#corollary cousin

[frenchiefitzhere]

NEW EPISODE! NEW CHARACTER! 🥰

Episode 21: Not looking for coffee (Meeting a Flirtatious T.A.) | F4A Audio Roleplay

Summary: Cousin gets a new nickname from a new character. Smells like romance…and coffee.

Script, VA, editing by me (Frenchie)

Guest voice: Cheri (@teafairywithabook) as Dr. Goldie Fletcher

SFX CC0 from freesound.org

Music by @ lesfreemusic (YouTube) "Corollary" is an episodic, sci-fi/supernatural mystery told through audio roleplay. 

Talk about Corollary over on my Discord server (SFW/18+ only) https://discord.gg/WmJHfzP4

Merch: https://www.redbubble.com/people/FrenchieFitz/shop?asc=u

[msexcelfractal]

An oft-repeated fact: a human is closer cousins with a fungus than a plant.

A seldom mentioned corollary. when you see a fungus on a plant or a plant product. the fungus is of your kin more than it is of the plant’s kin :)

[twentybrokenipodclassics]

ADHD is often (at least implicitly) linked to autism as being partway along the same spectrum, likely perched marginally closer to the "normal" (/shallow) end than its more depressed cousin.

Corollary to this implicitation: smoking weed (widely known to cause the appearance and, crucially, intensification of autism signs) almost always makes neurodiverse pleople become less autistic and more attentive deficit, almost never the other way around. Strange!

[generic-sonic-fan]

Intro post!

Hello! This is the Sonic sideblog of @measlyfurball13. Call me Measly!

I love robot characters. I love Sonic. I really love the robot characters in Sonic. Mostly posting about "gameverse" here (but really just the niche interpretations of these guys that live in my head specifically. I take bits of canon I like as loose inspiration! I'm not familiar with IDW is what I'm saying)

My longfic, now completed: Complex Inquiries (Posted to AO3) A catastrophic malfunction sends Metal Sonic out of the reach of its creator and into the throes of the world beyond.

My other blogs: Ask the Ultimate Robot (E-123 Omega ask blog) (currently on hiatus)

My Fanfiction: (oldest-newest) Robotnik Family Reunion (AO3 Link) Ivo never knew his cousin Maria. Shadow receives a letter from him about it.

My Soul To Keep (AO3 Link) Rouge takes a hit. Shadow doesn't take it well. Omega suggests an unlikely conversation topic to calm him down.

One Ultimate Latte, Please (crack fic!) (AO3 Link) This is the story of how Shadow's starbucks order went viral.

I Can't Accept All This (AO3 Link) Sonic and Omega are trapped in some rubble together. They talk.

I Can't Take All This (AO3 Link) Corollary to the above. Metal Sonic is forced to contemplate the most extreme execution of its prime core directive.

Edge of Tomorrow (AO3 Link) Sometimes, Silver needs multiple tries to get things right.

A Father's Embrace (Further chapters on AO3) Eggman, with the help of Sage, realizes something about the way he’s been treating Metal Sonic. Currently on Hiatus.

5 Times E-123 Omega Denied That He Cared + the 1 time he admitted it (AO3 Link)

Residual Orders (AO3 Link) Omega has some old programming leftover. He didn't want anyone finding out.

Transcendence (AO3 Link) Metal Sonic empowers herself with the Chaos Emeralds.

Team Dark Week 2024 One-Shots (AO3 Link) A collection of shorter oneshots focusing on Team Dark's friendship.

go on ahead (i'll be okay) (AO3 Link) Maria will be strong for everyone if she has to be.

Etchings (AO3 Link) Sage is used to bearing the weight of ghosts.

OPERATION: SELF-DETERMINATION (posted to AO3) Omega speedruns finding the meaning of life, to both humorous and serious results. For STH Big Bang 2024- art included!

Annual Life Support Maintenance (posted to AO3) Something is horribly wrong with Omega's power source.

Points of Authority (posted to AO3) The last thing Omega expected Eggman to do was apologize.

Of Which We Make (posted to AO3) Shadow does something Omega deems unforgivable. Rouge is left to pick up the pieces and determine what really happened.

Sanguinaccio Dolce (AO3 Link) Shadow must either become the monster he was planned to be or find another way out before it's too late.

Ensom (AO3 Link) Omega isn't used to not knowing how he feels.

Diametric (AO3 Link) Omega meets Maria in the white space. SxS Gens.

CTRL+ALT+DELETE (posted to AO3) Omega gets captured by Eggman.

My Drabbles: Underestimated Rouge goes on a solo mission.

Prescience Sage has been recovered. Metal Sonic reflects.

The Weak Link GUN plans their contingency for if their two strongest members go rogue.

Team Dark and Weighted Blankets

The Graffiti post

It Won't Scar Something about Sonic's startle reflex and Badniks.

Metal Goes In For Repairs

Future Metadow Drabble (with fanart!!) A sad immortal hedgehog and a transitioned, disguised robot walk into a bar. . .

Purpose Shadow and Sonic get philosophical for a moment.

Rouge's order for Tails Rouge needs bombs and she asks the local genius to make some.

OFFICE COFFEE DELIVERY Omega helps Rouge get out of a meeting.

I was such a good little lamb (until you came along) (AO3 link) Maria knows how this story is supposed to end.

sometimes it aches but that's okay. Shadow wonders about what could have been.

Transfemme Metal and Supportive Eggdad Drabble

Carnation A birthday fic for Amy!

Tensile Shadow models a combat scenario. Omega suspects there's more going on.

Gas Light Shadow finds a receipt for a donation to a charity. It's not his. It's not Omega's. It can't possibly be Rouge's.

Other fun links: Old intro to Complex Inquiries My (long) character read for Omega Why do I use it/its for Metal Sonic sometimes? Why do I write Shadow as a GUN agent? Team Destruction (my ideas for an Amy+Silver+Omega teamup!) The Team Dark Apartment Setup I guess I have a mirrorverse au now?

[echovale052]

Who would win in a snowball fight?

A fandomcember prompt with my brainrot and shenanigans for the Corollary and it’s listener characters. Ranking them all for the silly reasons. :)

@frenchiefitzhere

1. Aspen & Goldie- The dynamic duo, i think they definitely would’ve pranked their students during midterms.

2. Hays- The amount of competitions the cousins had? This one is really close to Randi.

3. Randi- she’d be the one who forgot to build a wall of snow so she was hiding behind a really thin tree, but she’s still doing great.

4. Margot- she just snuck up on Hays and got them right in the face.

5. Carol- if she could be goaded into playing I think she’d get points for trying :)

6. Annex- Taking it a bit too seriously. Calm down heathen.

7. Cricket- They’re the one struggling to make a ball stay together.

Honorable good sports mentions: Avery, Lori, Dinah (if she could participate) and that one guy Goldie is with (I forgot his name I’m sorry)

Bad sports- The Eminence.

[frenchiefitzhere]

New episode! Corollary Episode 20: I am not brainwashed

Summary: Catching up with Randi. What does she think of her old friends now that she has a new job? [Cousin Listener] "Corollary" is an episodic, sci-fi/supernatural mystery told through audio roleplay.

[coffeecakecafe]

Hey I was wondering why Riley might need a medical alert dog? I have two cousins with type one diabetes (as well as other health problems) that don’t need/make use of medical alert dogs. Is this just a common thing i wasn’t aware of or does the character have other complications?

Thanks, and I hope this didn’t come off as rude or anything, just curious! I love your OCs and just wanted to clarify this <3

Hi, thanks for asking!

When I initially started doing the research for Riley, diabetic service dogs came up as an option some people might choose to use alongside their regular care options, as sort of a peace of mind backup and emotional comfort animal. Sort of like another monitoring avenue people can choose to use, if they have it open to them. Riley has Sophie and also uses a glucose monitoring system on his arm. He can get really focused and sometimes doesn't notice when his sugar starts dropping, so Sophie is a big help for him.

From the meta perspective I liked the corollary between witches' familiars being animals with jobs and medical assistance dogs being animals with jobs, so it made sense to me to give Riley a dog with both jobs.

All that said, I'm still not through my writing and research stages, so if anyone would like to expand on this from a more informed place then please feel free to add on or correct me on anything! I'm coming at this from the outside (I have some type 2 in the family, but it's very different from type 1) so any input is valued and welcome.

