Do NOT give in to despair. Yes, the response isn’t always perfect. But the perfect is the enemy of the good.
People are standing up.
Fancast: Aldis Hodge as Tony Stark
#oh my goddddddd #you just never see a poc in that kind of archetype #tony stark is a power fantasy reserved for white men #i’m automatically a million times more interested in rich kind of dickish superheroes when they are poc tbh #because like imagine being a little black boy growing up so so so smart and so so so alone #half your teachers dismissing you when you get bored and restless because you already KNOW all this stuff #and focusing on your disruptive behaviour that results from that combination of boredom and loneliness #you grow up without any real peers because the other kids at your rich fancy private school are all white #and nobody would ever dare say anything but you’re self-conscious anyway #so you deal with it by being as outrageous as possible because then at least you can control why they look at you askance #your dad’s been trying to prove himself to long gone heroes for as long as you can remember #and your mother loves you but she doesn’t always understand you #they die young and you go off the rails and it doesn’t even sting that they all think you’ve proven them right #because you kind of believe it as well #you’ve grown up never seeing a black boy on the television who wasn’t violent #and even when you get straightened out some with help from rhodey there’s a long fucking way to go #but you reach out and you /demand/ respect because you’re angry and you want justice for all your wrongs #the media never really accept you; they’re hungry for more of your misadventures so they can paint you like a villain #I COULD GO ON BUT I DON’T THINK IT’LL FIT IN THE TAGS (via peppermoonchilds)
Tony Stark as a POC is 100 000 times more relevant than white male Tony Stark
I….I don’t think I’ve EVER seen a poc Tony Stark fancast. Wow. I just realized this. Damn. And this is awesome. Co-sign all the way.
There are probably other actors who pull this off, but Aldis Hodge would carry off this role & no one would ever see Tony Stark as a white man again.
Really tho. He’d take the role and keep it, like Samuel L. Jackson took and kept Nick Fury (who was originally a white southern dude, for people not into marvel comics)
Part One
“We are going to get in so much shit for this,” Chris rambles, “if we get fucking caught with this-”
“Chris, stop okay,” Eddie tries again. She’s been working herself up with the same shit for twenty minutes.
“We decided to do this babe,” Robin reminds her.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time!” Chrissy practically wails, “he saved our asses, it just seemed fair!”
“Our asses were in trouble in the first place because of him,” Eddie mumbles under his breath.
Robin Elbows him, “shut up, he said he didn’t know and I believe him. I told you, he’s a good soul.”
Eddie cries out in pain, “ah shitting fuck!” he yells across the bay, reflexively pushing off with a booted foot so his stool rolls away from the danger, his hurt fingers shoved unceremoniously in his mouth to nurse away the sting.
“Whatsit?” Robin sits up in her bunk, fluff of hair sticking up at all angles.
“Nothing. Nothing, sorry, fucking thing shocked me, go back to sleep.”
“Timesit?”
“I dunno,” Eddie looks around vaguely, looking across the untidy bank of tools and control panels he squints at the nearest monitor, “one ish.”
Rewrite an Ending or Two: Chapter Seven
“You like my display?” Vecna steps forward and runs a clawed finger along the vine trapping Andy’s legs. “You took Maxine from me before she could complete it, but don’t worry. She’ll have pride of place.”
“Stay the fuck away from Max,” Steve says. She dives for one of the spider jars and throws it at him, tries to get behind the overturned chairs, give herself a little bit of cover, but Vecna tilts his head like El does, and Steve finds herself pinned to the attic wall. She tries to hunch over, protect herself, but it’s like she’s frozen in place.
For those of you saying "But when do they find out about the BABY", this one's for you.
Written for @steddiesportsau.
Read the Coverage
Prompt #1: Friday Night Lights | Word Count: 2771 | Rating: T | CW: Language | Tags: Pre-Steddie, S2 Canon Divergence/Mild AU, Football Player Steve Harrington, Hawkins High School Football, Let It Be Known: Eddie Munson Did Not Sign Up For This Willingly
It was only supposed to be an unfairly issued punishment for a bullshit charge of attempted destruction of school property. The old, if you want to mess with the school's footballs so bad, then maybe you should be on the team nonsense that only a smooth-brained coach could cook up.
