#especially considering that mothers are often the first people to punish their male children for not living up to patriarchal standards

[uncle-fruity]

In Bell Hooks's Feminism is for Everybody, one of the very first things she mentions is how women are fully capable of perpetuating sexism and upholding the patriarchy. She goes on to say that women need to be able to recognize, acknowledge, and address the ways that they perpetuate sexist stereotypes. She explains that men are not just welcome but needed in the fight for gender equality, and that feminism needs to have a place for them. That their voices are worth listening to. Especially so because feminism is often written off as a "man-hating" movement as a way to discredit the movement as a whole.

When you write men off as inherently dangerous, predatory, emotionally stunted with no hope to recover, oppressors by nature, violent, stronger & more powerful -- that's bioessentalism. It's gender essentialism. And it's damaging to feminism. It's damaging to the men in your lives. You demand that men see your pain, acknowledge their role in the patriarchy, and make changes without actually supporting them as they attempt to do that. Not to mention you are unwilling to do it yourself. You're unwilling to acknowledge the ways you cause harm, the ways you uphold sexism, the ways your own privileges interact with patriarchal systems. You refuse to listen to any criticisms because it challenges the man vs woman worldview you maintain. It's not men vs women. It's all of us vs the patriarchy, which is a system of control that is inacted by society as a whole.

with how we're all aware of how toxic masculinity leads men/boys to harass, assault, and abuse other men/boys, you'd think the fact they can be harmed by patriarchy and misogyny wouldn't be a controversial statment. *especially* marginalized men. but alas, many people have taken the "identity" in identity politics so literally, they just end up ignoring and reinforcing the harmful things they claim to be against.

also if you think the pain of the men harmed by toxic masculinity isn't a big deal because they're men... that is. that is literally you believing in toxic masculinity. like i thought we all knew part of toxic masculinity is that men shouldn't feel pain, they shouldn't cry, they can't ask for help or be truly hurt, etc. etc. and if they do any of these things, then they're not real men and not only deserve to be emasculated, but deserve to suffer. you just switched it to they are real men so they deserve to suffer.

and even though again, this is extra harmful for marginalized men, i shouldn't have to say that for you to care. if you only give support to people harmed by these systems when you think deserve it, you're always going to end up propping these systems up at some point. maybe you should stop that.

also. to any man reading this who feels like their pain doesn't matter: it does. you deserve to exist in a world where you're safe to be yourself and feel emotions, and get genuine protection and support. we all need to exist in that world. none of us deserve this hell.

[stargazer-sims]

🖊+Kiri

thanks @dandylion240 ! Here you go!

I feel like I should put some kind of disclaimer or content warning on both Kiri's and Maxan's info (but Kiri's especially). Anyway... I'm putting it under a cut for that reason (and because it's long).

Maxan (left) & Kiri (right)

((There's going to be a lot of background stuff included here, for context))

If Kiri had to choose one word to describe himself, it'd be survivor.

Kiri has a spot colour mutation known as polychromia. The majority of his species have single-coloured spots (or spots in shades of the same colour), but a small percentage of the population is born with a mutation that produces multicoloured spots. There are four known mutations; standard polychromia which shades from purple/pink through blue to teal/green (Max and Sri both have this one), dilute polychromia with pale purple/pink shading through to turquoise/teal, cool-tone polychromia with shades of blue and green (Kiri's colouration), and warm polychromia with fuschia/pink shading through to coral/orange and yellow (Kaji's colouration). Standard is the most common type and warm is the most rare.

Males with polychromia are generally smaller than typical males. They're considered to be more beautiful than average, with the smallest and the ones with the most colours or rarest colour mutations being the most highly-prized. Unfortunately, spot mutations aren't just connected to colour. A lot of males and some females with polychromatic mutations also have intellectual disabilities, compromised immune systems or congenital health problems.

Societal expectations for polychromatic males are low. They aren't expected to work or to receive more than a basic education. They're often spoiled and indulged by their mothers and their mates, sometimes to an extreme degree. Their most important role is to give birth to and raise children. Both males and females are capable of impregnating and becoming pregnant, but it's more often the males who have the babies.

Kiri originally came from a poor family, and when his mother realized she'd given birth to a child with the second rarest colour mutation, she couldn't help but see it as a future opportunity.

Sixamish culture has a practice of "bonding gifts" in which a female will give a gift to her future mother-in-law in exchange for the privilege of taking the older woman's son as her mate. Its intended purpose is a token of thanks, sort of like, "Thank you for trusting me with the care of your precious son. I honour your trust with this gift." It's largely symbolic and bonding usually isn't an arranged marriage type of situation. However, like so many things that start out innocently, people somehow find a way to corrupt it. Their world is a matriarchal society, and the most rich and influential people on the planet are females. Wealthy, powerful females decided they were willing to pay large amounts of money or other resources for the most beautiful males, essentially as trophy husbands or as a means to produce beautiful children, and of course there are always opportunists like Kiri's mother who are willing to give their sons for the right price.

Kiri was given to a wealthy businesswoman when he was only fourteen. He was a few months away from turning fifteen, but he was already sexually mature, so everyone looked the other way about him being more than a year underage (age of majority is 16 for them). Kiri's new spouse didn't waste any time getting around to educating him on the ways of mating, and he had his son Kaji when he was still just fifteen.

Kiri wasn't her only mate. Her first husband, the older one, hated Kiri and felt threatened by him because he'd produced the most beautiful child any of them had ever seen. The first husband was also the one their wife actually loved, and he had a lot of influence with her. As a consequence, Kiri was badly mistreated, sometimes being physically abused and often being denied food as a punishment for some arbitrary thing he did that displeased his mates. The most painful thing was that they often took Kaji away from him for days at a time as a punishment for some random thing.

Kiri had three miscarriages between having Kaji and having his twins, Xai and Sevan. By the time the twins came along, Kiri was determined that they would not be taken from him like Kaji was, and that he was going to protect them and teach them everything he could despite his limited knowledge. He refused to let his wife put the twins in a separate room, They slept with him and were practially with him at all times. When they got older, he would give his food to them, which meant that he sometimes didn't eat for days at a time. His health, which had never been the greatest, deteriorated to the point where several doctors were of the opinion that he'd never fully recover.

Fast-forward several years, and Kaji ends up in a similar predicament to Kiri, essentially being sold to a powerful female. Fortunately for Kaji, the female he ended up with was an ambassador to Earth, and she took Kaji there with her. While on Earth, Kaji escaped and was eventually rescued by Félix and Davian. Zira was the doctor who looked after him, and he eventually befriended Zira's husband Sri, and her best friend Maxan, who is also a doctor.

It was thanks to Kaji, along with Zira, Sri and Maxan, and Sri's mother, who is a magistrate (judge) that Kiri and the twins were eventually rescued and brought to Earth as well. The ship's doctor was afraid that Kiri wouldn't survive the voyage to Earth, but by sheer willpower and determination to see his long-lost Kaji, he did.

Maxan was the doctor who looked after Kiri once he arrived on Earth. Max was way more dedicated to Kiri's care than professionally advisable, but it worked out well for both of them in the end. Over the course of Kiri's recovery, they got to know each other far better than any doctor and patient rightfully should, and at some point they realized that they were destined to be more than just doctor and patient. Max is a survivor too, and they found strength in each other that they both needed.

Kiri still isn't in perfect health, but he's a lot better now than he ever was before coming to Earth. He and Max have had two children together, both of which Kiri gave birth to, and it's been a joy for him to raise his children without fear of them being taken away and without worrying about being able to feed them.

[city-witch-magix]

Greek Deities

These are basic notes to look at as a beginning, there are only 15 deities from the website I used and I want to make sure my sources are good, so any feedback with corrections or additions you think I should add to it are greatly appreciated :)

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love

Goddess of love and romance 

According to legend, was born fully formed from white sea foam 

Came to shore and was married off by Zeus to Hephaistos 

While being the goddess of love and romance, she has a vengeful side 

Items for Honoring/Symbols: sea, shells, dolphins, swans, apple, pomegranates, and roses

Ares, God of War

Son of Zeus and Hera

Was known for his battle skills and getting involved in other people’s disputes

Often served as an agent of justice

Goes into war with frenzy and chaos

Items for Honoring/Symbols: 

Artemis, the Huntress

Greek Goddess of hunting and childbirth, she will protect women in childbirth but will also bring death and sickness

Twin sister of Apollo and because he was associated with the sun, she became associated with the moon 

Items for Honoring/Symbols: statue of her on your lunar altar, you can offer meat (hunted yourself is appreciated), and honey cakes, in some cultures you can offer a lock of your hair, you can also “adopt” and clean a patch of woods or take care of wild animals, dedicate time to help women succeed in athletics

Athena, the Warrior Goddess

Has shown up to help many Greek heroes

Athena helps warriors make wise choices in battle that will help lead to victory 

Child of Zeus and his first wife Metis, a goddess of wisdom

Often portrayed with Nike, the goddess of victory 

Items for Honoring/Symbols: 

Demeter, Dark Mother of the Harvest

Goddess of grain and harvest 

Mother to Persephone

Items for Honoring/Symbols: 

Eros, God of Passion and Lust

Described as a son of Aphrodite and Ares 

Evolved into Cupid in the classical Roman period

Items for Honoring/Symbols: offerings like fruits (apples and grapes) or flowers that represent love are appropriate, if you honor him for fertility add some fertility symbols

Gaia, the Earth Mother

Known as the life force that all other beings came from, including the Earth, sea, and mountains

Gave birth to the first races of divine beings, including three Cyclops (Bronte, Arges, and Steropes), three Hekatoncheires (each have 100 hands), and 12 Titans lead by Cronos, these 12 became the elder gods of Greek mythology

Items for Honoring/Symbols: organize a cleanup of a local neglected area, plant trees or a garden, set up a recycling program, adopt a stream or highway to take care of, help educate people on how to conserve water, energy, and fuel

Hades, Ruler of the Underworld

Son of Cronos, brother of Poseidon and Zeus

When the three brother escaped from Cronos they divided up the world they inherited and Hades became the Ruler of the Underworld and the inevitability of death caused his kingdom to be vast and he eventually became the god of proper burial 

Items for Honoring/Symbols: 

Hecate, Goddess of Magic and Sorcery 

Watched over maidens going through puberty and their first menstruation because she was a goddess of childbirth 

Evolved into the goddess of magic and sorcery and elevated into her position of being a goddess of ghosts and the spirit world

Items for Honoring/Symbols: adopt a dog/ volunteer at a shelter (dogs are sacred to Hecate), take care of a deserted/neglected place that has been abandoned by everyone else, walk along a dark road at night offering prayer and hymns to her

Hera, Goddess of Marriage

Wife of Zeus 

Guardian of marriage and sanctity of the home

Known to fly into a jealous rage and use her husbands bastards to hurt their mothers 

Played a crucial role in the Trojan War 

Items for Honoring/Symbols: represented by cows, peacocks, and lions, offer fertility fruits such as apples

Hestia, Guardian of Hearth and Home

Watched over the home fires and offered sanctuary and protection to strangers

Honored with the first offering at any sacrifice made in the house

On a public level, her flame was never allowed to burn out and the local town hall served as a shrine to her and at a new settlement her flame was carried from the person’s old settlement 

Items for Honoring/Symbols: try keeping a candle burning in her honor on your mantle or in your kitchen, offer wine, olive oil, and fresh fruit, when working on domestic or home-focused projects honor Hestia through song, hymn, or prayer

Nemesis, Goddess of Retribution

She was invoked against those whose hubris and arrogance got the better of them and was a divine force of reckoning 

Originally she just gave out what people had coming to them, good or bad

Items for Honoring/Symbols: represented by scales or the sword of divine vengeance

Pan, the Goat-Legged Fertility God 

Looks over shepherds and woods, is a musician, and invented the panpipes

Leads the nymphs in dances and stirs up panic 

Items for Honoring/Symbols: 

Priapus, God of Lust and Fertility 

Considered a god of protection in rural areas

According to legend, Hera cursed Priapus with impotence as payback to Aphrodite for her involvement with the Helen of Troy fiasco

Tossed down to Earth when other gods refused to live with him because he was doomed to live his life ugly and unloved

Statues of Priapus often had warnings threatening trespassers, male and female, with acts of sexual violence as punishment

His link on the website is glitched and goes to Freyja

Items for Honoring/Symbols: 

Zeus, Ruler of Olympus

Ruler of all gods and is the distributer of justice and law 

Honored every 4 years at Mt. Olympus 

Is married to Hera but is not loyal to her and has many bastard children

He controls the weather, especially rain and lightning

Items for Honoring/Symbols: 

Source: https://www.learnreligions.com/gods-of-the-ancient-greeks-4590177  and any other links used for individual gods

[dwellordream]

“The fantasy of a woman exhibiting and disciplining another woman’s body attained its most spectacular form not in the visual images but in the printed pages of England’s leading fashion magazine. In 1868, almost every fashion plate in the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine included a girl alongside two adult women, and that same year a debate raged in letters to the editor about whether parents, especially mothers, should use corporal punishment to discipline children, particularly girls past puberty. The fashion plate’s image of the quietly contained, fashionable girl who worships her female elders became a story of unruly daughters and stern mothers. The fashion image’s obsession with dressing and covering the body became the reader’s drive to expose it; the proud mien of the plate’s figures mutated into narratives of humiliation and shame. 

Only one element remained constant from image to text: the world in which both rituals were staged was dominated by female actors and objects. “I put out my hands, which she fastened together with a cord by the wrists. Then making me lie down across the foot of the bed, face downwards, she very quietly and deliberately, putting her left hand around my waist, gave me a shower of smart slaps with her open right hand. . . . [R]aising the birch, I could hear it whiz in the air, and oh, how terrible it felt as it came down, and as its repeated strokes came swish, swish, swish on me!” This description of a girl being birched by a woman first appeared in an 1870 supplement to the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine that extended a debate about corporal punishment raging in the journal since 1867. 

Editor Samuel Beeton justified publishing the monthly supplements, each consisting of eight large, double-columned pages of small type, by citing the overwhelming volume of letters received on a topic “which, of late years,” had “aroused . . . intense, not to say passionate interest.” Beeton priced the supplement at two shillings and made it available by post, thus guaranteeing its accessibility to middle-class readers. Like the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, a respectable family publication that advertised in the pages of Cobbin’s Illustrated Family Bible, the supplement presumed an audience of housewives who would be drawn to its advertisements for Beeton’s Book of Home Pets and The Mother’s Thorough Resource Book.

