#also my sibling in sin. most authors out there ARE full grown adults with children.

[cygnus-art]

Oooh. Screenshot OP. Are you sure about including Dante's Heavenly Comedy in the High Classics.

The Divine Comedy (at least, the Comedy in its time) is very much comparable to modern day fic because people like you see "high" art (existing IPs) as being "above" the "common folk" (the audience and fandom) who are unworthy of even talking about fanfic and IPs in the same sentence.

Plus there's plenty of instances on tumblr where people go "You'd think [quote] is from a classical poem but no, it's from a [insert ship/fandom] fanfic" nowdays, and I can't help but draw a parallel to the people that once saw the merit in Dante's work, when all the "elevated folk" saw it as nothing. So.

[strangerthanfiction]

and it's wrong, wrong, wrong            (but we'll do it anyway 'cos we love a bit of trouble)

𝖖 𝖚 𝖔 𝖙 𝖊 𝖘

“i don’t want to be just a nothing, a sick blank, withdrawal into myself forever. i just want something, beside the emptiness i’ve carried around in me all my life.” –– allen ginsburg

“a man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it into the river                but then he’s still left    with the river. a man takes his sadness and throws it away                                            but then he’s still left with his hands.” –– richard siken

"i was not a lovable child, and i'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.” –– gillian flynn

“you will always be fond of me. i represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” –– oscar wilde

“power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” –– george orwell

𝖇 𝖆 𝖘 𝖎 𝖈

NAME: Rabastan Edric Lestrange NICKNAMES: “Rab” by most, “Bash” by those who know him best, “Eddy” by his grandparents AGE: Twenty-six BIRTHDAY: April 13th, 1954 GENDER: Male, cisgender PRONOUNS: He/him/his

𝖋 𝖆 𝖒 𝖎 𝖑 𝖞

MOTHER: Sabine Lestrange (nee Avery) (52) FATHER: Gaspard Lestrange (48) SIBLINGS: Rodolphus Lestrange, Bellatrix Lestrange (sister-in-law), Narcissa Lestrange (sister-in-law), Lucius Malfoy (brother-in-law), Andromeda Tonks (sister-in-law)

𝖕 𝖍 𝖞 𝖘 𝖎 𝖈 𝖆 𝖑 𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖇𝖚𝖙𝖊𝖘

FACE CLAIM: Penn Badgley BUILD: Fit, muscular, and clearly works at maintaining it. Wishes he was taller always. HAIR: Longer than it should be, according to his mother, growing out of the buzz cut he got in November, thick and wavy. He’s also sporting stubble that’s quickly turning into a beard. HAIR COLOR: Dark brown, almost black EYE COLOR: Hazel on a normal day, amber on a sunny day, murky brown on a cloudy day SKIN COLOR: Pale, thin and translucent, like parchment. Anyone can see when he’s hungover or had a shitty night of sleep because his eyes look hollow and the skin underneath it looks almost purple. DOMINANT HAND: Right ANOMALIES:

TATTOOS: The Dark Mark on the inside of his right arm, a sketch of the sculpture of Laocoon and His Sons sketched out from the top of his left rib cage to his hip, the first lines of the Iliad on his collar bone, stretching from his left shoulder to his right shoulder, a stick and poke of a muggle ghost on the inside of his ankle, and, perhaps his favorite of them all, the word “TERROR” on the inside of his bottom lip. He charmed it so that, any time he flips his bottom lip out at the world to show the tattoo, the letters pop out in a magical version of a jump scare.

SCARS: His elbows and knees are shredded up from years of Quidditch and not following proper rules when it comes to healing potions. He’s got the slightest scar in his left eyebrow from falling off his broom when he was nine. Plus, he’s got the scrapes and scars of a fighter, a soldier, and he wears his ragged skin with the brashness and boldness of someone unafraid of battle.

