#how many times do you think of the roman empire is also such a bullshit way of gendering subjects AGAIN

[hellcatsandcars]

i don't get the "how many times do you think of the roman empire" trend because i've been hyperfixated on history since i was six. i think about it the same amount as i think about pre-colombian civilisations and the paleoproterozoic era. which is admittedly an insane amount, but it's my autism and i get to pick the music

[fannyyann]

Hey, hope you're doing okay. I hope you don't mind me asking, but I am rather new to the mattdrai fandom and I couldn't help but wonder:

Was Matthew really as bad as a lot of fic lead to believe in his earlier hockey years in Calgary? And was he really disliked in the room - where there rumours like that? So many fics build on this premise, and seeing him now in Florida and hearing all the nice things his teammates say about him and seeing the things he does himself and the insane good hockey he plays... it's hard to believe.

It's so strange also that it's so rarely mentioned that Leon was the one to be sent down to the minors, not Matthew.

Plus what I don't get: matthew is a lot hotter than Leon? why is it always told like Leon is the hottest dude on earth while Matthew is nothing? comparing early pics and pics from now... it's just not true? Leon looks good, a bit bland IMO, but Matthew is and was just hot in a very unique and special way. maybe because he isn't that bland generic good looking Leon is? But good looking in a special way? so that got a lot longer than I thought it would, hope you don't mind the ask.

i don't mind you asking at all! this is basically my roman empire so MY apologies if this gets unwieldy but i have FEELINGS about matthew's early fic portrayal lmao

in his six years on the flames, matthew was always one of the top five scorers.

his rookie year, he was sixth in rookie scoring

the season he was picked for his first ASG, the flames were 16th in the league at the time all star rosters were announced and matthew was their top scorer.

so it's not like he was the best player from a bottom of the league team or going because he was the home town boy, he was a playoff team's best player (both at the asg break and when the season was eventually suspended because of covid).

and even in his career worst year (2020-2022), he ended the year as their third best scorer and only six points behind johnny (the leader). and as one of calgary's beat reporters said in his end of the year review, Matthew was "good, but not quite as good as the Flames needed him to be."

so i've never really understood why people were portraying him like that either and still haven't figure out if most of it was unreliable narrator kind of stuff or if some authors actually thought he was bad before he had his breakout season, but it doesn't reflect reality.

as for him being disliked in calgary, that all stems from jake muzzin flipping the puck at him, and the subsequent players only meeting that took place after it, in which matthew allegedly told the team he was upset they didn't join him in the scrum after and he was then told him it can't be a riot every night.

before that there were never any rumors that i'm aware of that he was unliked in the room, and in 2019 gio, who most people tend to think is the one who told matthew to tone it down, said this about another players only meeting:

so while the 2021 players only meeting was a story because matthew wasn't playing like his usual self afterward, i've never thought it was indicative of him not being liked by his teammates. and honestly, you have to take it all with a grain of salt anyway because while guys obviously bullshit the media, at the practice after the players only meeting guys talked about how there was a general lack of emotion, and how they came out there trying to have fun with each other and put it behind them, and in the postgame the next night, gio specifically sites getting into scrums and mixing it up when asked how much more emotion they played with in that win compared to earlier losses, so if mixing it up was good the very next night, the math doesn't quite add up, yk?

but johnny did confirm in his spittin chiclets appearance about two weeks after the muzzin incident that matthew was pissed after they left him out to dry that night, and when asked about matthew's struggles that season darryl sutter said matthew needed to, and would, get back to playing to his identity, so the whole cause and effect of the muzzin incident on matthew's play that season isn't completely unfounded, but i do think multiple guys saying the team needed to play with more emotion, johnny saying in the chiclets episode that the guys skating off didn't find out about the puck flip until they saw it on sportsnet and saying he felt bad about it, and the new coach coming in and getting matthew to play back to his style shows that it wasn't as personal as it was made out to be.

anyway, the flames may not have be as tight knit as the panthers are, but matthew had his people there. he's bffs with hanifin and his friendship with sam bennett is part of what drew him to florida. johnny always says great things about him, blake coleman called him the heartbeat of the team, and was such an important voice in the room that the flames suffered when he and gudbranson were no longer around to tell sutter to chill the fuck out when he was being too hard on guys in the room.

he probably wasn't close with every teammate, most people aren't friends with all their coworkers, but he wasn't some sort of loner in that locker room.

as for the looks, that's all down to personal preference. leon is definitely very conventionally attractive and while matthew has definitely glowed up in the last few seasons, he was by no means ugly. i wouldn't even say he's really unconventionally attractive either. he's got a good face and was a cute teen and people who are like "oh no i find matthew tkachuk attractive now" have literally never made sense to me. but again! personal preference and all that.

again, my apologies if you weren't looking for THIS MUCH of an answer to your question but this isn't even all the sources i pulled up when i first got this ask so i did TRY to keep it short lol

[stirringwinds]

Hi! I saw some of your hws China thoughts lately and they were really fun to read, it's always especially interesting to see takes from other sino related people 😆 Do you think Manchu(ria) would be a separate figure (from Wang Yao) during the Qing dynasty, or do you think the Jurchen tribes would've just been absorbed along the way? People always have such different takes on it so I'm curious to know your thoughts.

hey, thanks for this question! :-) i do enjoy thinking about yao's characterisation, even more so in relation to other nations. this is my view of it:

i'm personally inclined to see manchuria as a separate personification during the qing dynasty (though i admittedly haven't developed a detailed idea of their character/personality). i've previously written scenes in the aftermath of the opium wars where yao was at the signing of the treaty of nanking (for example)—but i see it as a situation where yao is rather being ordered around by manchuria (and the humans think yao is a qing official). my thought process is that while the manchu rulers may have adopted certain aspects of han chinese culture to bolster their legitimacy with the wider population, they still held real power, retained certain customs, influenced chinese dressing (the cheongsam) and even tried imposing some of their cultural norms on the entire population. the queue hairstyle for men, and less successfully, the attempt to ban foot-binding for women (that's one thing where i'm "really? you guys should've already cut that bullshit out centuries ago" @ the ancestors 😔). so, to me this is very far from a situation where a nation dies.

in my view of chinese history, there have been times when yao, as an empire, (like rome or persia) has ended or absorbed other nations. the southwards expansion of the han dynasty, for example: the disappearance of the "baiyue" tribes, through conquest, settlers and sinicisation (the totality of that cultural conquest always struck me—that we don't even know what they called themselves today). the conquest of vietnam is one instance where that didn't happen—and even more so for qing china, where manchuria is the one calling the shots. and i don't see a nation adopting some aspects of another nation's culture = death precisely because all cultures change. there's that joke classicists have made about "did the romans conquer greece, or did the greeks conquer rome?" given how much they adopted greek culture aesthetics but we wouldn't say "the romans were not a distinct cultural entity" either. naturally, there are big differences between the qing and roman empires, but most empires weren't above adopting some customs of those they conquered—it's indeed often how successful incorporation worked.

it's also about characterisation and narrative choices for me too; imo yao saw the opium wars as a doubled humiliation. being subject to the "western barbarians"—while being ruled by other "barbarians"; yao's pride is one thing that is stubborn, and he'll cling to the shreds of it. my immediate thought is that if manchuria isn't a separate character, a lot of this narrative loses the force; when it comes to how i'd translate the history into interactions between all these eldritch beings. this is especially when i'm thinking of the subsequent anti-qing movements; and how folks like sun yat-sen laid the blame for china's downfall at the hands of western empires on the manchu ruling dynasty and even characterised them as a colonial force ultimately hobbling china's progress (even if of course, irl history is more complex and there were manchu officials/figures who supported republicanism and the end of the regime). so in this context, to me it's best represented as a multi-layered power struggle between yao, manchuria and of course all the other western nations.

so overall, while history can always be interpreted and translated into hetalia many ways, and i wouldn't say there's a definitive "right" or "wrong" criteria when translating it into whether a hetalia personification dies or endures— personally, it makes the most sense for me if manchuria is a separate character during this era for all the abovementioned reasons. nations after all, aren't states, with all that strict international legal criteria about what a "legitimate" state is—but imagined communities. hetalia personifications are that idea extended further— given flesh and incarnated by the dreams, beliefs and imagination of humans: they're fluid and ambiguous—but also resilient, because it's not so easy to kill an idea.

[salora-rainriver]

Its really funny and weird how, of all the european pagan mythologies, greek is the one white ppl know the most of by far.

Like, of course it makes sense, greco-romans were hailed as the peak of civilization by white european elites at least like, twice in history, but it’s still really wild like. We’ll know the names of every olympian and what exactly their deal is, know like 20 different random greek monsters who only appeared in like One Story,

but then u ask abt the british isles, site of a people who would eventually colonize the fucking world, and its like “uhhhhhh theres morrigan? Also some fairies. Is morrigan a fairy? I think there were some tree worshippers. Some dudes put blue paint on their body and had big shields i think?” and a book’s gonna claim there was an irish potato god and you’re going to believe them bcs you’ll be so wrapped up in the potato famine thing that you’ll forget potatos were IMPORTED FROM THE ANDES MOUNTAINS.

And then like folks will be familiar with like 4 norse gods maybe 5, know some words like asgard and ragnarok, but ask them who fenrir is and theyll be like “Is he important?”

Also if you ask them about germanic mythos they will draw a fucking blank bcs even tho the general public are familiar with at least a few germanic mythos things, we completely stripped out the germanic origins from them when we called them generic “fairy tales.” Same for france and the iberian penninsula i think. Also dont ask me which fairy tales come from where bcs i am a prime example of this, i do not fucking know, i just vaguely remember that they came from certain places and then spread from there.

Oh And absolutely FORGET about anything east of germany fucking forget about it. The slavic regions have a rich mythos and even ppl who are pretty knowledgable abt the stuff i said above won’t know shit about it, case in point, me! Go ahead! I know a bunch abt celtic stuff and norse stuff and a lill bit of german stuff, but ask me to bring up ONE slavic story! The only thing my brain is cookin up is that one about the lindwurm, and even that one i cant remember if its actually slavic!

Now Think abt how many white people claim heritage from places in europe that arent greece and italy. Think about how little those same ppl know abt their ancestor’s prechristian stories and beliefs. Im hispanic i know like one thing abt pre-christian spain and its that they had a funny word for fairies (i don’t even remember the name!), just as an example. Like isnt that fucking insane? You’d think a buncha colonizing douches competing with each other to take over the world would put a bit more effort into educating ppl abt the ancestral stories that set these guys apart from each other, but no, not really. And like dont get me wrong its not like this doesnt make sense. It does. The roman empire and later christianity overtook like all these myriad cultures years before colonialism and white supremacy was even a pipe dream, to say nothing about the internal strife that happened in the iberian peninsula and the british isles.

But at the same time, in recent years there’s been massive pushes to recover this lost culture (especially in those british isles places that arent england), and even with this effort, so much is unknown to a fuckton of people who, i repeat, claim heritage from these places. (In fact, one of those efforts probably set us back bcs it got caught up in bullshit ideology and mysticism and grabbed stuff from totally different people to support a bullshit point. Looking at you, nazis.) and it’s just kind of insane. Overall this is just a peak example to me of the hollowness and artificiality of the concept of whiteness. The master race can’t even remember their own ancestors, and ancient history had to be wiped away or made generic in order to support the notion that these people have something in common, and thus, something setting them apart from everyone else.

[mchiti]

You said: "Like imagine talking about purity for european languages who were born out of a very unstable, poor in lexicon and grammar latin spoken by "commoners". I'm very interested in knowing more about this if you would like to share. I've studied latin too in school but I never really thought of how romance languages derived from latin.

Hi anon! I'll put it under cut so I don't annoy my moots

The fact is the latin they teach you at school is only literary latin from the upper class of roman society framed in a certain moment in time [II century B.C. - I century A.D.]. That's why people always have this idea of latin as a very static language, also because of course you study a language that it's not spoken anymore. But latin was pretty much real and spoken for a whole millenium, and when a language is spoken is bound to change over the span of centuries: it's inevitable, and change is made by speakers themselves.

