#baltic beat

[goddesspharo]

Are the two of us still playing for your number? I thought I won. That's your problem. You always think you've won before the match is over.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Gilbert and Erzsé.... they're one word in two fonts. Soldier and warrior. Dragoon and hussar. Monk and priestess. He lashed himself to Ludwig, to make a nation where Prussia could not possibly be dominant on its own. She wed herself to Roderich, because exchanging her sword for the crown of an empress was better than losing everything. These parallel paths, only intersecting when there is a boy to teach to ride and to fight and to read and sing. Or when corsets finally unhook and a chemise can be pulled down and a mouth can lavish attention from her throat to her thighs....

[unhonestlymirror]

Make Belarus Baltic again💪💪💪💪💪

[deadguy6667]

Lithuanias revenge is snitching to his big sis when he's doing something undignified

Motherfucker is 6 ft built and still doesn't smoke or swear in front of Ukraine cuz he KNOWS he's gonna get his ass handed to him.

Lithuania currently taking advantage rn

He thinks about it late at night and giggles and kicks his feet in the air n shit

Definitely took a selfie with the chase happening the the background to humiliate russia frfr it's pinned on his twt account

[42frankee]

The sound of Baltic beat, mixed by Bartosz Kruczyński by djmag https://ift.tt/Co5VrUm

[dentixvoxel]

a russian vatnik streamer getting perma-banned in twitch after raiding the baltic art and ukrainian art is fucking comedy to me

[sadclowncentral]

about the sea: have you sailed along the southwestern edge of the baltic sea? if yes, could you describe the land and the shore and the water there? i’m doing a little infographic on the fall migration of european starlings from Latvia to the UK (via Denmark) and i’ve never been along that coast! google maps is ok, but cannot compare to someone’s lived experience. especially with the narrative similarities between sailing and flying

this is and remains my favourite ask I have ever gotten, and it took me some time to get it right. The Baltic southwest is in my unbiased opinion the most beautiful place in the world, all year round, and I could never do it justice in all of it’s facets and different faces it wears through the year. So here are some snapshots of the southwest islands through the year, both of the sea and the shore:

Langeland, Denmark in late spring

The southern tip of the island is so flat that it nearly vanished into the sea until you are right in front of it. The belts and straits of what is lovingly called the Danish south sea are a bright blue in the first sunny days of the year. Sometimes, close to shore, yellow-green pollen bloom even creates swirling patterns in the water. There is animals everywhere; birds settled in the quieter water of the bay, mostly seagulls and loons, but swans as well; if you are very lucky, a harbour porpoise will choose the wake of your ship to swim along with, and further east, you might even meet a seal or two. The coast is green fields and white turbines turning so fast that they are blurring before you. Between it all, a constant trail of huge container ships passes the straits, turning the sky close to the water grey with their exhausts. It all seems so warm, until a single cloud passing in front of the sun reminds you of the coldness of the air.

Fehmarn, Germany in early summer

The canola fields are still in full bloom, turning the whole island a bright, joyous yellow, interspersed with specks of red and blue from the field flowers, swishing in the wind. Bright yellow and bright green against the blue backdrop of the Baltic sea. The island and the land here are flat as a pancake, making it easy to see from shore to shore; only on its edges, like a crumpled paper, does the island lift up into sandy cliffsides that drop of dramatically into pebbled beaches. Standing on the beach, the water is a azure blue, and in the sun, the numerous sandbanks are clearly visible in the light turquoise. While the wind is ever present, it is subdued in early summer, but the jagged cliffs are a stark reminder of the violence of the winter storms. All trees lean towards the shore, gnarled branches disfigured by the wind; there is a reason we call it “the land that even trees bow for”.

Ven Island, Sweden in the middle of the summer

Coming from the open water up north, the island appears like a golden hill rising out of the sea. The grainfields in full bloom, the warm sandy beaches, and the sun behind it. Behind you, the Øresund gave you the perfect reprieve, watching cities and mixed tree forest pass by in turn on either side after the rough waters of the Kattegatt, where both North and Baltic sea crash together in a cacophony of wave pattern, shaking you and your boat around frantically over strong winds. Now, on Ven, it seems almost a lifetime ago, as you follow the soft roads winding up the island and watch as grain and water are dispersed by the wind in mirrored patterns, golden and green-blue.

