#IDK. Man. Sometimes it feels like those posts are made in bad faith. Especially when there's no CTA. No encouragement to actually read the

[seaslimes]

Every time I see those posts about the AO3 F/F to M/M ratios, all I can think is:

Okay, excellent point. But what if you just wrote it?

Like. Yeah, man, I'm sure it's discouraging to see raw numbers talking about how your ship doesn't get the rep it needs. But when you get down to numbers... sometimes the difference within fandoms is less than 500 more M/M works than F/F works. That's actionable. You can fill that gap with a fraction of the people liking / reblogging posts about F/F erasure.

Sometimes the gap is bigger. It's like, 1000 more works are tagged M/M. 2000, or more. Yeah, that's a big gap, but you could make it one less. If every person liking or reblogging a post about the disparity of ship fics on AO3, that number would shrink drastically, or outright disappear.

IDK. I write F/F. I write M/M too, as well as M/F. But I write F/F, and when I see that sorta post. It doesn't feel like a call to action. It feels like somehow, in some way, I'm not doing enough when I post up fanfiction for free about stuff I like.

It makes me feel like I should stop sharing my F/F work, that it doesn't matter, that people don't recognize the effort or love or time that goes into it. Even beyond that, I feel discouraged about the work I have put out, because thousands of words written all about an F/F pairing are only seen in that raw stat format.

"There's X M/M fics and Y F/F fics." Yes, I know, and that has to suck. But look at how many people wrote F/F fics! Have you commented on each of those F/F fics? Have you given kudos? Did you feel inspired to write or draw because of those F/F fics? That's what fandom is for. That's why we create. If that's not inspiring you to "close the gap" on those stats, I don't know what to say.

[common-blackbird]

it’s time... for a dragon age 2 playthrough post. scroll on!

The things i loved most:

1) the frame of the game - Cassandra interrogating Varric.

What a great way to get hook the player. Like, the opening of guards dragging this poor dwarf with cuts of the title, and then Cassandra demanding answers... Whoaaa! I have no idea if that’s usually done in games or not, but it’s definitely such an amazing intro with characters introducing themselves as well as the story so perfectly, it captivates instantly. The tutorial has a charm to it bc varric is messing around. Which serves to show more of his character. Cassandra’s personality was pretty much blank here but her presence is so powerful. Something happened, something huge and they know and i was about to find out. I can’t describe how excited that intro made me feel. Each time the scene cut to the interrogation scenes, my eyes were glued more than ever. Just GREAT.

Also it makes for a very convenient scapegoat for every plothole ever with the argument “it’s just his version of the story”.

2) The story.

It’s tragic. It’s amazing! The further you play, the more you can see that no matter what you do, everything leads to a disaster. Hawke doesn’t want to take sides, tries to mediate, does not want to get involved, but just can’t stop it. For every thing gained, Hawke loses two more. Your friends come with packages that get you involved in terrible stuff. Your good intentions result in disasters. The whole game you spent time climbing  the social ladder not only to reach the top hauntingly alone after losing all of your family, but also losing even that empty title and watching as the city you started to find your place in fall apart in blood. UGH! GAH! FEELS!

3) Kirkwall.

“ But, I beg you my dear readers, never forget that, no matter the subject of any story that might ever be explored between the cliffs of Kirkwall, She will find a way to steal the thunder of the protagonist. Or become the antagonist. Kirkwall is never a mere background. We could even understand it so: the challenge for you dear readers is to prevail against the smokescreens and observe to what extent our characters are players or played by the merciless black souled stone giant. Enjoy playing the dare of the ages between the lines of these humble memoirs. “

Memoirs from the Downfall - Act I. Mirage    by Pfefferminze on ao3 (fic rec!)

This paragraph summs up what Kirkwall is better than I ever could. This shrouded mystery that surrounds Kirkwall keeps you on toes. From the first intro when Varric describes it (paraphrasing from memory) “Kirkwall. The city of chains. It is a free city - keeping in mind i use the  the word loosely”. You already start seeing how dark Kirkwall gets. The name, that derives from its black walls (interestingly, the walls in the game aren’t black...), the history of slavery etched into every corner of that city  and its surroundings - the names (The Gallows, the Bone Pit, the Wounded Coast, the pub The Hanged Man), the scenery (sculptures of slaves, the sunken ships by the Wounded Coast, slums and underground of the Lowtown and the Darktown).

I was really digging the History of Kirkwall and it loved it. Kirkwall has a history of violence, from the times of slavery of the Tevinter Imperium, to Qunari conquests and liberation from Orlais. Many revolts and uprising. And though free now, it’s suggested that, seeing that the Templars hold the most influence, Kirkwall is in the hands of the Chantry.

It’s full of cultures mixing together. I love how not one of your companions is a native to Kirkwall, and it feels like a crossroads to every character’s life. a very tragic crossroads in their life, seeing there’s nothing ever good waiting for you in Kirkwall.

Also there’s these codex entries you look for about the Enigma of Kirkwall. It was when i started digging that up that i fell in love with the city and all. Combined with the History of Kirkwall and every codex entry for every place in and out of Kirkwall, I was pulling my hair out reading about the Enigma. I..i’m still not quite sure what happened. Did the magisters use blood of thousands upon thousands slaves to unbound a forgotten one? if so, is that corypheus? And around what time did that happen?? I get that part (or all?) of Kirkwall’s mysterious violent agency is owed to corypheus slumbering relatively close to the city, but is that all? or is there something more? In either case, the Band of Tree are my heroes.

4) The characters.

I’ll talk more about them later, but in general, i just love how they oppose each other, how complex they are, and there is just not pleasing everyone. They feel genuine. They are all deeply flawed. They all have a solid background that makes their beliefs and actions convincing. The friendship/rivalry points are shaky though, and sometimes really don’t fit the character, but i guess there must be someone hating/loving your bad choices for the sake of the game regardless of characterisation. But all in all, i really appreciated each and every character, and loved how their viewpoints challenged me.

First i want a disclaimer: i love each and every character in the game, whatever i say against them doesn’t diminish my liking of them. My issues really aren’t significant. Also, i might and probably will say smth wrong bc i’ve only played it once. I’m a baby.

let’s start with Family:

Mama Hawke:

i really loved mama hawke. after reading her codex entry and an excerpt of some book on this site, i really feel for her. I mean, imagine going back to your home city where you only remember being respected and wealthy only to find out everything you remember is gone, you are forced to live in poverty, your kids are doing dangerous jobs and you can’t stop them bc you do need that money, you write letters trying to get the old connections but keep failing (at least it was implied?), it’s really been hard for her. I get why she was so obsessed with her legacy. She wanted her childhood home back. She can’t feel like Kirkwall is her home until she is home.

Also loved her antagonism towards Hawke. It seems she can no longer treat him like a child, so she criticises him instead. and honestly, hawke is doing some crazy things so he defintiely deserves some criticism. And stopping Hawke from taking carver with him is just logical to me, idk. since she knows she can’t stop Hawke from going, she will at least attempt to prevent the last kid from going into mortal danger. I’d do the same. AND AFTER HAVING CARVER DYING IN DEEP ROADS I AGREE WITH HER

All in all, i don’t think she’s a perfect mom, but there is no perfect mom, and Leandra does care a lot for her kids. The All that remains killed me too :’(

Bethany

RIP :(

Her codex is not long, but i guess she wasn’t happy with her magic :(

CARVER

My favouritest bestest bro in the game. A secondary character with an inferiority complex towards his sibling, with no sense of humour, blaming everyone else for his inability to get a life? I see a lot of myself in him.  He is sooo bitter, but doesn’t even realise (or at least doesn’t admit) that he’s his biggest obstacle. He feels like it’s Hawke’s fault for Carver not getting his place in the sun, but honestly, it’s Carver’s devotion to Hawke that keeps him from getting a life. He’s just tied with that responsibility and can’t break from it unless forced to.

His interactions with other characters are so funny. Either he’s bitter or he’s awkward, i die every time ;;__;;

Anyways, he became a templar in my game and i thought it fits better thematically (throughout the game the grey wardens felt more like a fanservice material since they really aren’t connected to the story), but after reading that meta about carver and seeing the striking difference between warden!carver and templar!carver i wanna reload and redo everything ;;__;;

i mean... carver isn’t exactly a templar material. The codex entry for templars says that the wanted characteristics of templars are strong faith and utmost  obedience, none of which carver really has... . But that moment when he stands up against meredith was *chefs kiss* worth it. I’m just wondering what happens after, is he still a templar? is he with hawke? is he in Kirkwall or if not, where did he go?? so many questions ;A;

Uncle Gamlen

I feel bad for him. Mostly he’s mean but i like to think it’s bc he’s so ashamed that his sister sees what he’s become. And he’s bitter about his own life. I was so happy when i realised he has a personal mission ;__; I feel bad that he didn’t come to live in the hawke estate tho, especially since Hawke is also alone there :(

COMPANIONS!

Varric

There are no words that can properly convey the amount of love for this guy. He is simply flawless. He’s a charming godfather of the dwarven mafia. I wanna have a charming godfather of the dwarven mafia in my life... He already becomes interesting with the intro, and i gotta say, out of all ~storyteller~ types of characters, he is the best. he puts a disclaimer at the beginning with that game tutorial, and during the whole interrogation he’s like “well, how do you know i’m not lying? i could be.” Also, his voice is the second best voice in the game. 

As for his personal missions, oh wow, that thing with his big bro really hurt. I also gave him the red lyrium... was that a mistake? will i regret it? ;__; I know the true friend would prevent him, but i also trust that varric knows how to handle dangerous stuff...

On a side note, since i’ve read the comics (no self control whatsoever), i loved the beginning of the Until We Sleep, where varric mentions it’s easier to imagine all the people he had to kill were evil than to face the fact that those were normal people just doing their job or trying to survive. Man, it hurts TAT

*garret hawke’s voice when he looks a certain way at the family crest in the hawke estate* ISABELA!

Ok ok, so, i love Carver bc i relate,  i love Varric because he’s simply perfect. But I love Isabela because she’s the most intriguing.

She just crashed in Kirkwall and really didn’t sign up for all the trouble she got. She never likes to have deep conversations, she is always downgrading herself and you just wonder, what is it that happened in her life, and you know her past mistakes haunt her, and she’s doing her best to move on. Her arc was i think my favourite. I think the comic Those Who Speak really adds a lot to her arc in DA2 and makes some of her choices more understandable. Her whole story is about her internal conflict of whether to survive or do the right thing. Her story about freeing the slaves got her ship wrecked is great and all for making her be a pirate with a golden heart, but that story about her drowning all the slaves few years previous make this freeing of slaves a big character moment for her. She finally did the right thing. And she got for it was more trouble, because she’s a pirate which means she can’t afford to just do the right thing. And throughout the game, that same story is going back and forth. She runs off with the Relic bc she’s done the right thing before and it got her nowhere, so now she decided to put her own survival as a priority, but comes back bc she’s too kind to just leave Hawke standing like that. And again, with the slaver papers, it’s the same reasoning: it’s her or the higher cause. She needs that ship. She chooses herself. It’s her biggest flaw. But hey, between pros and antis in your party, it was really refreshing to have someone who, along with varric, just gives you a break with moral high-grounds.

I only wish we actually got to see her more as a captain in power in the game or that she showed me that amazing hat she saw in lowtown. It’s cool that it’s implied that her crew doesn’t like her and she also lost most of them during the crash while the others probably left her after.

I love it when she says she goes sometimes to the docks just to watch the ships. That there is no feeling like sailing. I just want a spin-off with captain isabela’s terrible adventures (´A`)

Also, isabela’s VA is my fave, she really did an amazing job. she voices so smoothly, i wouldn’t know if i was playing a game or watching a movie. And has such a pretty way of talking...

Aveline

I’m really neutral towards Aveline. I like her personality and i like that she’s found herself a purpose and advanced in the guards, and she’s always looking out for everybody. I just wish her personal missions went in the vein of the one in act 1... i feel it would have been more interesting to see her having trouble in her position and that you can’t just waltz into Kirkwall and take command. It’s implied she’s being pressured, so i guess she’s just dealing with it herself, but i just... eh. She’s ok.

Merrill

Merrill actually has one of the if not the most tragic story-line that really challenges you both morally and emotionally. 

Her cheerful and cute personality is dampened by her constant dark leitmotif of willingly practicing blood magic. And i think her story really showed well the indirect consequences of it.

