make a salt barrier around the house and goes to meet Lady Wachter.

Her carriage is let into Krezk, party notices a necromantic aura around it and undead auras from her guards and the coachman. Wachter confesses that they are skeletons and "not dangerous at all", but keeps silent about Nikolai (party still doesn't know about her keeping his body). They go inside and try to have a nice polite chat over a cup of tea, discussing recent events in Vallaki and trying to ignore the growing cold and screaming faces behind the frosty windows. Lady Wachter introduces some new sidequests for their eventual return to Vallaki: a series of murders and a strange deadly pox coming from the bogs of Berez. Vincent reads his poetry to lighten the mood; Lady Wachter is delighted and tells him she's going to commission some propaganda poetry from him, and possibly even a stage play!

Finally, she notices the elephant in the room, and someone has to go "ah, yes, and we are also surrounded by an army of hungry ghosts from all the people who died of starvation in Krezk, but isn't this a normal thing in Barovia? We didn't think it was worth mentioning"

Lady Wachter starts panicking about the safety of her carriage; party looks outside through their familiars and finds out that the shadows are starting to form a one big chunky shadow swarm to rip through the barrier. Party gets ready for the fight. and the shadow swarm eventually does just that, with hundreds of ghostly hands pulling out of the walls.

Alana Krezkova starts panicking as well and goes "oh yeah also I AM A WEREWOLF and my aunt is also a werewolf and whole Krezk is overtaken by werewolves, I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU GUYS HAVEN'T MENTIONED IT TO LADY WACHTER YET since this is kind of a crucial information??" and then shifts into a wolf form, ready to protect her brother.

Swarm of shadows flies through the room straight to the basement, doing tons of necrotic damage on its way and almost killing Illyria. Lady Arisa gets hit by its fear effect, flees to the basement. Werewolf bites prove to be not very effective. Just as the swarm phases through the floor and almost reaches Ilya (which would inevitably transform him into a horrific hungry monster), the party finally manages to take it down, using a combination of moonbeam, endless eldritch blasts from warlocks and Lady Wachter and one well-timed Vicious Mockery. Ilya is very shaken, but safe for now.

***

Next day: Lady Wachter insists to go to the Abbey, because "yes I know you mentioned that the Abbot is crazy and dangerous but I am STILL very interested in his research and magic and I just have to meet him"

Party sends one of their familiars to Victor, asking him to hide all the dangerous magical books he found in the Abbey, and also himself since Lady Wachter PROBABLY wouldn't be happy about seeing him alive and well.

On the way there the party finally caves in and tells Lady Wachter all they know about the Abbot, including him being an angel. She is somewhat touched by their honesty, and when they try to press her further about her motives she confesses about wanting to resurrect her husband. Strangely enough, this puts their minds at ease since they realize she isn't planning anything more sinister, and they promise to help her as long as they can be sure it's safe for everyone involved. In this weirdly wholesome moment, Edena decides it's time to introduce their imp familiars to each other; so far Majesto preferred to stay invisible, but as he finally shows himself the party discovers that he is actually very polite and serious, unlike Edena's familiar Chaos who is a little dirty-mouthed asshole. Everyone loves Majesto, and Chaos starts sulking.

The party arrives to the abbey, meeting the Abbot who is delighted to present them with Vasilika's new and improved artificial face, fully constructed from modified pieces of dead people! Victor's necromantic magic helped the Abbot immensely with his work - and he says so right in front of Lady Wachter, who was NOT supposed to know about Victor. She immediately goes "ah, so you trusted this unstable teenager to stay alone with the Abbot, but not me? I see".

Party goes full damage control mode. Vincent promises to help with Vasilika's voice, and they arrange to meet in Abbot's lab this evening. Party allows Lady Wachter to have a private chat with the Abbot, and then ask her why she thinks this will work better then Ilya's ressurection.

She goes, "ah yes see I preserved his body and soul with my dark magic and kept him by my side all this time"

"Also, I brought his body with me, so we can start right away!"

...The party actually finds this very touching, and believe that since she loves her husband that much, if they help her with bringing him back she might also consider remaining their ally even when they start openly opposing Strahd.

***

Some final calm before the storm Abbot murdering.

The female part of the party has a nice Krezkian steam bath with Lady Wachter, asking her about Nikolai and their first meeting; being so close to getting him back, she's feeling very emotional and thanks the party for everything they've done for her so far. Meanwhile, Vincent offered to help the Abbot perfecting Vasilika's face, so he and Victor join him in the lab, Victor helping out with his magic skills and Vincent projecting a Minor Illusion of his artistic vision over Vasilika's face as she is being dissected. He tries to distract himself from this grisly sight talking to the Abbot about souls and the nature of love. Coincidentally, Vincent's artistic vision of Vasilika looks nothing like Ireena, but she's still beautiful, and the Abbot is pleased. At this time, Lady Wachter's husband is brought to the abbey, and the Abbot proceeds to resurrect him like it's no big deal (Lady Wachter already paid him with a part of her memories and some human remains beforehand, so it's all good). She gets all teary-eyed and asks the party to leave them alone, as resurrected and seemingly well Nicolai recuperates in the abbey. They oblige, and Vincent promises further help with Vasilika tomorrow - fully aware that tomorrow they are going to MURDER THE ABBOT. All the preparations are done - Clovin is going to poison mongrelfolk food with sleeping potions, a pack of friendly werewolves will help containing stray mongrelfolk and golems, and Victor is going to help out from the back lines with some well-placed fireballs. Abbot suspects this, of course, but considers them just a small annoyance at this point, and hopes to gain more help from Vincent before they try anything. Next session is when the fun begins!

***

Abbot is dead! I love how I can always hit my party as hard as I can, and they'll still manage to pull through and win, or at least survive. The Abbot downed 3/5 players with some homebrew AOEs I gave him, then grabbed Lady Arisa and flew off to drop her from the cliff BUT, before he could do that, they managed (while holding off the flesh golems, no less) to bring up the unconscious party members and pull off a crazy combo with Ferret turning into a giant eagle and flying up with Edena prepared to cast feather fall while Lady Arisa fighting for her life grabbing onto the Abbot to avoid being thrown down. After several rounds of a SUPER INTENSE SKY BATTLE they managed to defeat him without anyone falling down, which I honestly didn't believe was possible. After this, they burned and buried his body (with a hilariously awkward elegy from Paelias that was mostly about all the horrible things the Abbot has done), but Ferret kept his heart to sacrifice it to her fey mom. All that's left for them was to clean up after him and explore the eldritch horror torture dungeon underneath the Abbey. Should be easy, right? It was just a bit disturbing, with all the moving body parts and meaty walls and an huge eldritch flesh golem made from the Anna Krezkova (who sacrificed herself to bring back Ilya) rising from the black pit of corruption screaming about her children. The party managed to destroy the golem, recover one of the winery gems and got only a little bit corrupted in the process. The only one who got affected by this in the long run was Victor, who started accidentally disappearing into the ethereal plane sometimes - the rest, specifically Vincent and Ferret, did get to see some creepy dreams about their mothers being replaced by an eldritch entity offering dark gifts, but they rolled high to reject them and got off lightly. For now.

Also, Illyria tried to run away and Paelias begged her to stay and kissed her. The morning after, she brought him a giant mountain goat she killed and said she'll become his wife if he kills Strahd and brings her his body. Cheers for our first official NPC romance!

***

Tl;dr druid's girlfriend is now a moon goddess Long version: in my game, each of the fanes requires "3 hearts" to cleanse them: the heart of a powerful enemy sacrificed at the altar, the winery gem (containing a part of the goddesses' soul) and the willing and faithful heart of someone who will become a new vessel for the reborn goddess. The potential vessel will have to go through a trial and then will either die or gain awesome powers, but also responsibilities.

So, their plan for the mountain fane was to do the ritual with Alana, elder Krezkov daughter, who is a new burgomistress of Krezk and also a werewolf. The party (as well as Alana) starts having second thoughts, and decides to do a "test run" for the ritual on the night before the full moon, not being sure if it requires the full moon or not.

Alana, who is very insecure about not being strong enough to lead the pack and is 100% convinced she HAS to do the trial alone without any help is... Not exactly the right person for this trial at that point. Paelias casts augury and confirms that. Everyone starts panicking.

Meanwhile, Alana's aunt Illyria is sulking nearby. Lady Arisa decides to confront her about the reasons she's not doing the ritual herself. Illyria gets mad and they start a shouting match, with Lady Arisa shit-talking her being all "you are weak and pathetic, you worshipped the Huntress your whole life and now you get scared and want someone else to do your job"

So Illyria takes the bait and goes "UGH FINE GIVE ME THE GEM, I'll stand in this dumb stone circle and will prove to you that it WILL NOT work because I'm not the right person"

...So, of course it works. The stone circle starts glowing with moonlight and the corruption getting expelled from it manifests as a shadow wolf pack that starts tearing at Illyria. Illyria, who's been a grumpy loner her whole life, would surely die; if it wasn't for the party going full nuclear POWER OF FRIENDSHIP on her for several weeks at that point, going as far as calling themselves "her pack" (not to mention her relationship with Paelias of course). So, she knows she's not alone and calls upon them. After a short but tense fight, the Huntress's spirit its reborn within her. The whole scene was awesome and very emotional, we end with Paelias rushing into the stone circle and spending all of his remaining spell slots on healing her.

Oh, and also: this session they received another letter from Strahd, saying he has "great news" for them and will await them in his castle on the night of the full moon. Which is very soon. It's time to leave Krezk and confront Strahd once again.

[unknown-lifeform]

1, 4, 9, 24, for ff7?

Thank you for the ask! I do love to rant about things lmao. I'm putting everything under a read more because I'm opinionated and I'll let people skip the post if they don't want to see salt

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?*

Mm. I would say for the majority of popular ships I can get where people come from. Which doesn't mean I share the ship, there's definitely ships I don't like, but I also see which interactions made the ship popular.

I think the only ones I don't get are the popular Vincent ones. Vincent had interactions with Yuffie in DoC, sure, but I just can't read them as romantic. And... big controversial here, I don't get Valenwind. Which I'm sorry about, because I have friends who are very big into it, but I just don't understand how it became so popular. It's ok in fics, I've read some fics that had it and were good, just... how did so many people pick it?

4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?*

Cloti and Clerith Cloti and Clerith oh my god I can't stand either one of them anymore. And I get why people ship them! I do! But the shippers are so toxic I can't look at these things anymore.

Like yes I guess they have some chemistry but also it's extremely lukewarm for both ships. It's like this by design. You have the option of going on a date with either Aerith or Tifa (or Yuffie or Barret, if you manage to get the secret combination of dialogues right), the game does give you hints of possible romance between Cloud and either of them to get you invested. But it's ambiguous hints, because the game lets you choose, and so they can't make either pairing too canon. And like at first I was neutral on both these ships, I wasn't into them but I could see the appeal.