Christiansø, Denmark in later summer

Arriving in Christiansø is always a wild ride. While the sun beats down in unrelenting brightness, the waves and wind that had time to build over the whole Baltic sea are so strong that salt crystals form on your face from the constant sea spray that hits you in the face. The island seems almost unreal – just jagged brown-grey teeth of rock rising out of the middle of the sea with no land visible in either direction for miles, with deepest blue water surrounding it, no ground in sight. The waves crash on the stubborn rocks with a loud crashing sound, and over all of that, the stubborn calls of birds that circle around the islands undeterred. On the island, the specks of green, of still water ponds and green grass (I don’t remember a single tree), seem almost comical against the rusted brown rocks. You stare out into the dark marine blue and watch the sunset through the roaring and screeching.

Rügen, Germany in early autumn

Auttumn has arrived, and with it, heavy clouds and heavier winds. The Baltic sea, as beautiful as it is in summer, as strong are the east wind storms that start belting down on the southwest from September onwards. Without the sunlight, the water has turned a deep angry green, but mostly white, as sea foam flies over gnashing waves. Sometimes, as the water rises past your ship, you can see the last moon jellyfish of the season in long tangled webs of kelp pass you by. The rain is soft and dispersed, but colder than the water and makes visibility low. But then, the northeast of the island comes into view, as darkness has already set in, and as the wind dies down and the clouds disperse the island shines in a blinding white, the chalk cliffs of the island rising above the water. The breaking off chalk turns the water here a pastel turquoise in the sun as it dispersed, but here now, it’s dark grey, just as the sky.

[borisbubbles]

12. ESTONIA 5Miinust & Puuluup - "(nendest) Narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi" 20th place

Decade Ranking: 40/153 [Above Trenuletul, below Pasha Parfeny]

For those of you who don't speak Estonian.

This is message for those that didn't believe in them.

Guess where they are honey.

They're in the final.

and they're here to stay 💋 :dramatic tallharpa:

YES, I KNOW, they're out this early. Honestly, It feels incorrect to rank 5M&P anywhere other than right above Trenuletul (their spiritual ancestor), and we've already reached them point on the spreadsheet, so... Blame that year for producing 11 better entries.

I don't think Estonia warrants an introduction this year. From the second ANY of us heard :inhales: nendestnarkootikumidesteiteameküllmidagi, :exhales (this may seem difficult to type out, but I speak a language that has words such as meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornis and arbeidsongeschiktheidscommissie. Pity for the five readers I get from countries such as Romania and Portugal). Anyway, from the second any of us heard [LongestTitleEver], we all knew we were going to be in for a WILD ride.

And indeed, if there's anything you can say about Estonia is that their song went HARD in basically every live performance.

THE MEMEDANCE

(symmetrically branching out 😍)

THE TAVERN BRAWL INTO FRATERNIZATION NARRATIVE

OLD FARTS CARRYING ♥ ♥ ♥

(Yeah he does look like VSauce, i knooow...x)

Shenanigans coated by song whose lyrics effectively boil down to "Don't do drugs! Drugs are bad! Allow me to demonstrate all that can go wrong. :demonstrates absolutely nothing wrong: " 😍. This entry is hotter than a stovetop.

Never forget that they qualified, fairly comfortably, from the semi of death, with an absolutely FOUL live performance! 😂 (no wonder that Sofia Coll comparison came naturally...x). Sometimes the song and concept are good enough to carry a televote, take notes countries with no idea what makes a televoter tick (Belgium, Austria, Azer...x).

All in all, it was a really fun ride, so why not higher?

Well... You know I love a good trainwreck and Estonia provided one... but it's the same deal as Raiven and Kaleen in a sense. I think the song's really good on its own. It's a rich composition that masterfully showcases Estonia's musical tradition. No other country in the WORLD could present an entry like (Nendest) Narkootikumidest.

Yet, I found that the lives didn't do it as much justice as I would have liked. (Nendest) Narkootikumidest's first live I saw (the one at Hommik Aniga) remains the best one, largely because they managed to curb the chaos for just the right amount of time before unleashing it into a psychedelic shitstorm. What we got in Malmö was very fun too, but not quite as epic.

It's a little bit nitpicky, I know, but bear with me. I really like everyone left in the ranking. It's the little details such as "this doesn't reach its full potential" or "these vocals are kinda crooked" (both of which apply to Estonia 💔) that are going to make or break your further survival, alongside my personal whim. (Nendest) Narkootikumidest was good, and I cherish it, but I know it could have been better (case in point: Finland beat them by a handful of points 💀), and that realization sealed their fate for me.