Not in one instance was Merrill’s practice of blood magic an active culprit for all tragedy that surrounds her. First, it seems that blood magic is practiced in the clan, seeing there is no freeing Flemeth without it, but i’m guessing it’s seldom practiced and with great caution. So Merrill wasn’t in any danger of being prosecuted for her blood magic. It’s actually her wish to study it further with the help of the demon that makes her an outcast. That and the magic mirror that apparently is forgotten for a reason. Also, it’s made quite clear that Merrill would be welcomed back no questions asked if she at any point decided to ditch the demon and live without the study of magic mirror. She, on the other side, is driven by the higher cause, the idea that figuring out the forgotten purpose of some evil mirror might help her clan, and is willing to be an outcast if it means reaching her goal and helping her clan. Fast foward to act 3, the clan is still there when they should have moved away, and it’s only when you face the demon possessed Keeper, you realise why. She knew Merrill would sooner or later bargain with the demon again. And she sacrificed herself, trapping the demon within her, as to prevent it. And i think that is why the clan stayed so long there. She waited for Merrill because she wanted Merrill to kill her, and hopefully with her the demon. It didn’t go as planned, obviously, but i really think she had good intentions. When Merrill does manage to kill the Keeper she’s forced to face the clan and i chose the wrong option of telling the truth which resulted in a massacre. Merrill gets back and regrets everything. She, however resolves to help the alienage.

The thing is, there is no one to blame Everyone had the best intentions. Everyone is working for the safety of the clan. it’s a story of sacrifice and when sacrifice feels like the wrong choice (whether it truly is or isn’t depends on your worldview) and it’s really done well.

But here are my issues with Merrill. I love her as a character, but i don’t agree with her decisions.  It’s a personal issue. Merrill is giving up everything as to help her clan by learning history of the evil mirror. And while this is a game where old things are important and significant, her mission is always explained as this duty of preserving history. And while i agree that preserving history is very important, there is a limit to it. you should never put history before the present. If your research endangers the present, you give up on that line. The other is that you need to make peace with the fact that many, many things are forgotten and will be forgotten. It’s sad, but you gotta make peace with the fact that some things are just gone.

And Merrill, who is a magic historian, fails to see that. So that kinda irks my historian moral codex. And in the end, as far as i know, Merrill doesn’t succeed in reviving the evil mirror and dedicates herself to help the alienage. It was a terrible way to learn that some things aren’t worth it.

The other, less personal issue, is that none of this had to happen. I mean, the keeper obviously didn’t think Merrill was experienced enough to actually deal with demons and therefore distrusted her and warned the clan about it. So, if Merrill was a little bit more patient she could have just studied normally under the keeper, and when she herself becomes the keeper, she could have fraternize with that demon however she wanted without much complications. So yeah... i guess youth is made of idealism.

But as i said, minor issues. Her story is really, really great.

Fenris

Fenris and Anders are my “i love you but i am soo annoyed by you but i still love you” characters. Half of the time they’re just there to make you feel guilty for being a neutral party. Which sometimes has me rolling my eyes. If Fenris and Anders actually got along with each other, slavery and mage oppression would have ended in 2 days. Which makes it all the more frustrating that they do not.

Fenris.. his voice. What a nice voice colour. So elegant, but kinda rough, sometimes he talks like he’s 80 years old, sometimes like he’s a teenager. I love it.

As for the rest, i mean, i don’t agree with his methods, but very often, the guy’s got a point. I get his experience with mages colours his view on them, so while i symphatise, it’s really hard to have him on my “free mages” missions when he’s my best tank and i want him to be on friendly terms with Hawke so this makes things... difficult. That aside, it’s interesting that fenris doesn’t see mages as evil per se, but rather victims who, in his experience, will always, always going to succumb to a demon. It’s an inevitable reality to him. And this makes me wonder if he ultimately, despite being his friend or lover, is just waiting for the day he will be forced to kill Hawke too :(

As for his missions, they were ok, it led up to culmination and i didn’t let him kill his sister bc Hawke has just lost his mom, don’t do smth you’ll regret ;__;

also, somewhere around the end of act 2 i decided to romance fenris bc i love to suffer, so i worked the whole act 3 trying to get more aproval points and also wondering why are there no romance options when i talk to him... turns out that one night stand with isabela romanced her and canceled fenris. But i never even finished the romance with her so i’m just ??? about it all.

I wish it was more explained about the tattoos fenris has? I just thought the tattoos would play a big role somewhere in the game and it just never happened. There was a banter with Merrill about how his tattoos are similar to valaslin, so i thought, hmm, interesting, maybe the two are connected. But nah they just glow in the dark and make you pass through walls. Whatevs.

also dude just goes and kills without a second thought, i’m just “mate, you gotta calm down”. But that’s his thing. He’s constantly bitter and is very bad at anger management. I can’t blame him, considering he lacks around 10- 20 years of experience due to amnesia.

He’s the only one who left me when Hawke sided with mages, and i was like, “ok i getcha, it’s been nice knowing you”, but then when i asked him to join me 5 minutes later he just went “ok changed my mind” which was so funny, like, where did all that integrity dissappear??? It would have been more impactful if the dialogue went in the line of “i want to stand by my principals but you’re a living breathing proof that not all mages are weak to succumb to demons so i’ll join you in the end” (and then side-eye “i told you so” when orsino turns into a demon)

And i wanna read the fenris comic now bc my question for every character here is what is their fate after kirkwall. I only know that isabela & varric are working for alistair and merrill wants to help the alienage. Aveline is i guess either dismissed from her job or got a pass after cullen took  the command.  But Carver?? Fenris?? Anders?? They never talked about long term plans...

Anders

ooh boy, here we go. there are many questions i have for him and am generally just hmmmm. First, as for his pro-mage rights - it’s like opposite fenris so i just have the same feelings: you mean well, i don’t agree with your methods, your experiences define your worldview so i let some things slide, but other things i will not agree with. Though, question: in how many circles has Anders been? He knows the kirkwall circle, he knows the fereldan circle. Seeing he has excaped 7 times, did they send him to a different circle each time or was the fereldan the last one? or the first one? Or maybe it was his boyfriend they transferred? did i miss something?

I’ll just whisper: awakening!Anders >>> da2!Anders. I just miss the old anders. Which says a lot bc during the awakening i was just “shut up anders”. I miss his bad jokes, his terrible attempts at flirting, his enjoyment of freedom, nagging all the time, and generally being more moderate in pro-mage rights. Like, in awakening, because it was not the only thing he talked about, it felt more personal and intense. Here mage-rights are the only thing he ever talks about + justice. I mean, please correct me if i’m wrong, this was just general impression. But to defend da2!Anders here, it makes sense that merging with mixed both of their personality, and i like that they did that. It’s also very sad.

The thing is, when i’m thinking about anders, i love his story and character. Just as it’s terrible that Fenris, having no memory from before being Fenris, Anders can never go back to being just Anders. And this, people, is why you don’t fraternize with spirits. He’s obviously afraid of how justice is affecting him and there are some bare traces of his old personality and i guess he wouldn’t be as radical if he didn’t have justice personality that can’t stand the injustice. And in combination with anders quite selfish personality (form awakening, and i say that lovingly), it makes him do things that justice wouldn’t condone. Anders is literally a walking bomb.

Again, same problem as with fenris, i really thought that the justice glow would have a incredibly significant culmination, and it didn’t, it was just to show that anders and justice are very bitter. Eh, ok.

Also, i let anders join after he blew up the chantry, bc he started it, so might as well follow it through.

Some minor characters that i remember

Senechal Bran for the next Viscount! He hated hawke so much but still put up with him.

Feynriel is the coolest mage in Kirkwall. I think his missions were my favourite. Dude goes from “oh no i’m a mage” to “i will just dreamwalk to tevinter and learn control the reality” to “i dream-killed bad people from thousands of miles away”. Does he appear in the next game? I want him on my side. He’s so cool.

I think the Maker is sending Cullen signs to quit being a templar. First job: evil mages that tortured you. Instead of “this job will kill you” h took it as  a “never trusting mages again, got it”. Second job: your boss is evil possessed paranoid maniac. Man, talk about bad luck.

What is the story of the Lady Elegant?

Flemeth had that big great talk at the beginning of the game and i thought by the end of the game i’d realise what it meant, but nope, still no clue.

Ok so I defeated Corypheus, but there was this looong shot of Larius walking away. Corypheus possessed larius, didn’t he? He’s out there. In a madman’s body. I know he appears in inquisition.

Many thoughts

I gotta say, in Kirkwall, at least, it didn’t feel like much of a challenge to pick a side. Like, there was no mage who said “hey i actually really like it here in the circle, the templars aren’t so bad”, and having templars actually smuggling mages from the circle says a lot to say the least. Every time a mage talks to you, unless you go with “oh they’re 100% lying”, their stories invoke sympathy and of course you want to help them. And then in 99% cases they turn to blood magic bc there was no other way. Except that dude who always hanged out with the wrong people, he only did blood magic to save Carver. But yeah, that turning to blood magic was like having Fenris side-eye me with an unspoken “i told you so” bc every mage, whether in desperation or hunger for power, will turn sooner or later into a demon. Regardless, blood magic was always in the act of desperation and self-defense. The only times where magic was actually evil was the slavers and the serial killer, who is a madman.

When i was reading the Enigma of Kirkwall, there was a part that talks of a blood-mage conspiracy and i was all, oh shit, there is a reason why templars are mean to mages! maybe the conspirators are framing innocent mages on blood magic crimes that they actually commit, maybe Meredith is actually on trail of the conspirators, maybe there is a reason for animosity on both sides. After all, Kirkwall was known for having a bigger number of apostates, a bigger number of blood magic cases and far more ruthless templars. It added up.Thinking back now, i never even got any specific reason why meredith was so intensely anti-mage, other than going mad.

But yeah, no conspirators. Just sad mages and mean templars, and good templars that get screwed by desperate and mean mages.

While in Kirkwall it’s easy to be a pro-mage, i was thinking a lot about mage-rights in general so let me indulge myself: there are circles, but the mages aren’t oppressed. Rather, the circles would be educational centres and society in every larger city where one learns how to properly handle magic bc magic is dangerous. You can leave when you pass the final exam and also come back anytime to hang out with mages who decide to live there since the institution would support mages.

Also, when one gets possessed, i’d invest more into “walk into their head and free them of demons” specialists. It’d be cool if you could have a dreamer who does that bc no lyrium spent. Honestly, why don’t they ever do that? How did the keeper do that rite for Feynriel? Was it blood magic?

I guess, you’d still have to answer for your crimes, tho no death punishment and degradation allowed. Blood magic wouldn’t be punishable by death, but rather have specialists who study it, but practice with extreme caution and use of another person’s blood is strictly prohibited.

Templars would still exist but completely reformed. No more “mages are all potential disasters”, but i’d rather make it that mages can too be templars, since they both have abilities that prevents the others from casting magic. This way the control system would be much like the dalish: if the keeper(mage) is possessed, the clan (which means the non-mages and the first(mage)) need to kill them. You could argue that you don’t need templars as non-mages, since mages can do it too, but seeing that in general people fear magic and feel inferior to it (since there’s a collective memory of the great tevinter imperium), having non-magic specialists would make them feel like on equal ground. The extra-reformed templars would be under Circle, not under direct command of the chantry, and circle, depending of whether chantry is reformed, might or might not be under chantry.

(a side note, i was thinking about templars recently and i can’t recall an instance where it says who had the clever idea to chew lyrium first? i just wanna know)

I know that DA2 wasn’t about grey wardens and therefore not about darkspawn, but seeing as in legacy we get corypheus being... an evil version of the Architect(??), i was only wondering do we get more answers about the darkspawn? is there hope for them? is the Architect still alive?

And oh, to turn to the Anders question:

Is he a terrorist, or was that just activism? I mean, i don’t see why those two can’t go together. blasting a building with a symbolic significance killing and harming many innocent people to get a message of your radical activism across belongs into a schoolbook of terrorism. Does he have a good cause? He sure believes so, and i, too, agree that mages should not be oppressed for just being mages. But does that mean this is the right way to do it? Personally, i do not condone any act of violence in service of a political or religious cause. I know it’s sometimes inevitable, but i like to believe there are more diplomatic ways, or at least not including an attack on civilians.

That aside, the moment where anders goes in front and just announces that the church was gonna blow up in a minute was the best anders moment for me. Until that point i more or less just viewed his activism as a hobby since he just did it in his free time, but now he put his money where his mouth is and freaking went all out. Cool character moment. And incredibly heartwrenching. He was aware of how many innocents he killed, but just didn’t see other way to get the point across.

I still don’t agree with his idea of blowing up the church tho. Maybe if he told Hawke, they could have done something to empty the church previously and further people away from it and then blow it up?

But still, blowing up religious buildings isn’t the answer. If i was the radical mage activist, i would have gone for the open assassination. Seeing it worked in WW1, i don’t see why it couldn’t start a fantasy war.

Some random things i liked:

uniportant but lovable interractions in the house: it starts innocently with gamlen’s house, to see how you’re doing, and becomes really fun during act 2 when you see your friends have been here and left you things. In act 3, however, it feels melancholic. no more family to come back to, just ghosts of friends that have visited, Bodahn and Sandal being there for you, Orana still not getting some sunlight and your dog at the fireplace. The Hawke Family Suite is playing, and you feel older than you are, lonlier than you should be. just... ouch. I hope Bodahn adopted Orana and took her out of Kirkwall :(

t i named the dog “Maker” which is very funny to me bc every time i summon the dog i just imagine Hawke yelling “Maker help us”. Carver hates the name bc he needs to chase the dog often in the streets. Mama Hawke never ever calls the dog Maker, but she never has to call the dog anything: he’s super obedient towards her.

