#also sidenote: being european ≠ being white

[southasianpercy]

i don’t understand why ppl view laios as white…isn’t he asian?

[ae-neon]

Still can't sleep,

Sidenote, there is a biker rally happening down the road with music and everything, it's 2am 😭

Anyways, still watching Anne with an E

Outside of putting down the Irish, Southern and Eastern Europeans

Hair colour really is white people's colourism cause why are they seriously getting on Anne for having red hair 😭 all red hair is so pretty

Also they getting on Anne for saying that the teacher and Krissy were having intimate relations as her being a gossip and or something

But not wondering whyyyy she thought that??? Kill that teacher

Edit: I actually have no idea what the time period is so who knows if it's "appropriate" and they'll end up getting together.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Long post warning, because I should use them more often:

I've been kinda buried, typical of me when it comes to the seemingly-biweekly hyperfixation, in the early 2000s Disney animated movies. Namely the pre-CHICKEN LITTLE movie, prior to the studio's switch to a future in CG movies. (With the encore of pair of PRINCESS AND THE FROG and the 2011 WINNIE THE POOH along the way.)

And I noticed, a lot of them, including a few non-Disney animated films from the period, have an almost deliberate "old-fashioned" bent to them. Now, Disney was never a stranger to period pieces when it came to animated features. Outside of the fairy tale and fantasy films set in dream-like worlds, places that exist in irrealities inspired by the real world and their respective source materials, you had more than enough films set in actual identifiable real-world places in past time periods.

For example, before going to straight-up dream worlds, ALICE IN WONDERLAND and PETER PAN from the early 1950s are clearly set in England. The former, Victorian-era England, the latter Edwardian. LADY AND THE TRAMP is somewhere in the Midwest, turn of the 20th century. It's in a state where the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad ran through, for sure, as you can see a logo for it on a train car in the film. (Sidenote/tangent: The direct-to-video sequel, SCAMP'S ADVENTURE, seems to suggest that the town Lady and Tramp live in is actually in New England... But the B&O Railroad does not run through any New England region state. The furthest to the East it goes is New York state. It's possible that the writers saw Jim Dear nailing a Yale flag to the wall in the original movie, and assumed it was set in Connecticut. And the DTV movies are an EU sort-of situation when it comes to these movies.)

So those are three 1950s examples, you also had THE ARISTOCATS being explicitly set in 1910 Paris, THE FOX AND THE HOUND appears to be set down South right around that time. '90s Disney had plenty, too: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, POCAHONTAS, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, MULAN, TARZAN, to name a few. HERCULES goes to ancient Greece and mythology, ALADDIN is set in a fictional Arabian city, that one I feel is more on the dream-world level of - say - SNOW WHITE or LITTLE MERMAID, where the setting/time period isn't quite written out. This is why I don't tie myself in knots trying to determine where and when THE LITTLE MERMAID takes place. It's literally an amalgamation of different European and tropical locations, inspired by a story by a Danish author, and it has a Caribbean crab in it.

But no, early 2000s Disney is more specific than not! DINOSAUR is obvious, THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE is set in ancient South America (its Incan Empire setting originally had much more bearing on the story back when it was KINGDOM OF THE SUN, the movie that had gotten thrown out that this replaced), ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE takes place in 1914 - starting in Washington D.C. and then largely being set below the Earth thereafter, LILO & STITCH is present-day Hawaii, BROTHER BEAR is a post-ice age Pacific Northwest, and HOME ON THE RANGE is clearly set in Malaysia in 2177 A.D.

All joking aside, it's almost a string of movies like that... Except TREASURE PLANET, which is set in a fictional galaxy, full of fictional planets, and no sign of Earth, much like the STAR WARS universe. Yet, TREASURE PLANET's cosmic setting is 1800s pirates/high seas aesthetic meets spaceships and high-tech. After all, it *is* Robert Louis Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND, a story dating back to 1881 as a serialized adventure before it was made into a complete novel two years later. Just take out 1800s Europe.

Now, at one point, the 2004 release of HOME ON THE RANGE was going to be followed by a movie called A FEW GOOD GHOSTS, which was once known as MY PEOPLES. This project went through several title changes over time... A 2D/CG hybrid that was a magical Appalachian love story involving ghosts that was to be set in the 1940s. The movie would’ve probably been released in the summer of 2005 if all had gone well, as it was to go full-steam ahead by the time of its cancellation in November 2003. By that point in time, Disney execs had long made up their minds about 2D animation, and because this was to be made by the Florida unit… Well, BROTHER BEAR didn’t meet expectations at the box office out of the gate… No more Florida unit, no GOOD GHOSTS…

What a lot of these movies have in common is that they, as mentioned earlier, are seemingly much more old-school than the animated movies of the '90s *and* their CGI contemporaries.

The majority of these movies were released during the years when a new CGI movie was - 99% of the time - pretty much an audience hit by default (SHARK TALE and CHICKEN LITTLE individually outgrossed LILO & STITCH, for example), and that definitely hurt the perception of hand-drawn 2D animated feature films. It's been written over and over, so much theorizing as to why the majority of these movies failed to connect with audiences the way the newest Pixar or DreamWorks CGI film did... And sometimes, I look at some of this cluster of movies and I can only notice how weirdly out-of-time they are… Either too late to the party, or there well before it's even planned. Like, years in advance.

As such, most of these movies became cult favorites of the few people who did see them back when they first came out or when they debuted on home video. These fans are all in their 20s now, at the highest. Yesterday's flops, today's "what? This movie SLAPS! How did it lose money at the box office?”

The majority of the CGI movies made in the late '90s/early '00s are thoroughly modern in some way or another. If it's not the setting, then it's the attitude. SHREK, for example, is set in a mishmash ye olden dayes fairy tales & nursery rhymes Europe (the first PUSS IN BOOTS movie further confirms this, being explicitly set in Spain), but everything else about it is as late '90s/early '00s as you can get. ICE AGE… Literally in the title, yet the comedy and writing rings more Looney Tunes and modern humor. I was turning 10 when ICE AGE came out, so I was aware of what the sorta-kinda general attitude was circa early 2002. The humor in the movie matched that; it was cool for an adult in their 20s to check out the talking prehistoric animals cartoon and quote it.

Pixar is kind of out of the question, well, this particular early run of Pixar movies. The TOY STORY movies, A BUG'S LIFE, and FINDING NEMO all clearly take place in the present. Timeless present-day settings, where it's modern enough but not too much to date the movie in question. (How 'bout that line in BUG'S LIFE about "the twig of '93"?) MONSTERS, INC. is set in a fantasy world, but that too is modern day, what with the cars and technology and every other detail. Boo doesn't walk in out a 1930s human world, haha.

When it comes to pre-2005/06 Pixar, the one exception in this criteria is THE INCREDIBLES, which is set in a retro-futuristic 1960s whose technological advances are informed by the presence of superheroes in that world. And yet, it's not a movie that feels out of time, old-timey, dated. It uses the '60s influences to enhance, rather than trap the storytelling. It’s also curiously not set in any specific American location - much like TOY STORY 1 & 2, and A BUG’S LIFE. In comic book tradition, it’s set in the fictional Municiberg, which I can only surmise is somewhere on the West Coast. CARS and RATATOUILLE and UP, afterwards, would go back to present-day. WALL-E, the far future. BRAVE, in 2012, would be Pixar's first real period piece, a fantasized medieval fairy tale Scotland. That was their 13th feature…

And yet, there’s an air of nostalgia for a past decade in pretty much the majority of these earlier Pixar films… Which is a deep dive for another day, and others have already looked at that sort of thing. But, a lot of the movies made by the TOY STORY alumni (John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich) in particular are very much rooted in the directors’ late ‘50s/early ‘60s upbringings… But not in a way that renders them "corny". At least, to audiences circa 2002, that is.

The 2000s, in general, were a much different time anyways. And it just wasn't the appropriate era to release a small cluster of old-timey movies. Made in what was seemingly perceived as an old and outdated medium, when 3D environments and characters were WOWING people left and right. I can see why most audiences just didn't take too well to a Jules Verne-style animated adventure that was probably - with its PG rating - too silly for anyone over the age of 10 looking for an action movie. Nor a very classic adventure movie-style space epic. Nor a cartoon Western that literally *looked* like a lost vintage Disney cowboy cartoon a la the 'Pecos Bill' segment of MELODY TIME and EVERY COWBOY NEEDS A HORSE. Nor a familiar wilderness adventure movie that recalled '90s "new age" vibes. If the Appalachian folk musical had come out when intended, I suspect it too would've been rejected for similar reasons.

It's no surprise that LILO & STITCH, set in the modern day and not at all old-fashioned like that, was the lone box office success here and - for a brief while - a major phenomenon once it was on video. THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE is snappy and modern and energetic, but that was impacted by its troubled production and the studio just dumping it. Its ludicrous legs at the box office and later video sales would prove that, people actually really liked that movie. The few people who saw it, that is. If it had been backed with a better campaign, that would've probably been Disney Feature's biggest movie since THE LION KING.

But it's those four movies... ATLANTIS, TREASURE PLANET, BROTHER BEAR, and HOME ON THE RANGE, that form this unique grab-bag. One that also includes DreamWorks' fairly edgy 2D-animated period adventures released around them, THE ROAD TO EL DORADO, SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, and SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS. All of those lost money, too.

And they told these stories in ways that were incongruous with the times, when audiences wanted farting ogres and silly sloths and wacky Ellen DeGeneres fish. Maybe they all would've done better as thoroughly-CGI movies, maybe not… But it's a weird vibe across the films that I’ve noticed over the years. Quaint, in a way. Maybe it was “cringe” or whatever in the moody and edgy early 2000s, but today - with so much time having passed and the world ever-changing - it’s all rather charming.

[bopinion]

2023 / 45

Aperçu of the Week:

"Conflicts come and go. Money stays."

(Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, ex-President of the Russian Federation)

Bad News of the Week:

It was feared for a long time, now it's happening: the Ukraine war may not be losing its horror, but it is losing its attention. As happened with Syria. And with Yemen. How is Iraq actually doing? Or Libya? New times bring new headlines. People's attention span is limited. And people's empathy too. It is not only in the US Congress that voices are getting louder questioning support for Ukraine. It would be a bottomless pit anyway. And you can't take care of everything.

In this country too, people are now taking to the streets for or against Palestine, for or against Israel. The aggression of Hamas or the Netanyahu government is obviously closer to us than the aggression of Putin. At least now. But perhaps also in Europe in general, to which Israel is often counted. France has a not only flattering history in the region and a large Arab population, Germany's special relationship with the Jewish people ("reason of state") need not even to be mentioned.

And now there is growing evidence that Ukraine does not always wear white shirts either. Research by the Washington Post, among others, into the background to the explosives attacks on the North Stream pipelines leads to Ukraine. Former intelligence officer and special forces commander Roman Chervynsky is described in security circles as the "coordinator" of these attacks, responsible for the logistics of the sabotage commando. If Ukraine is now behind the biggest act of sabotage of all time, no German, whose energy prices have tripled as a result, will be pleased. If, at the same time, direct military aid is doubled to 8 billion euros, the purse strings will be tight. In real terms, but above all in terms of feeling.

I very much hope that the solidarity that has united us Europeans up to now will only crumble and not collapse. Because it is still true that European values are being defended in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin must not be allowed to win. But I am increasingly worried that his calculations could work out. Time is clearly working in his favor. Sidenote: the Russian economy is currently doing better than the German.

Good News of the Week:

Jeff Bezoz and Elon Musk are known as negative examples of capitalism. Attacking competitors, exploiting employees and paying as little tax as possible. Virtually all investors and almost every multinational corporation try to structure their balance sheets in such a way that as little as possible goes to the state(s). Even though those depend on tax revenues for their public welfare tasks. Tax evasion is how all our companies work.

The problem is, on the one hand, the well-known tax havens such as Cayman Island and, on the other hand, competition between nations as to where which company with which activity sets up shop. Because of jobs and because of taxes. I have remembered a creative example of tax avoidance in Europe from recent years: the sporting goods manufacturer Nike.

Its German business - the largest market on the continent for Nike despite its domestic competitors Adidas and Puma - generates enormous sales, but strangely enough no profit, which would be relatively highly taxed in this country. The trick: for every pair of sneakers etc., Nike Germany pays a license fee for patents, design, brand use etc. to Nike Ireland, where the tax rates are significantly lower. And strangely enough, always in the exact amount so that nothing is left over. Thank you very much.

My criticism is less directed at the company, whose nature it is to generate as much profit as possible. But rather to Ireland, which allows tax evasion at the expense of its European colleagues. But this will soon come to an end. Because the global minimum tax is just around the corner. The German tax office calls it "one of the biggest reforms in the international taxation of companies".

Until now, the taxation of multinational corporate groups has largely been organized on a national basis. A group only has to pay taxes on its profits in the countries in which it has a physical presence. This is becoming less and less important in the increasingly cross-border movement of goods and in the digital economy in general. And even within Europe, tax rates vary greatly: from 9% to 35% according to the OECD.

Now 138 countries around the world, including all G20 states, have committed to a global minimum tax of 15%. Experts call its introduction a "game changer" in the fight against decades of tax dumping by large corporations. Estimates are based on this. The global minimum tax will generate an additional 200 billion euros a year for the international community. This will finance their commonwealth, from which all citizens will benefit. And not just the investors on the stock markets and the shareholders of companies.

Personal happy moment of the week:

Senta Berger. One of our greatest actresses. As a young woman in the 60s and now, at 82, she still is. I have always admired her. For her artistic work and for her humanity. She fights for the protection of wildlife and against leukemia. And admitted to having an abortion in 1971 (!). She was and is a great woman. I bumped into her in the elevator today. And told her exactly that. She said I made her day. And she made mine.

I couldn't care less...

...for the carnival. On 11.11. at 11h11 on the dot, tens of thousands of "Jecken" celebrated the start of the Rhineland carnival and the foolish season in Cologne. As if the time before had been normal in any way.

As I write this...

...I'm fighting a nascent cold. And a stomach virus. And muscle tension. And tiredness. It's November. But maybe I'm just getting old.

Post Scriptum

Nikki Haley could become a serious challenger to Donald Trump in the Republican primaries. Last you heard from Ron DeSantis? Exactly.