That said, MEGA STOKED Estonia qualified (and some of my friends got to hang out with them during the off-time in Malmö you can imagine how jealous I am), so let's hear the song one last time, with THIS handy format so you have no excuse to misidentify Marko, Ramo, Lancelot, Kölver, North Korea (lol) and Päevakoer ever again!

and um lol yes another year with Lithuania as the top Baltic. Funny how that remains a constant over the years. (#LETTHEMHAVETHEIRFIRSTWINSOON)

THE RANKING

[your-resident-boat-person]

Hi! I saw your post about your top ocean liners! If you're still answering questions, what do you know about the Adriatic? Feel free to include another ship as I'm trying to learn more about ocean liners!

So, the Adriatic occupies a strange position in the Ocean Liner community. If you were to ask someone which of the Olympic class was their favorite, you'd get various answers, including the Britannic. However, very few people would say they picked Britannic because "she's the best version of the Olympic class". Most people would discuss her building, or her World War 1 service. Meanwhile, most people who I have spoken to about the Big 4 prefer the Adriatic because "she's the best version of the big 4". And, I mean, they're right, but its strange. She's the largest, the fastest, and the most luxurious. She was the first ocean liner to feature a swimming pool and Turkish bath, and all of her accommodations were generally a significant upgrade from her predecessors. But it's strange to me how THAT is the reason everyone prefers her. I mean, it's why I prefer her. She's the ultimate ship of the Big 4. But like I said earlier, very few people who prefer Britannic over Olympic and Titanic hold that opinion because she was (planned to be) more luxurious.

Anyway, here are some cool facts for you.

1. The Big 4 was almost the Big 5.

After Titanic sank, White Star apparently put in an order with Harland and Wolff for "A new Adriatic class ship". This is VERY strange considering the Big 4 had since been superceded by the Olympic class. As far as I know, no company EVER ordered a new ship from a previous generation like this, other than this instance. The ship was to be named RMS Germanic, after the SS Germanic of 1874, from the Britannic class. She presumably would have followed and improved upon Adriatics design, just as the Adriatic improved on the design of her predecessors. RMS Germanic had her keel laid down right around when World War 1 started, but the war delayed her construction, and she was eventually canceled.

2. The name

Like the Germanic, The RMS Adriatic was named after another White Star ship, the SS Adriatic of 1871. The SS Adriatic was the 5th ship in the Oceanic class, White Star's first class of ships. Like the RMS Adriatic, the SS Adriatic was an enhanced version of her predecessors. However, the SS Adriatic was later improved upon by the SS Celtic. The RMS Celtic of the Big 4 was named after this ship.

3. The Specs

The third ship of the Big 4, the RMS Baltic (named after the SS Baltic from 1871, also from the Oceanic class) was significantly larger than the previous two ships. However, Harland and Wolff left her engines unmodified. This meant that she was slightly slower than her predecessors. The Adriatic was even larger than the Baltic, but Harland and Wolff made her engines significantly more powerful. This meant that the largest of the Big 4 was also the most powerful, and the fastest. Her fastest crossing time was 7 days and 6 minutes. Also, her top speed was around 17 knots.

4. Coal consumption.

The Lusitania and Mauretania were the fastest ships in the world. From 1907 to 1929, their speed was unrivaled. The Mauretania specifically held the record for 19 uninterrupted years, and even beat her own record once. This, however, came at a cost. The Lusitania and Mauretania consumed 1,000 tons of coal PER DAY. The Olympic, only a few knots slower, only consumed 650 tons per day, despite being nearly 10,000 GRT larger than both of them. I actually discussed this in more detail in a previous post. Anyway, the Adriatic, by comparison, only consumed 260 tons per day. Now, she was nearly 10 knots slower than the Mauretania, but you can see how much more economical it made her by comparison. Because this was before late stage capitalism, these savings were passed on to the consumers. Tickets for the Adriatic (and by extension, the rest of the Big 4) were SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER than other competing ships, even the Olympic, and the RMS Oceanic, the predecessor to the Big 4. Also, after the first World War, most Ocean Liners like Olympic and Mauretania were converted to burn Oil instead of coal. This had several advantages.

1) Oil made the refueling process several magnitudes easier and shorter.

2) Burning Oil instead of Coal made the ship marginally faster (the Olympic was 1/10th of a knot faster after the conversion).