Fighting wasn’t as hard as in origins, i like that.

The haunted house mission was so cool.

When random people greet aveline in Hightown.

And that’s i think about it. There are probably plenty more things i loved, but i think this is already enough. if somebody told me i’d be playing so much this year, i’d laugh, but I already want to play the next game ;;___;;

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #323

“dehumanized upon a shell  /  we came to bleed it dry  /  obsessed with divine wealth  /  divide and multiply”

Have you ever drawn on someone’s face while they were sleeping? No. Would you scuba dive in shark infested waters if you had the chance? No thanks. What is your favorite slow song? There are so many, but one of the slowest and most beloved of mine is "Obstacles" by Syd Matters. It gives me goosebumps without fail. It's one song I know I want at my hypothetical wedding. If there were aliens on earth, would you be afraid? I mean, yeah. I'd want to know their intentions. If your best friend died, would you be able to speak at their funeral? It'd be extremely difficult, but if I had any say in it, I absolutely would. Do you enjoy going through old pictures? Sometimes. Other times it causes too much pain, depending on the pictures, of course. Do you tend to have a lot of drama in your life? Definitely not. My life is painfully uneventful. When’s the last time someone was disappointed in you? I don't know. Do you have a house phone? No. Which fast food place do you eat at the most? McDonald's. Have you ever met someone on the Internet in real life? Yep. What’s your favorite color to wear? Black. Do you like being in pictures? No. Do you travel a lot? Essentially never, even though I'd love to. Do you play any sports? No. Do you like pickles? Yesssss. How many times have you been kicked out of a store? Never. Is there things you’ve told someone that you’ve NEVER told anyone else? Probably. When was the last time you had alcohol? My birthday dinner last month. Are you one to often make typos? No, except when I'm texting. I have autocorrect on for a reason. On a hot day, would you rather prefer ice cream or a popsicle? Ice cream. Have you ever wanted to get drunk and get your mind off everything? Yes, but I just didn't want to drink anymore at one point. I'm far from a lightweight, apparently. Have you played cards recently? No. Is there a band you like with amazing music but a bad vocalist? Mother Mother immediately comes to mind, but not the main singer; he's great. The woman who occasionally joins in is fucking horrendous. Like, it hurts my ears. Is there a certain song you like to headbang to? I don't and never have really headbanged, surprisingly. It's a sure-fire way to make me dizzy. Anything you might be giving up on soon? I hope not... Sometimes I feel like it's time with photography, but I just. Can't. Have you ever captured a moth? I've raised a caterpillar into one before, then of course let it go. Is there a band/artist who has strange lyrics but you love them anyway? Otep, noteably. When was the last time you wore earrings? It's been a long time. How many pairs of heels do you own? I don't think I have any. When was the last time you changed your picture on Facebook? Uhhhh it's been at the very least a month, but I know more. Would you consider yourself to be physically strong? Absolutely not, especially my legs. I struggle to fucking walk because they're so weak. Have you ever painted a piece of furniture? Yes, actually. I helped Jason paint his shelf black. Do you have a really fat cat? No, we never have. We've always been good about keeping our pets at a healthy weight. Do your initials spell a word? No. When was the last time you went to a playground? A year or so ago when I was taking pictures of someone's son, as well as just general family photos. That same family just had another baby the other day. Have you ever made a business card for yourself? No. Do you have a favorite curse word in a different language? No. Are there any recipes you have memorized? No. Do you know your multipication times tables? Lol not most of them, no... It's been way too long. Do you have a favorite font on the computer? Of the basic ones, probably Garamond. Are you good at creating logos? *shrugs* I've only ever really made my photography watermarks, and I only JUST made one I like pretty well. How about catch phrases? I don't make those. Have you ever been severely burned? Not severely, no. Did you ever dream that you had a baby? I've actually had numerous dreams where I was pregnant, but I don't THINK I've had one where the baby was born yet. Do you or anyone you know have a rabbit? No. What was the weirdest thing you ever saw cross the road? Hm, nothing too weird, I think. Last song you got stuck in your head? "ALTÆR" by 3TEETH. Last song you listened to? ^ Favorite movie quote? I don't know. Maybe Rafiki's quote about the past hurting, but you should take that opportunity to learn. Favorite lyric? That is impossible. There are so, so very many that just like slather me in goosebumps. What magazine are you an avid reader to? None. Have you ever gone a full day without interacting with another person? I have. How many relationships have you been in that lasted less than a year? Four. Have you ever been significantly more physically fit than you are now? Man, take me the hell back to my WiiFit days. I was pretty damn fit. The last time I did it, it was seriously alarming how much I struggled doing things that were once pretty effortless. When growing up, did you parents keep the house very tidy? "Very" seems a bit too much, but Mom definitely kept it in order. How many watches do you own? None. Should teenagers be allowed to have their cell phones with them in class? Yes. Emergencies happen. Do you have any gay relatives? Yes; my mom has a cousin who's gay. Have you unfollowed, deleted, or blocked anyone on social media recently? Not recently, no. If so, what was the reason? ^ What’s the biggest financial mistake you’ve ever made? Oh, y'know, dropping out of college three fucking times. Once I pay my own bills and I truly understand finances, that's going to fucking wreck me. Do you like metal music? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck yeah. If so, what sub-genres of metal do you like the best? Heavy and symphonic. Who was the last person you sincerely thanked? My mom for bringing home lunch recently. Have you ever been in a relationship where there was a large difference in maturity levels? No. What’s the longest you’ve ever stayed as a guest at someone’s house? Maybe like a month when I was technically homeless? How bad was your acne when you were a teenager? It was preeeetty rough. Do you like strawberry shortcake? No. What’s the last you got out of the freezer? A microwavable breakfast bowl. Do you go on the computer or watch TV more? Guess. Explain why you are single: Because I'm a very, very underdeveloped "adult" that has very little clue what she's doing. At my age, I and any potential partner should want someone with direction. What feature do you usually get most complimented on? My hair. Has anyone ever accused you of being gay? Well, I'm bi. I had this weird therapist once in middle school though who asked if I was a lesbian... Idk why she did? What Facebook groups have you found the most helpful? I'm in an advanced ball python husbandry group, and while a lot of people there are utter, degrading elitists, they do have valuable information. Did you name all of your stuffed animals and dolls? I sure did as a kid. What would you have your bridesmaids wear? Probably black dresses, and I think it'd be really cool if I were to marry a woman, the bridesmaids wear checkered Converses colored into a rainbow pattern, or something like that. Where do you want to go on your honeymoon? I think Alaska, if it was a good time to see the Northern Lights. Are you sick right now? No, thankfully. Do you feel loved? Yes. Do you like your butt? Why or why not? God no. I have such a flat ass. Are you ashamed of your faith? I'm assuming by this you mean religion, in which case, I don't have one and am not ashamed of that. Has anyone ever tried to force their beliefs on you? Yes. Have you ever personally been a victim of homophobia? Again, I'm bisexual. I have never had a personal act of homophobia inflicted upon me, though. Have you ever been accused of being homophobic? Yes, because I was for most of my life. Fucking repulsive to remember. "Repulsive" is much too gentle a word, but yeah. It is so, so embarrassing to recall myself ever believing it was wrong because my then-religion said no-no. Do you think you’d be happier if you had a pet? I have two pets. I would be so, so lonely without any. :/ I've had pets my entire life. Who was the last person you went on a date with? Sara. How long has it been since that last time you went on a date? Like two or so years. Do you think babies are cute? They can be, but I usually don't find them all that cute, honestly. Especially newborns/very young infants. They're usually hideous. My youngest niece is actually the only newborn that I remember seeing that I thought was absolultely precious. What is your favorite style of pants? Ripped skinny jeans. Were you ever hospitalized as a little kid? No. Who was the last person who broke your heart? Jason. ^Do you still miss this person? I'm sure I always will to some degree. Do you have someone to talk to and share your secrets with? Sara more than anyone, but Mom, too. Is there someone you feel extra shy around? Just men in general. Have you been hurt more by friend break-ups or romantic break-ups? Romantic. Closest living thing to you? My snake's terrarium is against the opposite wall. She's in her hide. Would you rather drown or burn alive? Drown. You go unconscious first, so. And I'd assume it to be faster than burning alive. Also me no like hot. :'''( Who is the last person you got really pissed off with? My stepmother posted some ignorant bullshit on Facebook about how people blow out of proportion our "supposed" environmental crisis. I nearly deleted her right then and there. I take that shit seriously. Most of her beliefs drive me insane, honestly, but she's a wonderful person at heart, so I just bit my tongue. Who was the last member of the opposite sex you laid in a bed with? Girt. What type of sushi do you like to eat? Never tried it, don't want to. Was the last person you kissed physically attractive? Yes. Do you have any flowers in your room? No. Do you know anyone that owns horses? Yes. Well, I took pictures for her family, anyway. Do you know anyone who has road rage? Who? Jesus, yes. My little sister. Is your mom a big health freak or your dad? Or neither? Neither are "big" health freaks, especially not Dad when you consider he smokes and knows it'll be what kills him. My mom is diabetic though, so she's reasonably careful. Do you know anyone who wants to be the president one day? No. What kinds of chips are in the cupboards? We don't have any. Ma tries to keep snacks out of the house for both hers and my sake. If you were going out with your celebrity crush, what would you wear? OH BOY idk. I'd probably spend days planning the "perfect" thing. Do you have any friends who have naturally red hair? I do. Have you ever cried when a teacher retired? Yep, my band teacher. He was incredibly loved by literally everyone. Do you have your mom’s or dad’s eyes? Neither's. They both have brown eyes. What’s the best date movie? We gonna have a problem if you don't watch The Notebook w/ me if I have it on lmao. How long has your current best friend been your best friend? Many years now. (: Do you swear and yell while playing video games? I might swear under my breath, but I don't yell. Would you rather name your daughter Andrea or Eva? Andrea. If you were adopted, would you want to know? Yes. Do you know anyone who has grossly skinny eyebrows? I couldn't care less about someone's eyebrows. Do your pets chase after bugs? Oh yes, Roman certainly does. When’s the last time you were so excited you couldn’t sleep? Why? Hmmm... this actually happened recently, but I don't remember why... What is your mom’s favorite movie? I don't know, actually. I think it's some romance one. What TV family reminds you of your own family? None, really. Do you know anyone who always looks perfect? Who? One of my best high school friends Alon was like... just always pristinely beautiful, it seemed like. I haven't seen many pictures of her lately, but I'm sure that hasn't changed. Has anyone you know ever pulled the fire alarm in school, joking around? I think so once, yes. Who was the main character in the last book you read? A dragon named Sunny. Who are the last people you saw kiss? On the lips, I'm sure it woulda been my sister and her husband. Would you rather look at clouds or stars? Clouds, I think. Well, it would depend on their design, I guess, and time of day. When you get married, who will be the maid of honor/best man? Probably my mom. Does your best friend get along with their parents? She has a wonderful relationship with them. Have you ever been in a wedding? What were you? I was the fat, hideous, crying bridesmaid. ;x; Are you purposely hiding something from someone? No. What’s the most intimate thing you’ve discussed with a stranger? My suicide attempt with doctors. What, if anything, do you substitute for fries? I always get fries. Have you ever been in a building that was on fire? No. Are you in an argument with anyone right now? No. Have you ever written a poem for someone? Yes. Who’s the last person who cussed you out in anger? My grandmother. Who is the person you are closest to that you’ve meet online? Sara. Have you friended your parents on FB? Mom, yes. Dad doesn't have one. What’s the last tourist area you visited? Chicago. Mice or roaches? Mice are precious, meanwhile I hate roaches. Did you give or get any Valentines this year? No. Well, Mom bought me and my sisters each a delicious candy apple, if that counts? What’s your homepage? Google. Is there anyone whose grave you visit? No.

[retvenkos]

Hi! Congrats Olive! That's amazing! 🔥 please? Okay Part 1: Im an ISFJ/INFJ, 6w7 and 4w3(i know i know you are only suppose to have 1 but i swear I’m both lol), And a slytherpuff! Straight female. I am very smiley and bubbly but am an introvert(or extroverted introvert) and can be super shy. I am extremely ambitious and loyal My friends call me optimistic and the happy one of the group but I actually suffer from chronic depression, OCD,  and major social anxiety.

Part 2: Also have abandonment issues due to my dad leaving. Can be overly emotional and sensitive. But I I love to laugh and find the positive in situations!  I am a very determined person, if I want something I won’t stop trying until I psychically can’t. When Im in expert in something I sometimes get a slight superiority complex, mainly when someone questions me on it, trying to work on that.I’m a Christian and my faith is very important to me!

