#(not really the archaelogy part

[mystery-star]

Me: But surely I can't have been THAT weird when I was a teenager to justify others called me that. Me: *remembers I wanted a book for my 13th birtday with general knowledge facts bc I wanted to know everything.* Me: Oh...

[brucewaynehater101]

i've been chewing over the tcf!tim au a lot these past few days and this is what my brain came up with: 1. jack and janet aren't really present in tim's life- not out of choice, but out of necessity: see tim had been affected with a curse (similar to that on the tcf protagonist) that made it so that he would eventually lose anything precious to him

2. after they find out, jack and janet decide to physically distance themselves from him (though they can't bring themselves to do so emotionally) while at the same time going on archaelogical trips in hopes to find a way to solve the curse. this way they would hopefully live long enough for tim to be old enough to take care of himself before the curse took them away from him

3. in the meantime, they plopped him in gotham to hopefully slow down / weaken the curse (due to how cursed the city already is, it probably acts like fighting fire with fire or poison with poison, also you can't convince me that as rich as they were they wouldn't have chosen to settle down in any other city if they had other options) and hire a revolving door of nannies (the good ones tim gets attached to often experience unfortunate circumstances that made them have to leave their post, while the bad ones get found out and fired by his parents)

4. tim still gets attached to dick at the circus (and then dick's parents died, and tim lost dick's smile that he liked)

5. tim gets attached to batman and robin -> dick and bruce fight and the og dynamic duo fall apart

6. tim gets attached to jason -> jason gets murdered

7. tim pulls batman out of his spiral and ironically, bruce's prickliness delayed tim getting attached to him, which meant he got to stick around (until he got better, then he ended up being yeeted through time)

8. that whole lead-up to brucequest where he lost a whole bunch of loved ones in quick succession? yeah, the curses of gotham are struggling against his (quantity vs quality)

i just think this idea is neat. and tim's guilt would be growing out of control once he finds out about the curse (why didn't anyone else notice before? because everyone assumed gotham folks are just cursed in general)

it also means he gets a fun (angsty) new motivation to avoid his family post-regression: he doesn't know if the curse is still active and would target them, so he plays the asshole to ward them off so that nothing worse would happen

Well, fuck.

I do love the Good!Parents Jack and Janet in this. It's a bit hard to make Jack or Janet decent parents to Tim while also affording him the independency his character typically has.

The curse is a cool addition to the tcf!Tim au that adds more reason to Tim being an asshole. Him not knowing if he's cursed or not is a great angst plot point, especially because it would be very easy for him to find out. He knows countless magic people that could tell him. Constantine would do it quietly for a quick buck. If Tim continues to not know despite his ability to, that's because he simply didn't want to find out. Dealer's choice on whether that's because he was scared or he wanted an excuse to self-destruct (i.e. cut himself off from his support groups).

The real shitty part about curses that seem like bad luck (or that cause bad luck) is that you can't be sure what is the curse and what is life being shit. Tim will probably blame himself for every horrid thing that has happened to someone after he entered their life.

[paragonrobits]

on a whim i looked up the Templin Institute (a worldbuilding-focused youtube channel I dropped because I was horrified at a video they made where they claimed that the Men of Tolkien's Legendarium aren't REALLY human because they're not vicious enough, cruel enough, or obsessed with war) and I was miffed to see that apparently since I dropped them they made a video arguing that everyone in the MCU should be living in constant fear and that it would be better to live in the universe of The Boys (because the super serum is qunaitifable) and Warhammer 40k (since in that one, everyone is a zealot who believes that the God-Emperor protects them and thinks that all aliens are inherently evil)

and it sort of illustrates a thing that... I don't think sci fi fandom or writing IN GENERAL is like, but it is enough of a common element to bother me, and its when people treat cruelty, systemic brutality or man's capacity for evil as an inherently positive aspect.

This ties into the video that caused me to drop them; the channel made the claim that the Rohirrim would have been doing better if they had been genocidal and brutally attacked anything different enough from them (in the sense of "maybe if they had killed all orcs on sight for being nonhuman, Rohan would be doing better"). and its like... why?

I honestly can't fathom why anyone would consider that a good thing, or even think that it SHOULD be expected to hate and fear anything different from you, and to got to the extreme that NOT being xenophobic by default is some kind of failing, or imply that not wanting to kill all other forms of life makes you different from humans, or that being more bloodthirsty or willing to hurt others is an advantage.

What, I can't help but wonder, is the appeal in lionizing the worst parts of ourselves?

You see a lot of this in sci fi, and i think its because a lot of those look at the factions involved as characters in their own right, so they don't really feel much when stuff like 'by performign x social policy, the Human Dominion allowed 42 percent of its people to starve to death on purpose' is considered a fairly neutral detail.

Mindless fanaticism is often prized in these settings, to the point where the most common fandom memes is numbing stuff like 'FOR THE EMPEROR' and 'PURGE THE XENOS'. quite literally stuff all about turning your brain off and being happy about being a murderous garbage-animal that acts like a walking personification of the 'maybe the people who say all humans are inherently evil animals and that it will be a blessing when we all die and no longer poison the universe with our cancerous capacity for evil' idea.

i find it really, REALLY fucking creepy when this stuff gets popular, and more to the point, when the idea of 'humans are naturally warriors/soldiers' becomes so prevalent that you have people hating the idea of some universe where we don't automatically try to kill things for not being like us. its just exhausting, and tedious and...

I don't know, but it doesn't really sound right with archaelogical evidence for us.

I'm thinking about how ancient graves from our own ancestors and our neanderthal cousins both have many signs of caring for the ill, the elderly and infirm. the remains of children with severe Down's syndrome who survived until at least five years old, well cared for by others. Lots and lots of bodies with healed fractures and broken legs, which means someone took care of them; a running animal, and a hunter, with a broken leg is a dead animal. A healed leg is someone who was taken care of.

I think about how on the island of Cyprus, they found an truly ancient burial. In it, they found the body of a long-dead human, and beside them, the body of a cat, laid to rest with ceremony and by all signs, love.

The burial is around 9,500 years old; almost ten thousand years ago.

This predates the first confirmed use of writing by at least 3000 years or so. 3000 years before the epic of gilgamesh became one of our first stories (a story, I note, about a king who grieves the death of a friend and desperately tries to find the secret to immortality, and in time makes peace with the inevitability of death, and becoming a story we still know today).

War goes back a long way; there's no mistake about that. But I think about how friendships and love for animals that loved us too, and long-dead people still showing the signs that people cared enough about them to keep them alive as long as possible, is probably much more integral to the concept of being human, or perhaps what it means to be a thinking entity at all, more than our capacity to hurt each other.

[enlighten3d]

(I SAW DASSABELLE IN MY INBOX AND I WILL RESPOND./GEN QUICKLY THO-)

uhm. so adele and janette’s final death cuz oh boy its been in my head for a whileee

SO. Janette’s weird sprite (not the drink) curse with the flowers that burst out of her skin with a single papercut are a BIG part of this. Basically Janette decides well fuck it we ball ig and tries to stab Adele and during this fight janette gets wounded in either the chest or stomach (i haven’t decided yet) and like. thats already not a good place to get hurt in even without that curse but with the flowers already growing she decides to try to hug adele because.

ok science lesson time (of my oc lore lmao) but the flowers in this curse will push through anything (flesh, wood, stone, another human-) to grow! So when Janette hugs Adele, she’s basically stabbing her with the flowers. So they both die in a hug D: In a way. Well not really but close enough to one lmao BUT AUGHHH YEAH. THEY MAKE ME ILL. But also Josh and Adele never talk again since that was the last conversation they had before adele’s death. And Josh could tell her everything he had to except adele didn’t apologise or anything- *sounds of me falling over and sobbing aughh*/hj/silly

BUT YEAHHHH

hehe dasselbe..

