#centralized power

[jovialbasementbouquetblr]

1957 Wang Shuyao: "Highly Centralized Power is Dangerous"

《燕园风雨铸人生》[Storms on the Peking University Campus Forged My Life] In Mao’s day writing and posting big character posters dazibao was guaranteed by the PRC Constitution. That freedom was terminated shortly after Deng Xiaoping became the top leader. Why I am not sure. Mao wanted to monitor and the intense application of pressure forge characters, extirpating bad ideas and implanting approved ones.…

[bet-on-me-13]

City Spirits awaken.

So! City Spirts are basically God's sustained by the people in their Cities. Some are Gods born from the belief and people of a City, others are God's who Bind themselves to Cities to sustain themselves in periods of low worship.

Almost all Major Population Centers have some kind of City Spirit bound to them.

The Personification of Los Angeles who slept with Constantine was born from her City, but she was young and weak compared to other City Spirits.

Lady Gotham is an Ancient Spirit who holds immense Power, but purposefully bound herself to the new and growing city of Gotham so she could sleep for a few millenia without worrying about sustaining Worship. She has been asleep for Centuries.

Actually, most City Spirits are Asleep.

Millenia Ago, the most powerful Gods and Spirits of the Infinite Realms fled the Rule of Pariah Dark. They didn't agree with his ambitions to conquer the Living Realm, and didn't want to let him use their Power against the Living Realm either.

So they Bound themselves to newly forming Cities and put themselves into Deep Sleep to avoid his Control. They have been asleep for Millenia now, waiting for the day Pariah would be overthrown so they could return to the Infinite Realms safely.

Then they day came. A New King was Crowned.

And the Cities began to wake up.

[2129888]

played pm64 and ttyd back to back... these games mean so much to meeeee

[cmanateesto]

Are you tired of rolling brownouts and Politicians flaking on you? There is a solution to this problem.

[laniidae-passerine]

don’t get how you can watch iwtv and be a sincere diehard lestat hater. like the world’s biggest lestat hater is louis and that man can’t even commit to it for more than five minutes before literally hallucinating lestat wearing a wedding ring and talking pretty to him. this show is about louis and every road leads back to lestat for that man

[bottombaron]

oh ok so its the usual no-homo bullshit you always hear, good to know.

[forgetme-eternally-blissfully]

Part 2 of LCF is refreshing bc everyone in part 1 has gotten the chance to both revere and fear Cale and his family so now that they're going to different worlds we get to see new people go through the process of learning that Cale is a powerful saint that coughs blood who will steal and swear at and destroy everything in his path, and all of these things are true at the same time. And these new characters will always end up either loving him for it or being terrified of him, and that's beautiful

[wonder-worker]

A central element of the myth of [Eleanor of Aquitaine] is that of her exceptionalism. Historians and Eleanor biographers have tended to take literally Richard of Devizes’s conventional panegyric of her as ‘an incomparable woman’ [and] a woman out of her time. […] Amazement at Eleanor’s power and independence is born from a presentism that assumes generally that the Middle Ages were a backward age, and specifically that medieval women were all downtrodden and marginalized. Eleanor’s career can, from such a perspective, only be explained by assuming that she was an exception who rose by sheer force of personality above the restrictions placed upon twelfth-century women.

-Michael R. Evans, Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine

"...The idea of Eleanor’s exceptionalism rests on an assumption that women of her age were powerless. On the contrary, in Western Europe before the twelfth century there were ‘no really effective barriers to the capacity of women to exercise power; they appear as military leaders, judges, castellans, controllers of property’. […] In an important article published in 1992, Jane Martindale sought to locate Eleanor in context, stripping away much of the conjecture that had grown up around her, and returning to primary sources, including her charters. Martindale also demonstrated how Eleanor was not out of the ordinary for a twelfth-century queen either in the extent of her power or in the criticisms levelled against her.