[tetsunabouquet]

Aomine’s Future (Headcanon)

Now, I’m not going to ignore arguably the most popular KNB husbando out there! I hope you all enjoy and forgive me for the minor sidenote at the end. -Obviously he’s going to move to the US in the future, and I think he’s going to stay there for the rest of his life and not go back to Japan once his career at the NBA is over. -But, he will definitely still be into things from back home like idol culture. -Whilst he is interested in joining the police force after his career, I don’t think he will actually go through with that as devoting his time to making people abide the rules when he seems to hate them himself wouldn’t work out for him. That’s more of a young boy’s fantasy he will grow out off. -I can, however, see him finish his auto-biography and perhaps write a book or two more, but being a writer won’t be his main job after his NBA days. -He will probably work in the athletic world for the rest of his life, he’s a basketball junkie. Whether he becomes a coach, or a sports commentator, Aomine is not giving up on basketball. Ever. -Considering he’s going to Cleveland, and according to the internet, its actually really big in the beer industry, can I see Aomine rewatching his old matches with his fridge stocked with beer? Yes. He’s definitely that kind of guy. -He might own a few lame baseball caps. -Doesn’t settle down before 30. Perhaps not even before he hits his forties. -I can see him owning a dog or two as an adult. -He certainly has his own jacuzzi and a pool. Guy’s a bath-time fan. -He’ll definitely use that bubble bath of his to impress the women he takes home. -Would prefer girls who like beer over girls who don’t. -Over time, I can see him evolving from a big boob guy to a guy who loves a big boobs + large ass combo.  -I can imagine him trying to pick up good looking dweebs for one night stands using being a Japanese athlete to his advantage. (I can even imagine him actually having tried to pull the ‘I’m hot and Japanese’ on Alex but it wouldn’t work due to the age gap). -Unless Momoi were to start pursuing him, I feel like he’ll end up with an American girl. -If he goes on the route of marrying another celeb, then he’ll end up with a Japanese-American idol. No doubt about it. This man is a huge idol fan, and one that’s actually living in the US and could even teach him more about the country would be a big bonus for him. -If he goes on the route of marrying a normal American girl, I feel like he won’t go for an Asian girl but white or black, actually. I mean, I do think Aomine would be into some of black culture and a curvy black woman, but canonically he has only expressed interest in white women like Marilyn Monroe and Alex when it comes to foreign women so either of the two are on table. He’s definitely interested into an interracial relationship (which leads me to another one who I think is pro-interracial and my side-note).

  (the only other character we know is fan of an American actress, is Midorima as he likes Elizabeth Taylor. With him going to Boston and all, yes, I can see this guy being into British white girls, and likely north-west European white girls in general. This guy definitely would prefer the traditional old world over the new world, and the countries of this area are rich, influential and most of them are innovators in the medical technology field, etc. So I can see Midorima actually developping an interest in that region of Europe and considering moving to any of these countries after his NBA days. Also, did you know the Olympic gold medalist, the Flying Dutchman, Epke Zonderland, has also studied medicine? Just imagine these two handsome athletes working at the same hospital. I feel like there would be women who’d get sick/injured on purpose, just saying).

[mostlybats-partiallyrats]

Been out of commission this week as a result of certain aspects of my biology that I'd rather not possess. So I've mostly been watching YouTube and Vampire movies. So I guess I'll chronicle my thoughts here:

Interview With The Vampire (1994): what started this whole venture. Really decent movie, loved the costumes. Your average melodramatic gothic horror (loved it). Two things I noticed immediately with this movie that remained pretty consistent throughout: INCONSOLABLY HORNY. Seriously I've never seen a movie where every character except a literal child should go to horny jail (also, the horny is very concentrated between a trio of male characters so... Pretty gay, bro). Holy shit. The second is that Louis will always set something on fire. Usually a building. With varying numbers of people inside. It literally happens three times. So....🔥🔥🔥

[Gif Description: Antonio Banderas as Armand being unnecessarily horny with a lit candle. He runs his hand over the flame and then whinces with pain, pretty much. End ID.]

I think this gif sums up that movie.

The Hunger (1983): didn't even get around to watching this one actually. Only really considered it because of David Bowie and Susan Sarandon (and also some sapphic themes, always nice). Then I just saw that it was too poorly rated by too many people. Maybe I'll watch it at some point for sheer shits and giggles.

[Gif Description: Catherine Deneuve as Miriam, is smoking a cigarette. She has on red lipstick, a pair of dangling earrings, some black leather gloves, and a pair of statement silver sunglasses. End ID.]

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992): somehow even hornier than Interview With The Vampire in some parts. Always a fan of blasphemy against Western Christianity, so that was nice to see. Winona Ryder is always a win in my book, love her. And it was nice to see a younger pre-Matrix Keanu Reeves. Anthony Hopkins did a great job as Dr Van Helsing too. I liked it, very dramatic, tragic, horny (duh), and lots of blood👌

[Gif Description: Sadie Frost as Lucy Westenra after she has been turned into a vampire. Her face is painted white, she is wearing a gaudy wedding dress with a massive round collar, and a wooden cross is seen being held in front of her. She bears her bloodied teeth. End ID.]

Cronos (1993): haven't been able to find this anywhere, but I really wanna watch it, because I like Guillermo Del Toro and I know he has a particular affinity for monsters. So I'm excited to watch this one. As such, there is no gif, I don't wanna spoil it for myself🤐.

What We Do In The Shadows (2014): different from the others because it's a comedy, but I loved it, it was awesome 😊. Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi did so well in making the whole thing awkwardly hilarious. Very quotable and great for if you want a change of pace with vamp movies. Will always bring a smile to my face I think😁

[Gif Description: Taika Waititi as Viago, dressed in old 18th Century European clothing, is using a toothbrush to clean the "teeth" (fangs) of the character Peter. Peter's look is clearly influenced by the 1922 film Nosferatu. He is bald with long pointed ears, pale mottled skin, grey irises, and several long yellowed fangs. He's wearing a simple black cloak. End ID.]

Sidenote: seems like the early 90s was for some reason a really good time for vampire movies. Also I've already seen Lost Boys, a while ago. Maybe I'll watch it again soon, who knows. 🤷 I also wanna watch Nosferatu.

✨💀🥀🦇✨

[myhockeyworld87]

Not So Dangerous Liaison - Sidney Crosby - Part 20

Word Count: 3,745

POV: Sid’s

Warngings: Language, Smut, NSFW but also kind of fluffy

Notes: It’s late, so no one will probably read this...haha But I’m putting it out there anyhow, because I need to hold myself accountable and I said I would post it after the Stars game. (Sidenote: I’m still upset about that loss) Anyhow, this is basically all smut. I was just in that kind of mood with Sid this week what can I say. As always love your feedback and Happy Reading!

Not So Dangerous Liaison Masterlist

Paris was everything you'd ever dreamed it would be and so much more now that you'd finally told (Y/N) that you loved her. Being there with her was like living out a fantasy vacation. The two of you spent the day soaking in the French culture. Holding hands as you went from exhibit to exhibit in the Louvre was everything, as (Y/N) shared your love of history. You weren't sure who was pulling who, into the next room to see each display. One of the most magical moments had to be when you were standing atop the Eiffel Tower, holding her in your arms and kissing her senseless. Though the one that stood out the most to you was standing inside Notre Dame Cathedral. Maybe it was the lighting at the moment, or the beautiful white summer sundress (Y/N) had on but you were overwhelmed with thoughts of her walking down the aisle towards you. Never in your life had you thought about marriage like you did right at that moment. You could picture her in this beautiful gown carrying a bouquet of roses as she stood amongst all your family and friends. Suddenly, you wanted to make this dream a reality, but you'd only declared your love for her a few short days ago. This was going from point A to Z in like sixty-second flat, but if there was one thing that you knew, it was how to work hard and see things come to fruition, and that started by making sure this was the best vacation that (Y/N) ever had.

 The time in France had been jammed packed, for it seemed you two were always on the go. Though you did enjoy the long nights at the hotel where you spent making love to (Y/N) every and any chance you could get. She'd even been adventurous enough to have sex out on the balcony one night. It wasn't something that you'd normally do, but there was just something about this woman that had you wanting her anywhere and everywhere. Which neither one of you seemed to mind.

 Thankfully, you'd booked a resort in the quiet town of Estepona, Spain, instead of Ibiza or Barcelona like you'd originally planned. The beaches were beautiful there and you enjoyed seeing (Y/N) just lounging on the chaise in her bikini. "Want to hit the water?" You asked her after closing the book you'd been reading for the last hour.

 "Sure," she agreed and you both headed into the warm ocean. The waves caught you both up, as you frolicked in the sand and surf, both of you giggling. Every now and then a wave would crash along the shore almost knocking you both to the ground until you were finally able to drift beyond their breaking point. "This place is truly amazing Sid," (Y/N) told you as you swam closer to her, so you could loop your arms around her.

 "You're amazing," you said nibbling on her ear which was only slightly salty from the water.

 "Stop, you're making me blush."

 "I like it when you do." Your hands roamed down her back to her ass, where you slid your fingers underneath her bikini bottoms before kissing her soundly on the lips.

 "What are you doing?" She giggled as you attempted to pull those same bottoms to the side.

 "I can't help it, you look so fucking sexy in this suit. I just have to…" you followed your words up by pressing a finger between her folds.

 "Sid," she half moaned, half chided you. "Someone might see."

 "Babe, look around. This beach is pretty private, for one thing, and for another, there are a couple women running around half nude." Europeans were much more liberal when it came to their sexuality then both Americans and Canadians, and you were one who wouldn't mind (Y/N) running around topless. Well, you might if you weren't by her side. "No one is going to pay any attention to us."

 "But what if you're recognized or something?" You'd been lucky so far and only had a couple people come up to you in France and ask for autographs, hopefully, that streak would continue over the next week.

 "No one even knows that I'm doing anything to you. Unless you decide to scream out my name. Which I'm not opposed to." (Y/N) shook her head at you, so to emphasize your point; you slid your finger deep inside her. She bit her lip to suppress the moan she so wanted to release. You continued to toy with her until she snuck her hand in your swim trunks and started to stroke your cock. "Oh, I see how it is."

 "What? Two can play this game, Mr. Crosby." It was deliciously naughty to be doing this out in public with (Y/N).

 "Mr. Crosby is it? I don't think that's what you called me last night." Her palm slid down your length then back up, twisting as she went and you had to grit your teeth together from the pleasurable sensations she was creating.

 "Mmm, no I don't think it was." She pressed her cheek to yours, as she sucked on your earlobe. "Would you prefer Captain, or maybe Daddy, or…" She didn't finish that sentence as your thumb pressed down on her clit. Her head sank down to the crook of your neck and you thought she was going to bite you as she held back a groan. Your fingers worked faster and so did her hand, and soon she wasn't the only one stifling her moans. You were almost regretting this decision to have a little fun with her in the ocean, but then she was cuming and you were too and as your hips thrust into her hand you knew this would be one vacation memory neither of you would ever forget. "Fuck baby, that felt so good."

 "More refreshing than the ocean?" She said with a little wink.

 "Definitely," you kissed her then, pouring all the love you had for her into it. (Y/N) was truly one of a kind and you thanked your lucky stars, and the Fleury's, for bringing her into your life. She was exactly what you needed.

 Over the next couple of days, you spent time at the beach as well as in Estepona. You took (Y/N) on a romantic carriage ride through the city streets one night, then ended up back at the hotel where you made love for hours. It was the following day that you noticed her stretching her neck more. "Babe, what's going on?"

 "My neck's a little sore is all. I don't think it liked that one position you put me in last night," she said teasingly.

 "Here let me massage it for you."

 "Wait let me write this down because you never offer massages. It's always me giving them to you."

 "That's because you're really good at them." You gave her a little wink then let your fingers rub her shoulder. "You're really knotted up."

 "Yeah, but it'll work itself out eventually." She sighed contently as you worked on her muscles.

 "We should get one of those couple's massages." You told her, thinking that it would be a nice way for both of you to relax. "I saw them mentioned in the brochure."

 "You'd really be into that?" (Y/N) asked.

 "I mean ya, if it means I get to lay next to you half-naked; I'm always in."

 (Y/N) laughed before reminding you, "you know there's no 'happy ending' during these things. Well, that is unless it's different over here."

 "The only happy ending I want is with your babe." You told her as you let your arms slide around her waist. "So what do you say? Should I book it?"

 "I think you're trying to get out of giving me a massage once again, but I'm game. Make the call." You dropped a kiss to her neck before heading over and grabbing the phone. (Y/N) scooted into the bedroom to change into her swimsuit as the two of you had planned on going to the beach. After a call to the spa, they told you they would have everything set up in your room in an hour. You'd ask to have it there for privacy's sake and they were more than happy to accommodate you. "Babe, we've got an hour, then we've got to be back."

 "Wow, you work fast," she said as she sauntered back into the living room area clad in a white bikini that had you rethinking going to the beach as well as getting those massages.

 You grabbed at her waist and pulled her in close. "I'd rather work on you."

 "Slow down there hot stuff. You are not getting me all….sexed up and then having someone else rubbing their hands all over me in an hour. Maybe after that hour."

 "Sexed up?" You cocked your head in inquiry.

 "You know what I mean." Her arms wrapped around your neck then. "You did it in the ocean the other day. We are PG until after these massages." She kissed you quickly, then slipped out of your arms before you knew what was happening. "Now are we going to the beach?" When you just stuck your lip out pouting, she added. "I'll let you put sunscreen on me."

 It wasn't exactly what you were looking for but you'd take her up on it and see if you could sneak in a few kisses and feels here and there. "Deal." (Y/N) evaded all your attempts at seduction in your hour at the beach, which only had you frustrated and you hoped that you weren't sporting wood as you made your way back to your hotel room for your massage. It would be sort of awkward, but then again maybe that's what couple's massages were supposed to lead to. The room was draped in darkness as you made your way inside. Furniture had been cleared so that two tables could be set up. Rose petals were scattered all over the room with soft candlelight glowing and the relaxing sounds of the ocean playing in the background. It really was quite romantic and you found yourself pulling (Y/N) closer to your side as the masseurs introduced themselves. There was a female and a male, and you kind of wonder who would be doing who, for the guy was kind of muscular and handsome and you weren't sure you wanted him to be touching your girlfriend, especially the way he seemed to be eyeing her in her bikini.

 After introductions were made, they then had you lay on top of the massage tables face up. Only a couple feet separated the distance between the two of you, so you reached out and grabbed (Y/N)'s hand, as the therapists began to work. Thankfully, the male masseur worked on you instead of (Y/N). You didn't realize what a jealous streak you had until the thought of some other guy touching her ran through your mind. "Feel free to talk to each other," the masseuse said as she kneaded (Y/N)'s shoulders.

