#miserable life of werner

[octopus-reactivated]

Werner - meeting Marven again

It's short, because I had limited time, but wanted to do something. Hope you'll enjoy it anyway!

Tw/cw: Pet whump, kidnapping, gaslightning, shock collar, captivity. (let me know if I missed anything!)

Werner hugged his knees.

His situation was dramatic and to his surprise he found himself mourning not that his whole life changed but rather  that he lost the little things.

He missed his family. He wanted to become self-sufficient and he spent the whole semester studying at university, and when he had a break and was going to have nice holidays in his hometown… Mom said she had a surprise for him when he got home. He never got to learn what that surprise was. 

If he got kidnapped three weeks later he would already be finished with exams. Now he’s going to miss it and will have to re-take classes. So inconvenient. 

He won’t get to go on the frozen lake this winter. 

He didn’t have his favorite notebook with him. 

He won’t get to sleep in his old bed. 

He even missed his annoying roommate, even though their worldviews were so different, he was better than this.

It was ironic, because Marven was working as a Pet Trainer, and they had multiple arguments about that as Werner was strongly against…

Werner felt like his heart felt from chest to stomach and all the heat in his body turned into the cold. 

There were rumors that many of the Pets didn’t go into the system voluntarily. 

Werner was openly against the whole idea. 

His roommate was directly working for Pet training facility. 

And now Werner sat with a shock collar on his neck.

After connecting the dots it was so obvious, that he wondered how he didn’t realize it right away. 

He felt anger white-hot as white was this damned cage he was locked in overtaking him. 

He had whole life ahead of him, and it was taken away because of what? Because he was a danger to the company? Because he dared to speak up?

On the other hand, did that mean his actions would change something? That it wasn’t in vain?

For a moment, Werner regretted being so brave about it, but he shrugged this feeling off. There was no reason to feel ashamed for standing up for his principles. 

He stood up, paced around the room for a while and sat down again. 

How long will he be like that?

What will they want from him?

The only time he interacted with workers there, he was expected to recite ‘rules’.

He wasn’t told them, not by trainers, but he heard about some in his life before. 

Fortunately, memorisation was his strong side, so he managed to put together a list of rules. Probably not all of them and not in ‘correct order’, but better than nothing. 

He came there not earlier than a day ago, but he was treated like he was there for a long time. 

That meant, he won’t be shown mercy because he’s “still learning”, but after bit of thought, Werner decided not to go along with them for now. After all, they knew he wasn’t really there for long, they just pretended they didn’t.

And getting too obedient too quickly could be suspicious. 

And he deserves to get angry just once, before he starts fearing them too much. 

__________

Yet, he didn’t expect how angry he would get when he saw Marven's face. 

“You!” He lunged forward and almost managed to throw a punch, before electrical shock threw him on the ground. 

“I always assumed you were the smart one," said Marven in a calm voice. Like he didn’t just torture his roommate. 

“Now I had heard you forgot your place,”he continued, while Werner tried to collect himself “You refused to recite your rules. You didn’t show proper respect to your Trainers. And now… this”

“It was your doing, wasn’t it?” Werner asked through grinned teeth

“Talking without permission.”

“Answer me!” Werner shouted “It was you who made me like that, right?”

Marven stayed silent for a while and then crouched next to him

“No. “ He said calmly “For me, you always were just a Pet. I’m only about to make you aware of that”

__________

Taglist: @heathenwhump @myst-in-the-mirror @kim-poce @whumpering-heights @icyheart-and-friends

[luna-azzurra]

Ways to hit your readers in the gut

When it comes to writing, there's a profound and mesmerizing way to touch your readers deep within their souls. It's about crafting moments that hit them in the gut, stirring up intense emotions and forging an everlasting connection. Here are some techniques to help you achieve this:

1. Unexpected Loss: Introduce a character who captures hearts, only to snatch them away suddenly. Think of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, where the abrupt departure of beloved characters like Sirius Black and Fred Weasley leaves readers shattered, their grief a testament to the power of storytelling.

2. Sacrifice for a Cause: Show a character willingly sacrificing their own happiness or even their life for a greater purpose. Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" portrays Katniss Everdeen's selflessness, volunteering as a tribute to save her sister, evoking empathy and admiration.

3. Unrequited Love: Explore the agony of unrequited love, where hearts ache and souls yearn. Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" delves into the bittersweet and heart-wrenching tale of Jane's unfulfilled affection for Mr. Rochester, resonating with readers who have experienced the profound depths of unrequited longing.

4. Betrayal by a Loved One: Peel back the layers of trust to reveal the sting of betrayal. George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series delivers shocking betrayals that shatter readers' expectations, leaving them stunned and heartbroken alongside the characters.

5. Overcoming Personal Demons: Illuminate the struggle against internal conflicts, be it addiction, guilt, or haunting trauma. Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See" explores Werner's moral compass during wartime, captivating readers as they witness his battle for redemption and personal growth.

6. Injustice and Oppression: Shed light on the injustices characters endure, igniting empathy and inspiring change. Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" reveals the racial prejudice faced by Tom Robinson, awakening readers to the urgent need for justice and equality.

7. Parent-Child Relationships: Navigate the intricate tapestry of emotions between parents and children. Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner" unearths the complexities of the father-son bond, evoking a myriad of feelings, from longing and regret to hope for reconciliation.

8. Final Farewells: Craft poignant scenes where characters bid farewell, whether due to death or separation. Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief" gifts readers with heartbreaking partings amidst the backdrop of World War II, leaving an indelible mark of loss and the fragile beauty of human connections.

9. Personal Transformation: Illuminate characters' growth through adversity, offering a beacon of hope and inspiration. Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" narrates Ebenezer Scrooge's extraordinary journey from a bitter miser to a beacon of compassion, reminding readers that redemption and personal change are within reach.

10. Existential Questions: Delve into existential themes that provoke deep introspection. Albert Camus' "The Stranger" challenges readers to ponder the meaning of life through Meursault's detached and nihilistic worldview, prompting them to question their own existence.

With these techniques, you have the power to touch your readers' souls, leaving an indelible impression. Remember to weave these moments seamlessly into your narrative, allowing them to enrich your characters and themes. Let your words resonate and ignite emotions, for that is the essence of impactful storytelling.

[fettesans]

Top, Laurel Nakadate, Farther From Home Than I’d Ever Been, 2009, from the series Fever Dreams, C-print, 76,2 x 101,6 cm. Via. Bottom, screen capture from The Third Generation, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979, with a frame from The Devil Probably directed by Robert Bresson, 1977. Via.

See also, Greg Girard x Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

--

Perhaps more shocking than this, is the life and reception of essayist and novelist Norman Mailer. When speaking about feminism and women’s liberation Norman Mailer said: “We must face the simple fact that maybe there’s a profound reservoir of cowardess in women that had them welcome this miserable, slavish life.”

In his book Advertisements for Myself, Mailer claims that a writer without “balls” is no writer at all:

I have a terrible confession to make — I have nothing to say about any of the talented women who write today. Out of what is no doubt a fault in me, I do not seem able to read them. Indeed, I doubt if there will be a really exciting woman writer until the first whore becomes a call girl and tells her tale. At the risk of making a dozen devoted enemies for life, I can only say that the sniffs I get from the ink of the women are always fey, old-hat, Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque, maquillé in mannequin’s whimsy, or else bright and stillborn. Since I’ve never been able to read Virginia Woolf, and am sometimes willing to believe that it can conceivably be my fault, this verdict may be taken fairly as the twisted tongue of a soured taste, at least by those readers who do not share with me the ground of departure — that a good novelist can do without everything but the remnant of his balls.

I would argue that Norman Mailer spoke and wrote just as violently, grotesquely and shockingly about women as Valerie Solanas did about men. But he was not saying any of these things or writing his sexist texts as a parody or protest of his own subjugation.

Norman Mailer is still widely celebrated for both his fiction and essays, including numerous works that take a stand adamantly against feminism and women in general. In 1968 and 1980 he won the Pulitzer Prize. In 2005, he won the National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 1960, he attempted to murder his wife by stabbing her multiple times in the chest, barely missing her heart.

Chavisa Woods, from Hating Valerie Solanas (And Loving Violent Men), for Full Stop, May 21, 2019. Via.

[postersdecinema]

O Casamento de Maria Braun

RFA, 1979

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

8/10

A Alemanha Renascida

O casamento de Maria Braun é uma metáfora muito conseguida da Alemanha do pós-guerra, do milagre económico protagonizado por Adenauer, ele próprio várias vezes ouvido no filme, nos seus discursos de apelo ao orgulho da reconstrução económica alemã.

Nos escombros da segunda grande guerra Maria/Alemanha sobrevive, entre uma ténue esperança de regresso ao passado perdido e a agonia de um presente miserável e desonroso.

Mas os derrotados não têm direito à vergonha. Cabe-lhes reconstruir o futuro na cama dos vencedores, até aprenderem a viver sem eles, mais do que autónomos, como novas potências vencedoras, que tomam o lugar de quem os humilhou. Na vida, na economia ou até no futebol (Fassbinder faz coincidir o clímax narrativo com a final do mundial de futebol de 1952, em que a Alemanha se sagrou campeã, pela primeira vez na história da competição, usando assim mais uma metáfora da reconstrução alemã).

Depois da vitória consumada, da honra lavada, a vida esgota-se e é tempo de dar lugar a outros, ao futuro, que não deverá repetir os erros do passado.

Uma mensagem ousada e uma interpretação poderosa de Hanna Schygullla.

Fassbinder ao seu melhor nível.

Germany Reborn

Maria Braun's marriage is a very successful metaphor for post-war Germany, for the economic miracle played by Adenauer, himself heard several times in the film, in his speeches appealing to pride in German economic reconstruction.

In the rubble of the Second World War, Maria/Germany survives, between a tenuous hope of returning to the lost past and the agony of a miserable and dishonorable present.

But the defeated have no right to shame. It is up to them to rebuild the future in the bed of the victors, until they learn to live without them, more than autonomously, as new victorious powers, taking the place of those who humiliated them. In life, in the economy or even in football (Fassbinder coincides the narrative climax with the 1952 World Cup final, in which Germany became champion, for the first time in the history of the competition, thus using yet another metaphor for German reconstruction).

After the victory is complete, the honor is washed away, life ends and it is time to give way to others, to the future, which must not repeat the mistakes of the past.

A bold message and a powerful performance by Hanna Schygullla.

