#as always im open to more thoughts

[sforzesco]

I got. thoughts. about valens and voices in imperial roman history. but I also got a lot of thoughts about uhhhhhh choosing your brother for co ruling the Fratricide Foundation Story Empire. many thoughts about themistius' oration too

Brotherly Love, Themistius (trans. Peter Heather & David Moncur)

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / insta

[supahstarrr]

forgive me if this is equivalent to a "cornplate tweet" but i just noticed that drv3's setting as a school in poor condition acts as a symbol of franchises dragging on so long for the sake of commercialization to the point it becomes a shell of its former self. the setting being a school that is not only old enough for it to become broken and fragile but also for nature to take over it, plus despite what makes the building recognizable as a school fading away, it continues being used as a school? the school is representative of franchises in general but especially the in-game danganronpa series, with the nature burying the building by time hinting at the franchise's (unnecessary) longevity and it becoming history, while the fragility of the building represents how a franchise's identity becomes fragile itself due to the charm and depth it was once defined by fading away due to the series being dragged out.... i love the drv3's setting even more now

[lovesickeros]

☆ de fontaine

{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!

She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.

She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.

Furina is tired.

But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?

So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.

Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.

Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.

An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.

She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.

She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.

She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.

And Furina has always been good at lying.

It's the believing that's the hard part.

There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?

Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.

She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?

She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.

Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?

Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.

Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?

They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?

"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"

Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.

Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.

Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.

Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.

"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.

But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.

They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.

She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.

If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..

Furina will make sure they do.

[sunshineandviolets]

[character who only shows up for maybe a scene or two per book, we know very little about - not even a surname - very much a minor character, not relevant to the main plot ]

me: ... its free real estate

[spacerockband]

notes on past and future link

[lemongogo]

college … wasted on the youth (me)

[skeletoninthemelonland]

😭😭

[buddietommys]

"Why not?"

"I wish you were a girl."

[puppyeared]

who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it

[lecinea]

I am still baffled that we are literally told in the novel that Wei Wuxian defecting from the Jiang Sect AND the fight after, was staged, because they really had to bring home that there was nothing between them anymore to keep the Jiang Sect safe, and yet people still use it as an argument for why Jiang Cheng is the worst and totally hates Wei Wuxian. Like we don't have that lovely little Yungmeng trio scene only 2 chapters later. Wild.

Oh and if you're interested here are the citations that that support that the defection in it's entirety is a sham:

After the fight, Jiang Cheng told the outside that Wei WuXian defected from the sect and was an enemy to the entire cultivation world. The YunmengJiang sect had already cast him out. From then on, no ties remained between them- a clear line was drawn. Henceforth, no matter what he did, they'd have nothing to do with the YungmengJiang sect!

MDZS exiled rebels translation, chapter 73

Before they parted, Jiang Cheng spoke, "We won't see you off. It wouldn't be good if someone saw us."

Wei WuXian nodded. He understood that it wasn't easy for the Jiang siblings to have come out here. If someone else saw them, all those things they did for the public to believe would be wasted.

MDZS exiled rebels translation, chapter 75

[istherewifiinhell]

reading a single tf comedy fic will confront u with the authors viewpoints on: heads of military, heads of state, stance on revolutionary politics, reporters, freedom of the press, cops, class stigmatized labour, civilian liberties, criminalized... miscreantism? blows big breath kicks can down the road... minorities?

[rouge-fauna]

I think you’re talking about these posts [here & here], I don’t know if there have been others.

I'm not gonna say what I did was right, you are correct I should probably just not respond to asks getting me to talk about other people. I will say for these two posts those people had already blocked me I’m pretty sure, so it’s kinda hard to talk directly to them in that case. And I was not doing so anonymously and had not blocked them so I wasn’t hiding what I was saying. I did not follow them, I am not part of the innitor community, and not that that makes it right but I do think it is kinda different. Though you make a good point, perhaps we should stop this pattern of responding to asks about other blogs and such.

Still, the biggest thing to me I realized, back in elementary school when I first dealt with this, was that honestly all the time we talk about people behind their back. Talking about people when they aren’t always in the room is kinda just inevitable and part of socializing, however I think the important part is how you are talking about other people. It’s when you are insulting them, talking negatively about them to people they know, spreading false information and so on that it becomes not okay. Hopefully that makes sense.

In these cases I merely focused on the lore. I didn’t insult them or talk shit about them, as a person, as a blog or say their takes were stupid or they are stupid or speculate about their trauma or mental history. I just talked about reasons why I disagreed, or saw things differently and why we might see things differently. They were also not the only ones I saw to say similar things so I think in my mind I was making more of a general discussion, not trying to target them specifically. I didn’t post beyond that about them. But you are right, regardless it was probably not the right way to go about things.