[dramionediscussion]

I have a concern about Dramione fandom, which has been slightly troubling me lately. I am not saying that this is something that is going to happen, or is happening already. Naturally, I don’t think this is entirely unfounded either (hence why I am writing this), but I am just one Dramione shipper. If this doesn’t resonate at all, that’s totally fine! We are all aware of extremely boorish and fatuous anti-Dramione people, who troll, defame and accuse Dramione of being all sort of things. We are also probably all quite familiar with their claims about the ship and its shippers. You know, Dramione promotes racism, sexism, classism, unhealthy and abusive relationships, it’s all about bashing Ron, it’s just cuz actors are hot, we should all pay homage and tribute to canon relationships (and their shippers naturally), and offer respect and fawn over everything “canonical” for gracing us with all this HP bounty, and so on. This time I am not going to try to offer rebuttals, or deconstruct their arguments, or even psychoanalyze them more than absolutely necessarily. I am not even particularly upset about them (anymore). They are categorically wrong, their arguments are never insightful or thoughtful. Most importantly, they are disingenuous in their argumentation and especially about their own motives. I believe, the best course is ignore them totally. What I am afraid, that these endless arguments, relentless belittling, and even harassment of which they never seem to grow tired off actually might change Dramione shippers and community as well. Not in a conscious way, but constantly being on a defense can make people internalize some of these arguments. Or rather their premises and assumptions on which they are based upon. I don’t mean it, that Dramione shippers will suddenly wake up, and shout out that Dramione was actually all about abusing women all along, or anything like that. What I mean is, that people rather internalize certain assumptions, framing and logic chains, which are build into those arguments. In a defense, they start define what Dramione really means, what is ideal Dramione, what is acceptable or desirable in Dramione fics, in accordance of these attacks, by unconsciously defending their ship from slander. As an example, Romione people constantly accuse that Dramione is either all about mindless “Ron bashing”, and Dramione shippers rightly say that it’s not what Dramione is about at all. What I am afraid, that people might internalize the point, that “Ronbashing” is something truly heinous, and what should be avoided at all cost. And as a corollary to that, ideal Dramione fics are those in which there’s no conflicts between Ron, Draco and Hermione. Or the very least they are resolved in a conciliatory and harmonious manner. Or it is lazy Dramione writing, when Ron is “villainized”. Or another thing they say is, that Dramione just about glorifying and eroticizing abusive relationships. This might lead that some of us accept the framing, that describing or narrating something is totally same as promoting and celebrating it. If they accept it, then it’s quite easy to logically infer, that if Dramione is not defined by Draco abusing Hermione (it’s not), then it must be defined negatively as its opposite. Meaning that something cannot be genuine or accepted Dramione, if it contains an abusive Draco. Or as an induction from that, if a fic has an abusive Draco, it also must contain a redemption arc, and Draco has to change and make amends, and redeem himself as a person. That we start to define Dramione being really about redemption or redeeming, forgiveness, changing oneself for the better, etc (as contrary to their claim that its about abuse). Don’t get me wrong, I’d say the majority of Dramione fics contain a redemption story arc, and Draco either has changed or actively changes his views and behavior. It’s a common and wonderful theme, and almost all my favorite Dramione fics have those, and I like just for its own skae. Yet it’s not something what either makes or unmakes Dramione. There’s a minority of fics, in which Draco is never truly redeemed (usually a lust-filled obsession, with many many cognitive dissonances, which he never solves), and they are as Dramione as anything else, and some people enjoy writing them and some people reading them (or at least some of them). Also, a lot of gray areas, which can be quite delightful, thought inspiring and invigorating (and hot!).  Speaking for myself, I’d say maybe 1/20 of my favorite fics have this dynamic or something close to it. Maybe 33% are more in that gray area. It doesn’t do any harm, there’s nothing ethnically wrong about it, I never idolize that behavior. If Romione stans have problem with that, they can go away, cry and tell that Rupert Grint body pillow all their troubles, because I don’t give a damn. People don’t emulate or model their behavior or preferences from YA fanfics or smut in that sense in any significant numbers. If someone does, I am sorry to say, but you probably weren’t going to make it anyway. It’s the irl version of getting a comedy death in a video game, like if a smarter-than-average mushroom hypnotizes you and makes you walk into a bottomless pit, or something like that. Your problems are deep seated and numerous, which unless dealt with, will be triggered by just about anything. Its pure happenstance whether it will be Harlequin novels, Dramione fanfiction, urban legend your cousin told you, or whatever. This could go on, but seriously, Dramione shippers have nothing to prove or even argue with those antis. It’s just bottomless pit of resentment, what they twist into moral arguments, which they think will signify us as the worst kind of people, and they themselves as the most virtuous. Their antipathies are petty and personal concerns, in which they feel like the universe and the abominable cabal of Dramione shippers have cheated them out of all that attention, writers, fans, fics, and deference they feel entitled to. It’s natural for humans to cloak often even most pettiest and nonsensical slights and resentments into whatever moral or ethical language and arguments the society they live holds sacred. If we would be living in the 1600s, they’d be scouring the Bible for anti-Dramione arguments, and denouncing Dramione as unchristian and sinful. By their stated “moral standards”, there are a lot more “vile” and “harmful” ships out there, but they aren’t functionally bothered by them at all. So, unless really prompted, they don’t even bother to denounce them, little alone wage this never-ending crusade against them. That’s because they aren’t popular enough to trigger that envy and resentment (Hermione with basically any of the worst Death Eaters). Or they feel that they don’t compete in the same niche as their ship does (Drarry as an example). I wouldn’t be writing this, if this discourse with Antis hadn’t affected me as well. There was a time, I wanted to understand what they were about, and I read a lot of their grievances and internal discussions. While reading I couldn’t help but to be on a defense all the time. Sort of refuting and counter-arguing against their points in my mind, while reading their diatribes (I tried to start a dialog couple of times, but I was always totally ignored, which I am thankful for them in retrospect). Conditioning myself with that for long enough, I did notice that I started to feel a bit hesitant about certain tropes and Dramione fics I hadn’t before. I was thinking about Dramione like a defense attorney, excepting to be attacked from all directions. It actually took me quite long to figure this out, and how the bile of HP fandom had in subtle ways affected my sense and tastes without my really noticing.

Anonymous submitted: P.S. I wrote that previous submission, and I have to add, that I am not trying to say this is happening or pointing any fingers at anybody. There’s perfectly good reasons to not like any Dramione fic, as a Dramione shipper, in which Draco is irredeemable or evil. There’s perfectly legitimate reasons to prefer fics, which Ron is portrayed as a positive influence for Dramione. People can arrive to same conclusions or tastes from countless different routes and reasons. The negativity that the HP fandom and Romione shippers especially grace us just got to me in a way, that I wasn’t even cognizant about. It might be the case for others as well, if their own self-reflection so deems (or not).

------------------------

I agree with every point you’ve made. While it’s obviously okay to discuss why you like Dramione (or any other pairing), people also need to remember that they don’t have to justify why they ship Draco and Hermione together or prove (especially to haters as they’re not worth anyone’s time) that their OTP makes sense because even if it makes no sense whatsoever, it’s still fine to ship it as long as you can differentiate between fantasy and reality. I don’t know about you, but when I started shipping Dramione, it was like love at first sight. I didn’t think if they made sense, didn’t spend hours trying to make a list of arguments for Dramione, I just suddenly loved the idea of them together, believed they belonged together, and that was and still is enough. I don’t need to justify why I ship them, and neither does anyone.

It’s true that in most Dramione fics, Draco gets redeemed. It’s also true that most shippers prefer fics in which Draco gets a redemption arc, but we have to remember that there’s nothing wrong with enjoying fics in which Draco’s irredeemable or his relationship with Hermione is toxic. I myself read such stories from time to time. I like a good Ron bashing fic every now and then as well, and there’s nothing wrong with that either because it’s all fantasy, it’s all fiction, which, I believe, most Dramione shippers are aware of and accept. Hopefully, it won’t change, and no one will ever try to tell others what should and shouldn’t be written or what is and what’s not allowed in a Dramione fic.

- AgnMag

[chezzzie]

Why Contemporary Women Artists Are Obsessed with the Grotesque

If artists are generally boundary-crossers, a younger generation of (mostly women) artists is going for full penetration—making artworks that speak to something deep in the body, producing responses that range from carnal attraction to disgust.Among the most potently grotesque examples are Tala Madani’s nightmarish babies and dystopian fantasies of voyeurism and violence, and Jala Wahid’s visceral, sculptural allusions to cuts of meat and dismembered organs and body parts. Or take Marianna Simnett’s unsettling, darkly comic videos that bring to life imagined narratives of bodily invasions—including a gruesome nasal operation and a fable about varicose veins and cockroaches-cum-cyborgs. Then there’s Maisie Cousins’s glossy, close-up images of a wet soup of food, decaying plants, and bodies, which recall the more appalling corners of Cindy Sherman’s imagination. In painting and drawing, too, the grotesque is rampant, with elastic, deformed, or monstrous bodies populating works by Christina Quarles, Ebecho Muslimova, Jana Euler, and Dana Schutz.