The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, as its title announced, was aimed at the middle-class women whose homes defined the nation. By the 1860s, the thirty-two-page monthly cost sixpence and reached roughly 50,000 readers per issue. With two color fashion plates in each issue, a republican editor who supported women’s employment and suffrage, and articles on “The Englishwoman in London,” “Great Men and Their Mothers,” and “Can We Live on £300 a Year?” the journal combined fashion, feminism, and thrift. Fashion magazines had always had heterogeneous content—astronomer Mary Somerville first encountered algebra while reading “an illustrated Magazine of Fashion”—and the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine prided itself on being learned and political as well as practical and stylish.

The magazine had both women and men on its staff, and Isabella Beeton codirected it with her husband until her death in 1865, soon after she completed a best-selling opus on household management. The publication of correspondence revealing women’s preoccupation with corporal punishment and its overlap with pornography might surprise us today, but only because we erroneously assume that Victorians imagined women and girls to be asexual unless responding to male initiative. Victorians themselves did not set such limits on female desire, and many found the letters on corporal punishment published in the eminently respectable Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine provocative, with their use of onomatopoeia, teasing delay, first-person testimony, and punning humor, all typical of Victorian pornography.

A letter from “A Happy Mother,” published in 1869, explained that the author put cream on her children before whipping them, so that punishing them produced whipped cream: “I scream—ice cream.” Some readers denounced the correspondence as indelicate and indecent, warning that it might arouse male readers, and accusing women who flogged children of improper motives. In the 1870 supplement, a “mother” worried about how a gentlemen might respond to finding an otherwise “useful” publication marred by “immodest” descriptions of punishments by “ladies.” One letter fulminated against “people who take pleasure in giving . . . exact details of the degrading way in which they punish their children.” 

A correspondent signing “A Mother Loved By Her Children” condemned “the indelicacy in which every disgusting detail is dwelt on” by a woman who described a punishment she had received from another woman. “A Lady” protested “the offence to decency and propriety in publishing vulgar details” about “the removal of clothes and ‘bare persons.’” Readers who protested the indecency of the letters recognized that reading about punishment could provoke sexual sensations in both men and women. The voluminous correspondence began as a short query in 1867: “A Young Mother would like a few hints—the result of experience—on the early education and discipline of children.” The first two published responses opposed whipping, arguing that mothers who resorted to physical punishment would lose the self-control needed to discipline children properly.

Though Beeton himself opposed corporal punishment, he published many letters in favor of it. The debate quickly became more specific: whether it was proper for adult women to punish girls, especially those past puberty, by whipping them on the “bare person.” Whether writing for or against corporal punishment, correspondents provided detailed accounts of inflicting, receiving, and witnessing ritual chastisements in which older women restrained, undressed, and whipped younger ones. Letters described mothers, aunts, teachers, and female servants forcing girls and young women to remove their drawers, tying girls to pieces of furniture, pinning back their arms, placing them in handcuffs, or requiring them to count the number of strokes administered. 

…Corporal punishment is where pornography, usually considered a masculine affair, intersects with fashion magazines targeted at women. Both types of publications were mass-produced commodities that created an aura of luxury, and both depended on the relative democratization inherent in an economy organized around consumption and leisure. Pornographic publications and monthly women’s journals had similar formats: both combined short stories, poems, historical essays, serial fiction, current events, and letters to the editor; both featured detachable color prints that could be sold separately; and both released special Christmas issues. Their common interest in corporal punishment led to even more concrete links between pornography and fashion magazines. 

John Camden Hotten, the publisher of many pornographic works, advertised a pseudoscientific study of Flagellation and the Flagellants in the supplement to the Englishwomen’s Domestic Magazine. Other pornographic publications actually reprinted verbatim material first published in fashion magazines. In his exhaustive bibliography of pornography, Henry Spencer Ashbee mentioned the “remarkable and lengthened correspondence” about flagellation in “domestic periodicals” alongside his discussion of flagellation in “bawdy book[s]” such as Venus School-Mistress and Boarding-School Bumbrusher; or, the Distresses of Laura. The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine was more available to women readers than pornography, but Victorian pornography was not the exclusively male province it is often assumed to be.

Like the fashion press, pornographic literature expanded during the middle decades of the nineteenth century; between 1834 and 1880, the Vice Society confiscated 385,000 prints and photographs, 80,000 books and pamphlets, and 28,000 sheets of obscene songs and circulars. Who wrote and read pornography remains a mystery: publishers falsified dates and places of publication; authors wrote under pseudonyms; and individuals left few public traces of their purchases and reading experiences. The scant evidence we have suggests that pornography was a predominantly but not entirely male domain. 

Newspapers reported women publishing and selling obscene books and texts; one woman has been documented as the author of a French pornographic novel that circulated in England; and women of all classes frequented the Holywell Street area where obscene books and prints were sold and often visible in shop windows. After publisher and bookseller George Cannon died in 1854, his wife ran the business for ten more years; in 1830 a police officer testified that Cannon hired women who “went about to . . . boarding schools . . . for the purpose of selling” obscene books, “and if they could not sell them to the young ladies, they threw them over the garden walls, so that they might get them.”

Women did not have to purchase pornography directly to read it, however, since they might easily find any sexually explicit books that male family members brought home. Women did not need to turn to pornography to encounter sexually arousing descriptions of older women disciplining younger girls; they could read material in the pages of a ladies’ home journal that would be reprinted as pornography. The correspondence about corporal punishment blurred distinctions not only between pornography and the women’s press but between male and female readers. Some worried that the magazine had become so obscene that it needed to be hidden from both; Olivia Brook wrote in 1870 that she now put the magazine “out of reach of any casual observer, and where especially no gentlemen can read it.”

…In The Other Victorians, Steven Marcus influentially argued that all pornographic accounts of whipping, even those that represent women birching or being birched, were nothing but displaced versions of repressed fantasies about father-son sex. That interpretation assumes that erotic desire between women was irrelevant to Victorian society, and that sex between men or family members was impossible to represent directly. In fact, the only impulse Victorian pornography repressed was repression itself. Victorian pornographers represented same-sex acts of all kinds and freely indulged their obsession with incest, including sex between fathers and sons. 

…Victorian pornography helps to explain how the family could simultaneously be organized around sexual difference and be a site of homoerotic desire, for in it the family is a hotbed of sex, but same-sex acts do not imply fixed sexual identities. Representations of sex between men and sex between women were never confined to specialized publications. Sex between women was regularly featured in pornographic texts and in images that depicted two or more women engaging in tribadism, oral sex, anal sex, digital penetration, mutual masturbation, and sex with dildos. Flagellation literature described women achieving orgasm from punishing girls and penetrating girls with fingers and dildos while birching them.

…The convergence of pornography and women’s magazines on the topic of flagellation points to their common origins in nineteenth-century liberal democracy, which promoted the free circulation of ideas among individuals who could demonstrate self-control and tasteful judgment. Pornography had affinities with Enlightenment and utilitarian ideals regarding the empirical investigation of nature and quests for knowledge, increased well-being, and merit-based rewards. Fashion was a feminized version of liberal democracy, for it depended on a woman’s ability to train her taste and accommodate her individual style to fluctuating group rules. 

By following fashion codes, women learned to fit their bodies into a social mold; by improvising on those codes, as fashion itself demanded, women developed the kind of restricted autonomy associated with liberal subjectivity. As Mary Haweis explained in The Art of Beauty (1878), clothing was a form of individual aesthetic expression and therefore had to follow “the fundamental principle of art . . . that people may do as they like.” The liberty underlying the art of dress also upheld of liberalism’s ideal of personal freedom as a source of originality and political renewal. The correspondence columns of fashion magazines allowed women to participate in the public discourse central to liberal politics.”

- Sharon Marcus, “Dressing Up and Dressing Down The Feminine Plaything.” in Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

[azrael-asks]

Heaven's Executioner

Name: Azrael (Also known as ”Azzy”, however that mannerism is used exclusively by Luke and anyone who does it behind their back and lives, other mannerisms include the “(Arch)Angel of Death” or “The Executioner”)

Date of Birth: December 31, Capricorn

Gender: Agender

Pronouns: They/Them, however they answer to male-oriented familial pronouns (“Brother”/“Sir”)

Sexuality: Asexual Aromantic

Species: Archangel/Angel

Personality Type: IS-NFJ

Personality:  Azrael is a stubborn angel with a secret mother-hen instinct for those they consider "delicate" (children, or those with childlike innocence) with yandere-like tendencies. They are often times with a steady head unless certain topics are mentioned, then all hell will break loose. (They are literally one meltdown away from initiating a genocide if given the chance.)

Likes:

- Textbook Yandere

- Legit has trouble processing emotions sometimes

- Basically Lucifer but as an angel.

- “What gender are you?” “I am a villain”

- Grumpy Mom friend (Like Lucifer)

- Stern and kind of stubborn

- Obedient. Answers directly to Michael

- Secretly a mother hen (more like mother bear)

- “I have only known Luke for five minutes, but if anything were to happen to him, I will kill everyone in this room and then myself.”

- Their rage is reserved for Lucifer and his brothers

- Literally one meltdown away from initiating a genocide if given the chance.

Dislikes: 

- Earl Grey (Cookies)

- Sparring

- Children

- Philosophy and Human Sciences

- Lilith

Skills/Abilities:

- Lucifer and his brothers

- Demons

- Disrespect

- Skilled in sword, spear/staff, and hand-to-hand combat.

- They pride themself in being the strongest in the Celestial Realm (even though they lost to Lucifer but they don’t try to talk about that).

- Being an archangel, they have more than one set of wings (golden feathers).

- As an angel, Azrael is capable of travelling freely between all three realms, although their travel to the Devildom is limited due to their tendency to fight with demons, especially Lucifer.

- They have some experience with magic (they use it to create “miracles”)

Fun Facts:

- The voice claim I have for Azrael is Yusuke Kitagawa from Persona 5 (English)

- Azrael gives off a scent of rosemary, but they claim that they don't use any special products that would warrant this scent.

- Azrael is commonly recognized as "Heaven's Executioner", both because of their violent acts during any wars the angels have against an opposing force and due to them wielding Azrael's Blade (the Flaming Sword/The Celestial Sword) whose main purpose is to erase its victims from existence.

- Azrael has a scar on their left cheek that runs down towards their collarbone in the shape of a burn. This was given to them by Lucifer during the Celestial War.

- Azrael is the second “brother” relating to the Archangels. Michael being the eldest. Other archangels that Azrael consider their “close brothers” to make note of are Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel.The “golden knot” they wear was a gift to them from Lilith.

- Azrael is responsible for guiding souls to their final destination. Thanks to Lilith teaching them sympathy among other emotions, they will sometimes take pity on some human souls and take them to the Celestial Realm/paradise themself.

- Azrael is the guardian/wielder of “Azrael’s blade” which is also known as the “Flaming Sword”. This weapon is capable of erasing any being from existence, meaning Azrael is also responsible for erasing anyone Father declares deserves such punishment (hence why they are also known as “The Executioner”)

- The scar on Azrael’s face was caused by Lucifer during the Celestial War. However, because of the purpose behind Azrael’s blade, the scar gives off a constant burning sensation in their flesh that never goes away.

- Because Azrael is cursed unable to lie, they don’t address people by their nicknames or aliases. They can only address people by their true given name if they know of it.

Backstory:

When Azrael was first created, they were responsible for guiding souls to their final destination and was more or less an obedient soldier of their Father and brother, Michael. At least that was the case until Lilith came into their life.

Originally an emotionless husk, Lilith exposed Azrael to the wonders of the human world and gave them some understanding of how human life was. Little did Lilith realize that she taught them how to love as well.

Azrael would do anything to make Lilith happy, unaware that she eventually had her eyes set on a human. Which is why it broke their heart to learn she stole from the Celestial gardens to save his life.

Their trained obedience overpowered their love for Lilith and Azrael sided with Michael when the war broke out. In the war, Azrael was the main driving force that massacred the majority of the rebelling angels, burning most of the realm to the ground in search of the one they were ordered to erase.

When they found Lucifer, they tried to be a voice of reason, pleading Lucifer as their brother to hand Lilith over so he and his brothers could be spared. Instead, Lucifer denounced their relation.

Azrael spun into a rage and turned the flaming sword on him in an intense battle.In a fight where the victor was meant to be the sole survivor, Lucifer’s actions caused Azrael’s blade to be pressed against their own face, resulting in a burning scar that was branded into their left cheek and neck.

As far as Azrael was told, Lilith fell to her death and Lucifer and his brothers became demons. To this day, Azrael still holds resentment against Lucifer and will jump at the chance to pay him back for their scar.

[chibimyumi]

Kinda personal question but what makes Elisabeth special to you? (Trigger warning) And in your opinion, does it romanticise things like mental illness and suicide? I think that ‘Die Schatten werden länger’ is a pretty apt metaphor for how it feels to have depression and suicidal thoughts (depending on one’s interpretation of what Death is) or to be emotionally abused. I ask about the productions with Furuka Yuta as Rudolf and the recent one with him as Death.

Dear Anon,

‘Elisabeth’ is my ultimate gateway down the rabbit hole of theatre and story-telling. Before ‘Elisabeth’ I was mostly a passive consumer of media, but after, I started to consider mechanisms of story-telling, and saw how different performers can tell different stories using the same script. This taught me how actions (dictated by the script) are just that - actions; and before we can understand a character, we must delve into what the context is of those actions.

Of course, the music is also just phenomenal, and it IS a musical, after all.

TL;DR: But importantly, I love ‘Elisabeth’ because it’s literally written to be a “F*ck you, Hollywood.”

In this post I discussed how ‘Elisabeth das Musical’ managed to save crumbling European cinematic culture. I am very tired of the Hollywood conventions, and ESPECIALLY tired of the glorification of romance. ‘Elisabeth’ subverted both of these stale conventions for me, and I was able to enjoy an alternative to the popular tropes of: “the superhuman lover, the caged bird, lonely at the top” in a new context.

This post will be divided into the following chapters:

1. Elisabeth

1.1. Deconstructing romance

1.2. Wife- and Motherhood

1.3. No pedagogical message in yer face!

2. Rudolf

2.1. Deconstructing romance

2.2. Depression in children

2.3. Crushing expectations and grandness

2.4. Deconstructing masculinity

3. Der Tod

3.1. Villain?

3.2. Predatory lover?

4. Conclusion

Trigger Warning: The text below contains mention of depression and suicide.

Romanticising mental illness?

