#I cannot understand Joseph

[soda-n-dinos-andmore]

Witches cauldron ass theory I’m cooking up here but what if Clancy pre-meeting the Banditos genuinely didnt have a word for the color yellow? I know he wouldn’t have seen it in Dema so he might’ve just not known wtf to call it. Using context clues he figured out bishops Dont like this color and he put together the stuff he knew to get ‘Rebel Red’

Okay y’all hear me out

All of the flowers we associate with the banditos are yellow, right? But in Chlorine he says “rebel red carnations” and if i remember right the only times he associates rebellion with a color it’s red. It’s always “rebel red” in the lyrics even though in the videos it’s always yellow. So is Clancy really rebelling against the banditos? Or can he not see yellow either? How is red the color of the bishops but rebellion is red??? Girl what’s happening

[creatingblackcharacters]

“On Human Dignity.”  Blackness, Gender & Sexuality

Two things:

As usual, there’s historical and social context that I need explain! This lesson is not what sexuality is, or ‘how to write being gay while Black’. That’s… not that different from you. What this lesson is, is context on how Blackness plays a role in our presentation and understanding of gender and sexuality (as well as your perception of it), and how that’s something you should consider in your characterization, writing, and character design.

I DO NOT KNOW EVERYTHING! The reason this took so long was because I read multiple books and wallowed in my remaining lack of understanding. I cannot join The Tumblr Discourse so do not ask. I tried to be as inclusive as I could, but I learn something new on this app every day, so if I miss something- and I’m bound to- I apologize in advance. Please have grace with me.

TW: Sexual assault mention, homophobia, misogynoir, cannibalism, misgendering

“That’s that White People Shit"

I’m putting the hardest part first; walk with me, you’ll be fine!

I will be honest: this section here, while I do think you should know, I don’t really expect nonblack people to incorporate it in depth. Not because it cannot be done, but because it is a sensitive topic that we ourselves are still struggling with. If you have struggled with anything else while writing Black characters up to this point, this one certainly isn’t for you to touch. Just keep in mind!

There’s an idea I’ve heard before on both sides that Black people are more likely to be homophobic, that queerness itself is white. That is a ridiculous belief, but the root of it ends up right back where you think it would: slavery! I’m sure that you saw me post while I was reading The Delectable Negro by gay Black author Vincent Woodard. I shared those increasingly uncomfortable quotes on purpose! If you have a desire to understand Black culture and Black thought, that means being willing to acknowledge Black pain. How can you avoid stereotypes if you avoid learning their source?  

While I will be using quotes from the entire book, the specific chapter of “Eating Nat Turner” is a succinct explanation of why admitting to the presence of homosexuality, gender fluidity, and queer identity within the Black community is so difficult for my people. While I highly, HIGHLY recommend reading this chapter yourself, it essentially comes down to how admitting to such a potential vulnerability in the armor of Blackness, in gender identity and particularly Black masculinity, would allow white supremacy to destroy us as a people, to do validate doing even more cruel things to us when in a position of power over us. It’s a defensive reaction based in trauma that disregards and discards the queer members of our own community as a threat, a liability when it comes to fighting against the ubiquitous presence of white supremacy.

“Intuitively, Black gay men understood the issue of homosexuality during slavery as a complex phenomenon shaped by a number of factors, including the nation’s unresolved relationship to the legacy of slavery, Black liberatory ideology dating back to slavery, and, most importantly, the maintenance of traditional notions of family and community that originated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The legacy and memory of slavery had a powerful effect that left many Black gay men feeling isolated from and rendered invisible within Black communities.

Joseph Beam said it first and best: “I cannot go home as who I am. . . . When I speak of home, I mean not only the familial constellation from which I grew, but the entire Black community: the Black press, the Black church, Black academicians, the Black literati, and the Black left… I am most often rendered invisible, perceived as a threat to the family, or am tolerated if I am silent and inconspicuous.” … As Philip Brian Harper has noted, the Black homosexual functioned in the twentieth century as an index for Black masculine anxieties. These ranged from the very personal and painful anxieties of lynching, castration, and the denial of civil rights to a larger set of anxieties rooted in historical erasure and cultural genocide.”

“Sex and gender they also conflated with homosexuality, made out to equal effeminacy. Many Blacks linked homosexuality to castration and the recent history of Black men who had been lynched and Black women who had been raped in the Jim Crow South and in the North. Homosexuality, in its metaphoric power, had an exhaustive function: It is equated with the absence of family, hatred of Black people, estrangement from one’s kin and culture, and all of those horrific aspects of Black experience about which Black people would rather not speak.”

An example of why nonblack people should consider the depth of such a topic- and their place to do so- before incorporating it into their story comes in the form of Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner, and the backlash he faced from the Black community for such a sensationalized story from a white author.

“The ten Black male contributors [who wrote Ten Black Writers Respond] coupled cannibalism (overtly and covertly) with homoeroticism and effeminacy. For these Black men, homoeroticism became a way of circumventing and projecting their experiences and pain onto certain “effeminate” Black men: the consumed Black man these Black men equated with the homosexual man. Homosexuality served as a means of containing certain unwieldy and historically difficult topics pertaining to Black masculinity, such as the need for intimacy, gender variance, sexual and emotional vulnerability, and violation. It was as if, in this very powerful and discursive moment, threads that had been all along winding through history wove together in a manner that illuminated the past as much as they clouded and blocked full access to its complicated meaning.”

“On the surface, at least, I do not disagree with these Black men and women. I think their analysis regarding historicity and the diminishment of Black communal ties was mostly correct. Styron’s novel was historically inaccurate, depicting Turner as raised by whites rather than the Black parents and grandmother Turner spoke about in his original “Confessions.” Styron depicts aspects of Turner’s sexual life that are not validated in any documentation coming from the time period, and Styron’s exhaustive probing into the racial hatred and self-hatred of Turner clearly reflected something in his own psyche and white identity that he felt compelled to project onto Turner. Black men were put on the defensive by both the novel and by the institutions (literary production, the media) and individuals who supported Styron as an authentic interpreter of Black historical experience. Many Black men, like Bennett, felt that Styron was waging a literary war that paralleled the contemporary political and police state war against Black men…”

The problem with this mindset and approach within the community is that, while it attempts to protect our community, it silences both the prosperity and the pain of an entire section of it, as well as shutting down important conversation that needs to be had even by nonqueer members. And it’s doing it all to fight against a force- white supremacy- that is going to commit violence against us regardless! Respectability politics forces many Black people to stay silent, to not speak up on things that may rock the boat- but the boat needs to be rocked! Blaming fellow victims of racism is not going to save us!

“That was the irony of this moment. Black people invoked the cannibal discourse that could have freed up and complicated Black male perspectives on everything from social consumption to homoeroticism only to defend Black masculinity and Black culture. Black men were not interested in, nor capable of dealing with, the complex legacy of cannibalism and homoeroticism that so powerfully shaped their responses to Styron’s novel.”

But that does NOT mean that it’s a nonblack person’s place to make that argument! While I cannot stop you, I do want you to keep in mind that- as always with sensitive topics- you may have to face Black people who may rightfully be offended by your depiction if not done with care. Styron studied James Baldwin himself- who faced backlash on his end for saying that it was time for the Black community to face such a conversation- and even then, he still projected his white pathology and opinions onto the story of such a prolific hero in our history. Tread lightly!

“Well they don’t seem gay to me.”- A Eurocentric Standard of Passing

How many times have you heard this about a Black character? And if you’re Black and LGBTQ, how often have you heard it about people (or maybe even yourself?) How do we ‘not seem gay’? What is gay supposed to be? There’s this denial, almost, of Black LGBTQ folks, based in a complete disconnect of understanding of our own forms of gender expression and sexuality.

It’s extremely bizarre, because so much of pop gay culture as we know it is from Black LGBTQs (please refer to my infamous AAVE lesson), but… when we imagine an LGBTQ person, they're white.

If you’re Black and queer, you have to be this stereotypical, flamboyant RuPaul-esque figure. Can’t be regular degular. If you’re gay, you gotta be Uber Gay™. If you’re trans, you better pass with Complete Gender and Pizzazz. If you’re nonbinary, you’re not ‘androgynous’ enough. If you’re intersex or asexual, you’re practically not real. If you don’t fill this (white, western) mold, you must not be right. When all you have to be in order to be gay… Is be gay.

I shouldn’t have to put on extra performance to qualify as queer in your eyes! Do you know what looks are considered “androgynous” in my community? What behaviors are deemed “masculine” versus “feminine”? Do you know anything about my queer culture, or are you subconsciously comparing it to your own?

I want you to recognize that whatever image of queerness you have in your mind for your favorite or original characters, if Black people of all shapes and sizes aren’t included, there’s a problem! Because what are you seeing in others, that you’re not seeing in us? Is that, perhaps, a you problem? And why are we not worth the added effort of queer layering that others are?

THAT SAID!

“Oh I know what that’s like, I’m gay-”

This one mostly- if not always- comes from white queer folk. I’ve linked The Last Interview with James Baldwin. It’s so short. PLEASE take the time to read it. I’ve always adored how James Baldwin expresses himself, and while I could never stand so close, I have studied how he conveys his thoughts. But there’s almost nothing I could say that he doesn’t say better.

“A Black gay person who is a sexual conundrum to society is already, long before the question of sexuality comes into it, menaced and marked because he’s Black or she’s Black. The sexual question comes after the question of color; it’s simply one more aspect of the danger in which all Black people live. I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly. Their reaction seems to me in direct proportion to the sense of feeling cheated of the advantages which accrue to white people in a white society.”

The idea that “I know what it’s like to experience this oppression as a Black person because I’m gay” is not true. It’s like saying “oh look at my tan, I’m as Black as you now”. Stop it. Think back to that first section on history we discussed- no, you and I are not the same. We can discuss our existing connections, our intersection and have sympathy and empathy with one another on human dignity. We don’t have to act like we’re the same to do that! So don’t go headstrong into your writing (or life) saying “oh I get that completely, it’s because I’m queer”. There are more tactful ways to express your intent of solidarity.

'Queer' vs 'The N Word'

We’re gonna nip this one in the bud, because we’re leaving that argument in 2024. You know the one- “saying queer is like using the N-word- as a reclamation/slur!” What this argument reveals, used by EITHER SIDE, is how y’all don’t actually have community with Black people.