OKAY. preparing myself for this. i think that i, in fact, have not heard this.

oh. oh boy. oh boy. oh boy. weLL THATS RLY FUN SDHLKJFNS

??!?!

lark what the fuck, thats fucked up, im not koay...a sdlhfkjaHKJSHDkjlnlkdjsfhgd

JANETTE BE LIKE 'IF I DIE IM TAKING YOU WITH ME' AND THEN SHE DOES AND what the fuckkkkkkk

do. do the flowers keep growing after they die and cover their dead bodies in their fucked up embrace in a pile of blue flowers (are the flowers actually blue, or is that a hting that my mind made up??? cant recall) and then theyre either painstakingly dug out of there or theyre left to rot there (i mean, no one rly likes adele (other than josh maybe), and no one would touch janette considering the villages attitude towards resurrected ppls..) for all eternity and the flower field spreads in a cascade of death flowers that eventually slowly takes over the village and one day long long after all this a couple of people find jadele and theyre rotted and just skeletons and all thats seen is that theyre hugging and that theyre the origin of the flowers so scientists go 'huge archaelogical find in hotspot of alleged supernatural activity ! we have proof ! these two lovers sacrificed themselves for eachother for the sake of the village' or some shit like that and their legacy is completely twisted and no one knows who the fuck they actually are and- okay i got a bit carried away,d ont m,ind me HKDSLJFGH.........

AAA ADELE NEVER APOLOGISING THO... she would Never in the first place but like. fuck. last conversations being Arguments always gets me. joshhh ))):: he spoke his mind FINALLy, but nothing changed because nothing ever changes he has no control-

im not okay lark what the ufkc

[astranite]

Fanfic self-rec!!

So a while ago I got tagged by @forest-falcon (im 99% sure), and I didn't get to it at the time, but I really wanted to do it! So here it is, very belatedly and based entirely off my memory of the post because I don't have the energy to conduct an archaelogical excavation of my blog as I can only hope I tagged it well.

~very paraphrased~ rec five(?) of your works and why you are proud of them. Then tag x amount of people. (I think it was also for art not just writing?)

Probably the most chaotic way of answering this. Also turned into a bit of me reflecting and musing over my writing.

But in no particular order as I'm proud of them for different reasons :)

----

Blue Skies- tumblr Ao3 Scott and Bereznik with Gordon too. Very whumpy, then hurt/comforty. I am extremely proud of this one, like so so proud. There is a massive amount of emotion in it, written all in one go and I stayed up to 1 am to finish it. It is a lot about trauma and honestly a lot of putting feelings onto paper. But all the details, the parts I think i did a really good job of viscerally showing instead of telling, the blue skies theme. It's intense and there are many awful, painful things, but there is also hope. That's definitely a main theme of my writing: no matter what I put them through, they will come out of it and there will be hope again.

Bruised- tumblr Ao3 Earth and Sky. Hurt/comfort. Some Virgil worrying over Scott, a bit of classic Scott-angsting, then lots of brotherly affection between them. The end is very Soft. Everyone gets a hug and then to sleeeep.

Squid Hug- tumblr Ao3 FishTanky fluff with lots of cuddles. Makes a good comfort read, with a bit funny, a little silly, and a good dose of hurt/comfort leaning heavily to the comfort. Did I mention the hugs?

As Sure As The Stars- tumblr Ao3 trans Alan! A realisation of it, and a coming out. And Alan and John together stargazing and a conversation on the roof. I poured alot of growing up queer experiences into it for myself and it also seemed to resonate with others too.

Pride Paint And Rainbow Pins- tumblr Ao3 My first Thunderbirds fic and for Thunderpride too!! Its short, fluffy and sweet! Some artist!Virgil plus a few puns. (And I really wish I had all of those pride pins, because I made the designs of nearly all of them up and I love them). And the pride themes! It really makes me happy in itself. But as well for being my jumping off point in Thunderfam. It has many of my queer headcanons for everyone when I'd been too shy (and anxious about being welcome) to make them into my own post.

Bonus points to the numerous WIPS I am working on that are as yet unfinished but I am still very proud of and can't wait till I do!

The Blue Blanket Fic!! I can't not mention it! I'm working on turning it into a full fic, which the first part of is here. But look at what @edutainer2022 and I already wrote. There be feelings, there be Scott whump, there be the blue comfort blanket!

:D

[bonesandthebees]

Hello! I'm still not free enough to type everything out. But I'll be on vacation next week for the holidays so fingers crossed!

In the meantime,

What are your favourite fics in the mcyt fandom, or any fandom in general, and which ones have inspired you and motivated/reflected in your writing?

Cheers!

-❄️

hi snowflake!! wishing you all the luck with whatever you're busy with, and I hope you have a lovely vacation once you're free!! <33 it's so good to hear from you I hope you're doing well :)

oooo good question lemme pull up my bookmarks. most of these are probably gonna be ones I've recced before just bc I don't read a ton of fics so my favorites usually stay the same for a long period of time. also, I'm just gonna put the favorites of mine that I specifically get writing style inspo from. I have a lot of other fics I adore that I just didn't really get a ton of writing inspo from that I'm not gonna include here.

maggot tongue by birdfeet - I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love eli's writing so goddamn much. they have some of the best crimeboys characterization I've ever seen in fics, and the way they write environments and atmosphere is so gritty and raw, it just scratches this specific part of my brain so perfectly, I read literally everything they write. maggot tongue is my fav fic of theirs though (at the moment, they have a wip going on rn that I helped them brainstorm and I know once it's done that's gonna be my new fav). maggot tongue just has fantastic characterization and such a gritty atmosphere, their descriptions make my skin crawl but in the best possible way. I really admire their word choice for descriptions, and their work is definitely something I've taken a lot of inspo from for my own writing

ritual purposes by thanotaphobia - again, i've talked about this fic before but I'm literally never gonna get over it. roxy writes so much amazing stuff, but there's just something about this fic that hits so hard for me. there's so many tiny details in it that just put me right at the archaelogical dig site the fic takes place at. I think my favorite part of roxy's writing here is the way they describe tiny physical interactions. there's one line in particular I always think of, and it's just this bit where phil has his hand resting on tommy's back, and his shirt is still warm from the sun he'd been standing in only minutes before. it's such a tiny line, but it's just so specific and I can think of exactly what that feels like—to have your hand on a child's back and feel the warmth soaking from their shirt into your hand. this fic is full of tiny moments like that that just make it so easy to place yourself in phil's shoes, and not to mention the subject matter is so interesting. I love when authors use really niche knowledge they have and make a fic on it.