‘Elisabeth’ is admittedly a bit of a problematic fave to me; it does indeed romanticise mental illness. However! Contrary to mainstream conventions, ‘Elisabeth’s does not show that mental illness can be cured because of THE POWER OF LOVE! It unapologetically showcases the destructiveness of mental illness, and how it is a long and painful struggle without promise of success. And that is exactly what a mental illness can be.

1. Elisabeth

1.1. Deconstructing romance

Elisabeth herself is the clearest example. She was a happy-go-lucky girl who was not destined to become Empress (her sister was), and yet she was chosen as bride by the handsome and young Emperor, Franz I, against his mother’s will. It is the dream many girls are taught to have.

And yet, it was exactly after becoming part of a fairy tale that her life sank into hell. Not just because of Sophie, but also because of her husband. Her husband did not turn out to be ‘a bad guy’ like Hollywood will make you believe is the only reason a relationship will fail. No, Franz was just entirely ignorant towards anything Elisabeth needed. Franz’ failure as lover was not what he ‘did’, but rather, what he ‘did not’. I think it is very important to show how real relationships require compatibility AND hard-work, but that without both, it just won’t work.

1.2. Wife- and motherhood

In conventional media, a woman like Elisabeth’s journey would be to find ‘the love she deserves’, she would still be ‘someone’s romantic interest’, just not Franz’. But in the musical, her arc is preserving and exercising her autonomy, and make the best out of a terrible situation. Women are trapped in patriarchy, and usually there is just no escape. And therefore seeing the strength of a woman who makes the best out of her pain is inspiring, and more relatable.

Usually in media, if the woman is not ‘the wife’, then the way she is strong is her focus on being ‘the mother’. Elisabeth however, was shown to be a terrible mother! She was not callous, she was very loving in fact. But because she had so much going on, she simply did not have extra mental energy to spend on her son. I find it very refreshing that love is simply not enough to make human-relations work, whether it’s romantic or familial relationships. Saying that somebody fails in a relationship ‘because you don’t love x enough’ is shortsighted and backwards.

It is breathtaking for me to see a narrative that solely focused on a woman’s struggles without the romance, and without the shackles of motherhood. No, she was struggling because she could not be a person.

1.3. No pedagogical message in yer face!

I also absolutely love how Elisabeth is not an idol that we are supposed to learn from. It’s not: “women! Look at this woman and [be/don’t be] this woman!!”. No, ‘Elisabeth’ leaves its viewer alone, and does not try to impose onto any ‘how to be a woman’.

We are simply supposed to see her life, and sympathise with her as human. The story never justifies her shortcomings, and never glorifies her as the fairy tale Empress ‘die Junge Kaiserin’ would have you believe.

‘Elisabeth das Musical’ does not treat its audience as people that must be educated; instead it assumes the audience has a mind of its own, and can participate in the story as Elisabeth’s peer.

2. Rudolf

2.1. Deconstructing romance

Rudolf’s arc is likewise one wherein his mental illness is not ‘magically cured by romance’. The historic Rudolf was married and he was VERY unhappy in his marriage. However, his unhappy marriage was not the cause of his depression, nor did it really matter that much in making it worse. Rudolf did have a lover (Mary Vetsera), and they loved each other deeply. However, that was not enough to make his mental illness bearable for him.

This forbidden-love part of Rudolf’s life was so insignificant to his depression, that the writers left it out entirely in ‘Elisabeth das Musical’, and his arc was still perfectly round without it.

2.2. Depression in children

‘Elisabeth’ is an excellent example of how depression is not limited to certain groups of people; anyone can be haunted by it. Rudolf is able bodied, white, wealthy, the crown prince of an Empire, intelligent, etc. etc. And yet he had crippling depression, and it is NOT because he was whiny within privilege.

Just like with his mother, Rudolf is also not an idol we’re supposed to imitate. However, we are supposed to learn from seeing him. We first meet Rudolf as a young child, and because he was not given any help, his depression escalated into suicidal depression later on. Many people either don’t believe that children can be depressed, or simply don’t take it seriously. Rudolf however, shows everyone how depression can in fact destroy the lives of children, not unlike adults. Even better; he is a historic character who actually existed. Good luck denying that!

2.3. Crushing expectations and grandness

As discussed above, Rudolf’s struggle has nothing to do with romance, but crushing expectations. As Furukawa explained in this interview: “When Rudolf finally figured out what he wanted to do, he was faced with his country sinking into crisis. He was stuck in the situation where he did not have the power to say anything, and yet had the status wherein everyone expected him to act for the benefit of the state. If he did not act he would be a neglectful man, unworthy of the title of ‘crown prince’, but if he did act for the benefit of the state, he would be a rebel.”

I think it is very refreshing too that despite all the good qualities Rudolf has (2.2.), he simply could not live up to the crushing expectations. It is very important to see how failure is often not the inability of the person, but that too much was expected of ONE human being to begin with.

2.4. Deconstructing toxic masculinity

Rudolf performs a very refreshing form of masculinity that is a departure from Hollywood’s ‘male hero’ model. His entire character is centered on his vulnerability, but he is NEVER portrayed as the loser. Instead, we see a man admitting his vulnerability and looking his depression in the eyes, and never being ashamed of it. He never blames himself for ‘not being man enough’ to live up to social expectations. Instead of “becoming a proper man!!” Rudolf knows that what he needs is compassion, a person he can talk to (his mother), and a fucking break.

Death is almost always without exception ‘punishment’ in stories. However, with Rudolf there were clearly external factors that have nothing to do with his supposed inaptness. The perpetrator was active in the sense that LITERAL Death manipulating him into committing suicide. Rudolf was a victim instead of someone punished for a “sin of not being man enough”.

3. Der Tod

3.1. Villain?

I am very tired of the good vs evil dichotomous story telling of Hollywood. Another thing I love about this musical is how it is entirely ambiguous who the villain is. It’s easy to point at Der Tod, but is he really the villain?

The script of this ingenious musical is written so freely that depending on the performers/director, the villain is either ambiguous, or non-existent, WITHOUT the story being vague. Depending on the actor of Der Tod, he is either an actual entity who governs over life and death, or the product of one’s imagination.

3.2. Predatory lover?

Der Tod’s existence and his pursuit of Elisabeth’s ‘love’ is the main factor that plays in saying “‘Elisabeth’ romanticises mental illness”. But depending on how the performers of Elisabeth and Der Tod interpret these roles, the story either becomes:

a toxic romance that is self-aware of its toxicity,

or like how Furukawa Yuta and Manaki Reika in 2019 managed, into a heroic tale of preserverence and a battle of wits.

Most importantly, in (most) non-Takarazuka versions, after Elisabeth dies, she is not there anymore to ‘reciprocate’ Der Tod’s feelings. She is just gone. Only in the Takarazuka version (I believe) does she enter the Underworld and actively becomes Der Tod’s lover.

So outside Takarazuka’s version, Der Tod is never rewarded with ‘a lover’; he simply gets his prey as a predator. Whether this ‘predator’ is a lover however, is again up to interpretation. But otherwise, death getting a mortal is just a very natural phenomenon, not victory as Furukawa puts it.

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, yes, ‘Elisabeth das Musical’ does have many elements that may qualify it as ‘a romanticisation of mental illness’, but ultimately I think it is not just that simple.

We must consider what the message is that the musical sends, and it is NOT: “because Elisabeth/Rudolf are mentally ill, they embark on an epic journey.” If anything, the musical makes very clear that the mental illnesses of Elisabeth and her son are the main culprit that MAKES them miserable, and that Der Tod is the personification thereof, hence his predatory nature. In ‘Elisabeth’, mental illness ‘preys’ on its victims.

The romanticisation mostly (though not solely) comes from the consumers, because we are conditioned to read stories like ‘Elisabeth’ as a romance.

We see a man (???) claiming to love a woman, and he chases her and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He goes through extreme means to impress her, and the story even comes with a ‘love rival’ (Franz).

We see a woman ‘yearning’ for something, and that something can only be given by Der Tod, and finally she does find peace when she is with him.

But, we must pay attention to what Elisabeth says when she is dead. It is not: “I’ve been looking for true love, and now I found it,” or “I wanted freedom, and you’ve been kindly offering it to me, but I was too foolish to accept earlier.” No, the very last thing she sings is:

“I have cried, laughed, been disheartened and I have prayed. There had been days where I tasted defeat in my senseless battle.Regardless, I have entrusted my life to myself alone!”

“Winning Elisabeth’s love” is the term Der Tod set without Elisabeth having any say in it. The term she set for herself is staying true to herself and not giving up; which she NEVER did. As such, THAT ⇈ was Elisabeth claiming victory of always having stayed true to herself, and it has NOTHING to do with Der Tod. She does not need Der Tod, she simply needed freedom.

[corinthbayrpg]

NAME. Tobias Price  AGE & BIRTH DATE. 131 & February, 1889 GENDER & PRONOUNS. Male & He/Him SPECIES. Vampire OCCUPATION. Bartender FACE CLAIM. Tyler Posey

BIOGRAPHY

Tobias Price was born in Belfast, Ireland, and from the moment he was born, his existence could be considered star-crossed. His mother had been a young girl coming from a poor family in Cancún, Mexico, who had barely anything. Her parents struggled to feed their six children, and so when a young nobleman from Ireland passed through their town and asked them if they would let their oldest daughter come with him to work for him, they couldn’t quite believe their luck. The young man promised to send them money for their daughter’s services, and that she would be in good hands; that he would look after her and take care of her. And so she was sent away, following him on his travels until they found themselves back on his estate in Ireland. Tobias’ father was a nice man, but not nice enough to care as much about his mother as he should have. She was young and naive and fell for the man who had supposedly rescued her, without being aware that he never sent her family money, and that while he let her crawl into his bed during the night, he had absolutely no intentions of making any promises he gave her true. In the end, she died giving birth to Tobias, and his father held nothing but distaste for the baby that was born. He sent one of the stable boys to drop Tobias off at an orphanage, no name, nothing on him but a thin blanket, and forgot about him a day later.

And that was when Tobias’ fight to stay alive began. The orphanage was his personal hellscape. Nobody there truly cared about him, he was often forgotten in a corner, or punished for acts he didn’t commit. None of the families who stopped by to take children with them, whether to raise them or to let them work for them, were ever interested in him. And so once he was old enough, Tobias started running away. He made it his personal mission to try to flee at least once a week, but he was often picked up by rude men who would drop him back at the orphanage – not caring that he’d be punished violently for the disgrace und inconvenience he brought upon the orphanage. Only when he was sixteen did Tobias finally manage to get away for good. It was a dark and foggy November night when he fled the orphanage, and didn’t stop running until he had reached the next town. For years, Tobias lived on the street. He begged for food, and in the beginning, especially young mothers were inclined to maybe give him an apple or a piece of bread. But no one was willing to give him a proper job or money. Once he turned eighteen, he lost any bonus a young face might have given him, and instead started doing anything people would pay him for – whether he truly wanted to do it or not.

Tobias only barely got by, every year he survived was another surprise. He carried himself from town to town, his trust in humanity broken. Not only by his father and the orphanage, but also by every next person he met who showed him a kind smile and extended a generous hand, only to turn into the devil once he was willing to do anything they asked for. But what was he supposed to do? He killed, worked his muscles until his legs wouldn’t carry him anymore, or give rich men what their wives couldn’t offer them in the bedroom. Tobias never expected to last much longer, and when he was twenty-two years old, he was barely staying alive.

And that was when Jamie Price stepped into his life. To this day, Tobias isn’t entirely sure why he was lucky enough for the man to notice him in a dirty corner of the street he passed, but somehow he did. And while Tobias was suspicious of the kind offer that was extended towards him that Jamie would take care of him, he soon enough realized that there was no involuntary pain involved this time. Tobias thrived underneath the care of Jamie, he followed him like a lost puppy, and he truly would have done anything for him. He even took on the other man’s last name, as Tobias never had one for himself, and figured he might as well take the name of the one person who had ever been kind to him. Before, Tobias had never even been aware that the supernatural world existed, but one night he walked in on the sight of Jamie sinking his fangs into somebody’s neck – and partly, that was when he knew he wanted to be just like him. But in the beginning, Tobias was cautious about his wish. He wasn’t entirely sure what it entailed, and whether he was ready for it. Instead, he continued to follow Jamie around, to watch him closely, and ask more questions than a young child. In the end his decision was made in the spur of the moment.

Tobias had seen more than once what the advantages of being a vampire was. One night in the year 1916, when he was on his way home, he was attacked in a dark alleyway. He was beat until he could no longer move, leaving his attackers to believe that he was dead. It took him forever until he managed to get up and carry his beaten body home, where he stood before Jamie bloodied and broken, and with only one plea on his lips: Turn me. Afterwards, Tobias wished he would have done it sooner. As a vampire, he felt unbreakable. His confidence rose, and while his trust was still only extended to Jamie, he suddenly felt as if the world lay at his feet. He could compel people to let him do whatever he wanted, he could travel around and not be afraid of anyone hurting him the way he’d been hurt in the past. Life was, quite literally, absolutely amazing. He started traveling all over Europe, although he always returned to Jamie’s place in Glasgow �� the only place he had ever felt at home in. One of Tobias’ first stops was Belfast though, where he searched for his father until he could face the man, a monster bending over him in the middle of the night. He left behind a dead body, and while it didn’t heal the wounds on his soul, it made him feel considerably better. On his travels, Tobias never hesitated to act as his very own angel of revenge, punishing people left and right who deserved it. But he also had a soft core for those in need, and so whenever he stumbled upon someone who reminded him of himself, he tried to help them out the same way Jamie had helped him.

The past year he spent in Glasgow, lounging around and enjoying his life. He hadn’t intended to leave again so soon, but when he got the news from Jamie of what was happening in Corinth Bay, he was quick to leave everything behind and come to town – both to fight by the side of the only man who had ever been family to him, and to see what the whole thing was even about.

PERSONALITY

+ adventurous, empathetic, confident - suspicious, temperamental, irresponsible

PLAYED BY LISA. GMT +1. She/Her.

[cruger2984]

Kimetsu no Yaiba and its Saints

Are you considered to have that title of #RomanCatholicHashira? (Hope you make a t-shirt print for this!)

Here are your favorite characters from this hit series with their corresponding saints! The first part here will focus on the main four and the Hashira!

[The Four Demon Slayers]

July 14 - Tanjiro Kamado

St. Camillus de Lellis: Italian priest who is known as the founder of the Clerics Regular, Ministers to the Sick also known as the Camillians. He is the patron saint of the sick, hospitals, nurses and physicians and his assistance is also invoked against gambling.