Fassbinder at his best.

[seraphtrevs]

Love languages are fake, but I’m going to tell you my opinions on the love languages of all the BCS characters anyway. Jimmy - Words of Affirmation. Jimmy is a big believer in the power of words - it’s where all of his bullshit powers come from. But even though he recognizes that talk is cheap, deep down I think he believes that the right words will fix whatever’s wrong with him. He just wanted Chuck to say “I’m proud of you and I love you.” :( I think this is tough in his relationship with Kim because she’s allergic to talking about feelings. So he tries to show her instead, just like he tried to show Chuck.

Kim - Acts of Service. Jimmy risked everything to get her that Mesa Verde account. Did she approve? No. But goddamn, that is one serious Act of Service. All her life, she’s had to do everything for herself because no one gave her the care she deserved. Jimmy’s constantly proving he loves her by doing little things like painting her toe nails and getting her takeout and making her laugh, and on and on. Of course she fell in love with him!

Lalo - Acts of Service. Nacho parkoured his way into Lalo’s heart when he retrieved the drugs at the trap house. He always does what Lalo asks - he burned down Gus’s restaurant, he impressed Don Eladio, he put his life on the line for the Salamancas. Of course he fell in love with him! Nacho - Gifts. We don’t get too much direct insight into why Nacho chose a life of crime. He doesn’t seem interested in having power over other people. He looks mostly miserable when he has to do risky things, so it’s not for the thrill either. I think he just really likes Things and Stuff, and he wants lots of cash so he can get the very finest Things and Stuff that money can buy - jewelry, clothes, houses, cars, etc. You might not be able to buy his heart, but an impressive gift definitely wouldn’t hurt your chances. Mike - Quality Time. Mike doesn’t expect any of the people he loves to do things for him, and he’s uncomfortable with words, gifts, and physical affection. He just wants to be in the lives of his loved ones. He loves to be with Kaylee. He regrets not being there for his son. Werner won him over basically by hanging out with him.  After an extremely lonely childhood, the presence of others in his life is what he yearns for the most, even as he pushes people away due to feeling unworthy. :( Howard - Words of Affirmation. Howard’s pretty good at giving other people compliments, and I think other peoples’ words mean a lot to him, too. After Chuck’s death, he went to Jimmy because he wanted to hear someone say that it wasn’t his fault and he was a good person. And Kim’s Words of Disaffirmation damn near killed him.  Chuck - Acts of Service. Chuck’s mental illness manifested in a way that required people to go to great lengths to prove they cared about him. Unfortunately, it was never enough. :(

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Hue and Cry XVI

Warnings: non-consent sex and rape (series), pain/wounds, mild violence.

This is dark!medieval!Bucky Barnes x reader and explicit. 18+ only.  Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Synopsis: Barnes lashes out in his grief.

Note: So, it’s not over but most of you guessed that :)

Thanks to everyone and thanks in advance for all your feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

The sun cast a sardonic light on the cold winter morning. The first flakes of snow fell the night before but glistened as they melted away with the unexpected bloom of light on the horizon. The men began digging at dawn for the interment, a pit to be unmarked and unseen. The woman would be buried as any servant was; without any formality or fanfare.

Lord Barnes dressed in black, the sole attendee of the service. He had dragged a priest from the castle chapel to say some ordained words. The men climbed out of the six-foot hole as the cart was led over by two others, the wooden box atop it.

They lifted it, lifted her, and maneuvered it down into the grave with ropes. The holy man recited his verse but the duke did not hear them. He was only torn from his own grief as he heard footsteps on the crisp grass. He looked over as the foreign baron came to stand beside him, his dark eyes ahead of him as the men began to shovel dirt onto the wood. The sound was harsh in the early hour.

“Go,” Barnes growled, “you aren’t welcome here.”

“Well,” Zemo said, “how is that? After all Werner did for you; for her. I should like a proper farewell.”

“You didn’t know her,” Barnes hissed.

“Oh, I didn’t, but are you so sure that you knew her so well?” Zemo challenged, “you knew what you wanted from her--”

“Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Barnes lifted his chin and turned to face his foe, “I will not tell you to leave again.”

“I owe you no obedience, my lord,” he said flaty, “I think you’ve misunderstood that entirely. The ground we stand on is even. I am beholden to you for nothing. Given that it was my physician who saw to her comfort in her last hours, I’d say you--”

His voice was cut off by the hand at his throat. The duke throttled the Baron with his only hand and backed him away from the grave as the dirty continued to rain down. He marched him across the grass as his blue eyes burned with a selfish sort of hurt.

“I am not stupid. I know you came to rile me and you’ve done just that so go! Go before I put you down beside her,” Barnes shoved him away so that he stumbled.

Zemo stood and touched his throat as a rare glimmer of anger flashed across his features. He raised his chin and fixed the fur collar of his cloak. He nodded as he set his jaw and peered past the furious duke.

“She is free now,” Zemo said, “from you most of all.”

The baron turned away and strode from the green. The duke turned and watched the diggers as they kept at their work. A lump lodged in his throat and he lowered his head. He could not deny Zemo’s words, in fact, they sank so deep his heart ached. He knew as all did that her death was bloody on his hands.

🏰

Lord Barnes watched from the window as the line of carriages rolled through the castle gates. He was smug at the Baron’s premature departure but he didn’t truly feel any better than he had the day before. He expected the knock at the door and he was not surprised by who drew him away from the window.

The door opened before he reached it and his sister blustered into the chamber. Rebecca snarled as she came to face him, of the few who could match his own temper. Her nostrils flared and hardened her soft features as she glared at him.

“You’ve ruined it!” she spat, “you’ve ruined it all! He’s gone and it’s all your fault, you dunce!”

“I ruined it? You really think you could have trusted him? I merely saved you time and gold,” Bucky scoffed as he shrugged her off.

“You are so conceited. Don’t you realise we need this alliance? It’s much bigger than your little maid!” She barked, “oh, all this just to fu--”

“No, no! Shut up!” he spun and pointed at her face, “you don’t speak of her. Your or anyone else.”

She reeled and chortled. She rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips. She licked her lips sourly and shook her head, “Better yet, I will not speak to you again. You have until the end of the day to leave the capital.”

“Are you mad?”

“I’m serious,” her brows arched, “Samuel agrees with me. You will go and you will not return. Go back to your castle and be alone and bitter as you always wished.”

Barnes huffed and mirrored her own fury, “fine. I told you, I never wanted to come here.”

“So it is my fault now?” she snipped.

“No, your majesty,” he said dryly, “how could anything ever be your fault?”

“Don’t,” she warned.

“Oh, queen’s are so powerless,” he rebuffed, “how every woman in the realm must pity you.”

“You’re a bastard,” she sneered.

“We both share the same blood, the same flaws,” he slowly walked back to the window, “you will see in the end that I did you a favour. That man cannot be trusted.”

“Oh, do get over yourself, brother,” Rebecca snapped and the slam of the door marked her exit.

Lord Barnes stared down at the wintery grounds then up at the grey sky. It was due time he went home. To be alone. For good this time.

🏰

Flickers of light skimmed beneath your eyelids. Distant memories, dwindling dreams, and unheard words. 

The pain came first. The agony down your left arm and hip, the way it rippled through you like a crashing ocean against the shore. The ragged breaths grew to groans as the ground moved beneath you, rattling like your bones and your head. The noise of horses and wooden wheels in the dirt. The smell of leaves and oak. The feeling of life come back to you.

You could not move your left arm, it was bound and even if it was not, you couldn’t have lifted it. Your left leg was in similar shape and your entire body was bound in pain. The confusion laced your mind and kept you from thinking too deeply as you realised you were in a box, the darkness broken only by the thin wisps of light between the hammered boards.

“Hello?” you called, your throat dry and sore. It hurt to speak and your lungs squeezed terribly.

You bent your right arm, your shoulder straining as you did, and hit the lid. It did not budge and you hit it harder. Your uncertain strikes turned to a steady and frantic pounding as the blackness began to suffocate you. You had to get out. You would die in there. Or were you already dead. You realised what you lay in; a coffin, and your stomach dropped like a boulder.

The wheels stopped and the ground stilled. You were on a cart of some sort and footsteps tramped into the dirt and murmurs stirred outside. There was a thump on the lid and suddenly it lurched upward as it was pried off. 

Swathes of light flowed in and blinded you. You stilled and stared up as a figure stood above you and another appeared at the other side of the casket.

“Ah, finally,” the accented tone slithered, “I feared the dose was mistaken.”

You blinked until Baron Zemo came clear to you and shielded your eyes as they watered. You gasped as another shattering pain overtook you and gasped at the sheer torment. The other man, thin and tall with lines around his eyes and across his forehead peered down and reached to check the bandages around your left arm.

“She cannot sit in the carriage but we can arrange for her to recline in there, yes, my lord?” he asked as he felt your forehead, “there is no fever. She is past the worst of it.”

“We can arrange it,” Zemo nodded, “do get her a blanket. We really should have done so before we nailed the top on.”

“Yes, my lord,” the tall man hopped down from the cart and returned with a thick fur coverlet. Zemo tucked it gently around you and as he brushed your arm, you cried out.

“I… I should be dead,” you rasped, “how--”

“A trick. On the gods, on fate… on your Lord Barnes,” Zemo smirked, “oh, do not fear, he hasn’t any idea of your miraculous perseverance. Let me assure you he is most miserable to believe you dead.”

“Why?” you asked as the lid of the coffin was moved away and you heard others moving around. The stench of the horses made you shudder and brack back the scene; the clopping hooves, the roaring crowd, the pulsing of your heart, your maddened laughter.

“You know, I never desired anything more from Lord Barnes. What happened between us was an act of war. We were soldiers but he could not see it that way. I am an understanding man but I am not without reason. If he cannot be civil, why then should I?” He said smoothly, “I came to your kingdom to serve my own and I cannot do that with him snapping at my throat, so I will go home.”

“But why--”

“Patience,” he bid as he lifted a gloved hand, “I could not have factored you in if I tried. You are the most unexpected creature. What you did… well, that sent a very clear message to me, one that I heard.” He looked around and clasped his hands together as he leaned his elbows on his knees, ”I will not claim it to be entirely selfless in my deed, in fact the idea of the deceit does more for me than it could ever do for you. To think of Lord Barnes in his misery, that pompous man.”