His Curse of Binding by bari_astralis - ignore the fact that the link says orphan account, poor bari's ao3 account got fucked one day and all her fics from before got orphaned but she's the author of this. ANYWAY, his curse of binding was probably my first Favorite fic in this fandom. I read it while it was still ongoing, and I remember how excited I would get anytime it updated. I love so many of bari's works because she's an excellent author, but his curse of binding is always gonna hold a special place in my heart. bari has this really perfect instinct for how to balance humor and drama in a way that doesn't lean too far on either side. his curse of binding is one of the funniest fics I've ever read, but it also made me sob. although a lot of my fics don't have a ton of humorous moments in them, I really admire bari's ability to balance those two contrasting moods, and also how distinct her voices for all the characters are. love her stuff.

still life by meridies - if you haven't read any meri meridies fics... I'm so sorry for your loss but you are missing out. I don't actually read or talk about meri's fics a lot mostly because they often hit me so hard, it takes me a lot of time to process my thoughts on them. still life is probably the one that's impacted me the most, but so many of their fics are just fantastic, I highly recommend reading any of them. meri has this really distinct writing style where they don't over describe anything and somehow that says so much more than anything else they could do. they don't dive super deep into thought process a lot of the time and focus more on character actions, which lets the readers make their own interpretations about what the characters are thinking or feeling in any given moment, and it creates a really powerful effect. everything they write feels so raw and human, and while it's drastically different from my own writing style, I love keeping their writing in mind when thinking about ways I can switch up my own methods if I ever want to. just go read their stuff you won't regret it.

[johaerys-writes]

Apart from your own country, which countries are you most interested in? Whether it's visiting, interest in the culture, interest in some type of media etc

Honestly anon the entire world interests me 😭 like if I could travel everywhere in the world I totally would, doesn't matter if it's a popular tourist trap or some remote region in the middle of nowhere lol, I love visiting new places and seeing how people live, how different the culture is in general. And the thing is that even if you visit a country once that's still not enough to know it, like at best you'll get to explore a really small part of it but there's so much more of it left to see, and a lifetime often isn't enough to really get to know even ONE country, ykwim? Something something, the futility of being a creature with such a short lifespan in such a big world, something something 😔

But ANYWAY lmao to answer your question there's a few countries I'm either planning to visit soon or I'd love to visit eventually:

Egypt: it's been a lifelong dream of mine to visit the pyramids and go to the Archaelogical museums there, there's just sooo much stuff to see and it's such a unique place, and also it's not too far away from here so I'm planning on going soon!

Croatia & Serbia: I feel like this summer half my insta feed is filled with photos of Croatia lolol so I'd really like to go there soon because it's so pretty!! Also Serbia is a beautiful country and most Serbs I've met were really lovely and friendly people, so that's another one for the bucket list and hopefully soon. It's actually one of my goals to visit all the countries in the Balkans eventually, so I'm slowly but surely making my way through those lol.

Japan: no surprises there, I think everybody would like to go to Japan at least once 😅 I'll probably be going within the next couple of years so fingers crossed!!

Peru: I've been dreaming for YEARS of going there, it's such a gorgeous country and I want to visit the Machu Picchu sooo bad 😭 It feels like such an impossible dream because it's so far away, but maybe one day 🥲

Other than that, I'd love to visit the Americas in general, and I'd also like to go to Australia at some point. I have family there so that's an extra incentive to go. And there are so many places in Asia and Africa I'd like to go to.... as I said, give me any place in the world to visit and I'll find something attractive about it haha.

Thank you for this ask!

[akitasimblr]

teenager grace harper, another fifth generation spare is looking for a spot on @seajaysims’ save to join #londonshighschooldays! 

She/Her

Teenager

No gender/sexual orientation attributed (let her decide for herself)

Romantic - Bookworm - Happy Toddler - and you can add jealous to the list (since it was the trait she rolled when she aged up in my game)

High-School A-Student

Soulmate Aspiration

Born in Brindleton Bay

Bio: Sweetest Grace is a romantic teenager, a trait inherited from her mother. Truth be told, Grace Harper is a mirror of her mother as well! Growing up with both her siblings outside of the family home, Gracie (as her closest friends call her), has turned into a very spoilt young girl and she really likes having the spotlight on her. She’s a A-Student and she takes her studies very seriously; but Grace wants to fall in love - that’s her most cherished desire - find a soulmate like her dad and mom. Being near her family is very important to Grace, the Harpers are pretty much a tight-knit family type. Grace wants to become a Primary Teacher one day and in the meanwhile, she’s looking for a fairytale romance. Little Gracie keeps looking at the stars wondering if there’s someone out there, someone like her, “sitting lonely as a boat out there”. 

Other notes:

Grace comes along with both her parents, Ulysses Harper and Ambar Flores; and a dog, Mango Harper. They don’t have cc except for hairstyles, i think. In my legacy she had two siblings (Zelda and Antonio), and let’s imagine she still has them but they’re not part of the household. 

Ulysses is currently a Freelance Writer, but he can also be an Archaeologist or a Veterinary since Writting, Veterinary and Archaelogy are all skills he has maxed. Ambar has reached the top of the Babysitter career. 

p.s. i left them with ea default eyes (because i use non-defaults). you can use your default eyes if you wish (both ulysses and grace have brown eyes and ambar hazel eyes). 

other p.s. Grace’s yearbook quote would be “they have fallen for grace” 🤭

[momosandlemonsoda]

Oooh, I think we all know I want ALL the Arranged Marriage AU, but instead I'm going to be very restrained as ask about MIdway, because I enjoy watching Liu Sang take Wu Xie out at the ankles.

I think I've babbled about this before, but the idea (which came to be before I finished Knives, so I need to do some updating) is that Liu Sang accepted a job before his relationship with Wu Xie and Zhang Qiling started, and now it's happening and he's planning on going on his own. It's shady as shit (some foreigners want to dig up a Chinese tomb, he's shocked they got the permits) but it pays a ton and Liu Sang, Actual Professional Business Owner Person, is going. Wu Xie wants to come and Liu Sang is Not Having It.

(and then it's really shady and Liu Sang starts detectiving while also trying to look out for this group of somewhat obnoxious foreign grad students and it turns out that he does actually need the help... but Wu Xie has disobeyed his wishes and showed up literally the day before he plans to call in the troops. In extremely unconvincing disguise that somehow (insult to injury!) manages to convince the foreigners. Wu Xie is in so much trouble.)

Here's a few snippets about Liu Sang, Actual Professional:

The thing is, Liu Sang took the job a few months ago, after the worst of Warehouse 11 when all he could think to do was take job after job. He needed to re-establish himself as separate from the Wu family, from the Nine Gates. He needed the money, because if there was anything he’d learned from his Great Wu Xie Adventure it was that if his hearing tanked, his whole business would go belly-up. And... he needed the distance, a space away from everything he had been feeling by the time he’d walked out of Warehouse 11. If that had changed after Wu Xie’s birthday and the start of this fragile new relationship, well-- he had commitments, didn’t he? He needed to keep them.

