#Repudiable

[sfsolstice]

Anaïs Nin, in a letter to Henry Miller, d. March 26, 1932, from A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953

[moonshynecybin]

bezz holding up the entire track walk to wait for pecco. man who needs his friends to function

[mudpuddless]

Knight Feemor and Padawan Kenobi in the shadow court

AU where qui-gon gives up on/is banned from training Obi-wan after melida-daan and Feemor becomes Obi-wans master.

[picture ID: it's a digital drawing of jedi knight feemor stahl, aged 37, a long haired blonde near-human with tan skin and forest green robes, sitting on the floor with his legs tucked in under him. He is levitating a bright yellow kyber crystal between his hands as a disassembled white-gold lightsaber is floating to his right. padawan obi-wan kenobi, aged 13, a ginger child with grown out hair and a padawan braid wearing white tunics is napping next to him on the floor using a sage green cloak as a blanket and knight stahl's knees as a pillow with his hands tucked under his cheeks. the wall behind them is tiled with diamond shaped star patterned tiles and to their right a large white blue and gold porcelain planter is holding a small gnarly tree with droopy green leaves. above them three identical complex lancet windows which let white gold sunlight into the room. the drawing is done largely in turquoise and yellow tones and the atmosphere is peaceful and serene. end ID]

[bestworstcase]

& in fact one of the things that makes salem compelling as a character is this juxtaposition between her personal cruelty and the rightness of her cause; it bears repeating that she chose to live in exile rather than fight back for thousands of years while ozma dedicated himself to the cause of destroying her, and that her war follows on the heels of ozma forging a global alliance and then, as ozpin, abruptly locking down the relics in apparent preparation to summon the brothers back to remnant. if salem’s true goal is to avert the final judgment—get rid of the gods—then it is clear from the historical timeline and the events immediately preceding her commitment to war that she really did not want to go to war.

but with the information she has and the experiences she’s had there really is no other way to achieve her goal – every other possibility requires her to take it on faith that ozma is willing the break from his task now, against all signs to the contrary. he is still openly promoting worship of the brothers and urging everyone to live as if the final judgment will come tomorrow while zealously guarding the relics needed to summon them – no reasonable person would conclude from ozpin’s public actions that he is, in any way, wavering from his task, and so it is wholly irrational to expect salem to just intuit that somehow. and if ozpin is, as he seems to be, more committed than ever and on the brink of summoning the brothers, war is in fact her only recourse.

what makes salem a villain in this story is the abusiveness toward her associates; her individual cruelty, far more than the war of last resort, because the cruelty has no justification. and i think rwby is interested in the tension here, between how long salem refused to fight back and how cruel she is on a personal level. the tenderness with which she speaks of humanity versus her violent resistance to letting herself care about any one specific person.

i think it’s easy to write the cruelty off as a simple matter of salem… not caring, not having any interest in caring – in extremes this is how we get the "spoiled bitch" reading – but the same could be said of ozma; he’s nicer about it but no less willing to use people as disposable tools. why does he lie? why does he manipulate? why does he get violent when his secrets are about to be exposed? you don’t treat people you care about that way.

so ozma has his reasons – the trauma and the cognitive dissonance and the self-hatred and learned helplessness that motivates his submission to the divine mandate, the palliative fairytales, the retreat into dissociation to cope with being forced to exist as a parasite, and so on – and so too does salem, it’s just that hers are made more opaque. what drives this woman who speaks so lovingly of human virtue to treat individual humans like garbage? some of it is sheer alienation – she hasn’t been allowed to participate in civilization in thousands of years, of course she is antisocial – and the trauma of ozma’s betrayal, the deeper trauma of collective punishment, the fear of being hurt again, the resignation to being seen as a monster no matter what she actually does…

which i expect will begin to rise to the surface over the last few volumes. but the point is i do think her villain -> hero arc will turn almost entirely on ending and atoning for the personal cruelty as opposed to the war, and in fact i imagine there may end up being a stretch of the story wherein salem has moved clearly into the ‘good’ camp (as in: made things right between herself and her remaining associates, cinder in particular, and her true end is known to the audience) and still actively in conflict with the vacuo coalition because Her Cause is just. and that’s the kind of complexity rwby is interested in.

