#create an account on ancestry

[starry-bi-sky]

how do you clone a fey? that's trick question; and fey love those!

@the-navistar-carol (<333) brought up a good point while I was talking about my changeling danny au with her -- Dani! How would she exist in this au? Danny's a changeling - a fae. How would Dani, a clone of him, be created? How do you make a fey? Not through any means that Vlad is doing; you can't make a fey through unnatural means, considering the Fair Folk are nature. And Vlad's not a fey himself -- he's a halfa, even if he could make a fey, it's not in his best interest too. He's a powerful ghost, but even the weakest fae can overpower the strongest ghost. He won't want a clone of Daniel to be more powerful than him.

(In a three tier hierarchy it goes Ancients -> Fae/Mythos -> Ghosts. They all live in the Infinite Realms, but on different Planes. The fae live above the Ghost Zone in the Fey Wild, while the Mythos live beside the Wilds or down in the ghost zone depending on where they are. Places like the Frozone, the Athens Acropolis, and other such large islands climb throughout all three Planes.)

(While Ghosts can travel into the Fey Wild, its generally advised against as the ectoplasm tends to manifest differently there due to close contact magic. It can make it rather disorientating for a ghost, and as human spirits, the Fae living there would jump them faster than they could blink. So unless you're willing to play mind games with 'steal thy name eat thy face' fae, most ghosts keep out of the way of the Wilds. Fey can travel down into the Ghost Zone, they just don't bother.)

That's of course, not taking into account if Vlad even knows Danny's a fae himself. Vlad doesn't ring me as someone who really cares much about ghost culture or the going ons of the GZ. He might be aware that fae exist, but the moment he realizes he can't use them for personal gain he just doesn't bother with them. The risk is greater than the reward, and he'd rather not get eaten. But lets assume he's aware by now that Danny is fey, and has to take that into account while cloning him.

So, how does Dani exist? Good question! Honestly; i'm not sure. She might not exist at all, or if she does, she's more halfa than fey. Vlad would need a lot of human dna and ectoplasm to balance out all that fae magic. He manages to steal DNA from Jack and Maddie to do it, and since Jack's fey ancestry is very dormant its much easier to use alongside Danny's DNA.

In turn, it results in a little girl whose more human-ghost hybrid than clone. With that little extra boost in fey magic making her not a fey, but still relatively powerful. Dani is less of a clone and more of a lab-grown little sister. It's a rather tedious, complex process that has Vlad tearing his hair out trying to figure out. But he does eventually figure it out.

[uva124]

So yeah, I finished the drawing of Asha's redesign from Wish :D, maybe I'll make some changes in the future, but I'm happy to have finished it, it should be noted that I haven't seen the movie. , so I can't give my opinion on it yet, but I found it very interesting that their fandom is mainly made up of people who rewrote or made their own version of the movie, they are all very creative and it got me out of an artistic block. that I had a few months ago, but above all I found the rewriting of @annymation which is the one I have been most hooked on, so I wanted to do some redesigns of the characters coming out of its rewriting, that's why everything that has to do with the story of this version of Asha, as well as her personality and her world on which I base my drawing are the ideas and work of this account: @annymation

I'm just making a drawing of her character and how I would design her as well as sharing part of the process I had to do to draw her because, why not?

BOARD:

The first thing I had to do was put together a table full of references that reminded me of the character and things that I would like to add to her design, so I used milanote to do it:

-Looked for some Asha's concept art and save the ones I liked the most, and add the main colors that I used in the design. -I also created notes to write down the personality of the character and some of his data to have a better guide, I did a little research and found publications that talked a lot about Asha's discarded designs and how Disney workers had put that she had tribe ancestry Amazigh on his mother's side and since his father was from the Iberian Peninsula, that's why the next thing I wanted to do is research more about their culture. -I am not an expert on this topic, nor do I belong to the cultures from which Asha has ancestry, so you can comment on any correction regarding this topic, I wanted to implement details of this culture to her design and I would really like to give a correct representation :)

HAIRSTYLE

Continuing with the theme, I saw that the hairstyles in the Amazigh culture mostly had this type of colorful decorations on their braids and dreadlocks, that's why I also posted these reference photos for Asha's hairstyle.

-Finally I decided that Asha would not have all her hair full of braids or dreadlocks, but only a few accompanied by these decorations with a great variation of colors, although it was fun to sketch the many hairstyle options that I had in mind based on these concept art and other photos that I had saved

TATTOOS:

-Another detail that I liked was giving Asha some tattoos with designs from the Amazigh culture, because I saw that it was quite common for women to get them, the tattoo on her forehead is a symbol of protection against bad influences, that's why the The middle symbol is responsible for deflecting it in the 4 directions, I also added a similar one in Asha's right hand.

ASTROLOGY AND THE SPACE:

-An important part of Asha's rewrite is her knowledge of astronomy inherited from her father, especially with the stars for obvious reasons xd, so in addition to adding constellations to her dresses, research the meaning (or something like that) of the planets. Only 3 really reminded me of the character, which were: -Mars: Symbolization of the internal conquering function of moving forward, independent, self-determined, enduring failures with new energy, courage and energy to fight for your desires. -Saturn: Maturity, effort to solidly build realistic criteria, frustrations are transformed into objectives to continue growing, critical and realistic, far from getting frustrated when an objective does not work, you strive to move forward and obtain even more resistant and solid achievements, perseverance , and tenacity (I feel like yhis it the most similar to Asha :D) -Moon: protective role, feeling very vulnerable outside your known areas, feeling of security with your ties, importance of family ties. The one that reminded me the most of Asha was Saturn, that's why I drew those Saturn-shaped earrings :).

SUITS:

I looked for references and placed some on milanote, I noticed that the concept art was mainly divided into whether the dresses have lilac colors or warm colors, I decided to draw 2 models based on the discarded designs, although at first I thought of using only one color palette lilac and bluish, I realized that the reddish colors of her dress reminded me of Mars which has certain meanings that in my opinion coincide with Asha's personality. In the end I didn't decide what wardrobe she would primarily have 😅, but I like to think that in this version of Wish, Asha would have wardrobe and hairstyle changes like in some older Disney movies.

-These are some of the concepts that I mainly used for my version of the dresses

FINAL COMMENTS:

I am satisfied with the result, it was fun to make all this, although what I researched mostly seems little, it actually cost me several hours and I did it at night, so as a funny fact the next day I was explaining all this information to my mother and I felt like I looked like that:

(Make this drawing was so funny LMAO)

(Apologies if there are errors in my writing, English is not my first language and my writing is very basic)

[thydungeongal]

Can you elaborate on "character creation on a minigame"?

Okay so for what it's worth I think character creation will always be a minigame to some extent and different RPGs will have it feel like interesting gameplay to a different extent. But Pathfinder 2e has one of my favorite character creation minigames on account of it being an aggregate of multiple different choices that all amount to a unique character where you can see each discrete choice that went into creating it.

You get a choice of Ancestry and Heritage. Some heritages are tied to ancestries, some are free-for-all, so-called versatile heritages. That already opens up so many choices. Do you want your character to be a typical Dwarf Dwarf, or a Tiefling Dwarf? Classes have inbuilt choices, something akin to D&D 5e subclasses. You also get to pick a background which grants your character their first of many skill feats!

There's a lot of interesting choices to make and it is very expressive. As said, character creation is play in pretty much any RPG, but Pathfinder 2e really amps up how well it is an expression of system mastery and like actually a fun mechanical puzzle. It's very cool!

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Meghan Markle's ancestors owned slaves by u/PolishedWoodTable

First of all I have to clarify that I've never commented on here before, but I've been approved to post because of the research I have to share.

So it's been well established that Meghan Markle is descended from Captain Christopher Hussey through her dad's side (https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a13810014/prince-harry-meghan-markle-ancestor-execution-study/). Captain Christopher Hussey was a rich colonialist. I was talking about it to my mom and she wondered if they owned slaves, because most rich colonialists did.

Genealogy is my hobby and I decided to do some digging. Guess what? They did!

Here's a quick family tree to show you how these people relate to Meghan:

And now some info about her ancestors:

Establishing that Stephen is the son of Christopher Hussey (Source: Genealogical and Family History of the State of New Hampshire)

Stephen was a powerful man, huge landowner, slaveholder, and by most accounts an all-round-jerk.

Stephen probably got his slaves from the West Indies. (Source: A Branch of the Hussey Family in America)

Stephen was the biggest landowner of his day. (3 houses!! No wonder he wanted slaves...) (Source: Nantucket Lands and Land Owners)

And here's the part proving Stephen was a slaveholder:

Stephen Hussey's will, leaving his slaves like property to his family (Source: Quaint Nantucket)

I don't have any ultra strong feelings on Meghan but considering like everything that she and Harry have said and done this really shocked me. I know Stephen isn't her direct ancestor, but still ultra weird.

And that's not even the part that shocked me the most...Meghan's director ancestors sold their land to Stephen and so directly profited from his landholding, slaveholding empire. Like...what?? Here are the images:

This ones shows that Huldah Hussey, Meghan's direct ancestor, married John Smith (Source: History of the Town of Hampton of New Hampshire)

And here is John Smith, Huldah's husband, selling his land to Stephen Hussey... (Source: The Pioneers of Maine & New Hampshire)

Aaaaand her director ancestor Christopher Hussey did the same. (Source: Nantucket Lands and Landowners)

I found all this in local New England history books. I can upload all the books somewhere so people can read them for themselves, and on top of the link at the beginning of the post, I also have all the records showing that Meghan IS descended from Christopher Hussey, but there are so many records I'm not sure where to start...whatever anyone wants me to upload just ask.

So...the big question is, does Meghan know this? It seems like a really big deal to me considering the HUGE conversation that's surrounded Meghan's background since she joined the Royal Family.

EDIT to say 2 things:

1. I don't think that your ancestry should have any bearing on who you are and how you're judged. In any normal honest context, it shouldn't ever be considered relevant and every human being should be judged by who they are and what they do, not by what their ancestors did. I for one know that some of my ancestors had slaves. That doesn't make me a racist, and any implication that it did would be totally unfair.

And that's exactly why I created this post -- because that's exactly what Meghan did about the British nation. She has implied from the start that she was rejected by the British ppl -- not just the RF, but everyone -- because of her race. She crafted a narrative that said the British ppl weren't ready to accept a black princess because of post-colonial feeling. She branded an entire nation as being racist simply because of who their ancestors are.

So I created this post to show just how hypocritical that narrative is.

2. Thanks so much for all the compliments from everybody for the work I put into this post, it means a lot!

📌 post link

📌 Post archive link

📌Link to digital format files for referencing

author: PolishedWoodTable

submitted: May 10, 2024 at 12:41PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

[sanctaignorantia]

Starting another text about how my mind is deteriorating as I think more about Death Stranding 2. Here we go!