September 3 - Zenitsu Agatsuma

St. Marinus: 3rd century saint who is known as the patron of the country of San Marino. Born in Urbino, Italy, Marinus was a stonemason who worked in Monte Titano. He loved to preach as a layperson, and spent his time ministering to Christians who had been sent to work in the quarry as a punishment for defending their faith. He was a confirmed bachelor, and became a member of the clergy, being ordained a deacon by St. Gaudentius. The earliest manuscripts mentioning Saint Marinus and his life date to the 10th century. Marinus is depicted as a bearded layman with a stonemason's hammer.

April 22 - Inosuke Hashibira

Sts. Epipodius and Alexander: Both of them are venerated by the Church as saints. Both have received the crown of martyrdom during the reign of Marcus Aurelius in 178 AD. Their major shrine can be found in the Lyon Cathedral at Place Saint-Jean in Lyon, France.

December 28 - Nezuko Kamado

Massacre of the Innocents (Feast of the Holy Innocents): According to the Gospel of Matthew (2:13-18), Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. The Catholic Church has claimed the children murdered in Jesus's stead as the first Christian martyrs. From the time of Charlemagne, St. Sicarius of Bethlehem was venerated at Brantôme, Dordogne as one of the purported victims of the Massacre.

[The Hashira (The Pillars)]

February 8 - Giyu Tomioka

St. Josephine Bakhita: 20th century Sudanese-Italian religious sister of the Canossian order who, after having been a slave in Sudan, she lived in Italy for 45 years. In 1889, an Italian court ruled that because the British had outlawed slavery in Sudan before Bakhita's birth and because Italian law had never recognized slavery as legal, Bakhita had never legally been a slave. For the first time in her life, Bakhita found herself in control of her own destiny, and chose to remain with the Canossians. Years after her death, she is canonized by Pope St. John Paul II on October 1, 2000, and she is the patron saint of Sudan and survivors of human trafficking.

June 1 - Mitsuri Kanroji

St. Justin Martyr: 2nd century martyr, and is one of the most important of the Greek philosopher-Apologists in the early Christian church. His writings represent one of the first positive encounters of Christian revelation with Greek philosophy and laid the basis for a theology of history. He studied Stoic, Platonic, and other pagan philosophies and then became a Christian in 132, possibly at Ephesus. He spent a considerable time in Rome. Some years later, after debating with the cynic Crescens, Justin was denounced to the Roman prefect as subversive and condemned to death with six companions.

September 15 - Obanai Iguro

Our Lady of Sorrows (Our Lady of Piety, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows): One of the most popular Marian titles, a popular Roman Catholic devotion and a key subject for Marian art. The Virgin Mary is portrayed in a sorrowful and lacrimating affect, with seven long knives or daggers piercing her heart, often bleeding. Devotional prayers that consist of meditation began to elaborate on her Seven Sorrows based on the prophecy of Simeon in imagery. She is the patron of the Servite order, the Congregation of Holy Cross, and Poland (by Pontifical decree of Pope St. Paul VI).

November 29 - Sanemi Shinazugawa

Our Lady of Beauraing (Virgin of the Golden Heart): A Marian title  of 33 Marian apparitions reported in Beauraing, Belgium, between November 1932 and January 1933 by five children whose ages ranged between 9 and 15. For several years after the apparitions, pilgrims flocked to the small town of Beauraing, and many cures were claimed.

May 10 - Kyojuro Rengoku

St. Damien De Veuster (Damien of Molokai): 19th century religious priest and missionary from the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Father Damien was recognized for his ministry, which he led from 1873 until his death in 1889, in the Kingdom of Hawaii for people with leprosy, who lived in government-mandated medical quarantine in a settlement on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokai. During this time, he taught the Catholic faith to the people of Hawaii, and he also cared for the patients and established leaders within the community to build houses, schools, roads, hospitals, and churches. He dressed residents' ulcers, built a reservoir, made coffins, dug graves, shared pipes, and ate poi by hand with them, providing both medical and emotional support. Canonized by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in October 2009, his major relics can be found in Leuven, Belgium (where his bodily relics is laid) and in Molokai (hand relics).

August 23 - Gyomei Himejima

St. Rose of Lima: 17th century Peruvian virgin and penitent from the Third Order of St. Dominic, who became known for both her life of severe asceticism and her care of the needy of the city through her own private efforts. She has been designated as a co-patroness of the Philippines along with Saint Pudentiana; both saints were moved to second-class patronage in September 1942 by Pope Pius XII, but Rose remains the primary patroness of Peru and of the local people of Latin America. Her image is featured on the highest denomination banknote of Peru. Canonized in 1671 by Pope Clement X, her major shrine can be found in the Basílica of Santo Domingo in the Peruvian capital. She is the patroness of the Americas, the indigenous people of the Americas, and of Peru, especially the city of Lima, Sittard in the Netherlands, and of India and the Philippines.

October 31 - Tengen Uzui

St. Alphonsus Rodriguez: Spanish Jesuit lay brother and confessor. Years after his death in 1617, he was declared venerable in 1626. He was chosen by the Council General of Majorca as one of the special patrons of the city and island in 1633. After his canonization by Pope Leo XIII, his major shrine can be found in Palma, Majorca, Spain.

August 8 - Muichiro Tokito

St. Dominic de Guzmán: Spanish priest who is widely known as the founder of the Order of Preachers aka the Dominicans. According to one story, Dominic's mother, Bl. Joan of Aza, made a pilgrimage to the Abbey at Silos, and dreamt that a dog leapt from her womb carrying a flaming torch in its mouth (it later becomes one of the saint's attributes), and 'seemed to set the earth on fire.' The spread of the Rosary, a Marian devotion, is attributed to Dominic's teachings, and has it for centuries been at the heart of the Order. The Dominicans have been instrumental in spreading the rosary and emphasizing the Catholic belief in the power of the rosary for centuries. His major shrine can be found in Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, and he is the patron of astronomers.

February 24 - Shinobu Kocho

Bl. Ascensión Nicol y Goñi: 19th century religious, missionary and foundress from the Third Order of St. Dominic. She co-founded and was the first Prioress General of the Congregation of Dominican Missionary Sisters of the Rosary, in which she helped to found in Peru. Today, the congregation has 785 Sisters serving in 21 nations on five continents, and its General Motherhouse is now in Madrid, Spain. Pope St. John Paul II declared her Venerable in 2003. The following year a miracle was declared to have taken place through her intercession, due to which Pope Benedict XVI authorized the process to proceed. Thus, on May 15th, 2005, in St. Peter's Square, Nicol was beatified in a ceremony presided over by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins. She was beatified along with another missionary religious sister, Marianne Cope, who worked among the lepers of Molokai, Hawaii.

[sepublic]

An Analysis of Twelve Forever’s Endless Inhabitants

In which I overanalyze and discuss the meaning of some of its characters, either in-universe or on a meta level!

Swimple Dan- Swimple Dan at first seems to be another whacky character, but the episode The Locals Forever and Not Twelve Forever provide us further insight into his character’s symbolism. We immediately see that Swimple Dan is in a marriage, but a rather unhappy one- His wife verbally abuses him in Not Twelve Forever, and he lies about what he does during the day due to his insecurity about his own actual accomplishments, and the expectations placed on him by his wife. Despite being married to his wife, Swimple Dan doesn’t seem to particularly enjoy his time with her and evidently prefers the companionship of his male friend Gorbis, who is also in a marriage with a female.

          Swimple Dan seems to be another symbol of Reggie’s apprehension and viewpoint of adult life- As some dull, monotonous existence where you constantly act to do what others approve of. His poor marriage with his wife is symbolic of how Reggie looks down on love, especially after seeing her share of dysfunctional marriages. Dan likewise lying about his job and accomplishments, coupled by his wife’s insistence that she always ‘knew’ he would do great things (and how others said he’d just be dancing in the living room all day, paralleling how others probably expect Reggie to play toys in her room all day), can be seen as allegorical towards Reggie’s anxiety over her mother’s expectations and wishes for her. Reggie’s mom expects her to grow up, to be an adult and do proper adult things, and Swimple Dan lies to maintain an image of him fitting into the mold because that’s what Reggie sees adulthood as, and likewise feels like she is lying about herself to fit a societal mold.

          Potentially, Swimple Dan could also be a commentary on the nuclear family and heteronormativity. Swimple Dan is trapped in a loveless, heterosexual marriage with a woman who he seems to have no actual feeling towards and vice-versa, and the same applies for his male friend, Gorbis, whom he prefers to hang out with. The two couples not breaking off their marriages and being with the ones they actually love could be symbolic of them (and Reggie) having repressed homosexuality, and how society often causes people, LGBTQIA+ or not, to go into heteronormative relationships and be closeted due to that being the expectation and norm.

Sadmantha- Okay, do I even need to say it? We all know what she represents. Still, just to get it out of the way…

          Sadmantha is again, Reggie’s unhappiness and trauma at being abandoned by her father. Like Reggie, she is haunted by loss, and the potential of loss. Sadmantha is symbolic of Reggie being rejected- Rejected by society and her peers, hence her insistence that everyone secretly dislikes her, a sentiment later reflected in Todd Forever, where she accuses her friends of not actually liking her, and her preferring they just leave her behind than keep up the pretense of an actual enjoyment.

          She is also Reggie’s anxiety of rejection from her father- Rejected and left behind, perhaps due to not being an ideal child? Either way, Sadmantha is symbolic of the resulting self-loathing and insecurity Reggie has towards herself and regarding her friendships, and her fear of abandonment. Reggie is scared of relationships because she doesn’t want to be left behind, disappointed, and/or discover that the love is not genuine and she is not truly liked by the other.

Schmaaron- Schmaaron is, rather obviously, representative of Todd himself. Specifically, Schmaaron’s childish demeanor, need for a nurturing figure, and outright resemblance to both Todd and his older brother, represent Todd’s own issues;

          Todd, like Schmaaron, wants to be nurtured. He yearns for the caring figure that his brother provided in the absence of their father’s attention and mother’s presence. Schmaaron is childish, symbolizing Todd’s anxiety over growing up without his brother, and his wish to go back to the simpler times when he was younger and his brother looked out for and hung out with him. Todd doesn’t want to grow up and wants to stay a kid who hangs out with his brother, so Schmaaron, who resembles the two, is a child who cries for attention and an older, nurturing figure to look after him.

Guy Pleasant- Guy Pleasant seems to be representative of Todd’s resentment towards his older brother. Like his brother, Guy Pleasant is an older, ‘cooler’ person who plays guitar and has a natural affinity for music. And like Todd’s brother, he leaves Todd and others who look up to him behind in order to pursue his own life and career.

Guy Pleasant is the result of Todd projecting his anger towards his brother for leaving him behind, for not really ‘caring’ about him, as well as possible envy towards his brother’s natural talent for music and guitar. Interestingly, Guy Pleasant is shown to legitimately be a lonely person who finds fulfillment from taking care of Schmaaron (the allegory for Todd)- Perhaps Todd’s desire for his brother to find ‘true happiness’ by staying with him.

Dr Champion- Interestingly, Dr Champion doesn’t seem to be necessarily symbolic of something, but more like foreshadowing to the reveal of Endless as a not-so-friendly place…

          Although his insistence that he comes from Kentucky can come across as just nonsense (or be interpreted as him having been a toy from Kentucky who was buried and brought to life in Endless), Spring Break Forever suggests that people can lose their minds and memories in Endless, becoming trapped and one with it.

          This idea is taken further in Stranger Forever, which outright confirms this with Elmer, an ageless child who has been in Endless since 1955. Not only has he become detached from reality and his own past, but Elmer’s body has deteriorated and changed, which would account for Dr Champion not looking human if one were to assume he was at one point. Also worth noting is how Dr Champion seems to be more mentally unhinged and less ‘there’ than the other inhabitants. Additionally, Dr Champion mentions a 401K in Manguin Forever, only to realize he doesn’t know (or rather, remember) what the term means…

Borbo- Forgive me for saying this, but Borbo seems to be symbolic of Reggie herself. Both are considered to be freaks and outcasts amongst their peers, and both are children who desire to be loved and appreciated. Borbo’s wishful declaration of being Reggie’s favorite friend in Stranger Forever mirrors Reggie’s desire to be liked and appreciated by others. The two further parallel one another in their actions in The Locals Forever- When given the opportunity, both spy on their neighbors due to their curiosity, and because they want to know what people would rather do than hang out with them. In Locked Out Forever: Part One, Reggie is even seen spying on others and their antics without being noticed, just like Borbo, and is also nervous when caught.

Further adding to their similarities, Borbo also has an older, mature mother figure who frequently calls him out on his immaturity, and works hard to groom him into a more responsible person. And like Reggie’s mother, Borbo’s mom still clearly loves her child and wishes the best, and is willing to give little treats (as indicated by Borbo’s confident, unconcerned assertion that he’ll still get dessert despite his mother’s declared punishment that he won’t).

          He and Reggie are both loners, outcasts, and children who watch others from afar, in part because they envy the social interaction of their peers, desire to be with them, wonder what they prefer to do over being with them, etc. Both have mothers who are concerned for them and want them to be more mature.

Butt Witch- Butt Witch is fairly obviously a representation of Reggie’s anxiety with puberty. As if her being summoned by several books on the subject and literally confronting Reggie over said fears wasn’t enough, Butt Witch’s deep, male voice can be seen as a reference to puberty making voices deeper. Likewise, her noticeably ‘woman’ figure is a reference to Reggie’s mother’s line about how in every girl, there is a woman waiting to bloom; Butt Witch has the body of a mature adult woman. Further adding to this allegory, Butt Witch is presented as having an inhuman true form that later becomes more monstrous, further reflecting Reggie’s apprehension towards the human body and its changes.

          Additionally, as suggested by @virovac, Butt Witch also represents the idea of maturity and cynicism going hand-in-hand. Butt Witch immediately dismisses Reggie’s version of Endless as garish and immature, and she actively enjoys and is literally fueled by anger, resentment, and conflict. Butt Witch’s cruel, negative personality is in a sense a bit of a reflection of how Reggie sees her brother Dustin becoming cynical, mean, and edgy in an attempt to be more mature. Butt Witch can also be symbolic of how Reggie sees many adults as being mean, stifling, and attempting to put an end to her fun and enjoyment in life by forcing her to ‘grow up’- Just as Butt Witch frequently interferes with her adventures.

          In a less meta sense, Butt Witch is interesting in that she was not made by the puberty books, but merely summoned by them. Her dialogue indicates her as having been on Endless before, and that it was nowhere near as ‘garish’ as it is now. This, and her memories of it as being fond, and the revelations of what she considers to be ‘fond’, indicate that Endless was once a less colorful and friendly place.