SCENT: Tobacco, crisp linen, and, if he’s getting all dolled up, he puts just the tiniest dab of amortentia at his throat, because, well, “then I always smell good.” ACCENT: RP because his mother wouldn’t have her children sounding like scoundrels. But his Northern accent slips out every now and again when he’s particularly hammered. ALLERGIES: Bees. DISORDERS: Rapidly developing alcoholism. Slowly developing PTSD. FASHION: Punk but make it pureblood. Lots of silver rings with huge gemstones inset or crests carved into the metal. Amazing shoes always – be it chunky black combat boots, beautiful leather loafers, or the occasional (slightly) healed Chelsea boot. Skinny jeans and slouchy hoodies on his days alone in Manchester. Pressed shirts rolled up to the elbows and perfectly fitted trousers on his days at Lestrange Manor. His favorite robes are black velvet, with a gold clasp across the chest in the shape of a skull. And, of course, his clubbing outfits. Leather, mesh, crop tops (yes, Rab wears crop tops, and no, none of you will ever see it because he’s CAREFUL heh), muscle tanks, and the odd denim shorterall (with nothing underneath) moment. NERVOUS TICS: He used to bite his fingernails as a kid, but the nannies spanked that out of him. His oral fixation has been replaced with cigarettes – any slight bit of tension, and he’s lighting up. QUIRKS: He doesn’t know how to sit normally in a chair because he’s gay.

𝖑 𝖎 𝖋 𝖊 𝖘 𝖙 𝖞 𝖑 𝖊

RESIDES: Lestrange Manor 75% of the time. His own flat in Manchester 25% of the time. BORN: In France, while his parents were on holiday. He wasn’t supposed to be due for another three weeks, but his mother’s water broke while she was on the beach, and Rabastan was born five hours later. RAISED: In Yorkshire, with every other summer abroad (France most years, but sometimes Italy or Spain, and one very special year, Norway), until he went to Hogwarts. PETS: Gunther, a black Great Dane, who lives at Lestrange Manor, and technically is both his and Rodolphus’ – their mother got the dog for them as a means to help them bond, but really, Gunther is Rabastan’s and only gets attention from Rodolphus when their mother is around, so as not to offend her. And, in Rabastan’s eyes, but probably not in the eyes of other, more progressive individuals, Iphigenia, the Lestrange family house elf.

CAREER: Spending the Lestrange fortune. Being a Death Eater. EXPERIENCE: He’s been doing it his whole life. Nine years. Since his final year at Hogwarts. EMPLOYER: Voldemort.

POLITICAL AFFILIATION: The Death Eaters / Pureblood values. BELIEFS: Purebloods created this world, and now it’s their time to defend it. The Dark Lord is the only one capable of leading them to victory, and the purpose of men like Rabastan is to give him the aid he needs, no matter the personal cost. MISDEMEANORS: Truancy, defacing Hogwarts property, breaking curfew, bullying, tardiness, breaking dress code, and infinite more. He was never quiet about his rebellions, always laughing in the face of authority. And, now that he’s no longer at school, there’s nothing he can’t buy himself out of. FELONIES: Well. He’s killed more than a few people and gotten away with it, so. You do the math from there. DRUGS: Rabastan likes muggle drugs a little too much. Cocaine, particularly. He’s also been known to dabble in expensive, experimental potions from an alchemist the Lestranges have been using to cure their every ail and malady since Rabastan was a boy. SMOKES: Religiously. He started because every young boy wants to be just like their father at one point or another, and then he just never stopped. ALCOHOL: Rabastan’s rarely without a drink in his hand. It’s a glass of brandy as soon as he comes home, flask of whisky constantly at his hip, a Bloody Mary and some pepper up potion to eliminate his hangover first thing when he wakes up. It’s not a problem, he can stop at any point, or so he says. He learned how to be a functional alcoholic from all of the men he observed around him at a young age, and he’s found a very specific line – enough to feel gently numb, to feel invincible, but not so much that he’s incapacitated. And more and more, in recent months, especially since the disappearance of his brother, has he crossed that line. He’ll go through spurts of detoxing, of getting painfully sober for a few days, and then, he’ll be so overwhelmed by the world around him, by how loud it is, by how unforgiving, by how painful it can be, and then he’s right back where he was, with a bottle in one hand and a bump on the back of the other. DIET: Rabastan eats extremely well. Mostly vegetarian, except for fish, lots of legumes and greens, lots of fiber, etc. He knows how much crap he puts into his body, and while he doesn’t particularly care about the fact that he’s shortening his life, he does care about what it does to his physique. And, of course, the trade off is never going to be equal, but he does try to eat as cleanly as he can.