“What--Where are we going?” you asked weakly as the wariness crept up on you once more.

“The Tower Zemo,” he said plainly, “in my homeland. You should recover there and then we will decide what to do with you.”

“What to--”

“Nothing too nefarious, I assure you. I should like to avoid the depths of Barnes…” he sniffed, “I don’t expect you to trust me, lady, you would be a fool to and you do not seem one to me. Foolishly brave and perhaps obstinate but not a fool.”

“I--how am I to thank you?” you croaked.

“Don’t do that just yet,” Zemo rose as men approached and suddenly the coffin was slid off the cart.

You were carried around the side of a carriage and set down again. The men worked carefully to remove you from inside the casket and you screamed as they did. Zemo spurred them on and apologised for your discomfort as they transferred you to the lid of the coffin placed to stretch between the seats of the carriage.

The tall man draped the fur over you again and checked your splints and the layers of bandage hidden beneath the loose wool gown. He called for some water and helped you drink. Then he was handed a chest and stirred around for a vial.

“This is Werner,” Zemo said as he sat on the empty part of the bench and the carriage door shut, “he did see that you survived and that you died in the eyes of your master.”

“Oh… thank you,” you looked to Werner as he urged you to drink from the vial.

“Just a sip, miss, for the pain,” he bid.

You did as he told you and reclined again with a grumble. He sat opposite Zemo who watched you with a cryptic expression.

“It will be a long journey,” he said, “and likely longer for you. It would be best if you kept calm and did not stress yourself. You are still… fragile.”

“I feel it,” you closed your eyes as fatigue shrouded you.

“You would,” Zemo said, “sleep is best for it, isn’t that so, Werner?”

“Sleep numbs the pain,” Werner assured, “sleep lets the body heal itself.”

“And sees the time through,” Zemo yawned, “besides, what else is there to do?”

Your breath eased along with the pain and slowly you sank back into the void. You let it embrace you as you forgot about the Baron and his odd physician, about the Duke and the life before. You welcomed sleep as you had death and yet, you were relieved to be alive.

[doctorofmagic]

First of all your blog is like a Bible. I read pretty much every issues on your masterlists and now I can't get Stephen out of my brain. Hands down my favourite character of all time. But now I wanna read something else and I am very curious about doctor Doom. I know your blog is stephen-centric but do you have something to recommend me if I want to deepen my knowledge about him?👀

Oh, anon! Thank you so much for your kindness and sweet words! I'm glad you concluded this incredible journey, I hope it was a good one.

Now, I also concluded Doom's chronology but I gotta admit my memory skills only work for Stephen. I'll try my best to recall my favorite stories for Victor tho! He's my second favorite character and he's SO deep and interesting on so many levels when well written.

I'm assuming you've read Triumph and Torment and Secret Wars, so I'll focus on other stories. This is not a top 10, btw, just a basic list.

1 - Books of Doom

If you've already read T&T, I'm sure you're familiar with Victor's past before becoming King of Latveria. But Books of Doom goes deeper into his past, from his relationship with Cynthia and Werner to Valeria and Reed. It's definitely a must read and an awesome start. It was my first contact with 616!Doom, along with T&T and Unthinkable. I accidentally was fated to read incredible stories when I first got into comic books ehehehe.

2 - Avengers - Emperor Doom

This one is definitely a favorite. Here we see how Doom could choose to be a good man if he wanted to, making the world a better place in exchange of love, but that only makes him bored. Because he's not inherently good. He's selfish and petty on many levels so he gives up on everything so he can live a thrilled life. Not to mention that this is the inspiration for the God Emperor Doom from Secret Wars.

3 - Fantastic Four #247

My favorite Doom stories are not those in which he is portrayed as a shallow one-dimensional villain. And this is why I love this issue. It's Kristoff's first appearance and it shows how much Victor cares for his people. Some writers go for a cold ruler who can't be bothered and see his people as tools, which, in my opinion, is incorrect. Victor has an incredible background as part of an oppressed group. It's only natural that he won't stand for injustice. A must read!

4 - Fantastic Four #570-611 (+ FF #1-23)

Of course, if I'm talking about Fantastic Four and Doom, it's my duty to mention Hickman's run. I don't think that, till this very day, someone will ever surpass the levels of understanding Hickman holds when it comes to Doctor Doom. Also the depth in Reed and Victor's relationship is... pardon the pun, fantastic. And I also love Valeria and the Future Fundation as a whole. I know it's a little too much but I promise you, you won't even feel the time pass.

5 - Fantastic Four v3 #54

I'm SO soft for villains and their children. In this case, of course Victor would have a fundamental role during Valeria's birth. He was the one who saved both Sue and Val while Reed couldn't be there for them, which only makes their bond stronger. And it's so interesting because, again, Doom wants to be part of their lives. He wants to be recognized and antagonized because it's the sparkle in his life. And of course he will make Reed's life miserable in the sense that he's constantly reminding him that Doom won't let his family be. He wants to be noticed, he craves Reed's attention. So what is more outrageous than being the godfather of your nemesis' daughter? The pettiness this man holds is *chef's kiss*

Summing up, those are definitely my favorite stories. I could also recommend the recent Ewing's Guardians of the Galaxy run (#13-18) for funny and cunning moments, Fantastic Four v1 #57 for super funny and dramatic classic Victor von Doom, War of the Realms: War Scrolls #3 for one of my favorite quotes ("he's victory"), and so on.

And yes, I'm not recommending the super fundamental issues featuring Stephen and Victor because, again, I'm assuming you've read them. But of course, OF COURSE those will always be my favorite stories. It's only natural, giving these two are my bread and butter.

Thank you for your trust, I hope you like these stories. Victor is definitely a super interesting character in the right hands and these stories are definitely a love letter to his characterization.

Thank you for passing by!

[rex101111]

Following Orders.

Rating: E

Warning: Gore, blood, body horror, Mentioned attempted suicide, Holocaust mentions, civilians getting shot by nazi soldiers (the usual awful things).

Right so I recently got into The Magnus Archives so I had to contribute something :D blame @imbeccablee she introduced me to it. You should check it out it’s REALLY fun if you into horror and podcasts and horror podcasts :D

Anyway enjoy!

"Statement of; Johan Hess. Regarding an encounter in France during his time in the German army around the Normandy landings.

Statement Originally taken: December 15th, 1981

Recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute.

Statement begins;"  

-_-

The phrase "I was just following orders" is the emptiest thing a soldier could say. It is a pathetic, cowardly attempt to dodge responsibility by pinning it on your superiors. You throw away your choice, the option that you could have done different, by claiming you had no choice at all from the moment you placed yourself in uniform and became just another face in a firing line.

Of course I shot those civilians, I was following orders.

Of course I burned that house down, I was following orders.

Everyone was following orders, everyone was shooting each other and walking in lockstep as they were told to march, march forward onto hell and onto death and onto the enemy's bullets and bayonets without a thought.

We were all just. Following orders.

It's the excuse, and that it all it will ever be, an excuse, given by soldiers in the Great War when questioned about the mustard gas in the trenches. It's the answer you'll get from the soldiers that came back from Vietnam with mud between their fingers and blood in their teeth.

And it was the excuse I used, every single day of my life, from the moment I joined the German Military during World War Two. It is the excuse I use to get up from my bed in the morning, the one I used when I hugged my wife and had to convince myself I had the right to say that I loved her, the one I used day in and day out even after the true scope of what the Fuhrer had done to the morals of my country and the values we held dear.

I know it is a lie, that the cause for that war was corrupt and cruel from the very beginning, I have always known, but that lie is the only reason I managed to keep the barrel of my gun out of my mouth after we saw the...footage.

Have you ever seen pictures of the survivors of the death camps? Those gaunt figures with their bones nearly sticking out of their skin? Bodies, dressed in filthy rags, so emaciated that they barely appeared to be human? Their eyes filled with pain and fear?

How about film? Even in black and white, the way they moved, as if struggling against the wind lest it folded them in two, spoke to the depth of the horror and cruelty those people endured.

My people did that, my countrymen did that to those people. My neighbors and friends dragged them out of their homes, shaved them bald, starved them, beat them, put them into rooms filled with death, stripped them of everything that made them human until all was left was a massive hole in the ground filled with meat and blood.

 And I allowed it to happen, me and every other soldier in that army when we put on those uniforms. As we swept through Europe like a hive of locusts, stripping the land bare and dragging people kicking and screaming from their homes and gave Hitler and his sycophants more power and territory. I was not one of those animals, those soulless demons of the SS, but the blood on my hands was the same as the blood on theirs.

 Both of us allowed those terrors to happen. The only difference between them and I is that they did of that all directly, with full knowledge of what would happen to those poor Jews and Blacks and anyone deemed lesser. I was a fool, placing my fingers in my ears and refusing to see things as they were.

 My fellow soldiers were the same, high on patriotic fervor that blinded them to what our fatherland had become. I didn't join the Wehrmacht to kill people, though I knew that it would be asked of me, I joined because the thought of my friends and family dying out there alone made me sick. I wanted to do my part, and every article in the newspaper and every poster on the streets and every speech on the radio convinced me that my part was to hold a gun and shot until I was either dead or we won.

 Even as we turned on the Russians and operation Barbarossa failed miserably, even as the Americans started landing on the beaches of France, even as more and more of my fellow soldiers died around me, I was convinced that I needed to do my part.

 That all changed in a single night.

 I was stationed in France, near the Eawy forest, on June 13, a week after the Allies began landing on Normandy. I was sent to France almost as soon as I finished my training, almost two years previous, and had been to many places in that time. France is a beautiful place, its cities gleamed and its nature spanned wide and far in many places.

 It pained me in a way I refuse to say out loud to have to visit this place with guns and tanks.

 I was a part of a unit made to combat partisans and French rebels hiding in the forest, rooting out encampments between the trees and keeping the local population in line and stop them from thinking to do anything as foolish as fighting back.

 My unit passed through many villages in the forests of France, burning and pillaging as we went. Our commander, Heinrich Werner, was a vicious man who believed the word of Hitler down to his bones. He ordered us to take every Jewish civilian we could find in every village we passed, gather them in the town square, and shoot them were they stood.

 He often complained aloud at how unsatisfied he was at his position and placement, only growing louder as news of the Americans landing on the beaches reached us and we all stayed put. I suspect he exercised this cruelty to prove himself in some way, to show he should be fighting the allies instead of hunting in the forest for rebels with rusty weapons. If that was true than he failed miserably, and only grew more and more cruel as time wore on.