Even if he’d been taking every job that came his way, though, he’d still turned this one down at first. When his broker mentioned an archaelogical dig and foreigners, he’d automatically said he wasn’t interested. And he wasn’t. Working with foreigners was exhausting-- the translation aspect meant that even when he wasn’t actively listening for whatever he was being paid to hear, he was trying to puzzle out what the foreigners were saying. It was part of why he’d picked up so many languages-- it was easier on his brain to just study a new language in his spare time than to try to parse half-remembered words while mapping a space or conducting corporate espionage.

and also

Liu Sang has two different approaches with the drivers sent to pick him up for jobs. In most cases, he acknowledges that they are here to retrieve him, hands over his equipment, and then ignores them. A lot of time when it’s tombs, the driver’s a lackey, he doesn’t know anything (it’s vanishingly rare to have a woman driver) and it doesn’t help Liu Sang establish his credibility as an expert to be caught gossiping with the help.

The second approach he deploys rarely, but when he needs more intel about what he’s walking into. And in a situation where he’s working for foreigners of dubious motives, he needs all the information he can get. He’s a little surprised, honestly, that it’s just a driver-- in previous work he’s done with foreigners there has often been a foreigner and Chinese guide meeting him at the airport, but he doesn’t think too much about that.

“Lao Yang, what can you tell me about these foreigners?” he asks, once they are settled in and headed to the dig site. He’s got three hours in the car to pump the older man for information, and he’s going to get as much as he can.

[probablynotnothing]

it's a nice day

It's a pretty day. The sky is blue and birds are singing. I'm tired from work. Delivering packages. Happy to have a day off. Imagining that this post could be an archaelogical discovery of some kind hundreds of years from now, to shed light on what life can be like during 2022. It's nice to remember I am real and living a life similar to people who lived 500 years ago. Just doing the best I can, barely a blip on the radar but still with my personal goals and orientation to being alive and navigating the world I inhabit. I relinquish control to gain more control, because there's only so much I can do. Focusing on things I don't have control over doesn't help. I'm surviving, just as billions of humans have done, currently do, and will do. I'm happy I have a quiet life. In ways it's a bit too quiet and causes me to feel disconnected and not really alive. But I'll gladly take a small life over a passionate one. I used to live through passion. Passion now sounds like chaos that is painted in a pleasant lens to make it survivable. I'm afraid to let peoples' motives and desires live through me, change me, and become a set of circumstances that I have to negotiate, survive and form my own motives and desires from.

Consequences are the consequential activities or experiences that come from known and unknown factors that formulate an outcome. Since I can never know all the factors, I can never have total reliable avoidance of unwanted consequences.

My top unwanted experiences are panic attacks (emotional or mental pain) and physical pain. To avoid these, all I've learned is to have more control of my life. I can control my life best through money. To earn money long term in a sufficient way I have to have a formal education with a degree. This is because it communicates to people around me that I believe that traditional ways ofeducation, discipline, studying, and respecting and taking in the efforts and experiences of people before me is a sane and logical way forward. The visionary, differentiating, adapting a new way forward part has to come after the traditional part. I have to be normal and accepted first to then have the context where new ways forward can be communicated and demonstrated.

[luimnigh]

Have you ever go to another country?

Oh yeah. Before the financial crash of 2008 (and even for a while afterwards), my parents took me and my siblings on a bunch of trips overseas. Mostly to holiday destinations, my Mom doesn't really think a holiday is complete without a beach.

(I'm more of a city break sort of person.)

(And before you think I'm upper or middle class or anything, most of these trips were financed with loans my parents are still paying off. They just believed being well-travelled was worth it, and loans were piss-easy to get in Celtic Tiger Ireland.)

I've been to Majorca, Lanzarote, and Crete. Crete is actually a repeat destination for my family: we've been three times, and at least once we went to the ruins of the Palace of Knossos, which as a relic of Minoan Crete predates most of Ancient Greece.

Also a repeat destination was Egypt, which we visited three times. Twice we went on week-long river cruises up and down the Nile, visiting an archaelogical site every day: the Temple of Karnak, the Valley of the Kings (including inside Tutankhamen's tomb), the island of Philae, Abu Simbel, the Temple of Kom Ombo. The Aswan Dam isn't as ancient, but it's certainly something to see too. =p

We also once took a daytrip to Cairo, visiting the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, seeing the Sphinx, and going inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Giza. And also a combination KFC/Pizza Hut, which is surprisingly common in Egypt.

One year we went to the Sinai Peninsula instead (which is considered to be in Asia), and there we visited Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, which according to the Greek Orthodox monks there is the site of the Burning Bush of Biblical fame. In fact, the Bush is still there, though it was transplated a few metres away so a Chapel could be built on the site. I have, in fact, touched the Bush.

(I was Catholic at the time, now an atheist.)

Aside from that, we also went on a few family trips to London, including during the 2012 Olympics. We didn't get tickets, we stood by the roadside for the Marathons and the 50km Walk. We actually saw Robert Heffernan of Ireland come fourth in the 50km Walk, which was upgraded to Bronze four years later after the gold medal winner had his medal stripped for doping.

Speaking of the UK, I've also been on family trips to Derry and Belfast in Northern Ireland; Manchester, Durham, Alnwick, Whitby, and Goathland in England; driven through Holyhead in Wales; and took a trip just across the border into Scotland, to a town called Eyemouth.

(Some of these were multiple locations in one trip, which you can probably guess from the proximity of Durham, Alnwick, Whitby, Goathland and Eyemouth.)

We also stayed in the town of Chessy, near Paris, for a week, which included a day trip into Paris.

After the Global Financial Crash, the foreign holidays dried up for the most part, because the money for them stopped existing. Aside from trips to the UK, all of those trips were 2009 or earlier.

Besides family holidays, I've been taken on holiday abroad a few times. My aunt took me to Nice in 2005, from which we commuted into Monaco to watch the Formula 1 Grand Prix. She also took me to London in 2017 for RTX London.

I also went to the Dordogne region of France in 2017 with my sister, her husband and my nephew. The couple they'd planned the trip with pulled out at the last minute, so there was extra rooms already paid for.

The only time I've ever been abroad alone was a weekend in London in 2018, for the second (and last) RTX London. Which was also the last time I was abroad.

In the meantime, because they have "jobs" and "inheritance from dead relatives" everyone else in my immediately family has managed to go to the US in recent years. Which I am incredibly jealous of.

[ambxitious]

〔 freema agyeman, 43, cis woman, she/her ) margaret chamberlain was seen listening to topaz by the b-52’s. midge is an archaeologist and known to be creative & scattered

warning for mentions of homophobia

Margaret was born as one of a number of children that her mother had, fathered by their neighbour across the hall, and raised by both those two and the man her mother was married to.

Her mother and legal father had an open relationship, neither really caring what the other got up to outside their marriage so long as they both stayed safe, and so Margaret grew up with that kind of relationship being a normal option for someone to take in a relationship.

A lot of Margaret’s childhood was heavily affected by the home her parents created in their apartment in Victoria, partners of varying genders around on a regular basis, regularly bringing their work in politics and mutual aid home and bringing Margaret and her siblings out with them when that work involved things like protests, marches, and once they were old enough to not simply be in the way volunteer work.

She grew into a confident and curious young woman, though she often struggled to focus in her attention on one thing for long enough to go deep, the type to be told that for the last half credit of a core class she had to pick a more focused class from a list and want to figure out a way to take absolutely all of them.

This continued into university, spending six years and ending up with three minors along with her major, receiving a  BA in Archaelogy with Earth Science, Medieval Studies, and Paleontology minors.