LANGUAGES: English, French, German, and self-taught Latin

PHOBIAS: If you asked him, he’d say he has none. And that’s mostly true. But there isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn’t think about getting outed to his family and then being banished by the Lestranges for his deviant behavior, and there isn’t a day that goes by where the very thought is enough to turn his blood to ice. HOBBIES: Drinking, fighting, fucking. When he’s not indulging his vices, he’s actually quite a scholar – he’s read through every book in his father’s study twice, and he taught himself Latin when he was thirteen. He also loves flying and still takes to a broomstick when he needs to clear his head. He’s also surprisingly adept at tending to plants (he effortlessly got O’s in Herbology his whole time at Hogwarts), and he’s got a lovely, melodic voice.  TRAITS: { + }: Quick-thinking, fierce, loyal, playful { - }: Reckless, vulgar, lazy, submissive

𝖋 𝖆 𝖛 𝖔 𝖗 𝖎 𝖙 𝖊 𝖘

LOCATION: Spiny Serpent, specifically the secret fight club in the basement. It’s his favorite place in the world, the one place where he actually feels alive and free. He’ll heal all of his visible injuries with magic, but sometimes, he’ll leave a bruised rib or a tweaked knee because the pain of it reminds him that he’s alive, he’s present, he’s real. SPORTS TEAM: Wimbourne Wasps (and United ever since he started living in Manchester, but he’d rather be caught dead than admit to following the muggle Premiere league) GAME: Quidditch and he’s trying to start his own Swivenhodge league MUSIC: Much to his mother’s distaste, he’s an avid Hobgoblins fan, and his father begrudgingly took both his boys to meet Stubby when they were fifteen and eighteen respectively. Rab would never admit to listening to Celestina Warbeck, but after he’s had a few, he’s been known to do his own rendition of, “A Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love” MOVIES: Too muggle. Absolutely not. (But he’d fucking love ALIEN if he knew it existed) FOOD: Venison, so rare it’s still bloody BEVERAGE: Double whisky on the rocks COLOR: Gold

𝖒 𝖆 𝖌 𝖎 𝖈

ALUMNI HOUSE: Slytherin WAND (length, flexibility, wood, & core): 13 inches, Holly, Dragon Heart String, Brittle AMORTENTIA: Pine trees, cigar smoke, candied ginger, and the unmistakable musk of all the men he’s ever fucked (oops) PATRONUS: A Deerhound BOGGART: A blue ticket. Even though he’s no expert in muggle history, he spends enough time in queer muggle spaces to know what they are, and the first time he found out about that, the first time someone told him about dishonorable discharge because of something so seemingly trivial, it made his blood turn to ice. He couldn’t shake the image, the idea of it, and to this day, he avoids boggarts at all costs because he knows it’ll give away his secret.