In recent exhibitions of work by older and historical artists, as well, we’ve seen the walls erupt in freakish, fleshy forms that have threatened the contained space of a room, as in Dorothea Tanning’s Chambre 202, Hôtel du Pavot, on view in her retrospective at the Museo Reina Sofia and traveling to the Tate Modern early this year. The ceilings of art spaces have dangled with multi-limbed, Medusa-like monsters and cyborgs (like the sci-fi-inflected psychic landscape of Lee Bul, who had a retrospective at London’s Hayward Gallery in 2018).

With much of these artists’ works, the feeling of deep dread is often a blade’s edge away from erotic desire. As the narrator of Simnett’s film The Needle and the Larynx (2016) says, as she fantasizes about having her vocal chords surgically altered: “So sharp were his knives, so appealing…this was an irrevocable invitation.” This expression of temptation suggests a calling to make art—to create—as much as it does an inclination toward self-regeneration and other forms of transgression. The possibility of metamorphosing one’s flesh and image—of permeating thresholds—is both intoxicating and anxiety-inducing.

The grotesque is inherently associated with the feminine, long having shaped depictions of the female body—prostitutes, femmes fatales, and sorceresses.

The grotesque, as art historian Frances S. Connelly writes in her book The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture (2012), is “a boundary creature” that “roams the borderland of all that is familiar and conventional.” It is desirous of transformation—an “open mouth that invites our descent into other worlds,” like the underground rooms of Nero’s Golden Palace, excavated in the 15th century, which turned up walls decorated with hybrid figures sprouting bits of plants and architecture, and birthed the term “grottoesche.” (Today, our general understanding of the “grotesque” has been boiled down to mean simply “comically or repulsively ugly or distorted,” but art historians and theorists read more complexity into the term.) It is, in many ways, inseparable from the body, which is the most fundamental of boundaries. “What is most regulated in any culture is the body, particularly women’s bodies,” Connelly said during a recent conversation.

The grotesque, she writes, is inherently associated with the feminine—bodied, earthy, changeful. That thinking has long shaped depictions of the female body, including archetypes of sexual or environmental threat, like prostitutes, femmes fatales, and sorceresses. Even centuries before the term emerged, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle “advanced the influential argument that a woman’s body is monstrous by nature, a deviation from that of the normative male,” she writes.The term is fertile, opening up a womb-like space for new ideas and ethical conundrums to accumulate—a conduit through which cultures can play with taboos and shift the parameters of mores and conventions. It is perhaps no wonder, then, that some of the artists touching the grotesque assume a childlike, fairytale language. A fable tells us what is right and wrong, Simnett pointed out when we met. It is also “a game that you can write the rules for,” she said, one through which you can distort or expand reality. The landscape of morality tales and childhood lessons is ripe territory for boundary-pushing perversions to take root.

Very dark fairytales

Children play a central role in several of Simnett’s films, whose absurdist, grotesque narratives are preoccupied with infection, augmentation, and altered states. In her opus Blood In My Milk (2018), the girl protagonist flirts with the outside world, even as adults warn of the risks that this external environment poses.In scenes that take place within an echoey pink space suggesting the inside of an organ, children receive a lesson about the prognosis and treatment of mastitis in cow udders, interspersed with shots of oozing teats being squeezed and dissected. While an officious farm hand dispenses information about how to keep one’s milk clean and pathogen-free, the children engage in playground dares and brinkmanship that include fantasizing about dismantling a girl “into a million bits so she can never be rebuilt.” The children lust after blood in their milk.

Tala Madani is another artist who, in a different way, explodes any veneer of female containment or childhood innocence, making infants and girls agents of the grotesque. In her painting Sunrise (2018), a baby wields a sharp knife at a naked woman’s groin. An infant’s first act, the painting reminded me, is one of violence.In other compositions populated by menacing babies on all fours, withering adults are left in the dust. Shafts (2017) depicts a group of monstrously overgrown tots crawling off into a void-like cyberspace, with beams of light projecting out of their assholes. An aged man in the foreground holds up a flaccid string of feces like a banner of mortality—the next generation might have evolved into light-shitting cyborgs, but we are still blood, matter, and excrement.

The children in Madani’s works also exercise sexual agency. In her animation Sex Ed by God (2017), a young girl with legs splayed is being studied by an older man, a boy, and God (the narrator of this lesson). She reaches out of the frame and grabs her male onlookers, shrinking them down to size and squeezing them into her vagina, along with the rest of the scene. The adolescent counterpart to a baby who explores the world with its mouth, this teenager-protagonist processes the world and corrects its distorted power balances through her sex. (Madani has a corollary of a kind in the work of Ebecho Muslimova, whose ink drawings feature a female alter-ego who fills and consumes the world with her vast and doughy naked body, luxuriantly covering and penetrating objects—a piano, patio furniture—with uncontrollable flesh and organ.)Madani’s universe is one whose grotesqueries seem shaped, at least to some degree, by the thrills and anxieties of sexuality, motherhood, mortality, and technological change. But it is also one in which children subvert the hierarchy between parent and progeny. The grotesque becomes a means to dissolve power structures.

Both familiar and alien

The contemporary grotesque is interested in underlining the way that bodies that are different from the (white, male) norm, or that, in deviating from impossible standards, are treated as aberrant or monstrous. Artists who touch the grotesque subvert and claim power in part by owning flesh and blood.When I visited Jala Wahid’s studio recently, one sculpture she showed me comprised a cast of the artist’s buttocks resting on a smooth liquid-like surface that is based on the shape of a natural oil well. The exposed position of Wahid’s dismembered rear is both “a provocation and a vulnerability at the same time,” she told me, its position on an oil slick alluding to the politics of Kurdistan, where her parents are from. In her work, she is often thinking about the contested Kurdish body, which is continually “under threat” but also resilient—a body that is both powerful and yet subject to power and control. Another in-progress sculpture in the studio, a thick wedge of slick red jesmonite, will eventually approximate the form of a bloody ox liver that Wahid encountered in a meat market in Kurdistan. (It brings to mind the work of Paul Thek, whom she cites as an influence.)

The contemporary grotesque is interested in how bodies that are different from the white, male norm are treated as aberrant or monstrous.

Wahid is drawn to the great diversity of textures and colors that exist in bodies (in flesh, organs, offal), as well as the relationship between butcher and animal. She wants, in some way, to approach her role as a sculptor like a meat handler—with both violence and reverence—and to create forms that are live and confrontational. To frame her work solely in terms of power dynamics is to simplify it, however. She is interested in bodies in states of transformation, in their formal nuances and their vast capacity for expression. (She showed me a picture of an Assyrian frieze at the British Museum, which features the form of a hunted lion, its upper body upright and fierce, its hind legs shot through and flaccid—a single body in which “you have something really strong but at the same time dead and limp,” she explained.) But she does want her sculptures to have autonomy and wield a certain affective power in the room.

When bodies spill out of their boundaries, or when parts are severed from the whole, they become something unsettlingly other. That forces viewers to renegotiate the borderlands between inside and outside, between themselves and the source of their disquiet. In Wahid’s work, body parts and unidentifiable cuts of meat force viewers into a visceral encounter with objects that are familiar, but also alien. “A human corpse is not in itself abject, but one’s encounter with it certainly is,” Connelly writes, describing an idea within the philosopher Julia Kristeva’s seminal 1982 essay on the abject in art. This recalibration of one’s relationship to the object engages the body as it tries to gauge whether the foreign article is a source of threat or attraction—perhaps both.In the work of sculptor Doreen Garner, we see this at play to profoundly disturbing effect. In some cases hung from meat hooks, her hulks of fleshy silicone are neither human nor meat—too dismembered and deformed to be human, too suggestive of the whole to be flesh alone. Upon inspection, the horrifying human steaks, pierced with pins, reveal the fingers of a hand, or a stray breast. Garner’s objects are intended to touch a nerve deep in the viewer’s own body—specifically, to register the trauma visited on the bodies of enslaved black women by members of the American medical industry. This is the grotesque as a means to produce shock and empathy—to expose the transformation of the body into something monstrous as a consequence of the abuse of power.