So for instance one example I think is very fun is the latin word for "horse" -> equus. Equus didn't continue in ANY romance language. It's "cavallo" in italian, "cheval" in french, "caballo" in spanish. Yet, you do have derived words from equus: you even have it in english! "equestrian" comes from the latin equus, though it has nothing to do with the main word, horse. Same in romance languages, "equestrian" has nothing to do with italian "cavallo". That's because many adjectives were literally made up by intellectuals over the centuries, to enrich romance languages and their lexicons, and they were made up from classical latin to make those languages "more dignified". Those adjectives even made into english which obviously didn't come from latin, another example is the adjective "lunatic" which comes from latin though it's different to the main word moon. Anyway, the main word for "horse" in italian, french, spanish etc evolved naturally from the latin word "caballus" - "caballus" is a word you won't find in the finest pieces of latin literature, because it wasn't the "horse" as we now intend, it wasn't the majestic animal rode by emperors in wars etc (that, as I said, was "equus"). caballus was literally a nag, the animal that helps men to plough the fields. So imagine: the empire fell down. People were progressively poorer, they lived off agriculture. Schools and institutions collapsed. That's all they knew, and they adapted the language to that over time.

another super HILARIOUS example. The word for "head" is "testa" in italian and "tete" in french right. Both don't come from the classical latin word "caput" (spanish in an exception here, with "cabo"). Those two words come from "TESTAM" instead. Testam had nothing to do with head, but it was literally a slang latin word. Literally it originally meant the "Earthenware vase". Because people used it as a joke (when you want to say someone is stupid, you call it a "earthenware vase" which is something we still do say here). So, over time, it became the italian/french word for head, to the point "caput" became rare.

That's why languages are made by people ultimately. People can complain what they want about "corruption" as that french lady was complaining about french being """tainted""" by arabic. Even french came out of "corruption" of latin [which I wouldn't even call it corruption, it was just a change]. The idea of purity doesn't belong to languages and is utter bullshit. Languages belong to people and they change with them, in the same way latin changed as european history went through major changes too.

[msfbgraves]

Does Daniel want kids/want to be a parent immediately after getting married in Knights and Pawns? Or would he rather wait, since he's still a teenager himself? Or do Omegas just instinctively want to have kids, as they're so nurturing and cuddly by nature? Or maybe because he's from such a religious, traditional family, it's "God's will"?

Which prompts me to ask: does Terry want children? Do Alphas have urges to have a family and take care of their family?

I do think in omegas, the desire to bond and have babies is innate - otherwise why did they develop as a sex? I think for them, having babies in much easier than for us ('betas'), they can have more, they want more, and the homemaker ideal that has to be taught to girls is something they gravitate towards instinctively.

That said, they are still people.

Daniel expects to have babies as soon as he's married; to him, that is as natural as expecting to get wet when you dive into the waves. It's not a question if he prefers to do it; he doesn't exactly prefer to breathe, either.

But though it is rather unpleasant, it isn't impossible for an omega to seclude themselves for a heat. Daniel is a bit of a late bloomer as ever so he hasn't been through that many heats, and he feels that he could have suffered through a few more to delay it a little longer. Indeed, some may feel he is a little too precocious to be entirely perfect as an omega, but again he is a mob baby he needs more wits about him than most. And I also feel that there is an entirely bullshit sexist thing going on with 'taking' an omega's earliest possible heat. So here's young Daniele LaRusso, who has had time develop a mind of his own, has even had a serious love of his own in Kumiko (Alphas don't actually mind that, they find the idea of it hot), but 'has not been out more than three months yet'; so very few heats alone. He may even have overestimated how much time his Pop would have allowed him to play around with potential suitors, but he's not wrong that the Don was taking several meetings at the time. (The earliest were going on when he was still in school; families are very interested in these rare potential mates). That practice is of course not innate - there is absolutely no reason to seclude omegas so the most powerful Alphas can have their pick. Biologically, omegas' greatest trick is that they can safely mate with all genders. But to be most succesful at baby rearing, they need time to devote themselves to that completely, so there is a slight biological advantage to mating with an Alpha, who will want to devote themselves to assuring their safety and wellbeing most strongly of all sexes. And that's why they have heats that only Alphas can satisfy. Still it's not necessary: after natural disasters, wars or other cataclysmic events, omegas have mated with betas and each other to keep their communities going. But I'm sure the Church has a whole 'Christ is the Alpha and omega, this is the most sacred union' - thing going on, definitely. * Also, I think in their world, the myth of the Sabine women is a about a group of mythical Roman Alphas coming upon territory that was mostly populated by betas and omegas and the reason those Sabines did not want to go back when a rescue was mounted was because they'd all got themselves knocked up and bitten be the 'superior' Alphas.

To come back to the lovely couple: Daniel is not the only one who's able to suppress his urges, Terry can do that as well. He's actually creepily good at it. They've already tried to honeytrap him with omegas before, because moreso than betas, omegas can get Alphas to calm tf down and stop being an idiot, but Terry's not as easily caught. But if Terry does anything, he's all in, and he will give in to all of his urges in full. So since he's married Daniel, he wants babies yesterday, and he is planning jobs for his grandchildren in his as yet to form empire. He needs as many children as he can feed for that, and though he will want them and Daniel safe, secure and comfortable, this will also need to be a strategic partnership between them.

*to go on an insane tangent: my view of alpha/beta/omega Christianity is that Christ was the Alpha and the omega, while Mary was a beta, thus forming the Holy Trinity.

[nebris]

In Which Her Prophet Expounds Upon Catastrophe Porn

~This 'rant' was prompted by a comment made on a post where I said, "…[R]emember we're an Open System. Coming and going is part of how we'll Spread The Word. None of this hiding out in the compound bullshit. That's for those who are waiting for Jesus or Hale-Bopp or what/who/fucking/ever to come and 'take them away'.

No End Times around here, babe. The Wheel keeps Turning and we have to do the Work ourselves, Blessed Be!!"

A friend asked, “And your plan to deal with a potential Climate Change end to the current Interglacial's stability and the utter collapse of the technological levels needed to make the Sisterhood viable is? The current Climate Catastrophe pretty much kills off contemporary society as we know if it even is a medium-range scenario, while your Sisterhood depends on a much higher level of technology which in turn means Climate Change must be averted which is now not likely….. “

I replied, “I suspect a pretty high level of tech will actually make the transition, but part of our game plan is the 'lifeboat' scenario and we'll be able to preserve a goodly amount of tech ourselves if it comes to that.

In addition, Stage Three of our desert community will be based upon this design. There are other elements, but it is best to keep those under wraps for the time being.”

I felt the need to expand upon all that, so here goes….

First, let me state up front that I believe that Climate Change is real and that it is fully coming upon us in the next quarter century or so.

I cannot say for certain if we caused it or if it is simply part of Mother's natural cycle of things. I strongly suspect it is a combination, that we pumped a batch of pollutants into an unstable climate system and then 'shit happened'.

I also believe that we cannot stop this process, and maybe not even ameliorate it. But I do believe we can ride it out. Some of us at least. Many are going to die. Most actually.

I know that's easy to say with equanimity from my comfy First World life, but there it is. I presently live in a double wide in a mobile home park on the far outskirts of the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area and I'll just have to settle for that level of 'cultural authenticity'. I sure the fuck ain't gonna move to a tent in Darfur and nether are any of y'all, so you can shut the fuck up!

While there are huge numbers of folks who are in full on denial about this, there are also a cluster of people, mostly educated white males, who seem to be actually looking forward to this. John Michael Greer writes very thoughtfully on the subject – which makes him all the more depressing - and does manage to conceal his feelings.

But my old summer camp counselor, Jim Kustsler? Fuck, dude, you can hear him whacking off as he preaches Collapse. I consider him the foremost purveyor of Catastrophe Porn, the Al Goldstein of The Collapse.

But this is just End Times for intellectual atheists and is steeped in the same type of Apocalyptic emotions, but comes from those educated white males who feel alienated from, and dis-empowered by, the monstrosity that is, if you'll pardon the phrase, Modern Civilization.

James Lovelock seems really the most sincere and authentic in this matter and his sadness is palpable. He may not think that we shall become extinct, but he can see the pain and suffering ahead, and to his great credit, it makes him weep.

I suspect I'll do some weeping myself, but I have been tasked with a Plan and need to limit the exercise of that particular emotional luxury. I have Work to do.

My own view is that Modern Civilization is not going to undergo a Total Collapse. Shit's gonna get Real Hairy, but I don't buy the End Times/Late Roman Empire paradigm. History does repeat itself, but never in the same way.

While the sheer size and complexity of Modern Civilization is part of the problem, it is also what will save our bacon, though maybe not bacon itself. There is massive informational redundancy built into the whole thing, so much so that wiping it all out is nigh impossible, short of an asteroid strike. bites tongue

Plus, this is not some Hollywood scenario. The so-called Collapse will happen over decades and will never be truly complete. Many parts of the whole will die off partially or totally, but other parts will survive nearly intact.

Things like The Road are just what I named above; Catastrophe Porn. You can watch them with popcorn or with lube, depending upon your proclivities.

Me, I don't watch them at all.

Cynical as a I am, I'm really one of those hopeful solution oriented mother fuckers, and if you have a problem with that, I'll shoot you in your fucking face and take all your stuff.

And so it is….

[obaewankenope]

'Goblins only existed because the France invaded, because written examples of Goblins only existed in that time' Cool, any sources or are we just gonna have it so that Tumblr makes shit up again, like the time we made up a Greek Goddess.

Well you could always use your brain cell and fingers in conjunction to Google goblins, read the sources yourself buuuuut that's too much to ask, naturally.

Anyway, I guess I'll do the work for you.

Any paragraph in a block quote is from external sources, like Wikipedia or reference sites. All references are at the bottom of this post under a readmore. Read them and weep, anon.

.

Goblins, folklore, devils, history of Jews in Europe, Not Fictional Tumblr Bullshit Sorry Not Sorry

The origins of goblin as a term, as a folklore creature, can be summed up below, with English records of the term goblin showing up in the 14th century and coming from earlier languages etc etc.

English goblin is first recorded in the 14th century and is probably from unattested Anglo-Norman *gobelin, [Hoad, 1993] similar to Old French gobelin, already attested around 1195 in Ambroise of Normandy's Guerre sainte, and to Medieval Latin gobelinus in Orderic Vitalis before 1141, [CNRTL: Du Cange et al, 1678] which was the name of a devil or daemon haunting the country around Évreux, Normandy. 

So, that's Wikipedia, yes, with the references there giving you the etymological origins of goblin, since you can't seem to search it up yourself. Now I'll give you the information about crusades in France, Jews in France at the time, and, of course, the fantastic fact that Jews existed looooong before goblins did. Aka a brief history of Jews in Europe. Enjoy.

Hellenistic Judaism, originating from Alexandria, was present throughout the Roman Empire even before the Jewish–Roman wars. Large numbers lived in Greece (including the Greek isles in the Aegean and Crete) as early as the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. The first recorded mention of Judaism in Greece dates from 300 to 250 BCE, on the island of Rhodes (The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, p. 3).

I think, good sir, we may now be sure Jews existed in Europe before many things did (which is kinda frickin obvious since Christianity is younger than it, showed up during Roman times, annnd had to spread across an existing population which, funnily enough, I learnt in primary school, tended to target and ostracise Jews as a result of precious Christianity spreading). But... You know, that whole "tumblr making shit up again" thing is waaaaay easier for you to believe than a two minute Google search.

Here's a big ol chunk of info with some references lobbed in which may help you understand just how extensive Jews were in Europe loooong before a bit of folklore was imagined by a French guy.