Part 3 I LOVE to cuddle and hold hands and hugs but innocent otherwise. I have danced and done theater my whole life and love it and being on stage so much but ultimately decided to into video editing. I LOVE broadway and musicals but can’t sing for crap. I love pink and Disney(worked there twice) and nerdy stuff. Child at heart and old soul at the same time.  Oh and for Disney, Marvel, and Harry Potter please! Thanks so much!

Disney:

I ship you with Flynn Rider!

alright, we already know that flynn has a secret soft side to him, and i 100% believe that you unlock it without trying, on like, the second time you meet flynn.

i want to say that you met flynn fairly early on in his life - when he first got out of the orphanage and was still a thief in training. he probably made some dashing rescue when you were cornered by some thugs, and you thanked him with some coin and maybe a dinner? who knows. both of you are young and neither of you well off financially, so you share what little you have. when he leaves, you noticed he let you keep your money. so he’s a gentleman, huh?

he continues to find reasons to stop by your village, his excuses getting increasingly worse over time. on all of his visits, flynn seems to have the mission of getting to know you better - and you’re not going to easily reveal your secrets. after all, a girl’s gotta look out for herself, doesn’t she?

flynn learns that you are a very ambitious person with a lot of smarts that you’re proud of, and he likes your confidence - it’s something he’s had to build over a lifetime, so he loves the fact that it comes so easily to you.

he also loves your optimism. he used to have it, once, and it’s refreshing to find someone who truly and honestly believes in the world.

getting to know you is slow going, but it also takes time to get to know him, so fair is fair. and the more you learn about each other, the more you want him to stay. you, of course, know about his life on the run as a master thief, and he has hidden in your house plenty of times before.

what’s most interesting about your relationship is that flynn talks about the future with you. you know what you want to do with your life and are working towards it with all the tenacity in the world. you are headed in one direction and nothing can stop you, and that inspires flynn and reminds him of himself. and both of you are going to do all you can.

(if you want to get some angst in this headcanon set, maybe your ambitions take you to the castle - maybe you want to be a healer or someone who offers intellectual council, idk. anyway, your ambitions put you in direct opposition of flynn, and the two of you probably have a few run ins. and while there isn’t animosity and you always let him run free, there is a distance between the two of you. BUT, your time at court doesn’t work out and you have to go back to your roots - to flynn.) 

or! maybe you’re an actress in plays! you know that if you were, flynn would sneak into your shows to watch you and would leave you a single flower after your performance. 

you’re relationship is a lot of fun! it involves a lot of sneaking around, a lot of stolen, soft moments, and then talks at the kitchen table, with the candle burning low and all the world between you two.

ugh, i just love this concept.

Marvel:

I ship you with Peter Parker!

you and peter are the sweetest couple ever, two nerds who probably had feelings for eachother for a long time, but were too shy and awkward to mention them. 

since you mentioned video editing, can i propose the idea of you taking videos of spider-man, not knowing it’s peter? may i propose the idea of you making youtube videos about spider-man and kind of being his hype man in the early stages? may i suggest the idea that you are the reason why spider-man blew up online, and it stresses peter out to no end?

i really want peter to bring you into the fold and tell you that he’s spider-man because you’ve been bringing him a lot of attention and have started making theory videos on who he is and how he got his powers, and the stress of you possibly figuring out and telling the whole world is literally killing him.

then you can work to steer the evidence away from peter and to someone else, lol.

alright, but back to basics - you and peter both have altruistic goals! peter wants to make a difference and you do, too. you’re both kind of quiet in your goals but work toward them with a fervor, and it’s good for both of you to find someone with so much drive and willingness. 

also, the two of you are nerds! you can be nerds together! you would never have to hide your interests from peter and that is honestly such a relief. you definitely geek out over harry potter and all sorts of movies - you’re still trying to sell peter on paying attention to the full lore of star wars, but he really only listens for you and ned.

you both are a little sensitive, but you are able to work through that together. you both are unafraid to lean on the other and be vulnerable with each other, and that’s an exceptional trait to have, so the fact that you employ it so early on is good. 

peter, too, has that young at heart yet old soul vibe to him, and that’s because he’s had to struggle in life. he’s lost a lot of people and is poor, all of which ages him (mcu peter doesn’t really have this vibe, but other spideys do), and yet he is still a teenager! he’s still trying his best and wants to see the world! he has wonder in his eyes, and that makes him young again. you understand how he can be simultaneously both, which is good, because explaining that can be rough, and he also understand that in you. lots of mutual understanding is good for you - esp. since his life is so complicated, being spiderman.

oh! peter also loves watching bootl*gs of musicals with you. the two of you will hang out at his place, eating microwave popcorn while trying to enjoy the shaky video. peter talks a lot through movies, but it’s all good, because if you kiss his cheek, he gets flustered and goes very quiet for at least 10 minutes.

Harry Potter:

I ship you with Draco Malfoy!

okay, you gotta stick with me here, because i promise you i have some thoughts about this

i mostly get post-war vibes. i imagine the two of you didn’t interact a lot at school, and if you did, it was in passing - partners in charms once or twice, nothing that could make the two of you especially hate each other later in life.

i’m going all out and saying you both work in the ministry - in the same or similar departments, both of you working late into the night. you, because of your ceaseless ambitions and draco because working clears his mind from all the horrors of his past.

it first starts out that the two of you pass by each other at night, almost shutting off the lights on the other because you thought you were alone. i imagine that draco approaches you first - he has a problem that you can help him solve, and he’s pleasantly surprised by your pride in what you know and the vehemence with which you state the facts. he didn’t know you were so strong willed. it vaguely reminds him of himself, and that’s where the interaction ends.

after that, though, he’s bridged the gap. now, he’ll come over to you for advice on how to do some of his ministry work - you’re really good in a lot of areas, and you’re incredibly concise. when he comes over to your desk, you now ask him about some of your own challenging problems, and the two of you are work friends, now.

it’s a slow burn to end all slow burns, but eventually draco brings you a cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate one winter's night when the two of you are working late - his way to say thank you for all of your help. he’s not used to this - reaching out and being nice, but you inspire it in him.

one night he helps you walk some paperwork back to your house - some work you still have to do over the holidays - and he offers his help, if you need it.

i imagine that you don’t exactly want to call draco malfoy over to your apartment during the holidays, so you don’t, but when you realize how far you are behind, you call him over on a saturday and the two of you work all day. it’s mindless filing, mostly, so the two of you have time to talk, if you want to. draco’s pretty silent this whole time, but you are talkative and you eventually get him to crack. you talk about your earliest years at hogwarts. draco rolls his eyes at how dramatic he was and groans at some of his actions. (”remember when you made those “’potter stinks’ buttons? you had a button press in the slytherin common room and gave them out to everyone. i can’t believe snape let you keep a button press!”) the two of you have a lot of tea and you go to get lunch at a restaurant nearby, and when you’re walking back after your meal (where he laughed - actually laughed at something you said) he turns to you and sincerely apologizes for all that he was in his hogwarts years. and because there was never too much bad blood between you two, you shrug off his apology.

and it takes a lot of time for both of you to open up - and i mean a lot of time. you guys steadily become friends who tell each other everything, and it’s you who drags draco to parties with other school mates whom he reconciles with (although he still gives apologies to the main trio, quite often). because you’re a little more extroverted, you bring draco out of his shell while still being introverted in your activities.

you also take draco to your favorite muggle places - the theatre being one of them. i want to say that you go to see les mis or hadestown, because i feel like draco would actually really like those musicals. you also do a lot of movie watching, which draco loves. he gets to set aside his troubles for a few hours or so, and it’s nice.

a few more ideas - you teach draco to cook, you realise draco has a love for poetry and find it very sweet (but you lord it over him, of course), you gossip about your coworkers together, and you star gaze.

EVENTUALLY the two of you get together, and it’s just really sweet. draco’s not big on pda, but he will always give you his arm, or he will hold your hand, and the love is in the gentle stares and soft smiles.

[izzyovercoffee]

more SW salt re: that long post going around

((edit: just to clarify, this is re: a prequel era post. I don’t disagree with everything, but I am super tired w/ the attitudes in that ‘meta’ post. yes, fandom is hypocritical about their criticisms, but that post glosses over so many real world issues, presented as meta, that I can’t help but be salty about it))

idk man, I feel like you can make some arguments to defend the Order without simultaneously making the argument that making people of different cultures and different walks of life believe they cannot adequately care for their children and so need to give them up... is a “good thing” actually ... (especially when it’s guaranteed those children are completely separated and cut off from their culture and, more specifically, their families and communities). that whole super long post going around doesn’t once address the nuances of cultural genocide, of imperialism, of classism, that’s inherent in the Order’s mechanisms of taking children into their care in the very exact and specific way they do.

hell, like, just even the minimum awareness of how poor black and brown families on earth TODAY are specifically targeted and often have their children taken by the state “for their own good” or because they’re “not adequately provided for”, would have me take a second look at making that argument, let alone understanding how, say, the native re-education boarding schools worked in the americas and how they functioned to spiritually kill the indigenous people to the great degree that still has not been undone TODAY. 

and then to have entire arguments hinged on the “well being” of the child without understanding that a great harm and hurt was done to the family the child was taken from, and no understanding nor empathy whatsoever for the family whose child was given up, when that sacrifice often was not done without some level of political, emotional, or class (or some combination of any/all of the three) coercion. there’s no empathy and no understanding for the longstanding hurt that removing a child from a family has on the family and the community they were taken from. I genuinely cannot stress this specific point enough, specifically because no one ever bothers to wonder about it, nor ever consider looking at real life examples of this very thing.

it is not an accident that people who have escaped religious and spiritual abuse found within conservative communities (and I am being vague here on purpose) have made direct comparisons to their experiences with the Order as it operated and was presented in the prequel trilogy, and I just find it really done in poor taste that those commentaries and analyses were ignored or outright dismissed with some snide unnecessary comment, along with every other disagreeing comment that’s pointed out any of the above.

I’m not even touching how the entire Order is/was a somewhat fetishistic racist misconstruction of Buddhism at its foundation, seen through and then reconstructed through the lens of a distinctly Christian writer, so when you construct these arguments it would help to mention that ... but most people just outright ignore that decades-old criticism, regardless of how it would bolster intent vs execution in deconstructing and defending the idea over the presentation and writing choices.

there’s also something that really rubs me the wrong way about the same people making some (unfounded?) comment about certain people critical of the Order aren’t using the word genocide for some reason, as if the very same people who are critical of the Order aren’t actually part of the communities I mentioned above (myself included) who are subject to violence from the state, or some degree of separation from some kind of genocide already, but whatever.

but anyway this longass vent goes under the cut because I really do not have the emotional nor mental energy to get into that argument with people, because there’s already a lack of empathy as it is just from reading any and all of those posts, and it really isn’t worth the mess it’ll inevitably blow up into. 

as I get older it becomes apparent it isn’t worth getting into arguments with people operating from a position of bad faith, and literally everyone in this fandom (myself included, mind) often start specifically from that position. it’s exhausting tbfh

edit: and, to be clear, I don’t feel this way at the people who reblogged the post---it’s written in such a way to be really compelling and gloss completely over the issues above. of course when you read it, unless you actively engage with or are involved w/ the above, you’re not going to think of these things or even connect them in this way. 

I just wish that there was a way to point these things out without it inevitably blowing the hell up in either direction, but sometimes I feel like that’s not really readily possible anymore? or maybe I’m just overly negative loool

[zombiequincy]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom?  YES / NO.

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK.

Are they underrated?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character?  YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO.

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon?  — I’d like to think I follow canon fairly decently in regards to Giselle’s powers but then again there really isn’t much to follow. So we’ll go with a shaky ‘ehhhh’.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —  She’s one of the most objectively fucked up Sternritter. Her powers completely spit in the face of everything the Soul Reapers try to abide by and their cycle of life and reincarnation by basically crushing it under her heel and refusing to allow the process of death to run its course. She’s also just such a cheery and utterly irredeemable villain which is so refreshing sometimes. None of that brooding ‘woe is me my powers and situation makes me so sad’ no no no, she is here to FUCK shit up for everyone and laugh while doing it. Also the whole idea of forcing someone to fight against their will is just so supremely fucked up but always interesting to see in action. She could have singlehandedly turned the tides of the Quincy invasion if she got her hands blood on the right people and that’s a terrifying though. Also a lot of her motif and powers link closely to the sort of biblical fucked up imagery of angels that you can see in novels like Paradise Lost or Dantes Inferno or the Old Testament, that just themeatic attitude of like show no mercy even to the weak and how morals are meaningless in the face of war and if you’re doing everything in the service of god then even the most fucked up actions can be justified, so if like me, you’re a huge nerd for that shit, she is PERFECT.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  —  She’s one of the most objectively fucked up Sternritter. She’s annoyingly over powered in the sense that she just doesn’t die, which can really be a sticking point for some people because it just seems like there’s no threat present when she’s around. I also don’t blame anyone for being disinterested with her portrayal and character as it is in the manga since her whole identity seems to just be a shitty allusion to predatory lesbian trope and god awful transphobic jokes, so seeing those it can be easy to think that’s all there is to her character and not even want to entertain everything else she has to offer. Also the way that she treats Bambi, turns even my stomach, so I absolutely do not blame anyone who might want no interest in any of that and the implication of those scenes.