Today we're going to talk about how I believe Fragile will be the friend who betrays us in the sequel, but not because she's bad, but because she had no choice or because she's in a risky situation.

Let's start with a few points (which may be confusing because my memory isn't great, sorry). During my conversations with @love-bigboss1fan-me about Metal Gear and how Kojima's mind works within his worlds I came to a few conclusions. Let's get started!

-> Fragile and Higgs will be "on the same side".

If we were to put APAC as the common point between Higgs and Fragile then I could assume that both would be working "together", without knowing it, or knowing it, but still with a certain dislike between them.

How did I come to this conclusion? Coffin.

Coffin is the only thing that closely links Higgs to Fragile and I am very suspicious of the ease with which Fragile closed Fragile Express simply to open Drawbridge. The Qpid that Sam will now wear is basically the same design as the necklace that Coffin wore. Higgs' cool sarcophagus has the same ideas, so we have Coffin linking Fragile and Higgs here.

And you know what's bizarre? I was looking for these photos and then I thought "Fragile's father reminds me of Higgs…", the type of hair, the style, I don't know…

But then you ask yourself "why would Fragile be involved?" - Was the design of the new Qpid made by Drawbridge or APAC? The DHV Magellan is something that was given to Fragile by APAC so I assume that all the technology Drawbridge has is thanks to APAC, the ship, the Qpid and the "rings". And then we come to the second very funny thing that makes me think APAC has Coffin's finger in the middle.

I thought this new technology represented rings, but it could also be miçanga, remember?

A bead (miçanga in brazilian portuguese) is a small decorative object made from natural materials such as stones, bones, shells, wood or, in most cases, glass. They are usually used to decorate necklaces (or any other ornament made from glass), and are recognizable because they have a small hole in the center for threading or stringing. They are then attached to a string, chain or necklace. Their colors and different shapes are widely used in fashion, handicrafts and decoration to create unique pieces. The use of beads originated in South Africa and surrounding countries, where they have a spiritual value, since these necklaces were used in their early days for prayer or devotion, or perhaps to ward off evil spirits. For indigenous peoples, their meaning is not purely aesthetic, for them there is a question linked to ancestry and corporeality. x

Coffin hands the miçanga to her husband and then he hands it to Fragile. The object is purely a bridge between mother and daughter and then becomes a bridge between Sam and Fragile.

These new miçangas will be used by us (Sam) and the entire Drawbridge team, each miçanga is a "knot" that is joined by a large cord, leaving everyone united.

So we have the design of the coffins, we have the miçanga, we have APAC behind Drawbridge and Higgs (according to theories), then we have Coffin. "But ah… Coffin is dead!" - Cool, since when was that an impediment in Death Stranding? Since when, for Kojima, is killing someone the end of the line? And I'm talking now because I have knowledge of MGS and all the architecture behind "bringing people back to life through AIs" - here in Death Stranding 2 we'll be going into a world that's "very Metal Gear on Kojima's part" so I think it's important to take into account the fact that he's going to CONTINUE using Metal Gear references. And I say continue because DS1 already has a lot of references...

Coffin may be dead, but her ideals still survive somewhere, in someone, and just as we believe that Higgs raised this cult of Amelie as an extinction entity, we can assume that leaving Coffin with her ideals somewhere, germinating, would not be crazy. The next point would be to think that there is something behind Coffin, in case Coffin is "the face" of APAC? Probably. This is Kojima we're talking about, and in terms of manipulation, things work like an onion.

In DS1 Fragile tells Sam the "whole truth" that Higgs tells her, before she leaves him behind on the Beach. Knowing the unknown field that is Higgs Monaghan I would have thought that handsome son of a bitch had a card up his sleeve from the start. He had to. He didn't look like someone desperate in the face of imminent destruction. So taking on his big Hollywood starring role, because acting is also his "thing", it would be easy for him to keep telling truths that hurt and he obviously does with Fragile since he was "about to die", but what would stop him from telling her that he also worked with Coffin?

They are damaged goods and damaged goods with common points that hurt both parties, they are already deeply connected by the red thread of destiny, they are already part of that great string full of miçangas.

Assuming that in the trailer 1 when Fragile escapes with Lou, the vehicle she uses already contains the Drawbridge logo, then she will basically have had her team assembled since the beginning of DS2. I'm going to conclude that, in trailer 2, when we hear her telling Sam that she's closed down Fragile Express and set up Drawbridge, it's actually at the very beginning of the game, probably in one of the scenes where we have Fragile visiting Sam to look after Lou for a few moments. So these visits will be frequent in the same way that Fragile's insistence on Sam coming to work with her at Drawbridge will initially be frequent. When the trailer 1 comes to an end and Fragile invites Sam to meet her crew, that's Fragile's last attempt to convince Sam to work with her, and guess what? It works because Lou is gone… There's nothing left for Sam… AGAIN!

We have some points that I haven't been able to think about yet, like Higgs. If he's with APAC because there's Coffin's "face" behind it, then why is his cult for Amelie and not for her? That sort of thing. But let's leave it alone because I believe that, although Higgs and Fragile may have this much in common, they still have particularities that will set them apart.

-> Higgs is not so "bad".

Evil is a point of view, and in my honest opinion Higgs was never a villain, he was a victim.

As @love-bigboss1fan-me always reminds me, no robot/human character in MGS is a total villain. They always come across as "neither friend nor foe" (although most of them are more like friends, but they don't admit it). So I'm taking into account that Higgs in DS2 will be an anti-hero. Messing around and creating chaos is still his thing, he's there to do it and he enjoys it, but he's going to help us.

Higgs in DS1 wasn't afraid to get close to Sam, to look him in the eye, to break the safe distance of Sam's private zone. No, Higgs wasn't. Higgs would pierce any barrier Sam put between them. Higgs puts his tongue in Sam's cheek without trembling, he likes it. But in trailer 2 he simply keeps his distance, he hardly looks Sam in the eye. He touches the gun, a soulless husk, he touches the puppet, knowing that it is a soulless little husk, and then he touches Lou's empty pod.

But while Sam? Well, he only touches Sam with his words and, probably, with his truths. When he says later on that Sam will have to seek the truth and that the pain he's in will only get worse, I don't believe he's only talking about Lou because later on we have lines from Fragile indicating that "it wasn't her intention to string him along". And it's not as if Fragile is the villain, perhaps the lie she tells Sam is exactly the omitted truth "I didn't tell you because you never asked!".

If Fragile and Higgs have a link to APAC because APAC is linked to Coffin, then why should this be Sam's business? Sam doesn't seem to share his visions of Cliff out there, so "everyone take care of your family" and we'll be fine, but back to Kojima and his way of telling stories, we know that family isn't exactly what descends from our own blood or genes, family is what passes on and leaves a connection in us. And connections are what Death Stranding is all about. Humanity needs to connect, because humanity is the Great Family here…

-> Is it Higgs who "kills" Lou?

I can see Kojima saying "we need to set it up so that everyone thinks Higgs is the one who shoots. Maybe he shoots Fragile, maybe Lou. But actually Higgs is shooting at whoever is chasing Fragile and Lou. Higgs is helping them."

They don't look shot to me. The background isn't even the same color and for the situation to get to where it is, with this fire and destruction, then there was a lot of fighting, something that just one shot would have solved, one shot would have ended the show.

And Higgs, like a good son of a bitch, is going to help with his own intentions behind it. He's going to help Fragile and Lou, but maybe he's going to kill whoever's after them while acting as if he killed Lou and got Lou out of there (here comes the theory that Lou is closely linked to Amelie and then Higgs' interest with his EE cult). Higgs had opportunities to destroy Fragile and never did, Higgs had opportunities to destroy that baby in the pod and never did. Higgs talks too much, but he wouldn't kill them. Fragile gave him a choice, shoot or be trapped forever on the Beach. Fragile was merciful so I don't see Higgs wanting to get back at her.

So how could Fragile become the "villain", but not because she wants to but because she "had no choice" or "is at risk"? APAC is a new face, a new company, Kojima likes to deliver the new as friendly and then that's not really a very friendly thing. We'll have APAC vs UCA then we have the top of the pyramid. These are dangerous names because they are names that have power, so these are the names that will be in control. Seducing Fragile and Higgs using their deepest connections isn't something new for Kojima either, we're still treading the same minefield as DS1 and the entire MGS franchise. The big problem is what's behind those masks, what's behind all the curtains when the show is about to start and then when it's over, what only the people who have that power in their hands will be seeing. We are just puppets, pawns.

You seduce them, hand them a fraction of that power through weapons and soldiers (for Higgs) and technology (for Fragile) while they believe they are using it for THEIR OWN INTERESTS, when in fact they are bait, they are "the pawn bridges" for the purpose of these "kings".

I don't believe that Higgs becomes "the villain" in DS1 because he wants to, and I don't need to explain his reasons. So here I don't believe that Fragile would be the "villain" because he wishes it when everything is about manipulations and well-rehearsed lies. Fragile is at risk because she does again what she condemned in DS1, she will ally herself again with something "faceless" because it gives her powe/and or has things in common (technology, dhv magellan, connect the world, make deliveries) and that will lead her into the hole. In the same way that we have Higgs doing again what he did in DS1, letting himself be seduced by icons. And we have Sam doing exactly what he didn't want to do in DS1, teaming up with a "great idea" to connect the world, this time, because it's the only thing he believes he's good at, and because he has nothing else left and because someone told him that it would heal him. THE SAME CYCLE IS STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN.

And when I talk about cycles that repeat themselves, I talk about reincarnation, I talk about how a spirit needs to repeat the same things during its spiritual journey so that it learns from its mistakes and breaks this karmic cycle and thus evolves. We see this in MGS with Hal, for example, breaking the "karmic cycle" that his father Huey "started" and so on with "the future generations" or "descendants" that are placed in the story and that can also be interpreted as "future reincarnations" of the same "soul" = idea, ideal, character. And yet, we can compare the karmic cycle of all humanity, which, in both Death Stranding and Metal Gear, continue to practice/and or be part of the same "karmic cycle" that only generates its own destruction.

[bite-the-bloody-hand]

Dramatis Personae

For the sake of having the most important details of Zell's person and history written down somewhere, I have been compelled to create this character sheet of sorts. FULL of spoilers for Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous.

Name: Grenzel 'Zell' Marion Hellsing Birth name: Salyut Pronouns: He/Him Gender: Trans Man Species: Dhampir (Vampire King Ancestry) Age: He thinks he's 19, but he's off by a few decades. Birthday: 20th Gozran :weed emoji: Star Sign: The Bridge (or The Daughter, I think he's right on the cusp?)/The Underworld Dragon Sexuality: Pansexual, Panromantic Deity/Religion: None Class: Bloodrager Primalist - Celestial & Arcane bloodline. Background: Nomad- Honglian and Ustlavic Alignment: Chaotic Neutral to Chaotic Good Path: Azata+ Love interest: Daeran Arendae Starting Stats: (Level one): STR 16 DEX 8 CON 14 INT 12 WIS 14 CHA 16 Top 3 Skills: Perception, Athletics, Persuasion Hobbies: Spinning thread, bug hunting, venue crashing (plays drums, flute, trumpet, and lute as cover) Horseback riding, various kinds of entertainment-derived mischief, Improv theater, bone carving Accent: Ustlavic - while fluent in Common he prefers to let people think otherwise. His accent will get thicker when he's tired, annoyed, or fucking with someone. Will speak in broken Ustlavic or a paint-blisteringly thick Honglian regional accent at the drop of a hat.