It implies that either “we don’t like it” or “we do”. Yet another binary that does not exist! There are plenty of Black people that despise that word, regardless of context. That think it brings us down. And then there are those that use it as a reclamation of an identity that was used to demean and dehumanize. Either way, one party is not going to walk up to a stranger and force it on them- that would cause an actual fight! It’s not improving your argument. As a whole, I would say stop using Black politics in general to improve your arguments when you are unaware of the overlap, or maybe the lack thereof, between Blackness and queerness in your argument. It shows. I’m not your tool; I’m not your Negro!

I’m not here to tell anyone whether queer is a slur or not. I don’t use it as one, but I recognize when people are uncomfortable, when it is being used as one, and I will use different language when I am speaking directly to someone who says “I do not like that word, describe me as __”. I am just here to say that we’re leaving that argument behind.

Black =/= Gender

Blackness and the concept of Gender have a fraught, confusing history. Not human enough to have rights, but human just enough to fail to meet Eurocentric standards of gender.

One example of this is the term “stud”. Studs are an example of Black women traversing gender presentation, the origin of which is because Black people are perceived as having “lesser sexual dimorphism”- i.e. you can’t tell who’s a woman or not. It’s an in-community joke that doesn’t make sense spoken outside of its historical context (thus, no, your white butch is NOT a stud within this context).

Another example: Megan Thee Stallion is one of the most stunning, feminine women I have ever seen… And her entire career, people have called her a man. Because she’s brown-skinned, Black, confident, loud, and openly sexual, she’s deemed manly. I can’t stand it. Plus her height- and mind you, Taylor Swift, of the same height and probably a higher number of bodies over the years, has never once been called a man or lost any of her “feminine” charm despite it. Why is that? If one of her men had shot in the foot, trying to kill her, there would be an uproar. Why is that?

There is an internal contradiction that being a Black woman is being inherently “gender nonconforming”. The first reason is that I will never be allowed to truly be a “woman” because to be a woman is to be white while doing it. White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad is an excellent book on this dynamic in all women of color, and Black activists like Angela Davis and Kimberle Crenshaw have written and discussed the topic as well.

The second reason is I have to play the role of whatever ‘gender’ is expected to get me through this life. I have to be more ‘masculine’; strong, assertive, and proactive, a hard worker willing to sacrifice it all every day, in order to protect my family and myself in a world where a lack of resilience might kill me. I cannot allow weakness to stop me from taking care of my community, because Black women are supposed to show up and save the day. Find a Black woman! they say. She’ll fix it! And odds are, I do know how to fix it because I’ve probably had to address it before.

But then I’m acting ‘out of a woman’s place’ by being so ‘hard’ and expecting people to listen to my authority. So in order to play a Black woman’s place, I have to balance that with… Somehow not intimidating people by being more ‘feminine’, submissive, vulnerable, sweet and motherly (because if I’m not a good breeder and mother, I am a bad woman). I scare people if I don’t. If I don’t do that, then I’m not a good Black woman. But if I don’t harden myself and be strong and assertive to protect everyone, and tough through everyone’s problems with infinite sacrifice, then I’m not a good Black woman… You see how the cycle gets confusing! (The Delectable Negro and Black on Both Sides also speak on this, and how this is rooted in the creation of the Mammy!)

I spoke about it earlier, but that same inability to be defined as a human, defined as white, haunts many Black men in their goals to be seen as ��equal’ to white men and receive equal treatment. By seeking to fit a standard of whiteness, they are never going to attain it (and often, that comes back home in not-so-good way)! E.g.: this is the original issue that Louis had in AMCs' IWTV- Louis never actually wanted to be a vampire, Louis wanted to be treated like an equivalent human- and that was unattainable to him not because he wasn’t a human being, but because he wasn’t a white one!

The Racist Counterproductivity of TERFs

Sigh. If you are of this belief, but here to better your writing, I feel like I should say this to you. I want you to listen to me. (TBH, I’m going to delete anything asking me for opinions on this because I don’t want to potentially entertain even a singular troll). Besides, my argument is pretty simple and resolute.

The gender binary is rooted in bioessentialism, and bioessentialism is rooted in white supremacy. You know what else benefits from white supremacy? The white patriarchy.

How are we gonna escape from the patriarchy and white supremacy… if the ideology you believe in… is rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy?

And it’s not just the TERFs- look within yourselves as well! How are we going to make the world safer for trans people, including white ones, if you aren’t willing to confront your own racist biases? If you are unwilling to release the shackles of gender essentialism and the benefits of whiteness, none of us are getting out of here. You are reinforcing the very walls you wish to dismantle!

To offer another side of the conversation, Black On Both Sides by C Riley Snorton has been an interesting read! Essentially, the conversation is on how Blackness and transness intersect, how being Black in and of itself can be and is a transitional, gender fluid experience. It, along with The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould and Medical Apartheid by Harriet A Washington, goes into the history of how the Black body was seen as a different species altogether, and how phrenology, biological essentialism, and examples of sexual dimorphism were treated as an example on how we are an inferior group. Yet, this lack of understanding of our bodies (despite the constant access to it) allowed for us to maneuver within such a system.

An example, of how Blackness has an effect on our perception of gender:

"Cobb suggests that this blackening may have been an anticipatory gesture; when James Norcom (Jacobs’s enslaver) published a description of her in the 1835 issue of the American Beacon, he presumed that she would be “seeking whiteness and dressing as a free woman, not accentuating her Blackness” and finding a “cross-dressing” and ungendered mode for escape. Although the description of sartorial arrangements seems to conform to passing’s logic of movement for protection or privilege, Jacobs’s use of charcoal to darken her complexion tropes—by inverse logic—on more commonly held beliefs (and fears) about racial passing.

As “passing” became a term to describe performing something one is not, it trafficked a way of thinking about identity not only in terms of real versus artificial but also, and perhaps always, as proximal and performative. Like a vertical line with arrows on either end, passing is figuratively represented by moving up or down hierarchized identificatory formations. This articulation of vertical identity also coordinates with forms of binary thinking, typified, for example, by the language of “the opposite” sex. …Brent/Jacobs’s blackened blackness gives expression to her condition as fungible within the logic of U.S. slavery, in which the system of colorism, as Nicole Fleetwood has argued, “produces a performing subject whose function is to enact difference . . . an act that is fundamentally about assigning value.”

As it relates to the scene of Jacobs’s brushing past Sands, her status as “it” also indicates how blackness-as-fungible engenders forms of nonrecognition, as Jacobs’s performance elucidates how blackness and going blacker become an embrace of the conditions that might allow one to pass one’s friends and lovers undetected. In this encounter, fungibility sets the stage for gendered maneuvers on a terrain constituted by modes of viewing blackness, in which Jacobs’s blackness and going blacker color her gender as well as her face."

The Black Trans/Nonbinary/Genderqueer Experience

Rather than try to summarize opinions on something I had not lived, I wanted to platform some Black trans, intersex, and genderqueer opinions for you all to consider! I asked three questions, and I’ve typed out the responses and placed them as their own post for the sake of space. I don’t care if it’s long- read them! You want to write these characters; you should hear the perspectives of the people you wish to write about!

The Black Intersex Experience

Nothing I could say that someone that is actually Black and intersex couldn’t say better!

Here is a page on Tumblr that compiles resources on the intersex community and its history that I found; while it’s not Black-specific, I have seen the page post topics related to.

The Black Aspec Experience

An interesting thing about identifying as asexual or aromantic while Black is that from all angles, people will simply not believe you because Blackness itself has been sexualized. I talked about this in my lessons on stereotypes, but one of the ways that the sexual assault and violation of Black bodies was dismissed, was to emphasize that not only were we incapable of being r*ped, but that we were naturally inclined to being hypersexual beings and that if we weren’t controlled, we would bring it onto ourselves. Black women were jezebels; Black men were mandigos, vicious savages that would assault pure white women if not chained like beasts.

Here is a page for Black people (!!!) with these identities to gather. Again, BLACK PEOPLE with these identities. Here's another!

The Bit You Actually Showed Up For

So! Given all that historical and social context: really, it’s just about application! You have to ask yourself certain things to catch when you’re about to dip into a bias or stereotype while you’re writing.

Black Queer Joy- A Conclusion

I know I’ve shared a lot of history here, and it’s not been the happiest stuff. THAT BEING SAID!

I must personally say- I am honored to be Black and bisexual. There’s nothing else I’d rather be. I am so happy to be who I am. It’s hard as hell living at the intersection, but the intersection is lit! There’s so much love, history, culture, creation, and so much power here; I’m standing on the shoulders of cultural GIANTS and my chest is full, my chin is high with pride. I love it here!

Being Black and queer itself is not a miserable experience! Your characters should feel joy, because we feel joy! There’s so much that we have to offer the world, it’s practically blossoming from us. I don’t want anyone to walk away from this going “let me go pity the next one I see and tell them how hard their life is”. We don’t need you to feel sorry, we need you to have solidarity! Either show up and do the work, or leave us alone. You can’t join the party at the intersection and then flee when it’s time to fight for it!

Listen to Black queer people in your spaces- dear god, it never fails how conversations of queerness and gender and feminism will leave Blackness completely out, and then be shocked when none of us want to show up. Like I said before- you will never dismantle the walls barring you from your own freedom until you address ours.

Support Black queer creatives, content, perspectives, and people- when you tag on that “support Black trans women” bit at the end of your posts, don’t just speak lightly- understand what that means, and stand on it! Because it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

[atthecenterofeverything]

on degeneration theory

due to the amount of discussions regarding degeneration theory, i wanted to lay out some of its basic arguments and compile some quotes by the main proponents of this theory (including the founder of its concept, the french psychiatrist bénédict morel), with a focus on its context (the second half of the 19th century in france) to better understand its workings.

warning: as might be expected, violent eugenics, racism, ableism, and extermination rhetoric as expressed explicitly by its theorists under the cut. all quotes originally in french (except nordau), all translations mine.

degeneration theory speaks of a biological basis to physical and mental inferiority. this biological basis can be and is exacerbated by one's ancestors' habits, diseases, environment, or eating and drinking patterns, as well as by new technologies and social changes occurring, and is then transmitted to the offspring in a degenerating process.

Some diseases, some intoxications, some habits among parents are capable of producing among their offsprings a constitutive state, a particular organistic state that can then be transmitted indefinitely until extinction of the race.