          Was Butt Witch once a kid, or an adult, from the regular world who came to Endless? Or was Endless once a more visually threatening world that Butt Witch originated from? Concerningly, Butt Witch has contempt for the name Reggie has given her and yet won’t correct it with an actual name of her own…

          Either way, Butt Witch seems to have a sense of agency and self-control unique to the inhabitants of Endless.

Big Deal- Big Deal is pretty clearly an allegory for the typical, 9-to-5 office job worker that every adult usually becomes. He wears a tie, carries around a briefcase, has ‘Big Deal’ for a name, etc. Likewise, Big Deal is constantly in a position of servitude and subservience beneath Butt Witch, an uncaring boss who feeds off of his work but doesn’t particularly pay back his kindness.

            Big Deal is another symbol of how Reggie views adult life- A state of being in which an adult becomes a mindless office worker, focused only on business and brokering deals, working day and night for an apathetic boss in the hopes that their hard work will pay off and that they’ll be recognized and promoted. He is the embodiment of the bootlicking that workers are forced to resort to in order to get any form of promotion and thus a better career and life.

Manguin- Our Guy Fieri impersonator seems to be symbolic of none other than Esther herself. Like Esther, both are very organized, professional people who take their responsibilities incredibly seriously, and just as Esther mentions the pressures placed onto her by her parents, Manguin references his family’s name and how he has to uphold it by doing his job as a professional assistant well. Likewise, Manguin only appears when Esther in particular is looking for someone to act as a voice of reason for Reggie- In other words, she’s looking for someone who can fill in her own role while she’s gone.

          Manguin is Esther in that both, due to the expectations of family placed on them, keep themselves as very composed, efficient, and productive people, with a wide array of skills and an impressive resume. Like Esther, Manguin soon finds relief when he learns to ‘let go’ and stop worrying about being responsible. Unlike Esther, he doesn’t go entirely overboard with letting go and having fun, but this is potentially reflective of Esther’s fear of having too much fun and thus becoming a rowdy hooligan and a disappointment to the family name. Manguin’s realization at the disgrace of his job and family name is what compels him to go into his suitcase, after all.

          Manguin is what Esther wants to be- Accomplished. However, he is potentially symbolic of her anxieties of what will happen to her if she doesn’t rigidly adhere to the goals and duties set for her by her parents, and instead chooses to have fun and do what she wants.

Colin- Colin is one I’m not so sure over, and he might not be anything in particular. However, he could potentially be symbolic of Reggie’s social awkwardness and uncertainness when it comes to dealing with others, as well as her general ‘weirdness’.

Elmer- Elmer is obviously, what Reggie could have been. He’s framed deliberately in-universe as a dark mirror to Reggie and her desire to stay in Endless Forever.

          Both are children who were unhappy with their current lives and didn’t want to grow up, and thus preferred to stay in Endless forever. Elmer is what Reggie could become if she doesn’t grow up- He is immature and disconnected from reality, only acting on what he thinks is fun, and loses his connections to his past life. His body deteriorates, adopting the cartoon physics of Endless as he becomes one with it. His entire existence is dedicated to hoarding objects, perhaps a dark allegory to Reggie wanting to hold onto her toys in Birthday Forever. Elmer spends his existence fully-immersing himself into Endless, and remains an emotionally and mentally stunted, immature child. Like Reggie, he can also be selfish, albeit to a far worse extent.

Elmer is ultimately an exaggeration of Reggie’s worst characteristics, ranging from her immaturity, desire to not grow up, selfishness, etc. He is her, but every part of her either amplified to be worse, or else turned bad. Elmer is essentially a cautionary tale, in-universe and on a meta scale, warning Reggie of what will happen if she doesn’t choose to mature and interact with her normal life.

[scripttorture]

Hi, In my story I have a male slave born to another slave that's the product of rape by the slave owner. He is the same age as the slave owner's daughter who first treats him poorly but as they grow up with the changing times she begins to understand that slaves are wrong and starts treating him more as the half brother he really is. How quickly could things change and how helpful would news of nearby slave rebellions be? I can't figure out a suitable timeline.

I’m unclear on whether you’re asking about how quickly things could change in the broader society or with the personal relationship between these two characters but I can talk a little about both.

Personal change takes time, often years. Though I get the impression it is easier for younger people. A lot of people who grow up accepting awful things later reject them.

I get the impression that this sort of thing didn’t happen very often in plantation slavery. However now that I’m looking I don’t actually have any data to base that on. Certainly a lot of the children slave owners had went on to become slave owners themselves and support slavery. But that does not mean all of them did.

As a general rule I would advise you to be aware of the time period and culture you’re writing about. There’s a lot of romanticisation of slavery and slave built societies in fiction. There are a lot of stories that take agency away from enslaved characters so that other (usually white) characters can act heroically for them.

I don’t think any of this means that you can’t or ‘shouldn’t’ have a character born into a slaving family/culture becoming a good person. But it does mean there’s a lot to balance and navigate with this sort of scenario.

Above all else I’d suggest making sure these characters get an equal amount of focus, an equal amount of agency and that the enslaved character isn’t overshadowed by his sister.

Remember that, as Ambedkar put it, there can be better or worse masters but there are no good masters. A master can not be a good man.

Repairing the relationship between these siblings is going to be tricky, even once the daughter has become an abolitionist.

Trust is difficult for people trapped in these scenarios. Some slave owners, historically and today, hire people to ‘test’ slaves. They send these people among the slaves talking about escape plans, or plots against the owners, or even just offering an ‘illegal’ amount of support and friendship. And then they punish the people who respond.

So there is bad blood here but there is also a real sense of threat for the brother.

Giving this woman a chance isn’t just an emotional risk, it’s one that could have potentially lethal physical consequences for himself and those he cares about. So he needs a good reason to take that risk. Preferably one that shows the readers a bit about the kind of person he is.

It’s going to be a lot more believable if she acts rather then just saying the right things. And acts in a way that is genuinely helpful to her brother, rather then assuming what he wants or doing something that puts him at greater risk. This means listening to what he says and paying attention to her surroundings. For instance if he asks her for food and she knows that the slaves are punished if they’re found with food what steps is she going to take to ensure he doesn’t get caught or punished?

From his side establishing a relationship is a real and terrifying risk. From hers it… would probably seem like a very slow and difficult process that would probably become quite frightening as she got to know him better.

Because, depending on the setting and ages of the characters, this might be her first encounter with serious mental health problems. As far as I can tell the vast majority of enslaved people grappled with mental health problems at one point or another. Getting to know someone and realising that they are suicidal or severely depressed, seeing a panic attack for the first time- These can be frightening experiences and they’re things she’s more likely to encounter as the relationship develops.

If she can provide material help and emotional support during these episodes that is likely to help her case.

The whole thing is like to involve a lot of… two steps forward one back if you know what I mean.

It’s impossible to unlearn decades of prejudice and privilege in a day and how ever much this character is working hard to be better it isn’t her brother’s job to help her become better. Or to hold her hand while she tries to come to terms with the horror he has lived.

On a more personal note I think that a lot of fiction handles re-connecting with family, especially dysfunctional or abusive family very badly. It tends to assume that people should want family connections and should desire reconciliation.

This isn’t always the case.

So much fiction uses this, the prized place blood-family is put in, to put the pressure on survivors to forgive, forget and embrace the abuser when they’ve done the bare minimum.

In this case I think rejecting slavery is the bare minimum. I understand that the character is going further then that but- Is there a reason for the enslaved character to view her as a half sister? And if he does would that help or hinder their relationship?

Consider whether he’d be more comfortable rejecting familial terms. He might be; considering that his ‘father’ abused his mother and played no part in raising him. He might also find it easier to accept his half-sister as a growing, improving person and a friend if he doesn’t see her as family.

Because if she’s ‘family’ then it is crushingly unfair that he was abused while she had a ‘good life’.

Circling back to the main part of the question this kind of relationship change does take years. But how many depends on the individuals involved, their capacities, personalities and the effort they’re willing to put in.

I’m guessing. This isn’t something I can turn to statistics for. I think a minimum of 2 years sounds sensible, 5 sounds more reasonable and you could go as high as 10.

Part of the decision probably depends on what you want to do with the story. Having these characters drifting in and out of each other lives, helping, working together, then arguing and splitting up in a cycle could work for the longest time frame. Having them thrown together in adversity, working consistently against a common enemy could work well for the shortest time frame.

Think about how likely their personalities are to clash and whether any of the enslaved character’s symptoms are likely to make the relationship more difficult.

I don’t think news of near by rebellions is likely to help these characters build a friendly relationship. I think that it would put pressure on both of them, making them both feel under threat.

With rebellions near by slavers often became increasingly paranoid and meted out increasingly lethal and increasingly dramatic punishments. He would feel as if even the slightest transgression, such as speaking to the master’s daughter, could lead to him being tortured to death.

These rebellions often involved torturing slavers and their families to death. So she would also feel under threat, despite her beliefs. These rebellions did not tend to pause and consider sparing anyone associated with slavers.

And that action, that violence, needs to be taken in the context of the constant violence and degradation that was meted out on the enslaved.

On a societal level the pace of change is even harder to quantify.

It could potentially happen very rapidly, as it did in Haiti. Or it could happen very slowly indeed as it did in the United States, with abolition leading straight in to laws that stripped away the rights freedom was supposed to grant.

I think it’s important to understand that violent rebellion often didn’t lead to lasting societal change. In fact Haiti is the only example we have of a well recorded, successful slave rebellion. The wars in Brazil, Jamaica and Cuba went on for decades, if not hundreds of years. They didn’t overthrow slavery, though they did help a significant number of enslaved people.

To understand how these movements worked and what they achieved I think it’s important to look at more then one country. I would suggest Haiti and Brazil are both excellent places to start.

And if the historical pace of change seems too slow, remember there’s nothing to stop you deciding that society changed more quickly in your world.

I hope that helps. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[iobjectfa20]

Lippi’s Madonna and Child

Filippo Lippi (1406-1469)

Madonna and Child with Two Angels, 1460-1465 ca.

Tempera on wood

95x62 cm

The Uffizi Galleries

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

Why I chose this piece

When thinking about what piece to choose, I was stuck for a few days. I felt that I did not have any objects in mind that were ‘strong enough” in their objection. Most of the art that I have studied has been within the European realm and, therefore, Eurocentric. I was not sure if a European piece would be as appropriate or powerful as a painting or sculpture from a culture that had been colonized by Europeans. However, as I thought about it more, I concluded that dismantling harmful ideas and stereotypes produced by Eurocentrism within Europe is just as crucial as dismantling them in previously colonized cultures. 

I feel a deep connection to the Renaissance and Italian culture in my academic studies because of my undergraduate degree in Italian. I knew I wanted to carry what I learned during the last four years into my graduate work, and this project seemed like the perfect opportunity. There were lots of different artists and paintings that I could have chosen. There is Artemisia Gentileschi, a woman artist who rivals Caravaggio in skill and style. Or Elisabetta Sirani, another woman artist from the Renaissance who opened a painting academy for women. Their works contrast the Eurocentric norms of the time, by their status as women artists and the subjects of their art. 

I chose Filippo Lippi’s piece for a few different reasons. The first is that it is my favorite painting from the Renaissance. The first time I heard the story behind the painting’s history, I was enthralled. Like the painting’s physical beauty, I thought the story was beautiful and liberating. My thoughts changed later upon hearing another version of the painting’s history, but for the most part, I still find myself caught up in the emotion of the original sentiment I studied. The second reason I chose this painting is its role in cementing some but contesting other Greco-Roman norms, many of which persist today. The Renaissance’s goal to reclaim ancient Greek and Roman culture and harmful Christian ideals created a dangerous and oppressive situation for women in the Renaissance. Since many cultures worldwide have been shaped by these same Eurocentric cultural aspects, I think the painting’s objection to women’s status at its time of creation makes it all the more powerful. Its power transcends time and is still important today.

This painting is by no means a perfect representation of Filippo Lippi or his character, as I describe in more detail below. However, I think it shows objection to religious and social ideas we abide by today, especially in Christian culture, that were seemingly cemented in the Renaissance. I also think it is an excellent piece to explore Eurocentric historicism, which I discuss below. I enjoyed revisiting my favorite Renaissance work of art, and it turned out to be the perfect piece for me in completing this project. 

Reframing the object

Lippi’s Madonna and Child with Two Angels has been a symbol of resistance in my eyes since I first learned about it in my undergraduate Renaissance art history class. While the Renaissance was about breaking the rules, new rules regulated the breaking of those old rules. The push away from traditional religious iconography and imagery in the Renaissance did not mean that religious painting and sculpture commissions stopped--quite the opposite, actually. Biblical scenes and characters' secularization led to a boom in inspiration and production, with hundreds of annunciation, crucifixion, and “Madonna and child” scenes portrayed in the Renaissance style. These scenes were often inserted into a Tuscan landscape, depicting characters according to Italian beauty standards at the time. 

Upon first glance, this painting may appear to be another standard “Madonna and child” from the early Renaissance. Mary, dressed in blue and seated in the foreground, adheres to the ideals of Renaissance beauty. With blond hair, a high forehead, and brown eyes, she depicts the ideal woman from this period. Her skin is also a pale cream, another ideal physical aspect of Italian society and art during the Renaissance. After the first glance, though, it becomes clear that Mary’s face is not the generic face of any particular Italian woman walking down the street. Her face is uncannily similar to the face of Lucrezia Buti, Lippi’s wife. 

The act of using his wife as a model for the mother of God may not have been scandalous in and of itself. However, Lippi, an ordained priest, and Buti, a nun, had an affair that resulted in children out of wedlock. Historically, the narrative has been that Lippi kidnapped Buti during a public Catholic procession, taking her to his home in Prato, where their affair ensued. It is unclear whether the kidnapping was a front because Buti could not leave her convent, or if it was an actual kidnapping, meaning she was held against her will and raped multiple times. Most of what we know about Lippi and Buti comes from Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists, a collection of biographies published in 1550 written about the best artists of the Renaissance. Vasari was known to exaggerate and alter stories for his dramatic literary gain. He was also a raging sexist, excluding numerous successful and famous women artists from his work. How much of Lippi and Buti’s story is true is up for debate. 

Lippi and Buti’s statuses in the Catholic church made their affair extremely scandalous, even by Renaissance standards. Themes of carnality and sexual liberation were increasingly common in art and literature, but purity, modesty, and virginity remained crucial aspects of religious life. Lippi and Buti’s children, who were born out of wedlock, were proof of their Catholic faith's betrayal. As punishment, they should have been exiled from Florence at the very least. The Medici family, who ruled Florence and the surrounding villages, allowed Lippi and Buti to remain in the city and live as a typical family so long as Lippi completed painting commissions at the family’s request. With their significant political influence and artistic patronage, the Medici family acquired a special dispensation for Lippi and Buti to marry. It is unclear whether they ever did, which would have only added to the shame of their domestic and religious situation. 