 Man, woman, child, elder, Werner wanted them all dead to the last. It mattered not that they screamed or begged, his voice was calm and steely as he ordered us to bring our rifles to bare.

 And no matter how they screamed and pleaded and cried, we all did as he said, we all followed our orders.

 None of us hesitated, none of us questioned, none of us were shot for disobedience. Every time, we lined up our rifles, steadied our grip, and pulled our triggers as one. You never appreciate how loud a gunshot could be until you put your hands on an actual firearm. Movies will try, but the sheer noise a gun makes when you tell it to help you take a life is something that can't be replicated.

 Imagine a wall of noise, slamming into the center of your chest. For a split second, every single one of your bones rattle inside your flesh. The liquid in your eyes shivers from the shock, blurring your world for a long moment.

 And then, nothing. Your shot echoes out, slowly dying in the air, but all you hear is nothing. The world is a void of sound and noise, the shot ringing in your ears is gone almost as soon as it arrived. When you are part of a firing line, you not only have to suffer the shock from your own weapon, but the weapons to your sides as well, walls of the noise crushing you from all directions at once.

 It deafens you, even after your ears either adjust to the noise or are so damaged by constant gunfire that it no longer stings, those walls of noise steal every sound from the world for a few moments.

 Just long enough for you to hear the bodies of your targets fall to the earth. You shot someone while they stand and they fall apart from the bottom up. First their legs give out, lacking the strength to hold up the weight, and then they slump forward or backwards, laying on the ground as if their strings were cut.

 The thud of flesh hitting the ground, be it mud or cobblestone or bricks, is unavoidable. You can't escape it. Even if you fill the air with so much noise and fire and death that you can't even hear your thoughts from the lead all around you, you can always feel the moment someone hits the ground and begins staining it with blood.

 And if your bullet is the one that caused it, the thud echoes. It reverberates through your chest and lodges itself between your lungs, and for a long time after you hear it with every breath you manage to pull.

 The nights after we raided a village were always quiet after that, each of us making sure not to look each other in the eyes as we ate our rations and crawled into our sleeping bags.

 Until one night, when Werner started screaming at us to get up, "On your feet! Everyone in uniform! NOW! EVERYONE OF YOU GET UP!" I remember those words exactly, even after all those years, like he had just shouted them right in my ear. It was the first time I ever heard anything other than cold satisfaction or cruel excitement from the man. This time, every single word he spoke was quivering with shock, even as he tried to hide it with his orders.

 It was a rush of people in the dark, elbowing me and hissing at me to hurry up as I shook the sleep from my bones and put my uniform on in a near blind panic. I was the last to get ready and follow the rest of the soldiers to the center of our makeshift camp.

 I was not very close with many of the soldiers in my unit, despite how long we spent together. I was never an overtly social person even back home, so I exceled at making sure I never stepped on anyone's toes, but suffice it to say no one there considered me a friend and I extended them the same courtesy.

 None of that made the sight of a mangled pile of body parts any less shocking to me. Least of all because I recognized the soldier it had once been. It was Karl, one of the riflemen that always seemed to be the most eager to file into a firing line when Werner started barking orders.

 He was pulled apart like an old doll, each of his limbs bleeding profusely from ragged stumps on the torso they were arranged on, with his head on the very top of the pile as some sort of vicious centerpiece.

 And his face. His face was the worst of it, instead of a blank stare like that of a drowning fish, or the twist of dying agony and terror I had so grown used to over the two years of my service, instead his face was the very picture of fathomless sorrow. His eyes were as if on the verge of weeping, his mouth closed in a mournful grimace.

 I felt myself drawn into those eyes, the clear blue of it glinting in the moonlight as I stared. I could swear they were filling up with unshed tears as I continued to gaze in numb horror and felt a deep, shredding dread cutting up the pit of my stomach.

 I could hear more than a few of my fellows retching at the sight, and I was barely able to hold back my own bile as Karl's blood continued to pool around the flesh of his mangled corpse.

 Werner was pacing back and forth, breathing heavily through his nose as he glared at us. "Who did this?" He asked us, voice trembling with some mix of anger and fear. "One of you must have heard something, did anyone see?"

 We all looked at each other uneasily, none of us having heard a thing before Werner had started screaming. He started shouting at us again, calling us all idiots, pathetic excuses for soldiers if someone could just walk into our camp and kill one of our own and get away with it.

 He continued shouting meaningless insults for another full minute, wildly gesturing with every word as he seemed to try and wring out his own fear, before he stopped abruptly, leaning his ears towards the deep, dark woods.

 We did the same, and all of us flinched at once when a deep, loud noise rumbled from between the tree trunks. Nothing human could have made that sound, and I heard no animal capable of anything like it either. It was something between the growl of a bear and the dying gasp of our many victims, echoing with a mix of anger and hate, and it made the dread in my stomach burn more and more brightly.

 Werner snapped at us once more, barking at us to gather our rifles and flashlights, and to march with him into the woods to hunt down whatever was, "making a fool of him." His face was twisted with anger and denial, as if the murder of his soldier and the noise was accusing him of something, and his pride was refusing to take it laying down.

 It said something of German Military discipline when there was only a short moment of hesitation before we all began to gather our equipment, all of us defaulting to the one thing our basic training had drilled into our heads in the face of this horror.

 We followed our orders.

 Again, I had fallen a bit behind, only one of the other soldiers, Wilhelm, waiting for me for a moment before continuing on to the group gathering in front of the woods with Werner. My hands were still shaking from the pile of body parts, unable to stop myself from stealing glances at it as I gathered my things.

 As I finished attaching the bayonet to my rifle, something caught my eye near what was once Karl. A piece of paper, resting on the palm of one of the hands, not flying off in the breeze despite the fingers being spread open.

 I walked over to the paper almost without thinking, the sounds of Werner shouting orders and warnings to the other soldiers sounding muffled, as if through water. With every step I took towards it, Werner sounded further and further away, finally falling silent as I stood right next to the outstretched, severed palm of my fellow soldier.

 It was a note, on it a single word, scrawled in French, the letters scratched and thin.

 I learned more than a little French back at home, my mother being from Paris, and the word on that note was unmistakable.

 In the beginning, the Jews we executed merely whimpered at us, begging for their lives. As time wore on, as the French people became more emboldened by the resistance and the allies pushing us back, they began shouting at us in rage and anger.

 They shouted many things, but one word kept repeating, over and over, the children screaming first, before their parents joined in. The word echoing in my ears even as the gunshots died on the wind.

 The same word on that note, the letters changing color from ink black to a familiar red as I stared at it, burning themselves in my mind as the note started to bleed from them.

 Monsters.    

 I was suddenly wrenched from my trance when I heard Wilhelm calling out to me, the rest of the unit, 29 men in all including myself, Wilhelm and Werner, already deep in the woods. I looked back at Karl's palm for a moment, and saw that it was empty.

 I shook my head and followed Wilhelm's call, barely hearing Werner shouting marching orders at the head of the party. I took a breath and marched forward with clenched teeth, feeling the woods swallow me whole.

 Forests at night were a terrible thing. Without the sunlight filtering through the canopy, they were utterly pitch black in every direction, only the occasional ray of light from the moon piercing through to barely illuminate anything.

 You could hear every little sound in the night, owls flying between branches, insects and lizards scrabbling up the bark, the trees attempting to deafen you while you were blind. Only the solid footfalls of my unit walking together gave me some sense of place, and whenever I looked away, the dark seemed to stretch out for miles.

 The Eawy Forest is one of the largest in France, over six and a half thousand hectares of forest, a border of trees on the northern edge of Pays de Bray. You could literally walk for miles, hours, weeks in these woods if you got turned around. And in the dark, the trees stretch out into the abyss no matter how hard you look.

 You could hide a body in these woods, and it would be months before anyone found what was left of it. There could be an enemy hiding behind every trunk, every errant bush, and the possibility of that seemed to finally enter Werner's head as we walked on and into the woods.

 More than once, a loud snap would sound from a direction, and every one of us would whip our rifles to shot whatever made the foolish decision to be alive and moving within our sight. Every time, there was nothing, and Werner would growl at us to keep our wits and keep marching, his voice losing more and more of its edge with each repetition.

 I don't know how long we moved through those pitch black trees, at some point my mind was panicking over why we hadn't seen the sun yet, thinking we must have walked for hours now.

 Me feet ached, but I dared not complain, not even as a matter of discipline, but more that the thought struck me that if something in these woods heard me admit a weakness, it would be the last thing I would ever do.

 And so we walked, deeper and deeper, almost in a trance, not a single one of us daring to speak a word, fingers tight around our weapons. In that silence, I noticed the sounds of the woods stopped as well. Wilhelm looking over his shoulder at me, a ray of moon light illuminating his face just enough for me to catch the worry in his pinched brow.

 I could only shrug helplessly at whatever silent question he threw at me, and he turned away with a silent grimace.

 All of a sudden, we stopped, Werner having apparently seen something and ordered a halt. One by one, the unit began to spread out wide and forward, with me at the very back I could only see why when the motion reached me about a minute or so later.

 We reached a clearing, large enough to fit all thirty of us and still leave room to spread our arms out. The moon was shining brightly, perfectly lighting up the clearing even though it had almost completely waned.

 I looked around at the rest of the unit, seeing them all stare ahead at something at the far end of the clearing, all of them still perfectly silent with Werner the furthest in. I leaned my head up to see what it was, not trusting my voice enough to risk breaking whatever heavy silence had fallen on us all with a question, and then felt the bile rise again in my throat as I caught the smell.

 The acrid scent of old, stagnant blood filled the air. Every breath I took was laced with the pungent odor of rotting, fetid meat, and the source was right in front of me, but I could not see. Images of torn city streets flashed in my mind, bodies strewn about haphazardly and left to bleed and rot in the sun, crows and maggots picking at their flesh.

Some force of morbid curiosity pulled me forward, the same mindless walk that led me to the note in Karl's hand, and I was about 10 feet away from Werner when I saw what he was staring at.

 And saw him shaking like a leaf in the wind, whimpering like a child.

 It was a pool, about 30 feet wide and stretching out into the dark of the forest, it's surface calm and smooth as glass, and the moon light blooming in the clearing reflected of it perfectly.