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  (Kaiman lol) She was one of the femritters I naturally gravitated towards because of her fight with Mayuri and I fucking hate Mayuri soooo, queen rights! Also I just love characters who can like puppeteer and control others against their will, there’s something so really interesting about that power in fiction and it always gives way to tons of angst and sadness which is absolutely my shit. I also had a ton of issues with the way that Kubo presented her in canon, especially in regards to her trans identity and I kept obsessing over that and wanted to kinda push away from all those shitty moments and try to focus more on her powers and attitude as a young Quincy who was eager to join a war and murder her way up the ranks. 

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  My love for evil women. But you know, mainly music and goth aesthetic posts. Also other pieces of gothic literature and undead monster lore and mythos. If there’s a will and way, I will always find a way to bring it back to Giselle.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO.

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO.

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO.

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day?  YES / NO.

Are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO.

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  Haven’t gotten any yet but I am always open to it. I know there’s a ton of choices I’ve made in my portrayal that are open to heavy scrutiny, like making her very young contrasted against the other Sternritters, making her a serial killer, making her a self declared man eater etc etc. Even though my main goal with rp is to just have fun, I’d never want to do so at the expense and well being of others, so if anyone has some serious critiques to make about Giselle or to say that she’s making them feel uncomfortable, then it’s the absolute bare minimum for me to listen and be considerate about that criticism! 

Do you like questions which help you explore your character?  —  If I say no that makes me look like a mad woman and an asshole but like GKJLASDKDJSA look its really hard to try to explore a lot of the inner depths of a character like Giselle who just joyfully takes pleasure in others suffering. Like she’s just here to kill and eat people, trying to explore the why and how and who led her into that way of thinking and informed her deeper beliefs, high key gives me a headache. Sometimes she’s just evil and a dickhead for the sake of being an evil dickhead. I have to be in a very specific headspace and mood to want to discuss in detail her attitudes and beliefs and how certain personality traits of her came to be and even when I do that, it’s not usually public. As I write with more and more people, her views and ideals begin to reveal itself in the threads and situations so I prefer to do the exploration that way via my writing and threads. I’m always open to questions which help me explore her ideals and beliefs and reckoning with her past but because I haven’t made any plans for her to really confront or express those beliefs directly yet, it’s hard for me to explain them accurately or correctly.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  Yes! I’d never declare myself as an expert on Bleach since I learn a lot of the nitty gritty details through osmosis of people who do know more than me, so if I get something wrong or a headcanon is a little bit far fetched, I’m always open to hearing the details as to why and how I can improve it. Also a lot of my headcanons are just stupid jokes so if you have one that’s funnier, then I will always love to hear it.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  —  In my stride. I always say this Giselle is mainly just a goof so I don’t take it too personally if someone thinks I’m doing her wrong, half the time it’s just be making bad jokes about murder and maiming and cannibalism. There are about a hundred different ways to approach someone like Giselle and mine is FAR from being the most accurate or correct one.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  —  I can certainly understand why considering her actions in canon and how brutal and cruel she was. She kinda is a figure made to be hated and disgusted by and in certain threads I do really lean into her more ‘evil’ side. So I’d never take it personally. 

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  —  Dear god please do it. I’m dyslexic and English technically isn’t even my first language I struggle with this VERY bad. Let me know please please PLEASE.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  I think sooo? I’ve never rushed anyone for replies, I take my own sweet time to get stuck into threads and I approach any headcanons or ideas people have for Giselle with a sense of optimism and good faith! I’m always down for some silliness but I’m always cautious about how far to go with her considering that the way she acts can be triggering in some regards so I like to think I’m both pretty careful and laid back!

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

Tagged by:  @windstormwielding cheers my dear !! Tagging: @fleshpurifies @bazzardburner @hyouketsu @oscuras and YOU!

[livvywrites]

*slides in here* i don't know much about ur ocs, so mry I pls know some happy things about them

imma do the main six from the martyr queen, oki? 

alinora mynerva

i’ve posted about this before but it remains one of my fave alinora facts. when she was a kid, she used to read this beastiary. i think i named it, but i don’t remember what i called it. *hangs head in shame* anyway, it was full of facts on eldora’s monsters/beasts. (hydra, dragons, sea serpents, giant spiders, giant scorpions, giant man-eating worms called tunnelers, yknow, typical fantasy stuff). sometimes they gave her nightmares, but it was Worth It, especially because she could use them to scare her friends during sleepovers

her favorite flowers are sunflowers! they never fail to make her smile, which is good, because she could smile more, honestly. (poor bb needs more love in her life) 

she has a major sweet tooth. she drinks coffee, but. she hates it so much. unless, of course, you add a fuckton of sugar to it. but, yknow, sugar’s expensive, so. 

her favorite fruit is peaches, but she’s developing a fondness for oranges. 

elaena

i was a big greek mythos nerd growing up (PJO is still my jam, tho i haven’t kept up with some of the more recent series) and i was always really into how like... involved the gods were in mortal life? plus how humanized they were? so that was a big inspiration for the eldoran pantheon... they’re all very human (and i have Reasons for that too!). 

elaena has always gotten on really well with chaos. she calls him uncle chaos and together, the two like to play pranks on the other gods. particularly order, who gets pissy every time, but they think it’s worth it. even if death (elaena’s dad) always makes her go patrol with fear as punishment. (not punishment bc it’s fear; punishment because patrol is usually boring, and elaena hates being bored)

she also has like, weekly tea parties with hope!! and the two of them gossip about whatever is going on in the celestial realms. (usually about hope’s vanguard, because... they’re messes. but.) sometimes love (leader of hope’s vanguard) joins them. or wisdom, or faith, or yknow. any of the vanguard. 

she and her dad like to play games together. usually card games. they rope the other gods/spirits into it too, and occasionally have a really good time! 

elaena loves the little reaper babies! she doesn’t always get along well with them when they get older (”too robotic,” she says, even tho robots don’t exist on eldora [yet] and no one knows what she means.) but she likes hangin’ out with the babies and teaching them life skills for a reaper. (unlife skills??) 

elaena’s not real big on guiding souls to the afterlife. like, yeah, it’s important and sometimes its fun to get into fights so she can protect the souls she’s guarding, but she likes escorting new souls the best! little baby souls. they’re so bright and pure and it makes her happy~ (she also likes escorting reincarnated souls!) 

one of her favorite past times is hanging out invisibly in the mortal world and watching like, court drama unfold. it’s like a soap opera. (no one knows what those are either) 

lyr

Disaster Child #3 (talitha and alinora compete for top spot)

good with his hands! he almost always has a small block of wood on him for carving, and he makes lots of little sculptures. he sells or gives away most of them, but ava still has a few he made just for her. he also enjoys smithing, but hasn’t gotten the opportunity to forge anything in a while. (and definitely isn’t a master at the craft, but he would like to study it one day, when things settle down!)

both ava and talitha were prone to nightmares as kids and he used to sit with them and sing. sometimes the song was basically nonsense to a comforting tune, other times it was something he had heard while traveling (which meant that it could be a bawdy bar song, a fighter’s hymn, a work song, or even an actual lullaby)

talitha roped him into learning how to dance with her. they were both Really Bad at it at first, but got better with practice. (they’re still not great, especially when they dance together--too busy snickering at other people to watch where their feet are going) 

ava

because she grew up with a nomadic lifestyle, she couldn’t actually... keep plants. however, she’s clever and not one to give up easily, and she figured out how to grow them magically. so she has flowers essentially growing in her hair. sometimes she makes those like.... shoe things? they’re not really shoes, but they wrap around your toe and ankle. idk what they’re called, but she does that. she also makes bracelets and such out of them. 

she can kind of communicate with animals??? she’s best with birds but wolves and deer are pretty attracted to her too. (tho tbh i also have this image of her riding a bear??? idk if it’ll ever happen, but.) it’s very limited communication, but she can do it. it helps sometimes. mostly it’s just kind of a skill she uses to befriend the local fauna. 

....basically what i’m sayin’ is she’s a disney princess. 

talitha jade

she’s a little bit crazy and likes to hang out on the top deck when it’s storming. sometimes she even brings her violin with her (enchanted so it won’t ruin) and plays music.

she was the Best older sister ever. her home life wasn’t great, but she adored her baby sister, and when lyn was upset, it didn’t matter what she had to do, she would move heaven and earth to make her feel better. (mostly, tho, she skipped the world-altering displays of adoration and snuck down to the kitchen to sneak her sister something sweet). 

she was a mischievous child who’s first big spell was an invisibility spell (learned several years younger than people usually learn it). you can imagine the kind of havoc she used to wreak. there was a rumor in town that they finally developed a seeing through invisibility spell specifically because of talitha. (this is baseless, as the spell existed before, it just needed to be found)

aishlynn mynerva

aish, like her sister, despises bitter things. unlike her sister, though, aishlynn has no qualms about getting her hands on sugar and using it to the fullest. (and god forbid she get her hands on a box of chocolate. she forgets how to ration that stuff, and will eat an entire box of it in one go, stomachache be damned.) 

can sometimes be caught humming slightly off key. if left alone for long enough she might even start dancing.

her favorite flowers are lilies. specifically purple ones.

growing up, she had a bodyguard, like any young princess would. her favorite thing to do was to make her bodyguard play pretend with her. usually knight vs dragon/other monster, because aishlynn wanted to be a hero something fierce, but sometimes she played queen to his knight, and ordered him around. it was very cute, and her mother used to like watching them play. (and occasionally join in) 

[ettadunham]

A Buffy rewatch 3x04 Beauty and the Beasts

aka men are still beasts part 2

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and rant about it in 10-3k words. What you can expect: long run-on sentences and disjointed observations, often focused on one tiny detail about the episode. What you shouldn’t be expecting: actual reviews that make sense.

And I had some thoughts of today’s episode’s while watching, but I feel like I’m already forgetting half of them. Which might be the cider. (Or me being cranky about it being that time of the month. You know, the one where I turn into a hairy monster who may or may not have killed a man in the woods.)

I mean, what else are you gonna pair with background domestic abuse storylines.when you’d rather just chill with your wolfboy? Port wine? Get the fuck out of here.

Oz is always getting these all men are dangerous douchelords explorations I guess. It’s not that I don’t get it, his whole deal is about being seemingly the chillest guy on our Earth, except for 3 nights a month when he might just tear you to shreds. So yeah, I get it, Faith. All men are beasts. We all know your preferences.

(I believe we’ll definitely get more into Faith’s opinions on men, so let’s put a pin on that for now.)

As for the show, I’ve already had a rant about the Buffy feminism with Phases, which now I might just repeat (Idk, I don’t often read back these fever rants). The point though that I wanted to make here is when people say that Buffy’s ‘fighting the patriarchy’, they’re not just being melodramatic.

Like, that is a big theme here. Patriarchy, and rape culture, and the kind of aggression that’s specifically labeled as male. And then the show flips it sometimes, because we’re still playing with gender roles as well.

On the other hand, this story is maybe more aligned with the idea of ‘loving a beast’. Which… especially looking at the actual domestic abuse portion of the episode… is questionable at best.

I already mentioned my big ick when it comes to a lot of Buffyverse episodes that specifically delve into themes of violence against women. But in this case, the thing that makes me really uncomfortable is how much this is not phasing me.

Debbie and Pete’s - I think that’s their names, but the fact that I struggled during the episode remembering that, should be indicative of how much I was able to connect to them - relationship follows all the horrific red flags you could think of. The scene where Pete hits her and then Debbie ends up comforting him is just super fucked up.

…But they’re also minor characters in a storyline that’s stacked with main characters going through some pretty big stuff. The show often does this thing where everything is heightened, because supernatural elements, while still grounding the character stories in reality. And I’m not sure it’s working here, especially since we don’t really have a reference to grounding these two.

And then we get the bathroom scene with Debbie, Buffy and Willow. I understand the theme that’s going on there, how it’s a callback to Buffy’s S2 arc of ‘losing herself in love’… But it certainly doesn’t handle the subject of domestic abuse with any care or consideration.

“Don’t get hit.” Yikes.

There are intriguing ideas in this episode about compassion and agency, but they sure chose an extremely tough sell to drive their points home.

So instead I’ve been wondering - what if Oz actually hurt someone? What if that was the episode? On one hand, I understand that thematically they wanted to have these extremes to show Buffy’s conflict about Angel. So you would want an irredeemable monster of some sort in your story, in which case, Oz would need to be the gentle beast.

On the other hand, I just feel like that would’ve sparked a more interesting discussion about what love can and can’t excuse, especially since the audience also has their own bond to Oz at this point.

But hey, I will be definitely talking a lot about some beloved characters doing terrible things and how much I still love them, and that’s a promise.