Bénédict-Augustin Morel (1809-1873), as quoted by Philippe Buchez in “Rapport sur le traité des dégénérescences mentales du Dr. B. A. Morel” dans Annales médico-psychologiques, 1857.

this basis constitutes a predisposition that makes one more likely to succumb to madness and weakens one's will to resist to passions (paranoia, insanity, hedonism, revolutionary ideas, etc.).

Degeneration is the pathological state of the being which, in comparison to his more direct ancestors, has his psycho-physical resistance constitutionally weakened, and which can not realize the biological conditions necessary for the hereditary struggle for life. This weakening process translates through permanent stigmatas and is essentially progressive, except in the case of inter-current regeneration; in the absence of the latter, the process results, faster or slower, in the race being annihilated.

Valentin Magnan (1835-1916), as quoted by Jacques Postel et Claude Quétel in Nouvelle histoire de la psychiatrie, 2012.

the degree of responsibility retained by the individual and the measures thought capable of resisting this process vary among degeneration theorists in significant ways. some thought reeducation possible and some did not.

Education does not and cannot have any effect on potential, dispositions, or the innate activity of intellectual, moral, and affective faculties, (because) psycho-cerebral vitality is essentially inborn. (Workers) are individuals originally vitiated by intellectual, moral, and affective defects, which are more or less hidden; the reason they are not educated is that they show reluctance to it.

Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours (1804-1884), La psychologique morbide dans ses rapports avec la philosophie de l'histoire ou de l'influence des névropathies sur le dynamisme intellectuel, 1859

this leads to circular logic: only degenerated individuals could act thus, which proves they are degenerated, and so is their behavior. the interdiction of homosexuality, communard activity, prostitution or alcohol, as well as a general dissatisfaction with the state of one's life or with the world, were thus often pathologized.

Great revolutionary moments only enthuse and lead to madness those who are predisposed to it, and who would probably have turned to insanity about other causes as well.

Louis-Victor Marcé (1828-1864), as quoted by Valentin Magnan in Annales médico-pyschologiques, 1857.

through this process, the general national (and racial) stock is weakened, thus expanding to the rest of the population if not prevented by eugenistic efforts (leading to Regeneration), explicitly framed as a hygienist and medical endeavor. this aimed to legitimate the social order of the french third republic by entrenching the position of the white bourgeois citizen as the rational subject (often implying that god created man as a perfect creation, who is then slowly corrupted by terrestrial influences), against among others disabled, non-white and/or working-class subjects. this also lead to the concept of "degenerate art" as used by nazis.

What happens to an individual can also occur for a group of individuals, and even spread to an entire society, to almost an entire people. (They thus form) a collective of organisms, equipped, so to speak, with their respective predispositions, united and acting on the same scene of social and political affairs.

Jean-Baptiste Vincent Laborde (1830-1903), Les hommes et les actes de l'insurrection de Paris devant la psychologique morbide, 1872.

this was also a central idea to the development of conceptions of mental illness as hereditary or not, curable or not - and to the nosology of insanity itself. you can trace many contemporary parallels with those ideas, including with people wildly removed from its ideological origins. for example, note rhetoric concerning new technology leading to a progressive weakening of intellectual faculties, adults being inexorably made slower (through appeal to neuroscientific claims) by the use of (and especially "reliance" on) these technologies, a gradual disappearance of the will/attention span/capacity to resist satisfaction ("dopamine") or hedonism, etc.

The degenerate is not in a condition to fix his attention long, or indeed at all, on any subject, and is equally incapable of correctly grasping, ordering, or elaborating into ideas and judgments the impressions of the external world conveyed to his distracted consciousness by his defectively operating senses. It is easier and more convenient for him to allow his brain-centres to produce semi-lucid, nebulously blurred ideas and inchoate embryonic thoughts, and to surrender himself to the perpetual obfuscation of a boundless, aimless, and shoreless stream of fugitive ideas; and he rarely rouses himself to the painful attempt to check or counteract the capricious, and, as a rule, purely mechanical associations of ideas and succession of images, and bring under discipline the disorderly tumult of his fluid presentations.

Max Simon Nordau (1849-1923), Degeneration (transl. by George L. Mosse), 1892.

[seat-safety-switch]

Like in motorsports, oil in cooking is everything. You have to select the right viscosity, the perfect origin, and the ideal smoke point. What, you just throw "extra virgin" olive oil on your pan without thinking too much about it? My great-grandmother would shit blood until she died again at you.

At the mall, they have an oil store. Yes, a mall, that's how upscale you have to be for this kind of store. It's inside one of the rich-people enclaves, and they've somehow blocked it out from the satellites. Didn't even know it was there until I had to get inside to rescue my friend Joseph, who had (you guessed it) stolen some key datasofts from the CEO of Zaibatsu Corporation.

While we were in the area, I figured I would duck into the mall while fleeing the corporate security. Those chipped-up cyborg death machines would never think to come looking for us in a bourgeois olive oil store. And it turns out they also had free bread for sampling the oil! Real bread, made from plants! Boy, if the people on the outside knew about this, they'd be knocking down the walls instead of just sneaking in through the Waste Output Port 195-B like I did.

We ate like three loaves of bread each, which I think made the clerkdroid a little suspicious. To allay its fears, we kept repeating rich-people catchphrases like "my fourth yacht," "investment account," "mergers and acquisitions," "the rabble outside threaten our very way of living," and my favourite, "I cannot afford a $500 per year tax hike." That seemed to placate its pattern-matching algorithms, and we were able to stay in there until the store closed.

What oil did we buy? None. Joseph offered to get me a bottle, for all my trouble, but the price tag was literally not visible to our eyes. We decided to go home instead. While we drove, dodging the hunter-killer drones the whole way, we thought about how nice it would be to be the kind of person who worries about different sorts of oil. My great-grandma would probably understand that the only kind I have left to fry eggs in is "motor, used."

[dragoneyes613]

"A Jew passed in front of Hadrian [ the second-century Roman emperor] and greeted him. The king asked, "Who are you?" He answered, "I am a Jew." Hadrian exclaimed, "How dare a Jew pass in front of Hadrian and greet him?" and ordered, "Off with his head!" Another Jew passed and, seeing what happened to the first man, did not greet him. Hadrian asked, "Who are you?" He answered, "A Jew." He exclaimed, "How dare a Jew pass in front of Hadrian without giving a greeting?" and again ordered, "Off with his head!" His senators said, "We cannot understand your actions. He who greeted you was put to death, and he who did not greet you was put to death!" Hadrian replied, "Do you dare to advise me how I am to deal with those I hate?"

- Lamentations Rabbah 3:9 commenting on verse 3:58

Hadrian acknowledged what most antisemites deny: Their hatred of Jews is unassuageable by any Jewish behavior. Thus, antisemites who fault Jews for "pushing in where they are not wanted" presumably would find no fault with those Jews who ghettoize themselves and remain within their own community. Yet studies have shown that the very antisemites who despise Jews for their "incursions" into the majority culture also are apt to denounce them for "clannishly sticking together."

Antisemites frequently reach for the argument that sounds most plausible. Thus, Jew-haters in the former Soviet Union long focused on Jews as capitalists who were subverting communism, while American antisemites accused Jews of being communists and subverting capitalism.

It is useless to try to reason with these disciples of Hadrian. As the nineteenth-century German historian Theodore Momsen noted: "You are mistaken if you believe that anything at all can be achieved by reason. In years past I thought so myself and kept protesting against the monstrous infamy that is antisemitism. But it is uselss, completely useless" (cited in Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, page 1)."

- Jewish Wisdom, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, pages 463-464

[dioslesbianwife]

Can I please request the jofoes with a partner who thinks of the most crazy /stupid plans and it always works no matter how crazy it sounds.

lol yes, thank you for requesting and i hope you enjoy :33

Dio

At first? Dismissive. “You what? You’re going to lure a Stand user into a trap using a karaoke machine, peanut butter, and a hamster? Tch. Ridiculous.”

But then it works, and he just stands there blinking like a lizard.

“…Impressive,” he mutters, trying to act like he totally saw it coming.

He eventually starts letting you take the lead, but every time he watches one of your absurd plans unfold flawlessly, he gets this smug-but-nervous smile like:

“Of course it worked. My partner is a genius… a deranged, dangerous genius.”

Lowkey wonders if your Stand is just probability warping.

Kars

You are a riddle he cannot solve. He’s a genius, a god, the ultimate lifeform- 

And you just beat five elite assassins with a bottle of soda and a traffic cone.

“How?” he demands, staring at the chaos.

You just grin and say something like, “It came to me in a dream.”

He starts following you around, watching you like a science experiment. He’s 99% curiosity and 1% fear cause you lowkey remind him of Joseph.

Eventually he stops asking how and just starts prepping supplies like: “Do you require… string cheese and fireworks again?”

He respects your unpredictable brilliance deeply and gets way too invested in your bizarre plans.

Yoshikage Kira

He’s internally screaming every time you explain a plan. “We’ll fake our deaths using water balloons, mayonnaise, and a middle school play!”

Kira: “I just want to live a quiet life. Please.”

But then you pull it off. Flawlessly.

Now he has no choice but to go along with it. And the worst part? He starts trusting you. Like, really trusting you.

“I can’t believe this worked,” he mumbles after the third flawless escape. “What are you?”

He finds your unpredictability both terrifying and exhilarating. Lowkey proud that you’re his partner, even if your plans make no sense.

Diavolo

Absolutely HATES it at first. “You expect me to believe this idiotic idea will succeed?!”

But when you defeat an enemy Stand using bubble wrap, a capri sun, and a feral cat, he just… blanks.

You become the only person allowed to make plans besides him. He pretends to hate it, but deep down, he respects it.

“It is a calculated chaos,” he mutters, pacing. “A controlled instability… Yes… You are terrifying.”

He refuses to admit your success aloud, but he’ll quietly provide anything you ask for- even if it’s 6 pounds of glitter and a fake mustache.

Doppio

“Oh wow! That sounds crazy… You… think it’ll work?”

You: “Yep. We just need a shopping cart and exactly 14 lemons.”

Doppio: “....Okay.”

He’s on board, but definitely keeps a safe distance in case he needs to make a quick escape.

When it does work, he’s very relieved and stops doubting you after a while.

Starts getting more into your plans, even offering ideas like “What if we add balloons?”

Enrico Pucci

He prays for you. He really does. “Lord, I know that You work in mysterious ways, but please grant me the strength to understand how this madness keeps working.”