But no, people have been arguing about which one is the One True Canon Ship of ff7 for 25 fucking years now, bringing "proof" that one ship is more canon than the other, they've carried on this ship war longer than I've been fucking alive, and when they get bored of bullying each other they go bitch at people who ship Cloud with other characters. And tbh neither side even cares about Tifa or Aerith as a character - it's all arguing about which one is the better prop for Cloud and shitting on the other, but then they go and make the girls the blandest versions of themselves imaginable.

I'm so sorry for the Cloti and Clerith shippers who aren't like that, it must suck finding good people to follow, but also seeing either ship makes me want to start biting.

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

I would say the Shinra Board - President Shinra, Hojo, Heidegger, those people. But also 90% of the fandom hates them because they are horrible people so it's not really controversial.

The saltier take I have is that Lucretia was a horrible person too. And half the fandom agrees with me, while the other half is up in harms about how she was a victim. Like, sure, at the end she was. But also this is a woman who willingly got into unethical human experimentation, fell in love with Hojo of all people because she admired his scientific dedication (to put alien DNA in babies), and let Hojo put alien DNA in her unborn fetus to see what happened. And then Hojo took the baby away from her and she was surprised by this! Like girl I'm sorry about the alien powered mental illness but you only have yourself to blame here. And DoC had the gall to try to convince us that she and Vincent had some tragic story going on when she what? Lied to him for months and then put a demon inside of him? God, how romantic.

24. Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?

Yeah, I'd totally recommend FF7 to people. The lore is very extensive, the plot may not necessarily be the most original by today's standards but it still holds up damn well, the music is to die for, and there's also open criticizing of capitalism, military propaganda, and unethical scientific approaches. Personally I also love the various sequels and prequels that make up the Compilation (although DoC is on thin fucking ice), but if one is only interested in the original game that's also a fully completed story. Which is more than I can say about a whole lot of games that ask you to have played other 364 things to understand them.

Gameplay wise, I've only played the OG so... if you like old jrpg with infinite grinding, you'll love that one. The graphics haven't aged well, although the polygon people are charming in their own way. Unfortunately idk how CC, DoC, or the Remake are when it comes to the gameplay (cries in not having any hardware that can run Remake).

[meteorstricken]

Sephiroth Week, Day 7 Prompt: Rebirth

“Assimilation”