3) Burning Oil made the ship produce much less smoke, increasing the air quality in EVERY PORT THESE SHIPS WENT TO.

4) Because fluid takes the shape of its container, you were able to store MUCH more of it, greatly extending the ships range.

However, an unintended consequence of this was the Stokers. Generally, a ship like the Olympic had 350 men stoking the boilers with coal. After being converted to Oil, this number dropped to 50 or 60. Also, because Coal and Oil boilers were so different, coal stokers would need to be completely reeducated to work on these new ships (contrary to popular belief, stokers were considered skilled labor at the time, and required very specific and specialized knowledge and training. It wasn't just a matter of finding a strong guy and handing him a shovel.) As a show of good faith to their employees, White Star didn't convert any of the ships of the Big 4 to burn oil, to help ensure that the coal stokers could maintain employment. This was especially appreciated once the Great Depression hit in 1929.

🌟~B-B-B-BONUS FACT~🌈

The RMS Adriatic was launched on the same day as Cunard's RMS Mauretania. Because of this, as well as the fact that the RMS Lusitania was launched earlier, the Adriatic was the only member of the Big 4 to not hold the title of "largest ship in the world".

⚓️🛟🚢 - BONUS B O N U S FACT - 🚢🛟⚓️

The longest trip the RMS Adriatic did was her voyage to be scrapped in Osaka Japan.

Now that I've infodumped all over your dash, here's a disclaimer:

90% of this was from memory. I occasionally checked some sources for specific numbers like speed and coal consumption, but otherwise this was all stuff I just knew off hand. Before you use ANY of this information ANYWHERE, I'd reccomend fact checking it to make sure I didn't get anything wrong.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out and ask! This is my favorite thing in the world.

[scary-grace]

what is 1994 estonia? (Gen, interested)

You've activated my trap card, I'm afraid. '1994 Estonia' refers to the September 28th, 1994 sinking of the passenger ferry MV Estonia in the Baltic Sea. Out of the 989 people on board, 852 died, and 137 survived.

As previously stated, my offputting special interest is disasters, and I've probably done more research on this specific disaster than any of my other "favorites". To me there are a couple of things that are particularly horrifying about this sinking, and to explain I'm going to do a little compare and contrast between the Estonia and a much more famous wreck - the RMS Titanic.

Details under the cut. If you don't want to read a detailed description of why this sinking was so awful, please don't click.

The first piece of the horror to me is the fatality rate. When Titanic sank, around 68% of the people on board were killed, and women and children had a reasonably high survival rate. This is undeniably horrific. On the Estonia, however, the fatality rate was closer to 86%, and very few women, children, or elderly people survived. There are a couple of reasons for this, which I'll go into a few bullet points down. They include:

The cause of the sinking. Titanic got in a fight with an iceberg and lost, resulting in a series of ruptures along the hull line and progressive -- but predictable -- flooding. Estonia, on the other hand, was what's known as a roll-on, roll-off ferry, meaning that the bow of the ship is able to lift up in order to allow cars and trucks to drive on at one port and drive off at their destination. During a storm the night of September 28th, 1994, the bow of the ship took such a beating from the waves that it came loose and fell completely off. This caused catastrophic and unpredictable flooding in the ship's hold.

The list. If you've seen the movie, you know that while the bow of Titanic eventually lifted out of the water, it didn't develop much of a list -- a tilt to one side or the other. When Estonia's hold flooded, it took on a significant list to starboard (tilted sharply to the right). Imagine you're staying at a hotel, hanging out in your room. Then, without warning, your room tilts sideways. Now the floor of your room is at a 30-degree angle. Objects in your room have fallen over, or fallen onto you. You're disoriented and possibly injured, but you decide that it's time to get out of your room, and out of the hotel, as quickly as possible. But with every passing second, the tilt of the floor beneath you continues to increase. Think about how quickly your environment would become difficult or impossible to navigate. Now imagine that while this is happening, you're surrounded by 988 people who are also trying to escape. How fast do you think you'd be able to get out? On the Estonia, escape to the outer decks was only possible for the first 5-10 minutes of the sinking. Anyone who was inside the ship past that point went down with it.

The conditions inside. Making it out to the deck of the Estonia required quick reaction time, even quicker movement, and a lot of arm strength. When the ship listed, it rendered the staircases impossible to use normally, and people who survived had to pull themselves up along the rails. Most people couldn't. Survivors reported panic among the passengers, as well as seeing people who were injured and in need of help, but being unable to help without losing their own lives. To me, the one of the most haunting stories from this aspect of the sinking is one of a man who was helping his girlfriend and parents to escape. When they realized they couldn't pull themselves up the stairs, they ordered him to save himself -- and he did.