But after you solve three Stand-related crises with a kazoo, a ladder, and a hot dog cart, he stops asking questions.

“You… are touched by something greater,” he whispers.

He becomes convinced your nonsense is part of God’s divine plan.

Literally starts preaching about chaotic brilliance:

“All glory to the most bewildering genius of our time.”

Funny Valentine

At first: “Absolutely not. That’s ridiculous and un-American.”

After you save his entire campaign using nothing but cardboard cutouts and a kazoo, he’s flabbergasted.

“This… This is the kind of ingenuity that makes this country great.”

He now fully endorses every wild plan you come up with, no matter how absurd.

“Gather the inflatable flamingos,” he orders a subordinate. “She has another idea.”

He frames your weirdest plans as genius wartime strategies to the government and acts like it’s all part of a top-secret tactical manual.

Diego Brando

You’ll say something like, “We’ll trap the Stand user by pretending to be a mariachi band, then have a real bull chase them into a minefield.”

Diego: “What the actual hell are you talking about?”

Then you do it. And it works.

Diego’s suspicious of you for weeks.

“There’s no way you’re not cheating. Is your Stand luck manipulation? Fate distortion? Tell me.”

Eventually he just stops fighting it and becomes your ride-or-die chaos accomplice.

He starts requesting you lead him through the race and help him win 1st with a resigned sigh like, “Alright, genius, what’s the stupid plan today?”

Tooru

He adores this side of you. He lives for it. He finds it hilarious.

“Wait, wait- say that again. We’re going to distract them with a fake wedding and then trap them with a flock of geese?”

You: “Exactly.”

Tooru: “...Alright then.”

He thinks you’re the most entertaining person he’s ever met, and your plans are somehow better than his slow-burn manipulations.

He’ll happily play along, smirking the whole time.

When it works? “I knew it would. You’re terrifying in the best way. We should cause problems together more often.”

[littlebluemoth]

timeless; thomas shelby

This idea has been plaguing my mind for days, I cannot get it out of my head. I’m not sure if I will make any more parts of this, it all depends on how I feel about it and if it is well received. The timeline of this is skewed on purpose, it’s also heavily based on Tommy’s time fighting during the war. Timeless by Taylor Swift was a huge inspiration.

Both you and Tommy became unlikely friends during childhood, only for you to realize you had always loved him. Tommy finds himself seeing you in a different light, only war being able to separate the two of you. (3.5k)

Thomas Shelby was the first and only boy you had ever loved.

It was 1902, Tommy was twelve years old. He played with your older brother, they went out into the street with the Shelby brothers and few other boys from the neighborhood and kicked a ball around. You were eight, trailing your brother Joseph at every chance you had.

When you met Tommy, it was because you had chased after your brother one August afternoon with the intention to join their game of kickball. The moment you approached the large group of prepubescent boys, Joseph looked absolutely mortified. Even though he was older than some of the boys, at fourteen, he still followed all of Tommy’s orders. This, you didn’t understand.

“Go home,” he leaned down to your level in gritted teeth.

“I just want to play, just one game,” you pleaded with him. “Please, Joey.”

“No,” he barked. “Y/N, you gotta get out of here.”

Feeling your face heat up, you were near tears and embarrassed in front of all of the older boys. Joseph would not let up, angry at you for trying to play with him and his friends.

“What the fuck d’she want?” Arthur bellowed towards your brother.

Peering over at him, you could tell that he was not very patient and was even older than Joseph. After Arthur had yelled, you turned back to go home. Hot tears spilled down your cheeks as you shuffled back to where you lived and went inside to play alone.

“Fuckin’ asshole is what you are,” Tommy shook his head a bit. “Game’s not fuckin’ hard or anythin’, Joe. She could have played.”

That was all they ever said again on the matter, your brother never brought it up to you that night and you never spoke of it to him. It wasn’t until later on that month that anyone had approached you about what happened that day in Small Heath.

You were sent out to pick up your mother’s cigarettes, dragging your feet along the dirt path with the coin in your hand. Every Wednesday, you made the same trek. Tommy Shelby came up on your right side as you walked one day, you saw a screwdriver sticking out of his pocket and nearly shuttered. The kids around the neighborhood spoke of him in hushed whispers, calling him a gypsy and saying he and his brothers carried razor blades around with them.

“You’re Joe’s sister, aren’t you?” He asked, peering over at you. “Tried to join in on a game a while back?”

“Yes,” you nodded. “I’m Y/N.”

He hummed in response, kicking dirt with his shoe as you both walked. He was much taller than you, though he was still quite narrow and scrawny. Truthfully, there was no denying that you had a little bit of a schoolgirl crush on him.

“Where’re you headed?” He finally spoke up.

“Grabbing my mum’s cigarettes,” you told him with a sigh. “She sends me out every week to pick some up.”

At the time, you had no clue why Tommy had followed you all the way to the shop and then walked you home. He never gave you any inclination either. Then, he did the same the next week. He came outside when you passed his house and you walked together. This occurred every week after the first.

Of course, you assumed this meant he liked you and this caused you to revel in the attention just a little. Tommy would talk to you about school and horses mostly, he was kind to you.

About six months after you and Tommy had developed this weekly routine, you mentioned something to your brother about it and he teased you about having a crush on Tommy. Making the mistake of saying he must’ve liked you back if he continued to walk along with you, Joseph was quite cruel in return.

“He doesn’t do it because he likes to,” Joseph laughed. “Father started pestering me to walk with you when he found out you were being picked on in school, bothered and such by the boys around. I started to give Tommy a bit of my allowance to walk with you so dad would finally get off my fucking back.”

You no longer walked to the shops on Wednesdays.

Tommy waited for you the next week, but you never left out front and began past his house. The week after, he did the same and you still did not come.

“Y/N!” Your mother’s voice came up the staircase on Thursday morning. “Come to the door.”

Tommy stood there in the walkway to your home, talking with your mother about something as you came down the steps. She left you to walk outside together and down the stairs into the street.

“You’re not getting your mum’s cigarettes anymore?” He asked you suddenly.

“No, I am,” you told him. “Just don’t want to walk with you anymore.”

He seemed taken aback by this, not used to the idea of you sticking your nose up at him and looking the other way when he tried to talk to you. Tommy knew you were smitten with him, he didn’t mind it. He thought you were nice enough, he liked to walk with you every week. He just didn’t see you the same way that you saw him, you were too young and too curious about certain things.

“Why’s that?” He shot back a little annoyed.

“Joey told me that he’s been paying you to do it, to make sure nobody messes with me.”

“And?” Tommy asked. “Doesn’t really fuckin’ matter if you ask me, whether he’s payin’ me or not.”

This made you roll your eyes, shaking your head at him and leaning against the brick of one of the alleyways you walked down. Tommy was confused as to why this bothered you so much, truthfully it didn’t really matter about the money to him. It helped him to buy cigarettes, that was all. He didn’t mind walking along with you, though. He would’ve done it without the payout.

“It matters to me,” you told him. “I don’t need looking after or anything like that.”

Turning on your heel, you thought that you’d been able to get the last word. Little did you know, nobody but Tommy got the last word. He only realized you had decided to go out on Saturdays, rather than Wednesdays. He told Joseph that he wouldn’t be requiring payment anymore and you walked in silence for over a month before you spoke to him on your walks again.

His stubbornness irked you, leaving you infuriatingly mad at his inability to leave you alone. Your cheeks went hot when he came around, stomach in knots whenever he would say your name.

Over the years, you had tried to shake your feelings for Tommy. This was mostly due to the fact that you had grown attached in a way that allowed you to call him a friend. By the time you were eleven, Tommy had taught you how to ride his horse. He spent an entire summer working with you. He was fifteen and definitely had plenty of better things to do, but he spent hours upon hours in the grueling sun with you.

“Tommy,” you said, laying sprawled out on a patch of grass one afternoon when you were thirteen and he was seventeen. “D’you want to come ‘round to mine for supper tonight? Mum asked me to invite you over.”

The last bit was a lie, you truly just wanted Tommy to join you. He inhaled shortly before propping himself up on his hand and looking over at you.

“Can’t tonight, m’sorry,” he apologized to you.

“Why not?” You asked curiously, assuming he’d saying something about having to be with his brothers or Polly.

“I’ve actually asked a girl out,” he confessed to you. “I’m planning to take her out tonight.”

This was one of the few times Tommy discussed his love life with you. Your friendship mostly consisted of doing other things, less intrusive things. He still really saw you as a younger sister type of figure in a way. He thoroughly enjoyed your company, but there was no denying his attraction to the girls he saw in school.

Once, Tommy told you about Arthur bringing home a prostitute. He didn’t tell you why he did it, or what they did. Only laughed it off, unbeknownst to him that you really didn’t know what a prostitute was. Joseph had called them whores, but you lived a rather sheltered lifestyle and none of the older people around you ever spoke about such things in front of you.

Tommy took girls out, he’d had several girlfriends as you approached your later teenage years. Your friendship, however, never faltered. When you were seventeen years old, you remember going out riding with him and telling him how you wanted to make something of yourself beyond what Small Heath had to offer. Planning to become a schoolteacher, Tommy had always admired this about you.

“Don’t you want to be something other than all this?” You asked him, alluding to the fact that he was growing more and more responsible for the Peaky Blinders. “I mean, I just wondered if you ever had other dreams.”

“I’d like to work with horses,” he told you quietly, running his hands over the mare’s mane.

“Why don’t you?” You questioned him. “I know you feel some sense of responsibility over your family, I think it’s one of your best traits. Don’t you ever want to just—I don’t know, live a less tormenting life?”

Tommy played with the reins, looking at you and shrugging. This was all he’d ever known, and all he would ever know. There was no Birmingham without Tommy Shelby, you knew it as well as anyone. It still hurt, though. Knowing he was playing with fire every day, testing God, as your mother had called it.

Once Tommy had grown more involved in the gang, your parents no longer allowed him to come over to the house. They detested you seeing him at all, your brother most of all. He settled quickly, marrying a woman and starting a family.

Tommy realized he loved you when he was twenty two years old. He’d known you for ten years, having called you his best friend for a decade. You were eighteen years old and had just begun training to become a teacher, you were commuting frequently and saw Tommy less and less.