This episode also made me wonder where Giles’ extreme dislike for Xander comes from. The way he rips into him here for sleeping during his Oz-shift juxtaposed with him gently waking Buffy up when it was her dozing off… I kind of wish that I tracked that better, because it definitely feels like he’s been sort of dismissive of Xander for a while now, but his outburst here felt like it was on another level.

Which is why I think it might come from Xander carelessly bringing up and shouting about Jenny during their Angel argument last season. I can definitely see how that would put Xander on Giles’ shitlist for life.

We’re also very close to the beginning of a storyline that I feel like is a lot of people’s least favorite of the season (which incidentally also features Xander), and honestly? I can’t wait to dive into that.

What can I say? I’m all about those bad choices.

And let’s pour one out for Mr. Platt, the real hero of this story. He set some high standards as a counselor for his successors to follow…

But, as always, I’m getting way ahead of myself.

[motorcyclegirlfriends]

What is the bechdel test?

Also relevant:

@lena-in-a-red-dress​ replied to your post “youngbloodbuzz: [me seeing everyone reblogging that post claiming how…”

With the Bechdel test, I couldn’t remember if it was a total conversation test (where any dude talk took the convo out of the running) or a time test (which the scene would tech pass), so I admittedly have research to do. But I do wish men hadn’t been mentioned at all… from a storytelling/performance perspective, they could have easily hit all the same plot-necessary notes elsewhere in the plot-necessary notes without infringing on girl time at all.

(Bare with me, I’ll also be addressing some other recently popular fandom opinions in this break down.)

Application of the Bechdel Test:

The Bechdel-Wallace test is simply, “The movie has to have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something besides a man.”

It was inspired by the writings of Virginia Wolf in which she observed that women were rarely portrayed in ways other than in relation to men, with particular note that this weasels it’s way into fictional female friendship.

I think I’ve seen individual studies expand upon this by specifying that it has to reach some designated length of time (one minute, for example), but I’ve never seen it interpreted so that men being mentioned earlier in the conversation negates the fact that they were afterward talking about something other than a man.

If it were so, it’d seem rather arbitrary a rule. Would the second half of the conversation suddenly pass if they had cut away to something else in the middle, making it a separate conversation? How does that method tell us anything about the quality of the show or the characterization of the women?

Furthermore, the Bechdel test is not meant for singular scenes, it is meant for entire works. In this case—entire episodes.

Sometimes whole conversations between women will, in fact, be about men. And that’s okay, as long as there are also conversations between women about things other than men within the text. In this episode, there certainly were. There will be more episodes in the future with multiple women interacting without mentioning men at all.

Something that people seem to be forgetting is that there’s nothing innately wrong with women talking about men, it’s when it’s made to be the entirety (or majority) of their characters that there’s an issue.

The point of the test is not to stop women from caring about men or having any storylines to do with men, it’s to make sure that there’s more than that. That they aren’t reduced to only that.

So people’s issues with the scene actually have little to do with the Bechdel test, and more to do the fact that these women got together on a girl’s night and, for about half of the portion of it that we saw, they talked about guys.

People are upset about it as a sort of… girl’s night trope in a feminist way, and—more strangely to me—in a queer activism way.

The Queer Activism Way:

Recently (the past few weeks or couple months), I’ve seen an alarming number of posts with regard to Supergirl in which people forget that their experiences are not universal and that their personal discomforts do not necessarily equate injustice.

Perhaps the mere mention of relationships with men makes you uncomfortable because you headcanon the character speaking about it as a lesbian or it reminds you of how alienated you felt growing up and not being attracted to men, but that does not actually make the mention of relationships with men homophobic.

First, the writers are under no obligation to make their characters the specific sexuality that you desire, especially when there is no lack of lesbian representation within the text. Moving forward with the romantic and/or sexual attraction that they have chosen for a character is not a violence against you, and believing that it’s a move designed just to hurt you comes off as rather paranoid and egocentric. 

It’s also worth noting that the writers stating that a character is attracted to men in no way prevents fans from shipping the character with a woman. Because, idk if you know this but… bisexuality exists!

Saying “we get it, you’re straight!” every time the character mentions having had a relationship with a guy is reductive and inaccurate.

(And I think it’s also worth noting that you’re probably making your local bisexuals uncomfortable when voicing how horrible it is that your headcanoned wlw is mentioning her relationships with men.

It may be coming from a place of “but we were attached to her being a lesbian! I was attached to her representing me, and having projected myself onto her, I feel uncomfortable when she is attracted to men,” but fans acting as if it is not simply a personal discomfort but an injustice that the character is made to be attracted to men? As a bisexual, it’s not a fun message to receive.)

And with regard to lesbian alienation in the face of discussion of relationships with men, Alex and Maggie were not uncomfortable hearing about their friends’ past significant others.

That is your personal trigger that you are projecting on two characters who are not at all left out in that situation, and who are actually—as the only characters in the room in a relationship—in a more enviable place than those there who are attracted to men.

This was a group of friends talking to each other about their past relationships. Just as it wouldn’t be wrong for your straight friends to talk about their past relationships in front of you, it is not wrong for the writers to have Alex and Maggie talk to their friends about their past relationships.

(Also, It’s likely that if Maggie were not there, they probably would have had Alex talk about her relationship with her.)

The Feminist Way:

It’s a bit of a cliche to have girls get together and talk about guys, but is it really that bad a thing? 

“But the scene perpetuates the stereotype that women get together and just talk about men!”

But the presence of stereotypical behavior within characters is alright, as long as there is enough representative content so that viewers do not get the impression that the stereotype is true for most/all people or most/all situations.

To compare, if there is a show filled with primarily bisexual characters and one of them cheats, it’s within the context of a group of bisexuals who have not cheated and thus can’t be mistaken for being representative of all bisexuals.

(This is why token characters can be so harmful.)

So if there is a show in which female characters regularly get together and interact in different ways and with varying topics, one half of a conversation in which they talk about their significant others who happen to be men is not indicative of negative representation of women.

This is why we use the Bechdel test, as low a bar as it is—to judge the discussion of men against the rest of the work. If it were not important to judge it against the whole of the text, the test would simply be “The movie has two have two female characters who never talk to each other about a man.”

Could this all have been avoided?

I really don’t think there is a different, natural way to bring up all of the elements that they wanted to bring up in this scene without mentioning significant others.

These are the topics they likely wanted to touch on:

1. Faith as a theme (“he asked me if I was baptized”)

2. Alex’s want for kids vs. Maggie not wanting them

3. Sam’s struggles with Ruby

4. Kara’s depression

Bonus: The tangible dynamic of Alex and Maggie being fully in the know with Kara, Lena knowing the half truth, and Sam knowing nothing

I’d be interested to see if any of you can actually come up with an alternative script for this scene in a way that isn’t too heavy or addressed later in the episode. 

(Using mothers as the link between these topics would work logically, with Kara’s depression being linked to the loss of her mother, but it’s a Heavy topic in a way that can’t be moved passed as easily as Kara’s “break up.” Not to mention Lena’s issues with her mom… It’d screw up the tone of the scene, and would be just a bit too on-the-nose with Alex’s current predicament. 

It’d also effectively skip through Sam’s storyline this episode right to the climax, because Lena would logically have given her the “my mom sucked, you’re doing pretty well” speech right there. (And again, that was a heavy scene that has no place at girl’s night.)

I also don’t quite know how you’d introduce faith as a theme or have Lena tell a funny story that doesn’t make everyone mildly uncomfortable if the topic is mothers.)

Perhaps you can figure out a way to have them avoid mentioning men at all, but you’re also more focused on that than the development of a natural and effective character interaction.

I think there’s a certain point where this becomes less about feminism and more about an intolerance to hearing about men.

And it’s understandable that this tolerance has suffered after last season’s focus on Mon-El to the detriment of Kara’s characterization and the Danvers Sisters interaction, but if you’re expecting them to actively avoid mentioning him or other men, you’re simply expecting too much.

[authenticaussie]

You posted a god!au awhile ago that had a snippet of another idea i thought was really interesting. Ace steals something from the gods and gods marco and sabo get sent after him, except they fall in love? it sounds so cool!

“except they fall in love” sighs happily yes I really Love that sort of schtick. Like!!! whoops didn’t mean to but oh no it’s Here. Feelings. Anyway it was based a LOT on the myth of Prometheus because like come ON, stealing fire….it’s totally ace omfg. So it took a while to figure out?? a plot?? ajhsdgf

ANYWAY AFTER LIKE 3000 YEARS!!!!!!!! (I’m so sorry) 

Commissions || Ko-Fi || [Requests are closed!]

So basically in the sort of deity system set up here, there’s three levels - you got your all-powerful fuckers ala Zeus/Poseidon/Hades (who???? Idk??? maybe one of them is Whitebeard?????????? Something like Sky/Sea/Earth and like, Dragon for Sky and Roger for Sea and Whitebeard for earth but at the moment the position for Sea is under contest ‘cause Roger just up and fucked off omfg. So Luffy’s a minor god gunning to replace him against a bunch of other gods!! But at the moment Sea is controlled by a couple of other 2nd Tier gods.)

 And they’re basically omnipotent but also they’re not allowed to interfere in the mortal world and they’re very Greek God in that they make mistakes too and That’s Just What Happens when you give ultimate power to immortal idiots. Regardless, they basically just Do Shit when they get prayed to in special places and by a heap of people. They’re the end-of-all-wars shit gods, and they Rule the. God place. Hence forth referred to as Olympus ‘cause I can’t think of a name atm and this is based enough off Greek mythology for me to get away with it haha. 

Second tier gods are like, gods of wisdom and power and war and math (////side note if I wrote this as original fic he’d be really calm and logical all the time and be an ear to the gods and talk about probability all the time but his siblings are the Fates equivalent and they FUCK WITH HIM SO MUCH WHEEZES).Anyway 2nd tier gods work as the go between for the 1st Tier and 3rd Tier gods. They do some shit in the human world, fuck around, make some miracles etc., but most of the work is left to 3rd tier godssss lIKEEE

marco and sabo!!! 3rd tier gods are really fucking specific. Like, god of stubbed toes, god of papercuts, god of singing in the shower, etc. They all are ordered around under different 2nd tier gods (eg. the god of papercuts and the god of stubbed toes would both work under the god of pain and stuff like that.) I’m not 100% sure but I think Marco’s a god of faith to family?? or like, faith to loved ones?? And Sabo’s god of forgotten memories. (He forgets things, but then he’s god of forgotten memory so he remembers them, but then he forgets them again- it’s frustrating being him). So they’re both under the gods of memory. Or. Something. SHRUGS??? USELESSLY????

Anyway, Ace has stolen fire! Which 2nd tier god Blackbeard, the god of Darkness, convinced the 1st tier gods that they should have. ‘Cause humans were dicks? And needed to live in fear and darkness so that they continued to worship gods? something like that. In actuality, fire was forming its own spirit/god/representation and he Really Did Not appreciate the competition. ‘Cause if fire formed into a God then Blackbeard had to share some of the 3rd tiers working under him, and a bunch of new gods would be created, and everything would go all topsy turvy for a while and Teach really liked how the world was coming along at the moment. He understood it and didn’t want thinks to change. 

But so, anyway, you know, forgetting memories and stuff - Sabo can track people, too, because people sometimes forget where they’d just been, or bits and pieces of it? and minor deities can look at Small Things and interfere w/ human lives, unlike 1st and 2nd tier gods, and he and Marco don’t get a lot of work so they’re waved off to go find Fire, along with a couple of other minor gods, (but they’re the ones who Actually find him, but, first,)  

They set about tracking Ace, who’s uh…..adapting to holding a Literal Godly Weapon pretty well, actually. And also getting a significant power boost just from luggin’ it around, he’s been setting stuff on fire and lifting shit up that most normal people Cannot Lift and giving everyone he meets fire and stuff and that all kiiiinda means he goes pretty slow haha, so marco & sabo catch up with him pretty easily (mistakes were made)

And so ‘cause they’re not s u p e r powerful, especially not in comparison to buffed-as-fuck by fire Ace, they follow him for a while and try and figure out a plan, and start?? Noticing some Weird As Fuck stuff. Like the joy humans feel when given fire, and that their prayers and worship seem to increase rather than decrease, and that it’s actually pretty weird that Ace managed to get away with stealing fire and now has all sorts of weird abilities that one only usually associates with a god and oh dear sweet lord he’s second tier isn’t he

This is Understandable due to the fact that like. There are so many gods. How are they supposed to know ALL of them?? Also 2nd tier gods are usually Dicks, or just plain busy, and so it’s a huge messy bureaucracy of running around and trying to find out if there even is a god of water and if so why isn’t the god of rainstorms under them instead of under Earth and who the fuck was meant to be taking control of the city this year because it just got invaded again and the Fates are laughing themselves sick in the corner gods damn it all

So Marco & Sabo are lowkey panicking towards each other and Ace is dealing with weird as fuck memories from the fire - ‘cause, see, BAM BAM BAAAAAAAAAM

The fire made him!!!!!