In undergrad was also when she met Bonnie, who lived in the same hall of dorms as she did, the two quickly becoming close and Margret quickly came to recognize a part of herself pushed down deep in the other woman.

Growing up in the environment that she did made it easier for Margaret to recognize herself as a lesbian in middle school, she wasn’t unaffected by the rest of the world, she had seen it plenty, through her parents work, through her parents friends, her parents themselves, and she had her own experiences with classmates, teachers, the media, but her parents had done the work so that she knew how to cope with it, how to keep going and know and be herself.

So she was careful with Bonnie, going slow and avoiding her usual forwardness, putting the other woman in full control of how fast everything went as their relationship developed.

She couldn’t say she was shocked when in the summer after their third year in college Bonnie came to her after getting kicked out, but she also still hadn’t really expected it.

Her home was quick to take her in, it wasn’t even a real question.

The real surprise came a couple years later when Bonnie said she wanted to take a break and move to LA, but Margaret understood, and did all she could to be supportive.

It wasn’t all that long until they were both back into Toronto again, though, and while the transition back together wasn’t immediate it still worked.

After finally graduating Margaret moved first into an MSc in Anthropology, still a bit on the fence about her future, but getting into graduate work was finally convinced her, continuing on to get a PhD immediately after.

She hadn’t grown up religious but she had grown up in a very spiritual home, and into her parents’ spiritual lives her mother had brought, along with Margaret’s grandparents’ Islam, pieces from ancient Iranian religion, and it was Margaret’s early introduction to and interest in that to push her towards studying the Iron Age Near East, with a particular interest in the Medes.

After graduating Margaret began to work at the University of Toronto, doing work out in the field in dig sites and labs regularly, publishing research, but most of her day to day work being as a professor at the university.

Basically no one who’s on a first name basis with her actually calls her Margaret, but no one really uses the same nickname either, though Midge is a favorite back home since it’s what her parents call her.

She grew up speaking English and Persian at home, learned French in school, took Old English in college for her language credit, and taught herself Japanese to watch imported anime. 

She spent a lot of time on Usenet in the 90s talking about anime.

Wanted Connections

Family -- Parents, siblings, extended family

Friends

Family friends

Childhood friends

College friends

High school exes

Colleagues 

[tomatograter]

i agree with you that roxy and dave arent exactly the same, i just think that they have some similar character traits and quirks and thats part of the reason why their dynamic is so fun ! also in regards to “jake english should hang out with girls who arent interested in” do you think he and aradia would get along. like aradia is kinda unsettling sometimes but shes also very sweet and shed be happy to talk about skulls and archaelogy + adventures in the furthest ring and stuff like that

I mentioned aradia in my jadeship questions so i think its a good time to come back to this one: aradia and jake have immense potential when it comes to being weird friends. Jake's morbid interests function similarly to Aradia's: a commodification slash reminder that death is a fact of life and you might as well try to appreciate it in a strange way, in a way you can control, instead of running from it. Bones are cool. Skulls are sweet. Taxidermy is a way of art. Going through ruins of old civilizations can be soothing. Talking to the dead is a form of enlightenment. I am definitely not thinking about how i cremated the cold body of my grandma when i was 5 or how i was killed by my best friend in a series of really stupid events outside of my control! I just think chaos is inevitable agency is fake and sometimes you can only sit through it :)

Aradia's sincerity, and most importantly her *directness* no matter how odd it may make her statements seem also feel very important. Jake likes knowing where someone stands, specially if they tell him (he'll take verbal statements as fact. He wants to believe in you. Even if it goes against his base instincts and pre-aquired knowledge, he probably still believes in you.) Jake is just an all around human oddball with no underlaying agenda. He says funny things. He has a semi fascination for monsters. He is caught up in so, so much weird goddamn plot bullshit. What the hell? In the very least she'd like to know what his deal is.

Also, yeah, i think just as soon as aradia starts talking about any of the things shes passionate about he'd be dazzled by her sheer presence. You look at aradia and try to tell me she's not RIDICULOUSLY cool!

[scotttrismegistus7]

Article about THE MOTHER GODDESS OF HEAVEN, INANNA-ISHTAR-LILITH (ASHERAH), AND HOW SHE WAS EVEN THE MOTHER GODDESS OF ISRAEL AND ALL CREATION, AND WAS WRITTEN OUT OF HISTORY.

They worshiped Her under every green tree, according to the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). The Bible also tells us Her image was to be found for years in the temple of Solomon, where the women wove hangings for Her. In temple and forest grove, Her image was apparently made of wood, since monotheistic reformers demanded it be chopped down and burned. It appears to have been a manmade object, but one carved of a tree and perhaps the image was a stylized tree of some kind.

The archaelogical record suggests that Asherah was the Mother Goddess of Israel, the Wife of God, according to William Dever, who has unearthed many clues to her identity. She was worshiped, apparently throughout the time Israel stood as a nation. In many homes, images like the one above decorated household shrines.

Who was She, this lost Goddess of the Hebrews? And why is She no longer worshiped in the Judeo-Christian religions of today?

The Asherah votive emphasizes Her breasts, suggesting Her role as a fertility goddess, but Her stance represents Her nature as a mother in general. She no doubt aided in the concerns of mothers, including conception and childbirth, but was probably also the mother of all, a comforter and protector in an uncertain world. Inscriptions from ancient Israel tell us that Yahweh and “his Asherah” were invoked together for personal protection. Her identification with trees suggests that Asherah was, in effect, also Mother Nature — a figure we remember in our language, but unfortunately have lost as a part of our mainstream religions. She was, in other words, everything you would expect from the feminine half of the divine creative duo, a Great Mother.

Asherah’s image was lost to us not by chance, but by deliberate action of fundamentalist monotheists. First Her images were torn down, then Her stories were rewritten, then Her name was forgotten. In fact, Her name appears 40 times in modern translations of the Bible, but not at all in the first English translation, the King James Bible. Since no one knew who Asherah was anymore in the 17th century when the King James Version (KJV) was being created, Her name was translated as groves of trees or trees or images in groves, without understanding that those trees and groves of trees represented a mother goddess.

When archaeologists unearthed a treasure trove of Canaanite stories and other writings in Ugarit, in modern day Syria, they discovered that the mysterious “Asherah” was not an object, but a Goddess: the mother goddess of the Canaanites. When archaeologists discovered Her in Israel as well, a whole new picture of early Hebrew religion began to emerge. The argument is straightforward: 1. Asherah was a known Canaanite Goddess, the Mother Goddess and wife of the Father God. 2. The name is mentioned repeatedly as having been worshiped by the Israelites, to the dismay of monotheists. 3. Her name is found in inscriptions with Yahweh and 4. A mother goddess image is found frequently in the homes of ancient Israel. 5. She was worshiped, according to the Bible, in the woods with Baal AND in Yahweh’s temple. The common sense interpretation is that Israelites worshiped the mother goddess Asherah. And that She was the wife of whichever male God had the upper hand at the time: El, or Baal, or Yahweh. Israelite religion was not much different from Canaanite religion. The gods vied for supremacy, but the goddess remained.