If we look at Eleanor’s predecessors as Anglo-Norman queens of England, we find many examples of women wielding political power. Matilda of Flanders (wife of William the Conqueror) acted as regent in Normandy during his frequent absences in England following the Conquest, and [the first wife of Henry I, Matilda of Scotland, played some role in governing England during her husband's absences], while during the civil war of Stephen’s reign Matilda of Boulogne led the fight for a time on behalf of her royal husband, who had been captured by the forces of the empress. And if we wish to seek a rebel woman, we need look no further than Juliana, illegitimate daughter of Henry I, who attempted to assassinate him with a crossbow, or Adèle of Champagne, the third wife of Louis VII, who ‘[a]t the moment when Henry II held Eleanor of Aquitaine in jail for her revolt … led a revolt with her brothers against her son, Philip II'.

Eleanor is, therefore, less the exception than the rule – albeit an extreme example of that rule. This can be illustrated by comparing her with a twelfth century woman who has attracted less literary and historical attention. Adela of Blois died in 1137, the year of Eleanor’s marriage to Louis VII. […] The chronicle and charter evidence reveals Adela to have ‘legitimately exercised the powers of comital lordship’ in the domains of Blois-Champagne, both in consort with her husband and alone during his absence on crusade and after his death. […] There was, however, nothing atypical about the nature of Adela’s power. In the words of her biographer Kimberley LoPrete, ‘while the extent of Adela’s powers and the political impact of her actions were exceptional for a woman of her day (and indeed for most men), the sources of her powers and the activities she engaged in were not fundamentally different from those of other women of lordly rank’. These words could equally apply to Eleanor; the extent of her power, as heiress to the richest lordship in France, wife of two kings and mother of two or three more, was remarkable, but the nature of her power was not exceptional. Other noble or royal women governed, arranged marriages and alliances, and were patrons of the church. Eleanor represents one end of a continuum, not an isolated outlier."

[serpentface]

A witch of the Naig-Troibadnnas (Yellowtail river valley) people, resting and enjoying a smoke of the mild stimulant brolge leaf on a hot summer day.

Witches are a small part of the everyday cultural framework among the Hill Tribes. They are individuals considered born possessed by a virgranul, a type of disembodied wild spirit that seeks to inhabit human flesh, either entering the body at the moment of conception, or entering the body at the moment of death. The latter is a dire circumstance that requires significant intercession to fix (the dead body may wander off without rites, leaving the person's soul trapped and liable to warp into the dangerous fuldaigh spirit), while the former circumstance is what causes a person to be born a witch.

In the case of those afflicted in the womb, possession by virgranul is lifelong, and is both a curse and blessing- it divides and isolates them from the human world and causes other wild spirits (both benevolent and malicious) to be perpetually drawn to them, but also allows for them to be attuned to the subtleties of spirits, and able to work magic and divination that the everyday person is incapable of.

Witches are usually recognized from a young age due to marked behavioral differences or atypical development, though are sometimes simply identified as such without obvious behavioral indications, by other witches having read signs of their coming. Their occurrence is not frequent, usually once in a generation for any given tribe. An identified witch child will be taken from their family (the timing varies by tradition, though is usually upon puberty) and into mentorship by an established witch, who will impart their accumulated knowledge and skill and teach the child how to best harness their condition.

One can be a witch regardless of their gender, with the only commonality being that they must remain unmarried, and are expected to never have children (deemed too dangerous, unavoidably placing a child in the path of potentially harmful wild spirits). With no spouses or children to support them in holding a household and herds, witches are instead supported by their communities as means of payment for their services. They typically live in semi-isolation in the boundaries between the village and wilderness (a reflection of their own division between the world of people and of wild spirits, and a protective measure for their communities), and will periodically be brought needed supplies. They do not commonly enter villages unless summoned, or for the sake of certain holidays and festivals, and live most of their lives in seclusion aside from any given mentee (who will in turn care for their mentor in old age).

The societal function of witches is as intermediaries between people and their ancestors, people and wild spirits, and as especially skilled performers of practical magic (most commonly weaving protective spells into worn items, such as clothing or the nose rings of cattle). Forms of practical magic and intercession with ancestors and spirits are performed by all members of society, but a witch has intimate, detailed knowledge of such things and tremendous natural skill that makes them an invaluable asset.

Witches personally discern the identities of the spirits living in any given area and will attempt to familiarize themselves with them, learning in depth about their ways, giving warnings of where the particularly dangerous (or mischievous) ones are, and giving recommendations on which will be receptive to offerings in return for boons. When a village needs to commune with a particularly powerful or dangerous spirit (such as a wildfolk witch), they will commonly send their own witch as an intermediary.