Quotes: "Come drink with me, friend." "Even foul water puts out wildfires." "Echh… we're really in the rice now."

Appearance: 5'5", broad shouldered with a somewhat wolfish appearance. Works out, but wouldn't say no to a cookie kind of physique. His hands and feet are oversized and a bit paw-like. He has hip-length, greying black hair that he keeps braided - usually in two simple plaits but he does love a fancy set of braids when time allows. His skin is a dusty gold-grey, as if undeath has left an actual tarnish behind.

His face is wedge-shaped, with high cheekbones, square jaw, and a slightly large nose crooked from catching one too many right hooks. Eyes are sharp, with small pupils and colored a bright blue-green - like the afterglow of a lightning strike - that reflect eerily in darkness or low light. Heavy, sharp eyebrows give him a somewhat cynical, predatory look that gets enhanced by his easy grin - he's not shy about showing off his fangs. He has one large deep scar bisecting his right eyebrow that sadly doesn't have a cool origin - a clay pot fell on him when he was trying to get it off a tall shelf. Otherwise he bears a few cut marks on his arms and legs from skirmishes, a deeper set of clawmarks over his ribs from a bad run-in with a wolverine, and the scars from affirming surgery. Finally, the fatal gutwound from his 'death' in the Stolen Lands, and the subsequent chest scar from Areelu's botched experiment.

Generally he gives off the air of a wolf desperately trying to domesticate itself, or a half-feral stray hunting dog. Real freak on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere energy. In the kindest of terms he can be described as unsettling but beautiful.

He favors jade, carnelian, and silver accessories when he can get them, and has simple bar earrings in each ear that he can't quite recall ever getting. (They're tracker tags from Areelu on account of his habit of fucking off in a random direction and getting stuck or lost somewhere upsetting.) He has issues with the joints in his hands being hypermobile that he corrects with silver splint rings. He favors primarily black outfits with pops of bright color, and minimal armor to avoid any issues with spellcasting. He has long debated the merits of getting a tongue piercing but hasn't decided whether to commit yet. He has a tattoo around his left leg of reindeer stones, and plans on getting more but isn't sure on the designs yet.

Personality: Zell by nature is an exhuberant, friendly, genuinely loving person who has learned the hard way to be extremely reseved with his trust and care. He affects an easygoing, relaxed demeanor that covers an anxious intensity soaked by deep, deep rage that is difficult to percieve until that switch flips. He leans on his innate charisma as social currency, is something of a barfly and enjoys sneaking himself into events by claiming to be 'with the band.' He especially loves crashing weddings and birthdays in this manner. Is generally known as The Guy to go to if you need something delivered, furniture moved, wood chopped, or defensive horseback riding lessons. Sometimes given to bouts of deep introspection, he has something he's searching for or working towards that drives him obsessively. Suffers from chronic joint pain and light-induced migraines, dyslexia, and severe abandonment issues. Runs hot, therefore gets heat exhausted easily.

Archetypes: Ringleader, Bon Vivant, Ambitious Sorceror.

Merits: Kind, supportive, loyal, gentle.

Flaws: Bloodthirsty, capricious, self-destructive, deceptive.

History: CW for forced cultural assimilation, forced detransition, child abuse

Zell was born under mysterious circumstances in the Hongli steppe. His mother was absent - whether she died or abandoned him was never explained - but he was raised within her tribe to be a happy and healthy child. Nobody was over concerned with gender, so he identified as a boy from early on and easily fell in with his peers. He excelled at riding horses, but had difficulty with a bow, so he trained in polearms and sword instead. While he doesn't remember much of his earliest childhood, he fondly recalls the parts of his youth leading a gaggle of youngsters across the steppe and icy desert, hunting for the tribe, herding goats and reindeer, finding cool bugs, and generally reveling in his freedom.

Unfortunately, it was not to last. When he was close to coming of age, he began to develop strange sorcerous abilities. Arcane necromancy and suggestive, enchanting magic came easily to him, and his control was nebulous at best. Still, he had help from his tribe and rarely had any extreme issues.

Soon however, strangers in terrifying black armor came from across the land bridge. They met with the elders that had raised him, and demanded to take him over to distant Avistan. He was devastated when the elders agreed to let him go, and tried to run away on his own. He was caught after weeks of evasion, and severely punished by his new handlers. The next time he was fully conscious, they were already more than halfway over the land bridge.

He was brought to Lepistadt in Ustalav to live with the "Hellsing" family, a deeply interconnected group of nobles and high-ranking Hellknights dedicated to the obstruction of a specific group of malicious vampires... When they aren't running an anti-Iomedaen protestant shadow crusade. Under the auspice of being closer to his father - who he would never meet - and 'necessary' training of his sorcerous power, he was put under the care of Nora Hellsing: a vicious, rigid woman whose first and foremost goal was to forcibly erase as much of Zell's identity as possible. Treated like a burden and an atrocity, he was denied the comfort of his language, his name, and all freedoms he had been allowed in Hongli. Alongside this, Nora did everything she could to stoke Zell's bloodlust and rage, honing him into a devastating fighter and wicked spellcaster. As a capstone, he was put through the same military academy as the other youths in the Hellsing organization. Faced with culture shock, unwinnable tasks, and Nora's cruel attention, his teenage years were a nightmare.

Nora reshaped Zell into Marion Hellsing with the intent of creating the face of the organization's next generation of Vampire Hunters, a devastating half-vampire princess that could be used as much as propaganda as a weapon. She succeeded in making Zell more dangerous, but failed in nearly every other capacity. As Marion, Zell used enchantments, intimidation, and sheer physical prowess to rebell at every opportunity; taking Nora's progressively extreme punishments while fighting indoctrination with every weapon at his disposal. He quickly learned that Nora and the more retaliatory Hellknights would stop short of anything that would kill him - though whether it was because they didn't want to risk him becoming a vampire or wished to avoid the wrath of his absentee father he could not immediately guess. Unfortunately this meant that anyone close to him was fair game - so his closest companions had to either be strong enough to hold their own or they would feel the brunt of the punishment. This did not deter Zell in the slightest, instead only fueling his rage. Zell played the part of a delinquent, bratty punk: deliberately failed classes, slept around with teachers and upperclassmen, and refused to behave unless inspired to exploit the rules to his advantage. He led a small gang of other disaffected youths upset by their involuntary placement at the Academy, and was consistent annoyance to just about anyone in power.

Even so he had few friends, and those that did get close did so for safety more than a sense of genuine friendship. Zell secretly found more solace in the labyrinthine libraries of Lepistadt's universities, more concerned with researching things on his own terms than following the ridgid precepts of Hellknight military training (or literally anything Nora wanted him to read). Eventually, his curiosity -and perhaps the occasional supernatual nudge - led him to discover interesting secrets about Hellsing's origins, and his own.

He discovers during this time that Hellsing is connected by familial relation to the Vampire King - who before becoming a vampire was the last known Aasimar of the newly dead god, Aroden. After being turned, he had apparently wandered and spent some time briefly in Tian Xia - long enough to sire a single child: - Salyut, Zell's childhood name. The child is meant to be Zell, but would have been born decades before. It will be many years before Zell eventually learns that he was given to Areelu by his father, raised til about age seven, and then left nearly a century later with the children and grandchildren of his mortal siblings with only the vaguest memories attached.

He also discovers that Hellsing's Anti-Iomedaen bent is more than just superficial: all the families are either related by blood to the Vampire King (and therefore, Aroden himself) or former clerics and paladins of the fallen god. It is unclear whether they are working directly with Areelu Vorlesh or if her involvement is just a coincidence, but they seem to believe the Vampire King's scion potentially holds a piece of Aroden's soul.

This causes him great concern… after all, Hellsing as an organization doesn't care about him as a person - they only care about Marion Hellsing the figure, and what she can do for their legitimacy and power. If they think 'Marion' holds a piece of Aroden's soul and want to try and do something with that, he doubts he'll come out the other side with any sense of self.

Learning all of this, his goals soon shifted from being the most annoying little shit on the planet to securing his own safety and freedom from Hellsing. While chasing these leads and preparing his escape, he stumbled upon caches of research left behind by Nora… and eventually proof that she was planning on becoming a lich. The particulars of her research, and how she plans to use the power of lichdom, disgusted Zell, but there was no one within Hellsing he could turn to in order to stop her. His only choice was to flee, and hope that Nora never succeeded in her plans.

This time, escaping the Hellknights was a far easier task. Armed with years of learning their tactics and the surrounding lands, he easily slipped away from Lepistadt and made his way south. The plan was to make for Absalom - perhaps strike up with some scholars who could point him towards more information about fallen Aroden. Picking the name 'Grenzel' for himself, he began his new life.

After a year or so on the road taking courier work and odd jobs, he happened to meet the captain of a river barge while chartering passage for a job. Captain Aslan Ciardha soon blew through all Zell's barriers and became his dearest friend and brother in arms. They traveled together for several years before Zell broke away to follow a lead in the Tors of Levenies. The lead was a dead end however, which allowed Zell to rejoin his friend - now a Baron in the tumultuous Stolen Lands.

He had difficulty falling in with Aslan's new crew; having little in common with most of them and no tolerance for the particulars of running a kingdom. His foremost goal was to protect and champion his friend - who had apparently come under the thrall of the wicked fae at the heart of the blight in the Stolen Lands. While Zell could see the signs of his friend being perhaps a little too invested in redeeming a clearly evil fae, there was little he could do to sway his friend. And soon, sensing his interference, Nyrissa would ensure that Zell was just as distracted.

He had not expected Tristian - of all people - to show any interest in him beyond the seemingly genuine concern of a healer. Even so he was charmed by Tristian's gentle, if fumbling, persistence, and eventually started to worry less about Aslan's predicament. While bemused and a little terrified of the prospect, Zell let himself start to fall in love and relax more around the other companions, finally gaining a sense of ease among them.

When Tristian inevitably turned coat and betrayed them all in Vordekai's tomb, Zell was devastated. He went with Aslan to Candlemere to try and talk sense into Tristian, but learning how thoroughly he'd been played truly broke his heart. While Aslan was determined to prove Tristian could be saved and made for the Temple of the Elk, Zell opted instead to support Amiri in confronting Armag. While he wasn't seeking his own death in battle - distraction and a few unlucky breaks put him on the receiving end of a mortal gut wound.