The conditions outside. While Titanic sank on a relatively calm night, Estonia sank in the middle of a storm, which meant the weather conditions were a threat to the people who were able to escape the interior of the ship. The list made it impossible to launch most of the lifeboats, and while there were life rafts, some of them didn't inflate properly. Many people ended up in the water with nothing but a life-jacket, and some survivors went without. It took several hours for help to arrive, and in that time, many people drowned or succumbed to their injuries.

The time. It took Titanic almost two hours to sink -- time for people to escape, time for the band to play, time for those who couldn't escape to accept their fates in whatever way was possible for them. The Estonia sank in 35 minutes.

To sum it up, while more people died in the Titanic sinking, a passenger or crewmember on the Estonia had a much lower chance of survival, due to the nature of the sinking and the speed at which it occurred.

Part of what draws me to this particular disaster is that it combines so many of my greatest fears. Drowning, being trapped in a small space (such as a cabin), not having enough time to escape but having more than enough time to know I was going to die. Something else is the sheer number of obstacles survivors had to overcome in order to escape, and just how many chances there were for things to go wrong. And then there's the question -- if you're with a loved one, and only one of you has the ability to escape, do you stay or go? The Estonia sinking is my worst nightmare, and I come back to it over and over again, hoping I can learn something that will make it less senseless, less bleak, less flatly and inescapably horrific. I haven't found it yet.

Thank you for the ask. If you've read this far, I very much apologize for ruining your afternoon.

Sources:

Final report on the MV Estonia Disaster of September 28 1994

A Sea Story

[itoendme]

i havent ranted about vinland saga in a hot second but after doing some manga rereading, i've been thinking about how vinland saga conveys so well how hard it is to actually break the cycle of violence.

thorfinn doesn't just become a pacifist. it takes time, effort, and self reflection both to decide that he wants to give up violence and to actually make good on that. and he does relapse. he punches the bullies retainers at the farm, he fights against snake, and during the baltic sea war, he fights garm ad nearly kills floki. just because he's not using weapons doesn't mean he's not being violent. in the instances of snake and garm, he's not being violent because he wants to hurt people, but because of the society he lives in and the circumstances he grew up in, fighting often occurs to him as the easiest and/or only way out. many of his problems would be solved more easily with violence. if he'd beat canute's guard at the farm, he wouldn't have had to endure 100 punches. if he'd fought garm earlier, they could have gotten out of the baltic sea war a hell of a lot easier. if he'd beat up ivar, maybe things would have turned out differently instead of raising tensions that ultimately led to violence in the end. swearing off violence is a choice that actively makes his life infinitely harder. it's not easy for him, and it's not something he succeeds at in one go.

and then we have hild. forgiving thorfinn for her father's murder and choosing not to continue the cycle is not a quick or easy decision for her. its something she agonizes over. even though she knows from the beginning that forgiving him is what her father wants her to do, it's not so easy for her to follow that advice. she hates thorfinn, she's the only one of the vinland gang that's seen what he did as a warrior first hand, and having the others try to tell her that her anger isn't justified because 'thorfinn is a good guy now' must have only fueled her anger. And even after she stops seeing thorfinn as a threat, it still takes time for that hatred to ebb away. and eventually making the decision not only to spare his life, but to forgive him, reconciling the vision of him that she built in her head with what she observed of him after joining the group was an internal battle.

breaking the cycle of violence isn't something you can do just by thinking that you should. it's greater than any one person. In the setting of vs, violence and revenge are societal norms. vagn is disappointed in thorfinn when thorfinn refuses to kill floki. I'm bad at writing conclusions, but i just really appreciate how, in vs the transition from wanting and indulging in violence to denouncing it is well-paced and realistic.

[50cal-fullauto-astarion]

Keziah Niamh. Ffhjjd. This got so fucking out of hand. I LOVE YOU TY DARLING. 💖💖

König x f!OC (Rivka) / 1.8k words / NSFW

AU where for some reason, there's been a concerted effort to imprison skilled operators in the Gulag. König is used to kill whomever the guards point at--he does not question why. His reward is a visit to a solitary cell, where a woman holds his vile heart in her fist like a benison.

TW: descriptions of extreme violence and gore, machine-translated Russian.