Garner’s work occasionally recalls the work of a historical pioneer of the grotesque in art—Robert Gober—in particular, works like the artist’s Untitled (1990), a slumped chest cast in wax that sprouts a female breast on one side, a hairy male pectoral on the other. This crumpled human fragment expresses the vulnerability of the human body, and insists on its gender hybridity, while also speaking to another abuse of power that simmers beneath his work—that of the U.S. government’s failure to respond to the AIDS crisis.

A fascination with monstrous bodies

The grotesque, of course, is not owned by women artists. It’s interesting, as well, to note how queer artists, in addition to Gober, have played in this terrain. In his latest show, at Ashes/Ashes, Ryan McNamara presented a sculptural showcase that included I Can’t Even Think Straight (2018), a sad, cartoonish figure practically melting off the wall. Faces dissolve into pools of liquid fish scales (Whispers, 2018); a series of gungey monsters with skin dripping from their brains joyfully snap selfies. The ghoulish group was in part conceived as a celebration of the queer nightclub in Phoenix, Arizona, where McNamara danced with other outcasts and misfits in his youth.But women, too, are deploying monstrous bodies in the world to empower the marginalized, or to satirize cultural norms and behaviors around age and gender. In two of artist Jana Euler’s latest paintings, she seems to offer biting commentary on our culture’s existential angst and exaltation of youth. Global warnings (people who are over 100 years old) (2018) is a mosaic of portraits of the elderly, each with a fantastically warped face. They are melted, pinched, and sunken, with cyclops eyes glaring from foreheads, and mouths swiveled 180 degrees.

In race against yourself (2018), a naked man rides an equine incarnation of himself, hands and feet turned into muscular hooves. This ghastly centaur and its rider are set against a fleshy backdrop composed of a snaking, human-faced colon, squeezed into the painting’s borders. The work speaks to something deeply perverse in human psychology—a propensity to hurtle through our lives at break-neck speed until our bodies crumple and we hit the grave. We can’t escape our own proclivities, much less our flesh and blood.Indeed, a profound awareness of human mortality is rarely far from the surface when it comes to the grotesque. When I asked Connelly about the common preoccupation with degrading flesh and food, she had this to say: “Life is constant change; we’re eating the world, the world eats us. We’re all mortal. We’re all human. We’re all meat. That’s seen as really traumatic.”

Other artists have created distorted, dismembered, and multi-limbed bodies to more optimistic effect. Christina Quarles paints bending tangles of limbs, bodies that insist on setting their own parameters and determining their own identities. Cindy Sherman continues to irreverently expand the possibilities of the grotesque, harnessing digital technologies to create fabulously idiosyncratic faces via her Instagram feed—ones that contort her visage in every direction except towards any convention of beauty; her fictional selfies are gloriously aging, sun-damaged, plastered in makeup, with features too big, too small, too gender-ambiguous.

Sherman expands the aesthetics of the (female, queer) body. In Maisie Cousins’s saturated close-ups of decaying messes of flesh, entrails, petals, prawns, and flies, too, something generative emerges. Cousins’s celebratory collisions of wet body parts, food remnants, and plants give the abject a facelift. Images of mild disgust find a place within the aesthetic of slick fashion magazine advertising. As such, they variously recall Sherman’s glossy, stomach-turning mixtures of waste, Marilyn Minter’s photorealistic renderings of gaudily made-up bodies and imperfections, and Gina Beaver’s paintings of bodies and fast food. (The latter artist will open an exhibition at MoMA PS1 in March.) Cousins’s photographs are full of innuendo, ripe, inviting us to find beauty in things spilling outside of their borders—to see our own bodies in the bounty of organic matter that the world has to offer.

It makes sense that among a generation increasingly comfortable with open, fluid approaches to identity—and fluent in the great toxic and transformational soup of the internet—artists value aesthetics rooted in states of change and hybridity. “I feel that is a constant, to be in a permanent state of transition,” Simnett told me. “In a sense, everyone is undergoing a mutation. It’s where I feel most natural. You get to meet a million more people, species, ideas. It’s like tendrils constantly reaching out, rather than staying put.” This hunger to explore and break down the boundaries of human experience, however anxious or unsettling—to deconstruct and reinvent the body—is generating some of the most vital and complex art being made today. 

Tess Thackara

source

[findswoman]

🏆 💎 🎤

Thanks so much for the asks! (From this list.)

🏆fic you’re most proud of?

This (and its cousin/corollary, “what’s your favorite fic you wrote?”) are always difficult for me to answer, because, y’know, it’s so hard to choose, it’s like being asked to choose your favorites child, etc.! But in terms of pure pride in an accomplishment, I would say Shaman, Traveler, Oracle: Journal of an Exile of Lasan. I wrote it for the annual year-long “dear diary” challenge at the TheForce.net fan fiction forums, which required me to keep to a very tight, very regular, and very long-term update schedule, and because of that I was worried I wouldn’t be able to finish the challenge—but, somehow, I managed! (And I’m doubly proud given its length—30 chapters, 29K words—because longfics are not common achievements for me!)

💎 fave trope to write?

I don’t know if this exactly counts as a trope, but I often find myself writing about “mismatched” friendships/relationships between characters who have very different backgrounds and interests but share similar core values. More on that, and on some other recurring themes in my stories, right here.

🎤fave line in a fic you wrote?

This one is very hard to answer, too, so I hope you don’t mind if I take the lazy approach and link you to the answer I gave here, for the same (or similar) question in an earlier ask game. 🙂

[luminess-brightcoil]

No Matter What You Do

All instruments recording the ongoing spread of the scourge pandemic indicated a rapid increase in risk of safety, up to and including the roaming dead in the very streets of Stormwind. What was once recommended to simply be a matter of staying off the streets and increasing security measures has changed with similar rapidity, up to and including the recommendation of immediate evacuation for all citizens of Stormwind, leaving only the Stormwind Patrol, the Argent Crusade, the Ebon Blade, and any of Azeroth’s Champions that were so moved to contribute to containing the absolute carnage at hand.

As the topic was broached for what this means for the great underground metropolis of Mechagon, Luminess Brightcoil balked at the data, though she Observed it in totality and took it upon her processing parameters to integrate this new data into her daily routine. To say the outlook was grim would be an understatement. To say that she was growing exhausted of grim outlooks would be even more of one.

Even a Beacon is prone to bouts of personal dismay. It was quickly becoming one Titans-damned thing after another for her. Starting and ending a revolution. Joining and ending the Fourth of Four Wars. Defeating the encroachment of the Old Gods. The Return of the San’layn. And now, this: Death itself, and whatever forces direct it upon Azeroth. And all of this within a single year. 

On days like these, a Beacon would wonder why she ever left the island in the first place... 

Luminess sat amongst her peers in the Think Tank that was assembled for the purpose of analyzing and developing an expedient solution to the matter of the scourge invasion with the Gnomish population at its focus. The scent of recirculated air through coppered ducts intertwined with the effervescent presence of warm, freshly applied toner as gnome and mechagnome alike scanned through document after document. Every finer point addressed, every corollary counter-examined, every contingency remodeled and re-assessed… And yet it was the general consensus of those present that not much headway was made just yet. 

Except for Walton Cogfrenzy, Chief Architect of Mechagon, who maintained that he had a very simple and direct plan of response, that in any other context would have been seen as antithetical to their current societal trajectory, and now perhaps its only chance for survival: 

Complete Lockdown.

“We will establish a temporary teleportation network between here and Tinker Town,” Walton explained. “Citizens of Gnomeregan can be funneled into our now half-vacant halls along with all our Gnomadic kin. Following that, remaining available space and resource accommodation can be afforded to our Dwarven cousins, though it is projected very few would be willing to retreat from their own beloved city. Still, we must press them to do so, and once we have evacuated all that we may hold and accommodate safely, access to the network will be severed from all entry points.”

The King shifted his weight from one side of his seat to the other. By far, the once High Tinker but now King Gelbin Mekkatorque would be the least Kingly King you could meet. He was conscientious to others. He yielded space and listened more than spoke. He sought counsel for all decisions, tall or small. Betraying the good will of his people was unthinkable, just as he would strive against working against their humbler wishes. And more often than not, you had to remind him of his now-regal station. A station, it is said, he has been working to reform away from the obsolete protocol known as the 'Divine Right of Kings.' Perhaps such topics could be addressed more directly when things were Quieter. But in either regard… Luminess, for one, was grateful to have someone so unlike the Mad Tyrant that, for now, she was willing to give the whole Monarchy thing one more chance.