Before any of his allies could return with help, Areelu Vorlesh whisked him from the battlefield to save his life and initiate her final experiment: Alchemizing his soul with Nahyndrian crystal. Now, with his soul so full of rage and heartbreak, seemed to her to be the best moment to strike. She threw in the top surgery for free, as a treat.

Delirious, heartbroken, and in a body slightly altered from normal was how Zell came to in Kenabras square, unsure how he even got there or even why he was still alive.

[cosmics-beings]

I’m still on the “megatron isn’t really a slave and the miners were actually happy being miners and therefore couldn’t be slave’ as if stocklholm syndrome and forced conditioning isn’t realistically a part of slavery and megatron at the end of the day was one of the few to break out of it.

But that’s not the point of this post.

I think that the reason a lot of people have trouble admitting that megatron was a slave and that he was an oppressed person is because it forces them to actually hold autobot society accountable for the flaws in the system. A system that forces slaves to revolt and has slavery in the first place is a flawed system.

A system that creates people for a certain purposes and forces them into that purpose while others get to choose what they want to be and forge their own bodies, a system that allows castes to choose and dictate how one lives their lives, a system that even has forced labor (slavery) is a flawed system. And yes, that makes Megatron and the Decepticons oppressed which is why they revolted, and I think people have trouble accepting that.

Transfomrers IDW 1 isn’t ever supposed to be viewed through a black and white lens. It is more than obvious that the Decepticons became something terrible at the end; a genocidal, oppressive regime. That is something that we can’t ignore.

But at the same time none of that would’ve happen if there wasn’t an unjust society that mistreated, abused and oppressed half of the bots there. And I don’t think that’s what people want to admit.

No the autobots are far from perfect, that is the whole critique. most of them lived in privilege and never even had to think about what was happening around them until the war hit. A lot of them used their privilege as autobot and high ranking authority to their advantage (i.e prowl, whirl, sentintal prime). 

The fact that Optimus was one of the few to outwardly call them out and he was somewhat scrutinized for it until he war isn't supposed to be a good thing. it's supposed to show their corruption.

The system was designed to be oppressive and to hold people down. Which is why there was a war.

I honestly don’t think this was something that needed to be explained but hearing people say that megatron wasn’t a slave and basically act like him and all the other miners were happy and were forced laborers just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Especially as someone who has traceable slave ancestry in my lineage and a lot of things people say to prove the megatron isn’t a slave I’ve seen people use irl before which is you know, gross. 

AND this isnt' saying that the autobots are terrible, irredeamable people. but acting as if they weren't in the wrong or that the society they created wasn't inherently oppressive, which is why a revolution was needed, is just missing the point.

you've got to sometimes accept that your faves are flawed. and that is what makes them interesting! having the autobots presented to us as the good guys for years and then reading idw1 and seeing how morally corrupt they are is INTERESTING. that doesn't make them unlikable it makes them interesting.

[leeknowsintrusivethots]

Marked By Him

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |

Pairings: Vampire!Lee Know/OC

Summary: Vampyres dominate the entertainment world with their otherworldly beauty and talent. It's a world you must be born into, but a few lucky ones are Marked. Stripped from her home and everything she knows, Minji's Marking means that she has to rely on the Devil himself, Lee Minho, to be her mentor. He's cute and sweet to the public, but behind closed doors the monster comes out to play.

Content: Angst, Slow burn, lotsa plot, eventual smut, vampires, dark themes, original characters, first person perspective, general 18+ content, alternate idol universe, asshole Lee Know, surprise love triangle, discussion of blood, discussions of death, discussion of illness, discussion and debate of fictional religions,

WC: 3848

Minors do not interact. Do not repost my content to other websites, this includes translations.

Notes: Random fun fact: fruit flies live an average of two months and I am prone to exaggeration.

Uncertainty. 

Dread. 

Abject horror. 

All of these could describe my feelings as my third meeting with Minho loomed near. I went through the motions: dance practice every night along with vocal lessons and days spent at the dorms with Maeri and Yoojin. The adjustment was hard, sometimes brutal, but I was coping the best I could.

Learning and absorbing information had always come easy to me, but dancing and singing were more physical than technical. Reading up on music theory and proper technique could only take you so far, and I was miles behind the other trainees in terms of skill and ability. Thankfully, Maeri was always happy to coach me through difficult dance moves and concepts while Yoojin politely helped me not sound like a dying animal in our vocal sessions. The vocal instructor still visibly cringed whenever I sang and I still tripped over my own feet during dance practice but it had only been two days. I was hoping progress would happen in time. 

During the wee hours of the morning when the dorm was silent, I studied 'Marked.' I quietly read by the light of a dim book lamp so as not to disturb my sleeping roommates, and I soaked in the knowledge like a sponge and took notes in my notebook like I was back in highschool all over again. I had already decided I couldn't rely on Minho to be my guide into Vampyrism, so the book was all I had and I intended to use it. 

Chapter Two was a detailed account of the earliest known history of Vampyres, and I found myself absorbed. It covered a lot of events that were not readily available public knowledge, including the First Coven: a group of ancient Egyptian Vampyres that banded together to create the first official Vampyric governing body. The First Coven would grow and shift over the years into the High Vampyre Association that was prominent in the modern day. Most of the Association could trace their ancestry back to the founders of the First Coven and a lot of the core ideology was still present even if adapted for the current times. 

There were ups and downs over the centuries as the First Coven grew in influence and power, spreading well across the world and overtaking smaller covens as they went. It was filled with battles of politics and principles. At times, it was bloody as beliefs grew and changed and opposition rose to contest the power structure. The First Coven always reigned victorious even as the humans around them were ignorant to the Vampyres they shared the world with and the battles raging right under their noses. 

I devoured the stories, the concepts of liberation from the darkness and cooperation with humans very much present in all of them. It was fascinating and far more than was shared with the general population. I was so intrigued that by the night of my next meeting with Minho, I had read well past my assigned chapter. 

Time management had never been my strong suit and I realized with a start as I glanced up from the pages of the book that it was just a couple of hours till sunset. I hadn't slept but my new world was set to wake up the second the sky turned orange and the sun sank into the horizon. Being a creature of the night was a hard adjustment when you had spent a lifetime in the sun and my sleeping patterns had been torn up and tossed into the trash along with my humanity. My week as a trainee had seen me living off caffeine and cat naps in-between practices and it seemed as if the upcoming night would be no different. 

I glanced away from the clock and back to the book in my hand wistfully. The upcoming chapter would cover the medieval period from the perspective of Vampyres and I was excited to get into it. The time period was a favorite of mine, and I knew it would be even more entertaining through the lens of a Vampyre. From what I recalled of my limited Vampyre history, it was also the time where Marks were first made known to the Coven. They (we?) we're unknown until the Tudor Era of Europe. 

Despite my interest, I forced myself to close the book and set it on my nightstand. I settled back into the sheets of my bed and closed my eyes. I would only get a few hours of rest, but it would be much needed when it came the physical torture that was dance practice and the emotional thriller that was Lee Minho. 

It felt like the second my eyes closed, I was being shaken by a hurried hand. My eyes cracked open groggily to find Maeri's smiling face. Her hair was already styled straight and hanging loose around her chin. She was dressed and ready for practice. 

"Get up, Nerd. We leave in twenty," she informed me perkily. 

My body protested as I got out of the haven that was my bed. I got dressed hurriedly, throwing on a pair of sweats and an oversized band shirt over my sports bra. Too tired to bother with hair, I pulled the messy mop into a tie on top of my head. It took all of a few minutes and when I was done I headed to join Yoojin and Maeri in the common room. 

Our dorm contained multiple rooms, and we shared our common area with other trainees. They milled about, also getting ready for the day while awaiting their own transportation to reach their schedules. I hadn't interacted with them much but it wasn't really of my own choosing. I was a bug waiting to be squished or a novelty with no in-between and even living with them had not changed that mindset if the brief glares thrown in my direction were any indication. I ignored the looks as I had been doing so since my arrival and focused on my roommates. 

"Are you… ready?" Maeri asked as she looked at me with a curious confusion evident in her features. 

"Yes?" I answered back with a question. My body was up and moving, but my brain hadn't fully accepted that it needed to wake up as well. I glanced down at my choice of clothing, thinking maybe I had managed to put my pants on inside out in my sleepy haste. 

"You have your meeting with Minho today, right?" Maeri prodded. At the mention of my mentor, my brain woke up enough for the dread to seep back in. Our last meetings had erred on the short side, and I hoped that the upcoming one would as well if only for the sake of my sanity. 

"Yes," I answered after a moment's hesitation. "I have my books in my bag. I-"

"At least wear a cuter top, and brush your hair," Maeri interrupted in exasperation. 

"Put more delicately, she's implying you might want to put in an effort to look presentable for your meeting," Yoojin took over before things got out of hand. She had a tendency to do that. Even her voice alone seemed to calm those around her. 

"Why on Earth would I want to do that? It's not a date," I argued back, giving Maeri a withering side eye in the process. 

"No…" Maeri said in a singsong voice. She was smiling at me now, the cuteness washing away my irritation just as quickly as she caused it. "But I've seen some of the things you brought from home. Including photocards, stickers stuck to your laptop, and blah blah blah. Fairly certain I even saw a poster you haven't unpacked yet. You're a fangirl and no proper fangirl would waste such an opportunity. I wouldn't if I had the prospect of regular meetings with BamBam."

"A friend gave all that to me," I tried to deny. I really didn't want to get into the argument of how he was so much different in person than the image of him I thought I had known, and I definitely didn't want to get into how I still found him to be disgustingly beautiful despite his dual personality. 

"Sure," Maeri tsked. 

"It's true! I'm much more of a Bangchan kind of girl," I argued halfheartedly. 

"Regardless, Minho is an idol - a fairly prominent one. It would do you well to leave a good impression," Yoojin said with an air to her voice that strangely reminded me of my mother when she was giving me life advice. At the comparison, my arguments melted and my shoulders sunk. I turned without another word and went back to our shared room to change and primp. 

I quickly brushed my hair and pulled it back up into a ponytail. I let my bangs hang loose with the shorter fringe that framed my face. It was still messy, but with intent and style this time around. The band shirt I switched out for a nicer more form fitting one. In a small effort to feign nonchalance, I picked an old GOT7 shirt with Jackson Wang's face displayed front and center. I contemplated changing out my tried and true baggy sweatpants for shorts but thought better of it. Clothes could be armor, and I needed all the armor I could get when handling Lee Minho. 

To make my lovely roommates happy, I also swiped on a bit of concealer in key spots and put on a layer of mascara. To complete my low effort look, I topped it off with a small amount of clear bubblegum scented lip gloss. I wouldn't be walking a runway anytime soon, but at least I looked more humanoid than before. 

I headed back out to Maeri and Yoojin to present my efforts and get on with the day. At my reappearance, I could have sworn Maeri's eye twitched but she held her tongue. Yoojin gave a soft smile with a small shake of her head. 