 It seemed kind of awkward to carry on an intimate conversation in front of strangers, so you stuck to just keeping things basic. "So this is nice, huh babe?" You threw in the word babe for the male therapist knowledge, letting him know that (Y/N) was indeed taken, not that he shouldn't know that given that this was a couple's thing.

 "It really is. This whole vacation has been magical." She gave your hand a little squeeze. "I don't know how you want me to go back to real life after this."

 "Well, we don't have to just yet. We still have a couple weeks in Cole Harbour, before heading back to Pittsburgh." You had your two days with the Stanley Cup coming up and while that would entail a little bit of work, as there was a parade planned as well as other things; there was also a big celebration that (Y/N) and your mom had been working on.

 "That's true, though I'll be heading back before you."

 This was news to you and had you almost rolling on your side so that you could face her. "What do you mean?"

 "You know I have to be back on the twentieth to get things ready for training camp."

 "Yeah, I'm going with you then." Had you forgotten to tell her that?

 "Um…" she hesitated, weighing her words in front of the strangers currently massaging you. "You'll be mid training with Nate, so that's probably not going to work."

 "I'll just train in Pittsburgh."

 She turned her head completely so that she could look you in the eye. "We can discuss it later." The look on her face told you that there would be no arguing the point and you figured it was best to have this conversation when she was in a better mood. The two of you fell into a silence as what was supposed to be a romantic time to bring you both together now had this icy chill to it. The masseurs asked you to flip over and now you couldn't really even look at your girlfriend to gauge her mood. Instead, you started to work on a plan that would hopefully turn this time around. It was about fifteen minutes into your back rub that you sprung up from the table with an idea. You silenced the massage therapists with a finger, then wandered over by the phone grabbing the pen and paper and asking if it was possible for the two of them to leave you alone, but not let (Y/N) know. The masseur nodded his agreement a silent look passing between him and the masseuse working on (Y/N).

 In a soft voice, (Y/N)'s massage therapist leaned down to her and said. "We're going to switch a moment. There's a knot that I just can't work out." (Y/N) hummed out her agreement, not moving and then the two quietly slipped out the door. You went to work, kneading the muscles of her back, hoping she wouldn't notice it was you. Years of getting massage work done on your body had taught you a thing or two, though you had to admit you loved when (Y/N) gave them to you more, hopefully, you giving her this one in return would win you some brownie points after your earlier discussion. You toiled over her upper body for quite some time before moving down to her legs. Folding the sheet up to reveal her lower half, you slathered more oil on your hands and let them glide up and down her calves working your way up her thighs. When her legs drifted slightly apart you couldn't help your hands as they traveled to her inner thighs. Each pass had you inching closer and closer to her core. All you would have to do is shift her bikini bottoms to the side, that or undo the strings, and she would be exposed to you. Instead, though, you moved your hands higher to ass, the sheet sneaking higher up.

 By now you did have to wonder why she was letting some strange man touch her ass like this, but you still kept caress her globes, until temptation got the better of you, and you tugged at the strings. On your next pass of her bottom, you flopped the material down between her legs. This time letting your fingers slip between her folds. Fuck she was wet and now you didn't know if you were pissed that another man was turning her on or if your brain was just consumed with lust for this woman, but either way, you kept fondling her. You waited for her to tell you to stop, or more like the masseur to, but she didn't instead she just moaned. You couldn't help what fell from your lips. "Babe, why are you moaning?" Hopefully, it sounded like you were on the table next to her.

 "Because I always do that when you touch me like that." She giggled then and you knew she'd found you out.

 "How'd you know it was me?" Your fingers slipped out of her, as you were slightly stunned.

 "I'd know your calloused hands anywhere Mr. Crosby." Damn, years of hockey had made your hands rough, and not nice and smooth like someone who basically bathed them in oil all day. She flipped over to her front. "But please continue, as I have to say it was quite an enjoyable massage. Do you promise a happy ending?"

 "Oh baby, do I ever." You ran both hands up her legs, then moved so you were in the middle of the table, your fingers slipping down to her pussy. Taking your thumb and index finger you rubbed her outer lips together while your other hand caressed her breasts. This time when she moaned you took comfort in the knowledge that she knew it was you who was bringing her pleasure. It was easy to slip two fingers inside her with all the oil on your hands and all of the wetness on her cunt. You pumped them in and out her, your thumb flicking across her clit as you went. She spread herself wider for you, lifting one knee so you'd have more access to her. (Y/N) looked so beautiful laying there, glistening from the oils on her body and you told yourself then, that there was no way you were not going back to Pittsburgh when she did, for you didn't think you'd be able to stand being without her even for a few short weeks. Her cries brought you back to the present, and you slid your free hand to put a little pressure on her mons.

 "Sid, please…" she begged and her hips started to rise which only had you adding more pressure. You worked her little nub furiously as your fingers thrust inside her. It didn't take long until you felt her pussy walls contract on your fingers, sucking them deeper inside her as she came. A rush of wetness followed and (Y/N) called out your name as the orgasm overtook her. God, she was beautiful, her body slightly flushed from climax and a sheen of both sweat and oil on it. If it was possible your cock became even harder at the sight. You watched as this euphoric transformation came across her face and took satisfaction in knowing that it was you that could make that happen to her. Her hand grabbed your wrist and hauled you close to her, so she could clamp her mouth on yours. The kiss was full of heat and desperate, turning you on even more. "Will this hold both of us?"

 "I don't see why not, and if it doesn't, I'll pay for it." You stripped out of your swim trunks in record time before climbing over the top of (Y/N), and though you were confident in your reply to her; you still moved gingerly in case the massage table didn't hold up. Thankfully, it did as she wrapped her legs around your waist. The oil on both your bodies made it a challenge for her to keep the position but she did her best as your cock slid inside her slippery cunt. (Y/N) gasped at the feel of you. Buried to the hilt inside her, you almost came right there. It was like the first time that the two of you slept together and you loved that every time with (Y/N) felt new and exciting.

 "Sid," she panted out, and you gazed down into her gorgeous eyes that were shining with love. "Please move…I need you." It was all she had to say, as your mouth came down on hers stealing both hers and your breath away before you slowly pumped in and out of her. She felt amazing as always, hips thrusting to meet yours as your tongues entwined. This was exactly where you saw this romantic massage leading. Well, maybe not on the actual table but this joining of your bodies and heart. (Y/N) had swept into your life and just made everything perfect and you wondered how you'd ever lived this long without her in it.

 "I love you, so much (Y/N)." You felt the raw emotion in your voice and hoped she could hear it as well. They weren't just words you were saying to her, it was how you truly felt. You would do anything for this woman, give up anything as well, though she'd never ask that and you knew it. You needed her to know this but didn't know how to say it, so you let your body do the talking for you, thrusting deep inside her.

 She arched her back in pleasure, though her eyes never left yours. "I love you too, Sid," and you felt it with every move of her body and gasp of her lips. You knew she felt the same way about you; needed you as much as you needed her. The first spasm of her walls milked you inside as you noticed her climax hit her. Her legs tightened around you, as they started to shake, and then she was there, pleasure cascading over her as the orgasm struck. You locked your lips with hers as she cried out and followed her down the path of climax, spilling your seed inside her.

 There were endless kisses as you both came off the high and as much as you wanted to stay inside her forever; it wasn't the most comfortable position for the two of you on the small table. So dropping one last kiss to her lips, you slid out of the haven that was her pussy, lifting her up in your arms and carrying her to the bedroom. "What about returning all that?" She questioned referencing all the massage equipment in the living room.

 "They'll be well compensated for waiting until tomorrow. I have other plans for us tonight." It was that way for the rest of your vacation. You couldn't get enough of (Y/N). The public displays of affection between the two of you were ridiculous, and if your teammates had seen it they would chirp you endlessly, but you didn't care. In fact, you had a feeling it would become something that happened regularly during the season, so you prepared yourself for the ribbing you would happily take.  

[needcake]

Hello ( ・∇・) I have come to haunt ur inbox

I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about Brazil? I recently finished a course in Latin American history and am very eager to learn more about just what life is like where you live, bc tbh the public Canadian education systems don’t do a very good job of teaching outside of Europe and even uni courses don’t feel quite...personal enough. Do you have three favourite things you like about ur region? Something ur frustrated by? Anything will do I’m just curious (ﾟωﾟ)

Also if u wanna: thoughts on Brazil the character? Do u vibe or nah

Tysm ♥️

Rein, you enable me ;_;

I have many thoughts on Brazil, I wrote a whole essay but it got too big haha so this is the redux version and it's still stupid big.

There are three main pillars in Brazilian culture: Indigenous, European and African.

Before the Portuguese bumped into our shores and brought their chickens with them, Brazil had various indigenous populations, with wildly different cultures. The Portuguese befriended some and helped their favorites win wars against the other tribes so they could still come and go. The Portuguese weren’t like the Spanish in their colonization, they didn’t come and imposed their settlements right away, they were mostly focused on trade, and so pretty much until the beginning of the sugar plantations there was very little European presence around here.

But yeah, after they figured they could grow sugar here instead of buying (*gasp* pay money for a commodity!) from India, they introduced it here and from then on we became Portugal’s nº 1 sugar colony.

(sidenote: sugarcane is one of the most HORRID crops to grow, its leaves are super sharp and it’s a terribly hard process to cut them down and process the canes, which is why enslaved labor was (and still is to this day, 2021!!) employed. And since sugar *IS* more addictive than cocaine, it’s incredibly profitable.)

(sidenote sidenote: the Portuguese had no refining plants in Portugal, they were mostly the middlemen between Brazil – where sugar was grown – and Flanders (Belgium and the Netherlands) – where it was refined into white sugar.)

(sidenote sidenote sidenote: People who usually moan about how we would have been better off under any other colonial power, 1) usually do not understand how colonialism works, and 2) keep comparing us, a sugar colony, to the US/Canada/Australia/New Zealand, all of which were not sugar colonies, instead of comparing us to Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti and Suriname, all of which were sugar colonies of the other European colonial powers.)

But things changed when Napoleon decided to pull a Roman Emperor move and try to unify Europe under a French banner. The royal family escaped to Brazil, yadda yadda, and we were elevated from sugar colony to seat of government, capital of the empire. While Portugal was being invaded and sacked, we were getting new roads, sweet new landscaping and even universities.

Unlike other Latin American countries we were relatively stable and wealthy after the Napoleonic Wars ended. We annexed Uruguay, which was a major dick move since they had just declared independence from Spain (they kicked us out in 1825 tho), and we were in good terms with Britain. So much so that when Portugal demanded us to give back their royals and go back to being a colony, the cat was already out of the proverbial bag and we declared independence with British approval.

There was a bit of a war, but, by the end of it, Portugal was tired, so they conceded our independence as long as we paid their debt to the British, which we did, interestingly enough. Most Latin American countries ended their independence process with massive debt and terrible credit scores, but we not only did ours mostly bureaucratically, we also had a good credit score and were considered a good investment by European bankers.

So what’s a young nation to do with a lot of money in its pockets to try and impress their European counterparts? We tried to find the mythical national identity.

Most of our literature up to this point was borrowed from Portugal, but from this point forth we innovated and began borrowing from other Europeans, like the French. We wanted to be seen as “European” and “enlightened” so bad, most of our Romantic literature sucked really hard.

You have José de Alencar’s Iracema and O Guarani, both of which had brave and naïve noble savages who fell in love with white settlers and thus created the foundation of the Brazilian people. (I don’t like these books, but they were a sensation at the time and O Guarani was later adapted into an opera by Carlos Gomes – in Italian, obvs, can’t have opera in any other language apparently – and which every Brazilian person knows by heart because the overture plays at the beginning of the government-mandate radio program Brazilian Hour (Hora do Brasil) that still plays every day (most people just turn off their radios when it airs, I have never met a single person who listens to it)).

After exhausting Romantic literature, we jumped into the far more interesting Realistic literature, where Machado de Assis went from being a boring Romantic writer to being the most brilliant writer of our entire pantheon. I’m definitely biased, but if you have to pick a Brazilian lit book to read, I’d recommend Epitaph of a Small Winner and its far less known but equally good sequel Quincas Borba. Machado, himself a black man, really knew how to portray the hypocrisy of the Brazilian elite and how hard we tried to seem cultured and European, while under the surface being very much not that.

Politically, we were more or less stable, Pedro I had to go back to Europe because of Miguel’s coup, and he left his 6-year-old son, Pedro II, on the throne, while we were governed by regents. There were a few local revolts, all suppressed, and the Paraguayan War, which was... a lot.

Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery, which was only ever possible because of the work of black activists and external pressure from the British. Brazil was and still is a country ruled by landowners, so when faced with the prospect of having to *gasp* pay for labor they were all very reluctant. So slavery was abolished, but no compensation was given to the people who, for generations, had worked on the land (how dare they want freedom AND rights?).

From literary Realism we split ways into the bucolic Parnassianism (again copying the French), our national anthem is an example of Parnassian poetry btw, and into our grittier Naturalism phase, and O Cortiço (The Slum) is AN AMAZING book, really really good, 10/10.

After slavery was abolished and Pedro II was so deep in depression he didn’t really give a fuck about ruling anymore, the First Republic was proclaimed. There’s an amazing line in Machado’s Esau and Jacob (I’m quoting from memory here) in which the characters pass by a bakery called Imperial Bakery, and the morning after the proclamation they see the owner changing the name to Republican Bakery, which is SO emblematic of how things work in this country. Politicians push their papers and change things, and we just shrug off and go on living much the same way as before only with a new name slapped on top.

The First Republic was very oligarchy-y. It’s also called the Coffee and Milk Republic because the richest states – São Paulo, a state known for its coffee production, and Minas Gerais, a state known for its milk production – alternated presidents in power. It’s during this time that we bullied Bolivia into giving us Acre, and rubber became one of our major exports.

Brazilian government, again, ruled by landowners, was now faced with two options in face of the growing economy: hire back the people who knew how to work the land and pay them living wages, orrrrrrr import cheap (white) European labor from famine-ravished countries in Europe, and, surprise surprise, they went with the most racist of the two.

European immigrants came mostly from Italian and Germanic regions, but there were also waves of immigrants from Portugal, Hungary and Poland, as well as Japanese, Syrian and Lebanese immigrants.

In 1922, we have a cultural schism. A group of young intellectuals gathered in São Paulo and they took a long hard look at the Brazilian national identity in order to publish the Anthropophagic Manifesto. Anthropophagism, different from good old cannibalism, used to be practiced by some indigenous tribes in Brazil before (and a little during) colonization and it’s a custom in which, after defeating an enemy tribe, the leaders believed that consuming the flesh of their greatest warriors would grant them their strength and they would thus become much more powerful. Culturally, this meant that we should stop trying to emulate Europe, but consume its culture and transform it into our own. This movement begins the radical thinking that our culture was good actually, and we weren’t inferior to Europe. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it decolonized thinking, but it really was a moment when Brazil began looking back at its indigenous roots with pride.