Well, okay, slightly more complicated than that. Remember how I mentioned that Roger fucked off? well he gave up his immortality to spend the rest of his life with a human lady called Rouge. They end up as stars when they die, together forever, but, also, there’s still the hint of a god in Roger and the slowly building concept of fire, trapped and unable to do anything, basically sent down a blessing to Rouge and Roger’s kid, and the kid was Ace! Who’s kinda, Disney hercules movie style has lots of weird shit happen to him. He’s got crazy endurance and strength and speed and Rouge is looking at Roger disapprovingly as Ace grows up and Roger’s like I didn’t!!! do it!!!

Anyway so Ace has dreams of fire and weird visions all his life and finally confides in his parents and Roger reveals a bit of godly knowledge in the form of a myth and says that fire was stolen and kept by the gods and Ace is like oh I must be getting a vision from one of them to steal it! And none of them question that this might actually be a really bad idea so they just let Ace go and the fire’s like fuck yeah, rejoining! And starts reclaiming its power/joining with Ace to make ace god of Fire, but he’s still mainly human now. And doesn’t know he’s meant to be a god haha, he’s just like oh this is cool, superpowers! Must be because of this thing I stole that really makes sense?

Anyway he’d end up being a second tier, which is why he has all these random as fuck powers, but meanwhile sabo and Marco are d YI N G BECAUSE WHAT!!!!!!!! DO THEY DO!!!!!!! And Marco and Sabo are like literally what the fuck do we do ‘cause!? They’re not powerful enough!!! to fight a 2nd tier!!! 

And then Ace gets hurt.

And gods can’t get hurt.

so Mar/Sab bust out and are like haHA you’re not a god!! You were lying!!!

when the fuck did I ever say I was a god? Ace asks, and then is like, ah dear sweet lord they’re gods I shOUL D HAVE EXPECT ED THAT ONE. And they have a little fight but Ace is still kinda injured and so they basically? Sit on him? And are like “return fire to the gods”

“Fire belongs to humanity!” / “Also like, I got??? visions of stealing it????? So some god obviously wants me to have it.”

“There’s a lot of fuckin gods man, just ‘cause one sent you visions doesn’t mean you go out and steal something from the goddamn gods. That’s why we have official translators!!!”

“Which god was it???” Sabo asks curiously, and Ace is like, ///gestures uselessly

“Idk???? fire god??? I was just holding fire. Which like. Hasn’t been a thing since Mom’s era.”

“There is no fire god.”

“What, legit????”

“Yeah, ‘legit’. Who sent you the visions?????”

“Idk, I told you!!! I just saw myself holding fire!!! And using it, and sharing it, and-”

“What, like, using it using it?”

“How else would I use it?”

Confused As Fuck Boys TM, just looking at each other, and Ace is like hey btw can you get off me now?? / “No, you’re our prisoner”

“WHY”

“'Cause you stole?? From the gods??? We were sent to retrieve you???”

Ace makes grumpy mumbling sounds but is like “yeah fine I’ll come w/ you bc I want an explanation, but I still want to share fire with people so we’re taking the long way.” / “Ugh fine.”

And like, marco and sabo are immortal, so it doesn’t really matter to them if they take the long way, and they found him and fire and well if he dies then that’ll be an even easier way to get fire back home?? And there’s other entrances to the gods’ domain in different places, so they just decide to head for one of those, and pick their way across the world.

And they’re first pretty snarky with each other, (especially after Ace finds out that they’re minor deities, he laughs at them once he discovers what for,) and they battle a couple of monsters together, and Ace spends late nights alone, fascinated by the twirl of fire around his fingertips, and the jar where he was keeping Fire gets smaller and smaller bc it’s bonding to him, but none of them realise until later, once they’ve started to become better friends and trust each other and have a routine;

And then marco notices and accuses ace of tricking them and Everyone is pissy and Mar/Sab are like, no we’re heading home now, before you use any more of Fire, how are we supposed to ??? Explain this???

(An alternate take to this scene was them realising that Ace was becoming a god/that fire was always meant to belong to humanity and being like “oh okay, better protect you, but how do we avoid-” *disappointed 2nd tier god shows up* “guys seriously you had like one job”.)

Anyway Ace is kind of their prisoner now and keeps trying to tell them that he didn’t steal the fire (well, apart from his initial stealing), that he was planning to fulfil their deal and he wouldn’t have broken it and Sabo’s like why should we believe a thief?? and Ace is like you believed me before!

Or, like!!!!!!!!!!! Oh maaaaaaaan Marco/Sabo manipulating Ace to go to the nearest domain entry, 'cause they’re not powerful gods and can pretend to be human and travelling together and Ace trusting them and confiding in them and Marco and Sabo confiding bits and pieces of their lives in him too and slowly starting to reveal that they are gods and being happy and slowly realising Ace is turning into a god but then 

WHOOPS TOO LATE THEY’RE AT OLYMPUS AND EVERYONE’S LIKE WOAH CONGRATS YOU MANAGED TO CATCH THE HUMAN and Ace is like wait what 

Marco and Sabo are like no, no, no, wait, there’s actually been a mistake-??? But Ace is super fucking pissy and No-One is Listening, (and actually I like this one better so this is basically what happens). 

SO ACE IS A PRISONER AND MARCO/SABO COME VISIT HIM AND HE REFUSES TO TALK TO THEM AND THEY’RE LIKE NO, LEGIT, PLEASE LISTEN TO US??? And Ace just scoffs and is like why. You lied to me, and you tricked me, and I thought you believed me about the visions and you didn’t tell me there was no fire god???

We think you’re the fire god

And Ace just laugh/scoffs at them because seriously, out of EVERYTHING THEY’VE SAID??? This is the most ridiculous. And they ask him to fight back, or escape, and he’s like, “The punishment for disobeying the Gods is death - both here and on Earth. And besides, what am I supposed to do, try and live my life hiding from beings that are literally omnipotent???? idk about you but I don’t think that’s gonna work.”

And so Marco & Sabo go and try to talk to the 1st teir gods, but have to go through 2nd tiers, and they meet Blackbeard, who worked his way into being part of the council representing Sea atm, and they’re like look we think he’s actually a new god??? And Blackbeard is like oh no, rlly?? my goodness gracious. But gods aren’t formed from humans, tho, and sidetracks them and confuses them and delays them and then they hear the announcement for Ace’s trial/execution and Blackbeard says they’re not allowed in bc they’re only minor gods, and Marco & Sabo are like yeah but we were the ones who bought him in??? Shouldn’t we be called to testify??

“We already know how this trial will go.”

“Well that defeats the purpose of a trial!” Sabo snaps, but Marco tugs him away and they sneak in instead and Ace is kneeling down and glaring at the gods and the almost-empty jar that used to hold Fire is on a pedestal to his left, but Marco and Sabo are Really Fucking Afraid 'cause they know Ace is afraid?? And they’re like jfc how well do we…..know him?

And Ace catches them looking and the fire starts to slowly wink out, just, dying, as he lowers his head and accepts his fate and refuses to look at them, and they’re like no no no no no it can’t happen like this, he is the fire god-

And Sabo leans forwards and just, please, he thinks, he prays, and Ace jolts and looks up at him and his eyes are so wide and startled and Sabo jumps too but then-

Ace can hear his prayers.

“Please!” he thinks, desperate and angry and hopeless, and Marco frowns and steps up beside him and puts his hand on Sabo’s shoulder and he just mumbles, “He can hear my prayers,” and Marco goes stiff next to him, hand tight around his shoulder, and then both of them can hear-

“Please. Save me.”

WELP HERE COMES THE NOT-YET-BOYFRIENDS SQUAD ///sniggers. They totally just jump in front of Ace and Marco stalks forwards and is like, “You can’t have him!”

“Uh….why…not?”

“He swore his fealty to us. Therefore, as 2nd tier gods, it’s our job to decide his punishment - if he even deserves a punishment.”

“You’re only 3rd tier gods!!!” blackbeard yells, and Sabo grins and the last of the fire winks out and Ace’s skin glows warm and bright.

“No. 'Cause Ace is a god.”

“You’re minor gods,” someone points out, “your domains are useless!”

“Forgotten memories and Faith?” Marco says, “Ace had faith in us, and the Fire forced him to forget who he was supposed to be; We were powerful enough to hide a new god.”

“when the heck did he swear fealty??????” someone else yells, and Marco folds his arms while Sabo makes the chains around Ace’s arms a forgotten memory, helping Ace stand up, “He asked us to save him. That’s fealty enough.”

“And what did he give you in return?” someone sneers, and the crowd is pressing in on them, but Ace steps forwards and there’s fire on his shoulders and in his eyes.

“My life.”

anyway they go and upend the structure of the gods omfg and ace experiments with his powers and visits his parents and tells them what went down and rouge is like ROGER, SERIOUSLY. and thwacks him on the arm bc ofc her son’s now a god jfc, and there’s!!!

Marco and Sabo are adjusting to their new roles and trying to figure out what the fuck they’re meant to be doing and they’re still kinda 3rd tier and still kinda 2nd and basically mar/ace/bo form their own little….god squad? (SNIGGERS) And their affiliations change slightly and shift to match each other and there’s quiet moments where they figure out what to do and one day sabo’s like you don’t- you know, you’re immortal. Swearing your life to us- You can have it back, if you wanted-

“I don't,” ace says, and they get it , they get the infliction of the word and what he means and so that’s the end of that.

[kittoforos]

A Beginner’s Guide to the Music of Aleksandr Bashlachev

By popular demand, here is a starter kit, in mostly English, to help anyone interested get into the work of my absolute favorite late-Soviet poet (/rock poet/singer-songwriter/guitarist of sorts) and one of my best beloved poets, as they say, всех времён и народов: Aleksandr Bashlachev (Александр Башлачев, or, if you’re feeling extra helpful, Александр Башлачёв— that last “e” is always pronounced “o”). 

Aleksandr Bashlachev was born May 27, 1960, died February 17, 1988 (by his own hand; sometimes people count him in the so-called “27 Club”), and left around 60 poems/song texts and various recordings (audio and some video), many of which are available on YouTube (a lot of his stuff is on Spotify, too, if that’s your thing). Despite the short length of his life/career, his body of work was/is a sort of massive hidden influence on Russian rock music/the associated culture from Perestroika forward; he’s not at all well-known among the general public in Russia today, but if you’re at all interested in any of that cultural history (or if you just like Russian rock), he’s worth at least a passing familiarity.

I’m making this post partially because I just love him and want to share his brilliant work,*** but also because his poetry (like, frankly, a lot of Russian poetry) is graceful and rewarding on its own, but also densely loaded with intertextual meaning, and his performance style (messy snarly vocals, messy acoustic guitar, just a bit of a mess really, albeit a through-composed one; also incredibly intense, somehow simultaneously explosive and hypnotic— one of his contemporaries, Yuri Naumov, used the term “thermodynamic”, which I like a lot) can be a rather “acquired taste” for a lot of people, especially for those who aren’t already familiar with the stylistics of Soviet bardic music or, like, garage folk-punk or something idk. I know it took me a long time to get into his stuff, at any rate (but once I did, I didn’t listen to anything else for months).

Themes and frequent images in his work include: Russia’s fate, politics (complicated ones, for which he got “shaken down” by various “security” organizations a couple of times— they only stopped doing that in 1987), spiritual freedom, spiritual honesty (”it’s impossible to sing one way and live another”), human contact, human nature (each unique individual as part of the whole), words, bells, birds, heights, Leningrad, love (unconditional and all-encompassing: “even those I hate, I love— they’re just not good enough people to realize it yet”), the sun, the role of the artist in society, the utopian future, suicide.

Also a key point here: SashBash (that was/is his nickname) wrote not so much songs, as fellow rock musician Boris Grebenshchikov put it, as entire emotional spectacles, so when you watch a video of him singing, there’s a helluva lot to take in on top of the words and music themselves, even though he was given to keeping the mis-en-scene pretty minimalistic (just a snarly Russian dude, his guitar, and his bell bracelets). It can be pretty intimidating stuff overall, (especially if your first language isn’t Russian! and/or you’re not used to listening to poetry in Russian, in which case I’ll tell you up front that this is gonna be really rough, but ultimately totally worth it— all the time I’ve spent listening to this stuff and frantically trying to decipher it has helped me a ton with my Russian!) and it can be hard to know where to start with him because his poetry is very complex and he wrote in a couple of different “genres” (to use the term loosely); hopefully this guide will help.

So with that, here are ten (10) songs (plus important musical/poetic background) to get you started— all listed, linked, and commented on under the cut!

(i love this pic there’s something magical and telling about the combo of rocker-style leather jacket and komsomol lapel pin)

***and because this man desperately wanted to be remembered (he believed that people are reincarnated as soon as they are forgotten, and absolutely did not want to ever come back), and I get so much out of the art he made, I feel like i should try at give back at least a little, if only now, and like this

I see you’re still with us! Excellent! Поехали!