"Remind me to take you shopping for some proper workout clothes," she said, not unkindly. Coming from other people, I might have taken her offer as an insult but I had quickly learned Yoojin was simply the type to care for people. She had an almost motherly aura which was mildly strange for a young Vampyre but it was still comforting. 

"As long as that offer comes with food, I am game," I agreed cheekily. 

"If food is involved, I am inviting myself along. Besides, Minji needs all the help she can get," Maeri chimed in. 

"You're ganna need help in a-" my threat was cut off by the timely intervention of Yoojin. 

"The car is here. Make sure to bring your bags," she instructed the both of us. Like good kids, we put the bickering aside and followed our unofficial leader after gathering all of our things.

The drive from the dorms was a short one. Yoojin stuck to her phone during the trip while Maeri and I continued our bickering. She only intervened when she thought it necessary so we were left to our argument about whether to get cream cheese or crab rangoons with our lunch. 

As we pulled up to the building that housed JYP Entertainment, Yoojin finally interrupted, "Why can't you guys just order both?"

"It's the principle-" Maeri and I started at exactly the same time. At our in sync answer, we all broke out into a chorus of hearty laughs. 

"You two are far too much alike," Yoojin said in-between bouts of musical laughter. Both Maeri and I reared up to rebuke the notion before the scene in front of our company's building caught our attention. 

It was 8:00pm on a hot summer night in Korea and the sun had set a couple of hours ago. Of course, in Seoul, the city never slept. Copious amounts of streetlights illuminated the street and walkways and an indistinct black van was pulled up to the curb directly in front of the car that had dropped us off. It would have been entirely unremarkable if it were not for the man that was climbing out of the backdoor to the awaiting security escort. 

Christopher Bang, also known as Bang Chan, could unintentionally make getting out of a car look like an ad for a high end fashion brand. He was dressed casually, jeans and a t-shirt, but he looked so good and confident that you would think he was wearing the latest runway looks. He smiled politely, dimples and all, to the security escort before turning his attention back to the van. Following him came the rest of the members of Stray Kids in all of their glory and I felt my heart rate increasing to hospitalization levels.

My stance on a higher power was variable on any given day, but looking at each of the members in turn had me praising whatever act of nature had led to the creation of these men. They were all so beautiful that I wouldn't even question it if someone told me it was an act of divine intervention. I found myself thinking of the teachings of the Church of Light. They didn't hide their anti-Vampyre sentiment and they claimed Vampyres were a blight upon man - a creation of an evil being sent to punish humanity for its sins. In their twisted world view, Vampyres were pure malignance with beautiful faces that would lure you to the darkest pits of hell. They would seduce and charm until the Light of your soul was extinguished and you were left a Husk of your former self. 

It was all bullshit, of course.

The scientific community from all across the world had been pushing back against the ideology that Vampirism had anything to do with the mythological creatures of lore. It was simply the mutation, and that was that. I knew that just as well as most open minded younger people did, but looking at the faces of one of the most prominent active male Kpop groups made me curious. If it simply was an act of nature and science, our reality was incredibly unfair and a very rare few took home all of the aesthetics and talent. 

I was so lost in thought that I didn't notice it until Maeri gave me a casual but mildly frantic elbow to the gut. It was becoming a trend with the two of us, apparently. I forced myself back to reality and realized with a start that the men in question were staring back. All eight pairs of eyes were trained in our direction, including the infuriatingly cold pair that belonged to Lee Minho. His held mine in a battle, but I wasn't even sure what we were fighting for. 

Yoojin, our most level-headed elder, smiled a coolly polite smile at the guys and herded me and Maeri to the doors. I could tell Maeri was chomping at the bit to crack a joke about me being ‘starstruck.’ It irritated me but what got to me even more was that she was right. It was a cliche right out of a badly written novel, but I was an ordinary girl who had something extraordinary happen to her. My only claim to fame or fortune was winning a few won from coming in second at a vocabulary competition in primary school. I was certainly not accustomed to rubbing shoulders or even being in the same location as the rich and the famous. 

In the life span of a fruitfly, I had gone from undecided incoming university sophomore to Marked Trainee. I could train for a lifetime and never be able to measure up to the world I was thrown into. I could debut and make millions, but it would still never change my background. I would realistically never reach the level of Lee Minho and his ilk. I knew that, but it didn't stop a fire that had begun to burn in my gut the moment I had first shared a space with him. 

I had started off life just like any other Jane Doe in the world, but the opportunity for a new destination was being handed to me on a silver platter. If I let it pass by and cowered behind an inferiority complex, I would wake up at sixty in my average house with my average husband to have lunch at an average restaurant with my average kids. I would collect my average pension from whatever run of the mill job I landed at with nothing but regret and resentment eating me alive. I knew myself well enough to know that I could never live with the knowledge that I had wasted an opportunity of a lifetime, but there was something more. 

I was a petty bitch, and I would never let Lee Minho and his demeaning stares and smirks win. 

I was already planning to thank him for pushing me to succeed when I accepted my first industry award. 

_______________________________________

“Minji!” My name being yelled across the practice room had the momentum of the dance moves I had been practicing come to an abrupt halt and my feet entwining under me and my face approaching the ground at lightning speed. I could see the scuff marks from tennis shoes getting closer and closer and yet I couldn’t find it in myself to care. I was lightheaded and had even reached a point of exhaustion where the muscle pain was simply no longer present. I had become a husk simply following the laws of physics. 

“Minji.” This was a different voice. It was almost serene, soothing. I tried with all the wits left in me to locate the sound, but I couldn’t. Everything was dark. 

“Minji! Wake up right this second, or I will call 119 and ensure this lives in your head forever as one of the most traumatic and embarrassing moments of your life.” This voice was more insistent, and prodding. I could hear a whine in it. The words were humorous, but veering into pure panic. 

“Should we call?” Another voice.

“Who do we call? She’s Marked. Human services or the Vampyric ones?” It was yet another one. 

“Please, back up and give her some space.” The calming voice commanded the others. “Ms. Jung, our roommate passed out due to exhaustion and overexertion. She should really have more fitness training before joining us in the more intensive dance lessons.”

Ms. Jung? A surge of annoyance took root in my fuzzy brain. I didn’t like that name for some reason. It took a second for the wheels to turn back into place and start properly spinning in my mind. Ms. Jung was the dance instructor. I had been dancing and then suddenly I wasn’t. I had been at practice with my roommates and the rest of the trainees on our schedule. That thought had my eyes flying open immediately to take stock of the damage. The other trainees were not my fans - that was a certainty. If my resolve to use this opportunity was to be effective, I could show them no weakness. 

Despite the renewed determination in my brain, my body was slow to agree. My vision was blurry, making everyone surrounding me appear to have hazy edges of color enveloping them. Their faces blurred together, but the number of them had panic setting in. I was already a zoo exhibit thanks to the Mark on my forehead, but I had become the newest addition to the local freak show. I was sprawled out pathetically on the hard floor of the practice room for all to witness.

“She’s awake?” One of the unfamiliar voices stated dumbly. It wasn’t an exclamation of relief or excitement. It was like asking a passerby if it was going to rain on any given day - mundane and only mildly interested. 

“Thank goodness!” The insistent voice breathed out. The haziness of my vision was fading enough for me to make out the relieved looking face of Maeri. She had leaned in closer to examine me so her face was right in front of mine. 

“Maeri,” I croaked with a scratch in my throat.

“Yes?” She questioned quickly. “Do you need water? Some Tylenol? I can get it for you.”

“You’re too close, you brat,” I replied halfheartedly. 

“I think she’s fine,” she informed the others with a quick chuckle as she backed away to give me room to breathe. I realized too late that it would have been better for my emotional health had she stayed where she was. Everyone in the room - fifteen young and primarily Vampyric trainees - were staring at me. I felt my face heat up and my insides burn with embarrassment. 119 was certainly not needed for this experience to rank high on my list of most humiliating moments in my life.

“I think you should take a break from dance practices for a while,” Ms. Jung butted into my mortification. “We have a company gym in the building. Use the time in your schedule to improve your endurance.”

I saw and felt the withering look that Yoojin shot at her. I had been delirious, but I remembered bits of the conversation that surrounded me before. She was taking credit for Yoojin’s suggestion. I knew Yoojin likely had my health and wellbeing in mind, but Ms. Jung appeared to simply be saving face in front of her audience of trainees.

“Ms. Jung is right,” Yoojin said with a charming smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “We certainly don’t want you dying of exhaustion on her watch.”

“Of course not. Your well being is of utmost importance,” Ms. Jung agreed eagerly. 

Yoojin never lost her smile and our instructor beamed back at her like the entire exchange wasn’t one of the strangest things I had ever witnessed in my life. It was eerily reminiscent of my quiet battle of wills with Lee Minho, only this was basically a student battling with their teacher and the subject of the battle was not pride but the safety of the students - of me in particular. 

A chill went up my spine and the fine hairs on my arms stood up like danger was imminent. His voice was in my head. His questions teased me, making fear spread its toxic wings from my heart to my mind. 

"Do you know of any active groups with a Mark as a member? Have you seen news of any Marks debuting? Switching companies? Getting kicked from their programs?"

Surely, I was being irrational. There was no way that I was in any danger. There was no way that the entire industry had some secret vendetta against Marks. It was ludicrous and I must have still been a bit loopy from fainting. The outline on my forehead was simply a product of genetics and not the design of some odd conspiracy. 

“It’s a target, and you will be surrounded by predators.”

Even when he wasn’t near, Lee Minho was filling my head with doubts.

[thesacredself]

Gemini Season: Water Signs

Themes and advice for Gemini Season. Please check your sun, moon, rising, and venus and take what resonates ✨

Cancer: warmth; creativity; playful; enjoying your uniqueness; boundless energy for joy and love; beauty and art; generosity; having fun; engaging in self-expression; confidence; learning to stand in your own power; heartfelt connection to life; authenticity; being true to your creative and inspired dreams; harmony; recognising patterns that are not aligned with you; standing in integrity; making space for passion; addressing wounds or fears around putting yourself first/chasing your passions/being in a position of leadership; being eccentric; nobility in truth; child-like expression and joy; heart-centred; generosity; a love of life; love of all kinds; prioritising pleasure; chasing your dreams; putting yourself out there; working with feeling uncomfortable when chasing pleasure and different forms of love; self-care.  

Scorpio: recognising what is unhealthy for you; evolution; connecting with your soul more than your identity; inner child work; courage; removing what is not aligned; letting go, taking care of your emotional self; confronting unhappiness; finding freedom; being gentle with yourself; exploring who you are; having fun with exploring a new sense of self; trusting in your own unique offering; taking accountability for your life path and for who you are/what you need; authenticity; empowered choices; expanding your perspective/personal philosophy; reflecting on how you approach situations; choosing to live your life the way you want to; knowing what you want/stand for; an emotional adventure; exploring new ways of being/living; committing to your own growth and wellbeing; striving less; breaking away from materialism to focus on joy and compassion; self-care; knowing you will be provided for; learning to live rather than survive; forming a new identity; allowing yourself to shine; embodying your truth; embracing yourself in your entirety; changing your mindset in regards to finance and work; self-forgiveness and self-love; allowing your definition of yourself to expand and grow.