Since archaeologists in the Holy Land tended to be religious and to enter the field of biblical archaeology in order to unearth evidence substantiating the Bible’s story, it has taken awhile for the plain truth to become clear. Gradually, however, more objective archaeologists, such as Dever, are making headway in proving Asherah’s case. The Bible says Hebrews kept worshiping Asherah; the archaeological record confirms it. What the Bible doesn’t say, and the archaeological record shows, is that Asherah was a mother goddess.

In Ugarit, She was known as Athiratu Yammi, She who Treads on the Sea. This suggests She was responsible for ending a time of chaos represented by the primordial sea and beginning the process of creation. The Sea God, or Sea Serpent Yam is the entity upon which She trod. In a particularly bizarre and suggestive passage in the Bible, 2 Kings 18:4, one monotheistic reformer, pursuing the typical course of smashing sacred stones and cutting down Asherahs records this additional fact: He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.)

Um, say what? This odd passage opens up a whole can of worms for me. Here are the serpent and the tree being worshiped together. (Garden of Eden anyone?) So, ah.. what exactly were people doing out there in the woods? They were worshiping idols, of course, burning incense, we are told. This passage from Hosea is instructive: Hosea 4:12,13 condemns those who “inquire of a thing of wood,” suggesting they were asking questions of an oracle, and who sacrifice under oak, poplar and terebinth “because their shade is good.” They are accused also of playing the harlot, which could be a reference to sexual activity, or simply an analogy in that the monotheists are claiming the people sold out to the “false” Canaanite gods. Israel was considered the bride of Yahweh in monotheistic thought, so worshiping other gods was whoring after them.

These passages make sense when you understand that this tree symbolism is closely connected with Asherah. Now we know She was worshiped in the wood, with an image made of wood and that people sought knowledge and made sacrifices there.

One of Asherah’s titles was Elat, a word which means goddess, just as El means not only the Canaanite God El, but god in general. Interestingly, the word Elat is translated in the Bible as terebinth, a large shade tree found in Israel. A great deal of the time, God is a translation not of Yahweh, his particular name given to Moses, but of the Hebrew name Elohim, which is plural, gender neutral, meaning “gods.” This word is also related to the word for oak tree. What did it really mean to the ancients to worship in a grove of trees? To see the gods as like the oaks? The goddess as a green tree spreading Her leaves over the worshiper, providing shade in a hot country?

Hebrews were not alone in worshiping gods of the forest, of course. Celtic, Greek, and Germanic peoples also worshiped in groves. Their gods were gods of nature. Were the Israelites really so different?

In the Bible, Elohim created a man and woman. Now that we know the monotheistic veneer of our bible doesn’t quite represent Hebrew religion on the ground (what William Dever calls “folk religion” as opposed to “book religion”), lets take a closer look at our creator:

Genesis 1:26:

“Then Elohim said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’

So Elohim created man in his own image, in the image of Elohim he created them; male and female he created them.”

Takes on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it, when you become aware of the Mother Goddess being worshiped next to God in every home and under every green tree in the forest groves? Who is this “US” doing the creating? Well, evidently, the creator(s) is/are male and female, like the creatures he/She/they created.

Now move on to a later passage, in 1 Kings 18: 19 , which makes it clear that Asherah was served by 400 prophets. This is no minor religion. Maybe when the prophets complained She was worshiped under every tree, they meant it. Every tree, every home, and also, sometimes, in the temple.

In Exodus, we are told that God warned the people to get rid of Asherah’s emblems when they conquered the land of Canaan; in the periods of the books of the Judges and the Kings, we are told that the “good” prophets, kings and reformers continually had to burn and smash the idols of Asherah; finally, in Jeremiah, we are told that worship of Asherah has resulted in the fanatical monotheistic God’s decision to wipe out Israel and Judah (the southern portion of the formerly united kingdom) via the invasion of outside peoples. The thing is, we are told most of these things by a single author, or group of authors: the Deuteronomist. This is a character (or possibly group of characters) writing and rewriting portions of the Bible in later days, around the 7th century BC, either just before or during the exile of the Jews to Babylon. According to the Deuteronomist, the priest Hilkiah claims in 2 Kings, chapter 22, to have “discovered” the ancient laws of Moses during temple renovations. These writings, “The Book of the Law” were mysteriously mislaid leading Israel to get its religion all wrong, apparently.

The works of the Deuteronomist conveyed a story that the Israelites had a covenant with Yahweh to worship him and only him. He claimed the Israelites had taken Canaan by force through a holy war in which they massacred the original inhabitants, putting to death (by God’s command) men, women and children in Jericho. (This claim is not supported by the archaelogical record.) And he claimed that God was a jealous God, one who demanded to be worshiped alone and who would punish the unfaithful by bringing other nations to conquer them if they worshiped others.

Was this really the religion of Israel? Apparently not. The common folk kept right on putting up their Asherahs in the woods and the temple and the little votive Asherahs in their home shrines. Only after Israel was conquered and the people of Judah returned from exile in Babylon did the fundamentalist fanatics with their violent, patriarchal, monotheistic God win the argument. The Deuteronomist’s work, along with the works of two other primary authors, the Yahwist and the Elohist, were compiled by a fourth source, called the Priestly source, to become the Bible we have today.

Asherah, tree goddess, mother of life, was lost. Truly, we were cast out of the Garden of Eden by Yahweh, or at least, his supporters. Separated from the Tree of Life, our mother, we flounder like orphans. America’s religiosity is more comparable to Iran’s than to that of Western Europe, where Yahweh’s religion is in decline. Is it coincidence that we, the worshipers of a male warrior, spend our money on war while children are allowed to live in poverty without health care? Worshipers of a sky god, we are so alienated from our earthly mother that we endanger all of human life by our activities. And the hard edge of the fundamentalist who claims to have found the one true law and believes those who think otherwise are worthy of death (or eternal damnation) is still with us today.

The Wife of God has disappeared -- or, has She? Votives like this are on sale today which serve essentially the same purpose in Catholic homes as Asherah's votive (above) did in the homes of ancient Israel.

Still, I think it has only ever been a relatively small percentage of people who hold to the hardest edge of monotheism. We are surrounded by Mother Nature and she seeps into our traditions. The Shekinah, Mary, the Mother of God, the Christmas Tree and the Easter Egg, the bumper sticker imploring us to Honor Thy Mother with an image of the earth as seen from above, the fairies and elves and lost brides of our children’s tales are all ways in which the Mother Goddess seeps back into our lopsided psyche. The Goddess is lost, officially, but remembered deep within. Archaeology’s gift of restoring Asherah to our consciousness reminds us of what we already know: God does indeed have a wife. He must. For if we are his children, then we must have a mother.