[compacflt]

YOU'RE ALIVE??? - my reaction upon seeing your most recent reblog

Anyway, your fic and blog single-handedly kickstarted my U.S. military history obsession <3

im alive!!!! yeah I've been away for a while. it, ah... has not been a grrrreat time to be a military historian or a Big Fan of military propaganda pieces like Top Gun for the last year or so...

lmfao I just saw that the second trump admin plans to haul up all the commanders in charge of the Afghanistan withdrawal (which HE negotiated btw) in front of congress with the plan to charge them all with TREASON per the UCMJ (good fucking luck dude)

but um in my timeline... that includes navy secretary 2021-2022 tom iceman kazansky, bro... so in case you're wondering what these characters are up to in the present day apparently the answer is "getting investigated for treason." sorry to bring down the mood. my happy ending's a little sour now.

mostly I've been insanely busy. I graduate university in may & have to have a journalism capstone, an English research thesis (my paper on military commanding officers in fiction inspired by my top gun fics tbh) and a creative writing capstone (novel) done by march. plus job applications, work for the place where im currently freelancing, apartment hunting... so im a wee bit crunched lately.

some minor updates for anyone who still cares: I am, extremely slowly, still editing WWGATTAI & the other stories. I've finished a complete overhaul of the Carole-dies chapter, chapter 7, but have yet to post it because I'd like to sync a logistical change in the story across the other pieces. and I'm mostly done with a COMPLETE overhaul of chapter 6 (aka "the nineties" chapter where ice & mav move in together & build their family) which goes into much more detail about how... emotionally and logistically... they could pull that off. + a lot more baseball stuff + the Clinton sex scandal. which leaves just chapter 10 left to do. ugh, my least favorite, which is why im putting it off... and then debriefing etc. which won't take as long because I don't honestly care about debriefing at all and I just have very minor changes to make to it. slider doesn't need editing and idgaf about the other pieces.

once I finish with the edits, which will happen eventually I swear because more than anything I just want to hold the updated edited final thing in my hands the way I did with the first draft, I'll upload my pdf (with meta analysis and notes that go back to mid-2022) for u guys to do with as you wish

also for the m:i doubleheaders I am planning on editing my m:i fic pre-m:i8 next year and pending ilsa life status will write much much more

[thatsbelievable]

[metamatar]

pretty depressing that sheikh mujibur rahman statues and his house (also a museum) got burned down but his daughter weaponised his legacy and these were inevitable consequences. to those who don't know him, he was the pivotal figure in the bangladeshi war of independence in 1971.

[tonyglowheart]

(Thousand Autumns spoilers ahead)

SCREAAMMMS... Yan Wushi challenging Hulugu to take the pressure off Shen Qiao at what promises to be great personal cost??? y'all are fuckin insane, this IS peak romance !! from a guy like Yan Wushi this might as well be the equivalent of a loud explicit public declaration of love to the whole jianghu... sorry some of yall apparently just can't stand his toxic yuri swag !

[transsexual-menace]

lol it is increasingly obvious how zionist diaspora jews are so self-hating about being part of the diaspora. we have a rich history of judaism without the state of israel and you want to throw that away for a state that is committing genocide in your name

[mswyrr]

@dizzycat2000​

Learning this just made my heart do a happy flip! 😂I love it so much. A married couple making art together that a lot of different people can enjoy. That’s gorgeous.

For anyone who’s curious, there’s an article about the married chefs and their love story here:

To hear them say it, they’re always busy and always running around, but in conversation, they’re both quite laidback. They also seem very down-to-earth. They complete each other’s sentences, and sometimes answer in unison. They look at each other lovingly, and listen intently when the other person speaks. They think highly of each other. They may be from different backgrounds but have clearly found their common ground in food.  

