picking scraps out of the wreckage... gay symbiote lore...

I really don't know what's going on with Spiderman lately xd (spoilers for the latest comics!!)

Last year, the year before last, we saw comics in which Spiderman would gag just by looking at the symbiote, and act like it was the most disgusting thing that exists in the entire universe and now...

Incredible? an absolute feeling of electricity? SEXY??

Spidey you're talking about a married symbiote! With kids!

I do ship them tho... But even I have a filter where I can recognize what's canon and what's just nonsense my head creates because making ships is fun. So I can recognize that whatever's going on here is completely and totally out of character. Spider-Man would NEVER, EVER. From the second he discovered his "suit" was actually a living being, he tried to remove it from moment one. Even risking his own life to do so.

I don't know which writer or writers are in the latest Spiderman comics. But they are totally SpiderSymby lovers. There is no other logical explanation for what is happening here xd

What I find funniest is that they aren't even reciprocating. Symby chose to go back to their husband and son rather than stay with Spidey.

Spidey is like "damn, it was so cool to be reunited with the symbiote, I wonder if he feels the way I feel." and Symby is just happy because their back with their "perfect family".

Because this is also the first time we've seen Spiderman act this way. The last time he teamed up with the symbiote that I can remember was this one. And their interaction was not friendly.

still called them "suit"

and generally found it unpleasant to have to use the symbiote.

I wonder what happened there. Maybe the power of the King in Black makes you gay or something... Yeah, that must be

a lot of people have been hurt in the terror attacks in lebanon, i know this is a time where requests for donations are high and a lot of people are struggling financially. however, if you have something to spare please consider donating to the lebanese red cross, many people who have been injured or died in these attacks have been innocent civilians and hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients.

Second part of this little fic bit! It's the reluctant god Eddie Brock fic:

Flash had no idea what he was going to do with the foreign symbiote he’d brought home with him from the orchard.

Well, actually, that wasn't true. He was going to introduce it to Eddie. But then he'd have to call Eddie, and he'd been putting that off for a month and a half. It sounded worse when he put it like that, though. 

In reality there'd been days of recovery followed by weeks of figuring out how to control his new body. Then there was the hassle of reestablishing himself as a living person in need of housing and with a whole new set of dietary requirements–and he was still working on that first part. The New York apartment he was living in was decent enough and also not leased under his name. The  phenylethylamine supplements were satisfying but bland. He could count on one hand the people who knew he was sort of alive again.

Really, Flash had been busy. Maybe he'd eventually believe that. 

He sighed and looked at the orchard symbiote nosing around in his mostly pointless kitchen. It had condensed itself enough to fit through the front door of Flash's apartment and shifted from a rainbow oil slick shimmer over black to a mottled golden yellow and red over black. But aside from that, it still had six eyespots and still looked like a manta ray with legs. 

"Can I get you anything, " Flash asked instead of calling the number Eddie had given him. "Like coffee, something to eat–" not that he really had anything  "–maybe some phenylethylamine?"

Curiosity, it projected at him. "Are coffee and phenylethylamine like apples?"

"Not– not really?" 

"Would like to try," it offered diplomatically. 

“Then settle in I guess?” 

The bipedal manta crouched where it stood, tucking its mantle and tail around its legs until it looked like a giant dinner roll with eyes. 

“Yeah…” Flash felt those eyes on his back as he went through the motions of coffee making. Inspecting the bottle of phenylethylamine over his shoulder as he measured out the powder. Judging him as he decided if he should put the symbiote’s portion in a mug or a cereal bowl. “How much d’you want?”

“I do not know.” The symbiote’s voice echoed within it as it hadn’t made an external mouth.

A mug it was then, at least there’d be less waste if it learned that it didn't like coffee. Flash poured its portion into one of the off white mugs–which matched the off white dishes that were all he had now that he'd come back to life–and set it in front of his guest.

"Have at it," he encouraged it once he'd stood back up and taken a sip of his own. 

Back when Flash was alive and mentoring her, Andi had reveled in showing him mildly fascinating videos. Mainly because it kept him hanging around, but also because she enjoyed the expressions he made at some of them. One of her favorites had been of a magnetic putty slowly engulfing a cube of steel in exactly the same way his symbiote guest was pulling in the cup of coffee.