It’s also around this time that anthropologist Gilberto Freyre published The Masters and the Slaves (1933), in which he states that, and please read this with as much sarcasm as you can muster, shockingly, there was no racism in Brazil, because we’re all one big race, the Brazilian race (except some are more equal than others obvs).

Then came WWII and the Cold War, and the US tried (and succeeded) to control Latin America so we wouldn’t fall prey to evil Communism. Most dictatorships here were US-backed, and ours was no different. American products began to flood our market, as well as American films and books and culture. Some of our best artists and writers went into exile abroad, and only came back after the end of the dictatorship, in 1985. Which also happened mostly bureaucratically, with politicians pushing papers and hiding the evidence of their crimes, pardoning everyone forever before leaving Brazil a bankrupt mess.

Our film industry became mostly non-existent, with most professionals having to make ends meet shooting pornography, our literature had taken a heavy beating from the censorship and was barely standing, but our music! Oh, boy, our music soared!

Samba, born from poor black communities, protested against racism, discrimination and poor living conditions. It praised the work of black women, their hardship and their strength. It glorified African ancestry, religion, language and roots. MPB is cool and all, but samba slaps hard. Composers like Cartola, Nelson Sargento and Dorival Caymmi are all emblematic of this.

We, as a society, are still coming to terms with what it means to be Brazilian. Racism is still deeply ingrained in the structures of our society and our native indigenous peoples still have to fight tooth and nail for their right to exist. We have flirted with fascism in the past and are now witnessing this alarming rise of neo-fascism in this country, which, given everything, is so STUPID.

And yet we are moved by a blind hope that things will be better, that Brazil can still be good.

Other really good books that I didn’t mention:

The Patriot/The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma, by Lima Barreto

A estrela sobe (Rising star), by Marques Rebelo (not sure if there’s an English translation, he’s one of the least known authors)

The Violent Land, by Jorge Amado

Sergeant Getulio, by João Ubaldo Ribeiro

Every single play by Nelson Rodrigues, but most notably: Boca de Ouro (has a great film adaptation), Toda nudez será castigada (has a good film adaptation as well) and Vestido de Noiva.

Films that everyone should watch:

Black God, White Devil - Glauber Rocha (1964)

Rio, 100 Degrees F - Nelson Pereira dos Santos (1955) (p.s. it’s 40ºC in the original title XD)

São Paulo, Sociedade Anônima - Luis Sérgio Person (1965)

They don’t wear black-tie - by Leon Hirszman (1981)

Twenty Years Later - by Eduardo Coutinho (1984)

Bacurau – Kleber Mendonça Filho (2019)

TL;DR: I love this country with the power of a thousand suns and I still hope to live to see it getting its shit together.

I'm from the south (famous for our cattle production and racism), so three favorite things are: being close to Uruguay (my beloved), local wine is cheap? idk, the food is good. I don't have a whole lot of good things to say about my region, it sucks a lot most of the time.

In terms of Hetalia, I like writing Brazil as being a true political animal down to his core. We joke that there's only one law governing this country, which is Gerson's Law (Gérson was a semi-famous football player who did this cigarette commercial in which he says "why pay more if *this brand of cigarette* gives me everything I need? I like to take advantage in everything."), or, as it is more commonly known, the Brazilian jeitinho. He can be very intense with his personal feelings, but he covers it with a thick layer of emotional armor, always making jokes (memes) at his own expense to hide the fleshiest parts of him. He was still pretty young when he looked at Port, tangled in his union with Spain and riddled with problems, and stopped seeing him as this god-like parent figure and started seeing as just... another person, deeply flawed and human. So he mostly learned how to go around him and sweet-talk his way out of trouble. The only people who can see right through him are Port (when he can get his head out of his ass), Uruguay and Argentina. His rivalry with Argentina goes beyond football (but let's be honest, Argentina has a knack to fostering rivalries pretty much the same way as France does). I don't have a fixed ship for him (I like him single ready to mingle), but I like Brazil/Uruguay and Brazil/Uruguay/Argentina. Brazil/Argentina is also good and I enjoy it a lot.

This is stupid long haha but thank you for asking!! I love talking about my sweet dumpster on fire of a country ;____;

[schleierkauz]

Q&A Highlights

Ok so bad news first: My questions were ignored. Cornelia did not clarify any of our death-related theories. Maybe next time.

There was A Lot of other stuff, though so... Enjoy!

- The stream starts with everyone wishing us a happy women’s day! Usually women in Erfurt (where the bookstore people are) get flowers but not today because... you know. Cornelia says America is starting to go back to normal, meanwhile Germany... :| Anyway. Don’t look over here.

- Cornelia says she probably won’t get the vaccine anytime soon because she’s just chilling on her farm anyway and people who have to be out in public/are vulnerable should get it first

- Question: When will Cornelia visit Germany again? In response to this, she gives us some exclusive news, not official yet, heard it here first: She’s gonna move to Italy! Apparently she bought an olive farm there which is cheaper, better for the environment (her current farm will be sold to some people who want to turn it into an organic farm) and obviously closer to Germany so she’ll be here more often. :)

- The 4th Reckless book will be released in English at some point this autumn

- There’s no definite release date for TCoR because she’s busy with Dragonrider but she hopes she’ll have finished writing it by the end of this year

- If she’s still alive after all that to work on Reckless 5, it’ll be the last book of the series... probably. She’s also working on a bunch of smaller projects with her artists in residence

- Question: What are Cornelia’s favorite stories by Jane Austen, the Brontë sister and Shakespeare? She’s not a huge fan of Austen or Brontë because she finds all those repressed emotions too exhausting to read about. With Shakespeare on the other hand she struggles to name a favorite because there’s so much greatness to choose from (she does name MacBeth and Romeo and Juliet though)

- The Black Prince’s legacy in the Reckless timeline may play a role in the next Reckless book or it might evolve into a whole other story. Either way, she’s thinking about it  👀

- Someone asks about Reckless characters and Cornelia says that Kami’en and the Dark Fairy felt very familiar to her from the start in that she always knew who they were as people. She’s not sure why that is. She thinks the Dark Fairy represents many aspects of womanhood, like the ancient forgotten Goddess. Same with Fox, who embodies different sides of that.

- If Cornelia had to date a man from the Mirrorworld, Kami’en would interest her

- Rainer Strecker randomly joins the chat to say hi and everyone is delighted

- Cornelia’s favorite book series is still Lord of the Rings

- Question: Why has the Black Prince never found his true love? Cornelia says she’s not sure that’s true - maybe he did found true love at some point and then lost it again? ‘...and they lived happily ever after’ isn’t a guaranteed outcome after all. Since he’s such a passionate man, she’s pretty sure he’s had at least one big lovestory at this point. She hasn’t asked him about that yet but hopes she’ll find out when she continues writing his story.

- Jumping off that question, Cornelia says she respects her characters’ privacy and lets them keep their secrets until the time comes to ask about them, just as she would with real people.

- Someone asks if Cornelia has ever written herself into a story and she says a part of her is in all her characters. Except the villains because she hates them. She feels closest to Fox because she also always wished she could shapeshift

- The bookstore lady jumps in and asks about Meggie, is she similar to how Cornelia was as a child? Cornelia says yes, especially because she also had a very close relationship with her father and they would bond over books. However, she always envisioned Meggie with dark hair and as a different kind of girl than she was. (Ok sidenote from me on that, I wonder what she means by ‘dark hair’? Because Meggie is explicitly blond, so like... dark blond? Or did we just unlock brunette Meggie in 2021? Cornelia-)

- Continuing the conversation, Cornelia says she doesn’t consider herself the creator of any of the characters in her stories, she feels like she met them and wrote about him but she would never say something like ‘I invented Dustfinger’ because that’s absurd. How would that even work. That’s disrespectful. No.

- Some characters pretty much demand to be written about and are very impatient (like Jacob), others are more shy and elusive and take effort to understand (like Will or Dustfinger)

- There probably won’t be another book like The Labyrinth of the Faun because it was created under such unbelievable circumstances. Cornelia does enjoy writing film scripts, though, like she did for the Wild Chicks recently

- Question: How does Cornelia come up with character names? She has a bunch of encyclopedias and when she knows where a story takes place she checks if there are any artists from there whose names she can steal. She always wants names to have meaning and to paint a picture of whatever character it belongs to. However, she says that sometimes the vibe of a name is a tricky thing: When she wrote The Thief Lord (which takes place in Italy), she thought ‘Mosca’ was the perfect name for a big strong boy. However when the time came to translate the story into Italian, the Italians told her that ‘Mosca’ sounds like the name of a tiny little fly. Oh well.

- Cornelia says a lot of readers have written to her about The Thief Lord because at one point Victor (the detective) calls Mosca (who is black) a “Mohrenkopf”. Context: ‘Mohrenkopf’ is a German slur towards black people and also an outdated name for this goddamn marshmallow cookie:

Fuck this cookie.

- Cornelia says yeah, Victor is being racist in that moment but that doesn’t mean that she, the author, is racist. Similarly, she used the term ‘Indians’ in Reckless and a lot of readers were upset which she did not anticipate. To her it’s a positive word since she admires ‘Indians’ so deeply and finds terms like ‘Native/Indigenous Americans’ very complicated. She wonders how much longer she’ll be allowed to say ‘Black Prince’

- She thinks it’s right to be vigilant about bigotry but simply searching for problematic words is dangerous because context matters

- Bookstore lady brings up Pippi Longstocking and how the N-word has been removed from modern copies (think Pippi’s father). She think’s it’s wrong because the original text is part of the cultural heritage and shouldn’t be hidden from children but instead explained. 

- Cornelia says that in America she sees the hurt that’s connected to that word but she doesn’t think it’s right to simply remove the slur and expect everything to be fine. After all, the text in which it was used is still the same so any harmful ideas would still be in there and that needs to be discussed. Simply whitewashing things doesn’t make them any less racist.

- Cornelia brings up a visual example: The Asterix comics. She always liked them but the fact that the only black character is drawn as a racist caricature is harmful and wrong. It’s time to listen when black people express how hurtful depictions like that can be. Many white people never noticed racism growing up because it never affected them and that’s why it’s important to learn

- The ‘from rags to riches’ American dream was usually reserved for white people and Cornelia thinks a lot of (white) people are waking up to that fact. The way black people are still being criminalized and the way prisons use inmates for cheap labor is horrible and like a modern kind of slavery

- The bookstore people try to say something but Cornelia is not done: We Europeans are not off the hook either because the sins and wounds of colonialism are still felt around the world, not to mention the way other countries are still exploited today. Our wealth rests on the shoulders of poorer nations. Many doors are opening and it’s difficult to step through but we have to do it and admit to the things we may have been blind to due to privilege.

- The three of them agree on that and go back to reading questions

- Question: What are Cornelia’s tips for young authors? She advises to never start writing a story on a computer, always get a notebook and collect ideas & pictures for your story. Don’t rush things. If you have more than one story, give each story its own book and feed whichever one is hungry. It’s important to follow the idea where it leads, if you use cliches your readers will recognize them. And then it just takes time and passion. And trust in your own unique voice. She paraphrases a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson who once said no one cares about stories or characters or whatever, people read books to see the world through the goggles the author puts on them. I’m sure he said it prettier, I’m paraphrasing the paraphrase.

- That said, Cornelia thinks authors who say things like “I’m writing to express my innermost turbulences” are kinda dumb. She thinks it’s important to write about the things that happen everywhere else and around yourself and to try to find voices for others, not just yourself. Just like how carpenters build furniture for everyone else, a writer should use words to build things for others, whether it’s a window or door or a hiding place.

- Speaking of notebooks, as most of us probably know Cornelia has a lot of those and occasionally publishes them on her website. She says she’d love to let people look through them in person, maybe at the new farm in Germany (Cornelia sure does love farms)

- Speaking of writing things on paper, all three of them stress that everyone should write more letters because one day they’ll be old letters and curious people will want to read them, just as we like to read old documents now.

- Last question: How come both the Inkworld and the Mirrorworld feature a character called Bastard? Cornelia thinks that’s a good question and she should probably think about that. (Am I stupid? Are they talking about Basta? I’m confused)

...And with that, the livestream ends. They’ll get back together to do this again two months from now, until then: I’m going tf to sleep

[atheostic]

Friendly reminder that cannibals being uncivilized/savages/evil is a narrative pushed by white Christians to demonize Indigenous cultures and religions.

Cultures that practice cannibalism take it very seriously and there are extremely strict rules regarding who you can eat, how they should be consumed, and when cannibalism is appropriate.

In all the examples I know of regarding cultural cannibalism, it is part of religious/spiritual ceremony, having to do with absorbing a part of the one being consumed into yourself and making it a part of you (much like the mindset behind symbolic cannibalism in Christianity). 

For example, while the exact rules varied between cultures in Brazil, the version I’m most familiar with is this:

You were only to consume a formidable enemy who you greatly respected. The idea is that by consuming them you would take into yourself the traits which you admired about them and become stronger.

I know there are also a few cultures that perform cannibalism as a part of mourning ceremonies, the idea being that if you consume your loved one part of their spirit becomes part of you, allowing that person to live on through you.

Sidenote fun fact:

Because of this strict rule, we know that the Indigenous folk in Brazil who made first contact with the Europeans had likely already heard from other Indigenous people that the Europeans were not to be trusted.

We know this because they ate the first priest to say Mass in Brazil, meaning that they considered the priest to be a formidable enemy (I mean, he said he had a direct link of communication to a god, I’d have eaten him too in that situation).

The priest’s name was Sardinha (literally, “Sardine”), which is always a point of amusement in Brazilian history class.

[mevekagvain]

Chapter 211 - I can't blame Tao for eating Raizel's cookies. Those are the ones closest to him. If they didn't want him eating those specific ones they should have had the other plates closer. Plus Raizel obviously doesn't care so...

- Cerberus 🥺 I still love the convoluted hcs I have for them. Yuizi my love,,,

- Still impresses me that they can run up walls. Love you too Naruto wannabes. Also did they just go up there to pose? One of those tv show aus would be very fitting for Noblesse.

Chapter 212 - Crombel bro you're breaking the unspoken rule of only showing a ill fitting silhouette in Union Elder meetings. I disapprove.

- I hc the person constantly policing how people speak is Zarga. It's the teacher in him.