 The smell, fetid and stagnant and rotten, was the strongest right at the lip of the pool, and the moonlight made it impossible to miss the deep, red color of the water.

 No, not water, the more I looked the more I was certain that not a single drop of water was in that pool. The bile rose in my throat and burned it as I stared at this huge pool of blood, smelling of decay and sorrow so strongly it nearly knocked me off feet, and so thick I could not see through it.

 I desperately wanted to look away, to hold my nose and turn on my heel and flee from this place with all my might, but I was rooted to the spot. Despite my horror, something else rose in my chest, a crushing feeling of guilt stuck itself between my lungs and stopped me from breathing, and tears started welling up in my eyes as I continued to stare at this massive pool of red.

 A Knowing grew in my head, a certainty that would have dragged me to my knees had I been able to move. I spilt this blood, I filled this pool to the brim with every trigger I pulled, I couldn't look away, I had no right to look away. All I could do was weep and feel the bile I could not vomit churn in the back of my throat.

 I could vaguely hear the soldiers around me whimpering along with Werner and myself, some of them whispering desperate apologies and gagging on their own vomit as we stared at this pool of gore we all made.

 After what felt like an eternity of begging for forgiveness and staring unblinking at that pool of blood, the glass like surface of the pool began to ripple outwards from the center, something moving just below the blood.

 The ripples began inching closer and closer to the edge of the pool, closer to us, before stopping dead and vanishing all at once. We all fell silent and held our breaths as we stared at where the ripples were, waiting for…something.

 Almost without warning, an arm shot out of the crimson pool, and started clawing at the grass. Before we could fully understand what we were seeing, a second arm joined the first, and together they started pulling at the ground, dragging something, someone, out of the blood.

 It stood up slowly, painfully, blood dripping off in rivulets and pooling near its feet instead of sinking into the ground. It was barely the size of a child, limbs thin and muscles emaciated. They wore bloody rags, the cloth sticking to its skin, through which I could see bones nearly bulging out, bent at odd angles.

 Its hair was shaved in irregular patterns, and what hair it had was soaked with blood like the rest of it. It kept its head down, taking deep, ragged breaths. Every inch of me was screaming at me to run, that what I was seeing was wrong, that staying where I was meant death in every sense.

 But I did not move, the Knowing that told me I made the pool told me that this is where I needed to be, and I could do nothing but stay, and wait.

 It raised its head, and it wore the face of a child, the face of every child. The face of every child I saw while I went to school, the face of every child I saw dragged kicking and screaming to the trains, the face of every child I saw at the far end of my rifle.

 Its eyes were a deep brown flecked with red, mud on a rainy battlefield, and the sheer depth of hatred in its eyes made me feel like someone was ripping me in two. It hated us, this thing from the pool, hated us all, personally, on the deepest level possible. It hated me, for everything that I was, everything that I am, for everything that I ever did in that pointless, cruel war.

 Its jaw started twitching, wrenching open with a sickening sound of stretching flesh, and a sound began coming out of its throat, slowly forming into a word.

 I knew the word before it said it, before it scowled at us and its face twisted into an overwhelming expression of sheer rage. I could feel the word burning in my mind as it took a deep, wet breath between its blood stained, jagged, broken teeth.

 Monsters.

 It spoke with the voice of a little girl, word dry and ragged in the air like it hadn't had a drop of water for years, and it echoed deep into the woods and deep in my bones and I could not argue with it at all.

 It said it again, and again, and again, the same word, the same accusation, over and over and over.

 It called us monsters, in French, in German, in Hebrew, and more and more and even when it spoke in a language I had never heard before I knew what it said, knew every implication and every nuance and every inch of hate in the words it used.

 And I knew, know, that it, that she, was right.

 We were monsters, every single one of one of us, and we had earned the hate in her eyes. Every. Last. Inch of it.

 I felt myself fall to my knees, tears of shame and fear and sorrow running down my face as the words flowed through my blood and strangled my heart. I heard the soldiers around me do the same, their whimpers replaced with broken sobbing as the words sank into the trees behind us and went on, on into the wind until all was silent again.

 She stood there for a moment, sweeping a hateful, furious scowl all around the clearing as she took us all in. And she scoffed, but said nothing in response to the weeping and sobbing of the men, cowards, monsters, around her.

 She began walking forward, her steps landing in a loud squelch of wet dirt, the blood dripping off her form never seeming to end as she closed the distance between her and the sobbing mess that was Heinrich Werner.

 She stood in front of the bawling man for a long moment, staring down at him as he fell apart under her burning hateful gaze. He said nothing intelligible, all he could manage was a long string of blubbering and tear soaked pleas for mercy. His voice went on and on, growing more and more hoarse until I was sure I started to see blood mix with his spit from the strain and yet he kept begging her. Begging her to spare him.

 Even as she ripped off his right arm, gripping it with boney fingers and slowly ripping the flesh away from him he continued to beg.

 She ripped off his other arm, his legs, cut open his stomach to let his entrails spread across the grass, and yet he kept begging.

 She grabbed his head with both hands, her broken teeth grinding together as she started to pull, and only then did he stopped begging, and started screaming.

 His head screamed and screamed, even as the last strips of flesh connecting his neck to his skull snapped away with a wet sound. It screamed and screamed and screamed, the sound ringing in my ears and rattling the teeth in my head, before she crushed it between her palms, the gore of Werner flying off in odd directions, spraying me and the other soldiers in blood and liquids I dare not name.

 She grabbed the body parts she pulled from Werner, and dragged them to the pool, tossing them into the deep, dark red with a careless gesture. The ripples died almost as soon as they started, the opaque blood swallowing the meat ravenously until nothing remained.

 And then she went to Wilhelm, and the begging, the tearing, the screaming, it all started again.

And again with the next.

 And the next.

 And the next.

 All around me the soldiers begged and then screamed and then were devoured by the pool as she ripped them apart one by one. I could not move, not to run, not to look over my shoulder to see her claiming her pound of flesh from us. All I could do was sit on my knees, the tears continuing to fall down my face, and wait.

 Soon, the last soldier screamed their last behind me, and she walked passed me to TOSS the meat into the pool. She stood in front of it for a long moment, the wind whispering between us as I waited.

 Slowly, painfully slowly, she turned to face me, the hate in her eyes burning just as brightly as when she first emerged. She pinned me down, stopping my shaking and crying and even my breathing as her face twisted into a soundless snarl.

 I blinked and she was right in front of me.

 She waited, waited for me to beg, to scream, to plead.

 I opened and closed my mouth, trying to say the same as the rest of my unit, but my voice refused to leave my throat to say them. I was a monster, just like they were, I deserved no less and no more than what she did to them.

 But when I finally spoke, when my voice finally formed into words, all I could manage was a sob.

 I took one last breath, and using strength I did not have, by the force of a will I did not deserve, I looked right into her eyes, her burning, piercing eyes, and said, "I'm sorry."

 No excuses, no begging, no pleading for mercy or cries of fear. Nothing more than apology, weightless and pointless in the face of my sins, but it was all I could manage to say.

 For a moment, for a single second, the hate in her eyes were replaced with shock, her face dropping the burning scowl she's had from the beginning. I could see her for the first time, truly see the young girl behind the gore and blood that called us all monsters with such conviction. And the guilt sunk in my chest again, and the Knowing came back and told me that I did this to her, and more tears fell again.

 As soon as that Knowing passed through my mind, the hate returned to her eyes, twice hot and making my heart drop to the bottom of my stomach, before I could say another word, a plea or another worthless apology, her fingers clenched the flesh of my shoulder and pulled, ripping my arm without a hint of resistance.

 The pain blitzed through every inch of me, burning so bright I couldn't even scream, but the urge to do so blared in my mind so brightly it nearly blinded me. Before I could even fully comprehend the pain, she grabbed me by the collar of my uniform shirt, and started beating me furiously about the head and face.

 She did so soundlessly, no grunts of exertion, no growls of anger, but in the brief moment before she landed each blow, I could see her face. The scowl was still there, still as accusing and raging as it had been since the beginning. But between her beating my face to a pulp I could see something reflecting the moon light off her cheeks, and in the delirium of pain I realized they were tears.

 The beating went on for what felt like hours, but soon she dropped my bloodied form on the grass. She looked down at me like I was a piece of filth stuck to her shoe, face impassive as I spat red stained spit and teeth on the ground.

 My vision began to blur, but before oblivion could embrace me fully, she grabbed me by the shortened hair on my bleeding scalp and began dragging me towards the pool. I dared not struggle, knowing, Knowing, that she was pulling me to a fate I deserved.

 I think I managed one more blood soaked apology before I blacked out, but I was never sure.

 Next thing I remember; I was in a field hospital in the village of Ventes-Saint-Remy, with a missing arm and nearly my entire body covered in bandages. My head especially was heavily wrapped in gauze with the exception of a single eye.

 A nurse was the first thing that I was able to focus on, she was speaking to me in calming, gentle French, asking for my name.

 Without thinking, I answered in French, and she smiled at me with kindness I will never deserve.

 I did not tell her I was a German soldier, and she did not think I was. Apparently I was found in the woods by a couple of young boys, naked as the day I was born and covered in wounds. That was months ago.

 It was December, she told me with a grateful and tearful smile, and the Germans were losing.

 If you asked me why I didn't tell her who I truly was, or what had happened to me, the only answer I could give you is that I was a coward. That I am a coward. But whatever the reason was, I spent the rest of the war in that hospital, slowly regaining my strength under the care of that nurse.

 Her name was Irene, and her kindness and heart were more than I will ever deserve.

 As the war ended, I found my way back to Germany, and saw my home in ruins. I did not live in Berlin or anywhere that far east, so I was somehow spared having Stalin and his Soviets watching my every move.

 But I never forgot that night in the forest, where my whole company payed the price they owed for being monsters. I spent years waiting for a court martial, or for someone to unearth some document that proved I was the unit that burned lives and towns in France and for an angry mob to demand my head.

 But it never came, it was like I never fired a gun or served in the army a day in my life. Whenever I asked my parents about it, they acted like I spoke nonsense, that I never spent a day in France, much less as a member of the Wehrmacht. They said my injuries were because of some car accident, or the result of a building fire, every time I asked they were confused as to why I didn't remember and refused to speak further of the matter.

 I started to believe that perhaps I imagined it all, that perhaps my nightmare in the French forest was just that. A nightmare.