I could see Syd and Carmy being so happy living a life like that. And I could see, in a few years, someone writing an article like that in-storyverse about the married chefs who run The Bear 💖

[thirddoctor]

as a long time hater of Donna's original ending I'm feeling so vindicated right now

[visenyaism]

🎁aegon ii

2 aegon 2 targaryen💥

[wonder-worker]

"Anne Stanhope was a devoted and loyal wife and mother. She was also a politician, a committed religious reformer, and a survivor of Tudor intrigue. It was her actions and her connections at court that saved the Seymour family from ruin throughout the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Her activities as a patroness of religious literature distinguished her from many of her contemporaries. Anne also worked with both of her husbands – but with Edward Seymour in particular – to form influential political partnerships. [...] The Duke and Duchess of Somerset’s struggle with Thomas Seymour in the late 1540s, however, set the groundwork for Anne’s unfortunate historical image. Almost immediately, writers and historians slandered her reputation. She became a stereotypical “bad wife” – proud, nagging, vengeful. By looking beyond this image, however, scholars may now view Anne Stanhope’s story in a more balanced light."

-Caroline Elizabeth Armbruster, '"A woman for many imperfections intolerable": Anne Stanhope, the Seymour family, and the Tudor court', (MA thesis, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2013)

[jomiddlemarch]

While You Were Sleeping

Chapter 4

Some people, primarily Muggles, count sheep when they have trouble falling asleep.

Wizards preferred Puffskeins or occasionally crups. Molly Weasley had once admitted she counted crups in Weasley sweaters, after George had spiked her tea with something she made him pull from the store shelves.

(Hermione did not believe anyone who said they counted dragons other than Hagrid, who listed them off by their forenames.)

Hermione preferred facts.

Fact: the Eguzkiko continued to think she and Draco were a married couple.

Fact: Draco was fluent in at least five languages.

Fact: Draco wore a subtle cologne that smelled like Hermione imagined the Silk Road would, minus the camels.

(Unconfirmed fact: this was exactly what Amortentia now smelled like to Hermione, forget cut grass and parchment.)

Fact: Hermione’s facts were usually about statistics, geopolitical historical alliances, and characters in Dickens’ novels because her father had loved those dearly but since the start of this mission, her facts had increasingly, exclusively become All About Draco.

Fact: Hermione appeared to have Feelings for sodding brilliant, widely accomplished and knicker-incineratingly fit Draco Black Malfoy, Esq., Feelings she felt ill-equipped to express.

Fact: She felt no more drowsy now than when she’d extinguished the reading lamp and turned on her side to avoid trying to make out his profile or the exquisite line of his neck against the pillowcase.

Fac—THUMP.

“What was that?” she exclaimed.

“I don’t—” Draco began.

THUMP. Thump. thump.

“What the bloody fuck?!” Draco said, sitting bolt upright. There was a yelping quality to his cry, that couldn’t be denied, though his voice was still pitched low enough that no one would have called it a shriek. Also, being bolt upright showed his broad shoulders to notable advantage (who knew pyjamas could be so impeccably tailored?)

In any case, Hermione had that covered, the shriek-department that is. She did manage to keep it to one solitary shriek that she choked back at the end, right at the moment when Draco reached over and grabbed her upper arms. She only had a split second to evaluate the grabbing, but it was definitely from the making-sure-you’re-real and I’ve-got-you-don’t-worry categories, not the get-a-hold-of-yourself-witch or I’m-about-to-shake-you-silly-for-being-a-silly-bint. Also, his hands were big and warm and transiently made her feel very much cherished and she was glad she’d tied back her hair so he didn’t accidentally pull any of it, though the prospect of his hands gently running through her curls was dreadfully appealing.

When she wasn’t devoting her not inconsiderable brain-power towards the mental recitation of facts, she was capable of noticing quite a bit.