"Let me give you one last piece of advice, Ancient. No matter what you do, it's futile. It's all part of this Planet's system. Many foreign entities from the skies fall into the Planet's life cycle unknowingly and now Jenova’s in there. So where does its soul go? Even if you try to destroy it, it will never disappear. It has merged with the Sea of Mako, drifting through every part of the Planet through the Lifestream. One day, you will all have to live as part of Jenova. Hahaha... It's only a matter of how soon that will happen."--Professor Hojo to Aerith, 'Maiden Who Travels the Planet'

~~~~

Spring

The planet's personality was changing. Spring brought forth flora in vibrant, unnatural colors--purple spiny fronds where long, gentle gold and green waves used to grow. Giantism emerged in some of the smaller creatures. A house kitten born the previous winter might be confused with one of the big, feral carnivores, because that's what it had become. Chocobo teeth were novelty for country fairs, once their keepers learned how not to get bitten. And, incidentally, once they figured out that the birds no longer craved greens. A herding dog or two was lost to that discovery.

Although the change brought fear, for the most part, people learned to live with it. Smaller villages put up fences. Hunting became a popular pastime once more, granting some of the elderly a renewed sense of purpose as they trained their grandchildren. Cuisine and medicine transformed by leaps and bounds. At times it was a struggle, but adaptation allowed everyone to continue living their normal lives for the most part.

What had brought on this change? What had so influenced the planet's idea of itself? Most--from the subsistence farmer to the W.R.O. expert reporting directly to Reeve Tuesti--believed that it was simply the growing pains of a world that had been through way too much in too little time. Jokes of planetary puberty abounded.

No one could say for sure, but there was also no evidence to the contrary. Wily though the world was, there seemed to be no deliberate villainy afoot, and the last Mako reactor had been disabled years ago.

----------------------

Summer

They were once members of Shinra-endorsed fanclub called the Silver Elite, which also served as an arm of the old company's propaganda efforts. Although long since disbanded, many remained friends, and they journeyed together to Icicle Inn that Summer to get away from the abnormal heat that had cloaked much of the world, binding it into one shared season. It was unusually warm here as well, but pleasantly so.

Under a full moon they gathered around a fire, black-cloaked and nervous. All at once, they'd felt the urge--no, the need-- to dress that way. It was comfortable, they said to one another, but they couldn't define it any further than that, and they didn't try to. A hush fell over them. One woman began to hum a directionless, unknown tune. Two more joined in with her. Then, all together, they somehow achieved a perfect, united harmony.

"Do you remember Sephiroth?" one of them spoke when they'd ended the mysterious song.

There was laughter at first. Of course everyone remembered. The only reason most of them knew one another was because Shinra had convinced them to lust after its prided SOLDIER. Not that much convincing had been needed--the man had been a living masterpiece.

"But he was more…he became more than that, didn't he?" the eldest voiced. There was something desperate and pleading in her tone, as if she was trying to remember part of the doctored tales they'd all been fed that perhaps wasn't so made up.

"If Chairwoman H was right…maybe?"

"Whatever became of her? Did anyone ever actually meet her? Who was she?"

"Probably just another company shill."

Another long, drawn out silence descended over the group. The fire snapped and crackled, and a chilly wind blew down from the Great Glacier--a rapid-melting mass that was said to have flooded the ancient ruins nearby. Small runoff streams had turned to pregnant, raging rivers. There was one they could all hear nearby, roaring as it raced out to the ocean.

"He's alive. I can feel it. We were lied to."

"He can't die. Not truly. He will always return."

Fearful glances rounded the flames. Some nature of spell had come over all of them; something far more potent than raving, pop culture-promoted thirst. What had started as a get away to remember the bad old days had turned to an impromptu cultish conclave, though not one believed they were making anything up. The words and tunes and rhythms surged through them from without--something magical and terrible.

There was no time to think twice. They had heard the call, and they'd all obeyed. What more was left to them?

"The Crisis and Solution, beginning to end to beginning again. Become now the cycle and the meaning, the life and the death, in aeternum, forever and ever," raised up an overlapping chant.

There was weeping. There was trembling. They all shouted the name. And they all threw themselves into the fire.

----------------------

Autumn

When Fall arrived, it brought with it dying, pretty leaves and a stilted harvest time--the world had not yet adjusted to living the same season all at once. Supply chains were strained, but attitudes remained upbeat. The planet was healing, everyone agreed. They had to follow its lead so that it could complete the process. For all humanity had taken, a little sacrifice for a couple of years was a small price to pay to be able to witness the planet at full strength--something only the Ancients would have last seen. To live in such a time was a privilege.

And that remained the message, even as Rufus Shinra, his Turks and W.R.O. operatives in Midgar and Junon convened over video calls in darkest hours before dawn. It had now become mercilessly clear that the planet was not acting on its own.

"Yes, degradation, like SOLDIER," Tseng confirmed. "It was first observed in the Junon area forests."

"Which life forms appear to be affected? Is it a danger to humans yet?" Reeve asked.

"Everything our people have tested has come up positive, including crops and cattle. Anything that eats has it," Rufus broke in.

Reeve crossed one leg over the other, wiped his brow, and loosened his collar. "But degradation comes directly from…" He couldn't bring himself to finish.

"Jenova cells. The late Professor Hojo's Reunion theories never accounted for something of this scale, however," Tseng supplied.

"Reunion suggests a gathering together of infected organisms. This is just…it's a take over!" Reeve exclaimed. "How do we stop it?"

Eyes darted between one another. Heads bowed. Of course, there was no stopping it now. It was something that, if they'd not been distracted with everything else over the past several years--Sephiroth's second coming, Deepground and Omega, and the sheer labor expenditure it took to try to keep society stable and rebuilding through those setbacks--should have been researched and addressed immediately following Meteorfall.

But no one knew enough. No one even knew to ask if there could be such all-consuming consequences for the SRD's environmental failures like this. It was beyond imagining.

"We don't. We stay the course," Rufus finally answered.

"Accept that adaptation is necessary, and everyone has to do their part to live with it…" Reeve said, defeated.

----------------------

Winter

Sephiroth opened his eyes. He could sense that a frigid cold had overtaken the surface world in its entirety. Mother's essence had at last permeated all things, causing the ecosystems to assimilate and the seasons to act as one. All plant life had returned its energy to the planet, and there its cycle had ended with him; one with him. He was the new living thing they were all to become.

The planet itself was a second skin for him now, one that he was gradually peeling back with each new death.

All fauna was at his fingertips to do with as he pleased--he needed only reach out. Whales, bloated and transformed beyond their bodies' functioning, beached themselves. Fish devoured one another in a feeding frenzy, each one poisoning the other. Bears that would have hibernated crawled out restless from their dens, fierce and hungry. They waded up streams to feed, restrained to the instinct that would have prepared them for the Winter months, freezing to death overly-gorged. House pets turned on their keepers, content to feed on the hands that had faithfully provided for them.

Spirit energy surged and surged into the planet's core, into him. He was rising, becoming…

Bleak despair shrouded the humans' domains as the months crept onward, and Spring failed to arrive again because he did not ordain it so. Some of them killed themselves; others relished blame and murder. Most of the time, they were inspiration enough for themselves, but that did not stop Sephiroth from amusing himself, pushing where hesitation plagued them. Riots and mini wars broke out.

A select few names, he withheld from the end until the very last. Cloud, Tifa, Nanaki, Vincent, Cid, Barret, Reeve, along with some who remained with Shinra were to see the world in its total desolation.

When that day came, he drew them together at the ocean's crimson-dyed shore and announced his presence in their minds. Yes, it was him all along. He had done this, and they'd accomplished nothing but to watch and wait. They'd allowed him to infect all things, and for a time, had taken joy in it. Now, all that was left of the surface was them, the corpse-littered ice-encrusted landscape, and its bloody waters.

As one, they fell to their knees, and he placed a weak, breathy proclamation on their frost-bitten lips--"The Crisis and Solution, beginning to end to beginning again. Become now the cycle and the meaning, the life and the death, in aeternum, forever and ever."

At last, he sent a tidal wave to crush them, and their souls were his.

----------------------

Rebirth

A dead planet spun erratically off its axis, breaking orbit from its sun, and flung itself into the depths of space. Fragments broke off from the old husk until all that was left was the green orb that had incubated inside. Brilliantly glowing, it shattered into a million gleaming shards, and a living entity full of wings and eyes--the summation of all life that had ever lived on that world-- unfurled from it.

A god was born.

[richmond-rex]

What do you think Henry VII remembers, if anything, of his other uncle Henry VI?

This is such an interesting question and something that I myself have been wondering, so thank you for providing me with the opportunity to expand my thoughts on here 🌹

We know that Henry VII only ever saw his uncle King Henry VI once during his life, when he was 13 years old. However, I’d argue King Henry must have caused quite a great impression on him, and considering Henry Tudor was old enough at that time, also a profoundly lasting one. So far young Henry Earl of Richmond had been living as a ward of his uncle Jasper’s enemies, the Herberts. By 1470 his old guardian, William Herbert, had been executed, and then, as the Earl of Warwick changed sides and brought about Henry VI’s readeption, Henry Tudor was returned to his uncle Jasper who took him to London to meet King Henry VI. That Jasper felt like acquainting his nephew with his brother denotes a special degree of closeness and advocates for his idea of family, in my opinion.

According to André, Henry VII’s court poet and self-styled regius historiographus, on 27 October 1470 Henry VI held ‘a splendid feast with the nobles and best men of the kingdom’ to commemorate his return to the throne. As the king was washing his hands, young Richmond was brought to his presence, and according to André, ‘the king prophesied that someday the boy would undertake the governance of the kingdom and would have all things under his own power.’ Polydore Vergil, a historian that began his service under Henry VII in 1506, wrote in his Three Books that in that 1470 meeting ‘the king... is reported to have said:’

“This truly, this is he unto whom both we and our adversaries must yield and give over the dominion.”

It seems not even Vergil lends much credence to this tale as expressed by his choice of words: reported to have said. As expected, this myth has largely been viewed as Tudor propaganda and indeed the episode has been immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry VI part III. In the play, King Henry VI meets a toddler Henry Richmond (then escorted by Somerset), calls him ‘England’s hope’, and says Richmond was ‘Likely in time to bless a regal throne’. Given that King Henry VI had his own son Prince Edward as his heir at the time, it seems unlikely he would ever have said such a thing. However, if anything remotely close to that happened, then I agree with Leanda de Lisle in saying that it must have been King Henry VI taking Henry Tudor to be his own son Edward, who thanks to his imprisonment in the Tower he had not seen for five years (and would not ever see again). It’s absurdly sad to think King Henry VI would confound his nephew with his son but arguably also not out of the realm of possibility. We don’t know if Henry Tudor saw his uncle King Henry again, but it’s also not unlikely that he, his mother and uncle Jasper stayed at court for the feast of All Hallows’ (1 November) and All Souls’ Day (2 November).

If King Henry VI ever made such prophecy, wittingly or not, then it must have greatly impacted on Henry Tudor. Henry VII believed to have been chosen by God to, against all odds, become king of England. He once wrote about ‘the crown which it has pleased God to give us with the victory over our enemy at our first field’. Henry Tudor was reported to be very pious—he made pilgrimages to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury every Easter, as well as frequent pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and donations to the shrine of St Vincent Ferrer in Brittany. He also founded the cult of the Breton saint St Armel in England and boosted the teachings of St Francis by his patronage of the Franciscan order. He especially favoured the Observants (the Franciscans, also known as the Greyfriars), granting them annuities for the establishment of monasteries in England and abroad. It seems he also favoured staying at religious houses when travelling or going on progress around the kingdom.

Most importantly, Henry VII held a singular devotion to the Virgin Mary and his adoption of the red rose as his personal symbol—aside from dynastic reasons—had everything to do with the religious connotations of that flower. Henry VII could have associated himself with his uncle Henry VI by adopting his antelope badge, for example, but instead, he chose the five-petal flower associated with the Virgin Mary and the Passion of Christ. The Franciscans were noted for their devotion to the Passion, and Henry VII had come in contact with the Observants during his exile in Brittany. The rose had five petals like the five wounds of Christ—St Bernard of Clairvaux once stated: “As many wounds as there are on the Saviour’s body, so many roses are there! Look at His feet and His hands; do you not see roses?” 

