#becoming

The arrival of First Lady Melania Trump’s movie has appeared to cause a spike in viewership for her predecessor Michelle Obama’s own 2020 documentary, Becoming.

Over the same weekend that Melania released in theaters, Becoming saw a bump in viewership among U.S. Netflix users, according to data provider Luminate. It reported a 13,000 percent rise in views, up from the past weekend.

More than 47.5 million minutes of Becoming were viewed over Melania’s opening weekend, compared to 354,000 minutes the previous weekend. Roughly, that means Becoming was streamed more than 480,000 times, a figure calculated by dividing the time spent viewing by the film’s total run time.

While Melania was critically panned across the board, it had the biggest opening for a non-fiction feature in the last decade, grossing $7 million in ticket sales domestically.

When the Ice Answers Yuri on Ice Fanfic by MythboundCal

The music begins. But Yuri doesn’t hear it.

He hears breath. His own—ragged, sharp, then steady. Like wind through glass.

He steps onto the ice like it’s a love letter. As if saying it without words might make it true. That he’s strong. That he’s worthy. That he wants this.

The first glide is everything. It’s not movement. It’s memory.

And just like that— The letter becomes a vow.

He thinks of late nights and early mornings. Of Victor’s hand on his back. Of the sound his blades make when he finally lets go.

The rink becomes a galaxy. The spotlight, his moonlight. And overhead, the flashing of cameras Spirals into stars.

He gives himself to the moment. Every stumble, every sweat-stained failure, Every heartbreak etched into his spine— He offers it all to the ice.

And the ice? The ice answers.

By the final spin, he’s not skating anymore. He’s flying. Not to escape. But to arrive.

When he stops, there’s silence.

And then— Applause.

But none of that matters. Because now he knows:

Stabbing a large, almost forearm long, pretty and ornate key into the back of somebody's pelvis and holding it firmly from rotating, watching the body twitch as it quickly and suddenly grinds to a halt.

Metal, previously piercing through bone, hooks up right to the central nervous system as it punches through the spinal column and starts to grow a proper brass socket for itself, clearing skin and meat and bone as the person stabbed stands there fully still, incapable of moving because the key is prevented from turning.

A wave crawls out from the edge of the socket, skin paling and smoothing out as it shrinks subtly to give a daintier physique, bones and flesh pushed out from the center of each limb, packing and hardening into solid, hollow, abnormally resilient enchanted porcelain tubes. The whole body feels hot and cold and heavier and lighter at the same time, so confusing.

Face harden into a pretty girly mask that freezes for a moment until the new doll clicks its eyelids quietly and realizes that it can kind of force its face to make expressions, even though it is not up to it how they look exactly, defaulting to a pretty, demure and feminine manner at all times.

Cables and pulleys and springs and gears jumpstart in the hollow torso, echoing in it quietly, not a hint of the old gross guts, machinery trying to move despite the key still being held in place...