“Are you all right?” he asked. With the grabbing, he’d closed the distance between them and they were close enough she could see the hints of green and blue in his grey eyes, the faint shadow of his beard, a darker shade than his hair. There was a small scar near his left temple and she wondered at what curse had caught him there, how badly he’d been injured to leave such a mark impervious to the Healers at St. Mungo’s. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, are you?” she said. Her heart was still beating very fast, but it had more to do with Draco than the earlier noise.

“Yes,” he said. He loosened his grasp on her and let his hands drop, but they still rested on her forearms, lightly enough she could shrug him off. She did not.

“What was that?” she said when the moment had started to grow too intense, the hollow at the base of his throat too tempting.

“I don’t know,” he said. “At home, I’d guess it might be an old house settling for the night or a storm brewing, but here—”

“Could it be something magic?” she said. She swallowed, then said what she’d first thought, when all she had felt was terror, when she’d wanted to call out his name. “Don’t laugh at me—”

“I won’t,” he said.

“A monster. Under the bed. I know it sounds foolish,” she said.

Hermione was absolutely certain that every single one of her acquaintances, with the sole exception of Luna Lovegood, would agree it sounded foolish. And even Luna was likely to give her reassuring smile and tell her that kidakomori were far fonder of people than people ever gave them credit for and Hermione would have to pretend that she was aware of kidakomori and their undeservedly dubious reputation.

“It doesn’t sound foolish. Not to me,” Draco said. 

“What?”

“I didn’t want to say it first, because I agree it makes me sound unhinged, but I also thought of a monster under the bed,” he replied.

“You were supposed to talk sense to me. To tell me I was overreacting,” Hermione said.

“Are you even capable of overreacting?” Draco countered. “I realize I am tacitly validating your prior assault on me—”

“We were children! And you were beastly,” Hermione said.

“And I deserved it,” he said.

“Well, no one deserves to be hit,” Hermione said.

“I understand the progressive Muggle approach to childhood discipline and in general, I don’t disagree but in that particular situation, I must say I did. And not only because I was making a point.” He smiled at her and she liked it far too much.

“Do you really think there’s a monster under our bed?” she said, trying not to whisper and failing. 

“You said our bed,” Draco replied.

“That’s what you’re choosing to focus on? Not the monster part? And the fact that we have no wands and even wandless magic is verboten in here, even assuming either of us knew what spell to cast for a monster under the bed,” she ranted. Her exposure to Parseltongue had been so negative (whose wasn’t?) she kept herself from hissing, but it was a close call. Draco moved his right hand from her forearm to her wrist and then laced his fingers through hers. It would have been the sexiest move she could remember any man making except for the possible monster beneath them.

“Inanis belua, but you have to put the emphasis on the bel and let the final a drift. Like leviosa,” Draco said.

“Inanis belua,” she repeated.

“Perfect,” he said. “You’ve always had an ear for incantation.”

“How did you learn it?” Hermione asked. It seemed he wasn’t going to make her face the implications of our bed. At least not at the moment.

“Narcissa,” Draco said, again referring to his mother by her first name. Hermione almost wished for another round of eerie thumps to distract them both from the ticking bomb that was his relationship with his mother. “She coddled me, as much as she could—the Malfoy heir was expected to be superior in all regards, but the Blacks tend to be high-strung, overly sensitive. It was a secret, that she taught me the spell. I wasn’t to tell my father.”

“I don’t think it’s coddling to make your little boy feel safe,” Hermione said, hoping she’d picked the least inflammatory aspect of what he’d shared. The less she said about Lucius Malfoy the better. Even after all these years, she wasn’t sure she could talk about him without venom and however Draco felt, the man was still his father, albeit immured in Azkaban .

“Perhaps,” Draco said.

“I suppose you think it’s horribly middle-class of me. Or Muggle,” she said.

“I think you were raised by kinder people than I was,” he said. Hermione thought of the estrangement that existed between her and her parents and also how it had been as the Grangers’ little girl, the plush calico kitten that had been tucked with her under her covers, the bedtime stories, the trips to the library with a trolley to bring home her latest acquisitions. When she thought of them, they were still Mum and Dad.