An ultimatum to either suck it up and accept the forced task of throwing practice passes to the JV losers, or be suspended, all but guaranteeing himself a third senior year. All because Coach Watkins saw Eddie snag a football from one of the asshole jocks, cock his arm, and send it flying into the trees in a nice spiral Uncle Wayne had taught him as a kid. Back before it was quite so blatantly obvious that sports weren't gonna be an interest in his life.
Now, months later, he's having a helmet shoved on his head mid-game because Carver, the asshole starting quarterback, is being carted off the field. Knee blown out.
Two minutes ago, Eddie was reading a book on the bench. Now, Steve Harrington is pulling Eddie's jersey off his back, shoving a pair of pads into them, before demanding he put his arms up.
He does, not sure what other option he really has at this point. Harrington yanks the jersey down over his head, settling the pads onto his shoulders, then slides his hands under Eddie's jersey. Eddie hears the click, and feels Steve yank them tight. Too tight.
They're not really gonna make him play football in an actual game, are they? That's absurd.
"You should've been padded up," Harrington says, and then pats Eddie's thighs. Eddie is wearing his bottom pads, but if he wasn't, would Steve Harrington try to strip his pants off him too? "Why weren't you dressed out?"
"Uh, I don't really play," he starts, but Steve Harrington, the only remaining captain on the field, is too busy dressing him before they have to resume play.
Ellipsus Digest: April 2
Each week (or so), we'll highlight the relevant (and sometimes rage-inducing) news adjacent to writing and freedom of expression. This week:
Meta trained on pirated books—and writers are not having it
ICYMI: Meta has forever earned a spot as the archetype for Shadowy Corporate Baddie in speculative fiction by training its LLMs on pirated books from LibGen. You're pissed, we're pissed—here's what you can do:
The Author’s Guild of America—longtime champions of authors’ rights and probably very tired of cleaning up this kind of mess (see its high-profile ongoing lawsuits, and January’s campaign to credit human authors over “AI-authored” work)—has released a new summary of what’s going on. They’ve also provided a plug-and-play template for contacting AI companies directly, because right now, “sincerely, a furious novelist” just doesn’t feel like enough.
No strangers to spilling the tea, the UK’s Society of Authors is also stepping up with its roundup of actions to raise awareness and fight back against the unlicensed scraping of creative work. (If you’re across the pond, we also recommend checking out the Creative Rights in AI Coalition campaign—it’s doing solid work to stop the extraction economy from feeding on artists’ work.)
Museums and libraries: fodder for the new culture war
Not to be outdone by Florida school boards and That Aunt's Facebook feed, MAGA’s nascent cultural revolution has turned its attention to museums and libraries. A new executive order (in that big boi font) is targeting funding for any program daring to tell a “divisive narrative” or acknowledge “improper ideology” (translation: anything involving actual history).
The first target is D.C.’s own Smithsonian. The newly restructured federal board has set its sights on “cleansing” the Institution’s 21 museums of “divisive, race-centered ideology.” (couch-enthusiast J.D. Vance snagged himself a board seat.) (Oh, and they’ve appointed a Trump-aligned lawyer to vet museum content.) The second seems to be the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a 70-person department (now placed on administrative leave) in charge of institutional funding. As we wrote last week, this isn’t isolated—far-right influence overmuseums and libraries means this kind of ideological takeover will seep into every corner of the country’s cultural life.
Meanwhile, the GOP is (once again) trying to defund PBS for its “Communist agenda.” It’s part of a larger crusade that’s banned picture books with LGBTQ+ characters, erased anti-racist history, and treated educators like enemies—all in the name of “protecting the children,” of course.
NaNoWriMo is no more; long live NaNo
When we initially signed on as sponsors in 2024, we really, really hoped NaNoWriMo could pull it together—but its support for generative AI and dismissiveness toward its own audience prompted us to withdraw our sponsorship, and many Wrimos to leave an institution that helped cultivate creativity and community for a near-quarter century. Now it seems NaNo has shuttered permanently, leaving the community confused, if not betrayed. But when an organization treats its community poorly and fumbles its ethics, people notice. (You can watch the official explainer here.)
Still, writers are resilient, and the rise of many independent writing groups and community-led challenges proves that creatives will always find spaces to connect and write—and the desire to write 50k words in the month of November isn’t going anywhere. Just maybe... somewhere better.