Persecution of Jews in Europe begins with the presence of Jews in regions that later became known as the lands of Latin Christendom (c. 8th century CE)[Cantor, 1993: Lewis & Wigen, 1997: Davies, 1996]  and modern Europe [Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopaedia, 2007].  Not only were Jewish Christians persecuted according to the New Testament, but also as a matter of historical fact anti-Jewish pogroms occurred not only in Jerusalem (325 CE), Persia (351 CE), Carthage (250 CE), Alexandria (415), but also in Italy (224 CE), Milan (379 CE) and Menorca (418CE), Antioch (489), Daphne-Antioch (506), Ravenna (519), amongst other places. Hostility between Christians and Jews grew over the generations under Roman sovereignty and beyond; eventually forced conversion, property confiscation, synagogue burning, expulsion, stake burning, enslavement and outlawing of Jews—even whole Jewish communities—occurred countless times in the lands of Latin Christendom [Laqueur, 2006, Grosser & Halperin, Grosser, Halperin, St. John, & Littell, 1979].

To fast forward to around the time goblin was introduced as a folklore creature (actually a name for a devil, not as a goblin™ yet) we jump to France, Crusades, and the Middle Ages. Like so.

Persecution of Jews in Europe increased in the High Middle Ages in the context of the Christian Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096), flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed; see German Crusade, 1096. In the Second Crusade, (1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions, including in 1290 the banishing of all Jews from the Kingdom of England by King Edward I with the Edict of Expulsion. In 1394, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France. Thousands more were deported from Austria in 1421. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland (Holocaust Center of United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh: Weinryb, 1973: Woodworth, ).

Sooooo... French crusades where Jews in France were target in 1100s onwards and a devil that developed into the modern goblin springing up in 1141... Eventually becoming a creature often described with a hooked nose, short stature, conniving, untrustworthy, and greedy, that is a danger to good (Christian) folk...

I don't see the connection at all. Honest. [S a R C a S M].

Now, honestly, I'm not actually saying ALL VERSIONS OF GOBLINS ARE ANTISEMITIC HONEST because that's just unlikely. Just like all versions of fae are unlikely to be from The Same Source, it's not tenable because ideas do develop over time and sometimes similar ideas reach the same conclusion from different start points. But goblins are, at the root, at the centre of a vast web of later folklore creatures which owe their origins to that Old French name for a devil. Are Rowling's goblins potentially based on some attributes that were ascribed to Jewish individuals at the time of goblin becoming a folklore creature? Possibly.

But here's the thing. Rowling's goblins are not the same as other goblins.

They're really not. Historically, later (post French name for a devil becomes a type of creature ala goblin) goblins varied in descriptions and in nature. Most of the stories either have them as Outright Evil or mischievous with a helping of malicious. Eventual influences from society and cultural shaped goblins into what we know them as today, and Rowling's own version of goblins Is Part Of That Reason.

Goblins could be tall, could be short, ugly, pretty, invisible etc. But goblins didn't traditionally have connections to gold and finances as much as Rowling made them in HP.

Almost two decades of HP being mainstream really does affect portrayals of goblins, it truly does.

Would you like to know why?

Because Rowling's goblins are more like knockers or the Coblynau from Welsh folklore than the goblins seen more in English folklore in terms of description, where they live, and what they do.

Now, the Welsh term derives, eventually, from the French term gobelin (which gives rise to the modern goblin):

The word Coblynau is related to the English word Goblin and may derive from a Germanic source akin to the German Kobold, via the French Gobelin (Franklin, 2002).

And, generally speaking, the idea of knockers, or Coblynau is that they're either deceased miners or Jewish ones forced to mine in the 11 and 12th century (MacKillop 2004). Whatever the origins are, these Coblynau are more like Rowling's goblins than the larger existing style of goblin that became popularised by Tolkien (based on earlier literature) and DnD (based on Tolkien).

Coblynau and knockers helped find unground veins of precious metals for miners, and since Jews were used as miners in the 11th and 12th century, it definitely isn't a coincidence that some of the descriptions of Coblynau are very... Suss.

The Cornish described the creature as a little person 2 ft 0 in (0.61 m) tall, with a disproportionately large head, long arms, wrinkled skin, and white whiskers.

Basically, Rowling's goblins. Knockers, in essence, are a subset, a subtype of goblins in folklore, more specific to Cornwall and Wales than the larger geography of Europe where 'goblin' tended to be more amoral, trickster like than the goblins of Rowling's universe.

.

Now, I'm done, and I'll even put all the references here, below a cut for you anon. Since I can't expect you to find them either when you can just whine about "tumblr making shit up again" to excuse your lack of knowledge.

[As an aside, the fake goddess thing was, from the outset, clearly a false goddess, based on initial posts that Made That Clear. The fact that you think a fake goddess that is the result of group thought where They Started On The Premise Of It Being Fake From The Outset is compatible to "so crusades that murdered Jewish people in France around same time a folklore creature started off and likely was used as an identifier for Jews because the creature itself was actually a name for a devil not a species first and Jews were often called devils by Christian folk lol lol" really is a you problem. Seriously.]

Anyway. Your references. Enjoy them.

T. F. Hoad, 1993, English Etymology, Oxford University Press, p. 196b.

CNRTL, Etymology of Gobelin, Online French, translated below:

It 1195 (Ambroise, Holy War, 8710 ds T.-L.), att. isolated (cf. again the lat. medieval. goblinus "id. ", av. 1141, Orderic Vital ds Of Cange); start xvies. gobellin (J . of Auton, Brown., ms. B.N. fr. 5082, fo28 rods Gdf., s.v. nuitin). Probably go back up, via the lat. chrét. * gobalus "Home genius", at the gr. κ ο ́ β α λ ο ς "sprite, evil genius", v. J. Brüch ds Z. rom. Philol. t. 52, 1932, pp. 340-341.

Du Cange et al, 1678, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis ...(online French and Latin).

Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, 1993, "Culture and Society in the First Europe", pp. 185ff.

Martin W. Lewis & Karen Wigen, 1997, The Myths of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, pp. 23–25, 27–28.

Norman Davies, 1996. Europe: A History, by Norman Davies. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-19-820171-7. Retrieved 23 August 2010.

Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopaedia, 2007. Europe. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved 27 December 2007.

Walter Laqueur (2006): The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-530429-2. pp. 46–48.

Grosser, P.E. and E.G. Halperin. "Jewish Persecution – History of AntiSemitism – Lesser Known Highlights of Jewish International Relations In The Common Era". simpletoremember.com. SimpleToRemember.com – Judaism Online. Retrieved 6 February 2015.

Paul E. Grosser & Edwin G. Halperin, foreword by St. Robert John, preface by Franklin H. Littell. (1979). Anti-Semitism: the causes and effects of a prejudice. Secaucus, N.J, Citadel Press. ISBN 0806507039. Retrieved 6 February 2015.

Why the Jews? Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh, accessed November 24, 2009.

Weinryb, Bernard Dov, 1973. The Jews of Poland. ISBN 978-0827600164. Retrieved 9 November 2013.

Woodworth, Cherie, 2010. "Where Did the East European Jews Come From?" (PDF). Yale University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 October 2013. Retrieved 9 November 2013.

Franklin, Anna (2002). "Goblin", The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies. London: Paper Tiger. ISBN 1-84340-240-8. p. 108.

James MacKillop, 2004, A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, Oxford University Press.

[regina-del-cielo]

Immortal Siblings AU | Four, then three, then four again

I mentioned that the bulletpoint post describing how the Guard from the Immortal Siblings AU found Joe had totally run away from me. It has, in fact, become a study on them grieving over Lykon and then finding Yusuf. 

I have, somehow, reached a sort of natural end to the amount of bullshit my mind can add to this list/fic draft. So, if you want to give it a read... grab a snack. It’s long. I’m sorry.

Warnings for Wikipedia levels of historical accuracy - I added links to the relevant pages when quoting historical events, but since I was just trying to work out a timeline (famous last words), the research wasn’t extensive. There’s a lot of hand-waving.

By the end of the 11th Century, I think Andy, Quynh and Nico haven’t been in Europe for a while, not really. They moved south, and then east, after the sack of Rome of 410 CE. Seeing the great cities fall has become hard for them, especially for Nico, who is a nomad at heart but has a soft spot for cities, together with Lykon, the true city boy in the group. He’d seen it happen to Athens, he wasn’t sure he could deal with seeing Rome wilt.

For reasons I cannot fathom, my mind is settled on them having been in India when Lykon dies (possibly sometime around the middle of the 6th century, in the mess that was the crumbling of the Gupta Empire???)

Seeing him die destroys them, and they take a break from any battlefield to grieve their friend and brother. They wander, occasionally helping but almost never raising their weapons, too leery of injuries and of losing each other.

(Quynh, who was the first to notice Lykon’s wounds, has nightmares that make her cry in her sleep. Andromache holds her so tight Nico can feel the tension on her muscles against his back. He and his sister barely sleep, scared of the open spaces of Asia as they’d never been before. Lykon was the youngest of them and he died, what if they stop healing too?)

(If Nico stands guard over his sisters and feels an ache in his chest seeing how they hold onto each other, he’s never going to say it out loud. His Mache deserves the love she shares with Quynh. But sometimes he wishes he had someone to hold him like that, one he can call his heart.)

The first time they go to battle again like in the old days it’s almost the end of the 10th century, and they’re helping Quynh’s lands gain independence from China. They have a reason and a specific side to root for, and it’s the kind of cause Lykon would have approved of. They find purpose again.

They are distantly aware of how things are holding up in the west – they know Constantinople has crowned itself capital of the Roman Empire (what is left of it anyway); they know of the new religion, Islam, and how it was brought further east with the armies conquering Persia. They met the Varangians on the Northern Plains of the Rus’, when Andy insisted on going back to their steppes for a while.

They acquire new swords, repair the old weapons, make improvements on their bows. They travel, and help, and listen. They learn new languages. They heal.

They’ve just spent the winter in Samarkand when they hear merchants newly come from Constantinople talk about the Frankish armies that took Antioch and making their way further into Palestine. 

The words ‘freeing Jerusalem from the infidels’ make Andy sigh in exasperation and twist Nico’s guts. The three of them don’t really understand the point of going to war for a god, but Jerusalem is old, and she’s been coveted by many throughout their long lives. Things like this never end well, they know it intimately.

But they’ve been away for a long time, centuries at this point. Things are very different from when the Romans had the power. They are less eager to throw themselves into the battlefield now, and there’s much they don’t know about the dynamics of Europe and the Levant. Still they’re worried, and decide that they’ll move west to see if something can be done, for the civilians at least.

At first they travel slowly, keeping an ear out for gossip spoken by the caravans coming from the west. Things radically change, however, when they dream of a new immortal (a man, with a curly black beard and shining dark eyes) dying on the walls of Jerusalem and reviving to an unprecedented slaughter – said man is, obviously, absolutely terrified and they feel it.

He’s also woken up surrounded by living enemies, with high risk of being killed or injured multiple times, and of being seen.

They are still too far away to do anything more than hope that the new guy is clever enough to keep himself alive until they can reach him, but now Nico is all for moving west at full speed to get him out.

“What the everloving FUCK is happening over there?!” is the common theme in their thoughts; nothing about this war they’re walking towards is making any sense.

Yusuf al-Kaysani is, in fact, clever enough to keep himself (and a few other civilians to boot) alive and get out of Jerusalem when it becomes clear than no matter how many Franks he kills he can do nothing to stop them alone. (It’s a fucking carnage, and he’s so tired). He walks away from the battle and tries to reach some sort of safety in the desert.

When he’d decided to stay in Jerusalem and fight instead of escaping the siege, Yusuf had considered the possibility of dying. He had not accounted for waking up from a fatal wound with no sign of having been hit in the first place.

And then there are the visions. Or dreams, he’s not sure. They don’t seem to make any sense? Who are those people?! Is his mind so addled by the war that he’s conjuring scary warrior women and a stupidly handsome man, armed to the teeth and camping in the desert?

(fantasizing about handsome men in his sleep isn’t exactly news for him, but there were never women in those. And none of his usual dreams involved weapons. Something is definitely off)

For the following days, Yusuf makes sure to stay away from human settlements while putting as much space as possible between Jerusalem and himself – the last thing he needs is to become a potential target for any invader that may cross his path.

