#i get the feeling this way of structuring shows has been imposed on them

[missadangel]

The Heart of Rome (Marcus Acacius x OC)

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IV. The Desire (+18, Smut, MDNI)

"Ubi amor ibi fides."

Where there is love, there is faith.

“Tell me who you are,” Acacius waited for the answer to come from between your lips, his eyes lingering on the curve of them.

You knew it was time. There was no point in dragging it out any longer. 

“Marcus, I-”

He was taken aback at first, but he liked it when you called him by his first name. He kept questioning you, though, still waiting for an answer.

The door of the room was suddenly knocked on from outside. It was his squire. Acacius turned his head angrily.

"Don't disturb me!" he commanded.

"Sir, it's urgent matter!"

Acacius looked into your eyes for the last time, then withdrew his hands and turned towards the door.

"Come in!”

Acacius' squire Cato came in, looking very worried. 

"Sir, you've been summoned from Collis Palatium (Palatine Hill). It's an emergency." He was out of breath.

"Take it easy and let me know what's going on, Cato."

"They said, Emperor Geta has been poisoned, sir. The Empress wants to see you."

You covered your mouth in shock. After all, he was your half-brother. Acacius looked at you and then back at Cato. "Why is she calling me? I'm not a medicus."

"I'm not sure, sir, but I was told she wanted to speak to you. The guard with the horse said so. He's waiting for you outside to accompany you sir.”

Acacius nodded and let out a deep sigh. 

“Take me with you," you said suddenly.

He turned to you. "No, it might be too late by now."

"I can help him," you said loudly.

"Maybe you can't. I won't throw you into this recklessly,” he hissed.

"Are you going to let him die? It would be disastrous for Rome if he dies. He may not be the best ruler, but he's on the throne and an emperor in the end. I know he rules better than Caracalla. You know that too. You can't just leave Rome's fate in his hands."

Acacius put his hands on his waist, thinking, uncertain, but knowing you were right.

“I didn't know you were so interested in politics,” he teased, crossing his arms.

“I'm just observing things,” you shrugged. “Please let me come,” you said pleadingly.

His brow furrowed, and he raised his index finger as if in warning.

"You will stay in your cloak in the carriage and you will not show your face to anyone until I say so. If I need you, you will come when I tell you. Is that clear?"

You nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The upper class Roman citizens settled on the Palatine Hill and built magnificent palaces. Emperors lived here in palaces called Domus. Caracalla and Geta did not get on well, but they both stayed in the same palace, The Domus Severiana. This imposing structure was located southeast of Capitoline Hill and the Colosseum.

The carriage arrived at the Palatine Hill in the twilight. You and the General barely spoke the whole way, both of you feeling tense in different ways. He was nervous because he had brought you with him, and you were worried that you would not be able to help Geta in time. You needed to know what kind of poisoning it was. You were almost an expert, but you weren't sure how well you could do without Vicius, your uncle. If you do something wrong and he dies, you could be in trouble. The General was aware of this, and it was worrying him.

Domus Severiana had no entrance from the street because it did not face the street. Security issues were undoubtedly the reason. In fact, all you could see were high walls, and not a single window facing the street. As the carriage stops, Acacius looked at you directly. "Put on your cloak and wait until Octavius arrives."

You nodded and did as he said, pulling your cloak over your head. 

"I'll check on the situation, and if there's nothing left to do by the time I leave, you must return to the villa. Do you understand?"

"Understood."

Acacius looked at you one last time before turning towards the giant door of the courtyard, concern on his face. "I hope," you murmured as you looked behind him. "I hope you don't die, brother. And I hope I can help you."

A moment later, you heard the sound of a horse's hooves hitting the ground as it ran and you turned your head in that direction.  Octavius pulled the reins of his horse and stopped it right next to the chariot. He leapt down and regarded the scene with a keen eye.

"My Lady," he greeted, "I wonder if there might be any news?"

You shook your head. "The General is inside," you replied.

He nodded, "I'll see if he needs me," and went inside.

It was dark now, and you were eager to get moving. You were ready to get out of the cart and rush inside, but when you saw Octavius coming out of the courtyard, you decided to wait it out.

"The general said you should leave," he said quietly. From the look on his face, you could tell he didn't agree with him.

"Is it too late for him?” You swallowed hard.

“He said he doesn't look well. I think it's his last moments.”

You frowned at him. "I can save him, just like I saved the general. You know that, don't you?"