𝖈 𝖍 𝖆 𝖗 𝖆 𝖈 𝖙 𝖊 𝖗

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Neutral MBTI: ENFP MBTI ROLE: The Campaigner ENNEAGRAM: Type 6 ENNEAGRAM ROLE: The Loyalist / the Skeptic TEMPERAMENT: Sanguine WESTERN ZODIAC: Aries CHINESE ZODIAC: Horse PRIMAL SIGN: Hammerhead Shark TAROT CARD: The Devil TV TROPES: Beard of Sorrow, Millionaire Playboy, Black Shirt, Draco in Leather Pants, Lovable Rogue, Punch-clock Villain SONGS:

1. balaclava by the arctic monkeys 2. bury a friend by billie eilish 3. to be so lonely by harry styles 4. make up your mind by florence & the machine 5. winter of our youth by bastille 6. broken crown by mumford & sons 7. i’m still standing by elton john 8. people by the 1975 9. ball and a biscuit by the white stripes 10. let’s have a kiki by scissor sisters (am i joking? idk)

IDEOLOGIES:

Adores birthdays and refuses to let people get away with not celebrating them. He loves any excuse to drink and party, and he knows he gives a mean toast, so people might as well fucking celebrate so he can put his skills on display. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Despite the contradictory nature of this, he doesn’t hate all members of the Order / all blood traitors on principle. He understands that they’re just trying to defend their place in the universe, and frankly, he respects the survival instincts he’s seeing play out. Of course, he knows his side is going to win – that’s inevitable. But it’s still admirable to see them all go down with such a valiant fight.

Hates cats. Period, full stop.

Refuses to go to St. Mungo’s, or any hospital for that matter. His uncle on his maternal side went there for a minor illness and came out in a box. Rabastan was seven, and his tiny brain came to the conclusion that the hospital was what did in his uncle, not his illness. And now, Rab knows how illogical it is, but he’d rather pay the family healer to come take a look at him than go to the doctor.

Would rather stand on public transportation than sit next to a stranger because he loves his own personal space just a little too much

As much as he does spend his family’s money a little too freely, no one can ever accuse Rab of hoarding his wealth. He always buys a round for everyone in the bar, picks up the check without being asked, buys things for his friends that they want but don’t need, lets people crash at Lestrange Manor whenever they need to. He’s not miserly in the slightest, not like Rodolphus.

Never makes a crucial decision without consulting a seer first. His mother taught him the habit.

Always flips one cigarette in the pack when he buys a new one.

No matter what time he wakes up, breakfast food has to be the first food he eats.

[automatismoateo]

The other day I argued with my mom when she claimed that the acceptance of LGBT people is leading to the decay of society and the acceptance of pedophilia. (This is a stupidly long angst-addled rant). via /r/atheism

Submitted July 22, 2018 at 05:54AM by GemRocking (Via reddit https://ift.tt/2LDN1Rl) The other day I argued with my mom when she claimed that the acceptance of LGBT people is leading to the decay of society and the acceptance of pedophilia. (This is a stupidly long angst-addled rant).

I wasn’t going to write this post; I try to be self-sufficient and not get easily “triggered,” but some things just make me frustrated, angry, anxious, and sad. I had this conversation with my mom the other day and it’s been bugging me ever since, and I want to vent here where people are actually fucking sane. I’ll try not to be long-winded and just recollect the main things that happened.

Important context Mom is a mental health professional. So she won’t change her mind on anything because 1) the Word of Gawd says 2) she knows what she’s talking about, fuck you.

Another thing is that I myself have a preference for the same sex. I know that every third kid in my generation does, or says they do. I have a lot of shame over it because I’ve been taught that LGBT people are stupid, confused, hell-bound perverts.

My mom actually knows about my same-sex attractions, and at one point I’d told her about some of my religious unbelief—namely that I questioned the existence of God and divinity of the Bible. But I’ve started lying to her in recent months because of how tense and painful our relationship got, and because I’m in a Christian academic program that requires really rigorous statements of faith and I don’t want my parents to know how good of a liar I am.

TL;DR Mom mentioned a TED talk she’d recently seen about how pedophilic relationships should be accepted and embraced by society. She claimed that we were going down a dangerous path now that LGBT stuff is legal and widely accepted. Argument ensued.