“It will be difficult to convince the Gnomereganians to take refuge,” sighed King Mekkatorque wearily. “Many believe they’re perfectly safe within the walls of Ironforge, despite the surrounding snowy climate being far more tactically advantageous for the Scourge than even the tranquil forests of Elwynn or the unimpeding flats of Durotar. And even so, their pride is at stake to some extent. They won’t take easily to being confined to another underground kingdom, even if it is ostensibly theirs. Over time, we of Gnomeregan have become more and more like our Gnomadic cousins than not as the impossibly high toll taken by Thermaplugg continues to plague our once-hallowed halls, figuratively AND literally.”

“And so I would hope they would be difficult to convince, your highness.” Intamin Diveroll, renowned prosthetist and out-speaker, swiveled his chair towards Mekkatorque just slightly as he respectfully interjected, but kept his gaze upon the Chief Architect. “Your plan puts our now-combined kingdom at risk of recreating the exact same scenarios for destruction that had befallen either of them. Suppose we are all holed up here and one of our vaunted city’s life preservation systems should fail, or worse: sabotaged by ne’er-do-wells known or unknown. Suppose the invasion never ends, and to quell a dissatisfied populace, a new Mad Tyrant emerges to place them back into order under the guise of Public Safety. And should neither fate befall us, and we merely survive through the ordeal to a ruined Azeroth or… continued indefinite life underground, even in prosperity… that would make cowards of us all.”

“It is not… Cowardice to prioritize survival! It is the only acceptable option,” pressed Cogfrenzy with just as much proud conviction on display as he hid his secret guilts. His servos whined under his weight as he leaned forward against the conference table with the coiled-bulb lamps glowing above his exhausted, perspiring brow. “And the only safe one. Our Kingdom is the most secure against external threats of any on Azeroth. Our doors open and close only to us, and our walls are impenetrable against all alien threats. Anyone who enters without the aid of our own kind is instantaneously vaporized by our unparalleled city defenses. For five hundred years, a full-length default gnomish lifetime... our security was so assured that the rest of the planet knew not even of our existence. We were effectively anonymous. Fel, we even have the capability of sealing off all access to the Azeroth’s vast network of Arcane Leylines, guaranteeing that not a single soul enters or leaves through the mightiest of mage portals!”

As the King ran his fingers through his whiskers, Luminess’s face belied only a hint of bemusement as her gaze slide sideways to one of her closest companions to examine his face for a reaction to that last sentence. Indy would offer none. But she knew. They both knew.

“My King,” Indy gently prodded, turning his trademark winning smile towards his liege. “The Rustbolt Revolution demonstrated to us that the answer to our prosperity lies not here exclusively in Mechagon. It lies in Greater Azeroth. And to that end it is not only such that we should not run away, but we should fight to defend it alongside everyone else.”

King Mekkatorque smiled at Indy gently, reassuringly. “On that, we are in total agreement, Good Doctor. We are no longer two kingdoms of Gnomes. We are one, and beyond that, we belong to the mighty Alliance as well. And defending our world from imminent threats within and without is the Alliance’s primary function, after all.”

The Beacon stirred in her seat, squeaking it at the hinge as she leaned forward onto her elbows, fingers tented before her face. She refused to comment on the political trajectory of the Gnomish populace, for now. Instead, she turned to another of her companions that she insisted be included on this Think Tank for the sake of the wealth of information he contains as a single entity. “Cornelius,” she addressed him from across the table.

“Hello, User!” came the chipper response from Mister Tribulatus, self-aware as ever, and the Beacon remained quite proud of him for achieving that.

“Known methods of Scourge Incursion, please, listed."

“Query accepted! Running diagnostics…”

The room fell silent, save the soft stirring of seats in anticipation, and the soft ting-ting of a spoon inside a cup of coffee, one of a great many that were filled and spilled on this auspicious day. 

“Results compiled. Scourge are known to make entry into populated areas through the following means, alphabetically: Aerial Delivery. Burrowing. Contagion. Localized Necromancy.”

All eyes in the room, save Cornelius’, slowly drifted over to a mechagnome seated at the end of the table, brow bedecked with ostentatious horn modifications. His focus was trained on an asymmetrical paper football formed out of one of the documents on the table, and his attempts to ‘kick’ it through a ‘goal post’ made from used coffee creamer cups and stirring rods. His clamps fail to provide the manual dexterity needed to perform the maneuver, but after eighty-seven attempts so far, the man was not about to back down now. However, he felt the familiar sensation of an entire room of his alleged peers judging him all at once, and so he looked up.

“... What?! Titans Testes, I’m not a Necromancer, I resurrect myself with CLONES,” protested one Doctor Theodorp Wimblewomble the Sixth. Or was it Seventh, now? The people of Mechagon had only his word for the answer. 

“The Fel practices are adjacent to Necromancy are they not?” the Beacon inquired, with earnest sincerity. “Perhaps in this way you can offer us insight?” 

“You’re asking an electrician to fix your toilet,” chided Theodorp as he unceremoniously failed his eighty-eighth attempt to score a field goal. “Fortunately for you I am learned of a multitude of means of delivering Doom.” 

The King rubbed his eyes with a gloved hand before flipping open the box of donuts on the table, deciding which of the remaining flavors might quell the madness he felt in this moment for including a pseudo war criminal on this Think Tank. Take him away, Blueberry Glazed.

“For certain, this Kingdom is advantageously impervious to outside threats, as the Chief Architect asserts. Titans know I’ve tried and nearly succeeded countless times to perviate it myself. Yes, that is a real word.”

All of the eyes that were cast upon Theodorp quickly volleyed to Cornelius. Instinctively, he clicked and whirred in place before speaking: “Perviate. Transitive Verb. To enter, bore into, or run through. Would you like me to search for more information regarding Perviation?"

Professor Theodorp Wimblewomble the Sixth silently threw his clamps into the air, victorious over all who dared to doubt him, once again. As the gnomes around him (save Cornelius) collectively stifled their groans, he permitted them immediate reprieve of a well-deserved gloating, and continued...

“As my criminal record shows, I’ve only had so much luck attempting to bring various forms of Fel into our kingdom. The Titan-Energy Interference from the Engine that we’ve made our home into is a natural repellent to both the Fel and Necromantic efforts from exterior sources. Our Previous King spared no effort or expense at seeing such impure practices all but eradicated or imprisoned.”

He takes a moment to feel very smug about being the only practitioner of either who isn’t currently technically imprisoned before continuing: “Ultimately, our greatest concern, second only to simply allowing the plague to enter our halls through contamination of persons or produce… would be someone like me infiltrating Mechagon and finding a way to succeed. For the Fel, we have no particular need of concern as ever. But in the case of Necromancy, they would not need to open a portal, they would simply need to locally source some corpses right here. Which could be remarkably easy, considering the whole proposition to keep the walls closed and sealed that no one could possibly enter or leave.”

The Think Tank of gnomes, already silent, somehow fell even more deathly quiet. No one liked that.

“Then it would not be enough to simply close the doors and shutter our windows,” the Beacon spoke wielding a voice laden equally with certainty as hesitance. “It would require a near-constant monitor of every individual’s vital signs, and restricted movement for all throughout the densely populated areas. We would effectively not be merely bunkering in for our physical safety, but we would need to place the population under a functional quarantine for the first few weeks simply to ensure there is no undetected viral agent is able to spread. We would require anyone taking refuge here to comply with these regulations, or…”

She gulped as she choked on her words in this moment. Indy peered at her searchingly. Cornelius smiled at the wall. Theodorp was on the edge of his seat, waiting for her to finish her thought. King Gelbin Mekkatorque simply listened, chin upon thumb, cheek against finger, elbow against armrest. 

“... Or be placed under secure, supervised quarantine. Just for the duration. And ethically, of course. This is for… public safety.”

Theodorp clinked his clamps excitedly under the table with a wide, toothy grin while Luminess attempted to meet Intamin’s gaze. But when her optics searched for his, he had already turned away. She sank in her seat just slightly as her lips tightened and her face drooped just a bit. 

The King nodded slowly as his own eyes searched in the far distance, into the invisible thinkspace we all have for flaw in this reasoning. And whether he found zero flaws to be had, or he simply accepted the known flaws as they were, it was not made clear in his exhausted sigh that set his moustache billowing in the wind blown forth from his lips.