Pisces: learning more about how your childhood/family environment affected you; learning how to nurture yourself or others; breaking generational cycles; travelling back to your childhood/family home or moving out of the family home; being clear about goals; expanding your mind through books, different cultures, spiritual practices, etc.; profound awakenings; transformation; changing perspectives; knowing you have the freedom of choice; looking for a new home; recognising where you or others restrict you; a journey to find meaning; moving away from unreciprocal/unhealthy relationships and environments; exploring ancestry; profound change; exploring different facets of yourself; testing different ways to live and think; authentic self-expression; untangling the subconscious; working on inner child wounds; igniting joy and passion; self-empowerment; nobility in truth; child-like curiosity and wonder; healing karmic wounds; creating warmth and freedom in your life; experimenting with your appearance; removing egotism; prioritising your needs and values; taking accountability for yourself; doing your research into further perspectives/ways of living/being; facing your fears;  tending to your emotional needs; open-heartedness; transitionary period; learning to let go; deepening your spiritual practice and understanding, particularly though self-exploration and expression.

If you liked my readings, feel free to leave a tip on my kofi 🥰 link is in my bio!

[jq37]

I've been following your D20 recaps for a while (they are so much fun!), but Junior Year episode 9 compelled me to create an account for this ask.

Are Jace and Porter both baddies?

Spot got eaten by an owl right before finding Yolanda's body. Yolanda was presumably killed after reporting Kristen's concerns to Jace, and it was established in freshman year that he summons owls. And now the intrepid heroes are digging through the possible path of succession. Maybe he's just bored of doing nothing as the sorcery teacher?

Porter might be a normal shitty teacher, but I'm getting all kinds of bad vibes from his "rage as devotion to doubt" lesson. Maybe doubly so since Brennan brought up the divine taboo of siphoning off worship from one god to empower another? And of course, no word on who his paladin deity is! There may be another connection with Porter being an earth genasi, since Lucy was also a genasi but with giant ancestry.

Plus these were the two teachers talking to Arianwen post-prom, and Porter (knowingly?) infected Ragh with the Kalina plague.

This has gotten away from me. I think I need more yarn for my cork board.

Unrelated, but last thought: Since there's been all the questions about Aguefort by-laws and the literal vs. intended interpretation of the rules, I think it would be funny if Kipperlilly "found" the rogue teacher just by requesting a teacher conference.

First of all, making a Tumblr account just to send this ask? I'm flattered! Thanks for following my recaps!

Now, to your actual question let's talk teachers.

I forgot to put this in my recap but despite the fact that I don't actually have any read on what a motive might be, I did wonder if Jace might worth putting on the suspect list. I mean, he is the last person Yolanda said she was going to talk to before they found her body. And Brennan technically didn't say she wasn't killed by magic, he said there was no magical residue. Sorcerers do metamagic which can change spells and I wonder if Brennan would let something like subtle spell be flavored to not leave magical residue. Absolutely circumstantial and speculative, especially since, as I said before, there's no motive. But it's worth noting and he's def worth looking into/talking to as Yolanda's last mission before she ended up a corpse (RIP). And he did presumably become Principal with Grix gone so movement is happening around him.

(I don't remember the owl thing but that would be a deep pull from Brennan, haha. I got the sense that that was more about just Fig's bad luck but who knows?)

Porter I just talked about in another ask but the genasi thing is an interesting connection. Good spot. My read is that Brennan is playing Porter sincerely but, again, I can def see Brennan leaning into Emily/Fig's last two years of suspicion and making him an integral part of the plot just to pay that off--this is a season of payoffs after all. Either way, just like Jace, he likely has at least some useful info.

Re: Kipperlilly, That would be such a weasel-y way for her to have done that…which makes it entire in character. This is def a loose end I'm very interesting in the Intrepid Heroes following up on so I'm glad Murph/Riz is remembering to roll for it.

Anyway, all good notes! All of it is officially on the board! Can't wait to see what new info we get tomorrow and, now that you have a tumblr count, feel free to stop by my inbox any time :)

[honourablejester]

Thought for a “Heart: The City Beneath” Character

I’m marinating in the setting for this ttrpg a bit, and there is this lovely passage on art in the City Beneath:

“The City Beneath is bursting at the seams with art. Wherever there are people, they express themselves in wild patterns. Something about the place fills the inhabitants with creative energy.

It’s as though the loose reality, disjointed cause and effect and the intrusive universe on their doorstep pushes them to understand the world through metaphor and allegory or abstract shapes and sounds, rather than relying on brittle and unbending science. Almost everyone creates art of some kind, and those who don’t are considered a bit weird.

Murals line the walls of many settlements. Statues wrought from junk and detritus have pride of place in town squares, often hanging from ropes to keep them from touching the ground; songs are sung, and each new singer adds something to the lyrics or tune; books are hoarded, read and re-read, edited and cut up into new patterns; and cartography, the most prestigious and challenging art of all, sees practitioners descend into drug-induced fugues as they attempt to map the strange environment of the Heart through whatever means they have to hand.

Reason has failed the inhabitants of the Heart; instead, they have turned to rhyme.”

(Heart: The City Beneath, Pg. 122)

And I love that. A lot. Reason has failed, so let’s turn to rhyme. Art! Art everywhere. Art made of junk and detritus and madness and passion.

And with that in mind. Art. A character who makes art. There’s a trinket you can get with the human ancestry: ‘Custom scrimshaw kit, well used’. I love scrimshaw so much. I’m not fully sure why. Bone and horn and ivory and death, but also art and memory and storytelling and life. I love it. And in Heart … Yes. All of that.

So. An artist of bone. And if we’re making art from death, I think it has to be a Cleaver. Or a Deadwalker, Deadwalker would definitely also work, but my kneejerk first instinct is Cleaver. Because blood and bones and carving. That feels Cleaver to me. We’re not mucking around with metaphysics and heavens. We’re carving bones. A hunter, an explorer, an adventurer. Searching for the perfect raw materials. Bones to make a masterpiece from.

Which, yes. We’re talking the Adventure calling. We want to slay beasts. To make marks. To have our name be known. We need to explore the deepest reaches of the Heart, and find a true beast whose bones are worthy of our life’s work. A masterpiece. A suspended skeleton, carved with our exploits, hung for all to see. “Go somewhere where no-one else has stepped foot for at least a century.” “Slay a beast that’s at least five times your size.” “Catalogue your exploits for an extended period; either do it yourself or hire a bard.” Those. That’s who this character is. They’re a strange, black-eyed hunter-artist with a well-used scrimshaw kit, and they’re searching for the perfect set of bones.

(And there are some landmarks that I would dearly love to venture with them, but that’s cheating on account of not being both GM and player, but *cough cough* Hang Station *cough cough*, *cough cough* Briar *cough cough*, *cough cough* Ghastling Plain *cough cough*)

For our starting cleaver abilities, I think I’d go Wild Hunt for major, because it lets our whole party in on the hunt. For minor, Darkling Eyes for delve, Unmaking Claws for kill, and then I think I really want Twisting Territory. It gives you the Warren domain, yes, but the main thing is this:

“Once per situation, you can ask the GM who’s in charge of the immediate area around you. By smell, sight or some other esoteric sense, you gain an intuitive understanding of the apex predator or alpha creature (whether that’s a person or a beast) in the local area. When you use this power, the target gets the uncanny feeling that they’re under threat.” (Pg. 28)

Once per situation, you get to ask what the biggest, meanest thing in the area is, and then give that thing a sudden unsettling feeling of ‘I see you!’. Yes. Absolutely. Our artist-hunter is all about that. Does it increase the risk that our prey knows something’s coming? Absolutely! Does that increase the glory, and the worth of the bones for our art? Without question.

Granted, there’s the question of who will carve the bones if we die trying to get them, but if all else fails, so long as someone in our vicinity survives to bring the bones back and tell the tale of their retrieval, that will be art of some kind at least. Heh.

Yeah. I think I like this. A adventurous human cleaver. A hunter-artist of the bone.

[hero-israel]

I’m Afro-Indigenous as well as a mix of other things including NA Jewish and Palestinian. So I have a somewhat personal anecdote that could explain a little more into why Palestinian-Americans (imo MOST, not just some) are so unwilling to recognize indigenous American sovereignty and the (still ongoing) colonialism of our land.

The not-so-short answer is: they just don’t want to take accountability for their own actions and engagement in settler-colonialism, and they realize how hypocritical they sound when they screech at Jews being settled-colonizers while simultaneously doing the same thing. Sometimes they’ll try to defend this by saying they get a pass because the only reason they are on this land is because the evil Jews kicked them out. But that quickly falls apart when you remember that 1) majority of them are BORN Americans and not refugees (despite them claiming so), and 2) even if their parents or grandparents were actual refugees, being a refugee or fleeing persecution doesn’t stop you from being a settler-colonizer (this coming from their own logic that they use against Jews escaping persecution in Arab countries and after the Holocaust btw). So they are able to ignore their hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance by saying ‘we’ll colonization is done, so that means we aren’t hypocrites for willingly engaging in the same type of oppression we claim to be against!” and then they turn around a buy a house on indigenous native land while doing nothing to show solidarity to Native Americans other than to appropriate our Land Back movement while doing nothing to help us… get our land back. Im thanking I’ve met some Palestinians who are actually active in supporting Native sovereignty and have done tons of work to support Land Back, but the majority of Palestinians do not, whether they are leftist, liberals, islamists or communists.

And yes, many Jews are also not supporting Natives either. And that’s a problem. But Jews also don’t make a habit of saying people should be killed for being settler-colonists while simultaneously being one themselves. And their is much more similarities between Native American history, oppression and goals of sovereignty than Palestinian ones (despite what many claim). NTM the rhetoric Oalestinians use literally being the same rhetoric used to harm Natives. One off the top of my head is “the Jews / Natives were all died off/were expelled so long ago so it’s okay for us to keep their lands” which is super common and is literally the same rhetoric behind why the US considers multiple tribes extinct despite living people being apart of them, and why most Palestinians still refuse to even accept the fact that Jews still continued living in Israel and Judah even after they were expelled and colonized, just as a minority.

This is also where you get another one, the “they were colonized/expelled too long ago for it to matter today and others moved into the land so it’ll be unfair if we give it back to them (despite unjustly settling on and taking it in the first place)” which is one of the biggest reasonings anti-Indigenous people use to defend their opinion that Natives shouldn’t have sovereignty.