But he’s alone, having nightmares, constantly on edge, and in a body that suddenly doesn’t feel like his own anymore, since he doesn’t even have the scars to prove that the injuries he sustained were real to begin with.

After a couple of weeks, the appearance of the strangers in his dreams starts feeling safe and comforting; they seem to operate like a little family, and God knows how much he misses his own.

(should he try to go back home? Would news of the siege reach his family before he does? Would he be able to go back to his previous life in the state he’s in? Could he keep this secret from them? Would they still love him or think him a monster?)

Despite their impressive warrior appearance, they feel... kind. And gentle. Sometimes, it feels like they’re trying to reassure him, even. Especially when he dreams from the perspective of the man.

The sensation those dreams leave on his skin is like a cape. You’re not alone, it whispers. Wait for us.

Andy, Quynh and Nico have just left Baghdad when the dreams change, and not for the better - Yusuf was passing through a village when a band of marauding Franks started harassing the locals. He moved to defend the villagers, but was overwhelmed and what’s worse, the Franks saw his wounds close too fast. Their reaction was vehement: they called him a demon, incapacitated him and then brought him back to their garrison, with every intention of ‘properly getting rid of him’.

Nico wakes up screaming and Andy has to sit on him so he doesn’t just sprint ahead without actually knowing where the fuck he’s going.

“We can’t just raid every single Frankish encampment in a twenty mile radius around Jerusalem, Nico!” “TRY ME” *Aggressive Sibling Bickering follows* *Quynh doesn’t bat an eye and just rolls out a map of the area she purchased and starts mapping out the fastest routes*

Yusuf is having a Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week at the hands of his captors, who are getting disturbingly creative in their tortures, but whenever they let him fall unconscious he sees the people of his dreams travelling much faster than before, looking Royally Pissed Off, and the surroundings are... starting to look familiar too? 

If he tries to pay more attention to the conversations his torturers are having with each other outside of the tent he’s in and hoping the dreams go both ways, so the maybe-real trio can find him easier, now that’s nobody’s business but his own.

(spoiler: it works)

When they are in sight of Jerusalem, the immortals find a drunk “pilgrim” boasting about his band capturing a ‘pagan demon’ while coming back from their victory at Ascalon, follow him back to his camp, and as soon as it’s feasible they attack.

(Andy will later gripe that Nico didn’t leave her anything to do because he just paved his way through the Franks like he was harvesting wheat.)

seeing the Stupidly Handsome Man of his dreams standing in front of him covered head to toe in blood, with a double-bladed axe in one hand and a sword in the other, staring intensely at him as if to peer directly into his soul is... an experience for Yusuf.

(he may have composed a lot of poems about that first vision of Nico through the centuries. The words ‘avenging angel’ have been used quite profusely, too)

The protective instinct that Nico has felt for the newest immortal since the first dream clutches at his throat when he finally sees him, chained to a pole and so thin his clothes barely cling to his body, but with the softest dark eyes staring back with a glint of recognition when he comes closer.

(he could cry with relief at the knowledge that he’s not scared of him. Nico has seen the faces of the men that were keeping him captive, he knows he looks a lot like they did, and that he paints a gruesome picture.)

“Are you alright?” Nico asks first, in Greek. (He knows, from the dreams, that his captors prayed in Latin. He wants to make sure that the other knows that he’s not like them.)

“You were in my dreams. You came.” Yusuf answers back in the same language, although his sounds much newer than Nico’s.

“Of course. We’re not meant to be alone… and no one deserves to be in a cage”.

Nico uses the axe to break the chains, and by the time he’s done Andy and Quynh have reached them and his sister throws the keys at him to open the shackles.

“Couldn’t take a moment to get them yourself, little eagle? You wanted to show off your skills to the new one?” Quynh teases, just to see Nico blush. Andy stares at her brother and their new companion for a few beats, before finally asking his name.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani, known as al-Tayyib” he answers, letting out the first smile in weeks at the raising eyebrows of his saviours. “Just Yusuf is fine.”

“You have a sense of humour, brother. I like you!” Andy snorts, before cutting her palm with the edge of her axe, and showing him her fast healing.

“We are like you, Yusuf. That’s why you dreamt of us, and we of you” Nico adds gently, while Quynh offers her waterskin to Yusuf. They also offer their own names.

“We need to clean up this mess and move away from here” Andy says, while Nico helps Yusuf up. “One of those fuckers was boasting about an undying demon with others in a tavern, the last thing we need is to fight our way out against their whole army because someone else decided to come check if he was saying the truth.”

“It’s been a long time since we were in Kush” Quynh whispers, and Yusuf sees their faces open in a look of affectionate grief he remembers seeing on his Baba’s eyes when he talked about his own mother.

“We can talk about it more when we’re somewhere safer” Andromache suggests, before moving to set up the stage of an ‘accidental’ fire.

As they’re riding away, Yusuf turns slightly to watch the camp burn, leaving no trace of the invaders that hurt him. Jerusalem looms in the distance - lost, and wounded. If he were a little less exhausted, he could  easily work out a metaphor about his own situation.

But then he looks at the three people of his dreams – Quynh, Andromache, Nikolaos – that came for him. Who are the same as him, immortal.

His world has turned upside down, and there are so many questions to ask, and he could sleep for a month straight – but one thing is certain. 

He’s not alone anymore.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: Nirvana in Fire, Episode 02

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning: Spoilers for All 54 Episodes!

A Cunning Plan

Let's start by checking in with the in-progress schemes. Nirvana in Fire features many, many overlapping schemes that stretch across multiple episodes.

Princess Nihuang's Marriage: Princess Nihuang is betrothed to a dead guy, and that's fine with her. If she needs tender emotional care she's got Xia Dong. Xia Dong is married to a dead guy so this works well for both of them.  

The Emperor wants to marry Nihuang off, because she's got a loyal heap of troops at the southern border, and he's a paranoid old fuck, who doesn't like anyone to have the power to overthrow him. Marrying her will sort of force her to hand her troops off to her impulsive younger brother, or something.

The Emperor has a soft spot for Nihuang, however, so he's allowed her to set a bunch of impossible conditions on the marriage, including a martial arts contest. NIF is a hybrid palace drama and Wuxia drama, so there are courtesans and backstabbing and sneaky maids and sneaky eunuchs but also, people can fly.

The two main power seekers, Prince Yu and the Crown Prince, have flunkies that they want Nihuang to marry, but their flunkies suck at martial arts, so if they want her to marry one of their dudes, there will have to be cheating.

Note that Nihuang's good friends Jingrui and Yujin are taking part in the contest to marry her, which might be weird, except they both know she can beat their asses so they seem to just be joining in for fun & prestige. 

The fact that she doesn't want to marry either of these loveable cuties means that she's pretty serious about staying betrothed to her first love, despite his apparent deadness.

(more after the cut!)

Recruiting Mei Changsu / Killing Mei Changsu: Team Prince Yu wants to recruit Mei Changsu. Team Crown Prince wants to recruit him or kill him, if recruiting him doesn't work. 

Mei Changsu acts like this is so tedious; all he wants to do is rest. But they only want to recruit him because he and his pal Lin Chen made them believe he is the answer to their problems.  Whenever Mei Changsu acts annoyed at something, it's probably something he actually orchestrated. "Pork chops again?" (secretly buys more pork chops).

The Duke Qing/ Landgrab Case: In Episode 1, the Jiangzuo Alliance protected some witnesses against Duke Qing in an enslavement/land grabbing case. It's difficult for me to find anything about historical land grabbing in China because Google is full of 21st century land grabbing information. Anyway Duke Qing works for Prince Yu, so the witnesses are (whether they mean to be or not) on The Crown Prince's side. The Emperor has an interest in this case, because land grabbing is bad, apparently, even by corrupt-emperor standards. Xia Dong is in charge of investigating.

The Chiyan Army Case: This is the big conspiracy that the entire show is about. 11 years ago, the Emperor received evidence that Prince Qi, Lin Xie (Mei Changsu's father), and the entire Chiyan army were going to rebel. This was supposedly reported by Xia Dong's husband, Nie Feng, before Lin Xie supposedly killed him. The emperor ordered executions for everybody.

Prince Jing thought this was a bunch of bullshit and didn't hesitate to say so, which got him sent off to distant regions to do army things for years at a time, and landed him a place high up on the emperor’s shit list.

The Hazelnut Pastry Scheme: This is a small scale, benevolent scheme, in which Concubine Jing will eventually stop making cookies with hazelnuts in them, because Mei Changsu is allergic to them. 

Ok, that’s the scheme roundup for this episode. On with the show!

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

After a quick expository chat between the Emperor and Gong Gao, laying out the reasons for the Nihuang Marriage Scheme, we go to Prince Yu’s place to watch superhot Meng Zhi, commander of the emperor's guards, whip some ass. Not, alas, literally.  Despite his leather shoulder thingies and his handsome beard, and his commanding ways on a battlefield, when it comes to interpersonal relations he is pretty much a labrador retriever puppy in human form.

Meng Zhi is kicking the asses of Prince Yu’s fighters to determine if they're qualified to compete in the Marriage contest. They are not. He points out to the Prince that they can't put such terrible wimps into the competition because it will make the country’s defenses look weak.  

This beatdown is observed by Prince Yu and by Xie Yu, who Prince Yu thinks is on his side. Xie is 100% on the Crown Prince's side, but is carefully hiding that fact; he has his son working for Prince Yu as part of his cover.

In determining how severe an ass kicking is, everyone talks about how many moves it takes to defeat someone, like it's chess. Meng Zhi can beat literally anyone else in the show. He's number two on the Langya List of fighters & we never meet #1.

Fe Liu Was Fast as Lightning

Mei Changsu is hanging out in the garden at Xie manor while Fe Liu jumps around. Fe Liu wants Mei Changsu to play Roblox with him, and pouts when MCS opts for staying in the garden and reading a book.

Fe Liu is utterly devoted to Mei Changsu; I really love their relationship. Fe Liu’s backstory isn't fully explained in the show, but apparently he was raised from an early age to focus on being extremely lethal, and didn't spend much time learning to talk or other skills, making him the epitome of the asynchronous/ gifted teen. Mei Changsu isn’t who raised him to be like this; MCS and Lin Chen rescued him, which is why he is now Mei Changsu’s personal murder pet.

Fe Liu is both a complete fantasy character and also a really believable teen, beautifully acted by Leo Wu, who DMBJ fans know from Tomb of the Sea, and who Xiao Zhan fans know from Battle Through the Heavens.

Fe Lui promptly gets into a fight with Meng Zhi, who's visiting Xie manor. All Fe Liu was doing was leaping about the rooftops like an assassin, but since Xie Yu is the sort of guy that a lot of people would like to kill, Meng Zhi doesn't think this is so good. They have a hilarious, entertaining fight with many, many wire-assisted moves.

They're pretty evenly matched, and Xie Yu watches them with extreme interest until Mei Changsu shows up and tells Fe Liu to stop. Xie Yu is watching because he needs to know how many dudes he should send to assassinate Mei Changsu. Answer: more. Always more.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately since it’s probably all part of MCS’s plan) Fe Liu's extreme skilz make it obvious that his boss is someone important. Mei Changsu discusses this with Jingrui and Yujin in an open-air setting where Jingrui's brother Xie Bi can totally hear them.  In no time flat, father and son have reported his identity to their respective princes.

Over at Prince Yu's place, Qin Banruo and her awesome eye makeup join the party. She's Prince Yu’s advisor/manipulator, working for the (fallen) Hua kingdom, led by the (deceased) Princess Xuanji . She has a network of spies who work for her, that she deploys for Prince Yu's schemes. Her ultimate goal is not to help him, however, but just to fuck up the Da Liang Empire, which conquered the Hua.

(Nearly) Everybody Hates Jingyan

Xia Dong heads out on her assignment in the Land Grab Case, and Nihuang goes to see her off. They talk about gender expectations and how annoying it is to have to marry a dude, and briefly hang out being WLW goals with their mutual devotion, excellent fashion sense and deadly fighting abilities. Nihuang, in particular, wears the prettiest things and also stands at attention like she's commanding an army; I adore her.