Okay, so, the first thing to know with Russian rock music is, a lot of it is based on (at least) two traditions: Western rock music (and/or the contemporary Soviet perception of it) and the Soviet bardic song genre of the 1960s and 70s (e.g. Okudzhava, Vysotsky). Russian rock tends to be heavily text-based and very individual-driven (in the sense that the lead singer of a group is often pretty much synonymous with the band— it doesn’t really matter who’s playing backup to Boris Grebenshchikov, as long as he’s there, the band is “Akvarium”), and SashBash’s work is definitely no exception to those rules— if anything he takes them to even higher levels. He worked almost exclusively alone, and a lot of his singing uses a dramatized speech-like recitative timbre; his main concern was not so much with rock music as such as with the poetry, with the Word, with expression through the Russian language (великий, богатый и проч. и проч.). 

Although that artistic concern remains fairly constant throughout SashBash’s repertoire, his genre choices are less consistent. Roughly speaking, his work can be divided into short comic songs, short serious songs, and long-form epics or meditations. Texts for all the songs I’m about to list can be found at http://www.bards.ru/archives/author.php?id=1927.

Short Serious Songs: (i’m starting with these because because there’s a lot of them, because they include some of his best known songs, and also because they’re just a good place to start to get a feel for what he was about as an artist without buckling in for a twenty-minute Suffering Session— that comes later)

1. Время колокольчиков (The time of little bells) — SashBash’s most famous song, just generally a famous song, gave its name to the whole era in Soviet music culture. If you’re only going to listen to one of these, this is the one, and I highly recommend watching the linked video of him performing it (all of the videos I’ll link here are from a квартирник (apartment concert) at Boris Grebenshchikov’s place— there exist other videos of SashBash performing, but a lot of them are from large concerts which he was very uncomfortable playing, and a lot of the time it shows). Rock and roll, the role of the artist in a time of individualist upheaval, the fate of the Russian soul, and more. (3:20)

2. Лихо (Likha (Slavic mythological personification of Evil); Dashingly) — One of SashBash’s major influences on the Russian rock scene was an eye toward Ancient/Medieval Rus’ as both a source of contemporary Russia’s problems and model of possible futures, whether good or bad. These certainly weren’t new ideas in Russian literature (see: Westernizer vs. Slavophile debates of the 19th century), but SashBash’s deft, unforgettable phrasings (and passionate, agitated delivery) brought rock and roll into conversation with these classic Russian arguments, and imbued them with new urgency. (2:41) 

3. Влажный блеск наших глаз (The wet shine of our eyes) — This is a bit sexier. Actually it’s all about sex. And love? And misery. And sex. (3:08)

4. Поезд №193 (Train №193) — This is a straight-up suicidal ideation song, an attempt to catch at a working definition of love, a swift pile up of quick-fix definitions, desperations. A genuinely short song with a pointedly circular structure. (2:16)

5. Вишня — This is the last song Aleksandr Bashlachev wrote whose text and audio survive. It’s a relatively melodic, life-affirming song full of fairy-tale imagery and general generosity of spirit, and the advice the singer gives to the princess character is actually pretty solid imho, especially for the 1980s (be brave, be kind, rejoice in all the things that please your heart and especially in your own freedom/will). (4:17)

6. В чистом поле дожди косые (In the open field slanting rains) — A treatment of a lot of the same themes as Время колокольчиков, but more explicitly and imagistically Russian (as opposed to Soviet), with the theme of rock and roll expanded to art/literature in general, a lot more Orthodox Christian imagery and ideas (anticapitalist), a less ecstatic and more lachrymose ambiguous ending...  A lot of people claim this to be the best song he wrote. (4:57 (song starts around 30 seconds in))

Short Comic Songs: (We need a break...such as it is. Soviet humor. If you don’t know the drill, you will shortly. I’ll go ahead and put trigger warnings in for these.)

7. Подвиг разведчика (The feat of an intelligence agent (title of famous WWII movie)) An average late-Soviet asshole with a brutal hangover daydreams about going on Cold War spy adventures, is ridiculous. The linked video has a pretty solid translation in the drop-down. (4:55) TW: alcohol, food, domestic abuse, poison, homophobic slur, torture mention, guns, suicidal ideation, rape mention (casual use of term)

8. Верька, Надька, Любка (Faith, Hope, Love (girls’ names)). Sometimes subtitled Исповедь весеннего рака (Confessional of a spring crab). A very strange, ultimately sweet and oddly earnest song that starts fairly concretely and gets rapidly, cosmically out of hand. A giant confused metaphor for a single Leningrader’s personal ideological development, with metamorphoses. (5:20) TW: food, suicidal ideation, religion, alcohol/drugs, brief casual transphobia (? tbh i’ve been chewing on this line for two years now and in context i’m still not quite sure), unreality

Epics/Meditations: (ok here we go, от винта!)

9. Имя Имён (Name of Names) — A chant of shifting rhythms over a monotonous pair of guitar chords, an uncertain, lurching, demanding, overawed and underserved Credo. (8:19)

10. Ванюша (Vanyusha (boy’s name, affectionate)) — This is an arc-structured song, about trying to understand the loss of a loved one, of a child, to find or make meaning out of that suffering (Bashlachev, whose philosophy in total seems to me simultaneously very Soviet and very Orthodox Christian, believed that all personal development, and indeed all that, which is worthwhile in life, comes to us through suffering— “if your soul hurts, it means it’s working”). It uses a lot of Russian folk structures and motifs, both lyrical and musical. (11:53)

Please note that these are not my personal favorite songs of his, necessarily— just a good first set that I hope represents and can act as a starting point for his whole body of work. Thank you for reading!! Спасибо за внимание!!

BONUS SashBash singing Russian 19th and 20th century pop hits with some friends. Laughter, joy, and contextually inappropriate quotations of Lenin ensue

[mixeddoctor]

Breakthrough- and not the good kind

Yesterday was a shitty day. Today was a shitty day. I think this is what they call breakthrough depression. I made the call Wednesday. I felt shitty. I even felt like I did something wrong. Like he wasn’t picking up the phone to respond because I messed up and he had a right to be mad at me. Which is crazy. This man raped me and is making me feel guilty about it? That is literally insane. But it’s what I feel. And Thursday, after sleeping some 16 hours, I went to class and my friend came home and spent the night here. Which was awesome because I didn’t think or feel anything about it. But then she left the next day. Well, I went with her on her first leg of the trip because I needed to return a dress to Banana Republic that my mom ordered for me that was too big. Well this Banana was across the street from the Nando’s we met at the night he raped me. I kept feeling weird looking at the shops. Looking at the ground that I was walking on. Looking at the Trolley knowing it went to the waterfront where he convinced me that I should go drink with him instead of going home like I wanted to. It made me feel some type of way being there and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I came home and instead of studying, I don’t even remember what I did. I literally feel like I was a ghost walking in my place doing everything I could to be there, but couldn’t manifest myself. I know I watched shows. Oh. I rewatched the shows from Thursday and I watched my Friday show and I watched Showtime at the Apollo. Showtime had a couple artists singing a few songs that I put in my spotify including Praying by Kesha Bust the Windows by Jazmine Sullivan and some others. But Kesha killed me. I caught up on the show and was just laying there because I didn’t want to move. I played Praying on my spotify and within the first 10 seconds I was literally sobbing. I cried....hard...for an hour. I can’t even deny thinking that I wanted to die. I was balled up on my bed on the floor. I was crying so hard and loud I swore my neighbors thought something was wrong. At some points I couldn’t breathe and had to slow down to blow my nose and clear my sinuses and throat because I literally was not breathing. I was rocking back and forth scratching my legs which is something I’ve never done before but it was this weird reaction to like idk wanting to feel something? I don’t think I’ve ever, in my entire life, cried that hard. I didn’t cry that hard when my grandfather passed. I didn’t cry that hard when my biological dad dragged me across my front lawn. I didn’t cry that hard after having auditory flashbacks of my stepmother’s screams. I have NEVER cried that hard and for that long. And everything just hurt. I couldn’t seem to do anything but just cry and cry and cry. I was pulling my hair at some points. At some points between sobs, I forgot, like legit forgot to breathe and gasped for air remembering that I wasn’t breathing anymore. It literally felt never ending. I can’t even describe the pain, the feeling.. it was like a hurricane or a tornado just ripped through me. The pills have worked up to this point but the catalyst was that stupid phone call. I thought I was strong enough for it. I really did. I reassured myself, I reassured my friends, I reassured them I could do this. I thought for sure these pills have been protecting me from feeling anything and I havent been able to cry or feel anything but evenly content since I started them so this should have been no problem. But the phone call, hearing his voicemail, leaving my voicemail, going over what happened, walking the street, seeing that Nando’s, hearing the songs, and just feeling... it all just came through me and rocked me like and unreinforced house in Katrina. Ripping the roof off my cool, flooding me with every emotion after the dam, those pills, failed. And completely destroying me beyond repair from the inside out. I sat there in my head asking God to send me something. Some kind of sign. Some kind of anything. I knew it was dangerous for me to sit there like that. I needed to talk to someone. Anyone. Because I knew if I sat there for too long, in that feeling, with my thoughts as wrecked as they were... I had already seen where I was going... But God answers prayers and my mom called. She had no idea what I’ve been up to, how I’ve been feeling, that I’m on pills or pretty much anything. I want to shield her because I heard it in her voice-she was guilty that she didn’t see it in him. She liked him. She thought he was great. She didn’t see it coming and I didn’t see it coming so she couldn’t protect me from what she had already lived through and she felt guilty. So I don’t tell her anything. My dad knows, which most people would find odd but I would say I’ve always trusted my dad a little more than my mom and now I trust him pretty much completely and he knows everything about me and what’s going on. Well... I kind of shield him too. He doesn’t know how bad my depression was and apparently after Wednesday still is. He has no idea about the side effects of the pills or obviously what happened yesterday night because he also feels bad. Because he warned me about him-said to stay away from him at one point. And he feels almost responsible which I told him is ridiculous but I know first hand, sometimes you can’t control the way you feel, despite what you know. Anyway. She called and we were on the phone for a long time and then I just fell asleep. 

I woke up today feeling better but still shitty. To be honest, had I not scheduled a call with a prospective student this morning I would have laid in bed all day, because I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to feel. I didn’t want to think. And the crappy part about that is that yet again I am not studying. I need to get over this hump. I am debating on taking 2 doses of the pills for the next few days just to get me through but I know that messing with these dosages can mess you up more than just staying consistent. 

Breakthroughs are normal especially with triggers. But this is just terribly timed. I need to be studying. Not laying on the floor in a pool of tears with swollen eyes, lips, and nose wanting to disappear. I am trying to be patient with myself and still have faith that God will get me through this. 

The other day someone said that breaking up with someone sometimes feels just as impactful as someone dying. Granted we weren’t together like that... sort of... sometimes I feel like we were even closer and then after the rape because of my stupid lack of coping skills, I did let him in that way...so I guess in a way, I feel like I’m grieving someone dying. I’m grieving him, my perception of who he was, and myself because in all of this a piece of me has died too. I guess when I put it as someone dying, it almost doesn’t feel as ridiculous for me to be feeling so terrible so much time afterwards or so easily triggered. I still feel stupid sometimes though. I feel stupid for not seeing the signs. I feel stupid for not trusting my gut that night. I feel stupid for grieving. I feel weak for grieving. I feel weak for being affected. I sometimes sit and try not to think but find myself wondering if he’s thriving. If he’s moved on to his next victim. If I was just a 2 year challenge. If he went back to his boys and said he finally hit it and just didn’t say how. If he said he was finally getting out of the friend zone and was enjoying all the confusion it was causing me. If once I cut him off, and he realized I wasn’t budging, if he just said fine, she didn’t mean that much anyway and moved on to the next challenge. And if he is thriving and manipulative and that evil... then I feel stupid and weak and idiotic and cheap and worthless. And maybe my grief and grieving for myself is me grieving my strength and pride. Somehow, I just can’t seem to get it together. And it again makes me feel weak. RIP to my strength and sense of worth because I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I would allow someone to take this much from me. I hate to admit that he broke me. But he did. And I am just trying to glue back the pieces together enough to be able to hold water but I keep springing leaks and falling apart all over again. How many more times will I have to put myself back together? Will the glue ever really stick?

  My friend back home had her baby yesterday. She found out the day after she announced that she was pregnant with her second baby that the baby had anencephaly and she chose to continue the pregnancy hoping for a miracle and just putting the whole situation in God’s hands. She went into labor Wednesday and had her baby Friday and he passed away either yesterday or this morning. She posted something today about it and responded to someone and said that She knows that she did everything she could to honor God and that God knows all and never messes up in His plans and perhaps she can help someone else later with a similar situation. Her strength in this astounds me. And today I found myself wondering if I will eventually just help someone else. Not that I would ever wish this on anyone, not even my worst enemy. But it makes me feel like the pain has a purpose. And where there is purpose, there is direction and maybe that’s all I need.