Forgive me for still going on a tangent about it, but Henry VII’s personal devotion to the Virgin Mary and the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception is exemplified in his Book of Hours, where a miniature shows a figure representing the king kneeling at a prayer desk before a vision of the Virgin as a baby held by her mother, St Anne (or, alternatively, The Virgin and the Child Jesus). His devotion to the Virgin was also highlighted in his rebuilding of the Lady Chapel (now Henry VII’s Chapel) at Westminster Abbey which I will return to in a moment.

I’m not sure but I think it was Vergil who reported Henry VII as having said that religion was his ‘continual refuge’ during exile. His piety has been largely attributed to the influence of his mother Margaret Beaufort, herself also a very pious woman. But given how many years—and formative years those were—they spent apart, I imagine that Henry must have looked up to someone closer to him at the time, namely his uncle Jasper Tudor. We know that after the death of Catherine of Valois Jasper and his brother Edmund were raised by nuns at Barking Abbey, and that then at some point they joined King Henry VI’s court. According to John Blacman, Henry VI’s biographer and chaplain writing in 1485:

[…] and like pains did [Henry VI] apply in the case of his half-brothers, the Lords Jasper and Edmund, in their boyhood and youth; providing for them most strict and safe guardianship, putting them under the care of virtuous and worthy priests, both for teaching and for right living and conversation, lest the untamed practices of youth should grow rank if they lacked any to prune them.

Blacman also claimed that the king personally protected his half-brothers from sexual temptation by keeping ‘careful watch through hidden windows of his chamber’ (yes, I know). Like his uncle King Henry VI, Henry VII would also set a court that ‘maintained the highest standards of sexual behaviour’. Indeed, Retha Warnicke made an extensive compilation of scandals during the first two Tudor reigns and not a single case of sexual misconduct was found to have taken place during Henry VII’s time, marking his court as a decidedly different one than Edward IV’s had been.

Going back to Henry VI’s supposed prophecy, his words surely must have acquired a great weight in Henry Tudor’s mind by 1483 when he made his bid to the English throne. By that time King Henry VI had become a popular saint in England and even though Edward IV had tried to have him modestly—and somewhat obscurely—buried in Chertsey Abbey, Surrey, people had started to flock to his grave. A peasant claimed that Henry VI helped him when he had a bean trapped in his ear, which only popped out after he prayed to the king. Painted images of King Henry VI began showing up in churches around the country, like this one at Barton in Norfolk:

One of King Henry VI’s most ardent devotees was Henry Tudor’s mother Margaret Beaufort (Jasper’s feelings towards the cult are unknown) who had met her kinsman when she was about nine years old. When King Henry VI allegedly offered her the option of remaining married to Suffolk’s son or be remarried to his brother Edmund, Margaret says St Nicholas came to her in a dream dressed as a bishop, telling her to choose Edmund. Again, if this story is true or not, we may never know, but Margaret told that to her confessor John (bishop, then saint) Fisher—why would a famously pious woman such as Margaret Beaufort lie to her own confessor, thus committing a sin? It might be that the events took a mystical turn in Margaret’s imagination as a young girl, but that she associated divine intervention to hers and her son’s fate, and likewise to King Henry VI’s proposal, is clear.

It seems Richard III tried to control King Henry VI’s ever-growing cult by moving Henry VI’s body from Chertsey Abbey to St George’s Chapel at Windsor, a place where visitors wouldn’t have easy access to the king. Nevertheless, when Henry VII came to the throne he wholeheartedly encouraged pilgrimages to the place. Henry VII launched an official campaign to have his uncle canonised, with several petitions to popes Innocent VIII, Alexander VI and Julius II. Henry also ordered the compilation of a book of miracles worked by his uncle, and a biography of Henry VI was published in 1500 claiming that Henry VI had been ever pious and chaste during his life, towards his queen never behaving ‘unseemly ... but with all conjugal honesty and gravity’. Henry VII planned to have the body of King Henry VI re-interred at the heart of the new Lady Chapel he was planning at Westminster Abbey. 

However much Henry VII enjoyed good relations with the papacy, especially Pope Innocent VIII, his campaign to have his uncle King Henry VI canonised never came into fruition. Henry VII decided for him and his wife to be buried at his new Lady Chapel instead, next to the tomb of his grandmother Queen Catherine of Valois. In his will, he stated his wish for his body to be buried:

“in the Chapell where our said graunt Dame laye buried, the which Chapell we have begoune to buylde of newe, in the honour of our blessed Lady.”

That doesn’t mean Henry VII set aside the memory of his uncle King Henry VI. He employed the same man that was overseeing the construction of the Lady Chapel at Westminster, Reginald Bray, to continue the rebuilding of St George’s Chapel at Windsor set in motion by his predecessor Edward IV (it came to be informally known as the Bray Chapel). The modest thirteenth-century chapel of Edward the Confessor was expanded into a vast cathedral-like chapel where, importantly, Henry VI’s body was placed alongside a famous relic, the fragment of the True Cross (a reliquary known as the Cross of Gneth) and the bones of John Schorne (revered for curing gout and toothache).

We may argue that Henry VII’s campaign to have King Henry VI’s canonised was fundamentally political (much like Richard II’s campaign for Edward II) as many historians have done. King Henry VI as a saint, combined with his supposed prophecy, would successfully contribute to the image of Henry VII’s reign as one chosen by God. When we put Henry VII’s religious devotion into perspective, though, his efforts to have ‘the glorious King Henry’ canonised take another dimension—in fact, there’s no doubt that in Henry VII’s eyes God had intervened in his favour. Henry VII’s will also stated his wish for an image of himself to be placed in St Edward’s chapel at Westminster, depicting him returning to God and the Virgin Mary the circlet with which he had been crowned at the Battle of Bosworth.

This is me purely speculating, but I think that even though Henry VII only came in contact with King Henry VI once in his life, his half-uncle might have exercised a great influence on him through his uncle Jasper. Jasper seemed to have been genuinely attached to his brother Henry on a personal level as well as devoted to his political cause. If Henry VI’s saintly qualities had been enough to impress Margaret Beaufort, it is very likely that they might have impressed young Henry of Richmond as well.

[alindakb]

Silent Tears - Chapter 2.1 - by Alinda

“Hermione, how long does it take to get a bottle of champagne?” Draco shouts while he walks into the kitchen. “Fuck, I didn’t need to see that,” he continues when he spots Hermione, who sits on the counter, her legs wrapped around Ron’s hips. Ron’s trousers pushed down to his knees, his face panting in Hermione’s neck.

Draco turns around and walks out of the kitchen. He hears Hermione scream an apology and Draco, the idiot that he is, pushes the door back open and tells them to get a room.

“It’s my house, I’ll fuck my wife wherever I want,” Ron says. He pulls his trousers back up, and Draco shakes his head.

“Not when you’re having a party,” Draco tells him. Ron’s lack of manners will never stop to amaze Draco. Right now, he needs a large dose of alcohol so he can erase the image of Ron fucking Hermione on the kitchen counter out of his head.

“Didn’t you like the view? Ron has a very nice butt,” Hermione pitches in. She opens the fridge and takes out two bottles of champagne.

“No, thank you. I do not enjoy witnessing heterosexual sex,” Draco says. Ron laughs and that traitor Hermione grins.

The kitchen door opens again, and Harry walks in. “What is taking you all so long. Seamus is about to explode, afraid he won’t get his glass of champagne in time for the count down.”

“Ask your best friends, they’ve just scarred me for life,” Draco tells him. He opens one of the cupboards and starts to take out the champagne glasses. Harry takes a couple and kisses Draco on his cheek.

“Ron, what did you do now?” Harry asks.

Ron has the decency to turn red. “Oh, nothing, Hermione and I just got a little carried away.”

Harry laughs and pats Draco on his shoulder. “Welcome to the club. I think about everyone here has walked in on them having sex at least once since they started fucking each other on every surface available.”

“Not a club I wanted to be part of,” Draco counters back.

“I know, love. Just be glad you didn’t share a house with those two for over a year. I was afraid to eat from my dining table.”

And there is another image Draco doesn’t need. “Not the dining table we still have in our house?” Draco asks. The one Harry brought along when they moved into their own house.

“Are we doing this in the kitchen or something?” Seamus asks when he puts his head around the door.

“Fuck no, I don’t want to start my new year at the place that scarred me for life,” Draco says. He hands some glasses to Ron, takes one for himself and pulls a bottle out of Hermione’s hand. He walks out of the kitchen and back to the living room where the rest of the party is booming.

Neville and Luna sit together in a corner, Dean stands next to them, waving his hands around while he talks. Blaise, Ginny, Pansy and Greg dance on the impromptu dance floor. Blaise his hands are on Ginny’s hips, and Draco can’t help but smile. His friend had circled around that girl for years, afraid he wouldn’t be good enough for the famous Quidditch star. Until a couple of months ago, when Harry had let slip that the pining was mutual, and Blaise had finally ask Ginny out on a date.  

“We’ve got the champagne,” Seamus shouts as he follows Draco into the living room. He starts to hand out glasses and rushes everyone to gather. Harry slips his arm around Draco’s waist while he holds out his glass for Draco to fill with the champagne.

“Ron assures me they never did it on our dining table, so please can we keep it?” Harry whispers in Draco’s ear.

Draco opens the bottle of champagne and fills their glasses. He hands the bottle off to Pansy, who claims she won’t part with it anymore until she’s off to her other party, the one with all the handsome single men before Draco turns to Harry. “I love that table too much to give it up,” he tells Harry.

They fill all the glasses just in time for the count down. And while the numbers count down, Draco can’t help but smile. This coming year is going to be amazing. Draco’s boss has approved the cut of Draco’s hours so that Harry can start to work full time at the Muggle school where he teaches English. Teddy is going to spend more time at their home, once he starts primary school in May. And maybe, their family will even grow if all goes according to plan.

“Three, two, one, Happy New Year!” the room shouts. Draco turns his head and kisses Harry. They share an intimate moment in which they wish each other a happy new year before Hermione pulls Harry away from Draco. Draco turns and is just in time to catch Pansy when she jumps and hugs him with her entire body.

“You’re drunk, Pansy,” Draco tells her.

“I know, and I don’t care. It’s a new year, and I’ve got myself a job at Gringotts as a curse breaker.”

Draco puts Pansy back on the ground and looks at her. “You said the interview was one disaster.”

“I know what I said. They called yesterday. The job is mine!” She turns and starts dancing to the music again. Draco shakes his head and raises his champagne glass to Greg. They do it every year, just one small gesture to remember the friend they lost. Draco would rather forget, but it helps Greg, so Draco does it every year. It’s not Vincent’s fault that his birthday was the first of January, or that the propaganda of their parents so blinded him that he didn’t realise what a stupid mistake he made casting that fire.

And then Harry is back, his arms around Draco’s waist. “Let’s go outside and watch the fireworks,” he says. Draco agrees and follows him outside. Seamus is already setting up his show for the night. It’s a good thing that Hermione and Ronald’s cottage is so remote. No Muggle would believe that the fireworks Seamus comes up with could be bought in a regular store.

“I’ve been thinking,” Draco starts when he and Harry find a private spot to cuddle up together to stay warm.

“Oh, should I be worried?” Harry jokes.

Draco smiles at Harry and kisses him on the nose. Harry laughs and takes Draco’s face in his hands to give Draco a proper kiss. When they part again, the firework show has started, and they both look at the fantastic animals Seamus has created in the sky. The entire party has gathered outside, and Draco tells Harry they should go for a walk once the show is over. Harry nods his head in approval without taking his eyes from the sky. Draco struggles to stay focused on the display of fireworks. He loves to watch Harry while he stares at the light-up sky. The pure joy so clearly on his face while he rests his head against Draco’s chest.

When the show is over, the others move back into the house. Harry takes Draco’s hand and leads him further away from the house. He smiles and lets his free hand brush the leaves of some bushes they pass.

“So, what is it that you’ve been thinking about,” Harry asks when the curiosity gets the best of him.

“I think I’m ready to stop with the birth control potions,” Draco says.

Harry stops in his tracks and looks at Draco with the most amazing grin on his face. Draco knows Harry had said it was up to Draco when they would start trying again, that he didn’t want to rush him. And Draco loves Harry for being so patient with him. It’s no secret that if it had just been up to Harry, Draco would never have started with the birth control again. But Harry was a good man, and he hadn’t complained about it once.

“You’re sure?” Harry asks.