They're interrupted by the arrival of Prince Jing, who is greeted cheerfully by Nihuang and eye-rollingly by Xia Dong.  

He's wearing an awesome brass-and-blue armor that we never see again after this episode. It's too bad - it's a good color for him and it has a cool vampire cloak with a high collar.

Prince Jing takes the opportunity to snark at Xia Dong about her investigation and the Xuanjing Bureau’s penchant for inventing finding conspiracies, and then rides off before she can reply.

This leads Nihuang and Xia Dong to get into their chronic argument about the Chiyan Conspiracy and the Lin family, and then Xia Dong hits the road.

Prince Jing and his subordinates stand around outside the palace waiting to report to the emperor while the emperor ignores him. They get sweatier and sweatier while they wait. which makes me like the Emperor a little bit more.

Prince Yu and CP Xian are busy sucking up to the emperor as they look at a manuscript. They are a bunch of assholes and you can see that Gao Zhan isn't a fan of this bullshit.

Eventually Gao Zhan reminds/persuades the emperor to summon Prince Jing, whose brothers snark at him like a couple of 12 year old girls while he radiates manly vigor and handsomeness.  

Consort Jin is bummed that she can't see Prince Jing for another 5 days, and her maid sidekick says random comforting things. This maid, Xiao Xin, is actually a little snake, who works for Qin Banruo's network. We don't learn that until sometime later.

All of the maids have this same hairstyle. If you are a westerner and you think this hairstyle is crazy, have a look at some Roman and Byzantine historic hairstyles. I'm not saying this hairstyle is NOT crazy, mind you; just that crazy hair was a feature of many, many historical empires.  

Consort Jing has someone deliver her hazelnut cookies to Prince Jing; she doesn’t know about Mei Changsu yet so hazelnut is still on the menu. Nicest mom. Also smartest, helpful-est mom, as the story develops.

Suck-Up Contest

At Xie manor, Xie Bi tries to get Mei Changsu to go meet the Empress, who has stopped by with Nihuang specifically to meet him, as part of the Recruit Mei Changsu scheme. Jingrui says nope, fuck that, he's not going to be a pawn in your political games, fuck off. We get to see Jingrui being steely and righteous, which is both cool and hot. Nihuang should totally marry him.

The Empress is annoyed that Mei Changsu doesn't show up, and Nihuang is like, it's ok, I don’t actually give a fuck about meeting new men. But I did want to meet his murder puppy Fe Liu.

Grand Princess Liyang says they don’t need to bother meeting pugilists, despite her son being one and her supposed best friends/co-parents also being pugilists.

Grand Princess Liyang will probably be glad Mei Changsu didn’t come to her little party, once she realizes what tends to happen when Mei Changsu comes to a party.

Then we go to the suitor tournament, in which everyone more or less sucks.

The princes really want to go over to Mei Changsu’s balcony to meet him, and they have a hilarious silent interaction where they both try not to be the first one to move. They finally cave, and go together.  

Then they compete to see who can be the most cringe and blow the most smoke up Mei Changsu's ass.

They ply him with gifts and flattery, which he mostly manages to resist.

Cookie Time with Granny

Then they get summoned to go meet the grand empress, who is (I think) the mother of the previous emperor, the grandmother of the current emperor, and the great grandmother of basically every highborn character of the current generation, including Nihuang and Yujin, although it’s not clear where they sit in the family tree. Historically, cousin marriage - particularly of maternal cousins - was no big whoop in China, so it's not surprising that a lot of nobles would share a great-grandmother.

The Grand Empress is a sweet lady with dementia. She can’t figure out who the hell anyone is. First-time viewers feel the same way.  

Her dementia is pretty well depicted, unlike a lot of TV dementia, or at least it matches up to my experiences with my own elders. She remembers the distant past more vividly than recent times; when she understands who’s in front of her she connects with them emotionally, but she falls off track easily. And she projects the identities of people she misses onto people who are around her.

Like many other grannies, no matter who is visiting, she wants them to 1. get married 2. produce offspring 3. eat something, you’re so skinny

When Mei Changsu meets Granny she immediately calls him Lin Shu, either because she recognizes him or because she really misses Lin Shu, or both. She calls Nihuang over and joins their hands, and Mei Changsu grabs onto Nihuang's hand and holds it for a while.

Everyone thinks it's adorable that Granny has dementia and is confused about that guy who was horribly killed, except Nihuang, who was already checking Mei Changsu out and is somewhat verklempt. She might have to revise her anti-man feelings a little bit.

Everyone leaves, and Nihuang hits up Mei Changsu to take a walk with her, casually mentioning that she could have his hand cut off for touching her, but since she's not in the mood, he's ok.

She prods a bit to find out what he's doing in town and what he's up to. “Do you have a girlfriend? Like a serious girlfriend or just a stalker who works for you?” She asks him which of the two princes he's going to support, but they’re interrupted by a eunuch beating a slave child. That’s the price you pay for trying to have a date in the palace, I guess.

[rein-ette]

Engport HC Series: Part 1a/?

oh my god ok so i just realized after @mr-nauseam liked my post (thank you) that i actually began writing iacta alea est to fulfill the "narrative of engport" request but i got so caught up trying to go all the way back to the beginning that i ended up planning a whole fic thats 99.99% about Other Things and only 0.01% actual engport and then promptly forgot who i wrote it for adsjcnlksjcelckjl i'm so sorry

As an apology here's some actual engport hcs about the beginning of their relationship, focused mostly on the feels rather than the specific historical events because that's usually how I think about character relationships (that is, i think about some aspect of a relationship that i want to explore, then choose an appropriate historical setting which reveals that aspect).

Headcanons Ahoy

So the major question I keep asking myself with engport, especially when I think about how they first met, is Why them? Why do these two kids click when they meet, and what draws them back to each other? I set Arthur and Ports meeting as the Seige of Lisbon in my timeline thing because i just think crusade + seige is such a dramatic setting fit for two Drama Queens ™ , but the 12th century is not favourable for budding relationships between two young nations that aren't even neighbours — how the hell would they have ever seen each other again? This isn't a "I found an italian in a crate and now after being forced to endure his presence for 10230482358 hours i think i'm gay for him" situation; history pretty much provided one shot for England and Port to make it work — if hadn't met and gone, "that's him, this is the one", then they wouldn't have seen each other again for centuries.

I think this holds true even if you change the setting and timing of their first meeting as well. Sure, the Anglo-Portuguese alliance is the longest ongoing alliance in history, but if we're being completely objective Port and England weren't each other's most important foreign relationship, like, ever. For Port that would probably have been Spain, and for England France or his brothers. So even after their alliance, why would they ever be more than passing friends? Pretty much what I'm trying to say is that the foundation of Arthur and Port's relationship was personal attraction, not proximity or chance; something in the time before they met each other prepared them to need each other, so that once they did meet they wouldn't let go.

That's why I went down the whole rabbit hole of the Roman Empire, because I think losing his mother and his time under Rome were formative experiences for Port, which changed him in a way that made him uniquely receptive (or should I say susceptible) to all of young Arthur's charms. Since humans have their earliest describable memories when their about 6 or 7, being torn away from his mother in a brutal war would have been one of Port's first clear memories. The ensueing years were no easier on him, as he (which i willl explore in the fic) and his brother were trained brutally before joining the Roman army. These are the years where Port learned discipline as a coping mechanism, as opposed to Toni who learned to obey. These might seem similar, but by discipline I mean forcing himself to carry out (often unnecessarily harsh) acts or measures, and seeking out unnecessarily dangerous experiences himself in order to release some of the tension inside. These are, of course, behaviours that Port continues to display even as an adult. In contrast Toni's obedience is more about wiping his mind and obeying like a toy soldier — if you have no choice anyways, why think and make yourself suffer?

Hence when he met Arthur, in the 12th century, Portugal was a somewhat subdued child of about twelve already disillusioned with much of the world and harbouring a hatred that he himself did not completely recognize or know where to direct. In fact, he was probably more disillusioned and suspicious than he is now, though he hid it under a mask of silence and cold, feigned disinterest. Of course, not all this has to do with Port's circumstances — its pretty contrived to attribute all of a character's bad traits to a "traumatic childhood", and in many instances Port simply acted and felt the way he did because he was a child who growing up in turbulent times did not yet know how to manage his anger, fear, or frustration.

But what does all this have to do with Arthur? Well, I think Arthur would have had (and still has) just the right type of personality to cut through all of this bullshit. Whereas Portugal wraps layer after layer of his grievances and unexamined feelings around himself, Arthur personality is like a firebrand in the night — destructive when handled incorrectly, but fierce and enthralling. As a child, Arthur wore his emotions not just on his sleeve but around him like a colour-changing flame; especially for someone as perceptive as Port it was just so incredibly obvious and fresh, so different from the scheming adults Port grew up with and Port's own tendency to shove everything inside and let it stew till it turned into toxic waste or something.

(if this is somewhat different from their current personalities, its because — obviously — they changed as they grew older, but also because they adopted things from each other: Port became more spontaneous, relaxed, generous with his emotions, whereas England became more introspective, pensive, learned to mislead and conceal)

anddddd this is longer than I thought so will do part 1b from england's perspective another day

[xwhitewolfv]

Ok so I need to rant about an SCP for a sec

In SCP 1050, the obelisk has an inscription in a form of proto latin by a dude called Legalus Maximus Romulus. It's dated to around 53,000 BCE according to the article. The obelisk itself is dated to have been created around 48,000 BCE. So yes, somehow an inscription in proto latin predates the actual obelisk itself. Ok but here is where things start to bother me. You don't need to be linguist to know that there was no established written language form 50,000 years ago (at least I am 99% sure), not to mention the proto latin itself is stated by the article to be of some unknown alphabet variant, which is fine, except for the fact that it predates any known empire, kingdom, agriculturally advanced society, whatever. I don't know if this is intentional, but I'll get to that in a minute.

The person who apparently wrote the inscription was made by the name mentioned above, which when I tried to figure out if this was a real person (the only results that came up was THE actual Romulus, founder of Rome who would have been in office at around 700 BCE) which not only doesn't correspond with the original carving he's attached to, (plus the like 6 others carvings after from civilisations that predate Rome historically) but he is also from a time period where proto latin wouldn't have been used. Unless this isn't actually Romulus (i don't know if his full name was actually Legalus Maximus Romulus and frankly I kinda don't care) or this is some dude fucking with the inscriptions to make it seem like it was this person, but they time travelled 53,000 years ago. (Was it Clef? Probably, idk, its always him)

So overall:

An inscription that predates the actual obelisk itself,

is written in an unknown alphabet of proto latin in a time period where no languages (in terms of an alphabet, prefixes, vowels, fucking whatever is in a written language don't come at me I know jack shit) existed

Is written by some Roman person who if it is THE actual Romulus (i mean there aren't many people with that name, and the other inscriptions were made by other prominent rulers and figures throughout history, so following this pattern it would be safe to assume it is him) would have existed around 700 BCE, possibly not writing in any form of proto latin nor correspond with the date of the inscription

Not the mention the fact that proto latin doesn't have a concise written form in real life, but since its established in the article as being written in an unknown alphabet related to proto latin it's ok /g

So, by itself this is fine and dandy. Why? Because the date of the inscription and the language could be anomalous, which ties into the anomalous nature of the obelisk as an 'interstellar early warning system'. However, I literally cannot find anything in the article that actually mentions the anomalous nature of the date of inscription and how it contradicts the actual date of the obelisk's supposed creation. Either there is nothing there or I am REALLY stupid (most likely I have missed something because I am in fact, very hopeless) Everything else in the article makes sense to me, it features inscriptions of languages that are accurately dated to their approximated date and are listed as such chronologically, as well as the addition of unknown scripts and symbols that act as nicely embedded pieces of lore and possible history within the universe that this story was created in. Ancient and anomalous civilisations aren't are foreign concept in the SCP foundation, some of the best stories on there utilise these concepts to strengthen their storytelling. I literally have no problems with SCP 1050, I think its a great article and the author really did their research, but this detail bothers the fuck out of me because I can't find any reason as to why this would be mentioned as such. Now you are probably thinking, 'it could have been a typo', and yes, that is what I thought initially as well. Except for the fact that the article has been around for around 8 years, and the original author has not rectified this perceived 'typo'. Barely anyone in the discussion page of the article actually mentions this and I feel like I am loosing my mind a bit. Am I missing something?