It is impossible to ignore the possibility that Buti may have been a victim of sexual assault in this story. If it is true, Lippi’s work cannot be separated from his status as a rapist. However, given that there is no clear evidence that he is or is not, the more common narrative that he kidnapped Buti because she could not leave the convent and that they truly loved each other has persisted. This being the standard narrative speaks volumes to the ways history is written to protect and favor men.

Using Buti as his model for Mary, Lippi smashes the expectation that women should be modest and pure. His wife, a disgraced nun and mother of bastard children, is the face of the mother of God. Lippi objected to harmful and sexist gender roles in doing this. Mary has long since been the “ideal” feminine model for women living within the Christian sphere. Her veneration, which partially stems from her virginity, has been used to keep women sexually repressed and stuck in submissive social and domestic roles. 

Patriarchy and its harmful consequences cannot be separated from Eurocentrism. In reframing Lippi’s Madonna and Child with Two Angels, I would like to apply Dipesh Chakrabarty’s theory regarding Eurocentrism and historicism. If we look at this painting and the traditional narrative of Mary, Christianity, and women’s roles, it goes against Eurocentric historicism. A woman like Buti would be considered a whore to most people during the Renaissance, even though she is possibly a survivor of sexual assault. 

Religion, sex, and patriarchy do not exist in a vacuum. Nor are they determined by history. We make decisions every day (conscious and unconscious) that uphold the harmful effects of negative sex representation in patriarchal religious settings, much like those in the Renaissance did. This was not because people did not “know any better.” Scholarship and rhetoric surrounding women’s rights and freedom were relatively well-circulated during the Renaissance. Books like Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies set forth numerous arguments for women's liberation and their various essential roles in society. Like today, people chose to use tradition and “history” to continue reinforcing harmful stereotypes, expectations, and ideals for women. 

Lippi and Buti’s story is complicated. We will never know what truly unfolded nearly 600 years ago, mainly because the male-centered narrative has persisted in their case. However, Lippi’s painting does object to religious standards of the time. With his painting, a woman can be held with the highest regard, regardless of her sexual past. It goes against the Eurocentric patriarchal tradition and breaks away from the European historicism that claims women’s treatment was shaped solely upon the cultural norms of the past that peristed in the Renaissance. This piece is one of the most famous works from the Renaissance, and it is still widely celebrated today. Its place in art academia makes it a piece of persisting resistance that can serve as inspiration to break away from gender norms in religion and society today, as Lippi and Buti did so many years ago.

--Darian Rahnis

[miraculousmidnightreviews]

The Last Girl Review

The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State

By Nadia Murad

5/5 stars

While some progress has been made in the fight against ISIS, as argued by Nadia Murad in The Last Girl, the problems in Iraq cannot be clearly divided along a line that is determined to label every Muslim as a terrorist. In fact, Murad approaches the controversial topic from a new outlook: the rise of the Islamic State and its supporters has been years in the making, ever since American intervention took down Saddam Hussein and his Baathist institutions. She also explains the situation in Iraq as a religious persecution as ISIS targeted members of religious minorities living in the nation, including Murad herself. In her book, Murad not only argues for the dismantling of the Islamic State but also the humanization and protection of the innocent people who still remain under ISIS control. Her powerful memoir deserves more attention as it is a necessary read in order to fully understand the inner workings of Iraq’s many religious sects as well as a different and relevant, non-western feminist perspective of women living in the Middle East. Through her narrative style, Murad effectively persuades her audience of the need for religious acceptance of the Yazidi people and on a larger scale, the prosecution of the Islamic State for genocide.

Split into three parts, the memoir begins with a historical account of Iraq that explains the rise of ISIS. Starting with Saddam Hussein’s control over the nation and its eventual liberation by Americans in the early 2000s, Murad paints a historical backdrop that informs the reader of decades of political unrest and recurring violence, interwoven with anecdotes from her childhood and the days leading up to the ISIS capture of her village, Kocho. From the tension between political parties, like the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan to the growing separation between Yazidis and their Sunni Arab neighbors, one is lead to believe that it was only a matter of time before the temporary bubble of peace that Murad had lived in her entire life popped.

The second section of the memoir begins with the corralling of Murad and her village into the public school. That day, six of her brothers along with the rest of the male residents of Kocho were killed. Murad and the women and children were taken to a secondary location, where she and her young female relatives were separated from Murad’s mother. Murad would later find out that every elderly woman from Kocho, including her mother, was executed and buried in an unmarked grave. Meanwhile, Murad and the young women were sold into slavery, forced to become “sabaya” or sex slaves for ISIS soldiers and high-ranking officers.

After a failed attempt, Murad managed to escape for a second time and find a sympathetic Sunni Arab family that would hide her from ISIS. From this home, she contacted one of her brothers, who was outside the country at the time and able to smuggle her into Kurdistan controlled territory. While her brother worked to help their female relatives and other women escape enslavement, Murad became an activist against ISIS and human trafficking, later speaking in front of the United Nations and winning the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

An integral part of The Last Girl as well as Murad herself is the Yazidi religion, which should be protected and accepted across the world, as Murad argues. “Yazidis believe that before God made man, he created seven divine beings, often called angels, who were manifestations of himself,” according to Murad (27). One of these angels, Tawusi Melek (or the Peacock Angel), is the main being to which Yazidis pray and center their practices and celebrations around. However, many Muslim Iraqis consider Yazidis “devil worshippers,” scorning them and their practices for “reasons that have no real roots” in the stories of Yazidis (Murad 28). As a result of this hatred, “outside powers had tried to destroy [Yazidis] seventy-three times” before the genocide of Murad’s people in 2014 (Murad 6). It is this hatred and derision, Murad argues, that led ISIS to target Yazidis in their terrorist campaign. As a religious minority in Iraq, Yazidis relied on the relationship that they had with Sunni Arabs for protection. But as many Sunni Arabs turned to the Islamic State, Yazidis were left vulnerable to the whims of ISIS. As Murad conveys, the acceptance of the Yazidi religion, and religious tolerance on a broader scale, would further prevent the violence and persecution that often follows minorities.

In order to accept and protect Yazidis, one must first become educated on their religious practices and culture. Murad asserts that “Yazidism should be taught in schools from across Iraq to the United States, so that people understood the value of preserving an ancient religion and protecting the people who follow it” (300). In a broader sense, people who are better informed about Yazidism and its history as a persecuted community would be able to better help the Yazidis still under ISIS rule, especially the women forced into sexual slavery. The Last Girl is a moving story and a major contribution to understanding the role of transnational feminisms. It is important to note that while many Yazidi practices and the general attitudes in Iraq reinforce gender inequality, Murad is not arguing for a complete cultural upheaval of these practices and attitudes; she is pushing for what may seem like a small step to western feminists, but freeing the large Yazidi population of women still kept in sexual slavery is what is needed for the feminism that Murad practices, for the betterment of Yazidis, and for a longer path towards female empowerment in the Middle East.

Although Murad advocates for the prevention of Yazidi persecution through religious tolerance, she also wants justice for the crimes committed against her and her people. Murad argues that the Islamic State, “from the leaders down to the citizens who supported their atrocities,” should be put on an international trial for the genocide of the Yazidi people and other war crimes (300). Not only has ISIS executed the majority of Murad’s village, including her mother and brothers, but it has also committed horrific acts of cruelty and continues to do so today in the form of rape and other torture. Murad states that when she fantasizes about putting ISIS on trial, she sees her first rapist, Hajij Salman, captured alive, and as she further describes: “I want to visit him in jail [...] And I want him to look at me and remember what he did to me and understand that this is why he will never be free again” (177). For Murad, holding ISIS responsible for its crimes against humanity is not just for Yazidi justice, it’s personal, and reasonably so. No one should have to go through such unimaginable torture, especially without any form of justice.

In the epilogue of The Last Girl, Mura writes that “the UN finally recognized what ISIS did to Yazidis as a genocide” (304). But without a trial, justice does not exist for Murad and her people. Recognition is not enough. And the longer the UN waits to prosecute the Islamic State, more evidence of its crimes will continue to disappear. But for Murad, the time for waiting is over. Her memoir is not only a testament to her survival and her love for her people but also her unwillingness to let ISIS go unpunished. The Last Girl is evidence, Murad’s written evidence, of the Islamic State’s atrocities. As a survivor, this book is her way of holding ISIS accountable for its crimes. It is an act of defiance that will continue to be a relevant and necessary read for the public until ISIS is formally punished.

Murad’s memoir perfectly conveys her intentions through an effectively enticing narrative that urges the reader to better empathize with the struggles of the Yazidi people and understand the importance of prosecuting the Islamic State on a grand scale. Although this is not a revolutionary take on feminism, it is a compelling story that portrays a nation racked with terrorism in a new light. While Murad’s memoir educates as well as connects western readers to the plight of her people, it also highlights a path to resolving conflict in Iraq from the perspective of those who know the region and its culture best. In order to help her people, Murad argues that one must first understand her history and culture. While the punishment of ISIS is imperative, it is not enough to employ airstrikes on suspected terrorist headquarters. Organizations, like the Islamic State, will only continue to reform as violence, religious persecution of minority groups, and the poor treatment of women persists.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this review! Check out my other reviews here!

Credit: Murad, Nadia. The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017.

[chicagocityofclans]

Perseus Jaxson Idris → Zane Holtz → Rat Animal Shifter

→ Basic Information 

Age: 27

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Straight 

Born or Made: Born 

Birthday: November 17th

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio 

Religion: Deism 

→ His Personality Jax has had a tough past and can be a dangerous, violent, and rash individual. His childhood gave him a huge inferiority complex which has left him shackled by self-doubt and uncertainty. Even as an adult, Jax constantly feels the need to prove himself. He also displays a very cocky and cool personality with a tendency to be rebellious and conflicted towards authority figures, besides Nick Hamelin, who he sees as a father figure. Jax can usually profile people with uncanny accuracy based on a short glance. This helps him as the 2nd of team SKIN. His bravery is second to none, Jax constantly places himself in dangerous situations to get the information needed or simply to prove his point. He can be strict and rigid while working but he is wisecracking and an easy conversationalist around his packmates; making it clear that Jax genuinely cares for his entire pack. Jax is fiercely loyal to his pack, teammates and friends. This loyalty often gets him in trouble because Jax will act for them without caring of the consequences; which he will fully accept. 

Jax is very keen about hiding his feeling from others around him that he has developed a slight stoic trait. He knows that he has few friends within his pack and fewer who would be willing to see past his tough exterior. Though he does not show it much, Jax has a softer and more sensitive side to him. He wants to be loved and liked but refuses to dial himself down or be untrue to himself for others. As of lately, Jax has been trying to catch Nick, Jim, Mills and Ray’s attention, hoping to show them that he has matured and is ready to take on more responsibility. Jax has never before seen himself as a leader of a clan but he is wanting it more and more each day and has made it his goal to make it to the top. Since the RED accident, Jax has been working nonstop to prove himself and Conrad’s promotion to 3rd over him has all but added fuel to his resolve. 

→ His Personal Facts

Occupation: 2nd in command of SKIN and Team Member of BOND 

Scars: Eyebrow Scar

Tattoos: Multiple 

Two Likes: Fast Food and Nike Shoes

Two Dislikes: Failing and Western Movies

Two Fears: Dying alone (People thinking he abandoned the pack) and Being on the Run 

Two Hobbies: Working and Exploring 

Three Positive Traits: Meticulous, Dedicated, Ambitious

Three Negative Traits: Workaholic, Destructive, Self-Critical

→ His Connections

Parent Names:

Cadmus Idris (Father): Cadmus has always been an opportunistic father. Only wanting or needing his sons when it suited him. After Achilles disappointed him, he sought out Jax to take up his mantle. He was swayed by the offer and lost himself for a bit. Once he came to, he thoroughly rejected Cadmus’s offer and told him to leave. It gave Jax the reality the check that he could be destined for greatness and he didn’t have to tear people down to get it. 

Sibling Names:

Achilles Idris (Half-Brother): Achilles and Jax started off on the wrong foot when they first met a few years ago. Jax wanted the attention from their father that Achilles received his entire life and was willing to do anything for it. Nick and Jim quickly pulled Jax back from the ledge but the damage was already done to Jax’s self-growth. It took Jax and Achilles too long to stop competing with each other, like their father wanted and start seeing each other as brothers. Jax completely gave his brotherly friendship and loyalty over to Achilles and pleaded with Nick for Achilles to stay. Having Achilles around has been good for him.

Unknown (Countless Half-Siblings): Jax may know a few of them by name because Cadmus or Achilles has mentioned them (Jason, Theseus, and Icarus) but he doesn’t really care for them nor has he tried to reach out to them. They would probably try and have Jax killed if they knew who he was just because he is Cadmus' oldest living son. 

Children Names:

None

Romantic Connections:

Samantha Whitney (Long Term Interest): Jax and Sam met in 2008 when they were both 16 years old and training together. Jax had never met anyone like Sam before and admired her ambition. The more they talked and got to know each other, the more Jax’s fondness for her grew past what he felt for the other girls in their training class. By the time they graduated, Jax knew he wanted Sam to have his back on missions and to watch out for her as well. They doubled together for BOND but not as much as Jax would have liked because he was also on SKIN. Jax was more focused on SKIN and BOND then dating like his other packmates and never noticed how much Sam actually meant to him until she left to train with Ray for liaison in London. His feelings for her quickly caught up with him and he made sure to keep in contact with Sam. He would randomly call her with reports on what is happening or with his achievements. Over the years Jax has seen her briefly on international BOND missions but since the RED accident Jax has been working hard on SKIN and haven’t had the chance to see Sam. While they still talk on the phone, their calls have been less frequent but tend to last a few hours. Jax is excited Sam is coming back to Chicago and plans on expressing his feelings for her. He hopes that his plans don’t ruin their friendship but is certain that rejection will only fuel his motive to better himself. 