“It was Bellatrix who taught her the spell,” Draco said, watching her face. His own eyebrows were drawn together, a serious expression similar to one he wore when wrangling with a particularly thorny bit of medieval Eguzkikan legislation.

“I take it you’re of the confront your fear persuasion,” Hermione said. “Or is this some kind of weirdly roundabout apology Or a Pureblood thing? If it’s a Pureblood thing, you’ll have to give me some context, like whether it’s all the Sacred Twenty-Eight or just the Blacks. It doesn’t feel authentically Malfoy.”

“I’m not sure what it is,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand, still hanging onto her right with his own. “I thought, we’re talking about monsters, from our past, we’ve never spoken about what happened with Bellatrix. We’re sleeping together every night, it seemed odd not to address it but perhaps that was better—"

“It wasn’t better. But this isn’t necessary,” she said.

“I think it is,” Draco replied. “Necessary, but not better. She’s so hard to talk about and no one wants to, beyond cursing her, and I understand, but to not talk about her, it’s as stupid to me as blasting Andromeda off the tapestry. And I’ve never told you how terribly sorry I am that I couldn’t figure out some other way to help you, when she was hurting you. I don’t know what I could have done but that’s not enough, Hermione. It never was and now—”

Draco broke off and Hermione found herself raising her left hand to cup his cheek, stroking her thumb across his cheekbone. It went on far to long for him to mistake is for only gentleness.

“D’you know, I think we’ve had enough of monsters,” she said. “Only I wonder—”

“What?” he said.

“There’s been no more noise. Might we have done wandless magic with that spell of yours, banished the bedframe’s resident horror to parts unknown? And if we did, will the Eguzkiko be deeply offended and break off diplomatic relations?” Hermione asked.

“I won’t tell,” Draco said. “Wandless is near-impossible to trace and tandem wandless hasn’t been recorded. Or regulated in any magical region. I think we’re safe.”

*

Fact: Draco’s eyes weren’t only grey.

Fact: Draco had been a little boy afraid of monsters.

Fact: Hermione wanted to fall asleep holding Draco Black Malfoy’s hand. And he let her.

[not-poignant]

Daily excerpt from today's writing, chapter 14 of Underline the Blue:

‘Nate, it hurts when you use suicide like an ultimatum, without giving me a chance to talk to you first,’ Janusz said, his voice surprisingly stern. Nate hated that tone. He buried his face in Janusz’ shoulder, and whined when fingers stroked his hair. He didn’t deserve all this comfort, did he? He didn’t deserve any of it. ‘But you’re hurting so, so badly. We’re not going to place you with another alpha until you decide you’re ready. If you don’t decide you’re ready, we’ll figure something out. In the meantime, you’re going to live here with me, and share your heats with me so you don’t get hurt. Okay?’ ‘But I cost money. Christian won’t pay forever. I bet he stops now. He’ll stop. He doesn’t- He has someone else.’ ‘Shhh, Nate. Listen to me. Hillview costs so much so we can put funds aside to support omegas like you who need a place to live, and space to recover. You can stay here for as long as you need to. We’ve got your back, Nate. It might not be what you’re used to, and you might think we’re too nice, but don’t you feel like you might need something that’s nice for a little while?’ Nate wiped his face on Janusz’ shirt even though he was crying all over again. ‘Let it out, sweetheart,’ Janusz crooned. ‘No one’s going to yell at you for having feelings here. Especially about this. And later you’ll have a nap, and then we’ll make something nice to eat, okay? Do you want to help me?’ ‘Can I?’ Nate said, looking up, his words mangled by his own wrecked voice. ‘Yeah,’ Janusz said, with a tired smile. ‘Yeah, baby. Fuck all the protocol, you can help me.’

[moonshynecybin]

Ooooohhhhh do tell me how much marcs parents would hate the rosquez suituation

i mean. marc didnt throw away those valentino model bikes.