They are ascribed have the ability to directly summon ancestors (who otherwise come and go of their own volition, and rarely ever deign to come at the call of one who is not their descendant). This is of great use when a person finds themselves punished by their ancestors with no certainty as to why, or cases where an orphaned child's ancestry must be identified to gain them proper spiritual support.

They are also regarded as having innate qualities of divination, particularly in reading birdsign (itself generally acknowledged as communication from ancestors, and occasionally gods). The average person has basic knowledge in reading omens of birds and a learned repertoire of key signs, but a witch can divine the messages of birdsign in immense and specific detail, through a vast knowledge system of the meanings of the species, sex, flight direction, gaze, prey, number, and songs of birds. It is common for people to approach a witch for a reading of the skies before undertaking a significant venture or life change, in order to receive detailed and specific advice.

Witches are always literate (and will be taught to read and write by their mentor if they cannot already) and will record their repositories of knowledge in tomes. These are items of absolute secrecy and taboo for a non-witch to touch (the consequences can be severe, you really don't want a witch ancestor-spirit upset with you). Witches can often become competitive about the knowledge stored in these tomes and are known to organize heists amongst themselves in order to gain access to each other's secrets. Most people avoid getting themselves entangled into the complicated rivalries of witches, as these competitions can get ugly and result in many a petty curse if one gains a witch's ire.

---

The only visual cue distinguishing this man as a witch is the tattoos on his forearms, otherwise usually regarded as inappropriate to mark in the contemporary Hill Tribes cultural sphere (the face, upper arms, and sternum is reserved for important clan/tribe/ancestry identification, hands and forearms are reserved for witches, and the rest of the body is appropriate for decoration). These unique forearm tattoos indicate his ancestral connection with a lineage of witches, not blood ancestry but rather the generations of mentors that have produced him. The lines extending down to his fingers are the newest, indicating that he has fully mentored another witch and gained a place in this ancestral line.

The rest of the tattoos here are tribe and blood ancestry identifiers (on the face and upper arms respectively, worn by all members of society), and purely decorative imagery (visible here is a deer, horse, eagle, and a dragon). He also has a snake on his forearm, applied decades ago in an act of youthful rebellion, which has since gotten in the way of critical open skin space.

His clothing is otherwise typical wear for warm seasonal conditions- a man's wool shawl and woven belt, short trousers, decorative deer hide (distinct to the Naig-Troibadnnas), and sandals (these are imported Wardi style sandals, which have been modified with preferred elevated heels). The horn shaped torc on his forearm identifies him as an esteemed elder.

[ancientsstudies]

Holland Park by wander_linaa.

[mollysunder]

The way Ambessa talks about the Guile is interesting. She speaks of it with such suspicion, dislike, and literal resentment. At first you'd assume that her attitude is driven by her fued with the Black Rose, but we don't know how long that's been going on, or if this was her own bias prior to it. Under the lens that these are Ambessa's own preconcieved biases before she got involved with the BR then it immediately becomes a critique on her own family. You just can't divorce her comments from how the show depicts her children, from Mel.

Almost every word Ambessa used to describe the Guile describes Mel, except "absent honor" of course. And when you understand that, it becomes clear just how doomed Ambessa and Mel are as mother and daughter. Ambessa indirectly, without the intention to imply Mel, states that her distaste for the fundamental aspects of Mel's personality. Ambessa loves her daughter, but she doesn't LIKE her.

[non-plutonian-druid]

[ID: two lineups of the Paranatural AU versions of the Commission characters; one set ten years ago and one set in the present of the au.

Ten years ago: only part of Carmichael's head is a fish tank; Herb has a dad-stache and is wearing a button up with a v neck; Dot has no glasses and her hair isn't pulled back; the Handler has longer hair and is wearing a typical Commission suit; Five is a teenager instead of an adult; Cha Cha has longer hair; Hazel has longer hair and a fuller beard; and the person who runs the commission, who is God in TUA, is a cowboy and a horse instead of a little girl. End ID.]