Chapter 214 - So Frankenstein 100% bullied the clan leaders. Maybe that's why we never see some of them. They refuse to appear even in flashbacks out of their distaste for him.

Chapter 215 - You blush about the RK but not the traitors who constantly visited you? I see how it is...

Chapter 218 - I never understood the whole laying low excuse like literally any Union member looking for y'all would find you in maybe a day tops. They don't change how they look at all. I've always been more surprised that they didn't have more fights because of that. They're always showing how they find out they're not dead from little details but I think it should be much easier than that. There's probably tons of footage of the three wandering about and blog posts by fans as well as eyewitnesses and I 100% don't believe that Tao can erase all of that.

Chapter 219 - Lutai actually did research before arriving? Big fan.

- Rodin and Yuizi,,, stoic,,, I adore them. Also Yuri's manipulative being,,, Love him too.

- Regis enjoying being part of RK is adorbs. Tsundere.

Chapter 220 - No matter how many years pass I'm still gonna scream over these panels like why Takeo and Yuizi specifically? It's so weird for something that means absolutely nothing.

Sidenotes - Yonsu's blue eyes makes me laugh since it matches how I hc her having European descent. Sangeen's white-grey ones could also mean that but for him I'm leaning towards it being due to an accident and his eyes were either regenerated or replaced during enhancements which is why they're that colour.

- Sangeen and Yonsu have the same dynamic as Zarga and Urokai.

[sleeplessandstubborn]

Emily in Paris or why I stopped caring for the main character and started rooting for the French. Episode 2.

I must confess one thing. I have a sort of admiration for people who have the habit and the will of go running before work, because I don’t do these things, and people who can do it while wearing what seems like a lace top (?) maybe more adequate for other things, but who am I to judge if Emily looks perfectly fine when running while I look like a bag with sport wear. So congratulations Miss Cooper you are doing well in this aspect. Also shows that Emily is adapting her schedules and her habits to her new life. Example: she’s not going to arrive early to work this time. Lesson learnt, so good for her!

Unfortunately there are still things she must get right. Example given, knowing exactly where her apartment is. She again tries to invade her cute neighbour’s home, which causes him to ask if she wants to live in his apartment. At this stage, there are reasons to suspect indeed. But there’s no time enough for our two character to devour each other with their eyes, so, after a last invitation to bang anytime from our delicious neighbour Emily goes back home to get a shower and dress for work.

Her white boots, however, have an unfortunate encounter with a material of animal origin. She’s naturally disgusted and deals with it making another Instagram post. Discovering, by the way, that she’s gaining more and more followers for ther photos of fictional! Paris.

Sidenote: this scene can mean two things from yours truly’s point of view. Either Emily’s next days are going to be shitty or she’s going to be ultimately lucky. In France or Spain is very common to wish good luck with the word merde (or well, mierda in Spanish). In both cases it comes from the times people went to theatre or opera house in carriages drawn with horses. So a load of shit meant: you are in the greatest show in town. But probably is not that deep.

At Savoir, la Plouc is decaying as Emily’s sobriquet, and only Julien greets her with it. Besides, Emily has learn to strike back. Or rather is her smartphone the one she uses to retort Va te faire foutre! Which mean Fuck you but it’s not that imaginative. Why not mange tes morts, or some decent French swearing. Anyway well done, Emily, because this makes her earn Julien’s respect.

... But evidently not Sylvie’s. She is clearly contemplating the void and wondering if some kind of karmic justice has sent her this girl that can’t figure out why is la plouc instead of le plouc or won’t pronounce the name of the fragance De L’Heure from Lavaux. Sylvie doesn’t want to listen her ideas for promoting Lavaux’s last product. A little discussion insues between the two ladies. Must luxury remain an enclosed world? Should it be democratized in some way? Of course Emily thinks the point of view of an outsider could help, but, could you point at the outsider in this scene? Of course Emily is not French and still dealing with the continuous cultural clash. But she doesn’t seem an outsider by any means. And, ah. There’s a launch party for De L’Heure so she better hurry up and put some thing that doesn’t resemble whatever she’s wearing.

Was that fashion advice from Sylvie? Who knows. In any case, Emily looks quite pretty with her black dress. The handbag is funny but highly debatable. And she’s overjoyed and bubbly as she pursues trays full of delicious food. Which is a faux pas, from Sylvie’s point of view.

Enter Antoine Lambert from Maison Lavaux a.k.a. another Frenchman who is going to be attracted towards Emily’s many charms. Because that’s what Frenchmen do in this series. She fails to understand what a nose means in the world of fragances - it’s not that harsh to figure out, sometimes I wonder why they have written her like that; she’s suffering a severe case of cultural clash, but it doesn’t mean she’s stupid, argh -. Antoine is creeptractive. Especially in the next scene.

Which takes place in this terrace with the gorgeous view of a glittering Eiffel Tower. This makes Emily smile and would do everyone else who had the opportunity to assist. This makes up for Sylvie saying that she’s talking too much about bussiness during the party, which is something she should not do.

Monsieur le Creeptractive follows her and tests the fragance on her skin. A really weird dialogue about how she should have a French boyfriend because you learn French in bed... Yeah, sure.  Emily profess her fidelity to her engaged to be engaged Doug back in Chicago. Something that he doesn’t deserve but more on that immediately after. He smells her in a way that would make many women shudder and run away and compliments (?) her on smelling like expensive sex. Yikes yikes yikes.

All in all, is a successful night for Emily, but as she discovers the next day, she’s supposed to work not in the promotion of De l’Heure, but in some product  called Vaga-Jeune to help woment to combat vaginal dryness. Is that a mean move by Sylvie, or it’s only a logical thing for Emily to start there, given she has experience in pharmaceuticals? Discuss. She also tells our heroine not to be too flirty with Antoine, who is married to one of her very good friends. But immediately after Julien drops the bomb: Sylvie is actually Antoine’s mistress. Oops.

In order to deal with the amount of unwanted information, Emily texts to Mindy and they go for a dinner. Mindy gives her a few tips to survive in the complicate environment of a city where everyone is having affairs with everyone. As if in Paris - like everywhere else - didn’t exist people who doesn’t care about sex. In this universe, Emily still can’t wrap her head around the endemic lack of conyugal fidelity in this series.

We learn more about Mindy, who maybe would deserve more than being only Asian token character which is supportive of the main one just because. Indeed Mindy is for now my favourite character here, along with Sylvie. Mindy turns out to be in Paris because her millionaire zipper king father wanted her in the bussiness school, but, since living in Paris was one of her dreams, Mindy dropped it and became a nanny instead. Now she’s been cut off by dad, but she’s free and, besides, she finds funny to have grown up surrounded by nannies and now being one of them.

The temptation of MIndy taking over Emily in this series is too big when just in the next scene she thinks she can “educate the chef a little bit about customer service” without even tasting her steak, which she wants done more. Customer are not always right; some of them behave like annoying assholes. She swallows her words as Gabriel from downstairs emerges from the kitchen because of course he’s the chef. Somewhat that convinces her she should taste the steak before giving her opinion. It turns out the steak is wonderful, it was wonderful the whole time. Emily please. Try to behave.

(also Mindy wouldn’t mind to taste the chef instead of the steak, which is understandable)

Next day Emily is happily roaming around the market with a little hat perched on her head and the mind full of Chicago Boyfriend Doug. The little hat is so stupid that it’s almost charming, like someone more fit for a musical than for real people walking on real streets. She seems to have befriended the woman from the boulangerie, too! However, the happiness is to be shortlived...

... Because Doug, as his first scene already indicated, is someone who can’t bother to take his ass into a plane and fly to Paris where there is nothing to do while expecting for his girlfriend to come back from job. This guy must have one, but he’s so lazy that one wonders if he inherited it. Notice that, unlike in Paris, there are cars in Chicago. Doug proceeds then to inelegantly dump his girlfriend by phone.

Very fitting to have Emily standing just next to the Panthéon when the call is over and their relationship as dead as the people inside.

Emily is logically sad after this and the weather seems to agree with her mood, probably she cried to her sleep, or at least she shed some tears. He doesn’t deserve it, honey.

Her mood doesn’t improve when, at the office, she discovers a new thing. Yes, you have grammatical gender in French, as well as in other European languages. She is puzzled because, starting her campaign for Vaga-Jeune, she discovers vagine is a masculine word in French. She doesn’t understand it, and, in typical Emily fashion, she decides the problem is with this language she knows virtually nothing about.

She also learns a very important word for her future life in Paris: grève, which means strike. And it’s not going only a vagina strike. But who knows, she lives in a parallel universe so maybe there are no strikes there (since there is no public transport and/or services on sight even if we know it exist somewhere). And of course, post something on her Instagram account about how vaginas are not masculine.

During her (daily, one guess) conversation with Mindy during the lunch break, Emily loses at last this overoptimistic side of her that makes the character annoying and vents a little about her general exasperation. She thinks she’ll never learn the language (but girl, you barely tried, don’t be so harsh with yourself), or be simply tolerated by her workmates, or even understand how the city was built. She’ll be all right, Mindy insists, not very impressed at her friend’s disperation.

Which follows is one of the most cringeworthy deus-ex-machina I have seen, and adequately being a deus-ex-machina it comes from l’Élysée. Wink wink, mythology aficionados.

By the way, it’s that the façade which gives to the main courtyard of the French presidential palace? Yes it is. Here I am wondering where this footage came from and when it was filmed because I am that way. Seems the flag is at half mast from that point of view so... this could help to know in which moment was filmed... But screw that, you aren’t here for my personal obsessions, so lets go right to the point.

Somewhat Carla Bruni finds Emily’s post about vaginas utterly fascinating, to the extent that she has to share it with Brigitte Macron. And of course the current French First Lady (even if officially there is not such title in France) agrees and posts it in her Twitter account. We only see Fictional!Brigitte from her back. Real Brigitte doesn’t have accounts on social networks, by the way, which is understandable since after a while one gets tired of playing the game of guessing if the one who made the mysoginist and idiotic post is from the extreme right or the extreme left (it’s a difficult thing to tell apart, I assure you). Of course Emily’s post gets viral.

Brigitte Macron just retweeted you, bitch! is not bad as unexpected sentence on a screenplay in 2020, congratulations. Her partners at Savoir are overjoyed and suddenly Emily can share a table with them, yay! Though evolving from la plouc to our Vaga-Jeune is not really improving that much I guess? So that’s the end of the episode and Emily’s life seems not-so-that-depressing all of a sudden. So thank you Brigitte.

And that was Episode 2 of Emily in Paris. Our heroine was slightly less annoying than on first one, probably because the reality of being in a totally different country is starting to hit her and she’s had a few humblings by this moment. For the next one, we’ll know more about Monsieur le Creeptractive & the nonsense of fragance advertisements.

[cisthoughtcrime]

just watched the latest Westworld episode (s3e5) and want to braindump some thoughts about this season as I continue to procrastinate, so spoilers under the divide. if any of y’all watch westworld, would be interested to hear your thoughts too.

ok gonna try to keep this short and not overcritical but probably gonna fail on both counts.

I’m still definitely enjoying watching it and I’m likely gonna keep going until it ends, but it doesn’t feel like it’s the same show anymore so much as a spin-off. At first i thought it was just the fact that so little of it is taking place inside the park and the cast has been decimated, but this episode made me realise that s3 has been so unoriginal compared to the original premise. (again: still enjoying it, still watching on it, not shitting on it for the sake of a superiority trip. There are a lot of derivative shows I really enjoy but Westworld isn’t usually one of them).

the original premise’s underlying subject was subtle and existential and imho was very good about laying out the ingredients for the viewer to draw their own conclusions about what the show was trying to say (from the big philosophical questions like “what is humanity/consciousness/free will anyway?” to the implicit societal critiques like “morality is performative and when no one’s looking humans act different”).

I think what’s bugging me about s3 is that we finally broke out of westworld and we’re in a futurescape i’ve seen a thousand times before in scifi.

The downtrodden ‘different’ (white male) outcast disillusioned with The System and omnipresent surveillance who meets the sexy motorcycle-wearing black-leather-clad badass woman who saves him from his mediocrity and validates his disillusionment and recruits him to help dismantle the system and free the sheeple? Check.

The reclusive European gazillionaire who owns an island, has a seemingly-self-contained tragic backstory that will no doubt have one or two vestigial elements that come into play at pertinent times to blindside the audience and/or main character, and espouses his dream of a utopia derived from his trauma but that isn’t really a utopia? Check.

Everything is automated but people are still empty inside so everything the rich do to poke their ennui with a stick is the same ol’ combination of colourful hypersexualisation/orgies/prostitutes, sadism, and synthetically-made drugs that do whatever tf the writers think will play best visually while brushing off the chemistry of it all with whatever the newest version of ‘flux capacitor’ is? Check.

That’s not to say these tropes are all necessarily scorched earth. I mean, worked for The Matrix and Altered Carbon and whatever. I’m gonna try to wrap this up by synthesising what it is that actually bugs me about this in Westworld S3 specifically:

i said earlier that previously Westworld was good about talking around the core concepts and plot, leaving us to infer the patterns and parallels (which tbh is kinda what i credited for the show’s popularity, ie the fact that there was so much to discuss and so many connections for the audience to make in such a creative world of philosophical and moral questions that ofc people would latch onto it and hypothesise wildly). But eg in this episode, when Dolores sends everyone their profiles, the human-host parallels spoke for themselves and seeing people’s reactions in the streets reinforced so much (base human nature, free will, the validity of the hosts’ emotional reactions, flawed attempts to standardise reality at the expense of individuality) but Bernard softballs it in with “they’re breaking their loops,” which hamhandedly shoves the “ooooooo humans have been the automated drones all along, that’s wack man” down our throats as if that hadn’t been a staple of speculative fiction since before Aldous Huxley and as if it weren’t the sort of blatantly fucking obvious thing you or the person watching with you would gasp aloud after a twist or reveal. Not saying I disagree with the criticism of complacent routine, it’s just... we get it already and we got it since whatever grade school essay we had to write on Orwell or The Giver, no? There’s also the “human over-reliance on tech” critique which has been there since S1, but until now it was kinda baked into the background of the main satirisation of hubris in the face of mortality and self-knowledge; now ‘human over-reliance on tech” is the exact weakness that the show keeps overexplaining has opened the door to human extinction.

sidenote: twice so far they’ve alluded to the human ‘real world’ being a simulation (Maeve in War World and Liam’s stoned friend on that rooftop bar), so if this season’s big twist is that the real world is just one of the ziptillion simulations run by the Serac’s machine I might just stop watching and pretend it ended after s1, esp if part of the twist is that Dolores or Maeve somehow merge themselves into the fabric of the simulation/become one with it. don’t even get me started on if serac is a host bc what a cop-out that would be.