Furthermore, (haha you thought this was over. Fuck u I'm not done bitch) the author has responded to comments identifying this typo, with one of the responses hinting that the author themselves did not intend for this to be in the final article, which I call bullshit; "I'll go digging through my notes and try and figure out a satisfactory answer for you. It's entirely conceivable that I messed up (I don't remember specifically where the 53,5██ BCE number came from) - in which case it might be a bit before I can correct not only the in-article text but the images of the carving. I had to do enough calculations for this article that I wouldn't be at all surprised if I made an error at some point..." A post from an admin indicates that at some point, someone edited the article to correct the date of the "proto latin" inscription in order to make it "Philologically plausible" (anyone can edit your SCP articles btw, with the proper permission and guidelines followed). From the admin's comment, the edit was reverted, as according to the author: "The unusual age of the writing is a key part of the anomaly" (can't find where they've stated this) and so this indicates that the date for the inscription WAS intentional, despite it not making any sense. Now before you go "this is the SCP FOUNDATION, we got a statue that looks like a peanut and a giant edgy reptile it doesn't NEED TO MAKE SENSE" which you are completely justified in saying. I too, really enjoy concepts and texts that do not make sense, because that's the great thing about writing surreal, cosmic horror, sci-fi, abstract pieces, you don't need to have your concepts make perfect logical sense because thatsTHE WHOLE POINT. Of course it helps to explain certain elements within your own universe in order for it to make a little realistic, but overall they're amazing, creative releases that I just adore. And so this part of the article really throws me for a loop, because it just stands out amongst all the other languages and inscriptions. Proto latin is a language, its date and alleged author on the obelisk however, contradicts the creation of the obelisk, which could link to its initial anomalous features (I'd like to point out that the obelisk is one part of the SCP, in fact I am quite literally extremely fixated on this one detail when it could be nothing of use) this isn't meant to mar the good quality of the article, it's just something that doesn't sit right with me because I can't piece it together into the story

Its almost 1am, my rant is done goodnight. I'm gonna look back on this in the morning and wonder wtf I was talking about

[haec-est-fides]

Filodox’s Trials of Apollo Reactions [Part I]

Welcome to part one of a reflective journey through Trials of Apollo ft. my original ebook annotations! I’ll be your host, 2020!filodox.

For this first episode, we’ll be going back to May 2016, the beginning of it all: The Hidden Oracle.

Annotations for this round are brought to you by 2016!filodox.

Is there anything we should know before we begin, 2016!me?

2016!filodox: I swore on the Styx never to read another Riordan book after he killed Octavian. And yet here we are.

... Alright then! Let’s get started.

But first, a more detailed overview on how this series will work: I will excerpt bits and pieces of the books based on what I highlighted / annotated on my first read. Beneath each quote, I will share what I wrote in the annotation. Below that, I will (occasionally) laugh at my past self, clarify the note, or say how my view has changed.

I encourage questions, comments, and concerns (of which there may be many), so go ahead and use that replies feature if you feel so inclined! However, these are just my opinions and (occasionally) emotional reactions, so no hate pls. <3 (Or, if you do send hate, pls make it funny.)

Now, diving right in with Riordan’s dedication!

To The Muse Calliope. This is long overdue. Please don’t hurt me.

2016!filodox: Hurt him. He didn’t even name the chapters.

As you can see, I had yet to experience Lester’s haiku and was already mad based on the table of contents alone. I went into this series very salty...

I inflicted a plague on the Greeks who besieged Troy.

2016!filodox: At least he did something right. Once.

I was just,,,extremely ready to die on Octavian’s hill. (Though I was a huge Troy / Aeneas stan before all this, just to be clear.)

Is anything sadder than the sound of a god hitting a pile of garbage bags?

2016!filodox: I actually find this particular god crashing into a dumpster quite amusing.

I also blamed Apollo for what happened to Octavian. I think that had a lot to do with how Apollo acted on Delos in Heroes of Olympus, basically disowning Octavian and whining about how some “creature” scammed him? That was bullshit. Apollo needed to own the fact that he blessed Octavian, but he just abandoned him and denied all the blame. TL;DR I had a grudge, okay?

My mind stewed in confusion, but one memory floated to the surface -- the voice of my father, Zeus: YOUR FAULT. YOUR PUNISHMENT.

2016!filodox: Wait, is this bc everyone blames Octavian and therefore Apollo? Bc lol but also no?

*cough* Octavian did nothing wrong 2k16 *cough*

Zeus will reconsider, I told myself. He’s just trying to scare me. Any moment, he will yank me back to Olympus and let me off with a warning.

“Yes...” My voice sounded hollow and desperate. “Yes, that’s it.”

2016!filodox: Apollo is a self centered frat boy, I forgot...but it is slightly...endearing? *narrows eyes*

Ah, how close I was to stanning Lester in the first chapter, when he was at his most “goddy”. You know, I actually made a rule for myself when I started reading Trials of Apollo that I would not under any circumstances stan Apollo. That was a naive goal, because it was never really a danger.

Regardless, Zeus had held me responsible for Octavian’s delusions of grandeur. Zeus seemed to consider egotism a trait the boy had inherited from me. Which is ridiculous. I am much too self-aware to be egotistical.

2016!filodox: I am going to Murder him.

*chef kiss* the hypocrisy ! the lack of self-awareness !

“I just...I assumed -- I hoped this would be taken care of by now.”

“You mean by demigods,” Percy said, “going on a big quest to reclaim the Oracle of Delphi?”

2016!filodox: That sounds like a decent quest, or you know, QUESTING FOR THE SIBYLLINE BOOKS

I’ve always said I can see the future but an inch to the left. Also, I don’t like Ella.

It warmed my heart that my children had the right priorities: their skills, their images, their views on YouTube. Say what you will about gods being absentee parents; our children inherit many of our finest personality traits.

2016!filodox: AND HE’S MAD ABOUT OCTAVIAN?!

I mean ?

Apollo, when Austin and Kayla show ambition: THEY GOT THAT FROM ME <3

Apollo, when Octavian (or Nero, or Caligula) shows ambition: srry i don’t know him ??

He had a weak jawline, an overlarge nose, and a beard that wrapped around his double chin like a helmet strap. His hair was curly and dark like mine, except not as fashionably tousled or luxuriant. His lips curled as if he smelled something unpleasant. Perhaps it was the burning seats of the bus.

2016!filodox: Nero ???

Not quite sure how to feel looking back at this moment. Call out post @ myself for instantly recognizing Nero, when afaik this scene was before we had any hints that Roman emperors were even a plot point? But here’s the thing: I don’t remember why I could recognize him so easily. I don’t remember where 2016!me obtained this ancient Rome knowledge. A mystery.

On another note entirely, did Nero really like,,,astral project into Apollo’s fever dream to address him directly? Because Rhea does. And sometimes Python does. But Nero? Can he do that?

The man laughed as flames licked at his purple sleeves. “You’re not sorry yet, but you will be. Find me the gates. Lead me to the Oracle. I’ll enjoy burning it down!”

2016!filodox: I too enjoy burning things down. # Nero confirmed

My only comment here is “oh you sweet summer child,,,”

Oh. Perhaps some of you are wondering how I felt seeing [Will] with a boyfriend rather than a girlfriend.

2016!filodox: No, actually. I wasn’t wondering. I was plotting how to kill you, them, and quite a few other people. Do you think I could trade you for Octavian?

Oh man, back at it again with the salt. XD

I could only remember my conversations with Octavian, the way he’d turned my head with his flattery and promises. That stupid boy...it was his fault I was here.

A voice whispered in the back of my mind. This time I thought it might be my conscience: Who was the stupid boy? It wasn’t Octavian.

2016!filodox: I can’t really...explain my emotions upon reading this. I’m still not quite okay, but this...it’s bittersweet in a way. I don’t know if this is a poor attempt at a proper closure, the author’s way of beating a dead horse, or just a way to make Apollo seem pitiable. Whatever it is... Octavian was important enough to remain in Apollo’s mortal memory. He somehow made promises to a god and had Apollo wrapped around his finger. And despite being so much like Apollo, the god blames him. Like everyone blames him. But Apollo also realizes, accepts on an infinitesimal scale, that “it wasn’t Octavian”. He wasn’t perfect, but neither is Apollo. Apollo is (at least) subconsciously admitting his own guilt in the whole affair.

...yeah. I will note that this bit isn’t meant to develop Octavian, but rather uses Octavian as a prop to support Apollo’s development? Which is why it still stings. Like thanks, I guess.

“Your judgement in the past has been...questionable. I wonder if you have chosen the right tools for this job. Have you learned from your past mistakes?”

2016!filodox: Nero has made plenty of mistakes to learn from

Love how I just assumed it was Nero back in chapter 10 and went with it, zero hesitation. Also love how I heard Python say Nero has made mistakes and went “oh absolutely”. In fact, here’s something funny in retrospect that will become more and more apparent: I did not like Nero in 2016. Or, at least, I thought I didn’t. There’s something really odd going on here that baffles me, looking back...

“A triumvirate is a ruling council of three,” I said. “At least, that’s what it meant in ancient Rome.”

“Which is interesting,” Rachel said, “because of this next shot.” She tapped her screen. The new photo zoomed in on the building’s penthouse terrace, where three shadowy figures stood talking together....

2016!filodox: Is it bad that I’m smirking? Because it’s getting interesting ~ *clear malicious intent*

Wow, edgy. Triumvirates are just a neat, Roman thing and I stanned.

“The last triumvirate I dealt with included Lepidus, Marc Antony, and my son, the original Octavian. A triumvirate is a very Roman concept...like patriotism, skullduggery, and assassination.”

2016!filodox: THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL EVERYONE. MODERN OCTAVIAN IS A VERY GOOD ANCIENT ROMAN. POLITICS, ESPECIALLY SHADY AF POLITICS AND POWERPLAYS, ARE QUINTESSENTIALLY ROMAN. Also, I’d like to note that it’s confirmed, in this universe’s canon, that Augustus was a son of Apollo.

Ohhhh, wait. I think I’d watched the HBO series Rome by 2016, which would at least partially explain my ancient Rome knowledge. (Amazing tv show btw!)

“He heard them talking in Latin.”

“Latin? Were they campers?”

Pete spread his hands. “I--I don’t think so. Paulie described them like they were adults. He said one of them was the leader. The other two addressed him as imperator.”

2016!filodox: !!!! (obligatory 💕)

I was such a simp for Latin in high school. And the Roman Empire. Still am, but hey.

“The Beast is planning some kind of attack on your camp. I don’t know what it is, but it’s going to be big.”

2016!filodox: Runs in the family I guess

The Octavian / Triumvirate parallels are everywhere... 👀

“The emperors made themselves gods. They had their own temples and altars. They encouraged the people to worship them.”

2016!filodox: # deify me

*smacking my past self with a stick* You stop that! Edgy child!

Anyway, a much better point here is like,,,the Imperial cult was huge in the ancient Roman world. Looking at Apollo’s explanation here, why did only the “worst” three emperors get to be immortal? Did famously “good” emperors like Augustus and Marcus Aurelius have the option of becoming minor gods, but they chose Elysium or something? Are there slightly less infamous emperors just hanging around anywhere as minor gods? A lot of Roman emperors live on in human memory is all I’m saying.

“Wait!” Will said as I reached the door. “Who is the Beast? Which emperor are we dealing with?”

“The worst of my descendants.” My fingers dug into the doorframe. “The Christians called him the Beast because he burned them alive. Our enemy is Emperor Nero.”

2016!filodox: I honestly can’t believe it took this long to reveal this? Was anyone surprised?