It was that Christmas when you’d introduced him to the man you had been courting, his name was Michael. When he shook the man’s hand, Tommy felt something inside of him shift. Suddenly, you were no longer that little girl with scuffed shoes and long pigtails. He saw a young woman with ambition and heart, but you were no longer holding out for Tommy like you had for nearly ten years.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Arthur came up and clapped Tommy on the back of the shoulder. “S’fucking Christmas and you’re really bringing my spirits down.”

Tommy said nothing, downing more whiskey as he watched Michael spin you around in a dance. You were in a fit of laughter, smiling at him adoringly.

“Be serious, brother,” Arthur sighed, drunk and wondering how Tommy could truly be as he was. “You can’t tell me that you’re sitting over here in the corner drinking away your sorrows because she’s brought along some bloke.”

“Fuck off, won’t you?” Tommy shot him a look.

“Unbelievable,” Arthur walked away laughing.

It was completely and utterly unbelievable, not only to Arthur, but to Tommy as well. He’d spent years with you, practically praying that you would find someone, anyone to avert your feelings too. As you grew older, you also were able to hide your feelings and emotions better in Tommy’s case.

He watched you the entire night, nodding a farewell when he noticed you trying to approach him. He had no intention of speaking to Michael again, for fear that he may be physically ill.

His hope that it was a passing courtship died with what looked to be your close friendship. The two of you hardly saw each other anymore, animosity forming between you after the night of the Christmas party.

Months later, Tommy found himself at your apartment door when Ada had told him that you mentioned thinking Michael was planning to propose. He left to see you after midnight, walking the entire distance to where you lived and putting himself at your front door well past one in the morning.

“Y/N,” he called out as he knocked. “It’s Tommy.”

Opening the door, you were only left in your nightdress. Your hair was down completely, something Tommy had not seen since you were some years younger. He could not help but to notice the sheer material of the fabric, the buds of your nipples showing through.

“Tommy?” You yawned. “What’re you doing here?”

“I needed to talk to you,” he told you.

“Now? It’s the middle of the night.”

Ushering him in, you let him shut the door behind him and tried to rub the sleep out of your eyes. Tommy felt himself growing hard, looking at you in such a state.

“Y/N, don’t marry him,” Tommy blurted out in almost a whisper.

“What?” You looked at him, shocked. “What did you say?”

“Don’t marry him, don’t marry Michael.”

There was a stillness to the room, a silence that made you almost sick. His face was somehow stoic, but pleading at the same time. His eyes bored into your own, as if they were making it impossible to get a word out.

“He is a good man, Tommy,” you said. “He wants to take care of me, to make me happy.”

“With plenty of money and security, with a practical occupation and a good legacy to leave your children?” Tommy asked, sarcasm incredibly evident.

“Yes, Tommy. Fuck, I mean is that what you want me to say? That he can give me a good life? Why should it matter if he’s got money?”

“It shouldn’t, not if you love him,” Tommy told you. “Do you?”

It felt as if you were eight years old again, confronting Tommy about why he was walking with you in the first place. He looked at you with such yearning, such longing. It was as if he was begging you not to say yes, pleading with you not to have already devoted your heart to this man.

There was only one truth of the matter. Thomas Shelby was the only man that you had ever loved.

“Tommy, I have only ever loved you since I was eight years old,” you whispered.

As if unable to hold back any longer, Tommy embraced you fully and brought you into his arms. He kissed you furiously, without any doubt or question that you were meant for him. He let his hands run up and down your back and pulled you into his body.

Before you gave into your urge to let him rip your sheer nightdress off of you, you pulled away with swollen lips and eyes full of desire. This was not right, not until you spoke to Michael. Regardless of how you felt for Tommy, you could not do this to Michael.

“Not yet,” you whispered. “I gave a man my word, I need to speak to him before I can go any further here.”

Tommy respected your choice, he knew you wouldn’t want disloyalty on your conscience. He just nodded his head and placed a hand on your cheek gently, it was in these moments that he forgot about everything else.

Michael didn’t take the news very well at all, his ego was bruised and he pleaded for you to reconsider. He told you how deeply he loved you and how you had led him on, making him believe that you two would have a life together. He was right, you had encouraged him in all of his dreams of your future and you had done it without ever considering how it may end. It was selfish.

It took you weeks before you agreed to see Tommy again after Michael had left you feeling so guilty. Nights of tireless sleep, you would look up at the sky and pray to god that you were making the right decisions.

Over a year into your training, you would soon be able to do what you’d always dreamt of. Dark times approached, though. There were ghosts of whispers at every street corner, they spoke of war so feverishly. It was as if death was due to knock at the doors of families, stripping women of their husbands and children of their fathers.

The thought of this had left Tommy quite stoic most of the time, he held a monotonous view on the entire matter. Every time you had brought it up to him, he told you how he would be expected to fight on behalf of his country if it came down to it.

And so he did, when it came down to it and Britain had joined the War—The Shelby brothers and hundreds of other men in Small Heath joined as well.

“Tommy,” I sniffled as I watched him from across his bedroom pack a small bag of things. “I need you to promise me that you’ll come home, that you won’t die out there. They’re saying things about trench warfare, it’s all really terrifying—”

Tommy crossed the room and took your face in his hands, kissing you hard on the lips, as if it was the last time he would ever do so. A piece of you wondered if he believed that he would die out there.

“Please come home,” you breathed.

“I will come home,” he kissed you again. “I promise you.”

You planned to hold him to this promise. Having waited ten years for Tommy Shelby, you would wait however long more so long as he would come home to you.

It took two months before his first letter would come after you watched him depart on that large ship. Long months of kneeling at the foot of your bed, begging god not to take Tommy. Everything that was being said about the war was absolutely tragic, soldiers being blown to pieces or rotting below the earth in the trenches.

My Dearest Y/N,

I wish I was able to write to you sooner, I cannot say where I am for the risk of interception. Just know that I have never been in such conditions in my life, I spend my days underground. I have taken the role of a tunneler. Trench warfare has not been good to any of us, I find myself fantasizing of the end of this long hell.

I stare at your picture every night before I shut my eyes, dreaming of what it would be like beside you. There is no greater sorrow to me than your absence from my life at this point in time. I can only hope that it will not be for long.

Not long ago, myself and a group of men were gassed. I watched a fellow soldier go blind for nearly three days before he finally came out of it, only with some permanent damage. There are times when I have thought to myself, ‘Perhaps if I was hit, it would not be so bad. Perhaps even death is better than fighting in this war’.

Then I think of you. I think of the promises I made to you before I left to fight in this god awful war. I cannot understand how men are expected to live like this, nor how we will continue on. I was up to my knees in water last week, the trenches dark and desolate as we waited for the storm to pass. There is so much waiting these days.

I look forward to your letter.

With all of my love,

Tommy Shelby

[error04landonotfound]

So, I told myself during the race that I wouldn't rant about it post-race. And I wasn't going to!!

But then the interviews and the quotes came out. And then I really couldn't just sit with my thoughts. I'm gonna put a keep reading under here because I just know this post is about to be LONG.

Let me start by saying this: the intent of this post is NOT to hate on Oscar Piastri. The intent is to voice my frustrations with Andrea Stella, Zak Brown, and Will Joseph specifically.

When Lando was P1 last weekend, Oscar was told they were "free to race." The exception to that was, understandably, when they were trying to clear backmarkers. Aside from that, they were free to race each other. Oscar wasn't told to hold back at any other point and even made the argument that he was faster, which was understandable. Lando, on the other hand, was told repeatedly by Will Joseph that his tyre degradation was worse than everyone else's and that he shouldn't push too hard. Now, I don't have it saved, but the post-race graphic showing tyre degradation levels for all drivers had Lando as one of the drivers with the LOWEST amount of tyre deg. If that's the case, then why is his engineer telling him his tyres were bad, when Lando has historically been good at managing his tyres? It begs the question of what exactly Will Joseph was doing giving those messages.

Now we come to this weekend. Oscar qualifies P1 for the main race with Lando in P3 due to some crucial mistakes. Nobody is arguing that Piastri had a better Q3 than Lando. Lando himself said he made some mistakes, and that track seems pretty famous for punishing drivers who make mistakes. Lando also noted pretty much the entire weekend that the car was difficult to drive and that he was just going to have to make the best of it. So when Lando moves up to P2 within the first few corners of lap 1, there should be some excitement, right?? Some happiness that Lando is now P2 and a McLaren 1-2 is within reach, provided the pitwall/strategists play their cards right? That wasn't exactly the emotion conveyed through the NUMEROUS messages from Will Joseph. Instead, we had to listen as Lando was told not to push Oscar too hard; his race is with George, not Oscar; Lando your tyres look bad. Now, I'd like to note here that it was 2 in the morning for me, and my TV volume has to be SUPER LOW because my grandmother sleeps in the room next to me. But some of these were heard LOUD AND CLEAR. It became evident very early on that Lando was NOT free to race Oscar in the same way Oscar was free to race him last weekend.

Fast forward to the last 10-15 laps (tbh I can't fully remember when it was), when Will Joseph finally decides to tell Lando his car has a braking issue. Which, by the way, they withheld from him

A BRAKING ISSUE.

Now I don't know about y'all, but I'm pretty sure literally ANY OTHER DRIVER would be told their car has a braking issue. But for some reason, Lando wasn't told until the last stage of the race. Am I insane, or is that not seriously dangerous to withhold that information? Should a driver not be made aware that their car has an issue with BRAKING, let alone that it's already critical? That, to me, tells me that nobody on that pitwall cared if Lando finished that race. I could list more radio messages from WJ that were incredibly sus and counterproductive (um, the using up pace and pushing into Oscar's dirty air??), but I think I've ranted about that long enough

I cannot stress this enough: I do not hate Piastri. Do I wish he'd react similarly to Lando's wins how Lando reacts to his? Yeah. But I still don't hate on him. It wouldn't be very fair to yell and scream that Lando doesn't deserve the hate he's received (and still receives) and then turn around and hate on Oscar. When I say "hate" I don't mean criticism. I mean saying things like, "oh I hope someone runs him off" or "he should lose it into the first corner". Criticism is fine, but there's a fine line between it and hate, and we should be mindful of that.

Because that's all we want: fairness. I want Will Joseph to stop sounding like he's trying to sabotage his own driver. I don't always like Max and GP, but at least GP's radio messages to Max are encouraging!

I want Andrea Stella to show up to Lando's podiums, too, because he deserves to be praised just as much as Oscar (moreso, imho, because Lando has put in part of the work that's made the MCL competitive again!).