“You speak the Truth as ever, Beacon,” decreed the King. “If we are going to do this then it would be folly to employ any half-measures. BUT... we will make sure that all who are so quarantined for the duration will have the inconvenience of their sacrificed time compensated, their needs of survival and personal comfort fully provided for. They are our people, our family and friends, and we will make their stay at home a veritable paradise until the situation is under control. To do any less would call into question the foundations and integrity of our very society’s principles in a manner we simply do not have time for right now, or possibly ever. Have we reached consensus?”

The assembled members of the Think Tank all offered their agreement in unison in low grunts of affirmation and/or raised hands. Even Intamin, after a moment. Luminess quietly sighed in relief, allowing her jaw to finally un-clench itself.

“Then the matter is settled upon. Beacon Brightcoil, I am counting on you to ensure that the quarantine efforts are carried out in a safe and ethical manner the people will find agreeable. Spare no expense. The rest of us will reconvene after a one hour biological break to discuss our efforts abroad aiding the campaign in Icecrown and the Eastern Kingdoms. Titans Observe that it will be Gnomish Ingenuity and Determination that brings a swift resolution to this crisis!”

The King’s counsel and subjects before him all responded with an assured nod and an equally assured utterance of “Titans Observe,” even Doctor Theodorp Wimblewomble the Sixth or Seventh.

With that, King Gelbin Mekkatorque bowed his head with a soft chuckle and made haste towards the door, eager to get out of being in a meeting for however long he can manage it today. Luminess, making similar speed, exited behind him as the others shuffled their belongings in order. 

Intamin gave chase.

“Beacon? Oh, Beacon?” cried the man playfully behind his companion, who laughed as she slowed her pace to allow them to walk on parallel paths. “I was simply wondering which personal liberties I would still be afforded while imprisoned in my own private paradise prison.”

Luminess rolled her eyes and nudged him with her elbow, shaking her head as she chuckled softly. “Really, Indy, the situation is dire enough without you nagging at my personal principles over my duties as a Beacon.”

The prosthetist cackled quietly beside her, grinning all too wide as he satisfied himself with her acknowledgement of such a Truth. “I am teasing, of course, my dear… Nothing about this is easy, and though it burns at my very soul to admit it… this is a necessary action to take. So long as it remains a stopgap, and not a solution. And Titans Observe that I may rest easy knowing you are at the lead of such a project.” 

“Titans may Observe it so… but they shan’t,” Luminess responded softly.

Intamin jogged in front of her to impede her movement, narrowing his ocular sensors to thin lines as he looked over her features for any sign that she might be joking. She was not.

“... You will not be staying? But you said--”

“I know that I spoke in favor of quarantine and I stand by that. It is what is right for our people, both of them, all of them… But it is not my place. For certain, This Unit could perform the task and do it well, but I am by no means the only one capable of doing so."

Intamin looked her over curiously. "Did not the King ask you to do it yourself?"

Luminess allowed a sly smirk. "He merely asked me to ensure it will be done. I will reach out Wenzli Cogsalvage to manage this in my stead. She is the finest community organizer I have seen since the end of the Revolution. And though I am beloved by many, as a Beacon I am still mistrusted by the same amount or more for our ties to the Mad Tyrant’s Orthodoxy and the work that remains in our reform thereof… By contrast, she is of the people in a way I can never truly be ever again, and will therefore be more efficient in inspiring trust in this time. In addition, since it is Wenzli... I will have the added bonus of most people simply mistaking her for being me anyway, as normal."

The prosthetist clicked his teeth. She certainly had a point, if not several, but he was not letting her off the hook so easily. "And so if your place is not here, Miss Brightcoil… Then where is it?" 

A brief question inspires an eternity in a split second of consideration. Where, indeed? Was her place in Stormwind, with the Embassy as an Ambassador? Was her place with Prince Erazmin and the Rustbolt Resistance, now expanding their field of operation to fight back against the emergent Scourge threat? Was it with the other medical professionals of the Azeroth Medical Association, searching for a long term solution against the contagion and the short term efforts of caring for those currently afflicted? Was it with her mercenary allies in the Dragon Corps or the Fence Macabre, beating back the hordes with them and other Champions? Was it by the side of those she held dear, one small clutch of beloved friends or another? 

Luminess smirked just for a moment before lifting her gaze to Intamin. Her eyes flickered Gold with the Light before she answered him with a warm tone.

“Uncertain. But what you said earlier rings true again: Wherever my place might be… it is quite clear that the answer is not here, in Mechagon. It is out there… in Azeroth.”

Intamin couldn’t help but allow a smugly satisfied grin plaster his face, flashing that perfect one-millimeter gap in his front teeth as they bit lightly upon his tongue to stifle a boisterous guffaw that would otherwise spoil what could be looked back upon as a tender moment.

“Titans Observe,” he said simply, and embraced his friend tightly with both arms, squeezing as hard as he can, as he always did, knowing that once again, this could be the final opportunity to do so. “But I shall not allow you to continue your adventures abroad unaided. Your previously requested modifications are complete and awaiting installation back at my workshop over a splendid Torcolato I’ve been saving for just such an occasion.” 

“Mister Diveroll, there is absolutely nothing that I would enjoy more at this precise moment,” said Luminess, as she sniffled once and dabbed at the corners of her eyes with the collar of her ceremonial garb after returning the embrace of a beloved friend and confidant. She then grabbed hold of his arm for escort down the winding path from the High Tinkertory, down to into the city which she held so dear, the city which until only still so recently was all she had known.

And as she walked, audibly promising the matter was settled to her companion, she continued to silently deliberate within herself over it all... whether she was making the right or wrong choice, whether there was an optimization to their plans she failed to find, whether or not it was hopeless to even try, endlessly as she would, as she does, and as she has, every single day of her life.

And as such... she prayed to the Titans, as she did, every single day of her life, that they may Observe her following the ideal path.

Tell me what your spirit says Show me what you pray Teach me every single part I'll be your guide You are a prisoner Looking for to be You can change your face But can't change your mind No matter what do you do No matter what do you do No matter what do you do No matter what do you do

[vampiresuns]

Day 14: In Another Life

As you could read in ‘The Best Way To Predict The Future Is To Invent It’, I took a different route with the ‘Another Life’ from @arcana-echoes​. Anatole would’ve not feasibly left Vesuvia — when he isn’t the apprentice he doesn’t leave, he just doesn’t die — and even if Milenko and Amparo did, they would resume their occupations.

Instead I went with what would happen if Lucio was never Count and, in absence of the Count the Consul ruled.

In the game-compliant timeline, Anatole’s great grandfather, Vitale Cassano (former Consul) along with other members of the Cassano family were looking to record the history of Vesuvia as far as they could go.

The first notable difference is that in that quest, Vitale finds out [spoilers for Portia’s route] about the pact the first Count made for the city to be in this constant cycle of death and rebirth. What Vitale figured is that if the source of that is in the Canals of the city, then what you need to do is rewrite them.

The Cassano-Radošević have a big circle of acquaintances from all sides of life, from a lot of different places. Finding someone who could aid like this (or someone who knew someone) was feseable.

Like Anatole himself, the big strength of the C-R lies in making connections. Intelligence for the sake of it, power for the sake of it, do not bring satisfaction to them: life is to be lived and loved. You survive because life is worth living.

Vitale was the Consul for a long time, he would’ve known the former, former Count, and would’ve seen the transition from that one to the Count before Lucio.

It was Agrippinna (the sibling of Anatole’s great grandfather) the one who placed the picture together, of the potential harm the former Count’s favour of mercenaries could bring to the City. Agrippinna was of this idea in the game-compliant timeline too. However, the letter from Vitale about potential harm to the City would’ve been enough to edge them on and check on the contents.

With this information, and we see in the game how dangerous it is when it falls on the wrong hands, Iovanus has enough reason to distrust the Count’s decision to hand the city to Lucio, as he would’ve had enough evidence to not give the latter the benefit of doubt.

The true consolidation of the Cassano as the Count-Consul family comes after the Plague, which I still think happens, because there’s no way Lucio wouldn’t have tried to take the city back. He would probably come back in a Devil-Lucio merge.

The Plague still hit the City, but it didn’t hit it as terribly as it did in the game.

In this timeline the Colosseum would no longer function as a battleground. In due time, aid spots and initiatives, as well as poverty fighting social programs, would’ve become usual in Vesuvia.