Nero’s reveal is rather late in the book compared to Commodus, Caligula, and even Tarquin iirc? But it makes sense, being the first book of the series. Also love how 16-year-old me was like “this reveal is silly because everyone, like me, recognizes Nero on sight” and didn’t question that assumption at all.

“Germani.” Instinctively, I moved in front of Meg. The elite imperial bodyguards had been cold-blooded death reapers in ancient Rome. I doubted they’d gotten any sweeter over the centuries.

2016!filodox: BITCH. See? This is why I love Rome. They knew what they were doing.

Ngl, as someone of Germanic heritage, I felt really represented by the Germani, which is hilarious on so many levels.

He tried to compensate for his ugliness with an expensive Italian suit of purple wool, his gray shirt open to display gold chains. His shoes were hand-tooled leather, not the sort of thing to wear while stomping around in an ant pile. Then again, Nero had always had expensive, impractical tastes.

2016!filodox: I don’t exactly like Nero, and actually think he was quite the shitty emperor, but I guess I mildly respect and “like” him on principle (in this book at least).

OH YOU SWEET SUMMER CHILD. I was so convinced that I didn’t actually like Nero, despite all of the lowkey evidence to the contrary? Who hurt you, past me? (Lmao, it was Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio.) My working theory is that I was too much of an Emperor Augustus stan at the time to admit liking Nero. It’s hysterical. Look at me equivocating like a champ.

I’d been so proud of my son, the original Octavian, later Caesar Augustus. After his death, his descendants became increasingly arrogant and unstable (which I blamed on their mortal DNA; they certainly didn’t get those qualities from me).

2016!filodox: I’m glad Apollo and I can agree on something. Augustus was amazing and those who came after him...significantly less so.

See! The propaganda really got to me, what can I say?

Nero clasped his hands as if in prayer. “Oh, my. It seems we’ve had a slight miscommunication. You see, Apollo, Meg brought you here, just as I asked her to. Well done, my sweet.”

2016!filodox: This was obvious but I still find it...gods, the only word I can think of is “delicious”

. . .

“The Beast killed my father. This is Nero. He’s -- he’s my stepfather.”

I could not fully grasp this before Nero spread his arms.

“That’s right, my darling,” he said. “And you’ve done a wonderful job. Come to Papa.”

2016!filodox: Okay, but we should have known this since it became apparent her weapons were Roman. Also, oof. Also also, WHY did Riordan feel the need to add that last line? Why?

ASDFGHJKL: I CAN’T

“After the fire, we’ll rebuild,” he said. “It will be glorious!”

2016!filodox: The amount of times I have used this very logic is worrying.

For (some) context, Firelord Ozai is my favorite character from AtLA. <3

The scene might have been funny except that the Germani were now back on their feet, five demigods and a geyser spirit were still tied to highly flammable posts, and Nero still had a box of matches.

2016!filodox: Oh, I find this plenty amusing!

The emperor stared at his empty hand. “Meg...?” His voice was as cold as an icicle.

2016!filodox: The various ways his tone / voice have been described throughout this conversation are just 💕

*looks at camera like I’m on The Office*

Seriously, though. Nero’s voice is like the central descriptive element of his character because he’s so manipulative. It’s really cool and a great use of detail.

[Meg] turned to Nero. “You told me never to lower myself to my enemies’ level.”

“No, indeed.” Nero’s tone had frayed like a weathered rope. “We are better. We are stronger. We will build a glorious new world. But these nonsense-spewing trees stand in our way, Meg. Like any invasive weeds, they must be burned. And the only way to do that is with a true conflagration -- flames stoked by blood.”

2016!filodox: Real 👏🏻 Gods 👏🏻 Require 👏🏻 Blood👏🏻

I was way too enthusiastic about this whole situation, wasn’t I?

Nero grinned. “Good-bye, Apollo. Only eleven more Olympians to go.”

2016!filodox: Wait, shit, WHAT

Having read Tower of Nero, this probably had something to do with Python interfering with the Fates, huh? But does that mean it’s more Python’s plan or Nero’s? If this was Nero’s plan (with his 12 kids literally replacing the Olympians) that’s,,,really fucking bold.

Then I heard the screaming from Camp Half-Blood.

2016!filodox: Music to my ears ~

I’m presenting every edgy detail of my annotations so I have a proper case file when I inevitably have to face the question “On a scale of one to ten, how relatable is Emperor Nero and why should you have realized it’s a ten sooner?”

In a flash of silver light, the camp’s magical barriers collapsed. The Colossus lurched forward and brought his foot down on the dining pavilion, smashing it to rubble like so many children’s blocks.

2016!filodox: Payback! Dear gods, I can’t stop smiling! I’m just like “YES!” I know this will all probably get fixed or whatever but I’M HAVING A MOMENT.

I’ve learned to appreciate the small wins. <3

Percy grabbed one of the crown’s sunray spikes. He sliced it off at the base, then jabbed it into the Colossus’ forehead.

2016!filodox: As much as Nero is FAR from my favorite, I really don’t like defacing ancient (or replicas of ancient) statues and art...

This is where I just start laughing at myself tbh. I was so insistent on not liking Nero. Like, I sound like I’m in denial. Peak equivocation. What happened to that heart emoji a few chapters back? Why did I suddenly make it about *checks notes* ancient art? Updated translation: nooo don’t ruin the Colossus Neronis it’s so sexy aha

Just as the [arrow] reached its apex and was about to fall back to earth, a gust of wind caught it...perhaps Zephyros looking kindly on my pitiful attempt. The arrow sailed into the Colossus’ ear canal and rattled in his head with a clink, clink, clink like a pachinko machine.

2016!filodox: HOW MANY EX MACHINAS IS THIS ?! The dryads, the arrow, Percy, the enchantment, and THIS ?

One of my criticisms of Trials of Apollo in general is just that the stakes are so much higher and Riordan usually solves that problem by having his heroes win on long odds. The chances of them succeeding at like,,,anything they attempt are astronomical, but of course they manage. It’s not surprising but it does get a little tiring.

“Yo, Nico,” Leo called, “please tell me that’s it for the physical abuse.”

“For now.” Nico smiled. “We’re still trying to get in touch with the West Coast. You’ll have a few dozen people out there who will definitely want to hit you.”

2016!filodox: Oh I’d love to hit him. With the flaming, Imperial gold payload of an onager. Preferably WITHOUT the Pontifex Maximus attached to it -- unless of course you mean the false pontifex, Jason Grace.

Leo was the salt in the wound for this one, ngl. He rekindled my undying ire over Octavian’s death. As I said at the beginning of this, I was extremely ready to die on Octavian’s hill after Heroes of Olympus. That sentiment sticks around for a while...

And we can call that a wrap!

Though it may seem like it, my annotations are not, in fact, a compilation of Nero’s greatest hits. There are a lot of scenes of his that I love (naturally) but I didn’t have anything to say about them when I first read the series. Maybe I’ll share those another time.

In any case, I hope you got something out of this ridiculously long post! Until next time! <3

[sagebodisattva]

The Universe Doesn’t Give a Shit About You

You know, one thing that has become seriously irritating nowadays, is this whole “the universe is doing something for you” shtick, that’s apparently become the latest favorite new age meme, currently making it’s rounds on the internets. Take a look at this stuff.

(A variety of examples are shown.)

And that’s just a small sampling. And this isn’t just a case of a few isolated incidents. This type of sentiment is everywhere now; seemingly having become all the rage among many aspiring spiritual truth seekers.

“Depressed? Cheer up. The universe is horny for you!”

By first appearances, making references to the universe seems to reflect a more scientifically based position, although, I don’t think these seekers really mean it in a scientific way. Essentially, these new age universe worshippers are just former theists, who probably finally realized the complete absurdity of that position, and so now, have shifted their heels over to pantheism; that is, a doctrine which identifies god with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of god; which is basically a veneration of nature. And, as we all know, mother nature is pretty much a cold, predatory, discriminating bitch; so I’m not sure why anyone would associate nature with a benevolent god.

I know, god loves you so much, he allows evil to rack you to the core on purpose. It’s a test, right? It’s all part of his divine plan. God just wants to see if you will curse his name when he makes times get incredibly tough. It’s a Job type of deal. He’s forcing you into a position of struggle and suffering, all so he can wage a bet with the devil over whether or not you will be disobedient. Isn’t that just so cool of him? Now you get to show god just how loyal and subservient you are to him, despite all the abuses he hurls at you! That’s such an enviable position! The one true god loves you so much, he tortures you as a demonstration of just how much you worship and obey him. That’s what love is. And just think of how lucky you are! He picked *you* as a guinea pig in his twisted self aggrandizing experiment! He chose YOU! This would make such a great reality TV show!

Heaven and Hell productions, presents...

“The God Fucks Me Factor.”

Ah yes, it would be, so nice. Because god takes great pride in your blind obedience, you know. And he’s a very jealous god, if you can believe it. So what’s going on inside your head is of supreme importance him! You must think that you believe in him, then confess it with thy lips, and then go down, and perform some lip service on the godhead. You should show great pride in being a slave. It’s a feather in god’s cap. And now, can be more fully realized with the advent of pantheism. It’s theism, with a pan. It’s pantheism.

Famous 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was really captivated by the idea of pantheism, and his many philosophical contemplations on the subject is largely responsible for ushering the position into modern day prominence. Pantheists do not celebrate a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god, but rather, accept all gods into worship, because they view god as everything. An ideological stance that can become quite problematic, to say the least.

Throughout history, pantheism has been a belief system that, in one form or another, tended to be the most common default faith practice among the many various indigenous peoples from around the globe. It’s the same ideologic methodology that the pagans of Europe used to practice; that is, before Rome came along and forced Christianity deep down into every person’s every available orifice. And you should always keep this historical fact in the forefront of your mind. Your Abrahamic belief system is the result of a Roman soldier raping someone’s great great great great grandma and grandpa with a big middle eastern theological strap-on dildo. Don’t you ever forget that. Your whole modern day spiritual life was originally founded on a theological psych-rape. Your precious sacred religion was passed down to you through your family being raped. And it’s no coincidence that Rome, an arrogant empire dead-set on conquering the entire world, found Christianity to be quite compatible with their grandiose ambitions. And that should tell you something about the core fabric of the Abrahamic cult religions.

So, pantheists believe that god is everything. All inclusive, with no exceptions. No standards or filter necessary. This includes every kind of concept; even the stupid ideas and majestic fantasies, floating around inside our heads. And this also includes every kind of object or person to have ever existed, no matter who or what they are. This means they are ALL god, whether it be a virus, a parasite or an infectious bacteria, whether it be a machine gun, cocaine or a dildo, whether John Wayne Gacy, the unabomber or Adolf Hitler, they are all but different forms of an ambiguous enigmatic god! He’s so complex, you can’t even fathom him. He’s got value and purpose so profoundly beyond your puny logic, you can’t even question him.

And not only is every kind of object or person a manifestation of god, but guess what? With pantheism, ALL the different gods, are god as well. It’s not that some gods are valid, and some gods are not, or that maybe all gods are completely full of shit, no! In fact, it actually quite the opposite, I’m afraid. Now, all different gods are actually the one same god. Every so called “god” is graciously welcomed into pantheism with open arms. Whether Yahweh, Zeus, Horace, or the great honorable bull testicle god, all of them are just different manifestations of the one same god!

Yeah. You know, when it gets right down to it, I don’t have any issue with the whole “god is everything”, bullshit, but, uh, to say the least, I think these concepts might be just a little *too* inclusive for most of the population’s tastes. They’re simply not palatable to their delicate tongue’s tender sensibilities, and they therefor much more prefer to perform oral worship on a single god head. Who am I to stop them?

But the concept of a universe is just so much better then a god, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s a better false substitution. The idea of the universe as a higher power is more soothing then the idea of a god as a higher power. This particular surrogate for the truth is just so much more secure and comforting. But in the end, it’s the same exercise. The idea that something ELSE in the field of perception is the responsible agent. In fact, most of this pantheism business just seems to be a matter of replacing the word “god” with the word “universe”, and calling this a new ideological position. Are you confused? Well, worry not! I will gladly give you a little taste, and bestow upon you three prime examples.