I want Zak Brown to NOT admit in interviews that he's thankful one of his drivers had a car issue that prevented him from challenging for the win!

Because let's be real: if this behavior was directed towards Oscar, there would be an uproar. But because it's Lando, it's acceptable. Nobody (except Lando fans) has any problem with how ZB, AS, and WJ are acting towards Lando, and it's frustrating. I just want Lando to receive the same treatment that Oscar receives. It doesn't have to be an either/or. Both can be treated well!

He's leading the damn drivers championship, for goodness sake. The least you could do is act like it.

Okay, I'm done (I think).

[robinbuckleysfringe]

paper rings.

a joseph quinn social media au

pairings: joseph quinn x keery!reader

warnings: pronouns for reader vary between she & they, I've tried to keep it as gender neutral as possible even tho I do use female faceclaims

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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liked by tomblyth, josephquinn, milliebobbybrown, rachelzegler and others

yninstagram breaking my insta hiatus to tell you all that we're back for another adventure into the Upside Down 🦇🫶🏻💕

View comments

joekeery why'd you have to crop half my face out like that

> yninstagram to make room for nat's face, obvs

> joekeery so you're saying you love her more than me???

> yninstagram of course, duh 🙄. you should know this by now

maya_hawke reunited bby!! 🫶🏻🫶🏻

> yninstagram missed youuuuu 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

madelyncline not you trying to crop joe out the picture 💀

> yninstagram there's already too much joe content on my page, the people need more nat

josephquinn very excited to join the upside down with you all!!

> yninstagram aw joe!! we're so happy to have you join our stranger things family 🫶🏻

madisonbaileybabe the 80s look great on you but I miss our beach vibes 😭🫶🏻

> yninstagram thanks hun!! I miss filming with you 🫶🏻🫶🏻

rudeth not you finally posting

> yninstagram as if you're online more than I am

rachelzegler don't die this season pls

> yninstagram I can't make any promises 😭😭😭

> user Y/N WHAT DOES THIS MEAN????

user obsessed with these bts pics!!!

user ahhhh, so excited for this season!!!

user omg they finally posted!!!

user love of my life. cannot wait to have you back on my screen!!!

☆☆☆

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yninstagram my best friend made a movie 🫶🏻🕊🐍

View comments

rachelzegler it was amazing to have you at the premiere angel 😇💕

> yninstagram love youuuu and everything you do ever 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻💕💕💕

> rachelzegler love youuu bby ❤️

madelyncline you always understand the assignment with the outfit

> madelyncline slay queen 👑😍

> yninstagram thanks bby 🫶🏻💕

joekeery it's criminal that you didn't invite me smh 😤

> yninstagram excuse me?? we're literally going to see it this weekend??

> maya_hawke do our plans not matter to you joe?? :((

josephquinn so this is why you weren't on set this week 👀

> yninstagram oops, did ya miss me? 😂

> josephquinn course not

sadiesink OMG SLAY!! 😍😍😍

user the fit is everything omg!!!

user now y/n is a person who would 100% understand the met gala themes every year

user omg pls tell me you've got a small cameo in the movie!! that would be everything!!

☆☆☆

*yninstagram has posted*

tagged marvel & florencepugh

liked by florencepugh, tomblyth, rudeth, josephquinn and others

yninstagram booked and blessed baby!!! our new series Hawkeye drops on disney+ this december 🏹💜

View comments

yninstagram can't keep a secret to save my life, so if you heard about this beforehand- no you fucking didn't 🫶🏻

*yninstagram pinned this comment*

joekeery proud of you!!!

> yninstagram thank you

> joekeery tho I will say I'm gonna take some credit for your success because I ran all your audition lines with you

> yninstagram 😡🖕🏻

florencepugh dream come true to work with you!! 💜

> yninstagram aww, love you flo!! 💜

tomholland2013 welcome to the MCU y/n x

> yninstagram thanks spoiler man

> tomholland2013 heyy, uncalled for!!

> yninstagram shouldn't have spoiled your movie for me then 😤

> tomholland2013 I'm sorry :((

hichasestokes congrats on being booked and busy. idk how you do it 🐝

> yninstagram i love all these projects, but really I just wanna nap

tomholland2013 wait. THEY GAVE YOU A DOG?? unfair :((

> yninstagram someone sounds jelly lol. sucks to be you I guess 🤷🏻‍♀️

josephquinn not you posting this like you didn't tell me on set 2 days ago. congrats tho, you deserve it :))

> yninstagram thanks joe 🫶🏻

> josephquinn also can you give me my guitar back now? please. I need to practice

> yninstagram you'll have to find me first haha 🤪

> nattyiceofficial they're in their trailer

> charlie.r.heaton just follow the sound of pure chaos and you'll find them 😂

user SHUT. UP

user is this real??

user omg can't believe you're bringing Kate Bishop to life!!! so excited for this!!

☆☆☆

I'm aiming for this little series to have about 6 parts to it, like my tom blyth one. but feel free to comment anything you'd like to read/see in this (or any future) social media aus 🩷

[fairuzfan]

you didn't actually answer my question , Temple Mount is the most ancient and holiest site for Jewish people -- the Dome of the Rock & Al-Aqsa Mosque were built hundreds of years later on behalf of the Umayyad dynasty's conquest. you mentioned in your response a massacre that happened centuries later, which does not relate to the fact that Jews cannot pray at this site (their utmost holiest site before even the existence of Christians or Muslims). how is "temple denial" something that I made up when you can research it right now and see what it is and that it exists? I ask because this seems to be actually a blind spot for many non-Jewish people simply because it doesn't affect them. I'm not intending to be argumentative and I am sorry if my English is bad in getting across

I'm sorry for being argumentative but a lot of the time, whenever Palestinians are asked about temple mount, there's an implication that Palestinians are colonizers and don't deserve to be on the land. Israelis, if they could, would completely ban Muslims from AlAqsa despite it being the third holiest site in Islam.

AlAqsa is probably the most important national symbol of Palestinians, often thought to be the last straw for Palestinian heritage. So much of our culture has been robbed from us, and (primarily muslims) believe that the demolition of AlAqsa, which is, as Mohammed ElKurd puts it, is one of the last places in all of Palestine where being Palestinian is not criminalized would be a fundamental loss we would never recover from, equivalent to losing our Balad.

I bring up the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre because there are no restrictions for extremist settlers legally — they operate as an arm of the state and in some cases are encouraged to committ these acts. The "Apartheid Law" basically enshrined that settlements are a national value for Israel. This means that there is no safe haven for Palestinians legally. They're in constant danger of getting kicked out of their home or getting arrested for existing. I cannot emphasize enough how Palestinian freedom is so restricted with the explicit intent of pushing them out of the land.

Temple denial as a concept (after looking it up) seeks to paint Palestinians in a fundamentally bigoted and violent light. Palestinians are not allowing Jews in AlAqsa not because they hate Jews, but because that opens the way for settlers to become violent around AlAqsa, which a lot of the time is already happening. I suggest reading "Why Do Palestinians Burn Jewish Holy Sites? The Fraught History of Joseph's Tomb" (sorry the link is not linking, but you can look it up on the palestine institute webpage). It discusses the use of history as a colonial tool. Here's an excerpt:

It is one of many shrines across historic Palestine – now split into Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza – that has been re-invented as exclusively Jewish, despite a long history of shared worship among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Samaritans that goes back centuries. And the reason it has been attacked has almost nothing to do with religion, and much to do with how the Israeli military and settlement movements have used religion as a way to expand their control over Palestinian land and holy places.

And a second excerpt describing the political use of religion:

But the claims of biblical archaeologists had a strong role in how the Zionist movement would come to understand and conceive of the landscape.6 As European Jews migrated to Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century, they drew upon biblical archeology's claims. They adopted archeologists' claims that Palestinian holy sites were directly linked to ancient biblical figures. In many cases, they focused on occupying those sites in order to legitimize the colonial endeavor by giving it a sense of deeper history. In many cases, this would mean evicting the Palestinians who actually frequented these holy sites.

And what Palestinians are afraid of:

In 1975, the Israeli military banned Palestinians – that is, the Samaritans, Muslims, and Christians living around the site – from visiting, a ban that has remained in place until this day. [...] Unsurprisingly, the ban has ignited intense anger over the years. This is true particularly given that frequent visits by Jewish settlers to the shrine are accompanied by hundreds of Israeli soldiers, who enter the area and run atop the rooftops of local Palestinians to “secure” the tomb. As a result, Joseph's Tomb has increasingly become associated with the Israeli military and settlement movement in the eyes of Palestinians. Its presence has become an excuse for frequent military incursions that provoke clashes and lead to arrests and many injuries in the neighborhood. Some fear that Israelis will attempt to take over the shrine to build an Israeli settlement around it. This fear is not unfounded, given the fact that Israeli settlers have done exactly that all across the West Bank in places they believe are connected in some way to Jewish biblical history. The notoriously violent Jewish settlements in Hebron, for example, were built there due to the location of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in that southern West Bank town. Following the initial years of settlement, settlers even managed to convince Israeli authorities to physically divide the shrine – which is holy to local Palestinians – and turn the whole area into a heavily-militarized complex. Other shrines have become excuses for the Israeli military to build army bases inside Palestinian towns, like Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem – which is surrounded by twenty-foot high concrete walls on three sides to block Palestinian access. The village of Nabi Samwel near Jerusalem, meanwhile, was demolished in its entirety to provide Jewish settlers access to the tomb at its heart.

I'm not denying the temple mount is there. I'm just saying that history has been manipulated to erase centuries worth of cultural heritage through scholarship and Palestinians are protective of their most important symbol of resistance and life. Even you saying "Islam and Christianity came after Judiasm" is a dogwhistle for me, because a lot of the time extremists say that to completely erase AlAqsa as an important site to Muslims and intending to deny the site as a shared worshipping site that is quite important to Muslims. Just because Islam came after Judiasm, does that mean it's not legitimate as a religion itself? Islamically, Islam is a continuation of Judiasm, so we don't deny judiasm is important to AlQuds. We just are so concerned with losing our national symbol that we're so protective over it.