When König’s shackled by wrist and ankle, with a chain running up to around his waist, he knows he’s one sin against his fellow man away from getting his little prize. If he were a rat, violence was a lever, and getting dragged up to solitary was a pellet, he’d stomp that fucking lever into the ground every fucking time.

No one had ever accused him of being smart, apart from one person, but there was not a person alive who had suffered the work of his awful hands that would not hesitate to call him brutal.

He’d been such a fucking problem when he was jumped and dragged to the Gulag all those months ago that he warrants a cadre of six guards in their full tactical gear to escort him down the halls to the boiler room. They like a good little show with a nasty atmosphere. It makes them think of home.

Once there, he’s aimed like a gun at another face that doesn’t matter to him. 

Older guy, beard, body hair like a werewolf. He’s got scars across his face that’ve taken one of his eyes, and when he snarls, he’s got no teeth across the bottom. Without his shirt on, König can make out eyes tattooed around his hips. Eh. Poor fuck, unlucky enough to get tagged for liking dick, it seems. Doesn’t matter. Not much of this does.

No one in the room speaks German, and he doesn’t speak Russian, and they won’t answer in English, so he just gestures for whatever weapon they want him to use on the raging asshole that’s about to become his victim. Sometimes, they get creative—hand him a pair of tongue and groove pliers or wire strippers, once even the broken wheel of an angle grinder. 

They don't give him bladed weapons, or anything that can be used like one. He kills too fast to get their rocks off like that. 

Today, it's simple. A claw hammer. His opponent is given an old skinning knife. It's not quite even odds, and König can remember a few fights that had been easier. 

When it starts, König is fast and ugly in nature and action. He's got reach, a hammer, and a lever to break off the fucking hinges. 

The bastard gets a few good slices in trying to go for his neck—a blood-groove carved over his cheekbone, a valley on his bicep that damn near splits the veins in his elbow. But König lands that first blow, and it's all over but the death rattle.

The claws fit perfectly under the windpipe. Can't rip it all the way out, but he can absolutely mutilate it. 

He's the perfection of violence with every arc of his arm drawing the hammer back—cracking it forward, pulverizing the joint on one side, ramming the claws between skull and cartilage on the other. The blood boils in his fucking veins, finally seeing the world in color, iron flooding his sinuses, thick on the soft palette, heavy on his tongue. 

The old man staggers, slurring, eyes unfocused. Trips on his own feet, goes down hard on his ass, looking around in confusion like a toddler. The guards howl like baboons showing red ass; they close in, smother, wanting a look at the damage.

König doesn't feel pity. That human feeling had been demo'ed and ripped out of him decades ago.

Slams a canvas basketball shoed foot on the gushing throat, crushes him back in a crouch with all his weight bearing down, and beats.

And beats. And fucking beats.

Might be the animal rage of being locked in a cage. Never loved a cage that he was forced into. Might be that he's named with his name, never called by his callsign. Might be that he's on an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea, and anything short of an Armageddon-sized riot would be a death sentence when eyeballing escape. Might be he just can't choose how he kills.

Might fucking be that his unit is dead, and the only thing he's got left is in the hole, and the only thing he's got left is the only reason he'd ever capitulate to these filter-faced fucks instead of killing as many of them as fast as he can, dying, but dying in defiance. 

His chest is heaving, he bleeds from the wounds cut into him, and he sits on the corpse's ribcage. He doesn't ask what the man did—wouldn't get an answer, fucker probably didn't do anything, and König doesn't care. 

Their tones change, and the tasers come out once gore streaks up across the floor and the near wall, hammer striking concrete when there's no more bone to crush.

Fuck—the meat, and blood, and bone chips are hot splattered on his legs, up the wifebeater on his chest exposed by his rolled-down jumpsuit. It burns on his exposed neck and face, and he can even detect it on the numb tissue of his warped burn scars. 

“Odinokiy. Seychas.” His voice rasps, throat hot and dry, wanting water, but he grates out the only Russian he knows, throwing the hammer away. 

Solitary. Now.

Rivka had been dumped in the hole five months ago for influencing the guards and other prisoners. For a woman with a subatomic amount of charisma, she was spilling poison in ears across a dozen languages. 

The only word he recognizes as he's paraded with his chains dragging and hobbling him through the corridors on the far side of the facility is Zabludowicz. It's the only one that matters. 

Her eyes never went back to normal—that scope glass gray he'd know in his dreams and mania now gone forever—and she still couldn't read, but she could still run her engines in the red, burning spite and ugly, fester-fuck rage for fuel.