A look at the Paranatural au version of the Commission! They do basically the same thing as the Consortium in Paranatural (aka who the fuck knows not me, something to do with keeping spirits in line) and it is also similar to the Consortium in one other important respect that i will get to shortly

Some notes on designs:

reminder that AJ is a medium (person who is possessed by a spirit), and mediums (and tools) look more and more like their spirit over time. ergo, he has more human features ten years ago.

the handler probably wasn't management ten years ago, so she has to make do with the regular uniform

five probably wasnt actually in the commission ten years ago (tho he WAS already a spectral) but hes here anyway for thoroughness

i almost forgot to put hazel and cha cha in here which is a crime

hazel is 100% the guy who had a ponytail when he was 21

cha cha's spirit power is this gun she found

and finally

the little girl god runs the commission in this!! of course she does!! why didn't i think of it sooner. In the webcomic, the consortium is run by a mysterious medium whose spirit is a wight.... except it turns out theyre not actually a person at all, but a construct made to look human by a very very powerful wight. Every so often the wight 'retires' the current construct and installs a new one; thus, the little girl is the commission's current model, and cowboy god from the comics was her predecessor!

[grailknightmonty]

just because you're soft doesn't mean you aren't a force.

honey and wildfire are both the color gold.

[city-of-ladies]

Though Qutlugh Turkan (c. 1208/1213–1283) began her life as a slave, she rose to become a ruler in her own right, ushering in a golden age for her lands.

A resourceful wife

Qutlugh Turkan was likely born in Transoxania between 1208 and 1213. She was enslaved as a child, purchased by a merchant from Isfahan, and given an excellent education. In 1235, she married Qutb al-Din Muhammad, the nephew of Buraq Hajib, the founder of the ruling dynasty of Kerman (in present-day Iran), a local power that emerged after the Mongol invasions.

After Buraq’s death, the Mongol Great Khan Ögedei granted Kerman to Buraq’s son, prompting Turkan and her husband to move to Transoxania. During this period, her intelligence and resourcefulness proved vital to her husband’s survival, earning him the of the local nobility.

In 1252, Qutb al-Din was installed as the ruler of Kerman. When he died five years later, it was time for Turkan to step into power.

Queen of a golden age

Turkan assumed control of Kerman in 1257, even though her husband’s male heirs were alive. The transition appears to have been smooth, with little opposition to a woman ascending the throne. She quickly established her authority, dispatching gifts to secure recognition of her rule.

Initially, Hulegu Khan granted her authority only over civil affairs, but Turkan’s persistence won her full control, including military oversight. She ruled independently for 26 years, a period celebrated as a golden age for the region of Kerman. The khutbah (Friday sermon) was proclaimed in her name in mosques, and her name appeared on coins.

Her reign brought stability and economic prosperity. Turkan was known for her equitable administration of justice and her benevolence. During times of famine, she opened the granaries to feed her people. She also initiated major building projects, including a madrasa, a hospital, a mosque, and fortified borders with new fortresses.

Coin minted during Turkan's reign

Challenges and Deposition

Turkan forged alliances with the Mongols, even marrying her daughter Padishah Khatun to Abaqa Khan, the ruler of Iran starting in 1265. She also sent troops led by her stepson (or possibly her biological son) Hijaj Sultan to support Abaqa.

However, Hijaj turned against her, publicly mocking her with this verse:

Young are your destiny and star, but old is your fortune; the one that is old should make way for the young.

Turkan sought Abaqa’s support and was reaffirmed as the ruler of Kerman. Hijaj’s attempt to depose her failed, forcing him to flee to Delhi, where he died a decade later.

Turkan’s fortunes changed with Abaqa’s death. His successor, Tegüder Ahmad, granted Kerman to her stepson, Suyurghatmish, ending her rule in 1282. Her efforts to reclaim the throne were unsuccessful and she died shortly afterward in a city in northern Iran.

Turkan’s daughter, Padishah Khatun later reclaimed the throne and ruled Kerman in her turn.

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Further reading 

De Nicola Bruno, Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns 1206-1335

Mernissi Fatima, The Forgotten queens of Islam

“QOTLOḠ TARKĀN ḴĀTUN”, Encyclopedia Iranica