“Yes, Harry, I’m sure,” Draco tells him. Harry’s lips are upon Draco’s, and the kiss is heated.

“If it weren’t so fucking cold, I would have fucked you right here in the woods,” Harry says.

“You’re an idiot,” Draco tells him. “You can fuck me when we fall in our bed sometime this morning, pissed out of our minds.”

“Or maybe, we can go back inside and disgrace Ron’s furniture to punish them for scarring you for life with their heterosexual sex,” Harry jokes.

“Good plan,” Draco tells him and they both laugh.

“Let’s get back and get pissed then,” Harry says. He takes Draco’s hand in his again and starts the trek back to the cottage. And Draco is sure now. 2002 is going to be the best year ever.

[milfsana]

Your top 10 milf

Oh wow that's an amazing question thank you !

Kinda hard but here we go:

The hottest of them all, Miss Kim Seohyung - no one can compare. SHE OWNS ME !!

At the moment, Nicole Kidman because she's so hot in Big Little Lies (and you know I'm a white woman's whore). PSA: the second season of BLL is coming back june 9th. HBO uploaded the entire 1st season on youtube with subtitles. Please go watch it

Is Jessica Chastain a milf ??? She's 42 and has a child so I think so and I love her so much. She deserves all the oscars

Tracee Ellis Ross, I know I don't post a lot about her but I'm in love with her smile. she's such a ray of sunshine. When I feel down I watch some videos of her to feel better.

Notre Cléopâtre nationale, Monica Bellucci. She would be higher on the list if she was more out in interviews or talk shows I need to see more of her. But she's one of the few white women who age gracefully and my god her accent is "eargamisc". Vincent you dumb ugly bitch !!!

The most beautiful afro-latina Ma'am Gina Torres. I started watching Suits for her but I don't care about the 2 major protagonists. Thank god a spinoff about her character is coming. G*na r*driguez wished she had her talent and beauty

Miss Rachel Weisz !! I mean the favourite, disobedient (even if I thought it was boring)... she clearly said gay rights. RACHEL LEAVE YOUR UGLY MAN

Lucy Liu. She would be 2nd place on the Iist if only i watched Elementary but Il hate the dude who plays sherlock so I can't bring myself to watch it. But I see the gifs on tumblr and she looks so beautiful so maybe one day

Don't judge me but Meryl Streep... I know she could be my grandma if I was white but idc. Mirand Priestly in the devil wears prada is milf propaganda.

Julianne Moore since I saw Chloe (her and amanda seyfried ? HOT ! The end is homophobic tho). She seems so sweet and I have a thing for redheads

Honorable mentions: Jennifer Garner (fuck ben affleck), Viola Davis (it's more admiration than attraction), Sandra Bullock (this woman is so funny), Charlize Theron (she looks like she can kill a man and not give a fuck about it)

And before I would have said Cate Blanchett at least at the 3rd place but she's so problematic. Not only she played in a woody allen movie but I think she defended roman polanski during his scandal and she never excused herself for it. But now she's out there talking about #metoo so yikes 🤢 I'm disappointed

In conclusion I guess you can call me a white women's whore

[hotvintagepoll]

Welcome to the HOT AND VINTAGE MOVIE STARS bracket! we are currently voting on the HOTTEST and VINTAGEST male movie stars from 1910-1970. (we will do the ladies next.) Submissions for hot vintage men are now closed, but we are accepting propaganda for those already in the bracket.

Round 2 of the Hot & Vintage Men Tournament will be posted Saturday, January 6th, with some spillover to Sunday if needed, and will last a week. All the round 2 polls can be found and voted on under the tag #round 2. All polls—including the shadow bracket of men already removed from the main tournament, as well as additional fun mini polls—can be found in the #hotvintagepoll tag. Every poll in the Hot & Vintage Men Tournament is tagged with the hot man in it if you need to search for a hot man in particular.

Between rounds, any propaganda (photos, videos, gifs, or text) submitted for your favorite Hot Vintage Man who is in the next round may be added to the official propaganda field in the polls, giving your fave an advantage in the next round. Once rounds start, any propaganda sent in is posted as its own separate post, searchable under the hot man's tag.

FAQs:

"Where is [my favorite hot man]?" It depends. Have you checked all the polls in the tag? Have you done a tag search for him? If you still haven't found him, either nobody submitted him or he did not fit the criteria of being a movie man from 1910-1970.

"Can I still submit hot men?" No, the submission window has closed. Please do not send in men you wish had made it into the bracket. I can't do anything with those asks and they just make me sad.

"I have hot women to submit!" Amazing! Please wait to send me your ladies until I post the submission form for that bracket. Asks submitting ladies don't count—you need to wait until the submission form.

"I have additional propaganda for the hot men!" Great! Send me an ask or reblog the poll and add your propaganda to it. I don't have time to read all the propaganda but I boost what I can.

If you're submitting propaganda for your hot man, I don't accept propaganda that's from beyond the end of this tournament's era (ie don't send me pics of them in the 70s onwards).

I don't post or boost negative propaganda about any hot man. If you really hate that a certain hot man is winning, send me positive propaganda for their hot opponent. If you think a hot man shouldn't even be included in the bracket because of scummy things they did in their lifetime, please read my take on it here.

If I see repetitive, trolling, and/or bigoted remarks in the comments, I may block you from this bracket. If you want to point out a hot man's flaws or misdemeanors, that's fine, but if I see consistent bad-faith trolling, you will be blocked.

"My FAQ isn't on here :(" send me an ask! I love hearing from you guys—just please check these basics first.

"WHERE ARE THE HOT MEN. I want to see all the hot men competing in one place!!" You can find all the round 1 matchups here (thank you @markwatnae!), and everyone who made it to round 2 below the cut. Thank you for being here! Enjoy the tournament.

Hot Men of Round 2, in no particular order (I will post matchup links once round 2 begins)

Omar Sharif vs Alain Delon

Sammy Davis Jr. vs James Dean

Gregory Peck vs Lex Barker

Robert Redford vs Sidney Poitier

Charlton Heston vs Jeremy Brett

Dick Van Dyke vs Marlon Brando

Cesar Romero vs Cary Grant

Rock Hudson

Peter Cushing

Jimmy Stewart

Conrad Veidt

Bela Lugosi

Vincent Price

Gene Kelly

Harry Belafonte

Christopher Plummer

Errol Flynn

Burt Lancaster

Oscar Michaux

Paul Newman

Clint Eastwood

Sessue Hayakawa

Carman Newsome

Robert Earl Jones

Gary Cooper

Paul Robeson vs David Niven

Clark Gable

Humphrey Bogart

Toshiro Mifune

Ronald Colman

Harold Nicholas

Danny Kaye

John Carradine

Gilbert Roland

Benson Fong

Guy Madison

Buster Keaton vs Noble Johnson

James Shigeta vs Peter O'Toole

Montgomery Clift

Frank Sinatra

Fred Astaire

Basil Rathbone

Turhan Bey

Boris Karloff

Peter Falk

Laurence Olivier

Tyrone Power

Donald O’Connor

Michael Redgrave

James Edwards vs Anthony Perkins

Fernando Lamas

Johnny Weismuller

Sabu Dastagir

Rex Ingram

Bing Crosby

If you have any additional questions, or propaganda to submit for the men above, send me an ask here.

[icharchivist]

Weirdly specifice question: in the context of a normal modern AU where everyone is alive and emotionally stable, which college majors do you think the ffvii cast would take? Just for whoever you can imagine it.

ooooh that's such a cool idea :o

wild how the most unrealistic part of your ask is the "emotionally stable" part, so except for like, if the lack of stability involves "mass murder" (looking at you Sephiroth), i'll still probably be playing with some of the stuff that were influenced by their past in the game.

but that's such a cool idea!!!

i'm mostly doing it with the main cast from the OG + of CC if you don't mind o7

-Cloud: My biggest Modern AU Job for Cloud has always been Mechanic for some reasons? I'm probably just too caught up by how cool he looks on a bike and want to make it his passion more than it is in game, but i think it'd be pretty nice if he was indeed, so i'd see him pursue a diploma in Mechanic Engineery of some type? Otherwise i could see him becoming a programmer or a coder with how much the Remake insists at how good he is at hacking.

-Barret: Mhmm this one is tough. I'd love to see him in Environmental science considering his passions with saving the Earth, but he does tend to get confused a lot when we enter into details in the OG at least (i don't think it happened much in the Remake though?). He'd totally still be a Green Activist Through and Through. Also i could see him having a sidejob working in street works and stuff like that (isn't it his job in AC?)

-Tifa: Oh this one is tough. Tbh i could totally see her pursue Touristic cursus such as translating and history considering she did use to do that before. She would still pursue being a Martial Artist but that'd be more a hobby and downtime thing. As for any diploma to take care of a restaurant or bar, tbh i think she would wing in without even it being something she's pursuing at school. More like a sidegig that ended up taking a lot of her involvement and now she takes care of it but she never studied for it.

-Aerith: Really hard to see her do anything but Florist tbh, but i also don't think she'd pursue studies for that, she's a natural. I could see her be a history buff and looking though ancient civilization studies's diploma, with an interest about history of how the Earth changed and everything, all while she's helping taking care of the uni's gardens and giving a hand at the local Florist shop she may or may not take over one day.

-Nanaki: So huh of course he's a dog/wolf so that's hard to see him as anything else in a Modern AU, but in case you want an AU where his existence is still considered "humanlike" or downright human AU, i'd definitely see him having an astronomy major. Working on the stars, anything like that.

-Reeves: This one's easy just take canon in Engineery, mostly focused on public spaces and everything. Reeves's job remains pretty on point in a modern AU so any studies leading him up to that would work. Otherwise he'd probably also have a sidegig in robotic and technology. Can work on it as a double cursus?

-Vincent: ...... I'm trying to work this list with either passion or work we've seen them do but with that in mind, what the hell would Vincent do. Maybe he could pursue a Science degree like his father because of family pressure? also maybe because that one girl in the science class is pretty cute even though she hangs out with that one jackass? But at the same time everything about Vincent's design scream "Litt major" so....

-Yuffie: If you keep "Modern AU but with all of ffvii's place" and all that, definitely a student in Wutai political and cultural history. (without even having it with the actual political climate of the ffvii world) It *is* her country but i do think she's the type to be digging around in her country in general. Also she's down to fight her professor if they start talking shit and the classes sure have got more entertaining since she's able to just yell "that's propaganda you dipshit" at your teacher. Also she is completely always stealing Zack's meal during lunchbreak everytime so much so Zack is planning ahead and brings two with him. He's resigned.

-Cid: Astrophysics studies. I don't even think i have to explain this one, do i? Though i've always been a sucker for modern Au that also explore him as a mechanic, especially if it's the guy Cloud is learning after. In AU where he still have the same agegap with everyone, i think we can totally picture him still as a washed up Astrophysician who worked for NASA or similar, got desillusioned in some way by the system, and decided instead to retire into a garage and do mechanism works, being instead the very grumpy old man that has the garagehouse next to the uni where Cloud is doing half time jobs at. And once in a while it brings a ragtag group of teenagers coming to invade his house and sofa. Rascals, all of them, he says with a smile.

-Zack: This one is hard. Honestly to me he's always a Major Jock so you know he's in any sports teams who would have him and stuff like that. But as for what to study, i honestly feel like he lacks the patience and concentration to be working on anything that he isn't truly, 100% passionated about, while also being pretty good in some fields like science and stuff which he grasps pretty well, but is a real airhead about it and isn't caring out of passion per se. he's definitely a helper and he's always doing any side jobs he can, or even charity jobs, where it's just about helping people. But i really have a hard time pinning him into an uni cursus per se? Maybe he'd resignedly push through a science cursus with the idea that it opens any doors he wants and he's good at it without really the passion behind it but that's all i can think of.

-Sephiroth: This one is hard with how well. *waves hand* but i could totally see him end up in an Ancient Civilization History Study cursus as well. and he's be opened to the conspiration about aliens. I could see him and Aerith being in the same class at uni and often ending up clashing having debates, but otherwise getting along fine (mostly based on Sephiroth's personality before he snapped into mass murder rage)

Genesis: Litterature student focused on Theater are you kidding me, is that even a question. Also probably doing a double cursus with business major on the side mostly in case he needs to take over his parents's business one day, but he's completely devoted to the Litterature arts. Please save his class he made a 2 hours long presentation on Loveless the otherday ple-

-Angeal: That's tough. It's hard to imagine him doing other stuff than what the game set up for him.... But i could see him taking up litterature to follow Genesis and he says he regrets every moments everytime. He's also in the same sportteams as Zack and Zack sees him as his senpai, and he is on friendly terms with Aerith because they both work on the Uni's gardens together.

-Rufus: Business major, which he doesn't even specifically need since he's going to inherit Daddy's CEO position anytime anyway. There is an unspoken rule on campus to not let Barret and Rufus on the same corridors at the same time because there's been known to have been altercations.