No one needed a reason to pack her off to proverbial Siberia. They just did. And when they dragged her out of the showers, they beat her. It—broke something. In her head.

The first time König had seen her after, both her eyes were dilated black, and she slurred her words together. Told him in the halting sentences of a child that she couldn't read the Cyrillic on the labels of the guards’ gear. Couldn't read anything in the Latin alphabet, either.

König throws his hideous, hyena-pitch cackle when the guards slam him against the cast iron door casket-lidding her miserable cell, grating out, “Rivki—Schatzi—it's me,” in a gout of German that sends the guards cursing, twisting his cuffs tighter, cutting into his raw skin. 

Death is death is death, and it still stands in the place of a gift in this shithole, but they find a purgatory in leverage levied.

It's on purpose. It's all on purpose, and it all hurts, and the worst things they can do to him, they won't.

Pain upon Rivka is his punishment, and they won't kill her until they reap all the connections they can from her head. Pain upon him is her pound of flesh; they know she stops speaking when he bleeds too much, and they know she'd send him to his death with silence, even if his delivery was torture in all its many natures. 

There's coarse Russian yelling, orders and threats spat, and König is wrenched away from the door, his limbs freed and howling just as it slides open with a bang that should burst his ear drums.

He's shoved in with all the force of an aircraft carrier launched out of dry dock on bad water, and there are thousands upon thousands of fucks he can't give, because there's Rivka, against the far wall. 

Her eyes are black, and they keep shaving her head without even the guise of delousing, just degradation. Stupid shit to think they could ever degrade her. 

Not sure which one jumps first after that microsecond of recognition—the space at the bottom of lungs between breaths, where dying eventually finds its way, where the lungs prepare to intake the scent of home—but the crash is painful, and Rivka is the shrapnel edges of broken glass with her starvation-raised bones digging into his bruised muscle.

Here, in hell, is his health. 

Her hands find his wounds, and her voice is a sharper cut than the knife used against him, “The fuck are they giving out now? Scalpels? You-you-you need glue t-to close-close-close.”

Her words are precious now, so he does not interrupt, but Rivka wouldn't know the difference between a limb severe by saw and a neck slit with a straight razor, and the love König carries for her would crush him to death the moment he stopped asking it to.

“I missed you,” he says in place of a reply, feeling the quarks in his atoms want to break apart in the face of his relief and full-body shaking, “fuck, I missed you.”

Her eyes snap back to him, and her expression crumples. Her features—austere, alien, fae—animate as her humanity bubbles back up through the cracks, too strong facing him to remain trapped even with her ruthless burial.

“Missed you bad,” she says, nose wrinkled snarl-like at her recovering vocabulary. Where she lacks in words, she masters in movement, arms around his neck, pulling body against body. She grabs the strap of his wifebeater, warping it, yanking him close, and he doesn't care. He listens. She's the hand on his collar, he'll always arrive when she signals him.

She gropes for hair at his temples that has long been buzzed away. She searches for silver that exists only in stubble. She kisses him like she'll take the soul from his body, devour it bloody, and carry it for safekeeping. 

He gathers her up like there's still some chance in hell that he can protect her, dropping on her miserable bare cot of a bed, dragging her onto his chest, and between his legs, and under his arms. All he can do is wait for her vengeful brain to heal, then there will come a plan, and he will faithfully (faithfully, faithfully, faithfully—as blinded by loving obedience as Abraham on the mountain, with wood for the pyre meant for his sacrificial son) be the finger on her trigger. He will be her executioner. He will carry out her will.

Her body is too tired and worn for fucking, and he wouldn't ask or accept it anyway. If it was a matter of too many eyes, they possibly could swing it from sheer savagery, but it's not. He can't make himself ask her to expend the energy. She has so far to go still. 

But her razor-slide lips are a refrain. We'll make it through, we'll make it through, we'll make it through. 

Rivka is the only higher power König believes in.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Can I ask if you go with Gilbert still being alive or not in the modern day?

Generally, I do. Pruhun is still one of my all-time favourite pairings, even though it gets like 3 notes and a bitch anon, so I don't really post it anymore I still find it incredibly cathartic. And she and Ludwig are why I generally go with Gilbert being alive. Hozier's Work Song sums it up better than I ever could.