 Years passed, I started a family, had children, and tried to ignore that alien feeling of guilt that sliced up my stomach whenever I passed a Jewish temple. It was a nightmare, it had to be, and that was what I was able to convince myself.

 Until the pictures started coming out, until the trial in Israel began appearing in the newspapers. Until footage of the full scale of what would be known as the Holocaust became public knowledge.

 I went to a newly opened museum in my home town, and with every display, with every picture, with every frame of film, the terror I remember from that night returned to me in full force.

 Gaunt figures, broken teeth, shaved heads, every one of them a reminder of that blood filled night in the forest.

 I can still remember that moment, that instant where I recognized a face in a group photo, a young girl in rags. The face nearly made me vomit in the hall, but when I saw the caption of the picture, saying it was taken in France, I collapsed then and there and rushed to a hospital.

 I never told my family the truth that I could no longer deny. Not my wife, not my children, not my grandchildren. Even as I had irrevocable prove of the punishment I had suffered, I could never find the courage to admit to the ones I loved that I was a monster.

 I spent the last few years applying myself to charities for the survivors of what my people did. I spent back breaking hours in soup kitchens and rallies, I devoted every second I had to make the apology I breathed in the forest air mean something.

 It was never enough, even as people received help and money and hugged me so fiercely I thought they would snap me in half it was never enough. And I never told a soul that I wore the same uniform as those that treated them like animals.

 Until today.

 Understand, I did not come here for absolution, or aide, this was simply a long needed confession from me. It is getting harder and harder to get out of bed, my wife passed away years back, and my children and their children barely keep in touch with me anymore.

 I have run out of excuses, I can no longer hide behind the orders that told me to commit such horrible sins. I will forever be a monster, no amount of charity or apologies will change that, but me being a coward? That is something firmly within my control.

 I do not expect you to find anything, or even believe this crazy, one armed man who suddenly appeared on your doorstep. That's okay, giving me a chance to write this story down, even if no one will ever read it, was more than enough.

 Thank you, all the same. And for the tea.

 It may seem small to you, but to a monster like me? It's more than I will ever deserve.

-_-

"Statement ends. Johan Hess died two months after giving this statement, so any chance of a personal follow up is impossible as this point.

 Further, considering that he recounted events that happens forty years previous, even Gertrude could not find much with what little investigation she did. According to German Military records that have survived from the French Occupation, no unit such as the one that Hess claimed he belonged to ever existed, at least not anywhere near Eawy Forest.

 In fact, there is indeed no document stating that Mr. Hess served during the war at all, so nobody remembering he went to France is no big surprise.

 There is a picture of him included in the statement, which does show an extensive amount of injuries to his face along with a missing left arm, but that hardly proves anything. Finding anything about any building fires or car accidents that could have given him those injuries have also turned up nothing.

 He didn't lie about his contributions to charity work to support Holocaust survivors, and there was a report of him being rushed to the hospital after collapsing in a museum, but that's where anything solid about what is said in this statement stops.

 I would dismiss this report entirely, if not for one thing regarding his death. The death itself was not as…visceral as what had allegedly happened to his unit, simply a heart attack in his sleep. But his neighbor, who had reported his death to the police and called an ambulance, found something clenched in his hand.

 It was a note, written in French. The neighbor, as well as the rest of the tenets in the building where Mr. Hess was staying, does not speak a word of French, and handwriting analysis determined that Mr. Hess did not write it himself. Translated, it reads as follows:

 Not a monster. Not anymore.

 End Recording."

[scumtrout]

Who are your favorite Shera characters? I love Shadow Weaver and Double Trouble, unabashed assholes who are clearly having a good time are too entertaining.

Sorry for the delay in responding, I was waiting until I’d finished S4.

I want to say ‘all of them’. I tend to listen to She-Ra while I’m doing something else rather than watch it directly (I  wish the animation was smoother), but I’ll look up and pay attention to a character if they’re up to something good.

The characters I consistently pay attention to are:

Catra1) She’s written in a way that’s pretty astute, and 2) I’ve seen her compared to Azula, but Catra’s writing is miles ahead of that. Azula’s arc was 'welp she’s crazy and she’s broken now, end series’… While Catra, for the most part,  remains fairly effective while still being deeply miserable. Also it’s not every day you see an antagonist who has naivety as a major weakness.Her relationship with Double Trouble was also pretty great. Like 'hey, I’m mean, you’re mean, let’s hang out’ and… Oh, Catra. Catra no. That’s not how it works.

Entrapta:Usually when a mad scientist character has the whole Werner Von Braun thing going on where they don’t care who their inventions hurt or who they ally themselves with, I’m left with the impression that the character is purely self-serving. However, I don’t get that impression from Entrapta. The series makes it pretty clear she’s just playing from a different rule book to everyone else rather than being driven by profit or ego.

Scorpia:In a show with lazier writing, she would’ve stayed as Catra’s slow-witted right hand woman, so thank fuck the writers didn’t go down that route.If you have been in a toxic environment with a girl who means well but is not terribly bright, then you have already met Scorpia IRL. If you’ve ever been at the bottom of the social pecking order, you have probably hung out with Scorpia. She is to be protected at all costs, and seeing her make friends with the other princesses was A+++ 10/10 very good.

Shadow Weaver:What a tool. What an absolute douche. Other shows would probably treat her character archetype along the lines of ‘boo she’s bad and she should die ASAP, ideally as a result of her own hubris so that the protags keep their hands clean’… however, in SPOP she’s allowed to survive and hang around Bright Moon like a bad smell, which seems more realistic, given that sometimes you can’t neatly erase toxic people from your life entirely.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life

This review was published on November 9, 2011, and is being republished for the 2019 Day4Empathy.

"Into the Abyss" may be the saddest film Werner Herzog has ever made. It regards a group of miserable lives, and in finding a few faint glimmers of hope only underlines the sadness.

The documentary centers on two young men in prison. Michael Perry is on Death Row in Huntsville, Texas, America's most productive assembly line for executions, and on the day Herzog spoke with him had eight days to live. Jason Burkett, his accomplice in the stupid murders of three people, is serving a 40-year sentence. They killed because they wanted to drive a friend's red Camaro.

Herzog opposes the death penalty, which America and Japan are the only developed nations still imposing. But the film isn't a polemic. Herzog became curious about the case, took a small crew to Huntsville and Conroe, Texas, where the murders took place, and spoke to the killers, members of their families and those of their victims. He obtains interviews of startling honesty and impact. I've learned that he met his subjects only once, on the day of the interviews, and the film presents their first conversations. I've long felt Herzog's personality is compelling and penetrating, and in evidence I could offer this film about Texans who are so different from the German director.

Herzog keeps a much lower profile than in many of his documentaries. He is not seen, and his off-camera voice quietly asks questions that are factual, understated and simply curious. His subjects talk willingly. He asks difficult follow-up questions. He is not very interested in the facts (there is no doubt about guilt here), but in looking into the eyes and souls of people who were directly involved.

Why did Perry die and not Burkett, when both were convicted for the same crimes? We meet Burkett's father, Delbert, who also is in prison serving a life sentence. In his testimony at his son's trial, he blamed himself for the boy's worthless upbringing. This apparently influenced two women jurors to pity the boy — or perhaps identify with the father. Delbert seems today a decent and reflective man. He bitterly regrets that he failed to take advantage of a college scholarship, dropped out of high school not long before graduation, and went wrong. He sees his mistake clearly now — too late for himself, too late for his son.

Perry and Burkett are uneducated, rootless, callow, lacking in personal resources. Delbert perhaps has benefitted from life in prison, as his son may. We meet Melyssa Burkett, who married Jason Burkett in prison and is now pregnant with his child — although, as Herzog observes, conjugal visits were not allowed. How did she become pregnant? She did, that's all. Herzog never sensationalizes, never underlines, expresses no opinions. He listens.

We also meet Captain Fred Allen, who was for many years in charge of the guard detail on Huntsville's Death Row, including the years in which George Bush turned down one appeal after another. He starts talking with Herzog and is swept up by memory and emotion, explaining why one day he simply walked away from his job and decided, after overseeing more than 100 executions, that he was opposed to the death penalty. What he has to say about one crucial event in his life is one of the most profound statements I can imagine about the death penalty.

The people in this film, without exception, cite God as a force in their lives. The killers, their relatives, the relatives of their victims, the police, everyone. God has a plan. It is all God's will. God will forgive. Their lives are in His hands. They must accept the will of the Lord. Condemned or bereft, guilty or heartbroken, they all apparently find comfort in God's plan. What Herzog concludes about their faith he does not say.

Opposition to the death penalty, in part, comes down to this: No one deserves to be assigned the task of executing another person. I think that's what Captain Allen is saying. Herzog may agree, although he doesn't say so. In some of his films he freely shares his philosophy and insights. In this film, he simply looks. He always seems to know where to look.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2I0k0kp

[octopus-reactivated]

BTHB: Worked to the exhaustion - Werner

It's been a while since I wrote something for this part of Werner's journey. Idk why, it's so fun to see his smart defiance >:]

Tw/cw: Pet whump, humiliation, cruel Whumper, starvation, beating, bruises, let me know if i missed something.

__________

At least, he left those annoying white rooms. Werner was going insane there, and that probably—correction—that for sure was their purpose. 

The Man who bought him had an unpleasant appearance. Probably twice Werner’s age and seemed like he was cruel.

 Werner was labeled as a chore Pet, so he hoped he wouldn't have much attention on him. Just give him tasks to do and let him be in the back.

That probably won’t happen. But it was nice to hope. 

The Guy grabbed him by the collar and dragged out of the car to his house, dropping him on the floor. Werner fixed himself into a kneeling position (and he hated that). “Alright, listen up Pet, because I'm going to say this only once” he looked like he had an inferiority complex and needed to make himself feel better “Here are the rules: You refer to me as Master. You don’t speak unless spoken too. When I have guests over, you don’t show your ugly face to them, unless I call you. And when I call you, you come immediately. Each morning you get a list of chores, and you finish them the same day. Do your chores in a way that won’t disturb me. Walking upright is allowed only when a chore requires it, when not, you will crawl. If there will be a need to buy cleaning products, you will note them down. Is that understood?” 

“Yes, Master”

 “Go do your work then” 

__________ 

To say that the list he was given was long, was an understatement. 

“Were the tasks so hard?” Master said.

 “Not individually, Master…” he tried to explain himself, kneeling on the floor, eyes down.  He knew it was futile, and yet he spoke in his defense. 