-The Turks: i genuinely can't think of anything individually for them but i could imagine them working in some engineery fields? they're all pretty clever and seems to know their way around mechanisms so i don't see why not.

-Jessie: Theater, of course. She's in Genesis's class and she's suffering.

-Biggs: He's canonically done some teaching so i could see him pursue studies to be an elementary school teacher.

-Wedge: works at the local animal refuge, probably with a vet school on the side in order to help out the best he can.

Anyone else i'm not mentioning (like, mostly, the others directors aside from Reeves) are mostly because it feels straight forward (mostly Engineery with Hojo/Hollander/Lucrecia being instead in science)

But that's about the outlines i'd give out or the general ideas i run with with modern AU when i think about it a little too hard ahah

that was fun! hope you enjoyed it!! :D

Take care :3c

[leonawriter]

To Change A Sombre Morrow (chapter twelve)

Read it on AO3

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII

Characters: Genesis, Yuffie, assorted others.

Summary: Time travel is that one kind of thing where it’s the plot of figuring out who you are in the dark, because the only ones watching are either ghosts, or memories. Genesis is working on it. It’s taking time.

...

The most irritating thing about being put into a war you no longer had any interest in fighting for, Genesis had to say, was the fact that there was no longer any sense of interest in it.

There was nothing holding him there, and when accosted by Wutaian soldiers it was sometimes hard to remember to take things seriously.

Especially when the last thing he wanted was to accidentally tell his entire contingent that he didn't even want these people dead. 

Well, no, strictly speaking that would be a lie; after long enough with what often felt like hardly an hour passing without yet another Wutai spy or soldier crawling out of the woodwork like ants or lice...

His patience was getting thin enough that if they hadn't been in the middle of a forested area, the next one who tried to attack them on the sly would have ended up with a face full of fireball. The last one had come close. It had only been the result of Genesis' own not inconsiderable ability to control the strength of his spells that had resulted in one shocked and singed Wutaian, and a few scorched but otherwise unharmed trees.

His unit was currently only approximately a mile away from Fort Tamblin, and he himself was perched up in a tree some distance from the perimeter of the town Shinra's forces had taken over a few months back, not even caring about what the reactions would be to the hole in his coat opening up again when it had been threatening to do so for some time now, and if his wing hadn't undone all of that hard work, then the sharp branches and bark of the tree he was in would have done the trick.

All in all, the peace and quiet away from inquisitive troops was something that he'd been in sore need of. The one thing that made things less than perfect had to be the sheer amount of things that seemed to think that just because he had feathers and wasn't currently feeling like moving, it clearly meant that he was free real estate to be crawled over and to be used as a hiding place.

Not for the first time, he flipped his PHS open, and thumbed his way into the spam folder of his messages. Knowing the sorts of people who could potentially hack into his phone if they decided that they wanted to, he had long since decided that it was hardly worth the bother of attempting anything too blatant of an attempt at keeping secrecy. 

The last mail from that particular number flashed up on the screen.

You've been quiet.

The message was dated several days ago. 

If nothing else, they'd come to the decision that if the Turks were going to find out that Genesis was having discussions with someone that bordered on treason, then they'd also find out a few interesting home truths about the company they were paid to be lapdogs for.

As yet, no one had. Despite the part of him that was relieved for it, there was another part that was almost disappointed in them.

I've been leading a squad into an active war zone. Which isn't entirely new territory for me, but it has been some time. 'Quiet' is the last word I'd use to describe it.

He hesitated for a moment, before sending. 

It wasn't wrong for him to say that it wasn't new territory - he had done this sort of thing before. Many times. He, along with Sephiroth, Angeal, and many others - some of whom had survived, while others had not - had led troops onto the field of war, living up to the name of SOLDIER. It was where their other titles had come from, those of General and Commander. Ones that... well, perhaps they didn't hold the same official status as First Class, but anyone who'd been involved in the war at all came away knowing that while there were plenty of SOLDIERs of any rank, there was only one General, and there were only two Commanders. 

It was easy to forget when he was surrounded by Shinra propaganda again, how the idea that he had become known as the Crimson Commander because of his hair, his coat, and his sword was not strictly true-

His PHS chimed. Only a few minutes since he'd sent his reply, and there was a response already.

Anything to be concerned over?

In another timeline, several hundred or so people would be dead or as good as by now. Several of whom had been showing concern over him in the past few days.

No.

It was the truth, after all.

I have a plan.

There was movement underneath him, and it took all of his willpower to stay still, not twitch, and not shake the feathers of his wing to get rid of the itch that was starting to form. In the time it took Vincent to respond, he'd sent a quick mail to one of the Seconds to inform them that Wutaian forces had been spotted some distance from their camp.

Your last plan resulted in you almost dying. I'm tempted to bring a fire extinguisher.

He rolled his eyes, and pointedly chose not to respond to that.

You can't change anything if you're dead. Remember that.

...

The first time he'd met her, she had thoroughly ignored him. 

Genesis had walked through the door of Seventh Heaven behind Cloud, Weiss a dead weight in his arms. A dark haired woman in black had sat behind the bar, talking animatedly to a younger woman with shorter dark hair, but they'd looked up at the intrusion.

Cloud had explained, in short, who Genesis was, introduced Tifa, and what was going on. About Weiss. 

The one he had been told was Tifa had narrowed her eyes at him, but then put all of her focus on Cloud, asking him what was needed, and if they should be contacting Reeve - a name that had struck him as familiar, yet he hadn't thought at the time that it could possibly have been the executive he had once only seen in tedious meetings. 

The other one, however, he wouldn't find out much more about until later, and the most he was given at the time was her name, when Tifa had asked after her, apparently concerned about something.

Yuffie, he had learned. And filed the information away for another time, deeming it unimportant, and he had summarily ignored her just as she had him.

After all, he had other matters to attend to, higher priorities. Anything else was easy to brush aside, especially given how he had still been recovering from mana depletion and his fight with Cloud.

He hadn't thought it odd, at the time.

Later he would hear her name again, and wonder why it sounded vaguely familiar, but then get distracted with something else - something more pressing, something more important than someone who didn't seem to want anything to do with him.

The pattern had continued. The girl seemed plenty animated enough with the others, but the moment he would walk into a room, she would trail off or pointedly ignore his presence entirely.

Cloud would twitch for his sword every time he saw Genesis' wing unfurl from his back. Tifa would watch him closely, enough to make him wonder if he'd run into her at some point before to draw her ire, but she never said anything, and he preferred not to poke at sleeping guard dogs. Shelke, dressed in normal clothes and slowly acclimatising to life outside of Deepground herself, had rarely gone out of her way to interact with him, aside from the calculating looks she had sent and the one time she had told him, bluntly, that he wasn't quite so impressive as the files and  reports that she had managed to find on him had suggested.

Compared to all of them, Yuffie's avoidance was nothing out of the ordinary, especially when she wasn't even always around.

And then, the monster attacks had started. 

Even if he wanted to, Genesis could no longer remember what had started it, but someone had suggested that he and Yuffie should go together to investigate. 

Yuffie had refused.

"Oh, this should be real interestin'," he'd heard Cid mutter darkly as everyone's attention had begun to focus in on the two involved.

Cloud had shrugged, eyes narrowing in a familiar way.

"Next to me, you're the one who knows the most about materia. And Genesis knows more than both of us." Ordinarily he would have preened at the compliment, even as matter of fact as it was, but something about the incident had been holding his attention. "We need to find out what's going on, and if it involves materia, then you're the ones best suited to figuring that out."

Despite the praise that had also been aimed her way, Yuffie had merely crossed her arms defiantly, expression stony.

"You think I don't know how good he is with materia? I do, and I don't care! I'm not working with him, and you can't make me!"

Something had struck him about her wording, a sudden sense of urgency in the back of his mind telling him that there was something that he had needed to remember, but it had merely made him frown. Regardless of whatever issue she had with him, there were such things as priorities. 

"Yuffie-"

"Don't 'Yuffie' me! He might be acting nice, but he's nothing more than a monster!" 

Old wounds ached, and Genesis' fist had clenched, leather creaking at the word. He had spent years believing that what she was saying was true. In many ways, it still was, with his inhuman wing garnering stares whenever it came out.

But he had come face to face with the Goddess and come away rejected but alive, and he had made promises, to himself even if to no other, and held other words close, or tried to. That SOLDIER... didn't mean monster. It was something to live up to, at least.

"Yuffie, that's enough."

Cloud's voice had snapped him back to reality, and he had breathed in with a hiss, his jaw clenched.

"You want to know what they called him? Do you? They called him 'the Crimson Commander'. When he was destroying my home. They'd burn villages and crops and kill people and then they'd go back home and get called heroes." A part of him had wanted to refute that, say that it had only been Sephiroth who had been lauded as the hero, but he'd held back. And then, for the first time, she had turned to him, looked him in the eye in the midst of the silence. "You can't even try to deny it, can you?"

He couldn't. It wasn't as though she was wrong.

"That was a long time ago," he said instead. "People change."

The one thing that he would never forget about the entire exchange, was how Yuffie's face - so often open while around other people, full of confidence and immaturity - twisted with anger and ugly hatred. 

"You," she had said, hands gripping her upper arms and voice barely holding in her emotions, "will never be a hero."

...

The fact that he's cleaning blood from his sword with a dark frown as he walks back into camp might contribute to the way that he notices that the SOLDIERs and infantry alike give him a wide berth for a while. It makes his jaw tense, the way that some of them look at him, but he consoles himself with the fact that it's probably safer this way - safer that they're keeping a distance while he's in a foul mood and lost in old memories of places and people now lost to him.

One of the Wutai soldiers had waited around instead of going with the others.

Having been on his own, it shouldn't have been that big of a deal; he could have encouraged the man to leave, planting the idea that he had motives that were separate from Shinra's orders.

The world, however, was far from perfect. Genesis had only seen that there was anyone else still there after he had come down out of the tree he had been sitting in, his wing still on full display as he used it in order to float effortlessly down.

Dead men didn't speak - especially dead men who weren't called Sephiroth. Not dead men who had no trace of Jenova, and no connection to any Ancients.

That was all the Wutai were, when it came down to it. 

Ordinary people, with no real power, and no connection to anything that would give them that power. They would be crushed under Shinra in any and every timeline because of this, because no matter how hard they fought, compared to SOLDIER they had no chance. None at all.

Blood stained the cloths he was using to clean Rapier crimson, and Genesis knew that it was going to take more than that to clean his sword.

[thisdaynews]

BREAKING:All the Land in Nigeria belong to Fulani - Miyetti Allah Leader

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/breakingall-the-land-in-nigeria-belong-to-fulani-miyetti-allah-leader/

BREAKING:All the Land in Nigeria belong to Fulani - Miyetti Allah Leader

•Fulani own all the lands in Nigeria

As the seven-day ultimatum Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, issued herdsmen occupying Ondo state forests expires tomorrow, the National President of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Bello Abdullahi Bodejo has declared that no power remove Fulani herdsmen from the state’s forests.

In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the Miyetti Allah leader stressed that their people have settled there for over 250 years and so they are not going to obey anybody to leave the place.

He claims the Fulani ethnic group owns all the land in Nigeria. “All the lands in this country belong to the Fulani, but we don’t have any business to do with land if it doesn’t have areas for grazing; if the land doesn’t have cow food, we won’t have any business with it. We don’t sell land, we don’t farm. What we consider is the areas that have cow food. If the place is good for grazing, we don’t need anybody’s permission to go there”, he stated.

Following allegations of kidnapping and robbery carried out by Fulani herdsmen, Ondo State government has given them seven-day ultimatum to leave the forests in the state, what is your reaction?

The Ondo State governor, Rotimi Akeredolu doesn’t have any right to give such ultimatum to our people. People, including Fulani voted for him to be the governor; so he should be the governor of everybody in the state.