The continued attack on campus speech
The Trump administration continues its campaign against universities for perceived anti-conservative bias, gutting federal research budgets, and pressuring schools to abandon any trace of DEI (or, as we wrote on the blog, extremely common and important words). In short: If a school won’t conform to MAGA ideology, it doesn’t deserve federal money—or academic freedom.
Higher education is being pressured to excise entire frameworks and language in an effort to avoid becoming the next target of partisan outrage. Across the U.S., universities are bracing for politically motivated budget cuts, especially in departments tied to research, diversity, or anything remotely inclusive. Conservative watchdogs have made it their mission to root out “woke depravity”—one school confirmed it received emails offering payment in exchange for students to act as informants, or ghostwrite articles to “expose the liberal bias that occurs on college campuses across the nation.”
In a country where op-eds in student newspapers are grounds for deportation, what part of “free speech” is actually free?
We now live in knockoff Miyazaki hellscape
If you’ve been online lately (sorry), you’ve probably seen a flood of vaguely whimsical, oddly sterile, faux-hand-drawn illustrations popping up everywhere. That’s because OpenAI just launched a new image generator—and CEO Sam Altman couldn’t wait to brag that it was so popular their servers started “melting.” (Apparently, melting the climate is fine too, despite Miyazaki’s lifelong environmental themes.) (Nausicaa is our favorite at Ellipsus.)
This might be OpenAI’s attempt to “honor” Hayao Miyazaki, who once declared that AI-generated animation was “an insult to life itself.” Meanwhile, the meme lifecycle went into warp speed, since AI doesn't require actual human creativity—speed-running from personal exploration, to corporate slop, to 9/11 memes, to a supremely cruel take from The White House.
“People are going to create some really amazing stuff and some stuff that may offend people,” Altman said in a post on X. “What we'd like to aim for is that the tool doesn't create offensive stuff unless you want it to, in which case within reason it does.”
Still, the people must meme. And while cottagecore fox girls are fine, we suggest skipping straight to the truly cursed (and far more creative) J.D. Vance memes instead.
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Let us know if you find something other writers should know about, (or join our Discord and share it there!)
- The Ellipsus Team xo
vthx asked:
💥 - bang! bang! bang!
pearynice answered:
Thank you!!! I’m already so excited about this I CANNOT WAIT until I can post about it!! Until then, have some Fruitbat Eddie:
“I’m just saying,” she defends, over a stack of VHSs, “he’s still—” she gestures vaguely— “human. It can’t be good for him.”
But Steve is just happy Eddie is eating anything at all, the memories of his first week still haunting him. That, and the few times Steve tried to introduce a vegetable into Eddie’s diet he was glared at with such obvious betrayal Steve hasn’t brought snap peas into the house since.
Steve cocks an eyebrow. “Have you ever been able to get Eddie to do what he doesn’t want to?” He grins, thinking back to their days of Mac and cheese and toaster strudels, when Steve was still on a campaign to get Eddie to eat a fruit that wasn’t soaked in syrup first. “That has not gotten easier.”
Robins tsks. “I suppose the claws don’t help.”
“I suppose the claws don’t help.” aaaahahahahah that is so freaking true!
vthx asked:
🐧 - it's gotta be great if it's penguins!
pearynice answered:
Unfortunately the penguins are only distantly related BUT I am not almost done with this one! Hopefully I can finish it this weekend 🤩 so until I can share it, have MORE fruitbat Eddie:
“Has he remembered anything else?” She’s going for nonchalance, he can tell, her voice always goes all high when she does.
He knows she doesn’t talk about it with him. Doesn’t tell him that this is affecting her, too, her friend, her friend that she loves, back from the dead, an unable to remember a single thing about her.
“I don’t think so,” he murmurs, clicking mindlessly through the computer just to have something to do with his hands, “sometimes…” his cursor hovers over Wayne Munson’s name, who is twenty months overdue on his copy of Ulysses. Steve never had the heart to void it. He’s surprised Keith’s never said anything about it. “Sometimes I think he remembers more than he tells me.” Steve finishes, and steps away from the computer.
“D’you wanna come over this weekend?”
Oh, man, poor Eddie. Poor Wayne. 😭😭