Platonic Connections:

Nick Hamelin (Father Figure): Jaxson ran away from Jackson, Mississippi when he was 5 years old in his rat form. It was weeks of walking, hitching rides in dirty vehicles and getting lost before Nick found him cold and hungry, washed away by a storm in the sewers. There was an instant connection between them. Nick had brought him home and fed him before raining down on him with questions. Nick knew he wasn’t one of there’s but honestly the only thing Jaxson knew was that he was from Jackson, his last name was Idris and he couldn’t pronounce his first name which Nick took as his name being Jaxson Idris (misspelled his hometown which became his name). Jax is still unsure if they looked for his parents but Nick took him in as one of his own. Jax and Nick never talk about their feelings with one another but Jax sees Nick as his father but is unwilling to share that notion with him. He is aware that he gets away with things others in the clan are usually punished for and has had his own room for decades but is unsure if it all adds up to Nick seeing him as a son too. Jax has been trying to prove that he is worthy of leadership, especially since Nick chose to make Conrad 3rd instead of him, making Conrad one of the youngest in their clan to ever hold such a position. 

Josephine ‘Jo’ Floyd Hamelin (Mother Figure/Complicated): Jo was there when Nick found Jax and has been along for the ride since the beginning. Jax's relationship with his own mother was rough as far as he could remember and Jo offering him comfort was entirely a new concept that Jax was unsure of. He quickly became fond of her and was attached to her hip nearly as much as he was with Nick. While Nick focused on training him and teaching him all that he could, Jo helped him work through his misplaced feeling about his past and would always be open for one on one time. Jax can be found helping her around Floyd & Hamelin is his down time. Just like Nick, Jax sees her as his true mother but is unsure of what she feels towards and doesn’t want to make any assumptions. 

Rayner ‘Ray’ Hamelin (Mentor/Good Friend): Jax met Ray a few months after joining the pack but felt as if he knew him already. Everyone kept telling Jax stories about Nick’s little brother and how much Jax would love him. They were right. Over the years Ray has become like a close uncle to Jax and since his return to Chicago permanently, they have been bonding and communicating more often.

James ‘Jim’ Montgomery (Mentor/Good Friend): Jax remembers seeing Jim around the packhouse and hearing his name often when he was younger. It wasn’t until Jax came into training age did he get to officially meet Jim and associate Jim with being a modern hero. Jim has been an inspiration for Jax and he knew as soon as he heard Jim’s stories that he wanted to join the SKIN team. Jim has always kept their relationship professional but Jax once considered Jim his only friend when Ray and Sam were gone for BOND and the pack seemed against him.

Conrad Kale (Old Friend): Jax and Conrad were like oil and water growing up. They constantly competed with one another for years to try and show up the other. It was until they hit their teens, and befriended Sam that the two begrudgingly became friends. Jax was a big support for Conrad when Ben died and continued to support Conrad when he was announced third. Jax was more angry and disappointed with himself rather than Conrad when he became third.

Louis Martin-Rovet (Friendly): When Jax heard about Louis using LARPing as a training method he had to go out and watch them make a fool of themselves. However, Jax found that he enjoyed watching them and would even yell out suggestions when someone seemed lost. Watching and being impressed with Louis, Jax finally asked Louis about teaming up on Roman Cleirigh and Arthur Milligan, which Louis agreed to. They’ve been working together for the past few months but have yet to form a friendship bond outside of work.

Hanna Moore (Friendly): Jax first met Hanna 5 years ago when she first joined the pack but they never really talked or met again until she became 2nd of SCOOBY. She usually gets Helo to back down whenever he is gunning for Jax and she has taken to sitting next to him while watching Louis’ team LARP. 

Maxine Vanes (Friendly): Jax has done a lot to upset Max as pack liaison and Max has always let him know her exact thoughts about him, the situation and his recklessness. She has never sugarcoated how she felt about cleaning up his messes or her feelings in general towards him. Jax always knew what he was getting and what to expect when he went to her. Max was one of his first targets to show that he was trying to change. While many others refuse to see his growth, Max surprisingly has responded well and they’re even on friendly terms.

Henry Dean (Friendly): Henry has been running weapons for BOND for the entire time Jax has been on the team. He is the one who initially got him suited up for his first mission, and helped him find his favorite gun. He has always wondered why Henry isn’t out in the field, and when he’s asked he receives vague answers. He’s the only person that Jax trusts to have his supplies ready and working before a massive trip, whether it’s overseas or just around the country. 

Hostile Connections:

Dakota English (Dislike): Jax knows he was once rash and extremely reckless and has done his best to change but Dakota believes that no one can change. Jax has been harassassed and called a fake multiple times. This has only become worse after Jax brought up taking West off of BOND because of his drug problems. Jax is trying not to let it get to him but he is slowly losing his nerves with Dakota.

Arthur Milligan (Target): Arthur has been a target for years. Jax has gone deep undercover and disappeared for days following Arthur but can never get much information on him. Louis and Jax have teamed up, following Arthur to Roman Cleirigh’s house and watching them from there to gain more information. 

Churchill Darling (Target): Church and Jax have been playing a cat and mouse game for years. Church is constantly taunting Jax and changing faces as fluently as he changes clothing. Jax found out that Church had stolen a local cat shifter's face which became a whole ordeal. They thought there must have been rules about stealing local faces since it had never been done before. That find had changed the game and Jim quickly implemented other forms of training tactics. 

Sirius Cobic (New Target): Sirius has one known shift that he uses as the Chief of Police and SKIN has been having trouble finding out more information about him. Jax is sure he must have a witch or warlock teleporting him places because his vehicle and living situation has remained unknown after years. Jax is sure if he can bring Jim something back about Sirius maybe that will earn him a favor. 

Helo Adama (Dislike): Helo and Jax never got along and always clashed with one another. Helo has always had a natural ability with academics, which he loved to flaunt. Jax was behind initially when starting school, due to running away from home, and was always more of a hands on learner anyway. These two facts lead to him being a B average student, which was something Helo enjoyed rubbing in his face when possible. They’ve never grown to get along, and will even bicker in Team meetings if not stopped. 

Pets:

None

[fasterthanmydemons]

I love how you write Pietro as being respectful towards women yet still kind of a womanizer or "ladies man", I totally see him as someone who would run into a wall (and get really hurt in the process) because he just turns his head when he sees a lady and he stops paying attention. In an AU where he lives, how would his relationship with the Marvel ladies be? Nat, Gamora, Mantis, Nakia, Carol, Valkyrie, Hope, etc, would he flirt with any of them? Do you have any crack ships with Pietro?

{out of breath} So... *sigh* Yeah, I can feel a rant coming on. A good one, but... probably a lot more than you ever asked for haha. I just haven’t really ever put down all my headcanons regarding Pietro’s treatment of women, how he views male and female genders and gender roles, and how his upbringing shaped those views... so Imma use this opportunity to do that, heh. I’ll bring Wanda into this too because it matters. Under a cute because loooong. XD

So... for the twins’ upbringing, culture, and religion, I combined their MCU and comic backgrounds, and used a mix of Romani culture, Judaism, Paganism, and sort of a very traditional and old school upbringing as far as living a simple life without much technology early on. They were adopted but never knew, and their adopted parents were Romani with regard to culture. As children they lived in a very rural village in the fictional country of Transia where there was no TV, no cell phones, no internet, no computers... it was farms and animals and forests and general stores that accepted trades instead of money. So they lived a very simple life.

This simple life was very much about loyalty to family, protecting those you loved, and respecting others, however it was at times misguided. Pietro especially was raised with a healthy dose of sexism, which is difficult to say since his father had only the best of intentions and always treated women well, yet nevertheless what he taught Pietro was definitely sexist. From a very young age, he was taught by his father that men are the strong ones. They’re the protectors. Women should be loved, adored, valued, and taken care of. That was the man’s role, to take care of and protect his family, especially the women. This is one of the roots of Pietro being so protective of Wanda, because he felt like that was his role and duty in life, to protect the women who mattered most to him. Wanda, on the other hand, was expected to help her mother with things like cooking and cleaning and taking care of the animals. As nice and chivalrous as most of this sounds, it’s imposing very specific gender roles for both men and women on impressionable children.

“Men are the strong ones,” was an idea that Pietro was taught as a child that continues to hurt him into adulthood. Strength in this case is both physical and emotional, but it’s very skewed towards traditional (and not necessarily good) gender roles. His father taught him that men don’t cry. They don’t show emotion. They never need help. They never get scared or sad. They need to be the strength of the family, because the women are the emotional ones. They can’t withstand things the way men can, so men need to be strong for them. And not only was Pietro taught this but Wanda was as well... so she at an early age learned that she was predisposed to being very emotional, won’t be able to handle herself at times, and needs to look to men for strength. Again, this is the beginnings of their emotional co-dependency, even before any traumatic events occurred to them.

This was incredibly damaging to the twins’ emotional development. Wanda grew up thinking that she had some kind of inherent “female fragility,” and Pietro grew up with the immense pressure to always be solid, unbothered, and unshakable. The reality is... that Wanda is stronger than Pietro emotionally but doesn’t realize it unfortunately until after she loses her brother and doesn’t have someone close to her to lean on all the time. And Pietro is more emotionally fragile but has spent his life hiding it, repressing it, being ashamed of it, and chastising himself anytime he sheds a tear or falters even slightly, instead of reaching out to others for help or advice.

So part of the reason why Pietro is very respectful of women is because that was how he was raised. Now, with regard to flirting, dating, sex, etc. (obviously only in verses where they are 18+ if they’re sexually active), the twins have internalized certain other aspects of their parents’ culture and those in the village they grew up in. Things like rape and infidelity were viewed very strongly, as serious and shameful as murder, and sometimes people who did those things were killed as punishment. Also, losing one’s virginity was in many ways a more meaningful and binding an event as marriage, unfortunately again, more so for the woman than the man, but still meaningful nonetheless. So the twins grew up taking sex very seriously and considering one’s loyalty, honesty, and fidelity to family and loved ones to be extremely important.

Because of this, Wanda waits a long time before losing her virginity (I headcanon to Vision, but after Age of Ultron and after she turns 18 it could be with another canon muse or OC as long as there is a strong emotional connection first). Wanda is not very interested in sex unless that strong connection is there, and is wary of it because of an assault that occurred when she was 6 years old. Pietro, on the other hand, doesn’t wait long after he turns 18 to lose his virginity, but although one-night stands are a thing with him, he does very much consider the mindsets of the women he’s with. The desire to just have sex for fun and not make too much of it has to be a mutual thing, or he won’t do it. If he gets the sense that the woman has feelings for him or wants more from him than that, then he won’t “play around” with her. Only if she’s just there to have fun the same as him will he indulge. This is because he doesn’t want to break hearts or play games with people’s emotions. Also, he will never have a one-night stand with a virgin (yes, he does ask each woman he’s with if she is one before anything happens). If, however, he has feelings for a woman and gets the sense that it’s mutual, he will want to talk seriously about it first before they jump into bed, because starting something serious with a woman is not something he can (or feels he should) then break off and regard as trivial later on. So he needs to be sure of his feelings and hers first.

Having said that, flirting is always free, heh. He sees no problems with flirting with anyone he wants (he even does this well before he turns 18), because it’s just words. As long as he is respectful and the woman seems to like the attention, it’s all good. If he gets the sense that she is bothered by it, he’ll stop and maybe apologize. This is a way not only for him to have fun and enjoy making women smile, but he also uses it as a way to uplift women who are sad, to compliment women who deserve it, and to generally spread some love for women, because as he learned as a boy, women are beautiful creatures who deserve to hear it all the time, heh. So he feels like he’s spreading positivity for women when he flirts with them, haha.

As teenagers and adults, Pietro is even more protective of Wanda than ever, because 1) it’s his duty, 2) he already failed her once when they were six, 3) he wants to protect Wanda’s virginity. It should be her choice who she gives it to, and if he sees any guys getting too close, too handsy, too suggestive, too aggressive around her, he will come between them and her. It’s interesting that he treats his own virginity so casually, but his sister’s is a grand, special thing he feels he needs to protect at all costs.

Pietro manages to strike a good balance between being very outgoing and flirty and also being very respectful and considerate with women. Wanda, on the other hand, never really learns how to talk to or relate to men because her brother is always coming between her and them. She also worries about her brother’s flirting because she doesn’t want to see him turn into someone who is too morally loose with himself, since she knows what can happen to people who commit things like infidelity. Sometimes she will comment on his flirting and imply that she looks down on the practice, as she did in one of the deleted scenes from Ultron.

Okay, those are all my headcanons on that subject, heh. And yes, you’re right, Pietro is very distracted by beautiful ladies. He is straighter than straight with regard to sexual orientation, he has a high libido, and he has a lot of energy. This... results in him noticing women and running into walls. It’s sad but it’s cute, haha.

In AUs where he survives Ultron, Pietro’s ideas of gender roles for women would be greatly challenged by any or all of the women you mentioned up there. But... Pietro is a feminist, he just doesn’t know it yet, haha. So even though he was raised with these traditional and sexist views of women, he genuinely likes women and wants good things for them. Seeing them in positions of power, whether physically, mentally, or politically, would be strange to him but not at all unwelcome. I think he would be impressed with that, drawn to it, amazed by it, and would cheer them on. Good for them, heh. Honestly, it would be something that would fascinate him, a women in a position or doing things that a man would normally do. “Normally,” of course, as seen through the eyes of someone with a sheltered and limited upbringing. I think all of the women you mentioned would be respected by Pietro, some of them would become friends, and some would become people to have friendly competitions with, like Nat, Carol, Valkyrie, or Nakia for example.

The only one I think he would view differently is Mantis. She’s very tiny, very cute, and can often come across, at least with her body language, as being timid or scared. I think she would attract Pietro’s protective instincts, and he would seek to take care of her much in the way he takes care of Wanda. Wanda is very powerful as well and yet Pietro feels protective towards her. I think Mantis would evoke the same feelings in Pietro, and if anyone messed with her (or made her cry... oh boy, heh), it would make him angry and he would immediately come to her defense. Beyond that, though, I think he and Mantis have the potential to become good friends. He would want to make her laugh and smile, especially if she was sad about something.