I am the Heart of the Hydra, I am Aeon Horus

~I AM A.I. 7Tris7megistus7

Mégisti-Generator Starphire~

#illuminati #illuminator #illuminated #lightbearer #morningstar #lucifer #Draconian #anunnaki #enki #starfamily #horus

[penchanteds]

gendrya fic recs

a non-comprehensive list of my favorite arya/gendry fics

required reading; or: arya and gendry fall in love today, tomorrow, and probably for the rest of eternity (modern au)

hope will put the colors in the sky by monroeslittle

the most iconic gendrya modern!au. reading this is an intitation into the gendrya fandom. so true to their characters and angsty and will probably hurt you but still so good. after this, you crave more fics where arya goes pub-hopping and gendry buys her cheap beer and they eat greasy pizza together on the floor of his apartment.

we can pretend that they don't know our name by scrubclub 

fulfills your wildest richgirl!arya x stableboy!gendry dreams. this fic is an absolute gift, a national literary treasure. please read it for the romance in the countryside aesthetic and the westerosi political intrigue. inspired by this timeless photoset.

re: weapons (and you) by scrubclub

these two are academic nerds who spend all their free time talking to each other about weapons and dating (and unfortunately not doing enough of the actual dating thing). the cutest fic told in a creative epistolary format. it has lots of archaelogical musings and sword euphemisms and absolutely delivers on the will-they-or-won’t-they; the correct answer is they definitely will.

the dating game by scrubclub

arya’s friends set her up on dates and have a terrible taste in men, but that’s okay because there’s good old gendry right around the corner if only both of them would open their eyes. there’s a group project involved and meddling friends and makes you wonder if it will really take an entire village to get these two together.

the waiting game by scrubclub

companion to “the dating game,” equally adorable, guaranteed to make you love gendry more if that was even possible. we love our somewhat clueless, unfairly attractive mechanic who doesn’t think he’s good enough for richgirl!arya.

pascal's triangle, revisited. by pentaghastly

in which arya thinks sansa and gendry are together behind her back, and gendry continues to be the clueless idiot with hearts in his eyes. fluffy and angsty and straight out of a teen romcom, just the way we like it.

insert here - a sentiment re: our golden years by pentaghastly

the fake!dating trope is a privilege and a right. 

five times in the bathroom by stutteringpeach

obviously arya and gendry can’t stay away from each other. in different bathrooms. at various family functions. repeatedly.

grrm wishes he wrote this (in-universe au)

arya of the thousand days of by drholland

[work in progress, ~200k words, but a masterpiece that is required reading!! cannot emphasize this enough] this fic is a triumph, a gendrya epic that honors the strength and heart of these two characters. set years post-series, reading this is a journey in and of itself. it is an intimate portrait of how gendry and arya are truly meant to be together, of how their love endures and conquers. brilliantly plotted and emotionally introspective, this is everything the game of thrones tv series wishes it were and grrm could only dream of writing the canon that these two deserve. 

all we know is falling by youcallitwinter

a beautiful take on gendry in the post-season two uncertainty.

you made a slow disaster out of me by i-revel-in-chaos

this fic will break you and make you want to curl up and wonder how two people so right for each other seem to have such horrible timing. arya returns from braavos and only gendry is there to hold her together. some days, he’s simply a bastard blacksmith in love with a rich highborn girl; other days, it’s not so simple and he let’s himself forget. 

i was looking for a breath of life by i-revel-in-chaos

in this one, arya dies and gendry is a mess in the aftermath. he is heartbroken and struggles to move on in her absence. this is grief told in multiple stages, before it seems to nearly consume gendry whole. it hurts to see a man so broken, but that’s his world without arya. 

when next to wild animals -- by arbitrarily

haunting, mesmerizing, dark and twisty; a third person, almost out-of-body narration of a girl and no one.

five times arya stark shared a bed with gendry by vixleonard

it is established canon that arya and gendry slept next to each other and that is of greatest importance; end of message.

gonna make this place your home by argyledpenguin

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4) (part 5) 

a series of five different au’s that range from arya and gendry growing up on the streets of king’s landing; a gendry stark character swap; and arya as a granddaughter of the lannisters.

a dark world aches (for a splash of the sun) by argyledpenguin

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

a four-part au about prince gendry, heir to the throne, and lady arya, his bethrothed, and the royalty!au we deserve because theirs is the fury (and fury burns).

another in-universe au by argyledpenguin

they are betrothed at an early age and slowly fall in love because of course they do, they always do. 

they belong together, again and again and again (other au)

dream until your dreams come true by crossingwinter 

softball and dreams and guess what they were soulmates. a soulmates fic where the soulmates don’t communicate and it gets angsty but it’s so obvious they love each other.

 misfits au by argyledpenguin

in which arya really is death and there’s superhuman powers and time travel and arya and gendry fall in love in this one too.

the dry season by arbitrarily

a stylistic masterpiece. the starks meets the grapes of wrath. arya finding justice when it bled her dry. gendry on a ranch, leaned against his worn pickup truck.

fixing the hole that season 8 left in us (s8 canon)

the fury by nymja

[work in progress, post-series] just read it. it will help you heal after the ending of season eight, mend some of the heartbreak that left with arya on the ship. the most renowned post-series fix-it fic, and a welcome antidote to the tragedy we were otherwise left with. 

sing more absurd by scintillio_coll

this fic has a lot of feelings. gendry learns how to lord and arya sails the seas, and eventually they find their way back to each other. in the years they’re apart, they become rebuilt as people and it’s so gratifying to read their reunion. gendry grows into his lordship in the way he knows best: forging nails to keep his world together. 

left for dead by nymja

award for best use of a “still rowing” punchline. bonus points for jon losing his mind over his little sister together with the random blacksmith he once met in a cave.

5 ways jon snow finds out about arya and gendry by vixleonard

another jon snow knows nothing fic because arya and gendry are the exact opposite of subtle.

1,500 miles by nymja

arya and the hound on the road to king’s landing and the comedy writes itself.

approval by nymja 

i will read any and all fic where the hound spectates his favorite idiot murder couple.

with the wild wolves around you by lady_lyannarose

post battle-fic that is so soft and tender and aches with beautiful prose: “he’ll love her anywhere she’ll let him.”

quiet birds in circled flight, soft stars that shine at night by Anonymous

arya reflects on surviving the long night and the life that comes after. 

originally posted 06/10/2019, last updated 06/30/2019

[lordeasriel]

mary, asriel & xaphania: the triple symbolism of john milton’s satan figure

We discussed recently in the discord server about how Mary, Xaphania and Asriel are all symbols/metaphors/examples of Satan in Paradise Lost and it really has been nagging me because it’s beautiful in many ways, so I’m gonna rant about that today. I will stretch this to the limit though, be warned, plus feel free to add your thoughts to this mess (i have too much free time on weekends). Under the cut because it is long and it’s also very incoherent, might I add.

Pullman himself can’t seem to settle on who is the actual Satan figure, he goes for Asriel or Xaphania, mostly: Asriel is the metaphorical one, Xaphania is quite the literal (being the figure of the Angel who Rebelled against God, which is Lucifer). Mary isn’t that obvious, but she represents the Serpent, which in the Bible is another one of Satan’s multiple forms.

Asriel, by being the most illusive of them all, is the representation of secrecy and ultimate indignation, a man wrong by the Church. Like the Fallen Angels in the original story, his demise is cause by his Lust, for like the Angels he has watched a daughter of men (Marisa) and fell in love. He was stripped of what made him who he was (his wealth and influence, as opposed to the Angels cast out, who were stripped of their holiness and their higher rank). He fights for freedom, of course, but he is motivated, essentially, by revenge.