Flash took another sip.

The symbiote made a gurgling noise.

“Please don’t eat the mug.”

The mug re-emerged from the symbiote’s mass, now empty. 

“Thanks.”

"Coffee is the dirt taste and phenylethylamine is the artificial sustenance?"

"Yeah, probably."

It bobbed its head in some sort of sagely nod. "Eddie now?"

Flash sighed and pulled his phone out of the void in his hip that served as a pocket. Navigating to Eddie’s contact information was rote by now, but this time he actually hit the call button before he could talk himself out of it. The line rang a few times, enough that Flash thought Eddie might not answer, but on the second to last ring the line picked up. 

"...Hello?" Eddie sounded exhausted. Worn down more than could be justified by the admittedly late hour.

"Eddie, I've been meaning to talk to you for a while. I need you to come over–" Flash was no longer in control of his body. 

There was a presence. It built and shifted Flash’s body and for a second he thought he was reverting to a dragon in the middle of his tiny kitchen. Instead he grew taller and bulkier, his already dense and cramped body somehow becoming more so.

“Flash?” The presence in his body called out. It looked around Flash’s kitchen with Flash’s eyes. Furrowed a crease into Flash’s brow when it caught sight of the symbiote loafed on Flash’s linoleum. Canted his head to one side. “What are you doing here?”

It came to meet the new god, the presence knew. Flash had no idea how it knew. He’d only felt the barest tickle, but the presence’s knowing had let him know.

The presence frowned Flash’s face.

“Sure, but what are two symbiotes doing in an apartment? I’m not hard for you to find.” Unimpressed.

Flash caught on the last thing the presence said, not hard to find… 

Nonthreatening, exuded from the visiting symbiote. “Having coffee,” it said.

“Of course.” The presence sighed reflexively and Flash realized that was the first breath it had taken. Every spoken word had been made without air. “And who is this?” It gestured at Flash’s body with his own hands. Or maybe not. The hands were Flash’s in that he could feel them move even if he wasn’t the one moving them, but they weren’t his. The hands were bigger, callused and scarred–but not like Flash’s hands were callused and scarred.

“You do not know?” The new god can not pull the information from his host body?

The new god–oh hell, Eddie–grimaced. “No. It's bad enough that I possessed this symbiote without asking, I'm not going to just pull knowledge out of it for my own satisfaction.”

Flash appreciated it, though he couldn't figure out how to express the feeling. He was too crowded in his own head to try.

“Ah?” Popped out of the foreign symbiote. It really needed a name if it was sticking around. “Unexpected.”

“I'm trying not to be Knull.”

The symbiote fizzed like it was carbonated. “I like that! New god Eddie,  you are within your own dragon.”

“Dragon?” Eddie scrunched his face again.  Flash was never gonna get rid of the wrinkles Eddie was making at this rate. “I don't have any dragons anymore… the only one who was on my side was–”

“Eddie?” A small, tinny voice called from Flash's cellphone. Eddie had set it on the counter thoughtlessly when he’d overtaken Flash and now he picked it back up. A tight feeling pulled across Flash's gut.

“Dylan?”

“Eddie?” Stronger this time, the person on the other end of the line had picked up the phone. “Did you get sucked through the phone this time?”

“No, not yet,” Eddie assured quickly.  “I just got called to help a symbiote.”

“Not ye– a symbiote with a cellphone?”

“It’s complicated.”

“You always say that.”

“And it’s always true.”

“Just tell me where you actually are, Eddie.”

“In the city somewhere. I think– I think I'm in Flash’s apartment.”

Dylan heaved a deep sigh. “Sleeper put your body on the couch. I'm gonna finish making dinner.” Then he hung up.

“Shit,” Eddie muttered. 

He closed his eyes, concentrated. Flash felt a pulling sensation in his chest, like being abandoned, as Eddie left. It knocked the wind out of Flash and had him gasping for a breath he didn't really need. 

“Clumsy,” the apple symbiote observed. 

“What?”

“Both of you,” it said. “Like new spawn. I like you.”

“Good to hear.” Flash wasn’t quite sure what else to say.

His cellphone chimed with an incoming message. We do need to talk, Eddie wrote. Here's my address, don't share it, I'm available whenever you're ready. 