When my time comes around Lay me gently in the cold dark earth No grave can hold my body down I'll crawl home to her

[unhonestlymirror]

Vasylyna Mykulyshna (in the russified version - Vasilisa Mikulishna) is Northern Ukrainian. The surname Mikulishna can be either a Church Slavonic version of Mykulyshna or Mikulišna in Belaruthian. The whole myth plot happens in Kyiv. The main character with her husband, eventually, goes home from Kyiv to Chernihiv - according to another version "back to Lithuania." :>

They say all of that happened around 1118 - 17 years after the death of the Polatsk Principality Duke and the Great Kyivan Duke Usiaslaŭ the Sorcerer. In 1127, strife and struggle for the lands left after this duke started - and they lasted till the very 1226 - when Teutonic Order, previously expelled from Hungary for an attempt of coup d'état, and then invited by the Mazovian Duke Konrad the First, started the genocide of Baltic Prussians. In the 1240s, Lithuania (Lietuva) and Lithuania (Litva, also Belarus, mostly Polatsk and Smalenks principalities) united, and in 1253, Mindaugas/Mindoŭg/Myndovh became the king of Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

If I once again see people calling Vasylyna Mykulyshna "russian", I will beat those with a GIANT STICK.

She was RUTHENIAN.

It's not the first time Ukrainian heroes are being russified (like Illya Muromets/Murovets).

[uss-edsall]

Brigadier General Derek Mills-Roberts (on the left), a British commando with the 1st Commando Brigade, accepted the surrender of German Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch (on the right) on 4 May, 1945, apprehending Milch on the Baltic Coast. Milch handed over his staff-of-office, a command baton, to the British officer.

Mills-Roberts had been present for the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Horrified and disgusted by the vulgarities of the concentration camp, Mill-Roberts demanded an explanation of what he saw there from the field marshal. Milch was the son of a Jewish father and was considered 'mixed-race' under Nazi racial laws; he was the only field marshal in the Nazi military of any Jewish descent.

Milch's response was, "These people are not human beings like you or I."

Mills-Robert's response was to beat Milch over the head with Milch's own baton until it broke, fracturing Milch's skull.

The next day, Mills-Roberts reported to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and apologised for losing his temper with a senior German prisoner. It broke the laws of war, despite what Milch had said. Montgomery merely covered his head and joked, "I hear you've got a thing for field marshals!" Nothing more was said about the incident.

Milch was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, it was commuted to 15 years in 1951, and he was paroled in 1954 having been imprisoned for only seven years.

[hetaestoniahq]

I don't know if you awnsered this or not. But I seen you talk to Unofficial Estonia about how Estonia is portrayed in Hetalia/ the fandom. Do you think how the fandom/Hima portray him nowadays is better? I know there is still some poor taste jokes/ takes/ art that are made by like 14 year olds about Estonia and Russia in the fandom. But do you think his over all portal is better?

By the way I do love your blog and rewrites of cannon. I love learning about other countries and their view of the world.

Oh yeah, me and some of the people behind that blog have spoken before about matters such as how Estonia is treated by the Hetalia fandom and worked together on a few occasions.

I do personally think Himaruya has improved a bit when it comes to his treatment of Estonia. Sure, he still makes the Baltics mostly be about the whole "lil guys next to Russia how scawy" which if you know the Baltic countries and people irl then you know we aren't like the cowards Himaruya has written hah.

What I've noticed in recent times with some of the content I've seen (though I definitely need to catch up) is that Himaruya is less focused about the whole Nordic thing with Estonia, he either has learned that the joke is very outdated and based on something very small, or he decided that he's beat that joke like a dead horse enough times now and found there to be much more that he can do.

I appreciate more Baltic content and Estonia and Finland content we've seen, exploring more about Estonia's relationship with these countries. I especially am glad there's more of Estonia just chilling as a Baltic, considering Hima's awful writing has created a side of the fandom that strongly believe the Baltics are a very divided and uncaring of each other trio with nothing holding them together.

So I do think things have improved, even a little. Now let's hope the rest of the fandom picks up on that too. Though I do think for the most part the Baltic side of the fandom has moved on with only a few individuals here and there having those outdated views on us. I also hope the Nordic fans side of the fandom has less people who sit in that outdated bubble too. I've noticed that the Nordic side of the fandom has a lil more of the people who like to target Estonia specifically, but again only some people here and there with majority either just not giving Estonia any attention or being neutral/respectful about it. Though I do think they too are missing out on some great history by ignoring Estonia, especially Sweden and Denmark fans.