Quote:

“Never trust anyone completely but God. Love people, but put your full trust only in God.”

Lawrence Welk.

Nice. Which now becomes:

“Never trust anyone completely but the universe. Love people, but put your full trust only in the universe.”

Quote:

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Sweet. But could also be stated:

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is the universe’s handwriting.”

Quote:

“Man has to start with something and then develop it - he cannot ever make anything from nothing, only God can do that, and call forth the creation.”

Margaret Weston.

Awesome. But let’s not overlook:

“Man has to start with something and then develop it - he cannot ever make anything from nothing, only the universe can do that, and call forth the creation.”

See how it works? Just about any dialogue about god could still hold water when replacing the word “god” with “the universe.” So it’s really not all that much of a novel position. It’s just a convenient one-size-fits-all philosophical cure-all. An ideological placebo. And I’m not one who is much impressed by Dues Ex philosophy, which is what any type of theology basically is, including pantheism.

For those of you not familiar with the term, “Dues Ex”, it is derived from the term “Dues Ex Machina”, a Greek phrase, which translated means, “a god from a machine”, and is usually employed as a literary device, wherein an explicitly complex seemingly intractable problem in a plot narrative is suddenly inexplicably solved by the addition of an unexpected character, object or situation. Think the eagles coming to save Frodo from uncertain doom in the fiery volcano of Mordor. Basically, it’s a cheap fast way to tie up the loose ends of a difficult quandary. It’s ideological laziness, and quite frankly, has no place in philosophy, in much the same way that theism has no place in philosophy.

And by the way, speaking of the “a god from the machine” thought experiment, it reminds me that, when it comes to gods and machines and ghosts and men, philosophers have gotten the whole thing all wrong all along. A god may emerge from a machine, but if it does, bear in mind that both the god and the machine are equally sourced from the pure mind. And this is the part people just can’t seem to understand. Though-out history, philosophers have always deeply contemplated the idea of “a ghost in the machine”, but that’s because most philosophers think they are a physical creature living in a physical environment. But it’s a huge lie. There is no ghost in the machine. What you actually have, is a machine in the ghost; as, there is no such thing as physicality, and a “deterministic mechanical universe”, is just an abstraction. What you call “physicality”, is a denser mental state; and to attribute this mind-space into an idea of objective locality is just plain falsehood. It’s just plain wrongheaded.

And it doesn’t matter if you include the “self”, as god, because this “self”, is still an attribution. The egoic character that you’ve associated an identity with, isn’t a self, so this is still in the same realm of falsehoods. Illusion is everything on the screen of perception; including the physical body, and all it’s supposed psycho-biological properties. Wherein is any universe?

So that’s pantheism; which, I’m not all that partial towards, due to it’s attributional psychology, which shares the same central backbone as orthodox religion. Why would it be any different with pantheism? The responsibility is still elsewhere, hence the power is elsewhere also; so it matters not that you’ve replaced an anthropological deity with celestial chemistry. Same excrement, different poop chute. And that’s the same reason why, that if a truth seeker were to take a purely scientific position considering the universe, it wouldn’t be all that much different then a theist or a pantheist viewpoint.

“How’s that?”

That’s right, Charlie. As previously stated, a purely cosmological scientific viewpoint; that is, the idea of the universe as some grand cosmic physical context of exterior space consisting of a mixture of different objects and chemistries, is just that: an idea. In other words, also completely full of shit. There is no “universe”, existing, anywhere. And that’s why, the universe doesn’t give it a shit about you. There’s no vibrating strings out there governing some law of attraction that brings forth metaphysical emergent properties when you energetically match a frequency. No. What you really have, is just an IDEA of a universe, which is not really located in a space-time continuum, but, only imagined as a location in a mind-space continuum.

If you can understand this basic fundamental, then you may have finally grasped one of the basic truths of reality.

[whyanispeakscold-blog]

the de-evolution of human existence

The human race as it seems in today’s world has taken thousands of years  to develop, in beginning of time, humans as the history speaks were a predatory species, we were designed or our basic nature was “hunt-prey-kill-eat”, then we evolved. We discovered fire, messopotamians discovered wheel, from messopotamians society, the idea of living in group with mutual understanding and dependency became popular and soon over a scale of thousands of years people developed themselves and started making communities and that evolved to society and hence later a civilization. Then empires were created from developed civilization, coming to main point ‘HOW DE-EVOLUTION?‘

Humans are a complex and complicated creature, their motives and thinking patterns are hard to understand, sometime we support ‘one nation- one leader‘, and sometimes democracy, sometimes they create differences in their own society and communities. In eastern roman empire Jesus Christ sacrificed his life to restore faith in god! A man is a sole cause of his destruction.

Now we no longer live in a civilization, i mean we all are civilized now, the whole race is at the edge of becoming 100% civilized. Now we often refer the word ‘society‘ in most aspects , ‘what will society think?‘, ‘what will it look like in society?‘ such bullshit, now we are at the second stage of de-evolution “the SOCIETY“, society is just a metaphor, no one cares about it, people often refer themselves to put forward their unspoken speculations of you, they don’t care actually.

People has retrieved themselves from societies or it exist as a metaphor, now they started segregating themselves in ‘communities’, ahuh not the real one the one which is called ‘caste-ism’ and ‘racism’ and skin color. In India there are reservations in government institutions and offices, because they are “unprivileged“ in free and modern world. People also have taken steps to wipe out the existence of communities and in actually many inhuman ways, the Nazi Germany and Herr Hitler used the ideal of “one nation one leader“, and almost had killed all the Jews from the face of Europe in his concentration camps in the fear that Jews will bring Deutschland in feet and bring no glory!

Since our journey (which i believe)  traveled backward from civilization till communism . now comes the statistics that , the percentage of people who actually don’t want to live in any of these is 40%, yes 40% of the humans are introvert some may accept some may not and some even goes to denial, these people actually don't have any interest  in the crowd of people with fake pretenses, introvert is actually not what we think it is, but becoming apart is becoming general nature of people.

It all started with the idea of living in group with mutual understanding and dependency among each other, in today’s world everyone is self dependent no one gives a fuck about anything you believe or do. No one knows what society we are actually building here- “ Is it actually de-evolution or just the beginning of a new era  “

thank you for wasting 2 minutes!

[manbomary]

Dear White People: You were colonized too

Hi, white people! How’s it going? Come on in; I just put the coffee on.

 How do you take it? Cream? Sweetener? Oh, I nearly forgot. Here’s some Nilla wafers. I even put them on a plate for you. I’m not an animal, after all.

 Oh, you want a cold brew? Sorry, I’m clean out.

 Anyway, on to the reason why I called you here today.

Let’s address the spiritual elephant in the room. Actually, let’s address the spiritual elephant in America. I’m not talking about what church you go to, or what religion you were raised in, or even if you believe in God at all. I’m talking about something else. Something that didn’t even originate in America.

 It originated in Europe, a very long time ago, before any of your family thought of coming here as migrants. You know, migrants that may have left a country where they were being oppressed, or not free to practice their religion, or there were no jobs or food…

 Sorry, did that strike a nerve? Have another Nilla wafer.

 You have a spiritual unease, white people. This is beyond religion or dogma. This is much deeper.

I’m saying you were robbed. You were robbed a long, long time ago. You were robbed of your culture and heritage.

I know, I know, you’re getting defensive. I get it. I know exactly what you’re thinking:

“I have my heritage! My great-grandparents are from Ireland and Germany!”

Wonderful. What is the indigenous religion of those countries?

“…well, my family is Christian.”

No, I mean before that.

“Huh?”

See, that’s what I mean. Christianity did not originate in places like Ireland and Germany. It was brought there by colonizers.

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, there were the Romans. The Romans were, like, the bomb at colonizing. They were everywhere. Their armies spread all over Europe and to the Middle East. In many cases, the Romans would move into an area and set up temples to their Roman gods. Local folks were usually allowed to keep worshipping their local gods but were also forced to sacrifice to Roman gods (including the emperor, who was viewed as a deity).

That was the first instance of colonization.

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the year 380 C.E., the second and perhaps greatest colonization began. Missionaries began going through Europe to spread the message of Christianity to the indigenous people of Europe. Wherever the missionaries went, they preached to the people that their gods and spirits were demons, that following Christianity was the only legitimate religion, and they’d better practice it or else.

As the missionaries grew in power, as more and more leaders became Christian (sometimes for political or strategic reasons rather than true spiritual conversion), the preaching became aggression. The sacred tree groves of the Celts in Ireland, England, and France were chopped down and the wood used to build Christian churches. Temples to gods that had stood for hundreds of years were razed.

Now, I’m not saying that Christianity is inherently bad, or that if you’re a Christian and white that you yourself are responsible for all these things. However, white folks, we bear those scars of colonization in our souls.

I know you’ve felt it. You may have heard stories that your older relatives told of how things were in Italy or Ireland or Germany, folk stories and beliefs. You may have heard of the fairy folk, of how trees and plants had magical properties.  I know you’ve heard of some of the “old” gods: Thor, Freya, Brigid, Athena…and you may have felt something in your soul. Something that feels longing. What would it have been like to live and know these old gods as your own? Your grandparents may have told you stories of their parents and grandparents. You heard stories of your grandfathers who fought in wars, your great-aunts who were healers or herbalists. What would it be like to have those stories be real?

I have news for you: they are. You just don’t realize it because colonization took away your opportunity to continue the old ways of your indigenous ancestors.

The Native people of what is now the United States had their lands invaded by people from another land who forced their ways and religion and laws on them. Where did these invaders (Europeans) learn how to do that? Because it was done to them.

African people were ripped from their homelands and forced into slavery in a far-off land. They were punished or killed for practicing their native religions and cultures. Christianity and imperialism told the invaders, slavers, and Conquistadors that their religious belief in spreading the Gospel of Christ justified their actions.

This same obsession with spreading the Gospel and converting the heathens that saw Africans and Native American peoples as less than human, primitive, and available to be exploited is the same force that colonized your indigenous ancestors.

How’s the coffee? It’s a fair-trade blend from Haiti. Se anpil gou, wi?

 Anyway, what I’m saying is the unease and discomfort you feel when you see Native peoples having a pow wow, or Black folks practicing Lukumi, or Latinos celebrating Day of the Dead, that weird jealous/indignant feeling, and the thought of “Why do they get to shove their ethnicity in our faces?”

That’s because you were colonized too, and your deep ancestral knowledge and heritage was taken away from you. A part of your, OUR, collective soul as indigenous European descendants was cut out. Our ancestral healers and herbalists were burned or hanged as witches. Ancient gods and land spirits were diminished into ghost tales and “superstitions”. And we have taken that energy of colonization, the energy that destroyed our indigenous culture, and foisted it onto Native Americans and the Africans brought to this side of the world and enslaved.

 Don’t look so down, white people. There is hope. You can start decolonizing yourself.

How?

Start with your ancestors. Get a white candle, light it, and put out a glass of plain water. Talk out loud to your ancestors, saying, “Ancestors of my blood, I ask those who lived well and died well to guide me to learn about the pre-Christian and pre-colonization beliefs and culture of your time.”

Do this once a week. Then pay attention. You might start having dreams. You might feel led to certain books, to ask living relatives what stories of your family they remember. Take notes. Don’t feel like you’re going crazy. You’re not.

You’re reconnecting.

This won’t be easy. Cultures like the Celts and Germanic people (just as an example) did not leave written records about themselves. You’ll be led to do more and more research, but you don’t have to turn into a research nut. Keep calling on your elevated ancestors and they will lead you in the right direction.

There are people out there who are trying to reconstruct ancient European pagan traditions. Some of them are getting things right, some of them are fronts for nationalist “white pride” groups. Don’t let them bullshit you. Vet people and check them before you get sucked into something awful.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by; come back any time.

Hey, take an extra Nilla wafer. When you get home, find a nice tree on your property and leave the cookie there for the land spirit.

Start small, act humbly, talk from the heart, and you can get decolonized.