Disclaimer I know I’m ranting about my mom here, and I do feel kind of bad about that. I’m going to do my best to be respectful to her (not necessarily respectful towards her beliefs or the way she expresses them). I don’t want to sound condescending, and she told me repeatedly the other day that I was being puffed-up and acting like I knew everything. As a teen, I know that I’m prone to be big-headed and I just don’t want to come off that way. Also bear in mind that this is completely from my own perspective, so it’s bound to be very biased, and I haven’t processed this conversation with anyone else.

Memory

Mom mentioned a TED talk she’d recently seen about how pedophilic relationships should be accepted and embraced by society. She claimed that we were going down a dangerous path now that LGBT stuff is legal and widely accepted. I challenged this idea (don’t remember what I said, just that I questioned if embracing homosexuality leads to pedophilia).

The conversation kind of went in circles. Here’s something you need to know about religious people: they don’t see things distinctly. Everything that’s a sin is just “degeneracy;” it’s all one and the same, it all ties into itself. No distinctions can be made. She wouldn’t accept my argument that distinct moral differences can be drawn between homosexuality and pedophilia based off of how it affects the parties involved, i.e. that in pedophilia, one of the parties is always at a disadvantage and is objectively damaged.

My head’s so full of the shit that went down in this conversation that I think the best way to organize what happened next is a bullet list; whenever I’m trying to recreate something Mom actually said, I’ll italicize it.

When I tried to say that embracing LGBT stuff won’t lead to pedophilia because there are distinct moral differences between homosexuality and pedophilia, she scoffed and said that they’re the same: they’re both sexual sin and perversion. Then she said that it’s a slippery slope, because she’s been around for so many years. “When I was a kid, homosexuality was heard of, but there were hardly any homosexuals. Now 75% of the population is confused. We’ve embraced all kinds of disgusting things.”

“Now if you’re a man that thinks you’re a woman, a woman that thinks you’re a man, a man that wants to wear silky women’s underwear, you can march around in the street and do it! You can have a whole parade to celebrate it and do it in the town square!”

“Now that people think that we just ‘love who we love,’ they’ll say that people are born pedophiles and they deserve ‘equal rights.’ Homosexuality used to be illegal, and now it’s all legal and encouraged.”

“And all this horrible pornography didn’t exist when I was a kid. The acceptance of this is leading to more and more depravity.” When I asked if she had any evidence that pornography leads to pedophilia, she said, “There’s evidence that it leads to all kinds of shit!” I asked if there was evidence that it leads to anything specific, and instead of directly addressing the point, she got really angry and threw out this complete red herring: “You want me to say specific things in front of your brother?? You want me to? There’s evidence that it leads to sex with siblings, sex with animals, sex with objects, sex with children—everything!”

She claimed that homosexuality should still be classed as “homophilia” in the DSM. I asked her why, asked if it met the criteria for a mental illness, and she came up with some pious Christian bullshit before saying that it causes distress. I asked her for evidence that homosexuality causes distress, and she said, “Are you kidding me? Look at the suicide rate among those people! Yes, they’re miserable.” I asked if the suicide rate is high definitively because they are homosexual, and I got, “Yes!” Case closed, I guess.

I asked if she had any evidence that the acceptance of LGBT stuff is leading to the acceptance of pedophilia, and she staged the following argument: the TED talk was recorded and aired, and thus, people accepted it. I pointed out the flaw in this reasoning, and she said, “It doesn’t matter! It was allowed to happen, and it would have never been allowed before!” I suggested that perhaps the rise of the Internet and the huge number of platforms to publish opinions on could be a factor here, as previously in history, the media has been much more monopolized and such a wide range of ideas might not have been allowed to air. “No, that’s stupid, [Gem]! It wasn’t published because there are more options now, it was published because we’re morally corrupted! You’re being ridiculous.” I hate to admit that this stung a bit, because I thought I had a pretty good point there, even though I’m aware that many other factors effected the press historically.