But just to be clear, if I am a hypocrite it is not my intention. I haven’t vague blogged anyone or meant to vague reblog anyone. I think this week is pretty much the first time I’ve ever been not naming, passive aggressively talking about blogs, and even then I’m not trying to insult them, trying to cancel them. I’m just expressing that before you go off about how I’m stupid and unable to have a discussion about it, the very least you could’ve done was give me an opportunity to try.

[adustoflove]

Every time I cry, my first thought is just I wish Scrabble were here 😭

[incense-and-iron]

I wasn't going to post this, and I doubt it'll get much attention but I wanna say it anyway. I had a conversation with someone I met a few times back in college via email and he wished me several happy specific holidays-- Thanksgiving and Christmas specifically. Upon telling him thank you for the thoughtfulness but I don't celebrate those holidays his reply was very... Well, it's what I've heard a million times and it always feels so luke warm and someone who never really actually puts in the effort to learn and change to be more inclusive. He replied with "well, i don't think about the origins of the holidays! I just view them as family gathering times haha!"

I'm sure other people have heard that sort of response waaaay more than me around this part of the year (indigenous people, jewish people, and many others) and I can't ever help but always feel so irked and annoyed by it. It's like theyre taking someone who doesn't partake in christian holidays/US centric holidays as a personal attack and are deflecting in a "im not one of THOSE people" even though they are simply by not being more inclusive in their wording/assuming everyone celebrates these days.

I could probably word this post better in some way but it's early and I sat there with my email open just staring at the reply for a few minutes.... I always felt the need to apologize growing up for saying "i dont celebrate [insert christian based holiday]" because of this sort of reply over and over and over. It's just... strange. Why do I, and millions of others, need to apologize for not celebrating your holidays? Why do we need to feel awkward and bridge the gap with soothing your feelings over us having different holidays than you? Why do you feel the need to "oh i just view it as family gathering time" when faced with someone only saying they don't celebrate your holiday (not criticism or bashing or anything further about it)?

[skitskatdacat63]

Boy King Seb :D

[sforzesco]

nikkicafeina said: There's just /something/ there when all our revolutionary leaders learned about justice and heroism and politics from Europe (sometimes IN Europe) and Europe learned it from Rome and in the end it just comes down to how we've never learned to say "freedom" in our own languages, and maybe we never can.

I actually have a much more optimistic opinion on this! even if our history has been brutalized four times over (spain, america, japan, and both marcos administrations), we did, as a people, learn to cry for freedom, and it did not come from a place of Roman imagery or European thought.

there were parts of the Philippines that managed to escape the full force of imperial violence due to the simple fact of geography, and they resisted tyranny as much as someone inspired by the writings of Rizal did, and there were parts of the Philippines that have always resisted the forceful reach of Manila to culturally assimilate and consume all other cultures and regions under an invented national one. these are calls for freedom, maybe without language, but it IS resistance born out of the filipino people, without the hand of europe to guide it.

even if much of our history was lost, rewritten, bastardized, the Filipino people have always resisted, even if the conclusion was tragic or forced into something else by someone's poetic but misguided bullshit, because at the end of the day, it is intolerable to be under the foot of someone else and it always has been, everywhere across the world.

the continuation of imperial visuals (whether it's the Western talking points of the government, the architecture, the Roman Empire) has a lot to do with structures of power. the government is distinctly European-Western. honestly, it's fucking American. it's driven by capitalism and imperialism, or a desire to ally with imperialist nations, to subjugate and maintain power to benefit a handful of officials who desire profit above all else. this is a tragedy, and we seem unable to shake it!

but. our students have always come forward to fight against injustice. we burned effigies, we protested, we call for justice even when our journalists are killed, our farmers are massacred in the streets, when our people are shot down by the military. many people from my province do not have a higher education, they would not know of the messy politics of imperial powers, but they do know that the elections were bullshit and the farmers are suffering and government doesn't fucking care, so they all turned out to march through the city to cry for justice, to be recognized.

today, we hold hands across seas with other oppressed people who are also desperate for freedom and peace. it would be nice to have our own words for it! but I'm not sure that we need it. it's enough to stand next to our countrymen and for others across the world and say, I got your back.

as the chant goes: from the classrooms to the streets, etc.

if our history had not been colonized, we might have had our own words and philosophies for it, instead of borrowed approximations, but the desire for freedom and justice is very much ours, and we have always called for it through action. the language now, I think, is one of solidarity. like, I think above all else, we MUST believe in a better future.