“Well then, do them individually then”

 Werner hated how the Man looked down on him. If the chores are so easy, do them yourself, idiot. Oh no, you can’t because your wife was the only one maintaining the household and when she divorced you, the only solution you came up with was to buy yourself a chore slave.

 He couldn’t say that out loud. Well, he wasn’t even sure if that was true, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he hit the spot. That type was common. 

And he couldn’t explain or defend himself. 

__________

The punishment wasn’t the worst he ever received, but it may get troublesome if every day will look like this one. 

He earned a few bruises and was sent to sleep on a cold floor in a small utility room. Apparently, if he ‘behaved’ he could get a dog bed, but Werner doubted the man even bought one. If he ever completes a full list, he will find out if his assumption was true.

 He curled up on the floor.

 It was just temporary. He will escape this, he just needs to be patient.

 __________ 

Master quickly realized that making an impossibly long list will only make Werner lose motivation to do his tasks if he’s going to be punished despite the efforts he puts in. So he fixed it by basing end-day punishment on a number of uncompleted tasks.

Ten missed chores meant ten canes or ten minutes waterboarded. 

Werner hated to admit that it worked. And he worked hard to avoid another cut or another bruise.

 He will escape and go home, he just needed to make his Master let his guard down. 

And until then he worked, and worked, until one day while dusting his hand appeared to be distant and the world seemed to spin around and everything became black.

 __________

 “What do you think you’re doing?” Master was towering over him, frown on his face. It was not a frown of concern.

 Damn.

 He got up and dropped on his knees.

 “Sorry, Master, I… I must have fainted” 

“Huh? Did I get myself defective?” 

Werner grinned his teeth. This was so humiliating. 

“Do you want to be thrown out?”

 Oh yes, please. Remove his chip and let him go free. He will wander around cold streets for a while, but eventually will contact his family. Please, let him go home.

 “No, Master” he answered, “Please, let me correct myself”

Endure it. It would be too suspicious if he didn’t beg for forgiveness. 

“I guess…” Master looked down on him, “I don’t want to go through hustle of getting new one”

 __________ 

He got kicked so hard that he flew into the storage room he used to sleep in. His breath turned into a series of coughs and wheezes. 

This was on top of his already bruised body. The owner slammed the door in his face, just after he announced that Werner won’t be getting any food for three days.

But that wasn’t the greatest problem. 

He was just scared that if he would be overworked like that, he wouldn't have the strength to go home.

__________

Taglist: @heathenville @myst-in-the-mirror @icyheart-and-friends (though you might enjoy??)

also @whump-blog thank you for proofreading!

[sunflowersean]

Oden shenanigans

"Don't look at her chest don't look at her chest don't look at her chest... "

"Bi and ready to die...... "

"Honestly I don't know if this is a dream or my life is this miserable...."

"You give me wowzers in my trousers"

*confused Spanish screaming*

@werners-ho

[llamasarecoolerthanyou]

Summer love part 2 – Stephan Leyhe & Andreas Wellinger

Thank you so much for all the likes, reblogs and kind words! It means the world to me. ❤️

Here is the second part. It was supposed to be short and sweet but I don’t think that’s possible with me. 😂 It turns out, I can’t let them be happy without some suffering but I hope you’ll still enjoy it.

Summer love part 2 – Stephan Leyhe & Andreas Wellinger

For the first time in months, Andreas actually felt happy. Even though it was already March and the season was slowly coming to an end, he was finally going to make his debut in a World Cup competition.

As it often happened, his thoughts went back to the time that was at once the happiest and most painful in his life. When Stephan had kissed him that day, for just a moment Andreas felt like he had everything he could ever want; only to have it taken away a second later.

  After he came home, all he wanted to do was to wallow in misery and stare at his phone hoping for a call from the man he was in love with. Fortunately, there was Karl who came banging on his door after a week of no contact. He would be forever grateful to his friend who had spent hours talking sense into him despite his often rude remarks.

He still thought about the brunette constantly, but thanks to Karl’s stubbornness he was soon back in the gym. Andreas put all the energy he had left into training. After not showing up at all for days, he was now staying after hours and was usually the last one to leave. But in spite of his determination and perseverance, the results just weren’t there.

During the first Continental Cup competition, he didn’t advance to the second round. As the time went on, he started to rank a little higher but still never even made it into the top fifteen. But whereas others would probably start considering giving up, somehow the lack of success only made him try harder.  

He didn’t know why but he felt like he needed to prove something, although he had no idea to whom. Maybe he wanted to show Stephan that he was right to believe in him. Some part of him thought even that his success would make the older man want him back. Mostly though Andreas just wanted to finally feel something besides this constant emptiness.    

He knew his best friend was starting to worry about him again but to everyone’s relief, February brought his first podium. The following starts proved to be even more successful, with the Bavarian suddenly winning every competition leading up to the World Championships. As none of them had been selected, Andi and Karl decided to watch the events together.

Leyhe didn’t start in the qualifications to the two individual competitions. Andreas was sure he couldn’t have felt more frustrated even if he had been the one being overlooked. Remembering their conversation from a few months back, he knew the brunette must be feeling pretty insecure and disappointed right now.

He was as surprised as everyone else, when the day before the final men’s competition, Werner Schuster announced that Stephan would be joining the team.

When the time came for the Hessian to jump, Andi was on the edge of his seat, nervously tapping his foot. He could hear Karl snickering at his agitated behavior but at that moment he didn’t care. All he wanted was for Stephan to make a great jump and show everyone that he belonged there.

An hour later he was watching with tears in his eyes as the man he was in love with received his silver medal. Seeing him smile and laugh with his teammates made him feel better than all his recent victories. What’s more, it made him long for a moment when he would be the one standing next to the brunette, celebrating a shared success.  

  From that day on something inside him changed or as his best friend said, “the old Andi came back”. He was more mature than a year ago but at the same time kept his easy-going attitude and infectious smile. This change couldn’t have come at a better time, as a few days later he got a call from his coach.

One of the jumpers from the A-team had sustained a minor injury during the Championships and not wanting to risk his health, decided to withdraw from the remaining two weeks of competitions. As he was currently the best among the B-team, they selected him to join the team.

Which meant that he was now on his way to Oslo, where he would join the German squad for the Raw Air tournament. Having finally achieved something he had been dreaming about for years, he was feeling excited and nervous.

The fact that he would be seeing Stephan for the first time in months didn’t help either. A few weeks ago he would have probably dreaded meeting him again but now he was somehow hopeful. He reminded himself that there was a chance that Leyhe wouldn’t want anything to do with him after all this time, but that didn’t seem like something the man he remembered would do.

Soon he arrived at the hotel and was now waiting at the reception as instructed. He couldn’t stop himself from looking around, even if it wasn’t very likely that he would spot Stephan anywhere.

“He’s not here.” He heard someone say and turned around to see Markus watching him with a smirk.

“What? I wasn’t…” he started to say, trying to pretend he didn’t know who the older man was talking about.

“Sure,” Eisenbichler rolled his eyes and continued ironically, “and I’m the one Leyhe is swooning over.”

“I…” Andi blushed, not sure whether he was mocking him.

Noticing that the younger man was becoming nervous, Markus decided to take pity on him and assured him with a friendlier smile. “Calm down kid, I’m just joking around.”

“But Stephan really isn’t here, I’m afraid. Schuster didn’t want him to strain that injured ankle, so you’re here to replace him,” added the brunette apologetically.

Andreas felt disappointment flood his body, he had really hoped he would have the chance to see Stephan again. It was just his luck that after coming here, finally having gotten the shot he was waiting for so long, it turns out that the one person he wanted to share his happiness with was not here.

“Don’t look so disappointed. Come on, we’re going to be roommates for the next two weeks.” Markus patted him on the back and started walking towards the elevator.

  Despite his initial hesitation, it turned out that living with Markus was actually pretty good. He had someone who could show him how things were done among the A-team and most importantly, even though he was new, he didn’t feel isolated from the group. He still wished he was experiencing all of it with Stephan, but it was nice to have someone who was willing to listen to his excited gushing after another day at the hill.

Time flew by and soon they were in Planica, about to enjoy the last weekend of the season. Andreas was satisfied with his results in the Raw Air tournament, having placed in the top fifteen in all of the competitions. In the end, he had come in tenth in the overall ranking, which was more than he could have hoped for.

They were relaxing after a training and the blonde was once again trying to gather up the courage to ask his new friend about Stephan. He knew they talked often but never when he was in the room, and the few times he walked in on their phone calls Eisenbichler quickly hung up.

He was too busy internally freaking out to notice that his roommate was staring at him amused and shaking his head.

“Are you finally going to ask? I would give you more time, only we’re leaving tomorrow and honestly, I’m getting fed up with the both of you.”

“You mean Stephan…” Andi said, looking hopefully at the older man.

“…is a moron like you?” Markus added exasperatedly. “Yes. You’re both acting like lovesick puppies. I can admit it was funny at the beginning but if I have to spend another evening recounting what you ate for breakfast, I’m going to lose it.”      

Andi tried to look like he was offended but after a second decided that he simply didn’t care. After months of wondering, he found out that he wasn’t the only one still thinking about last summer. Stephan had to still care about him if he was asking his best friend about him. Maybe it would take longer than he wished but he felt like everything was going to work out.

Knowing he lost him for a while, Markus just rolled his eyes at the grinning idiot and thought he may as well visit Freitag.

Three months later

Stephan smiled widely as he exited the car and looked around. Two days late but he was finally in Spain, ready for this year’s training camp. His cousin’s wedding the day before made him miss the flight with the rest of the guys, but now the wait was over.

After a long and miserable year, he was going to see Andi again. He had been distraught after finding out that the blonde was going to join the German team in Norway, just as he had been forced to take a break.

When he left the Bavarian after their kiss last summer, he thought he had done the right thing. He told himself that they were too young, Andi was just eighteen for God’s sake, and he couldn’t expect him to commit to a long-distance relationship after two months of knowing each other.

Before that night he had hoped they would stay friends but after he had kissed Andi, he knew it was no longer a possibility. It would hurt them too much to pretend that they didn’t feel more.

However as the time went on, he started to wonder what if. What if they had tried to make it work? If he had told him earlier about his feelings, after all, he had seen that Andreas liked him. If he hadn’t been too afraid to risk everything for once in his life.