Now I bring up the massacre at ibrahimi mosque because, like mentioned in the excerpt above, Palestinians are afraid something like that will happen again. There's no protections for Palestinians, and most of the time they're denied from praying in AlAqsa themselves by Israeli authorities. Israeli settlers themselves come in and disrespect AlAqsa, and as I mentioned, extremists plan on demolishing AlAqsa to build a Third Temple. The Massacre at the Mosque paved way to the "Jews Only" streets I mentioned, including the militarization and basically a complete upheaval of normal life for Palestinians. I suggest looking into how terrible the situation in AlKhalil is, and that arised directly from the massacre.

You cannot separate this issue from the colonial implications of the last safe haven in all of Palestine being open to Israelis. Now when Palestine is free, I doubt there would be restrictions. But right now, there are and to pretend Israelis don't pose a threat to Palestinians fundamentally, would be erasure of the colonization of Palestine.

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but even if AlAqsa was built hundreds of years after, it doesn't change the fact that RIGHT NOW Israelis have privilege that Palestinians do not. As soon as that privilege is no longer there, then we can talk about allowing Jews there. But until then, Palestinians are constantly in danger of settler violence and to take away a space (which, Ibrahimi Mosque was one of those sites before Palestinians were massacred) is frankly, an insult and a denial that Palestinians themselves are colonized.

I suggest looking at the links I provided earlier for more in depth analysis. I'm going to reiterate: the only reason it's illegal is because Palestine is colonized and this is our last safe haven that we even aren't completely allowed from entering ourselves.

Most Palestinians are quite heated about this topic. It genuinely is considered one of our last national symbols (so not just religious but also political and cultural), which means that having that taken away (which extremist settlers plan on demolishing it completely, and if they're allowed in, then there are no restrictions on their behavior) would be tantamount to losing our balad, or nation. I've heard Israelis call AlAqsa terrible names over the years and some fully intend on demolishing the site. Even within Israeli politics, it is a genuine goal for some people, including Ben Gvir, so most believe that opening the door for settlers (who are the ones who want the destruction of AlAqsa) would be equivalent to giving it up. You can't ignore that when talking about AlAqsa and the laws surrounding it. The primary reason for this protectiveness is political and cultural.

[ozzgin]

So I was wondering how Lisa Lisa, Caesar, and Joseph react to accidentally awakening Pillar woman reader( who is EXTRA Buff) . And while the three of them think Reader’s a threat, the reality she’s just a gentle giantess. And just pats Joseph head, and doesn’t seem to understand that they’re humans per say, but thinks their younger Pillar men?

Love the idea! After writing the Baki x JoJo crossover my mind has wandered to a Pillar Woman, too. A proper one. I also played around with Midjourney to see if I could get a glimpse at a potential Pillar Woman, and it’s not as muscular as I would’ve wished but it looks interesting nonetheless.

JJBA Headcanons: Pillar Woman! Reader

Featuring Lisa Lisa, Caesar, Joseph, and an awakened Pillar Woman that’s not as threatening as her male counterpart.

Joseph and Caesar are not only irritated by each other’s company, but by the sheer pointlessness of this task that has interrupted their training. Three Pillar Men have emerged from this site and fiddling around unturned stones only serves in delaying their fight. Their whines are quickly silenced by Lisa Lisa’s orders to continue their search. If they have time to moan, they have time to look for clues. The UV lights have long been discarded after the gory incident, so the narrow rays of flashlights only add to their frustration.

A faint sound catches their attention and they simultaneously turn towards a pillar at the end of the chamber. “Is that an unfinished sculpture or something?” Caesar ponders as he gazes as the bizarre block of stone with a vaguely chiseled arm protruding out of it. “I can’t believe this. I should be perfecting my deadly moves and here I am listening to your art commentary instead. Should we have a little séance session so you can ask them directly?” Joseph responds in a mocking tone. Their bickering continues under the scolding glares of the woman supervising them.

Her sigh of annoyance is abruptly drowned by the loud cracks of collapsing rubble. The bulky pillar seems to be disintegrating and they quickly cover their faces, scrambling to avoid the thick clouds of dust rapidly flooding the room. Once the smoke clears out, their faces twist in shock at the sight of yet another Pillar person that has somehow evaded the previous investigations. Although this one seems to be a woman.

The group is taken aback by the colossal size of this specimen. She’s significantly larger than all the Pillar Men they have encountered, with impressive muscular mass. Joseph and Caesar have already positioned themselves in strategic fighting stances and Lisa Lisa bites her lower lip, stressed by the unexpected encounter. They haven’t managed to lay a finger on the original Pillar Men. Would they stand a chance against this behemoth of a creature?

You stretch your limbs and lazily scan the area. How long has it been since you’ve gone to sleep? You don’t recognize a single thing. The humans before you are small are slender. Children? You’re not quite sure. You hear them mumble among themselves and you realize it’s a language foreign to you, although you quickly pick up the vocabulary. You approach Joseph and place your large hand on his head, trying to reassure the young boy of his safety. “Are your parents nearby? Perhaps they could explain my situation better.” You state in a soft voice. Caesar cannot help the laugh that erupts out of him, having to rest on his knees to manage the convulsions. Joseph barks at him, annoyed and embarrassed, and politely removes your hand, explaining he’s a grown man. You can only stare in shock.

Once it is confirmed that you are indeed no threat, Lisa Lisa describes the recent events to you. You listen intently, arms crossed. You don’t particularly care for humans, but you don’t like the cockiness displayed by the awakened Pillar Men, nor their supposed intentions. In your current state, you could use some entertainment. You might as well lend a hand to the amusing individuals that found you.

[adoredvi]

Giving Love A Chance

Pairings: Joseph Desaulnier x Female Reader

Genre: Fluff, light angst.

Warnings: None.

Chapters — Discontinued!

— ദ്ദി（• ˕ •マ.ᐟ —

Prologue —

Being a young woman in a rising in the world of men, where women are only seen as housewives, and a property of their fathers and husbands. Not only were some of the men are sexist, but also abusive towards the women.

So you often get why people often whispers about how you are raised very differently, growing up with intelligence about medicine and political views. Men especially, while studying in abroad, men had criticized you for your choice of work, as offending as it was, those men never really got the chance to graduate on the university and instead just got stuck in a loveless marriage from what you've heard.

While it wasn't surprising, you have expected some of those to happen, their attitude will get them no where, and might even be an idiot and tarnish their own family name.

Although you were successful woman who graduated in a high end university, where most normal people cannot even attend to, your father had forced you to stay at home and be the lady of the house, which means signing papers and responding to letters and such, not that you were complaining, most women wouldn't be able to do some of these so you're extremely grateful.

But that all changed when your father introduced you to a man from a foreign country and said that he arranged both of you in a marriage.

Chapter 1 —

The meeting.

Joseph Desaulniers, a man born in an aristocrat family. He was distant, elegant and enigmatic man, often attached to his camera snapping pictures of what he deemed beautiful. He was an unpredictable to decipher, like a puzzle that you have to connect to get the answer, and maybe that's why you grew interested, too interested if I say so myself.

You and him met when your parents had called you to the living room, telling a maid to fetch you out of the study room, and of course you complied, fixing your attire and appearance first to look absolutely presentable to face your parents.

You entered the room, undeniably tired, but still masked it with nonchalance in case your mother suddenly berates you for it. Your eyes immediately landed on a man with light hair tied in a low ponytail accompanied with a yellow bow and beautiful blue eyes that you could compare to the blue sky, it was simply so beautiful, eye catching even.

"Ah, come, have a seat." Your father finally spoke up with the clear of his throat, gesturing for you to sit down on the empty chair beside the couch, in which you did.

"You might be confused on why we called you here, yes?" Your father inquired again, looking at you with a stone face, not even releasing a single emotion.

You nodded, absolutely confused on why you were even here to begin with, you would rather drown in papers and signing letters than be here and be bored.

"very well, this is Joseph Desaulniers, a man who came from France," he gestured to the man you set eyes on earlier, you bowed you head to him as a sign of respect and mannerism, in which he just nodded at.

"I've decided to make an arrangement between the two of you," your father continued looking at you specifically. Your eyes snapped wide, looking at your own father who told you that you were never getting arranged to someone when you were young.

"and you did not ask if I'm comfortable enough to agree?" You questioned, a frown playing on your face while you looked at your father, hurt, and betrayed.

You mother only shook her head, as always, she was a woman of views, always so composed, not once minding any gossips about her, finally spoke up.

"Dear, you must understand that this arrangement are for the better on our business, we could now ship our items overseas." She reasoned, but you were having none of it. You shook your head with a frown still playing on your face, clearly upset.

"so I'm just a pawn in this? This is unacceptable, mother." You said before standing up and leaving the room with the door closing behind you with a loud thud.

Your mother stood up and excused herself, claiming that she'll talk to you and they should continue their conversation about the matter.

"apologies for our daughter, she is just used with having freedom of things she do." Your father apologized on your behalf, nodding at Joseph, who only nodded, taking no interest in his apology, although his attention was slightly peaked with your personality, he had never seen a woman have so many freedom about her choice in a world of men, he just wants to, capture it and make it his.

➣

Second time writing like this, I don't know if I did great, and I still don't know how to capture Joseph's personality properly😭😭

[animalsalvationassociation]

[ DO NOT REPOST, ALL ART & CONCEPTS WERE MADE BY ME ]

Father Finlee (Full Name Unknown)

Species: Alexander Archipelago Wolf (AKA Black Wolf)

Accent: Russian

Role:

Leader of the Order of the Light

Former Slave of the Призрачный щит Fortress (AKA The Phantom Shield) Lead by the Followers of the Great леший (Leshiy)

Relations:

Mother Zinaida, Mama Izolda, Sister Tatiana, Sister Iness, Sister Jelena (His wives, who have bore him 21 children)

Joseph Hughes (Right Hand, Head of his Guard)

Saídê of the Palace (Enemy, Former Slavemate, Fellow Soldier)

Maren of the Palace (His once desired)

Y.N. Palace (Former Follower . . . Chosen one of the вознесенный)

Fale Tsuyoshi (Enemy, Target)

The Spectator (Selected Ally)

The Hatter Trio (Questionable Alliance)

Personality:

Cult? Cult.

Astute. Finlee is nothing but careful in everything he does. Every move is calculated, precise. Even as a young pup he saw things others didn’t. 

He has quite the temper but he doesn’t show it as often as he used to. He was much more brash and hard headed as a young man, and would easily throw himself in harm's way for a more “brutal” result.

(Man was a BEAST on the battlefield, I'm just saying~)

He prefers to dominate his opponents in the most humiliating way possible, but pure violence is never off the table.