As for Anatole, I’m sure his mother would’ve stilled liked him to have a normal childhood, so he decided if he wanted to join the Cassano politics later, when he was older. Him having a normal childhood that was in touch with the material reality of the world would’ve still be incredibly important for both his parents. His parents and Asra’s parents would’ve been close friends, given all Vlad, Aisha and Salim are alchemists — Court Magicians. Vlad, Nana’s father, would probably end up as a Civic Infrastructure consultant.

Anatole would’ve still travelled, and he still would’ve taken the particular turn to the left his political views have, however, with Valerius as the standing Count now, he would’ve been disputed to either replace Valerius himself or his aunt Cassiopeia, as Amparo would still not want a political job.

Amparo, however, ends up doing politics. While her position as the daughter of Consul Cassiopeia Cassano, and niece (actually Cousin however times removed, but Valerius calls her niece) of the Count, she would’ve probably had access to better theatre and dance opportunities, or be subject of special consideration in some occasions. Her notoriety would’ve probably come a lot sooner. She still ends up with Portia, who comes to visit her brother.

Yet, when she hits her early 30s (which are just around the corner) she would end up shifting into politics, powered by her present concern about people’s conditions, social justice and access to education. Like Valerian Cassano, now former Count-Consort, widow of former Count Iovanus Cassano, La Cassano would’ve turned into politics willingly, though not to become the Consul after her mother.

In this timeline, Iris and Cassiopeia have another daughter, called Artemisia Eudora Cassano, who does become the Consul after Cassiopeia.

Milenko is the only one who never turns to politics. While he would mantain the topics of his writing (pastoral horror, and urban magical realism) he would’ve become the Poet Laureate of Vesuvia.

Nadia eventually becomes the Praetor. She and Natiqa would’ve most likely been ambassadors to consolidate the newfound Prakran-Vesuvian relations, and while she would’ve had no Count to hapzardly marry, I’m sure that without her in the line of succession, Valerius would’ve taunted the possibility of them being friends. She would’ve stayed in Vesuvia as a memeber of the Court, only she would’ve had agency, and would not have the pressure of a deteriorating marriage.

She eventually begins a relationship with Vesuvia’s Poet Laureate Milenko Radošević, as Nadia is indeed supposed to be Milenko’s LI.

After whatever road the events of the game take, Valerius would sooner rather than later prepare the transition for Anatole to take his place, as in an environment with no deals, steady support from his family, and a different approach from his predecessor in how to handle the City, he would’ve been encouraged to follow his true passions: wine, arts and theatre, stepping down as the Consul, becoming a patron of the arts with his own Vineyard. Anatole replaces Valerius as the Count at the age of 31, instead the usual 29 with which he replaces him as the Consul.

The system the Cassano follow is rather easy: first, do not saturate structures of power with people in the family. Secondly, no one becomes the Count or the Consul by force or duty: you must do it because you want to. Thirdly, corollary of the former, positions of governance must be filled with people with the technical capacities to carry the job, regardless or where they come from. They still give some positions as political favours, but ask that the person using them knows what they’re doing.

Nadia becomes Anatole’s praetor, as by the time he is Consul, he would like to start a series of justice reforms. 

Anatole’s best friends (Medea and Leonore) continue to be his best friends. Medea becomes a councilwoman, and Leonore becomes a self-proclaimed master of entertainment (”A clown then,” Anatole says). In reality he keeps his job as a therapist. Natiqa continues to be his friend, so do Asra and Muriel — in this AU, Muriel would’ve been taken in by the Alnazars. Depending on the route you want to take, either him or Julian end up as Count Consorts, as they are Anatole’s LIs.

(However @ilyamatic​‘s Andrico, along with Julian could also be Count Consort, as we ship the three of them together. On the other hand, @apprenticealec​‘s Leon could also end up in the same position, as they are also shipped with Nana).

Remember you can always check who is who in the Radošević-Cassano family tree, here.

[mountphoenixrp]

We have a returning citizen in Mount Phoenix:

                                    Rán, the Goddess of the Sea,                    whose origins stem from Ancient Scandinavia.                                She is now a City Council Member                                        and the owner of Böljande.

FC NAME/GROUP: Park Soo Joo / Model GOD NAME: Rán PANTHEON: Norse OCCUPATION: City Council Member, Owner of Böljande HEIGHT: 1.78 m DEFINING FEATURES:

Her eyes are of a cloudy gray.

She has a tattoo on her left forearm with 9 minimalistic waves

PERSONALITY: A careful face, but a tough attitude. As the keeper of drowned souls, Rán can be perceived as cold and unpredictable, and she carries the weight of this image well, not caring to hide her true nature to anyone. Nonetheless she is rather good company to keep because she can show warmth and empathy when these qualities are necessary. She is very animate with her facial expressions and hand gestures. A renowned great host, she loves to fill her home with guests for late night dinners or raves (at which she DJ’s). Quite ambitious and greedy, she was taught early in life of the importance of education and wealth, and as this idea grew on her, so did her voracity for money and power and all the luxuries that come with it. Her captivating presence suggests her as promiscuous and manipulative, a woman who could threaten both men and women, but with Rán seeing is not believing. Like the legends of her people, her life is an entanglement of secrets and half-truths, yet she shows no remorse when telling some of her embellished past-life stories. Rán sees herself as someone who is deeply caring and always listening when you think she isn’t, someone to have as an emergency contact when you need to bury your secrets deep in the mountains. Her words are in-adhesive to those who seek answers, her songs are beguiling to those that eavesdrop, yet they recapture the true tale of her troubled life.

HISTORY: [tw: briefly mentions domestic abuse, death, and sort-of cannibalism]

The cold moonlight shines on top of the black and blue sea

a young goddess, descendant of the red and blue, with eyes bright like moonstones and hair as silver and shiny as a coat of lynx. born of the North Sea and bound to it by blood, compelled to it by love. she is forever untamed like the creatures of the deep, always longing for an extra inch like the waves that wash up on the shore. it is a new day, for yesterday has been done away with and the sea-creatures of tomorrow are yearning for another chance. to prove themselves, to live like their mothers did — before their self-destruction.

The hand that couldn’t touch that ray of sunshine

born without wings, she never went too far. singing and daydreaming lying on her back in the beds of sand were how she spent most of her youthful days. the young Rán dreamed of becoming strong and glorious, with wings like Freyja a goddess she often envied. what could she do to have wings like the goddess of love; to have a reputation so destitute of monstrosity? the others made fun of her indifference, her inability to fly over the sea and shoot the breeze with their cousins. “how can someone like us even dream of such nonsense”, they said. “if we were meant to fly then what do we have these tails for?”, “maybe she’s too busy learning how to fly that she doesn’t have time for real scholarly work”. they teased her endlessly but she didn’t listen, her mind drifted into thoughts of touching the chariot of Thor.

The unfair stories

a chorus sings at dusk, their melodies are like the pouring out of smooth, fine waters. who could resist such an enticing sound? the sailors could not. it wasn’t so much that they were answering the call of the siren, but being hypnotized by the aura of it. surely no one on the island wished for their deaths, but merely company that they were after. visitors to bring spirits among other gifts. sadly, these visitors never left the island for the inhabitants were poor hosts, not knowing to feed their guests who seemingly had forgotten to eat. it is a sad coincidence such men traveled the coast, unaware of the dangerous creatures of the sea. her cousins, maidens who loved to play wicked games, attacked ships and drowned and often ate the flesh of the men, for fun. when word got around to the gods, her people were to blame for their songs that tempted the toughest of men. punishment was in order. and when it all was said and done, the others took to the seas and spread vicious rumors of the flesh-eating seductresses, “they’ll steal your goods and eat your heart out” they said. everyone laughed at them if they did not have pity, how beautiful fish-tailed songstresses were to turn into savages so easily. this was the tale she heard of her ancestors, and though she and the others on the island were but the offspring of the latter, the stories stuck like hair on her head. she would soon become the renowned fearsome ruler of the stormy seas, and in doing so maintained her status the same way her cousins did.

A black island is among the lowly settled water fog

perusing about on the coast of a small uninhabited island she frequented in her youth, in search of fresh meat, she came to realize prematurely that the shore had been blackened by waste and littered with the debris of human carcasses. surely her weekly antics haven’t caused this? what once was a haven for local birds and land critters alike is now what appears to be an ocean dumping, a burial site for a wasted lifestyle. the now older goddess emerges onshore with plastic bottle caps in her hair in lieu of seaweed. ultimately the toxic black waste would seep through into her body, penetrating through her lungs and corrupting her natural-given powers. it brought tears to her eyes to know this was only a sign of what the future is to bring, poisonous waters and death-clad shores. the others pretend not to know, the land-dwellers turn a blind eye.