Venom War #1 - "Are You Ready?" (2024)

just passed the fuck out

khartoum aid kitchen has 17 locations helping fight the catastrophic famine in sudan, pls consider supporting them!

I was just talking to Ahmed @90-ghost (alongside Av, who might be reading this, idk if they’d like to be part of this post tho). He has given me permission to write a post about our conversation.

This whole thing has gotten Ahmed to the point where he admits he’s started to hate tumblr after 12 years of being on here. He has over 3k messages in his inbox and can’t handle it right now, his brother and other family members are still in Gaza and he himself doesn’t have the money to help them out. I’ve noticed that donations have slowed among palestinian fundraisers in general, before this whole debacle that a few individuals on this site started. this is anecdotal, but I know Ahmed gets like $30-$50 per week in donations at this point, and that barely makes a dent in his and his family’s needs. Remember that people in Gaza need to pay massively inflated prices for what basic necessities are available right now. I think things are looking pretty dire to the people who would like to flee Gaza but don’t have the money. It already was dire that Egyptian government, working in lockstep with Israel and the west, charges $5k+ to Ghazzawis. Hala Agency, Ibrahim Al-Argani, and the other scumbags running the Egyptian state are all demons and they’ve lined their pockets throughout this genocide. But I digress—it was dire already and now the enthusiastic aid that helped people like Ahmed seems to have run dry.

All that is to say: Ahmed can’t continue to verify peoples’ documents or promote their fundraisers at this stage. He’s privately talked to hundreds of Ghazzawis and looked at their IDs, and he was the only person doing it for a while (a very small handful of other Palestinian users on here were doing it, but they’ve also gotten overwhelmed and stopped). When he was in Gaza, Ahmed was displaced multiple times, left sleeping in tents or on the streets while in active physical danger, starving, forced to drink unsafe water, and often sick. It’s not an exaggeration to say that his body and mind have been pushed to the limit. When he told me he’s depressed all day after doing this work while attracting a ton of negativity, I told him he’s allowed to stop for the sake of his own health, because frankly he needs to focus on his physical recovery. There’s nothing selfish about that, it’s not sustainable for him to be doing this, particularly not when he’s still under the immense stress of his brother and other relatives remaining in Gaza and relying on him for help.

Since I know people will ask: I currently don’t know of anyone on tumblr who still vets fundraisers. Everyone I know of who did has had to stop. I don’t know about the inner workings of Operation Olive Branch, but they seem to be one of a few collectives with enough members to distribute this work. It IS work, and those of us who have tried to do it have done so with a low failure rate (el-shab-hussein and nabulsi’s spreadsheet had over 200 entries and they misidentified a scam as legitimate ONCE). I hope everyone will be more considerate towards the people at collectives like OOB.

This has always been a matter of personal discretion. The vetting process some users tried to implement on here is meant to help people who want to help and accept the risk of offering aid to strangers. If you don’t trust bloggers who’ve been proudly Palestinian on this site for years, that’s up to you—genuinely, it’s fair to think “I don’t know this person and I don’t know what standards they’re operating on.” In the future, anyone who has such concerns should consider asking good-faith questions to the people involved and to converse with them like adults before jumping to accusations, conspiratorial posts, etc.

Read ..

there are resources beyond those on tumblr for people to find campaigns to contribute to-- here's a list of several grassroot orgs i've come across. i'm sure there's more out there. what y'all do with this information is up to you

el-shab-hussein + nabulsi's google sheet

operation olive branch

gazafunds

operation poppy flower (now also linked in oob's sheet)

operation watermelon

project watermelon

strawberry seeds collective

ottawa4palestine

camps breakerz crew

gofund(water)me(lons) | linktree

flowersfromfalasteen | linktree

the butterflyeffect project

bees and watermelons | linktree

The fact that they could’ve used ANY OTHER WORD to describe their very first interaction and yet the writer chose to use “caress” speaks volumes about Symbrock me thinks.

all blonde men deserve to be put through an evil maze against an evil spectre of themselves who sows deep worries and thoughts about themselves

For @venomfest

Colours didn't QUITE work out the way I wanted them to (harder than intended to tell that the light sources are the pride colours), but I think I'm improving my goop rendering :)

VENOM: THE LAST DANCE (2024) dir. Kelly Marcel