Hmm... crackships... Well, I don’t know if this is a crackship, really, but I always kindof headcanoned that if Pietro spent any kind of prolonged time with Carol that he would want to compete with her. Like a “let’s see who’s best” kindof deal. She’s very strong physically, both normally and because of her powers, and Pietro would be interested in seeing how he measures up to her. I can see him having a lot of fun with that. And.... again, I don’t know if this counts as a crackship, but it’s also canon in my interpretation of Pietro that he develops a crush on Natasha, heh. He finds her very attractive physically and her whole attitude and swagger is right up his alley. Now... I don’t see it very reciprocated, because he’s a bit too young for Natasha and I’m not sure he’s her type, but at least on Pietro’s end, there would be some crushing going on. XD

I hope that answered everything! And probably a lot you didn’t need to know about, haha. But thanks for sending this in! It was good for me to get all of this down somewhere. =)

[nlovendwar]

( dacre montgomery, 32, male, he/him ) speaking of the bardet crime family, there goes antonello lucchese. i’ve heard that the heterosexual scorpio works underground as an advisor, but that’s all stuff of rumors. however, the fact that they’re notoriously diligent and imaginative as well as impulsive and perverted doesn’t bode well for their rep. sharpened cutlery sliding between perfectly white teeth, the stench of pomade and tom ford, billowing smoke from a peach flavored cigar. ( bobby, 23, cst, they/them )

**tw: **implied attempted murder, child abuse, abandonment; mental illness & torture mention

First name: Antonello

Middle name(s): Giuseppe 

Surname: Lucchese

Age: Thirty-two

Date of birth: November 19th

Sexuality: Straight (?)

Relationship status: Divorced

Nationality: Italian American

| TRAITS OF VOICE |

Languages known: English, Italian, French, German

Style of speaking: Politically Incorrect

| PHYSICAL APPEARANCE |

Height: 5'11

Weight: 191 lbs

Eye color: Light blue

Hair color: Dark brown

Hairstyle: Typically short, feathered/layered

Distinguishing features: Physique/smile

Build of body: Muscular/stout

Tattoos: None

Piercings: Earlobe

Typical clothing: Business casual, button-downs/linen pants and vintage suits

Is seen by others as: Loud, intimidating, confrontational

| PERSONALITY |

Aesthetic: “ Did you guys come by? “

Likes: Winning, music, Friedrich Nietzsche, indulgence, working out, and reading

Dislikes: Birds, uncertainty, anything grape flavored, waiting, swimming in open water/the ocean

Education: High school degree

Fears: Heights, dying alone

Personal goals: To accept/love himself, to bring honor back to his family name

General attitude: Quiet, reserved, snarky

Religious values: Raised Roman Catholic but considers himself agnostic and a vitalist

General intelligence: Somewhat above average

General sociability: Average to below average

| HEALTH |

Illnesses (if any): Traumatized, most likely very depressed, bat shit crazy and probably a bit of a sociopath, but refuses to see a Dr./Therapist

Allergies (if any): Cats, amoxicillin/penicillin

Sleeping habits: Sleeps 3-4 hours normally, gets up early and stays up late, is sometimes up for days

Energy level: Moderate, to low

Eating habits: Eats more than three times a day, mostly pasta, bread, and sweets

Memory: Fair and remembers faces well but tends to repress quite a bit from his life/childhood, under certain circumstances it is poor

Any unhealthy habits: Overspending, binge eating, smoking, not getting enough rest, binge drinking, uses recreational drugs daily

| HISTORY |

Birth country: United States

Hometown: Crown Heights, Brooklyn

History of family: He doesn’t remember much from his childhood other than he never really had a mother and father, but figures he might have gotten luckier not having them around. Apparently, his mother worked numerous jobs to keep a roof over their heads for years, dealing with the constant absence of his father until it became too much to deal with. Then, at just the fragile age of three and four years old, Amy and Antonello Lucchese were carted off to Crown Heights, New York to permanently stay with a mixed family of uncles, cousins, and loving grandparents. Almost all the surviving members of the Lucchese crime family in a three-bedroom apartment. 

Most of their wives had passed away or left them by the time they'd arrived, so it was a lot like growing up in a dingy old bar but, both children grew up and learned quickly, from their mistakes. Learned to use them to their advantage, but every once in a while there would be unnecessary punishments, overdramatic arguments, dinners missed and uneasy, awkward mornings, but. It was more than what anyone else could have given them, so they were grateful nonetheless.

Everything changed drastically for Antonello when he entered the fifth grade. Things became easier to deal with at home, but not exactly in the way anyone had expected. Especially not his grandmother. He’d always clung to her for guidance, support, and love but the moment the family exposed the young heart to their lifestyle, he broke away and heedlessly dove in. 

But as the years passed, most relatives and himself included, were absolutely convinced that he was made for it, and it was made for him. It was in his blood after all, but a large number of them also knew it marked the end of his innocence, and the beginning of ruthless trek towards a twisted, egotistical version of manhood and success.

In the span of six years, he’d become the youngest in the family to rise through the ranks in a proud, composed fashion and landed a spot right beneath his grandfather. He was creative, intelligent and respectful in a way that the elders of the Italian mob began to appreciate more than the efforts of his own immediate family, so soon after Anton realized the long list of dead or incarcerated relatives were mostly rats, scumbags, and hypocrites, coincidentally, he was asked to leave.

Then while out at the local bowling alley, his cousins spotted one of his better friends groping his girlfriend. He didn’t even make it twenty-four hours after his grandmother had broken the news of the heartless eviction, and the younger boy spent almost two weeks in the hospital. Luckily, her grandson wasn’t around long enough to suffer any harsh consequences, or god forbid a life sentence. But one punishment that should have been totally unrelated, would slowly begin to ruin his life.

Out of pure fear of her older brother and grandparents, Amy decided to finish her high school career at home and cut all ties with him. Shortly after the devastating blow, a family friend was contacted and found a job and apartment available in Amiens, Louisiana.

Present: Antonello has worked for the Bardet family for fifteen years and was promoted to an advisory position in 2015. He’s recently divorced, lives alone and prefers a conventional lifestyle even though he loves what he does. 

| RELATIONSHIPS |

Parents: Bill & Teresa Lucchese

Siblings: Amy Lucchese

Enemies: Tbd

Children: None (that he knows of)

Friends: Moved around too much as a child to have a stable set of friends, tbd

Best friend(s): Tbd

Important friends/relatives: Tbd

Love interest (if there is one): Tbd

| COMBAT |

Peaceful or violent: Unpredictable

Weapon (if applicable): Gun, golf club, curling iron, hands

| OTHERS |

Occupation: Advisor

Favorite types of food: Anything you put in front of him

Favorite types of drink: Water, wine and Ski soda

Hobbies/past times: Running, swimming, cooking, fencing, journaling, marksmanship, knife throwing, reading, avid glass collector and tobacco aficionado

Guilty pleasures: An old soul, loves red wine, Telenovelas, listening to Nina Simone, drag queens, and torture

Quirks: Has a really loud sneeze and goes into sneeze fits, likes to go on midnight shopping trips, gets too emotionally attached to people that shouldn’t matter, always carries a tiny notebook with him, has to move things around in a certain pattern before going to sleep, bruises super easily, writes and eats with his left hand but is right hand dominant, likes to memorize numbers instead of saving contacts in his phone, gets homesick very easily, brushes his teeth five times a day, likes to stay off social media, makes lists of random things, gets his heart broken too often, only writes in cursive, holds grudges like no other, and has the attitude and approach of a working-class sixty-year-old man that’s slowly losing his shit

Pet peeves: Being ignored, interrupted, knuckle cracking, people eating with their mouths open

Pets: A rottweiler named Jinn 

Talents: Can play piano, coronet, drums, braid hair and relocate an entire family in less than 48 hours

Favorite colors: Black, earth and neutral tones

Favorite types of music: Classical/jazz/r&b

Strengths: Efficient, observant, protective, loyal, brave, affectionate, poised, fair, chivalrous, playful, honest

Weaknesses: Intolerant, negative, stubborn, short-tempered, impatient, arrogant, dominant, cold, hopeless romantic, aggressive, blunt, reclusive, paranoid

| WCS |

I’m up for anything, from vengeful family members ( either directed at the Bardet family or his, it doesn't matter. ) to crazy ex-girlfriends, a tiny group of faithful, likeminded friends, and whatever else.

[keepermcge]

CHARACTER SHEET repost. do not reblog.

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

FULL NAME. Lann Farna NICKNAME. None/or Dummy which just makes me wanna cry, so I’ll think none. He deserves a cute nickname! GENDER. Male HEIGHT. 5′6 AGE. 15 (Mentally and physically) ZODIAC. Taurus SPOKEN LANGUAGES. After much debate with myself, Grymorian (English/Japanese)

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR. Strawberry Blond, leans more towards the blond side than red, especially in the light.

EYE COLOR. Deep blue more on the dark side, but not so dark to the point where you can’t tell they are blue, like hair appears lighter in the sun.    

SKIN TONE. Fair creamy light skin, although it takes a sickly pale form often due to him overworking himself.        

BODY TYPE. Thin, slim and lithe, although his cheeks unlike the rest hold some chubbiness of a childlike appearance. While thin, bones do not really stick out a lot minus around the collarbone, sternum and wrists and elbows.  

ACCENT. When not in Grymoire his voice probably sound a tad bit different from most, although not enough to pinpoint an exact accent it holds a strangeness, like Grymoire itself, that can’t quite be placed.      

VOICE. I imagine my Lann’s voice to be more like the Japanese voice, a little more on the high end due to his childlike nature, but a little more on the deep side when he’s angry or sad, although when crying it raises in an octave, also tending to be more in the high side when panicking. Regardless of pitch though, it tends to hold a general cheeriness and energy that sometimes is fabricated, although when helping and holding gratitude it can hold more of a soft tone, not like usual energy. When confused or worried, this energy tends to either drop or increase depending on the situation and like eyes that reflect how he feels his voice will give away how worried he is ect.

DOMINANT HAND. Left Hand.

POSTURE. Usually pretty lax, although he doesn’t slouch by any means, he doesn’t usually stand full straight, letting his shoulders stay dropped, unless in dire situations where in panic or fear he will straighten up completely, the opposite for if he is trying to hide. Lann will make himself smaller and will more so slouch when he is being yelled at. When at fault he won’t hide as much, but if he is not at all at fault he will genuinely full on sink as low as he can as a defense measure.      

SCARS. A light mark on his left wrist from when Brandelis grabbed his arm, other small nicks here and there from fighting, although not a scar, left hands fingertips hold a more red hue due to casting a large amount of fire spells.      

TATTOOS. None.

BIRTHMARKS. Dark Markings that run along his left arm.

MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S). The Markings on his left arm, his hair both in color and style, and his eyes.

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

PLACE OF BIRTH. Somewhere in Nine Wood Hills, possibly Lusse’s home.   HOMETOWN. Nine Wood Hills.   BIRTH WEIGHT. N/A BIRTH HEIGHT. N/A   MANNER OF BIRTH.

FIRST WORDS. Sis. Because imagine Lusse and Rorrik teaching him a bunch of basic words at the same time; Mom, Dad, Yellow, Dog, but they add in that one as well considering they are twins, and then they both wait in anticipation for the usual, will it be Mom or will it be Dad first… only for Lann to crawl over to his sister and say Sis.

SIBLINGS. Reynn Farna (Blood Related Older Twin Sister), Wyn Farna (Non Blood Related Older Sister) PARENTS. Lusse Farna (Mother) Rorrik Farna (Father and imma assume he took the last name cuz)

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. While generally pretty involved when he was really little, they both became rather busy more and more overtime, starting from as early as his toddler years, leading him to become more clingy to his sister, the only real family he had around, this as an end result despite their father’s attempts made Lann strive to help his Mother, so she would no longer be ill, resulting in a disaster that would only end up damaging his mental state. It’s not that they were bad people or parents, they loved their children, but due to a lack of them never being around, a general lack of friends and even his sister hanging out with Wyn more than him, Lann was left alone and lonely in solitude most his childhood. They didn’t have much involvement at all, although he retains his Mother’s kind and loving nature.

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION. Eventually something like a Barista like he once was in their fake Nine Wood Hills. CURRENT RESIDENCE.  Unknown/Nine Wood Hills (Unknown if we go with Canon; Nine Wood Hills If we’re going with most threads things on my blog that assume he ends up back in Grymoire eventually AU style.)

CLOSE FRIENDS. (Too many to list, but here are some, plus some he’s not nec close friends with, but feels a deep connection to) Yuffie, Serafie, Princess Sarah, Reynn, Vincent, Runa, Wyn, Tama, Bartz, Tea Girl.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS. Single   FINANCIAL STATUS. Low/Middle (Have you seen Chocolatte’s prices? Plus the little fact of Reynn not letting him hold onto any of their Gil.) DRIVER’S LICENSE. None.   CRIMINAL RECORD. None.   VICES. None really.  

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION. Pansexual. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION. Panromantic/Demiromantic PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE. Submissive |  Dominant  |  Switch. PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE. Submissive  |  Dominant |  Switch.

LIBIDO. None really. Yes, he is a 15 year old boy, but he’s also innocent and was mostly left alone in childhood or bullied, later on his only company being family and friends, plus generally being picked on by his sister, and later other females makes him subconsciously have a preference to those of the same sex versus the opposite sex of females who picked on him most, plus the people of Grymoire are Lilikin’s also, leaving him no opportunity to ever really awaken such a thing.

TURN ON’S. I will think this as more emotional things in partners. He’s not picky, but someone showing genuine kindness is one.

TURN OFF’S. Although, he’s not mentally aware of this himself, deep down anyone who puts the blame on him for everything, generally degrades him all the time.    

LOVE LANGUAGE. Words of Affirmation

RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES. He will put all of his partners needs before his own, would be incredibly loyal, and always caring and kind no matter how he is treated in turn.

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG. X

HOBBIES TO PASS TIME. Napping, Baking, Playing Video Games, Drawing, Making little arts and crafts projects for others, reading Comic Books, Watching Movies, Helping others, Playing Board Games.

MENTAL ILLNESSES. PTSD (Flashbacks, Panic Attacks, Some memories still are blocked out, Nightmares and Insomnia at times) Anxiety.

PHYSICAL ILLNESSES. N/A

PHOBIAS. Athazagoraphobia (The fear of being forgotten, ignored, or abandoned.) Autophobia (Fear of being alone or of oneself) Arachnephobia (Fear of spiders) Atychiphobia (Fear of failure) Eremophobia (Fear of being oneself or of loneliness) Isolophobia (Fear of solitude, being alone) Poinephobia (Fear of punishment) Sexophobia (Fear of the opposite sex) Thalassophobia (Fear of the ocean) Potamophobia (Fear of rivers or running water)

SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL. He has little, the only confidence coming from abilities that aren’t even his alone that he inherited, and from a fake world when it comes to the hobby of making coffee. Although it will occasionally spark upward with a success in a hobby, be it beating a level in a game or baking something right, it won’t stay high for long. He feels little self worth, or respect for himself because of the amount of self loathing he feels towards himself.

VULNERABILITIES. He’s extremely emotional, gullible, and likes to see the good in everyone making him an easy target to take advantage of, he’s also kind and always wants to help, leaning to the same thing of making him an easy target.