A worn out and humid ferry, a small boat leaves

no longer was the island fit to rest on, no longer was the ocean, her home, as pure and flowing as her voice. the now frail goddess let out the call, that velvety magnetic cry that lured in men and women alike, the one her dear husband despised so. only this time her voice croaked, she was sure no one had heard her, not even the king of the seas. shortly thereafter, a lonely man appears on the coast, as is expected, you could see in his eyes the despair of her voice had not struck him yet until he reached the oil-slicked sand beneath her limp body. it wasn’t enough for him to help her escape for her life, he wanted to be a part of it. she was like nothing he had ever seen before, and he knew he would never see her again, not like this. an arrangement was made, once they reached land, dry and clean land, the goddess would exchange vows with this strange man.

The flower petals fall and the tears dry

a goddess who arranged a deal with a human so that she would not perish like her sisters, grew to adore the man whom she thought was sweet, sensitive and caring. he showered her with fresh flowers daily, clothing that showed off her womanly figure, and jewelry that matched her eyes. the man was so proud of himself for finding what he believed to be a treasure, he did not want to share her with anyone and soon the loving man became very possessive. he accused her of going out late at night to have drinks with other men and singing to locals that traveled by their house. sharing the wealth was what he called it, though one day came when she swore she did no such thing, the man would strike her in disbelief, this was not the first, but one of many occurrences. it was obviously time for Rán to cease playing house and deal with this man just like she did all the others, he had become like the poisonous waters of her past. honestly she surprised herself, living contently in the mundane life of a human, this was far from what she wanted for her life. she wanted to go back to the golden days, back when she and Ægir would get dressed up and throw ragers to entertain the gods in the home they built together. unfortunately, returning wasn’t so easy anymore.

My last move was to put down my long hair

Rán couldn’t stand to take another beating from a mortal who knew nothing of her life, once again she had to teach one of nature’s great lessons – don’t fuck with a goddess. for her there was no justification, similar to when humans get bitten by snakes and someone needs to suck the venom out to survive, this is how she chose to view this incident; sucking the venom out of her life with no other reason given the circumstances. only now the corollary was tremendous, the strength in her powers had returned except they were not the same as before, they were not only destructive but dark and consumed almost every aspect of her being.

The truth that can’t be hidden comes out

primarily to avoid persecution from the locals, she returned to the black island to lay the man’s remains to rest in her own way. the bottom of the small boat that once carried her away from this place was covered in black waste and debris. she could hear her daughters singing in the meadow, but their songs were not like the ones before, there were tears dripping down their faces. one song spoke of a massacre, brothers and sisters being choked with plastic rope, another was about beauty and how her daughter’s lips became blackened and they were losing their hair. there Rán stood shocked in silence, she realized she was not looking at all of her daughters, about a handful of them were missing. when the others finally ceased their singing and wailing, they cried out to her, “save us, help us! will you leave us here to die?” she could not answer without weeping for her lost children. the others pointed her to a pile of breathless sea-creatures with plastic rings around their necks and glass stuck in their skin. some had perished from eating toxic algae, others just from swimming in contaminated waters. day by day, the pile grew bigger. it is a new age, for an era has been done away with and the sea-creatures of tomorrow are yearning, for time, for life, for survival. Finally –after so many years were spent struggling to find understanding and acceptance among the land-dwellers, wandering and self-loathing and coming to terms with her life choices. she reluctantly returned to the waters, her home, for a final goodbye.

tears dry, time stops

If only I had insufficient comfort that means nothing

within the community of mount phoenix, a small company is born, to protect and maintain the life of living beings both in the sea and on land. a promise the goddess made to herself to give back what time took away. focusing on ethical production, reducing water pollution and environmental devastation, creating a way for people to indulge in luxury without destroying the habitat of others. Rán decided her time on the island would be better spent giving back to her community and using her platform to advocate for the creatures whose voices are seldom heard. truly though, she came to the island in search of something or someone. perhaps, if she could not return to her home – Aegirheim – she would make one here in Mount Phoenix.

a dark tale to be continued.

POWERS: Rán can create, shape and manipulate water of a spiritual or destructive nature. can cause natural ocean disasters such as tsunamis, monsoons, and whirlpools to manifest. She carries a net that she uses to capture and trap the souls of the drowned. A widely known power is her ability to transform her physiology to that of the merfolk and vice versa. Some of her merfolk abilities include aquatic life communication, hypnotic song or ‘beacon emission’ which can lure someone towards her, and depending on the mental capacity of the victim, can cause paralysis or dementia. She can also influence strong emotion with her singing voice or a musical instrument. As the personification of the sea, she is capable of returning to her godly form as a body made completely of the ocean, but is less likely to do so.

STRENGTHS:

Not afraid to go to the murky waters of the emotional and spiritually unknown.

Great at keeping secrets, has strong intuition and perception of others.

Values trust and a deep connection with others she considers as a friend or lover.

Electronically adept, her favorite way to escape is through casual gaming and social media so she does well with a smartphone and computer.

WEAKNESSES:

Despite needing to have complete and total control of a situation, she doesn’t have full knowledge or control over her newer, darker powers and will avoid transforming out of her human likeness because of this.

Craves deep emotional connections, but does not like to appear vulnerable so she is less likely to reach out first.

Claustrophobic.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

Corollary: biracial Jon courtesy of his mother Lianne means that Duke Gareth, her brother, is also Bazhir, & that Gary, his son & Jon's cousin, is likely also biracial.

Cannot stop thinking about how biracial Jon of Conte changes the entire everything about, actually the whole Bazhir Plot. Also possibly the entire direction of Alanna and Jon’s breakup fight. Like:

Jon, who has had to spend so much of his life hiding his Bazhir side, who has had to listen to awful awful comments (about himself, about his mother, about all the stories and food and culture that she was allowed to teach him, if any)

Roger positioning himself as the pure blood alternative ugh.

When he gets to actually go and it’s coming home and it’s not coming home because he’s of this place but he’s also not of (source I’m biracial and really found this/reconnecting with that side of me pretty late) and also feeling how much he doesn’t know. But he still fits here, in ways he hasn’t in Corus.

(I’m half Persian (with some Syrian but) and also Jewish so in my head this is very drawn from Persian/Persian Jewish I mean hi PERSEPOLIS)

Having to listen to remarks from people you like that really hurt.

Jon destroying the Black City as a Bazhir like !!!!! Jon becoming The Voice as a Bazhir, as someone coming home and being welcomed and also struggling with that.

Listen I adore Jon/Thayet but like BIRACIAL + BIRACIAL FEELS.

@captainlordauditor @blue-ink-pearls @eidetictelekinetic

[frenchiefitzhere]

FYI: I try to always post new episodes at the same time of day and I've been sticking to Sundays and Wednesdays. No new video this weekend because of the holiday, but I've got some good stuff lined up.

Next up on Corollary...

April 12 - Episode 20: "I am not brainwashed" April 16 - Episode 21: "You're not looking for coffee" April 19 - Episode 22: "Cricket" April 23 - Bonus Episode: Date Night with ??? Need to catch up first?

Or come on down and join the fan server on Discord

[grandhotelabyss]

This is the place where a typical leftoid genre pamphlet would indulge in some half hearted invocation of the proletariat. Maybe the academics dwelling on the hill will see their fates somehow tied to downtrodden workers, uniting in some struggle over… who knows what… police brutality maybe? Oceanic micro-plastics? Whatever social movement is on the menu for that day will have to work. But once we take a second to step back from the clout-chasing cause du jour and think critically about our position, the whole fantasy seems absurd. So how did we get here?Bessner’s above-mentioned essay provides an entree into the problem: from C Wright Mills to Chomsky, Bessner tracks how the boomers’ generational maturation coincided with the crystallization of an elite disdain for the affairs of the state. But there is an important corollary that he doesn’t mention: this process also entailed an identification with “humanity” instead of America. No longer were the bleeding heart liberals, or their scrappy little cousins, the so-called “marxist academics,” working for the bildung of a new generation of Americans, they were humanitarian internationalists, standing up for the little guy on the world stage against their own national jingoism. Weird that proletarian internationalism has so few proletarians and so closely resembles yankee imperialist humanitarianism…

Anthony Morreale, “The Academic Job Crisis Is Fake”