Fulani have been in the forests he is talking about even before he was born; they have been there for over 250 years. No matter how dangerous a forest may be, Fulani would go and settle there. After staying there for a long time and their cow dung turns the place fertile, people would begin to come there to farm and to settle and from then, they begin to make claims that our cattle were destroying their farms.

We are suing the governor and seeking injunction restraining him and others from carrying out his threat. But even at that, nobody, no power can send the herdsmen out of Ondo State.

When are you going to court as the ultimatum will soon expire?

We are making consultations with our legal team. But before then, the governor and his people should stop embarrassing our people in the forests and all their businesses.

No any herdsman will obey the governor; the herdsmen will not step an inch out of Ondo forests; they are going nowhere. We won’t obey the governor; it is only the constitution of Nigeria that we obey. We have been in that area before he was born, how can he just grow up and ask us to leave; no Fulani will leave that place.

What are his reasons for the quit notice?

He alleged that it is the herdsmen that are kidnapping and robbing people and they operate from the forests. We are not in support of any form of criminality- armed robbery, kidnapping, gun running etc. These crimes are the reasons we have the Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Army, DSS, even Civil Defence to nab perpetrators and there are courts everywhere to try them and if found guilty, appropriate punishment meted out to them. The governor is the chief security officer of the state, there is no reason he should single out one ethnic group for the crimes committed in the state. He is supposed to accommodate more Fulani in the state and not to drive them out. Driving them out is not the solution.

I have just concluded a meeting with my fellow Fulani and we have found out that some people will adorn Fulani attire to carry out various crimes. How can Fulani man living in the forest kidnap and ask people to pay ransom ranging from N5 million to N10 million. What would he be doing with that kind of money inside forest; if you pay herdsmen N20 million, N10 million, N5 million in the forest, where would he carry the money to and what will he be doing with such money? Check the leaders of those criminals; let the governors identify who the criminals are. They are not Fulani. He just wants to use that as an excuse to drive our people away from his state. It is just giving a dog a bad name to hang it; the herdsmen are not the kidnappers, let him carry out proper investigations. Let him know this, no any person in this country can push us out of the forests. If it becomes so hot and your people decide to go, where would you be headed?

The first thing is that nothing will make us take such decision. If you apply force and out of hundred Fulani, you kill 95 of them, the remaining five will go back there and continue with their grazing. They have been there for up to 250 years. They have been there before the state was even created.

All the lands in this country belong to the Fulani, but we don’t have any business to do with land if it doesn’t have areas for grazing; if the land doesn’t have cow food, we won’t have any business with it. We don’t sell land, we don’t farm. What we consider is the areas that have cow food. If the place is good for grazing, we don’t need anybody’s permission to go there.

Nigerians should know that our association, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore is not backing anybody who is a kidnapper, armed robber, and we are calling for law enforcement agents to go after all these criminals and deal decisively with them. The criminality all over the country is the more reason we want to fully implement our vigilante system; we want to enter all the forests in this country to check these bandits in the forests that are causing these problems and denting the good image of Fulani ethnic group. We can’t wait any longer; we are sending our vigilantes into the forests to fish out these criminals – those intimidating the herdsmen and stealing their cows and secondly, these bandits causing problems in this country. It is only the Fulani that can enter any forest and chase out these bandits.

Why can’t your people live with the people in the community instead going to live inside forests?

We don’t need cities or towns. If you dash us FCT Abuja or the city of Lagos, we won’t have anything to do with it. We want a place where we continue to practice our age long culture of cattle rearing. We inherited it from our forefathers and it will continue till the end of the world. People are using propaganda to spoil Fulani name, and desperate politicians are in the forefront. Any governor that is drumming up on the Fulani herdsmen issue, watch well, he has issue or problem whether political or otherwise in his state. It is possible that Akeredolu is fighting a political battle, it may be 2023 election and that is why he is playing up this Fulani herdsmen issue. It is the same with Benue State governor, Ortom, when he was not performing; he started to play up Fulani herdsmen and farmers issue to draw support from his people. For almost six years, he hasn’t done any work in his state; he is talking about herdsmen and his people.

Fulani can settle in any bush or forest they want the moment they have cows. We agreed that our children will pursue education and other activities other people are doing in town, but even me, I’m not comfortable staying in the city, up till now my house is inside village.

Why is it that you would not take permission from the owners of the forests before you settle there?

Which forest, who has the forest? Any person who thinks he owns any forest should be taken to psychiatric hospital. Nobody owns any forest; forests are for Nigerians. Fulani herdsmen have the right to move into any forest and settle there for their business. Why do farmers go and cultivate thousands of hectare of land and fence it, who gave them that land? Nobody is born with a land in this country; people were just moving from one place to another for settlement. Fulani are settling in every community, but we are not claiming land, we are only interested on how our cows will have food to eat.

Fulani can’t value 100 people’s lives like he can value his one cow because since he was born, he doesn’t have any business except that cow. The cow is like his own brothers and sisters. If anything happens to his cow, do you think he can leave you? You have two or three storey buildings and you park your cars , do you fold your hands and watch somebody come to that house carry your cars, your clothes, your wife, destroy the buildings? You must fight. The Fulani man values his cow just as you value your brother and sister and you go all out to protect them. They love their cows beyond description, you can’t separate them from their cows to go and stay inside town or city. The cows have names. The way you give your children names when they were born is the same way they name their cows. Even a person who has one thousand cows, those cows have individual names and he knows them by name; the cows have fathers, grandfathers and grandchildren. What you have in human beings – the ways names are given to people, the same way Fulani give names to their cows. We are cow lovers , that is why sometimes if you kill their cows somewhere they go there to look for justice, because they see like somebody has killed their brothers; they must go to see who did that and they won’t leave that person.

You said that only the Fulani will drive out the bandits in the forests, why is it that they have not done so in the forests of Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Niger?

Those bandits are not Fulani, but they are damaging the name of Fulani and that is why this our vigilantes will go into all the forests in this country to chase out all the bandits. Whatever atrocity that the bandits commit is hanged on Fulani neck. These bandits are equally killing herdsmen in their numbers in various forests, but many people don’t understand this, and the moment they see herdsmen in the bush, they will tag them bandits or see them as kidnappers. This is disturbing us as it is eroding on our credibility; more so, useless people, desperate politicians and social media warriors have latched on this to poison everybody’s mind against Fulani ethnic group.

Why not your vigilante clear Sambisa Forest, which is so vast so that your people will settle and halt these conflicts in many states?

Borno State governor Zulum said he will give Fulani people Sambisa forest, we are waiting for him and when the approval is given I will be the first person to go and live there. We are also waiting for the federal government to put infrastructures there, and then we move in. Herdsmen in this country are suffering too much; as they move their cattle from one place to the other, some people who want to steal their cows will organise and even kill them, especially these people they are giving uniform in the name of vigilantes.

These people are causing confusion, you just pack some people, give them uniforms to go and drive out Fulani people in the forests. Yes, the Amotekun; I’m calling on the federal government to ban it. Since the federal government has left Amotekun, that is the reason we want to implement our own vigilante, whose operation will be all over the country, not only one state; we will operate everywhere you find Fulani people in this country, we can go there, enter the forests and chase the bandits away. We can help the Nigeria Army, the Nigeria Police Force, the federal government and relevant security agencies to end this banditry in the country. The Ondo State governor has a secret agenda for asking our people to leave his state, not the reasons he stated.

[mattgetsit]

My Top 50 Albums of 2017: 10-1

10. Wolf Parade – Cry Cry Cry

This one made me cry cry cry for more.  Check out my full review here.

9. SPELLLING – Pantheon of Me

This album sounds like it was created in outer space and somehow found it’s way into our galaxy.  Part psychedelic, part choral, yet all lushly experimental. Pantheon of Me is a cerebral experience in modern new age guitar and vocal loops.  I’m not sure where this world of Pantheon of Me transports you too but I’m so elated to be there. 

8. Gorillaz – Humanz

I liked this album!  I found myself listening to this one a lot this year and I think it holds up.  There’s some cool rap going on, a little dance stuff, really cool layering stuff on “Charger”, and infectious hooks throughout.  The tracks are catchy, very danceable, and most importantly fun. Although still highly politically, this one celebrates disaster, which in a year of heavy emotionally-charged records, we may have needed.

7. Xiu Xiu – FORGET

After releasing a slew of albums that were purposely hard to get through, it’s nice to hear Xiu Xiu having more (dare I say) fun this time around.  Although lyrically Jamie still sings in his signature exasperated brood, much of the album is glistening and even sometimes up-tempo.  Just because FORGET may sound accessible, doesn’t mean it’s uninteresting. There’s signature sonic surprises and classic Xiu Xiu background clanging, but there’s still an element of excitement and passion that draws listeners into this crazy cacophony of a band.

6. Aldous Harding – Party

I had never heard of Aldous before, but when her video for “Blend” came out I think I watched it six times in a row and was immediately hooked.  It instantly made me want to watch all her other music videos and listen to everything she’s ever recorded.  Party is one of those special records; you’re not sure where or how it came from, but it’s for that reason you want to listen even more.  Using minimal instrumentation, Party instantly seduces the listener with the hypnotic down beat of “Blend” to the incredibly commanding “Horizon”.  It is simultaneously soft and intimate, yet twisted and chilling.  Each song is eloquently crafted in emotion and leaves you feeling haunted in the silences between the tracks.

5. Austra – Future Politics

Austra’s previous album Olympia seemed intimate and very chill.  This time around, Austra gives us a complete banger.  The heavy piano chords and thick bass lines create a brutalist scenery while Katie’s perfect-pitch coo flourishes around and through it.  This brand of industrial tinged electro is the perfect backdrop for an album about the personal as political and the optimism in face of disparity. 

4. Fleet Foxes – Crack-Up

Fleet Foxes like to take their time between releasing records, but when they do the outcome is purely magical.  This album is a delicate enchanting epistle with cinematic peaks and valleys that mimic the landscape that influenced it.  Each song is an intricately crafted secret that is inherent to the soundscapes that the Fleet Foxes have come to be renowned for. Although a lot of the songs ebb and flow different directions without warning, each note sounds intentional and delivered with purpose.  A charming display of melodic craftsmanship. 

3. St. Vincent – MASSEDUCTION

This is a powerhouse of a record from a powerhouse of a musician.  From the first few notes, St. Vincent lets her listeners know they are in for a roller coaster ride of an autobiographical guitar shredding opus.  Annie Clark has often played with mixing contrasting ideas and fusing them into one.  A few songs on this record (“Hang On Me”, “Happy Birthday, Johnny”, “New York”) are sweet melodic murmurs of yearning, which nicely contrast the more uproarious songs (“Pills”, “Masseduction”, “Fear The Future”).  There’s tons of signature guitar licks, intricate mixing (there’s a sample of “Los Ageless” in “Sugarboy” which I think is one of the most jaw-droppingly cool parts of the record), and beautiful song writing which never lets up. Each song is wildly different yet compliments its predecessor, and yet they each somehow sound like a quintessential St. Vincent track.  An intimate grandiose memoir and instant classic.  

2. Björk – Utopia

Björk has always been at the forefront of innovation, and this album is an innovative entity unto itself.  It’s hard to pinpoint where Bjork lost control and let it evolve into the wild milieu it became.   Björk interlaces vocal arrangements and composition to weave a tapestry of sonic landscapes.  Free-poetry lyrics aside (which can sometimes be too on the nose), Björk heightens her register to a coruscating terrain.  The mixture of flute, harp and birdsong make the album sound as if it’s actually breathing, whereas the either wet and marshy or dry and dessert-like beats pump the blood throughout the songs.  It’s a gorgeous mixture of surrealism while still bringing you down to earth.  A heartfelt glimpse of a dream that can be created after hardships.  Björk’s breathy vocals and strings match with Arca’s uninhabited production, to create a beautiful utopic soundscape.