I’m setting aside some of my other issues with the show to focus on how weirdly narrowed/streamlined/hemmed-in this season has been. i really want to like caleb but ffs his whole arc so far is simultaneously far too recognisable and far too self-insert-gratifying when the only new thing added to his stock character is the fact that Aaron Paul is playing him now instead of Sam Worthington or Jake Gyllenhall or whichever from the parade of recognisable-action-actors who are Misunderstood and Pouty until sexy miss unreadable fulfills his call-to-adventure fantasy complete with kiss/sex either during or immediately after a big fight scene.

Now that the rich intriguing world we started in has been largely explained and almost entirely killed off, we’re left with loyalty to a few fave characters in this (admittedly aesthetically pleasing and coherent, but still) standard vision of the future, where we already know Dolores’s story and motives and are kinda waiting for Caleb to catch up, and the only questions left really are kinda linear by Westworld standards (what’s Dolores’s plan, what’s gonna happen to each of the characters, like basic unanswered questions in any plot), and they keep recycling the same plot points (’oh they’re a host too?’ or ‘this host can’t trust their own thoughts/memories/actions because they’ve been damaged or tampered with’ but now kinda cheapened bc the setting is different and no one in the show expects them to be hosts but everyone in the audience does).

TLDR

There is nothing special or specific about this future-world that connects it to Westworld. A futuristic theme park of hyperrealistic humanoid AIs designed to facilitate the consequence-free catharsis of the stunted rich elite could be transplanted into any technologically-advanced future where extreme wealth-disparity and omni-surveillance are still problems, but that describes basically every scifi show that isn’t about space or apocalypse. But that’s part of what made the park such a strong concept, and also why i expected/wanted them to have come up with a more original outside world. If the park can fit anywhere, why did they choose such an uninspired world? It just feels like these creative interesting characters left this creative interesting world, took a wrong turn at Albequerque, and ended up in an extra-preachy Black Mirror fan script.

and again: i don’t hate this season, i’m still watching and enjoying, but i’m really disappointed by the reveal of this world.

[dlkardenal]

“Realistic” fantasy worlds – A sidenote to the debate

One of the many good things about Twitter is that I can see what’s on the mind of people. (I completely took over our twitter account, so if you see tweets and comments that is me, Lory, in 99% percent of the cases.) A few days ago I saw a tweet about why everyone who writes medieval fantasy builds a society where they are oppressing women. If you can build any world you want and any kind of society why are there so many medieval European settings, and why most of them have strong patriarchy? For a long time, this just felt natural to me, but that tweet made me think too. Now I have some kind of explanation, and I thought this topic is worth at least one blog post.

I. On medieval European fantasy

You hear the phrase “write what you know” basically everywhere. I’m not exactly at peace with this statement. We’re writing a desert fantasy book as Europeans and I had many depressing nights when I wanted to throw away our WIP because according to this statement, we as white Europeans do not have the right to write a desert fantasy. But this is for another time. Nonetheless, many of us grew up with medieval Europe in our minds. All the fairy tales, the knights and kings, and the old fantasy books have medieval settings. It is familiar, well known, and safe. No one will claim you can’t write it because you can’t associate with it. Also, the godfather of all fantasy–Tolkien–wrote a medieval Europe inspired world, and it became the foundation of the genre. After reading many fantasy books of this kind, I personally got bored of it, and I welcome the new trend of fantasy books with other kinds of cultures. (I read about a book called Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, coming this fall which is based on the Aztec culture and South-America and I am super excited about it.) 

To get the medieval-Europe feeling, you need certain things, like heavy armors, swords, knights, and this includes that the state of women also should be as it was back then. That’s why they call it realistic. II. Women dominated cultures

But really, if we can create any society and any alternative history why patriarchy is considered “realistic”? The short answer, because it is, but before you rage-quit from reading this post, hear me out! You may have already read a lot about ancient societies from me on this blog, but I have to bore you with more.

There is no evidence that real matriarchy ever existed. There were societies suspected to be female dominant because archeologists found a goddess as their center of worship, and there are ethnicities nowadays that have some form of matriarchy, but neither of these is the female equivalent to patriarchal societies. Sometimes they have matrilineality (when they trace their lineage from their mother and grandmother and so on) but not much else, in other cases, matrons rule over a family, but men have the political power. For example in the Mosuo culture in China, the oldest women was considered the head of their family, but the status of nobility passed on from father to son. We know very little about how people lived before the bronze age (or even during that), and there’s a slight chance truly matriarchal societies existed way before –like the amazons in Greek mythology– but for the bulk of our history, there’s only the concept but no execution.

It is worth mentioning though, that there always have been groups of women that lived outside the boundaries of a patriarchal society. In ancient Rome there were the Vesta Virgins, an order of priestesses with unique social standing. They had many rights ordinary women didn’t - they could observe gladiator fights, and their opinions were valued highly among… well, everyone. In Greece the heteras were also held high because of their erudition, but let’s not dance around the question, they were prostitutes. 

III. Biology. The answer is always biology.

Okay, everyone learned history at school, but we are talking about fictional societies! Yes. Fictional societies, but human beings. If you are writing about elves, or aliens, or god-knows-what with different biology from humans, then all these things have nothing to do with you and the reality of your world. But humans have certain limitations. You can see from the examples above, that we can put women into two groups: 1. the mothers and daughters 2. the priestesses and whores. The first group is the rule the second group is the exception, and the main difference – and also the reason for one group to ignore some patriarchal stigmas while the other can’t – is childbirth.

Women were worshiped for their ability to create life, but it meant constant life-threatening danger for them. A woman can give birth only a certain number of times during her life, because, you know, nine months of pregnancy, then a very little baby, then a new baby, then menopause, and half of the children won’t live until adulthood. They are the very essence of society because no children -> no people -> no culture. On top of that women tend to die during labor. So a woman is both valuable and endangered. On one hand, they need to be protected (in men’s eyes), on the other hand, because of their value they could be used to trade and to gain political power. I know it sounds horrible, but if we put aside every moral, I think it is understandable. This is just human nature. It allowed the population to expand at a rapid rate (one man + lot of women = a lot of children, even if half of the children and women die in the process), and outgrow those societies that may have been matriarchal. 

I don’t say, that we can’t imagine a medieval (and before) society where women have rights. Actually, women had many rights among the Vikings, for example, but the most they could achieve was some kind of equality. And even then, male-centered societies outgrew these. This is why I think, that these patriarchal societies in fantasy are not necessarily good, but realistic even if it is an imagined society and history. Because if you write about humans, you have to paint them as such - and humans are like that.

Lory

[siren-theories]

The Pownall Massacre

TL, DR: Too complext to summarise. Sorry, you have to read through this. If you want to, you can skip to Part IV to read what I think really happened.

There is but one certainty with historical events - that they can and most likely will be interpreted differently depending on the eye of the beholder. Our own upbringing, socialization, education, sexuality, gender etc. can all cause us to be biased when interpreting historical events.  There are always different "truths" depending on who you ask.

As a simple example most readers would be familiar with lets take a look at a "great" US President, George Washington. If you would have asked a Native American of the time about George Washington he would have called him a destroyer of native villages who led massacres. If you would have asked a loyalist, he would have considered Washington a traitor to the crown. If you would have asked a member of Washington’s army in the Revolutionary War, he would have hailed Washington as a great hero. And if you would have asked his slaves....

This is no less true for the period of "Manifest Destiny" and westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century. What looks like massive land robbery, ethnic cleansing and even genocide to the outside (modern) observer might also be romanticized as the era of brave settlers and brave cowboys, the era of daring people prevailing against adversity to secure a better life for themselves. Modern Media has (regrettably) largely chosen the later path.

Please keep the above in mind when considering everything that follows in this posts. Also, please note that this is a theory built on evidence from the show - but this theory has not been  explicitly confirmed by any of the show writers.

Part I: The historical context of the Pownall Massacre.

Understanding the historical context is the most important thing when it comes to interpreting past events. 

All sources agree that the massacre happened 150 years before the time the show starts, so somewhere in the vicinity of 1868. By this time Washington State had already been settled by native Americans for close to 14.000 years (thus giving us the earliest possible form of divergence between humans and sirens).

Native Americans hunting ducks, taken from Wikimedia Commons

Native American villages of the time seem to have been mostly concentrated on the coasts and near rivers, being focused on salmon fishing, hunting and gathering berries/roots etc. You can see how Washington is a perfect setting for the Siren story - even before the arrival of the white settlers. The most prominent of those tribes seemed to have formed what is called the Salish language community.

The salish language family (from here). 

The earliest contact between the natives and Europeans happened during the spanish mapping expeditions of the Northern American coast. One such ship, the Santiago, was captained by Bruno de Hecata. You can read a bit about his expedition here.  

Unfortunately this ship also carried a deadly cargo - smallpox. This disease resulted in a harrowing smallpox epidemic which killed at least 30%, if not 50% of the native population (approximately 11.000 - 20.000 people). Even though the introduction of the disease was unintentional (indeed a third of the Europeans themselves died from it) these events proved fatal to the strength of the local populations. This blow allowed northern tribes like the Haida to muscle in on the territory of the local tribes. .

[Sidenote: For those of you who would want to read more about this I suggest Robert Boyd: The coming of the spirit of pestilence. Introduced infectious diseases and population decline among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774–1874 (Seattle 1999). Be warned, it makes for grim reading.]

Eventually, British fur traders and settlers arrived on the scene. In 1790 Spain and Britain reached an agreement that gave the British free reign over the Northwest coast. In 1805 the Lewis and Clark expedition reached Washington and the USA entered the struggle for dominance over the region. Britain however gained dominance due to the war of 1812 and the Hudson Bay Company eventually became the most important fur trader of the region. These early years were characterized by a high rate of intermarriage between fur traders and local women, as well as the introduction of European technology and European goods, most importantly firearms.

However, in the 1840s large numbers of American settlers trekked westwards and started settling Washington State. Soon outnumbering the British fur traders and local natives (who seemed to have fallen into some form of uneasy coexistence), this formed the basis for what was later called the Oregon dispute between Britain and the United States. 

In 1846 the Oregon Treaty ceded Washington State to the USA and settlement began, with all the negative effects this had on the local population - disease, land robbery, ethnic cleansing and genocide. In 1862 another devastating smallpox epidemic broke out, again killing roughly one-third to half of the remaining indigenous population.

If the massacre happened in 1868 then it would have happened during a time which was filled with strife. The boundary dispute between England and the USA had not been fully resolved yet (it would only be resolved through the mediation of the German Empire in 1872). The community of Bristol Cove would have been at best a few decades old (and probably was significantly younger, maybe only having been formed in the 1850s). There might have been bad blood between ex-British and American members of the community.  The native population would have suffered from the devastating smallpox epidemic only a few years earlier and I highly doubt the natives had surrendered the prime fishing grounds willingly. 

The settlers and fishers of Bristol Cove themselves would have been hard men who had suffered through the deprivations of the long trek westwards. The fact that most of them would have been adventurous young white men without many suitable marriage prospects is also problematic as historically a surplus of young males has nearly always led to conflict. Judging from the town's football team being called the whalers and the harpoons being found in Helen's shop it seems that Bristol Cove primarily was a fishing and whaling town - two profession that require men that are comfortable with killing what they perceive as animals.

In short it does not require much imagination to view the Bristol Cove of 1862-1870 as a powder keg waiting to explode. All it needed was the right man to lit the fuze.

(Enter Charles H. Pownall, aka literally Hitler)

Part II: The sources covering the massacre

Let's look at the sources covering the massacre and try to decipher what they are telling us about the massacre and the reasons for it.

a) The official human version

The official version of what happened during the massacre is that essentially no massacre happened at all and the entire story is presented as a fairytale for small children. It is used as the centerpiece of the annual mermaid festival, being used to draw in tourists and bored college students looking for an adventure.

(Tfw your family history gets appropriated by college girls looking for an excuse to paaartaaaay.)

The Timestamp for the official human version is 4:35 - 5:10 of Episode 101 "The mermaid discovery".

(how lovely, a play about genocide. With Children in it. What could go wrong?) 

NARRATOR: "It was more than a 150 years ago when a local fishing captain, Charles H. Pownall, fell in love with a mermaid in these very waters, enchanted by her beautiful siren song." POWNALL: "I love you fishermen" SIREN: "I love you mermaid" NARRATOR: "But one day, he went to the bay, and his mermaid was gone, back to her home in the sea, never to return." NARRATOR: "And that is how thanks to Charles H. Pownall, Bristol Cove became the Mermaid Capital of the World"

(Is it my mermaid that I see there on the horizon? No, just a giant whitewash,)

The depiction of an episode of violence against other populations as a fairytale is not a new idea. For example, take the story of Pocahontas. Popular knowledge focuses on the fairytale aspect of this historical story (native Powhatan "princess" Pocahontas rescues brave white explorer John Smith) but nearly all popular retellings omit the continuation of that story - how the brave explorer John Smith continued to raid the food stores of the Powhatans, how the white colonists massacred the Powhatans, took their lands, assassinated their leaders and drove them into pitiful reservations. (Put THAT in a movie, Disney).

As such, this story fits the archetype to a T. And yet there are a few facts in the official version that merit a mention:

The official human version claims that Pownall was enchanted by the beautiful siren song (which would mean that the siren would have taken the initiative to make contact with Pownall)  

The mermaid in question disappeared without a trace, leaving Charles to look for her with no success

b) Helen's books

Another take is being presented in one of Helen's books aptly titled "An Illustrated History of the Mermaid", which features the mermaids of Bristol Cove in a chapter. Sadly the chapter is truncated and we only see the first page of it in detail - while other pages also show text, freeze-framing and enlarging them sadly showed them to be taken from a book on schooners and a book about the Napoleonic wars - a common trick by TV shows to save valuable time writing those props.

The page dealing with the massacre is shown in Episode 102: “The Lure” as follows:

(Pls Maddie move your hand a bit lower? Pretty pls?)