He spent months regretting his decision and finding excuses not to phone Andi. He was pretty sure that Markus came close to hitting him several times, during his late night whining.

He almost called the younger man in March, after Markus had assured him repeatedly that Stephan still had a chance with the blonde, but then came the news. Having heard that Andi was joining the A-team this year, he decided to wait a little longer and tell him everything in person.

Shaking off the memories, he grabbed his luggage and headed towards the hotel. He spotted Markus waiting for him near the reception and walked over to him.

“Have you seen him? Do you know where he is now?”

“It’s nice to see you, too. I’m great, thank you for asking,” answered ironically his friend.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that we’ve waited so long and…” Stephan smiled apologetically.

“It’s fine, you know I’m your biggest fan. He’s at the beach, now go and end our suffering,” said Markus taking his suitcase and shooing him away.

Having thanked his teammate, he walked quickly to the beach. Ten minutes later he was there and his heart started beating faster as he saw the man he was in love with. Andi was sitting with his back to him and making circles in the sand.

Feeling anxious, he came closer and asked, “Mind if I sit here?”

Andreas turned quickly, clearly, he hadn’t heard him approach. He looked surprised but after a second, a beautiful smile lit up his face.

“Go ahead.”

Stephan sat down and, hoping he won’t be rejected, took the other man’s hand in his.

“I’m sorry. I was so stupid…” he started to say but Andi just shook his head, leaned down and softly pressed his lips against Stephan’s.

He returned the kiss and the blonde put his arms around him. Stephan felt himself melting into his embrace. Their first kiss had been desperate and frantic, whereas now it stayed tender as their lips moved softly against each other.

They broke away after what seemed like ages but remained close as he gently caressed Andi’s cheek.

Finally, Andreas broke the silence, “I know we have to talk about everything that had happened. But I have been in love with you for months and I’m not going to wait any longer. All I need to know is if you love me because if you do, then there is no doubt in my mind that we can make it work.”

His voice was calm but he could see the anxiety in Andi’s eyes as he spoke. Still, all he felt in that moment was happiness and pride. He was proud of his Andi who had the courage to confess his feelings, even though he must have been terrified. He no longer resembled the stammering boy, who blushed every time Stephan looked at him.

“Of course I love you. I’ve loved you since last summer but I was too much of a coward to say…” he began but the blonde interrupted him again.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he whispered and pulled him closer to kiss him again.

And at that moment, it didn’t. Later they would talk about their mistakes and things they could have done better but right now, he was with the man he had missed and dreamed about for almost a year and nothing else mattered.

***

I guess it turned out to be much more of Andi’s story but I promise there will be more Stephan in my next one shot. 😊   

I’m hoping to publish at least one fic a week, I know it’s not a lot but it takes me a few days to write and polish a story and I don’t have that much time. 😔

[jonigirard3]

Landmark Education: worth watching video and my story - Part One

Landmark Education: worth watching video and my story - Part One

I was first introduced to Landmark it was called something else, Werner Erhard and Associates. I was a new immigrant in Israel, worked for the City of Jerusalem as an architect, in the Town Planning Department. I was lonely and miserable. I left Hungary hoping for a family. I left Hungary hoping for a better life. Instead I brought my misery with me and got loneliness on top of it. One day a woman I barely knew by sight stuck her head in the door of my office and invited us, 4 girls, to a thing at her home. I said yes, I would have gone anywhere at that point. My Hebrew was good enough to work, not too good to converse at that point.

https://www.yourvibration.com/2740/landmark-education-video/ Raise Your Vibration with Sophie

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

What is the greatest threat to Western civilization today?

In 2010, a journalist put that question to a leading European official, Herman van Rompuy. It was a crisis moment for Europe: just weeks earlier, anti-austerity insurrections had broken out in Greece and Spain, while in Italy an elected government had been replaced by a set of cardboard technocrats dispatched by Brussels.

In his conversation with the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine, van Rompuy, the former president of the European Council, offered a succinct answer. Not neoliberalism, not plutocracy: “the greatest danger to the contemporary West” he told his German colleagues, “is populism.”

Curiously, however, “populism” was publicly embraced a few years later by none other than the undisputed leader of the West: Barack Obama. Speaking to journalists in 2016, Obama addressed the advent of Donald Trump, a figure regularly portrayed in the press as an avatar of “populist” politics. But Obama had a different view: “I’m not prepared to say that some of the rhetoric that’s been popping up is populist,” Obama said.

You know, the reason I ran in 2008, and the reason I ran again, and the reason even after I leave this office I will continue to work in some capacity in public office is because I care about people and want to make sure every kid in America has the same opportunities I had.…

Now I suppose that makes me a “populist.” Now, somebody else, who has never shown any regard for workers, has never fought on behalf of social justice issues, who has, in fact, worked against economic opportunity for workers, for ordinary people — they don’t suddenly become “populist” because they say something controversial in order to win votes. That’s not the measure of populism. That’s nativism, or xenophobia — or worse, it’s just cynicism.…

I would advise everybody to be careful about suddenly attributing to whoever pops up at a time of economic anxiety the label that they’re “populist.”

The two examples illustrate a longstanding existential difference between European and American definitions of populism. Europeans tend to associate the term with everything politically odious. When asked to conjure an image of populism, contemporary continentals see youngsters brandishing red-brown flags, equipped with glistening jackboots and a thirst for totalitarian terror. In the run-up to the recent German election, for example, the p-word was deployed against both the far-left party Die Linke and the far-right formation Alternative for Germany (AfD), while the winning candidate, Chancellor Angela Merkel, styled herself the “anti-populist” candidate.

Meanwhile, the many-headed hydra of so-called populism has lately appeared in countries across the continent, including Austria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Spain. As John Judis has put it, Europe seems to be in the middle of a “populist explosion.”

Liberal commentators have been strident in their descriptions of the trend. To Princeton political scientist Jan-Werner Müller, the rise of populism is not just a danger or a threat; to his mind, it represents a “degraded form of democracy” that Western societies need to rid themselves of as swiftly as possible. Former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, a leading figure in EU politics, is less oblique. In his view, populism heralds nothing less than the start of “a new world war.” It’s a long away from Obama’s lament.

Recently, this transatlantic discursive rift seems to have narrowed somewhat, as some Americans have drawn closer to the European view. “Populism is a toxic brew,” notes Harvard historian Niall Ferguson in a recent essay, “as well as an intoxicating one. Populists nearly always make life miserable for whichever minorities they chose to scapegoat, but they seldom make life much better for the people whose ire they whip up.”

American and European elites are now converging on an intrinsically pejorative understanding of the term, with think pieces and op-eds on the dangers of the p-word now forming an obligatory portion of every news cycle.

(Continue Reading)

[totalsoccer]

Jerome Boateng interview: 'It is very important that we understand that the Chelsea game is not done'

Since lockdown Bayern Munich have won all 11 of their matches to wrap up the Bundesliga and German Cup, part of a run of 24 wins in 25 games, and they go into the second leg of their Champions League last 16 tie with Chelsea with a 3-0 win from the first game in London. So with that in mind it is startling to hear Jerome Boateng talk about how the "joy and fun" was brought back to a campaign that started off pretty miserably. “There were hard times,” the central defender admits. “It’s like being a child: as a child if I had no confidence, if you don’t get trust from your friends you play with, then you lose the joy of the game and fun. That’s what happens now, even when I’m older.” Like Bayern, Boateng was struggling with opportunities limited under coach Niko Kovac. At 31, maybe Boateng’s race was finally run with the German giants having been linked with Manchester United in 2018 only for the move not to materialise due to concerns over his injury record. “Of course there were thoughts at some stage, do I need to change now?” Boateng says. “Because, like this, I really did not get a fair chance. Of course you think about this because I won’t play football for ever and I want to enjoy football and I knew I still trained good, I worked hard and in my opinion – not everybody has to have the same opinion – in my opinion I deserved a chance to play and to show more that I can play at a high level. That was it, and at some point if you see it’s not working between the sides then you have to make a clean, but like a nice cut, not a dirty cut.” Instead another cut was made. Kovac was sacked and assistant Hansi Flick took over and it helped that he had coached Boateng with the German national team. “He brought back the joy for us as a team to play football, to have fun,” Boateng says of Flick. “He talks with all the players, he gives us a good feeling on the pitch and a plan and I think everybody can see that.” Everybody can. Bayern, with Robert Lewandowski in the form of his life, are undoubtedly one of the favourites to win the Champions League this season and it would certainly be a major shock should they not progress past Chelsea even if their last competitive game – there was a friendly against Marseille last Friday – was winning the German Cup Final on July 4. Chelsea, of course, have played up until last weekend’s FA Cup Final. But, still, it would be some turnaround even behind closed doors. “It’s very important that we understand as a team that the game is not done,” Boateng argues. “We are really hungry and see Chelsea are in good form and they have improved and will be stronger than the match in London so we have to prepare very well. “As a team you have to have a strong mentality, everyone has to go in the one direction and that’s really important. You see the teams who won the Champions League, including the last years: they always prepare well and as a team whether it is (Real) Madrid or Liverpool, they were like a little family sticking together.” There is a growing relationship between German and English football, especially when it comes to young players – with Jude Bellingham following Jadon Sancho to Borussia Dortmund, although Sancho may now be returning if Manchester United push through with a deal, while Chelsea have signed Timo Werner and are pursuing Kai Havertz. It is something Boateng is well aware of. “I think it shows the Bundesliga teams give young talent time to grow,” he says. “I think they feel well treated in Germany. They have time to grow slowly. Sometimes as a young player you have times when you don’t play so well. In some other countries I think it is really strict – they have a bad game, they are out for weeks. In Germany they take care of them. The clubs give them confidence, so that’s why they grow so well. All these players had really good seasons. Kai, Timo and Sancho are all really good talents. They have played for a long time now and I think they are all ready for the Premier League. “Of course you have to show that first of all. It’s not that easy because it’s a different league. The intensity is different. It’s a different style of game. They have to see if they feel comfortable and like it there.” Boateng was once one of those young players making the move from Germany to England when he signed for Manchester City in 2010, when he was just 21, from Hamburg. Unfortunately he arrived injured, was part of a vastly changing team under Roberto Mancini, was played out of position at full-back – and was sold, joining Bayern, within a year. Still, it has not put him off coming back to the Premier League one day.

source https://sports.yahoo.com/jerome-boateng-interview-very-important-160321519.html?src=rss