1. Arcade Fire – Everything Now

Rolling out an album with fake news propaganda may have initially backfired for Everything Now but it spoke volumes for it’s concept.  In a world filled with clickbait, manipulated headlines, and the aforementioned “fake news”, it’s hard to know what’s genuine.  In a world where we’re never satiated, and want to have everything we can all at once and commodify immediacy, it’s hard to know where to find relief.  Using experimental disco, new wave, and dub genres, Arcade Fire have managed to create a record that is poignant, funny, and earnest.  The album starts as a critique of the culture Arcade Fire have found themselves in.  Songs about getting what we think is real, but realizing it isn’t, then for some reason still going out of our way for it (however dire it may be).  Eternally seeking truth in a clusterfuck of noise and distraction.  On “Infiite Content” and “Infinite_Content” they playfully tell those who want them to “make The Suburbs again” that they can be any kind of band at any time, and that anyone can make anything you want.  You may not be infinitely content with infinite content, but you still have the means to have everything now.  The second half reflects on importance (while toning down the harsher sounds of the first half).  Pain, death, and isolation are all very real feelings with very real consequences, but being surrounded by things isn’t the cure.  Being able to have everything immediately may be nice, but it’s the relations and love we share for one another that always triumphs.

[sophygurl]

And now that I’ve written up the panels I attended*, I will attempt to write a little bit about the ones I was actually on. I’m not multi-taskented enough to take vigorous notes while actually panelling, but I’ll try and get some basics down at least. Please feel free to comment with additions and corrections!

(* - I did not write up the Leverage panel because 1) I was super exhausted, and 2) it was mostly a FEELS/SQUEE panel anyway, and 3) I figured (rightly) that it would be heavily live-tweeted anyway, so instead of my trusty notebook and pen, I brought my pillow and I got there early and took up two chairs - I apologize as I know it ended up being standing room only but I decided this was an access issue as if I could not put my feet up my gimpy ass was going to have to go back to bed - and I kinda hugged the wall while sobbing freely, cheering loudly, and generally having an exceptional time. Check the #LeverageFandom on twitter for actual accounts, including some of the show creators tweeting back at the fans awwwww)

Anyway, the first panel that I was on was Science Fiction on TV (#SFonTV) with moderator Carrie Pruett and fellow panelists Sigrid Ellis and Candra K. Gill. 

I was super excited to be on this panel because TV is my JAM and also all of those panelists are excellent people that I’ve had the privilege of panneling with in the past. 

It was primarily a squee panel and I recall raving about 12 Monkeys, Dark Matter, Lucifer, Orphan Black, Luke Cage, Colony, The Expanse, and Timeless among other shows.

Candra and I bonded over being some of the few who prefer Dark Matter over Killjoys (I like them both but DM is one of my absolute faves and I feel like KJ gets a ton more attention).

We discussed some SFF comedies such as The Good Place, The Last Man on Earth, Powerless, and my personal rec: People of Earth (seriously watch this show). 

We chatted about the proliferation of superhero shows (”when is Marvel going to get in the game?” LOL), and also time travel shows - some that succeeded and some that failed. 

OUaT was brought up and many of us agreed that it’s one of those shows we just can’t quit even though we want to. 

And then we did talk some about how much more representation we want out of our TV - specifically out of SFF TV because if they can have magic and super powers and time travel and futuristic sets and space travel - surely they could also have more people of color, more fat people, more disabled people, more queer people, more people of all shapes and sizes and colors. Why is this so hard!?

A few recs that others gave that I wrote down include: The Celluloid Closet documentary (that’s been rec’d to me before, I should really get on that), following Vincent D’Onofrio on twitter, and the show 3%. 

At the end, I did my usual “I love TV - come talk to me about it” spiel, and my MOM from the audience said some embarrassing thing about how I also write great reviews (I don’t even really DO that anymore mom!) so I waved my hand and said “that’s my mom everyone - don’t listen to her!” - and then gave her a big hug after because that’s just such a my-mom thing of her to do and it’s so adorable how she always wants to come to WisCon to “see me talk”. 

The next panel I was on was Where Do We Dystopia From Here? (#WhitherDystopia on the tweeters), which had a pretty good turn-out for a 10:30 pm panel. Our mod got sick so we had a sub-mod who had to kinda jump in to the subject matter last minute. I had some issues with my fellow panelist which isn’t worth getting into on a public post but otherwise I think the panel was good and the audience contributed a lot, which was cool, especially since we were across the hall from the Vid Party!

The hashtag for this one got some good rep, so check that out for a complete idea of how the panel went. I know I started off giving some history of the terms dystopia and utopia because I am a nerd who looks these things up ahead of time. 

I also brought up “whose dystopia? dystopia for who?” a lot as a theme because so many dystopias focus on specific privileged groups who are suddenly having to face conditions that actual real populations of people are already dealing with, which can be frustrating. Also a main theme of dystopias is that some small group of powerful people are in control and wielding that authority in horrific ways - so for that small group of people - it’s not a dystopia. Basically, I just really want to encourage people to be constantly asking themselves whose dystopia is this, for whom is this a dystopia - both in their fiction and in real life.

We talked some about the differences and similarities between post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction. One thing I’d noted when looking at examples myself was that post-apoc. fiction tends to be in more rural settings with themes about survival, and dystopian fiction tends to be set in more urban settings with the main theme being resistance. Of course, the two can be put together - especially when a dystopia arises after some cataclysmic event. But another form of dystopia is the kind I related to the frog-in-the-pot analogy of it happening slowly and gradually around people so that before they realize they’re in a dystopia it’s already too late.

Themes of dystopian fiction we discussed included: those in power using propaganda to make citizens believe they’re in an utopia; that the totalitarian control of a dystopia can come from any direction - both socialist and capitalist dystopias, dystopias where religion is suppressed or used to oppress, governments taken over or corporations have or technological advances have, etc.; constant surveillance being either a reality or a belief held to keep people under control, dehumanization of the groups being controlled.

When defining dystopia, especially in relation to similar genres, I said it’s kind of like the old saying about porn in that “I know it when I see it.” There’s a specific feel to dystopias - they don’t always fit exactly, but we recognize these common themes and kind of settle in to it.

I talked some about real life examples including the often-used Nazi Germany one, but also stuff from our own history in the U.S. - slavery, conditions after Hurricane Katrina, and frankly what’s happening right now in Flint, MI with the water crisis. 

We talked about what is useful about dystopian fiction - how it reflects a society’s deepest fears and hopes for itself, can draw attention to current real issues, and can provide us with hope and even ideas as to how to resist dystopian aspects of our current situations - or where we see things going in the future.

As far as limitations and problems with the genre, I know I talked some about how most dystopian stories only focus on one or two issues and then take them to a sort of ridiculous extreme which can undermine the multiplicity of issues actually facing us and make us take them less seriously. Also, a common trope of YA dystopias specifically is that one special person who alone has the power to topple the powerful regime and how that trope can lessen the idea that we can all fight back and overcome these things. 

We talked some about the increase in sales of 1984 and BNW after Trump’s election and what that means. I specifically found it interesting that it was these classics written by white guys and not more recent dystopias that may be more applicable or female authors, authors of color, etc. 

I remember being asked about dystopias from more marginalized voices and wondering aloud about examples of poc authors writing dystopias - I could think of Octavia Butler’s Parable series and posited that N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series might fit (got some questioning looks there so IDK if I sold that or not), and someone in the audience reminded me of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince (which I need to read!), but I don’t think we came up with anything else. 

There was an audience comment about having trouble relating to urban dystopias where they just don’t have skills that could keep them alive because they feel like those would be fairly easy things to learn how to do. I talked about a common theme in dystopias being that either nature no longer exists because we’ve destroyed it or it’s being forbidden in some way - such as in The Hunger Games. 

Some of the sources I referenced included: Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty Four, Woman on the Edge of Time, The Handmaid’s Tale, Parable of the Sower, The Hunger Games series, 12 Monkeys, Mad Max, The Matrix, The Purge movies, Continuum, Colony.

Recs from others that I managed to jot down: Paolo Bacigalupi’s work, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, The Roar and The Whisper by Emma Clayton, Jennifer Government by Max Barry, the Silo series by Hugh Howey, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu, Underground Airlines by Ben Winters, and the Snowpiercer movie.

(I was pleased after attending the other Dystopia panel the next day that we hadn’t had too much overlap. Ours was focused primarily on fiction with a little bit about real life where the other one focused more on real life stuff as it pertains to fiction.)

The third and final panel I was on was The Age of the Scifi Cop Show (#ScifiCops) with moderator Candra K. Gill and my fellow panelist Samuel Steinbrock-Pratt. 

This one’s got a lot in the hashtag too, so check it out! Candra and Samuel had a lot of cool stuff to say, as did our lively audience. Samuel especially had a great perspective because he’s a criminal defense attorney.

We discussed issues of surveillance and privacy as it relates both to tech-heavy sci-fi shows and more paranormal shows where, for instance, the zombie can eat a murder victim’s brain and gain their memories like in iZombie. 

We talked a lot about superhero/vigilante shows and how they represent who is and isn’t allowed to break the laws and why. Samuel had some strong feelings about Daredevil, especially, as a defense attorney who 1) only wants to represent the innocent and 2) goes out and breaks laws all the time himself. I added that Luke Cage did some interesting things in regards to intersections with vigilantism and law enforcement, as well as race, class, and gender. 

Person of Interest was another show we talked about a lot, both positive and negative. 

One topic was why there are so many scifi cop shows, and just cop shows anyway. Part of the reason is that it’s a nice formula for a show to follow in a serial format. Another is the ability for lots of excitement and drama involved. Also examined was the idea of who profits from having a common narrative where the cops are our protags?

We talked some about how these shows, in a genre that’s supposed to be about stretching the imagination, still don’t address so many systemtic issues in the police such as racism and abelism. Some shows actively reinforce these things by having us rooting for cops who are corrupt themselves, where other shows just gloss over these problems by having active surveillance and yet not dealing with things such as stop and frisk laws.

Samuel and Candra had some great things to say about cop shows set in the future and how they tend to criminalize the same things we do now, but that what we decide are crimes changes over time. For example - drug crimes are a thing that a futuristic cop/legal show could show having been abolished. Or what about a future where there are no cops? What about reparative justice?

An audience member asked about an epidemiological approach to crime. They used the example of lead poisoning leading to violence, which another audience member refuted, but the issue of taking an approach of what health issues might be causing crime remained of interest. The Reavers from Firefly were brought up.

I talked about a Canadian show called Cracked, starring David Sutcliffe, which is not a Sci-fi show, but does deal with cops gaining a greater understanding of how mental health issues intersect with crime - from either the perpetrator or victim side of things. The show paired cops with psychiatrists or psych nurses in a unit specially created to deal with crime relating to mental illness. 

We talked some about shows coming more from the outlaw angle such as Mr. Robot and Leverage.

Other shows I brought up included Stitchers, Limitless, Lucifer, Lost Girl, Minority Report, Continuum, and IDK a bunch more. 

Some stuff that got rec’d that I wrote down to check out included: Ultraviolet (the TV show not the movie), and the book A Door Into Ocean for it’s portrayal of banishment and reconciliatory justice. 

Phew! And so. Those were my panels. Or at least, what I can recall of them a good week later. 

I always appreciate getting feedback as a panelist - so feel free to chat with me, privately or publicly, about how you think the panel went if you were at any of these!