I have transcribed the visible text:

The Mermaids of Bristol Cove Being a true account of the bitter and broken heart of a Fisherman and the retribution that was exacted by Men of the Land upon the Maidens of the Sea

The proud men of Bristol Cove were renowned up and down the western coastline of the Americas for their craft and Bravery upon the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The men abord Captain Pownall's ship were especially known for their prowess upon the waves and their seemingly supernatural ability to find and capture more fish than any other craft. This ability was attributed to more than mere craft. It was whispered, in certain coastal taverns, that Captain Pownall himself was responsible for his own share of the bountiful harvest. It was rumored that the captain was [illegible text] a mermaid and that it was [illegible]and the deep that had resulted [illegible] his curious [illegible] five years[illegible]

This text is really short on details for its length. What we get out of it is a timeframe (five years) and a lot of fluff about the skilled and brave men of Bristol Cove - and that the relationship was also based on mutual fishing cooperation. However, the headline already tells us what interpretation the story will use here - that Pownall and the mermaid fell in love, she then broke his heart and the "brave and skilled" fishermen exacted retribution by massacring them. I was expecting some brazen apologia but not one this brazen. Yeah, some eeeevil woman(tm)  hurt you by leaving you, go murder her relatives in revenge. That makes you "brave and skilled".

Excuse me for a second while I find the nearest container to throw up in.

[Sidenote: Painting genocide as a tragedy while also arguing the victims deserved getting massacred is par the course for colonial apologia of the 19th century. Even in the 20th century Turkey for example justified its genocide of the Armenians by arguing that it was "just" a relocation that got out of hand due to Armenian banditry. This text fits well into all the other 19th century texts that allegedly deplored violence against indigenous people while similarly arguing that this could all have been avoided if the darn natives had not been so unaccommodating. Feel free to imagine a lot of fake pearl clutching as a side dish to all that juicy victim blaming.

I commend the writers of Siren for actually writing such a text for it shows their attention to detail but this was infuriating to read.]

c) The Pownall family history

Lets hear it from the direct descendants of Charles "stil literally Hitler" Pownall. Ben confronts his father after meeting a mermaid himself and nearly becoming the evening snack of said mermaid (no, snack is not used euphemistically here.) The conversation takes place in Episode 102: "The Lure" from 19:00 - 20:40.

(...So...uh...about great-great-great-great-grandpa...)

I have transcribed the relevant parts:

BEN: "I wanted to ask you something. I remembered that you and Grandpa used to talk about Charles Pownall, about what really happened back then." TED: "You really came here to ask me that?" BEN: "Yeah.” TED: "Why the sudden interest in the family history?" BEN: "I ran into Helen Hawkins.” TED: "Oh, c'mon." BEN: "Dad? Maybe I'd show up to more family events like the statue unveiling if you told me the real story about our family." TED: "All right. Look, Charles might not have been exactly who we make him out to be. I can't say for sure, but there might have been some mental illness, maybe even schizophrenia. Long months at sea, a constant stream of booze and, uh, well, he was seeing things. [chuckles] Mermaids? You know this. You did the play in school. That's how the town got its folklore. Now, as for Helen and her stories, well, we all know she's got a vivid imagination." BEN: "That's it?" TED: That's it."

Additional info about the Pownall Mermaid is delivered to us in the form of a conversation between Ben and his father in Episode 110: “Aftermath”. It starts from 21:30 and ends at 23:00.

(Don't mind me getting defensive here about not giving you all the information you asked for earlier)

TED: "Look, Charles had an affair with a woman in town, okay - she worked at a local bar...a brothel." BEN: "Wait, so she was a prostitute?" TED: "You can imagine...an extramarital affair, a child born out of wedlock with a woman in that profession - these aren't things people talked about back then. Every family has its secrets, Ben." BEN: "This isn't some kind of ancient history, dad. I have a relative living in town that I've known my whole life." TED: "You know our family Ben. This kind of history, nothing they'd want out there. Why dwell on the ugliness? Okay, Charles was a troubled guy. We talked about that. From what I understand, he had a lot of demons."

From these two conversations we get not only a lasting impression that Ted is knowing more than he lets on but also a lot of relevant information:

Charles Pownall suffered from alleged mental illness, maybe even schizophrenia - or something that made it appear as if he did.

Charles liked his booze, maybe too much

The mermaid was according to Charles family a woman of ill repute

Charles was already married when he met the mermaid and when the baby was born

The Pownall family has been paying Helen's family off to keep quiet.

d) The Siren sources

In Episode 209 “Street fight”, Ryn tells Ben the Siren side of the story.

(”Story? No, not story. Real”)

The conversation starts at 11:50 and ends at about 13 minutes.

RYN: "There was one of us who spent time with a human long time ago. She lived with him on land. Together they had little one." Ben: "A child?" RYN: "Yes. But the child was not normal, not look normal. He took it away from her into the woods. He killed their child. So she went back home in the water. But this made him angry. His head-bad. He brought many men, and they killed us. So many of us that...the water was red with our blood. Ben: "Helen told me that story. Not about a child though." RYN: "Story? No, not story. Real." 

It is interesting that as much as the human sources place the blame on the Sirens, the Siren side of the story places the blame just as squarely on the humans. What we can take away from this version is:

The mermaid lived with Charles on land and they had a child together.

The baby was deformed and thus Charles took it into the woods and killed it.

The mermaid left Charles whose head then went “bad”.

Charles took his men and slaughtered them in the water.

e) The Hybrid sources

Perhaps the most important tidbits of information come from Bristol Cove's resident mermaid expert, Helen Hawkins, in Episode 110 "Aftermath". The conversation starts at 16:12 and ends at around 18:50.

(Lemme just drop some knowledge on you children...)

HELEN: "She was the first. She was the daughter of Charles Pownall and his mermaid." BEN: "The baby is buried here? Ryn told me that Charles killed his child."  HELEN: "Oh no. [to Ryn] That may be what your colony believes, but that's not what happened. The baby was born in transition and appeared deformed, a soul caught between two worlds. Charles knew that the doctors of Bristol Cove would see her as an abomination and refuse to treat her. The Baby was gonna suffer and die. So he took her into the woods." MADDIE: "To put her out of her misery?" HELEN: "No. He brought her to bigger minds than the doctors of Bristol Cove. To people who weren't afraid of shape-shifters." MADDIE: "The Haida" HELEN: "Yes. BEN: "She lived?" HELEN: "The Haida helped her to complete her transition and she lived for a very long time. I am her last living descendant." BEN: "You*re one of them?" HELEN: "That's right. One-eigth to be exact." MADDIE: "Ryn, did you know this?" RYN: "Yes. I sense she is one of us. But I did not know the child lived."

Helen claims that:

Charles took his daughter to the Haida to find help for her

The Haida were able to help the hybrid daughter

The daughter lived for a long time in Bristol Cove among humans, eventually dieing there

Part III: Literally Hitler? The trouble with Charles H. Pownall

(Look at him. He is just standing there. Menacingly.) 

Much of how we view the massacre is dependant upon how we assess the character of Charles H. Pownall himself. It is easy to think of him as a typical machismo of his day, a ruthless conqueror who was blinded by his own sense of superiority, who could not handle rejection and committed genocide in revenge. There might be some truth to that interpretation - after all, the people who settled Washington were not exactly enlightened liberals.

And yet we know some facts which are unquestionably true (because otherwise Helen would not exist) that paint a different picture of Charles H. Pownall. When faced with the problem of his daughter's life being in danger, Charles acts rationally and decisively. He seeks out help from the only people who know how to deal with hybrids, the Haida. Doing so was not a small task considering the troubled times the Haida were facing due to the arrival of the white men and such an endeauvor might have easily ended with Charles being killed. But he persevered, the Haida managed to save his daughter's life and when returning to Bristol Cove Charles he took great care to safeguard his daughter's future. 

He organized regular funds to be paid to her and her eventual descendants and concocts a story to tell his family as to where this mysterious daughter suddenly appeared from and why they needed to pay her to keep her quiet (her being the alleged daughter of a prositute he had relations with). Admitting to a child born out of wedlock in those days had the potential to ruin a man's career and honour and thus his place in society so this was not a trivial thing to do.

Those two brave actions mentioned above are hardly those we would expect from a bloodthirsty genocider only concerned with himself.

Yet how do we reconcile this image of a at least somewhat caring father with the image of a madman slaughtering Sirens on the water? There might have been a logical reson for Charles turning into a monster. 

Both the Siren version of events and the Pownall family history mention that Charles suffered from mental problems which Ted characterizes as schizophrenic behaviour, seeing things and acting besides himself. What do we know of in the show that causes visions and causes people to act as if they are suffering from mental illnesses? In fact these are the exact symptoms people suffering from the Siren Song (Ben) or people suffering from withdrawal symptons (Chris) exhibit. Without having access to the song anymore and the only recourse being self-medication with alcohol (psychology was not exactly a practiced medicine back then, nor did MRIs exist), is it any wonder that his mental state deteriorated? It might be that the Charles H. Pownall that perpetrated the massacre bore little resemblence to the Charles H. Pownall that his mermaid fell in love with.

This might be a way too charitable interpretation of events. After all, not everybody suffering from an addiction and brain damage starts to commit genocide. However, at the very least Charles should be considered more than the black hat as which he appears in the Siren version of events (the sirens perception of him is also colored by him allegedly murdering his daughter which which never happened). Him being more of a grey character would also be in line with all the antagonists we see depicted in the show so far. Take for example Nicole, the main antagonist of Season 2 - while she lies and manipulates everything around her in order to get Ryn to cooperate with the military she is not entirely devoid of compassion. I think that therefore the interpretation of Charles H. Pownall as a more grey character fits better with this show.

This of course does not excuse his genocidal actions in any way. But it might serve as an explanation for them.

(Maybe not quite Hitler after all)

[Sidenote: I still hate the submissive pose the Pownall family chose for the statue of the mermaid, even if it fits the story the humans are trying to tell.]

Part IV: An attempt at reconstructing the events leading up to and including the massacre

As mentioned in the intro to this post, every group involved in an important and traumatic event has their own versions of the truth. This does not mean that each group necessarily lied or had a hidden agenda/hidden truth. Each version of the story (except for the two human apologia pieces already mentioned) might have been honest conclusions based on incomplete information.

So what are the facts of the story which we can reconstruct while trying to reconcile all the different pieces of information and using all information that we know not to be demonstrably false?

In the years between 1863 to 1868 Charles H. Pownall met a Siren. It might be that this Siren was actively looking for somebody to live with or to cooperate on fishing with (possibly due to the indigenous populations she used to fish with being decimated by the devastating smallpox epidemic of 1862).This cooperation led to Charles H. Pownall becoming the most renowned and wealthiest fishermen of Bristol Cove and might have continued for five years in total.

[Sidenote: The reasons for those cooperation might have been similar to those that causes other ocean predators to cooperate with humans in reality. See for example the Australian “Law of the tongue” or the Brazilian dolphin-human cooperation.]

Some time during this cooperation the mermaid and Pownall fell in love. Maybe she sang to him from the start, maybe she only sang to him after she realised she loved him. (Note that no version at all mentions that Pownall caught her so the approach was most likely consensual. Especially considering how forward Sirens can be I find the idea of the Siren initiating contact - and maybe even intiating the sexual part of the relationship - believable).

[Sidenote: In previous human-siren interactions - as the ones I postulated for the Haida in my earlier piece - this relationship would not have been a problem. The Haida and Sirens knew how to interact with each other as well as the dangers that could happen from exposure to the Song - as did the Sirens. The mermaid most likely thought the settlers would have knowledge of the problems as well. It might have been an innocent mistake to assume that. But the culture of the settlers would have been anathema to such a relationship. Having a female co-captaining a ship in the 19th century would have caused great offence, especially if she was sleeping with the married(!) captain to boot. As such, society would have almost certainly put trememndous pressure on the relationship even if the wider settler population might not have known that she was a mermaid.]

The Siren and Charles conceived a child together. The pregnancy resulted in a difficult birth with the baby caught halfway in transition. To the settlers the "deformed" baby was considered an abomination, maybe even a punishment from god for breaking the vows of marriage.

In desperation, Charles takes the baby to the Haida. He successfully pleads for their help only to discover his mermaid missing when he returns.

[Sidenote: Had the Haida been the dominant population at Bristol Cove at that time the birth of a hybrid would not have been a problem. Guess ethnic cleansing does come back to bite you in the behind after all.]

The Siren, assuming that Charles went into the woods and killed their child, had left for the water during his abscence, never to return. 

[Sidenote: This part is the one which I find hard to reconcile. I find it hard to believe that Charles would have known to take the baby to the Haida without his Siren telling him. In any case, I find it hard to believe that he just left Bristol Cove with the Baby without telling her what he was intending to do.

Or maybe there is another explanation. Maybe she assumed that the baby was dead because people told her so? There were certainly plenty of people with motivation to get rid of her. Charles' human family, moralists opposed to children born out of wedlock, competing fishermen trying to rid Charles of his competitive advantage, religious zealots or plan old racists and bigots - and those are just the human factions. There might also have been Siren factions opposed to mingling with humans - imagine a 19th century version of Katrina - do you think sirens like that would have shied away from sabotaging such a relationship or even shied away from making one of their own disappear?]

Alone and with no access to the song - nor to any cure - Charles’ mental state deteriorated to the point of no return, his condition worsening due to self-medication with alcohol. It is quite likely that he did not understand what was happening to him. 

[Speculation: Eventually - maybe with some "assistance" from some of the anti-Siren factions mentioned in the previous sidenote - he started blaming the Sirens for his mental problems, maybe even for taking away the siren he had fallen in love with.]

In 1868, after an unknown period of suffering excarbated by alcohol abuse, Charles H. Pownall, with the help of his shipmates surprised the sirens near the surface and massacred them.

The Sirens subsequently severed all human contact and went into hiding, forbidding any Siren to go on land and teaching their children to avoid the land.

(”Land bad. I learn this.)

The Hybrid daughter of Charles and his mermaid lived and prospered, despite being shunned by the rest of the Pownall family for allegedly being the daughter of a local prostitiute.

(”She was the first....”)

Acta est fabula. Clamate.

Addendum: The observations about the parallels between Ben and Charles and Ryn and Charle’s mermaid can be found here. 

