XVIII. Il fu Mattia Pascal

It took Haiti over a hundred years to pay that ransom and it's difficult to explain just how badly that fucked up their entire development, especially since France also demanded a 50% discount on everything they bought from Haiti just to make it harder. Like! No wonder they're impoverished!

hudsonwilliamsofficial 07.30.2026 KOREAAA! DOWN! BADDDDD!!!!

i do actually think it is offensive for an author to dismiss queer characters' concerns of homophobia as just internalized shame and selfishness and self-hatred and cowardice. i do actually think it is offensive for an author to bring up homophobic legistlation in russia as a major concern for an immigrant character only to then decide it doesn't matter to him at all, actually, because writing him as an immigrant and doing any research about immigration is somehow too much to ask of ~a romance novel~.

and frankly, i think people who go "oh my god it's just a romance novel!!! you guys are asking too much/reading too much into things!!! it's misogynistic to criticize the romance genre like this!!!" are actually far too comfortable insinuating that the entire romance genre is, by default, full of homophobia, racism, and lazy writing. i actually think it's entirely possible for romance novels to treat the subjects they invoke with care.

if reid didn't want to write about closeted queer people with any compassion, and instead wanted to accuse them of only being closeted because of shame, selfishness, and cowardice, she could have made up a fictional world in which homophobia is simply not as severe an issue as it is today. instead, she chose to invoke homophobia as it exists in the real world, and then simply victim-blamed her closeted characters for being impacted by it.

ultimately, she writes as though the closet is the ultimate sin. this is why she discards ilya's immigrant storyline and doesn't care about the impacts of russia on him as soon as it no longer plays into the ~forbidden romance~ trope in hr. the closet is evil, and wanting to stay closeted is shameful, and therefore ilya (her obvious favorite character) must want to come out. the long game follows the same exact formula as game changer, just with more cruelty in its ending. (it's like if game changer included two sentences about scott getting physically hatecrimed at the end, but glossed over it immediately because he was just sooooo happy to be out it didn't even matter.)

Offering a glimpse into the early Punk and alt scene, two friends pose for the camera on the New York subway, 1977.

i mean can you imagine how fucking cool a buffyverse show set in 1970s new york with a slayer like nikki wood as your titular character would be? there is sooo much unexplored about her.

was she called while she was pregnant, before, or after? who is robin's father? why isn't he in the picture? what was her day-to-day like; she clearly didn't have much help seeing as she was out late slaying with her young son. what was her interpersonal life like —that made her finally give into spike???

and besides the captivating character exploration that this show would present, can you imagine the rockin soundtrack potential? the costuming, the set design!? and i'm gonna need it to be shot on film (with good lighting and og btvs effects).

Yes.

Salman Mukaev is a gay Russian man who fled to Armenia to escape persecution. Russian authorities then opened a case accusing him of illegal possession of weapons, issued a warrant and requested his extradition. He was trying to flee to France but wasn’t able to leave Armenia due to the extradition order. He wasn’t granted asylum in Armenia until 3 years after the failed attempt to go to France.

NC SOS (formerly part of the Russian LGBT Network) said that “he was threatened with a fabricated case of illegal weapon possession if he refused.”

Pink Human Rights Defender said the weapons possession charge was a “fictitious criminal case”.

I don’t think she’s truly interested in world-building anyway, her writing is pretty character-driven. And that’s fine, but the way she chooses to both include and ignore aspects of real-life experience is so jarring. Almost dizzying.

She consistently takes real-world issues and dilutes them into inconsequential frictions. Here, the issue isn’t bigoted hockey culture or state persecution, but just a rivalry. Fabian’s parents aren’t homophobes, they’re just really into hockey ! Yet, somehow, everything still unfolds in this world?