Anyway, the whole point is that they are essentially hypocrites and anti-Indigenous. They may use indigeneity politics to defend themselves, but that’s all they care about. I gave up trying to have any kind of support from the Palestinian movement here in the US when I went to a activist organization/meeting and had many of them say I was a zionist (before I even was one) for simply saying it’s not right of them to ignore Indigenous Americans while appropriating a movement (Land Back) created by us.

It actually hurts me a lot that they’re like this. I grew up closest to my moms side, which is the Afro-Indigenous and Palestinian side. It was even until last year when I began reconnecting to my Jewish family and ancestry (my dad was North African Jewish and Bengali-British) since it came from my dad and he died when I was young, so I had no one to teach me about it. So I grew up around Palestinians, so it’s really weird to be disconnected from that side and community now. But I can’t stand the anti-indigeneity and hypocrisy. I do the same with Jews and non-Natives and non-Blacks too, so I’m not a hypocrite, but thankfully it hasn’t happened that much in the Jewish community for me to fully disconnect myself. I literally went to a high school created by Jewish people (literally majority of the faculty were Jewish and the people behind the creation of it were all Jewish iirc) to teach social justice, and for the full four years they included Native American focused curriculum and took us to protests, powwows, indigenous activist groups and so on. So yea they’re much better at this whole solidarity thing 🤷🏾‍♀️

Thank you for that very detailed and personal insight. I am sorry that you saw firsthand what poor "allies" so many Palestiners tend to be, as they relentlessly redirect all attention from other causes (i.e. immigration, police brutality, climate change, Anne Frank...) to themselves.

[bi-harrymort]

Hi!

A few words about me and this blog.

[but before we go any further... even though this is a blog dedicated to Voldemort and Harrymort, I don't support Rowling or her views; hate and bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated here.]

I've been a fan of the Harry Potter series since I was a kid, but I've never interacted with the fandom actively - I never created any fanart, posts, fanfics etc., I only consumed and shared them. So, this is my first attempt at sharing my own theories and any other weird little thoughts I may have on the subject.

Even though I am open to different interpretations and opinions, I know that many may not share this view and may not want to follow me because of it (righfully so), so I'm going to write some of my hot (or maybe not so hot) takes that are my primary headcanons and/or interpratations of the text.

I'm not a fan of the movies. I think the changes made in them distort the characters, the plot and the overall story.

I don't believe Voldemort is insane and/or badly written. I may write a charcter analysis based on the books one day when I'll have the time and energy... and if anyone will be interested in reading it, of course.

At the same time I don't think that HP and its characters (including Voldemort) are great and with no faults. I love the concept of the series and the world created, but I will also be the first to critique it and point out its faults.

Lord Voldemort is Lord Voldemort. Confusing, I know. What I mean by that is that I don't like differentiating between Voldemort (the insane bad one) and Tom Riddle (the brilliant good one). Recently, I started to become disconnected from the trend in the fandom of treating Tom Riddle and Voldemort as separate entities. At the same time, I'm not gonna go around telling people to stop characterizing them, or thinking about them, in whatever way they like! It's just something that I became sensitive to and don't subscribe to anymore. 

Harrymort is the only pairing I am single-minded about. Any other ship (that doesn't involve Harry or Voldemort) I'm very neutral about.

I am a fan of female Harry, but only because of one particular fic - the Historical Importance of Runic War Warding in the British Isles by samvelg. It's my all-time favourite fanfic, and I have as much, if not more, headcanons and thoughts about this particular HP AU rather than the original HP. (At the same time, I am aware why genderbending is disliked by fandoms, and I do agree that many genderbent stories are not great. Many of them erase the lgbt+ represantation, which is what I am not at all about.)

I don't have a set gender identity headcanon for Harrymort (trans, cis, female, male, nonbinary... they are all very much appreciated).

However, my preferred sexuality headcanon for both Harry and Voldemort is either bisexual, pansexual or asexual.

I am firmly a bi-racial/having Indian ancestry Harry headcanon fan.

Recently I started falling in love with Arabic and Korean, and a headcanon of bi-racial/having some sort of other ancestry Voldemort has began to cristalize in my mind (kind of an another mirror with bi-racial Indian Harry headcanon). I've had this thought after reading this one post about how Harry is changed in fics but Voldemort stays always the same when it comes to ethnicity/race.

I have plenty of different AU ideas about this pairing (many modelled more as an AU of the Historical Importance AU) and would like to realise them at some point, but I'd like for my first posted work to be an original idea.

The reason I'm creating this account now is because Tomarrymort stories are some of the best I've ever read. No matter how much time passes, I always come back to them. I am a slow-burn hoe (slow burns and long fics are like… 90% of my fanfic consumption), and I appreciate the vast variety of themes and motifs that these stories are capable of getting into.

On a final note, I'd like to make a disclosure.

Any opinions I have are simply that - opinions. I don't think that they are the best or the most accurate or that they should be imposed on other people. Everyone has a right to like whatever they want to like, and to think whatever they want to think, as long as that does not evolve into attacking actual human beings.

It's fiction. It's fun. I appreciate people with different opinions so long as we stay mature and respectful to each other about exchanging them.

[beardedmrbean]

Former Spokane NAACP President Nkechi Diallo — better known as Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identified as Black — has been fired from a teaching gig in Arizona.

Dolezal, 46, was employed as an after-school instructor with the Catalina Foothills School District in Tucson, but lost her job at Sunrise Drive Elementary after local news station KVOA revealed she had posted explicit content to an OnlyFans page.

"We only learned of Ms. Nkechi Diallo's Only Fans social media posts yesterday afternoon. Her posts are contrary to our district's ‘Use of Social Media by District Employees’ policy (attached) and our staff ethics policy. She is no longer employed by the Catalina Foothills School District," Julie Farbarik, the district's director of alumni & community relations, told KVOA on Wednesday.

Dolezal made national headlines in 2015 after her claims of being an African-American were debunked by her own parents, who said she had Czech, German and Swedish ancestry. She resigned as head of her local NAACP chapter in Spokane, Wash., amid the controversy and was dismissed from her position as an instructor for Africana studies at Eastern Washington University.

‘TRANSRACIAL’ RACHEL DOLEZAL WHINES THAT SHE CAN'T GET A JOB

She was also ousted from Spokane's volunteer police ombudsman commission amid allegations that she acted improperly and violated government rules, the Guardian reported.

In 2019, Dolezal reached a settlement with the state of Washington, which had accused her of welfare fraud. She was required to pay restitution and complete 120 hours of community service.

Dolezal was still claiming to be Black as recently as 2021 when she told the "Tamron Hall" show in an interview that she had been unable to secure a job. She said she's "always identified racially as human" but she's found "more of a home in Black culture and the Black community." 

"I’m still the same person I was in May of 2015, I’m still doing the work, I’m still pressing forward, but it has been really tough for sure," she said at the time.

She launched her OnlyFans page later that year, offering content including "Monday Motivation = Gym/Fitness/Squats N Other Stuff" followed by "Wednesday WorkDay = Hair-chair Conversations with my clients + HairTutorials" and "Friday Unwind: I bring the Art, you bring the wine/drinks. Watch me create & discuss my art," the New York Post reported.

But in the years since, Dolezal has posted explicit content on her OnlyFans page, which KVOA reported was shared on public websites. 

NKECHI DIALLO, AKA RACHEL DOLEZAL, REACHES SETTLEMENT IN WELFARE FRAUD CASE

Sunrise Drive Elementary Principal Julie Farbarik emailed parents Wednesday confirming that Dolezal is no longer employed by the school, KVOA reported.

"Yesterday afternoon, we received information that a Sunrise Drive employee had an Only Fans account, which had content that was contrary to our district's staff social media use and ethics policies. That person is no longer employed by the Catalina Foothills School District," the email stated.

"We are committed to maintaining a learning environment where our presence on social media is consistent with our professional obligations."

The Catalina Foothills School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[mariacallous]

In January, Taipei-based food writer Liz Kao thought she had scored a coveted invitation to the inauguration banquet for Taiwan’s president-elect, Lai Ching-te, on May 20. She was flattered when one of the organizers asked if she wanted to attend. But when she hopped on a clarifying call with him in March, she realized there was more to it.

“He told me I was going to make the menu. I was shocked,” Kao said.

Suddenly, Kao, a lawyer-turned-food influencer, found herself in charge of designing a state banquet for more than 1,000 guests. She put together a task team composed of veteran food writer Jewel Tsai—“who is very experienced in sourcing ingredients,” Kao said—and two critically acclaimed Taipei chefs: Wes Kuo of Embers, who has an encyclopedic “knowledge of herbs and plants in Taiwan,” and Tsai Jui-lang of Mountain and Sea House, who specializes in traditional 20th-century banquet fare. “He has the technique,” Kao said.

In less than 36 hours, the group had sketched out a preliminary eight-course meal. Their strategy was to concoct dishes and flavor profiles that would represent Taiwan’s five main ethnic subgroups: Indigenous, Hoklo, Hakka, Chinese mainlanders, and Southeast Asians. “We wanted to tell the story of Taiwan’s multiculturalism and democracy,” Jewel Tsai said.

This story is central to Lai’s platform. His Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the first political party in Taiwan’s history to secure three consecutive terms, and Lai has styled himself as an extension of his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, who maintains that Taiwan is already a sovereign, independent country and does not need to declare independence. The party asserts the island’s autonomy in part by embracing its vibrant mix of cultural identities, and this year’s banquet menu is an expansion of that ethos.

At first glance, Taiwan may not look like a very diverse society, since 95 percent of its inhabitants are ethnically Han Chinese. But that’s a huge and broad term for a multitude of peoples. In addition to its Indigenous residents, who make up about 2 percent of the island’s population, Taiwan has a 400-year history of immigration, and each wave has brought new food customs, condiments, and dishes to the island.

Seventy percent of residents have Hoklo ancestry, descending from the initial wave of migrants from China’s Fujian province who started settling on the island’s west coast in the 17th century. Hakka, a migratory group from southern China, also arrived during this period and comprise about 15 percent of the population.

Another 10 to 15 percent is represented by Chinese mainlanders, who fled with the Republic of China’s government to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War in the mid-20th century. Southeast Asians, the most recent immigrant group, began arriving in large numbers in the 1990s and now account for 2 percent of Taiwan’s population.

“Taiwanese cuisine is the combination of all these groups of people. It’s a sum of all the cultures,” Kao said.

As Kao’s team prepared the menu, they narrowed in on ingredients unique to each of these cultures. For the first course, for example, they opted for an array of seasonal vegetables, including Makino bamboo, chayote squash shoots, and lily bulbs, plated over a streak of sauces that represent Taiwan’s ethnic subgroups: te’nas, an Indigenous chili saltwater dip; Dongquan chili sauce, a Hoklo-style hot sauce; a sweet Hakka kumquat jam; fermented tofu paste, brought over by Chinese mainlanders; and satay sauce, a nod to Southeast Asian immigrants.