Man is a PERV!!!! P. E. R. V. E. R. T.–PERVERT!!! Do NOT be alone with him!!!! I repeat, you cannot trust this man! – I understand he’s attractive, don’t do itttttttt I begggggg TvT

I don’t care if you’re happily married with two kids and a grandchild, I’m still going to FLIRT with you!!!!

(Wow that wasn’t specific at alllll)

“My dear~” in the most husky voice he can manage (Me: *bangs face into table 20 times*)

Imagine a very flirty Shere Khan (Jungle Book) . . . Yes.

. . . . masochist

How old are youuuuu????

(Answer: Ancient)

It’s called . . .  torture~

(Literally his favorite pastime.)

Somehow this man has weaseled his way into every one of my friend’s hearts. They are all followers now, I literally don’t know what to tell you. Finlee has irl followers . . . I SEE YOU GOOGLING HOW TO FIND THE COMMUNE STOP IT!!!!

Neat freak, everything must be organized.

“Pick it up!” – “Nah” – “PICK. IT. UP.” – “Well since you said it like that . . . No <3”

(The man who tested his patience was promptly murdered at the scene. – @urautismdiagnosis-wistie )

The most Russian man that has ever Russianed . . . but evil.

Torture may be his favorite hobby but revenge? That’s his passion in life.

Screw you America.

Don’t ask also . . .

I am so sorry Fae.

No you don’t get context.

I should feel bad for Y.N.

“Should” being the opportune word here . . . @calamaroo 👀

I did . . . and then I started writing the Light Arch . . . Ya’ll need to apologize.

Don't ask why just do it!

I only feel bad for them before and after this arch . . . never during . . . you guys are meannnnn

Grade A Nuisance upon every sound minded person.

Oh you weren’t insane BEFORE you met him?

WeLl YoU aRe NoW!!!!!!!

For some reason his main wife, Mother Zinaida, is literally the only person he actually treats with equal respect. THIS MAN LOST AN EYE FOR HER!!! (Sure she lost an arm but it’s the thought that counts . . . right?)

TREATS 👏 HER 👏 Right 👏 . . . we are still trying to figure out if the other wives get that same privilege . . . *shrug*

Finlee has been around for a VERY long time. He knows what he’s doing. That being said, if you’re on his list (whichever one that may be) he already knows everything about you, down to your daily routine.

He knows your favorite food, your fav. picnic spot, where you keep your grandmother’s diadem, even your mother’s elementary boy crush.

It’s too late for you.

Finlee has his ways.

I promise, you do NOT trust himmmmm!!!

DON’T FALL FOR HIS HOTNESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

TwT

Listen at your own risk . . .

Welcome home my dear~

[ This is a Octonauts AU, in no way is this canon to the OG storyline. ]

[r--kt]

Okay, but why the "Kannabi" Bridge? I mean, why is this called that? Turns out, this is an amazing and very beautiful metaphor.

Kakashi Gaiden analysis. Kannabi — the bridge between two worlds

I will look at this from the side of Shinto culture (based on the materials that I could find, feel free to correct me if you know more about this) and from the side of Kakashi and Obito's storylines.

Contents | cultural code · significance for the plot structure · the idea itself (this one is really important!)

Cultural code

In Shinto culture, it is not customary to divide the world into human and sacred, especially into divine and demonic principles — everything exists in harmony with each other, in a single system.

Kannabi (神奈備) refers to a region that is a shintai (repositories in which kami reside) itself, or hosts a kami. In fact, Kannabi is a place of connection between the human and the spiritual. Usually these are mountains, rivers, and forests that stand out for their beauty. These are such accumulations of natural energy, so sacred that their presence requires observance of a certain rite. So, if in relatively modern times be present next to the blossoming sakura, picnics in picturesque mountains and the like has normalized in Japanese culture, then in ancient times people did not dare to disturb mountains or groves with their presence. In such places, people performed rituals of worship to the deity, wrestling matches, divination, sacred dances, offerings, etc. The territory of the kami did not completely coincide with the territory of worship to them, people still tried to move away from the center of the sacred place so as not to bother their deity. To mark the border of entry into Kannabi, symbolic gates were installed — most often in the form of torii.

examples of kannabi in real life. Mount Fuji and Nachi Falls. [ as I understand, shintai and kannabi are synonymous concepts, but kannabi is broader in meaning. ]

It's all about how important the term is in a cultural context. A place of divine power that cannot be desecrated. From here, the Kannabi Bridge and the surrounding area can also be considered endowed with divine energy — and here the most interesting thing begins.

Significance for the plot structure

Now about the scenario composition. In general, the Battle of Kannabi, as the event itself in Kakashi and Obito's storylines, according to Joseph Campbell's «hero's journey», is a stage of transition between worlds. That's what the symbolism of the place also works for. This is the moment when the hero assumes responsibility for the beliefs he carries and their consequences, and literally or symbolically crosses the threshold between the safe and familiar world to the dangerous and unknown one, embarks on the path of reflection and prepares to meet the unconscious.

Thus, briefly speaking, Kakashi finds the strength to resolve his internal conflict in favor of his father's attitudes about the value of each Shinobi, and Obito sacrifices himself, protecting his loved ones and defending his ideals. Then their paths got separate so that each one could face with the unknown by himself.

In the context of the monomyph model, this is how the beginning of the initiation stage is demonstrated (i.e., the transition from one state to another, which is accompanied by some kind of ritual). Since Kannabi in culture is the boundary between the human and the divine, it can be concluded that this very transition is shown almost literally, thanks to the sharingan awakening and the broken tanto. This is the first turning point in history, structurally coinciding with the end of the first act.

The idea itself

And what do we see in general? In the battle of Kannabi, the religious Shinto subtext is vividly read. For the battle in a sacred place, the moral positive change of the hero (Kakashi) or his original courage (Obito) and a certain sacrifice (Kakashi's eye), the deities give a reward: the power of sharingan, which helps them save Rin, which is shared between Obito and Kakashi and in the future generally serves as a direct demonstration of the spiritual connection between them. At the same time, for the desecration of a sacred place (the goal of the mission was to blow up a bridge), heroes are punished: from this point of view, Obito's death is a certain sacrifice for the damage inflicted on the deity.

There is also information that the name of the bridge - Kannabi-kyo (神無毘橋) - can also be interpreted as «A bridge where the gods won't help». idk if it's true, but sounds cool.

Moreover, the very name of Obito's mangekyo — Kamui (神威) — literally translates as «The Power of Gods». Perhaps it is based on the mentioned concept of the place where Kakashi and Obito received the power of sharingan. And maybe that's why they call the technique the same way: because they treat it rather with such a religious meaning.

and thanks for reading to the end ♡

[caffeinated-frog]

Just finished it. Holy fuck.

IT GOT HERE!! I CANNOT WAIT TO READ!

[dioslesbianwife]

Hello hello may I request the p3 characters (kakyoin, jotaro, joseph, polnareff, and avdol) with a reader that has a stand that only protects them? It doesn't attack but the defense is perfect basically. But the reader self-doubts their ability because the stand can't fight so they think that it can't help

(Platonic pls!! Like familial or smt?)

hi hi totally- thankyou for requesting!! i hope you enjoy <3

Your stand is incredible, nothing can harm you while it’s active. Bullets? Useless. Stand attacks? Blocked. Even time-stopping abilities or reality warping? Your stand nullifies anything before it can touch you.

The only problem? It can’t attack. And because of that, you feel like you’re not helping the team.

Kakyoin

He’s the first to notice how much you doubt yourself. You don’t say it outright, but he can tell from the way you hesitate in fights, the way you stand back when the others rush in.

He sits down with you one night and really talks to you about it.

“You know, just because your stand doesn’t attack doesn’t mean it’s not powerful.”

“But I can’t help anyone. I just stand there while you guys fight.”

“That’s not true. Do you know how many times you’ve saved us without even realizing it?”

He explains that your stand is a game-changer in battle- there’s nothing more valuable than a teammate who can’t be hurt.

Whenever you feel down, he reminds you of all the times your ability kept the group alive.

Jotaro

He doesn’t talk about it much, but you can tell he respects your stand a lot.

Any time you say something self-deprecating, he just gives you a look.

“You think your stand’s useless? That’s dumb.”

He might not say a lot, but he shows that he trusts you. If you’re standing in front of someone, he knows they’re safe. If he needs to protect someone, he moves them behind you.

And if anyone dares to insult your stand, he just cracks his knuckles. “Say that again.”

The first time you really take a hit for him, and it completely nullifies the damage, he just tips his hat. “Not bad.” And from him? That’s basically a speech.

Joseph

“WHAT?! YOU THINK YOUR STAND IS USELESS?! ARE YOU OUTTA YOUR MIND?!”

Joseph immediately starts listing all the ways your ability is insanely valuable.

“You could walk through gunfire and not get a scratch!”

“You can shield people while we fight!”

“DIO would kill to have a defense like yours!”

If you still doubt yourself, he forces you into a test- having the group throw everything they’ve got at you while your stand is active. When you come out without a single injury, he just gestures wildly.

“SEE?! You’re a walking, talking cheat code!”

If you’re ever feeling down, he just slings an arm around your shoulder and reminds you that even he had moments where he doubted his abilities- but a good team needs all kinds of strengths.

Polnareff

He’s one of the first to openly praise you in fights.

“Nice one, (Y/N)! You’re making this way easier on us!”

Any time you take a hit for someone else, he immediately hypes you up.

“I don’t care if your stand doesn’t attack, that was badass!”

When you confess that you feel useless, he’s genuinely upset on your behalf.

“Why would you ever think that? You’re the reason half of us are still alive!”

He insists on making sure you realize your value. You’re training with the team whether you like it or not, because he wants you to see firsthand how essential you are.

And if that doesn’t work? You’re getting a big brother-level pep talk, complete with dramatic gestures and a lot of heartfelt words.

Avdol

He’s one of the most understanding. He listens carefully when you express your self-doubt, nodding before responding.

“I see. But tell me- who else among us can do what you do?”

He reminds you that every stand has its purpose. And yours? Is to endure.

“A warrior who cannot be felled is far more terrifying than one who can fight.”

He trusts you completely. If he ever needs to make a risky move, he’ll look at you first.

“Stand by me, and I will have no fear.”

When he sees you start to believe in your own worth, he nods with quiet pride.