She pulled up a study on the overlap between homosexual males and pedophilic males, claiming that homosexuality causes pedophilia because of this study, and she mocked me when I questioned whether there could be other causes for this overlap.

She concluded this trainwreck of an argument by saying, “There: I have ‘evidence’ right here for you—the TED talk exists, it was made and recorded and released. I’ve pulled up a study. You have no evidence.”

Conclusion

During this debate, she played the parent/age card a lot. “I’ve been around on this earth and seen how the world has changed; you’re only arguing this because you don’t know a time when the world isn’t so depraved.” She also called me “little girl” at one point; I think she’d said something like “You think you know everything, little girl, but you don’t.” She also said, “I’m really disappointed in you; I thought you’d gotten over this. I’m disappointed that your views on this are so worldly.” I thought I’d kept this discussion really tame—I never questioned it when she cited the Bible as evidence for her arguments, and I let a lot of bullshit slide. She also asked why I was defending homosexuality, even though I danced on eggshells to be sure I wasn’t too pro-gay or whatever. Apparently pointing out that homosexuality and pedophilia are on very different tiers is equal to defending homosexuality.

I guess it hurt my feelings a bit, in one respect, because she knows that I’m same-sex attracted, yet she still goes around saying that LGB people are mentally ill, that homosexuality should be illegal, and that they’re as wicked as pedophiles and murderers. I think maybe she’s trying to shame me into turning straight or something. It’s not like this is the first time she’s said any of this, by the way—she consistently reiterates these views.

I feel like she discredits me unfairly. I feel like I’m a lot more capable of discussing these topics than my authorities allow for. But again, that’s likely teenage angst and Marilyn Manson my idol talking. What pisses me off about a lot of these conversations is that she occasionally speaks brazenly of sexual things that I’m not allowed to reference explicitly because I’m a kid. So I just have to be quiet while she talks and pretend I’m shocked and disgusted by what she’s describing.

And maybe this is also my teen angst and big-headedness talking, but I felt that this discussion was pretty unfair. I know that adults have wisdom that children don’t, but her “I’ve been around longer than you” and “You don’t know anything, little girl” bullshit felt more like a silencing tactic than anything. I know she’s superior to me in most ways because she’s grown up, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t think for myself. That doesn’t mean I have to always go along with her beliefs. It doesn’t mean I can’t form opinions about the way things were in the past or how things have evolved over time just because I wasn’t there to personally experience it—I’d even argue that I might have a better-rounded opinion of past decades than many people who lived through them because I’ve read about them in a more all-encompassing way, while they experienced decades through their own neighborhoods and upbringings.

I’m too fragile for this. Like I said, I try to be thick-skinned, but sometimes these conversations strike me at the wrong time. I ended up in a suicidal spin, I scratched myself up and cried for a good twenty minutes. Sometimes I feel really trapped; this ridiculous homeschooled Christian conservative environment feels so fucking suffocating at times, where I can’t even express a pretty moderate opinion about how homosexuality is morally different than pedophilia without upsetting people. And I know I’ll have to fight tooth and nail to get out of this place. My parents want me to go to a local Christian college and live at home with them until I’m like 20. They want me to marry a man and raise children near to them. They want me to do something God-honoring with my life. But I have to deal with knowing that I’m not who the fuck they think I am, and I can’t live that life; I’ll either have to go through hell to become independent and be myself, or I’ll die. Then I think that none of this is legit; I’m just a whiny, entitled, rich American teenager that doesn’t know how to deal with life or be a decent, productive human being because I’m constantly succumbing to my own angst and throwing pity parties.

I guess I learned my lesson: shut up and agree with my authorities externally, think for myself in secret. Anyway, I apologize for being so wordy, but I had a lot to get off my chest. Thanks for sticking around, if you made it through. Love y’all. Satan curse.