[ladyofpurple]

answer all of the questions!!

holy SHIT ok bless you omg

(sorry it's a full day late i took this shit SERIOUSLY. don't ask me how many hours this took, i was in A Mood™️ last night. removed the ones already answered xoxo)

angel; have you ever been in love?

yeah. didn't end too well, but i loved him.

petal; favorite novel and author?

this is like asking me to pick a favorite child. i guess favorite author would be stephen king, if only based entirely on the sheer quantity of his books i own alone. favorite book would probably be special topics in calamity physics by marisha pessl, and i'm only saying that because it's been my go-to response for years. i have lots of favorite books. ask me again in five minutes and i'll give you another one.

honey perfume; favorite perfume/scent?

freshly made coffee. lilacs. jasmine. cut grass. the ground after it rains. chocolate chip cookies in the oven. cigarette smoke on skin. my mom's shampoo. my grandma. my dog when he's just had a bath. thanksgiving dinner. acrylic paint on canvas. sawdust. that one cologne i can't name but can smell on a guy from a mile away. mulled cranberry and apple juice. vanilla. coconut. fresh laundry. peppermint.

sweet pea; what’s your zodiac?

virgo sun, pisces moon, scorpio rising ✨

softie; talk about your sexuality.

i'm biromantic asexual, primarily attracted to men more than women (but have had too many crushes on girls to consider myself het), generally sex repulsed when it comes to the thought of having it myself. i prefer to call myself queer in passing conversation, it's easier than explaining asexuality and the differences between sexual and romantic attraction. if someone asks more specifically, i'll usually just call myself bi for simplicity's sake, even though the ace part is a much more important (to me) part of my identity. monogamous as fuck.

i'm still struggling with internalized homophobia and a lot of "am i even queer enough" thoughts, which is super fun. took me a long time to even consider the fact that i might like girls at all. i'll probably never come out to my parents. not that they'd, like, disown me or whatever, but they're juuuuust homophobic/transphobic enough that my few attempts to educate them when they say something A Little Yikes have shown me that i should probably just stay in the closet unless i absolutely have to come out. like i'm getting married to a woman or something.

sugarplum; what’s the color of your eyes and hair?

i usually say my eyes are green because it's easier, and they mostly are, but i have rings of greyish blue around the irises and sometimes they're more hazel in the middle. they always have a green tint to them though, even if the intensity of the green varies.

my natural hair is brown, a little on the darker and slightly ashy side of completely generic. currently a former blonde, although i'm hoping to bleach my fucking YEAR of growout soon, and then go some crazy color as a last hurrah before i have to go dark again. being broke fucking sucks.

wings; coffee or tea?

tea!! black tea. chai, to be specific, with an irresponsible amount of milk and sugar. chai lattes are a fucking drug okay? coffee makes me sick (not a judgement, a literal fact. last time i tried some i threw up).

fairytale; are you a cat or dog person?

cat!! but my family has a chihuahua named sonny and you can pry that little monster from my cold dead hands ok i will fight you.

snowflake; favorite time period?

okay, i wrote and rewrote my answer to this about 10 times. then i tried to divide it up into categories (aesthetics, history, fashion, vibes, geographical location, etc), but that didn't help. so basically: i don't have one, because i have too many.

i like the american 20s-60s for the aesthetic, music/movies, and the fashion. i also like the european 1600s-1800s for the interesting history and also vibe. i love the french and russian revolutions — the fashion! the art! the wars and political upheaval! I FUCKING LOVE HISTORY. then, of course, we can't forget the rennaisance. or the witch trials (pick your continent). and ancient greece? the roman empire? hello?? did i mention empires? how bout we mosy on over to south america — can i interest you in the mayans? incans? aztecs? what about china and japan? korea? vietnam? and don't even get me fucking STARTED on the black plague.

ancient egypt? sign me the FUCK UP. vikings? yes please. the celts? oh boy. the MYTHOLOGY. the ARCHITECTURE. the LANGUAGES and POLITICS and LITERATURE and REVOLUTIONS and GOD HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN ANY OF THESE

i uh. might have gotten a little excited. basically i like history a lot. and mythology. and linguistics. and cultural practices. and the politics and prejudices behind wars and stuff. and learning in general. moving on.

vanilla; do you believe in ghosts?

let's put it this way: i don't not believe in ghosts??

listen. we don't know jack shit. we don't know what happens after we die, there are constant scientific revelations that turn our understanding of the universe completely upside-down, and there is literally no way to know which religions or myths or urban legends could have some grain of truth to them. like, dude, i've literally thought i was haunted before. psychology is bananas and the universe is infinite.

demons could be real. ghosts could be real. what if we just haven't invented the necessary technology to prove it yet? what if we never do, and they just fuck around alongside us, moving furniture and making shadow puppets on the walls just for kicks until the earth explodes? what if that one tumblr post was right and ghosts are actually real people from alternate universes or timelines that we see accidentally bc some cosmic wires got crossed? who fucking knows.

i love horror movies and scary stories and ghost hunter shows just as much as the next gal. but listen. psychics? mediums? people who accept every single creepypasta retold third-hand from their neighbor's kid's classmate's second cousin who "totally knows a guy"? doubt.jpeg

i don't understand the sheer amount of assumptions made willy-nilly about the nature of ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. the assumption that "oh this machine that totally doesn't look like a coathanger taped to a walkman will work because ghosts have this temperature and can always communicate like this and are electromagnetic" or whatever just baffles me. to a certain degree, following a general consensus is one thing — some basic things everyone can agree on? that's cool. ghosts can walk through walls and are probably dead people or whatever. but oh my god, taking every single story as absolute, undeniable proof?? taking these stories and expanding on them to infer intentions and scientific facts to something that by it's very nature is unknowable and assuming, like, every spirit is created equal?? and yeah, ghost hunting shows are fun and campy and kinda creepy but like. you really, genuinely don't think any of them have ever faked anything at all??? even if ghosts are real, it's fucking reality tv, my dude. it's the entertainment industry. at least maintain the slightest ounce of critical thought before taking zak bagans' word as the goddamn gospel.

and sidenote, maybe it's just my limited exposure as a white woman in the western world, but of all the shows and podcasts and movies and documentaries and whatnot i've been able to find and consume, there's the constant use of christian ideology applied to every situation that just really burns my bacon. what, there's never been an atheist ghost? if you see a shadow person and you don't know the lord's prayer by heart, are you automatically fucked? why are there never stories about, i don't know, viking ghosts? does your religion in life preclude you from becoming a ghost in the first place? is that why people never mention buddhist ghosts? i don't get it, and that's why even though i'm self-admittedly the most superstitious person i've ever met, true believers make me roll my eyes so hard they almost fall out. makes me come across as more skeptical than i theoretically am. I HAVE VERY STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT THIS OK

but like, you couldn't pay me to fuck with a ouija board. i'm not stupid.

delicate; diamonds or pearls?

both have their appeal and their place, but diamonds, i guess. i like the sparkle. but fake ones!! or synthetic. diamonds are overpriced and artificial scarcity is a scam and i don't need a dumb rock that some poor person in a mine somewhere was exploited and possibly died for. no blood diamonds in this house, thank you very much.

if i ever get engaged, i don't want a diamond ring. i'd want something cool, a little unusual, like a ruby or a sapphire or some other sparkly gem that isn't literally shoved in your face every waking moment as the expected standard symbol of True Love. they're cheaper, they're cool-looking, as a ring they still hold the cultural symbolism of an engagement/wedding ring. and honestly, as long as it's well-made and durable, whatever hypothetical gem it is doesn't have to be real either. i'm a woman of simple needs and demonstrably low standards. no point in going into debt for a fucking piece of jewelry, regardless of ~tradition~.

lavender dream; favorite album?

oh lord. welcome to the black parade, i guess. or anything by panic! at the disco. there are dozens of possible options — my interests are mercurial and my memory is garbage. but i'll always be an emo little shit. black parade and vices and virtues were also the first two albums i ever listened to where i loved every single song on them, and i happened to listen to them for the first time at around the same point in my life (i got into mcr super late. like, 2012 late. rip).

silky; what’s your biggest dream?

it's cheesy but i guess i just want stability and, by extension, happiness. emotional stability, mental stability, financial stability, stable living situation, stable routines, stable relationships... you get the idea. i have ambitions and passions, of course, but my ultimate goal is happiness at this point in my life, and i'm pretty sure stabilizing all those things would go a pretty long way in achieving that goal.

a little apartment with walls i can paint because white walls make me angry. bookshelves and posters and fandom merch on every wall. a computer i can actually play games on again, and somewhere i can paint and draw and record my podcasts. someone who loves me, maybe. a cat, if i'm stable enough. space for people to come visit me, and a place for them to sleep if they need. a tiny balcony, if i really want to shoot for the stars. a job i don't hate. the spoons to hang out with my friends, and the money to not worry about buying little presents for the people i care about sometimes. i don't need much.

strawberry kiss; do you have a crush right now?

nope.

glitter; favorite fictional character?

another loaded question. like books, if you ask me again in five minutes i'll probably give you a different answer. but in this particular moment, caleb and jester from critical role (please don't make me choose between them). i won't go full shipping mode rn, but jester is so funny and silly and sweet, so much more complex than she seems, and she tries so hard to make everyone happy even when she's so sad inside. the healer who treats healing as an inconvenience in battle (she's so fucking valid and also mood), the glue that keeps the party together. and caleb learning to trust again, facing his trauma and coming out of his shell. he loves his friends so much he plays wizard as a support class and i love him so much.

i love the mighty nein in general, of course, and all the guests/honorary members they've had. pumat!! pls don't be evil reani!! keg!! shakäste and grand duchess anastasia!! cali!! kiri!!!! the brotps! empire siblings! chaos crew! nott the best detective agency! i still love molly and all his assholery to bits (fight me), and mourn his lost potential. i adore yasha, even when she's gone; fjord has grown so much; beau and nott and caduceus — i love all their flaws and disagreements and their character arcs and the excitement of watching them grow and learn. but if i had to choose, caleb, jester and molly have always been my top 3 since day 1 and, well, molly isn't really an option anymore.

but like i said, ask me again in a minute. i have a fucking list.

swan; share a quote or passage that means something to you.

a collection of things off the top of my head:

Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. — Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

a tired feminist Mood™️

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not foolin' a soul." — American Gods, Neil Gaiman

i got my love of books from my grandma — some of my favorites i got from her. sometimes, as a treat, she used to take my sister and i to bookstores and we'd stay there for ages, getting to pick one out, roaming the shelves, the mental torture of having to choose. the peace of being surrounded by thousands of potential worlds, so much information, so many stories just waiting to be told; being surrounded by strangers who share that same wonder. the anxious drive home so we could read them, being unable to wait that long so i inevitably start reading in the car and make myself sick. telling her in excited detail all my favorite parts. if we were lucky, maybe we got to split a bear claw, or she'd drive past starbucks and get us something there too (tall vanilla soy steamer with one pump of vanilla syrup, whipped cream on top that always melted too quickly and squirted out the hole in the lid, so hot it burned my tongue but so good i didn't care). i have never felt more at home than i do when i'm surrounded by books.

"There are a lot of different types of freedom. We talk about freedom the same way we talk about art, like it was a statement of quality rather than a description. “Art” doesn’t mean good or bad. Art just means art. It can be terrible and still be art. Freedom can be good or bad, too. There can be terrible freedom. You freed me, and I didn’t ask you to." — Alice Isn't Dead, season 1, chapter 2: Alice

as cringey as it is to admit it, this line made me cry a lot after my breakup.

"So you aren't American?" asked Shadow.

"Nobody's American," said Wednesday. "Not originally. That's my point." — American Gods, Neil Gaiman

[side-eyes white america real hard]

there's more, of course. there's always more. don't even get me started on song lyrics, we'll be here all day.

lace; what’s your favorite plant/flower?

lilacs and roses.

mermaid; do you prefer the forest or the ocean? why?

both, i guess. but in different ways, and in different circumstances.

the sea is wild. it is endless and deep and unknowable. it is beautiful and dangerous. i am terrified of the ocean, and yet my favorite place in the world is an empty beach on the oregon coast. i have picked sand from between my toes for days with hair crusted in salt, danced around bonfires and watched the stars while marshmallows burn, gotten pulled under the waves as a child and nearly swept out to sea. picked starfish and crabs from small pools in the rocks, and swum (accidentally) with wild sea lions. in a long skirt, too early in the year to be swimming, i once took off my shoes and waded fully clothed into the water to my waist and just... danced. splashed and kicked and laughed with a boy i barely knew until our throats were sore and our toes were numb, walking home hours later with our soaked clothes clinging to our legs, shoes squelching, dripping algae as we went. the ocean is freeing and overwhelming all at once. i love it and am petrified by it in equal measure.

the forest is beautiful in a different way. it is silent and dense and serene. you are surrounded by life and yet, somehow, completely alone. there is magic in the forest, and history, and even when all else dies, that will remain. the trees grow from the corpses of their ancestors, and some have lived dozens of our lifetimes — with luck, a few dozen more. it is quiet there, peaceful, even the tiniest wood in the middle of a city muffling the outside world through the trees. you can feel the ancient ways deep in your soul as you follow winding paths strewn with fallen leaves, the mystery and wonder and superstitions of your forefathers. you wonder what it would be like, to run your fingers over the moss, to take off your shoes and socks and just run, leaping and dancing over rocks and roots, hair wild and air filling your lungs in deep, pure gulps as you shed the responsibilities and struggles of modern life, for just a moment remembering what freedom tastes like. it is primal, this connection to nature, one we have nearly forgotten over time. and as the sky grows dark and the silence of night presses against you, shadows looming, every footfall deafening, perhaps you begin to understand why some believed in monsters.

honeymoon; do you keep a journal?

i used to. honestly, that's a good idea, i should start doing that again. lord knows i have enough empty journal-type books.

starlight; do you believe in love at first sight and soulmates? why/why not?

i want to. i want to believe there's someone out there for me, the love of my life, someone to whom i'll be the love of their life, and that when i meet them i'll just... know.

but when i met my ex, i didn't really look twice at him for a while — no love at first sight. and when we were together, when i loved him and he swore he loved me back, i thought he hung the stars in the sky and knew i would marry him someday. couldn't even consider the idea that that wouldn't happen. and then when he broke up with me, he ghosted me so suddenly and thoroughly that he even preemptively cut contact with every single one of our mutual friends he thought might side with me in the breakup, before anybody even knew we'd had a fight. so, not soulmates either.

i really want to believe that someday the perfect romance will just fall into place and i can have the happily ever after i've always dreamed of. but the reality is i might never even have another s.o. for the rest of my life. maybe i'll get hit by a car tomorrow, or my hypothetical soulmate moves to argentina to become an alpaca farmer on a mountain somewhere and we never even meet. maybe i'm so traumatized by the betrayal and lies that i'll never have the courage to even try again.

and even so, happily ever after doesn't have to include a fairytale romance, regardless of whether i want it or not. i still like to cling to that hope though, deep down.

princess; what do you value most in people?

i'm going to assume you mean "real people" as in people i have positive relationships with, and not random strangers on the street.

loyalty. kindness. support. humor. similar values. patience. being able to grow together and teach each other things, so we can make each other better. honesty. trust. compassion. confidence. emotional vulnerability. communication. intelligence, or at least a willingness to learn. strength.