Eaten together, these starkly different sauces create a bright, savory blend that ties the dish together. “Ingredients are a vehicle to represent democracy,” said Kuo, who curated the sauces for this dish.

State banquets in Taiwan have long been a soft-power tool for the island’s leaders. When the Republic of China government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan in 1949 during the Chinese Civil War, Chiang wanted to project it as the sole legitimate ruler of China. For his inauguration banquet, his staff therefore served haute regional Chinese dishes such as Sichuan smoked duck, Cantonese barbecue pork, and Shanghai-style fried prawns.

Over the next few decades, state dinners followed a similar script. In 1965, Yen Chia-kan, who would later become Chiang’s successor, hosted a dinner for foreign press corps featuring braised shark’s fin, Beijing duck, and northern Chinese knife-shaved noodles. The recent wave of mainland Chinese immigrants made up less than one-sixth of the population, but they had already become Taiwan’s ruling elite. The cuisines of the rest of the populace—Hoklo, Hakka, and Indigenous—did not appear on official menus.

Taiwan transitioned from a dictatorship to a democracy in the 1980s, with the old ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalists, becoming one player in a multiparty system. But state menus didn’t change significantly until 2000, when Taiwan-born Chen Shui-bian became the first elected leader from the DPP. Unlike the KMT, the DPP had less of a cultural affinity with the Chinese mainland. Chen’s banquet included local delicacies that predated the Nationalist government’s arrival in Taiwan and elevated what had previously been considered working-class fare, such as meatball soup made with local milkfish and steamed savory rice pudding.

Since then, Taiwan’s inauguration banquets have become increasingly egalitarian and specific to the island, reflecting a growing number of people identifying as Taiwanese over their ethnic subgroups. That assertion has upset the Chinese government, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory.

The inauguration banquet of the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou in 2008 took a farm-to-table approach that showcased the island’s food production; the menu listed the sources of many of the ingredients, including chicken from Guanmiao, a southern Taiwanese farming district, and squash from the east coast city of Taitung.

Indigenous ingredients weren’t represented for the first time until the inauguration meal of Tsai, the outgoing president. Her menu in 2016 featured pork chops dusted with maqaw, a native Taiwanese spice akin to lemon pepper. It also included Hakka-style rice noodles topped with shiitakes, which, according to the menu, were harvested by a farmer named Tian Chin-feng in northern Taiwan. Tsai has ancestry from both groups.

Lai’s banquet builds on that legacy by being more inclusive than ever. “Past menus have not acknowledged the new immigrants,” said Jewel Tsai, referring to the Southeast Asian population in Taiwan. Eighty percent of all foreign residents are migrant laborers, hailing mostly from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. “They’re an important part of Taiwan. They have small restaurants all over,” she said. “I believe that in the next five to 10 years, their food will be integrated into Taiwanese cuisine at large.”

On a Friday afternoon a few weeks before the inauguration, I met Kao’s team at the Formosa Yacht Resort in the southern city of Tainan, the venue for the banquet. Unbeknownst to patrons enjoying the breakfast buffet, the team was huddled in a private room nearby for a tasting of the presidential dinner. They had finalized the menu, but the hotel chefs were in charge of executing the vision. It was the last rehearsal before the big event, and nerves were high.

Chefs Kuo, Tsai, and their associates sat together, jotting down tasting notes and feedback on plating and tableware choices for the in-house staff. In the next room, a local vlogger was interviewing Kao. Meanwhile, Jewel Tsai patiently explained each dish to me as they arrived.

The hors d’oeuvres platter featured a drunken chicken medallion marinated in Shaoxing wine, which represented mainlanders’ cuisine, alongside a taro, sweet potato, and kumquat spring roll—a personal favorite of Lai, who has Hoklo roots—from a vendor in the president-elect’s hometown of Wanli. It also included a Hakka rice dumpling flavored with mugwort, an Indigenous millet wrap stuffed with pork, and a singular shrimp coated in a bright Southeast Asian-style sweet chili sauce.

Most of the other courses weren’t as literal but still drew from the theme. A filleted seabream from a local aquaculture farm sat on a salted white puree flavored with bright green drops of oil made from cicong, an Indigenous prickly ash, which lent it a peppery, yuzu-like tang. A chicken soup with aged turnip and a parcel of pickled mustard greens paid homage to the fermentation techniques of the Hakka. A 1930s-inspired sweet and sour pork adorned with preserved plums and green mangoes recalled Hoklo fine dining when Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule. There was thinly sliced goose with turnip and tofu braised in two types of sauces: one to represent Chinese mainlanders of Teochew descent (“It has more spices,” Jewel Tsai said) and another in the style of the Hoklo (“More simple,” she said).

While the dishes were steeped in symbolism, none of the flavors were overwhelmingly spicy or bold. The fish had been deboned. Most courses could be enjoyed with a fork and knife. It was an elegant progression of courses fit for a crowd of political leaders, important campaign donors, and foreign dignitaries from around the world.

Then the unexpected happened. As the seventh course arrived, the room suddenly erupted in cheers. “Bubble tea!” Kuo exclaimed. Servers carried in shrimp rice and the iconic Taiwanese beverage, sourced directly from two popular eateries in Tainan. It was essentially takeout on a plate—a jolting deviation from the intricately composed dishes that preceded it. The bubble tea, which came with fat black straws, looked almost cartoonish.

A special request from the president-elect, the course was rumored by the team to be a nod to Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a television interview last summer, Lai said that if he ever had the opportunity to dine with Xi in Taiwan, he’d order shrimp rice and a cup of bubble tea. For dessert, we finished off with a fruit popsicle dipped in a citrus-forward marmalade, surrounded by mango, pineapple, melon, and wax apple—all sourced from Taiwanese farmers.

After the tasting, I asked Lee Hou-ching, the secretary-general of the nongovernmental organization in charge of planning the banquet, about the official reason for the seventh course. He demurred. “Tainan is known as a food city,” he said. “Lai wanted to represent Tainan with a dish appropriate for a banquet.”

Food is subject to interpretation, but that’s partly what makes it such an effective yet subtle tool of soft power. The inauguration banquet is a way for Taiwan’s new leadership to set the tone for how it wants the world to perceive the island. “We want the world to know Taiwan’s identity,” Kao said. “We represent democracy, freedom, and diversity.”

[thewizardprincessau]

So, how do Quiroi weddings work?

*for the sake of brevity, i'll be saying all this with monogamy in mind, but polygamy is very much possible too 👍

First and foremost, it's important to establish that wedding traditions in the continent of Thient are heavily co-influenced by the four major kingdoms-- Quiro, Burmelio, Lanluy, and Kh'elle-- because it's very common for families to have ancestry from several kingdoms due to how closely intertwined the four are, resulting in a sort of mix of cultures (Eri, for example, is of both Quiroi and Burmelian descent). Also taking into account that there are smaller territories in the continent with their own cultures, it can be hard to say whether a certain tradition is purely from a certain place, and it's usually too much of a pain to try and trace things back.

All that said, the wedding rituals people are sure originated from Quiro focus heavily on the tranquil celestial-themeing of the kingdom. Weddings in Quiro are very private, usually only with the betrothed and their close loved ones of choice in attendance. A normal number of attendees would usually range from around 10-15, but there have of course been cases with less or more.

Weddings in Quiro take place at night in an open place outdoors. It is optimal the couple consults some kind of fortune-telling or weather-forecasting device or person to ensure the fairness of the atmosphere that day, as a cloudy or rainy night without the stars visibly in sight is superstitioned to be the sign of an unlucky or unhappy marriage. The couple wears light-colored clothes to resemble the stars, and everyone else in attendance wears dark clothes to be like the night sky behind them.

Despite happening in the darkness of night, NO lights are allowed to be on in close proximity as to not obstruct the view of the stars. The only sources of light during most of the ceremony are the wedding lamp (to be explained later) and the candles held by the betrothed.

These candles are the symbols of the wishes of the betrothed for each other, their marriage, and their future together, all that jazz. From the moment they're engaged until before the wedding ceremony itself, they're given special tools to carve/write their wishes on the candle itself. There are special candles and carving/writing tools for marriage specifically. Also, using the two from earlier as an example, if Eri and Melek were getting married, it's Melek's loved ones who would provide the candle and tools to Eri, and vice versa. It's their sign of trust to the person who is marrying their loved one.

During the ceremony itself, the couple actually start off apart, and then travel to their designated wedding place with their loved ones, a bit like a wedding entourage.. pilgrimage... thing. That bit is said to have ties to Lanluy, but many have noted the tradition's similarity to the idea of an eclipse, where two heavenly bodies (the couple) come from different points and "align" for their union. It's cute! Anyway, it's the entourage and the betrothed's job to make sure the candle the betrothed is holding stays lit for the whole journey, and it must last until the end of the ceremony.

Once both arrive at the venue, the actual "wedding" part starts. You know an open field or spot is going to be used as a wedding venue if there is a "wedding lamp" in place, a lit lamp hanging on a pole that the couple stands under. The couple stands in the middle of a circle created by those in attendance. Once they exchange vows, their candles are melted together into one mega candle with the fire from the wedding lamp, to symbolize how their individual wishes for each other are now one, and all the effort you would put into seeing your own desires fulfilled must also be put into fulfilling your partner's desires. While the candles are being melted together, those in attendance come forward to individually present their gift for the couple accompanied by some nice words and well wishes, then place the token in a smaller circle surrounding the two.

Once the mega candle has officially been created and lit (via the wedding lamp), those in attendance have their own respective candles which also have wishes for the couple (sometimes also including their own) etched into them lit by the couple's candle. Once everyone's candles are lit, they are placed inside of lanterns and flown into the sky, hoping that their wishes can reach the stars and be granted.

This means if you see a bunch of lanterns flying in the sky, it means someone out there is getting married! :D

When the lanterns are out of sight, the couple is officially considered married. Quiroi weddings would usually end after the two are proclaimed wedded, and together they make the journey to a place where they can spend some time alone while everyone else goes their separate ways.

Depending on the couple, things can actually be added to the ceremony if they wish. The tradition of exchanging a material thing like jewelry (rings!) that was crafted by the couple themselves (outside assistance is allowed) is a very popular tradition that originated in Kh'elle, due to the place's abundance in metals for crafting those little trinkets. The idea of a reception was popularized by Burmelio, wherein the quietness of a Quiroi ceremony erupts into song, dance, feasting, and fun (usually at a different proper venue as to not cause too much ruckus in an open place).

As for royal weddings, the same still applies about it being a private celebration. The people of the kingdom, however, also carve their wishes into candles, waiting the night to launch their lanterns as soon as they see the first lantern emerge from the castle (the new royal couple's). (sorry for the scuffed af image but this is what a typical royal wedding day would look like to outsiders :3 dat one scene from tangled is imprinted in my mind permanently)

TLDR: Quiroi weddings are very pretty and symbolic. im tired