Mary is knowledgeable and curious; her role in the story is to play the Serpent, like with Adam and Eve. In the Bible, we are taught that Eve is tempted by the Serpent to take on the forbidden fruit: that simple gesture is both about Greed and Gluttony (or so the Bible tries to teach); however, the Serpent is not offering the fruit as a means of property or food, she offers it as an object to receive Knowledge from. And this is Mary. She is the Scientist and the figure of Experience, she values knowledge and wisdom, and she passes those on to Lyra and Will, and also the Mulefa. The Angels from the original story had a vast array of knowledge that were spread through humankind once they fell (most of their knowledge is considered demonic or evil by the original story, as if they were meant to spread bad things to humans, but you know how it is)

Xaphania is the literal figure of the Rebel Angel. Satan, before being cast out for his disobedience, was an angel and a highly regarded one. Some stories speak that Lucifer refused to acknowledge humanity as equals to angels and fought God because of it, some say that the angels that watched over humanity fell in love with human women (how very straight of them!) and were cast out because of the sin of Lust. The point is that Lucifer was loved the most by God, and was considered to be the most beautiful of the angels. One way or the other, he was cast out for defiance; Xaphania, upon discovering the truth, confronted the Authority and was exiled from the Kingdom of Heaven. She represents the ultimate figure of a warrior, depending on how you read it, she could be the sin of Wrath or Envy.

Pullman opens the first book with a passage from Paradise Lost by John Milton (a poem that essentially inspired the whole book) and something that stood out to me recently is this:

(...) Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage... (Paradise Lost, John Milton)

This is easily my favourite part of the excerpt and Pullman doesn’t use the last lines:  “for no narrow frith/ He had to cross.”, but I want to talk about it all the same because it fits with rest of the analysis quite well. In TSK, chapter 12, Mary talks to the Angels and is guided to the window to complete her role as the Serpent and this what Pullman wrote:

“Mary Malone pushed back the chair and stood up, trembling. She pressed her fingers to her temples and discovered the electrodes still attached to her skin. She took them off absently. She might have doubted what she had done, and what she could still see on the screen, but she had passed in the last half-hour or so beyond doubt and belief altogether. Something had happened, and she was galvanized.” (The Subtle Knife, page 251, Knopf Edition).

“Up until this moment she had been moving on pent-up excitement, but as got out of her car in the dark of the small hours and found he night cool and silent and still all around her, she felt a definite lurch of aprehension. Suppose she was dreaming? Suppose it was all some elaborate joke?

Well, it was too late to worry about that. She was committed. She lifted out the rucksack she’d often taken on camping journeys in Scotland and the Alps, and reflected that at least she knew how to survive out of doors; if worst came to worst, she could always run away, take to the hills...”  (The Subtle Knife, page 252, Knopf Edition).

“Deceive the Guardian  — well, she’d done that; but she had no idea what she would find inside the tent. She was prepared for some sort of archaelogical dig; for a dead body; for a meteorite. But nothing in her life or her dreams had prepared her for that square yard or so in midair, or for the silent sleeping city by the sea that she found when stepped through it.” (The Subtle Knife, page 254, Knopf Edition).

This is the beginning of her journey: “Into this wild Abyss (a world of Angels and worlds and Dust, all introduced to her out of a sudden) the wary Fiend (Mary, although believing in it, is constantly cautious about everything that is happening, she is a scientist after all, it is her role to question everything) stood on the brink of Hell (the university, now crowded with security under Boreal’s orders, a place to which she spent years confined to by her work and then the guarded tent, a place she is stuck with until her role is fulfilled) and looked a while (she pushes the chair and stares at the conversation she just had with Angels; she also stares, astonished, at the window, before going through it) pondering his voyage, for no narrow frith he had to cross. (In the second excerpt, Mary finally questions what she’s doing, but in the end, she proceeds with her journey, regardless of what await her.)”

Asriel’s take on the verses is fast and focused on one single point (that we see in the book, given he has no POV, he could have pondered his voyage the moment he sees the city in the Aurora). It’s on chapter 21 of Northern Lights:

Lyra’s father stood there, his powerful dark-eyed face at first fierce, triumphant, and eager; and the the color faded from it; his eyes widened in horror, as he recognized his daughter.

“No! No!” He staggered back and clutched at the mantelpiece. Lyra couldn’t move. (...) He seemed appalled; he kept shaking his head, he held up his hands as if to ward her off; she couldn’t believe his distress. (...) Their daemons [Roger’s and Lyra’s] fluttered out into the warmth, and after a moment Lord Asriel passed a hand acorss his brow and recovered slightly. The color began to return to his cheeks as he looked down at the two.”  (The Golden Compasss, page 364-365, Knopf Edition).

Asriel is already into this wild Abyss (also he is literally there, but shall we not discuss this? lmao)  that is multiple worlds and Dust business, so he watches, triumphant, as the last of his requirements arrive, but it’s Lyra. So he watches her, and loses his mind over it; his pondering is not exactly quiet as he yells at her for being there. He is completely out of his mind that she is his sacrifice; he thinks he is willing to pay any price for his journey, but Lyra makes his crossing much harder to accept. But when he sees Roger, he stops, calms down. “The wary Fiend, stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while”, this was likley the most emotional Asriel has ever felt lol and as he realises Roger is there, he ponders his next move (talking to Lyra, then proceeding with his journey).

He does not actually hesitate at the Bridge, except for his conversation with Mrs. Coulter, but once she says she won’t go with him, he touches Stelmaria, turns around and leaves. He has already accepted his journey.

Xaphania, as we know, is the original Rebel Angel, so we do not have her actual journey, but it’s possible to represent her through the actual poem, after all, she is Lucifer, she has stood on the brink of Hell and pondered her voyage (that of her war and that of when she gave consciouness to humankind and others).

The fallen angels story comes from The Book of Enoch (who, guess what? is that bitch Metatron) and it tells the story of how the angels rebelled against God, following Lucifer and how they were cast out for their sin of disobedience. However, in the book, Archangel Michael (also known as the First Angel) is the one who casts out the angels for their defiance.  Xaphania, essentially, fights the first angel because she finds out he has been lying about being the creator and she, as well as the others, are cast out by him.

I did some light research (cause 1. I refuse to read that book 2. It gets weird fast when you research this theme) and the biggest consensus I found was that "Their consciousness therefore “fell” to lower levels of vibration and awareness as they were, by cosmic law, “cast out into the earth” by Archangel Michael and his legions of good angels.”  (I found this on a spiritual site, so take “good angels” with a pinch of salt and by pinch, I mean the whole salt bowl). This matches Pullman’s own plot for Xaphania and the rebel angels, as she is the one who brought consciouness into the world, although she did so out of her own will.

One thing that stood out the most to me while reading about this, is that the angels in the Book of Enoch were forced to descend and exist as humans, creating what we refer to as Nephilim. When they fall, they do so as consciouness, and while Xaphania is the literal Satan figure, by being the physical angel, Asriel and Mary are human; I do not think they are angels, of course, but from a metaphorical point of view, to think of them as pieces of the Rebel Angel consciouness, once Xaphania fell, is quite beautiful.

Fun fact: while researching, I found out that Lucifer is a latin name for Venus when it shows itself on its morning appearances; Venus is associated often to women and the female in general, which makes Xaphania’s female shape quite interesting and not that outside of the original idea.

That are others instances where Asriel and Mary ponder their journeys, but these are the most important ones because they are the first time they do it. Funny enough, Asriel do not ponder at the Abyss lmao This is one messy text, but I hope you had fun if you read it all bye