He gave you a look that seemed to say he was in agreement. But he was just following orders from his General. “Acacius ordered me to accompany you to the villa.”

You closed your eyes, took a deep breath, stood up, and jumped out of the carriage. Octavius stopped you by extending his big arm out in front of you.

"The General's orders are clear, my lady."

 "I cannot let him die like this. If this gets out of Rome, Our enemies will undoubtedly spread the rumour that the Roman Emperor died of a simple poison and did not even have a skilled medicus to cure him. This would be an attack that could potentially weaken the Empire, and we can not allow that to happen.”

Octavius was too stunned by your words. 

‘My lady, you speak more wisely than the emperors, you are full of surprises indeed.’ He smiled.

First of all, as a medicus who saves lives, it never felt right to do nothing and let him die. You were determined to do it, even if he was not your brother, even if he was not the emperor. As a patient who needs help.

“I'll answer to the General,” you said to reassure Octavius. “But, sir, we don't have much time.” 

Octavius nodded, then inhaled deeply. “Even if you answer him, he'll punch me in the face for sure.”

You walked with him to the gate of the courtyard, he gestured to the guards waiting at the gate, one of the guards knocked the gate with fist without turning his body, squinting at you, and the large gold-embroidered gate swung open.  

The main courtyard was enormous. As you entered, you were greeted by a rectangular fountain with a motif of four peltas (shields used by the famous female Amazon warriors). The walls were decorated with frescoes, the courtyards and colonnaded porticoes were covered with elegant marble, and statues adorned the fountain and porticoes. Some of those statues were of family members. The biggest and most central one was of Septimius Severus himself, your father.

As you passed the statue, you took a quick look around, not knowing who it was, and made your way to the second courtyard. A large fountain and the same columns stood in this courtyard, but the marble was a different color. It was a truly beautiful sight. As soon as you crossed from this courtyard to the back courtyard, Acacius, who was talking to Julia Domna, noticed you and scowled. Julia Domna was looking sad, too. On the upper balcony, probably in the part of the emperor's chambers, you saw a lot of movement. Slaves were in a rush.

The Empress was clearly surprised, "That girl."

Acacius glanced at Octavius and his face clearly showed his growing tension. 

"If I can help, Your Highness," you said, bowing your head.

"How can you help? General, what does that mean?" she looked at him with a frown.

You answered before he could, the whole thing was so unnecessary, especially when time was so limited.

"I know I'm a woman and I know it sounds ridiculous, but I'm an experienced medicus. I'm here to save our emperor. Please allow me, highness.”

“Is that true, General?” She asked, her eyes on you.

Acacius squinted at you and then looked at at her and nodded. “She is the one who saved me highness, so, yes it is true.”

“But Medici has already said there is nothing more that can be done,” she said in a tearful voice.

"My Lady, we're wasting time here. Please take me to him and see what I can do to help.”

Julia nodded, looking very desperate.

“Well, he needs all the help he can get, you must be skilled to heal the General, but I trust him not you, not yet, don’t forget that.”

You noticed the General clench his jaw.

"Come with me now,” Julia gesturing with her hand.

While you were all going up the stairs, following her behind, Caracalla, who was leaning on the balustrade in front of Geta's room on the second floor, watching everything meanwhile.

“Lover, Slave, Medicus, so many things hiding under that beautiful face of yours,’ he said sarcastically. You nodded at him but didn’t like the smile on his face. There was no hint of sadness in his eyes. He seemed far from sad.

Julia stared at him with determination. "We'll do what we can, won't we? For your brother.”

“All the medici have already done enough, mother,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Or don't you trust my own medicus?”

You wanted to slap him in the face as he was standing in the doorway stalling you. How could he talk so carelessly when every second was precious? He might not love his brother much, but his behaviour was leading you to suspect him and you hated it.

Julia gently touch his shoulder. “I trust him as much as I trust you, my handsome boy. You trust me, don't you?”

Whatever Caracalla sensed in her voice, he didn't like it, and his eyes sharpened. But he quickly recovered his expression and smiled. “Hurry, then,” he said, pointing with both arms to the door leading to Geta's room.

Julia looked at you, "Just you." You saw the General before entering the Geta’s room. He was visibly nervous.

You were certain he'd give you a scolding when you got back to the villa.

When Julia led you through the door, you saw the golden dressing screen first. Opposite, was a large table with kinds of fruits and flowers on it and two chairs. Just beyond, in the opposite corner of the large window, where the golden curtains hung, was a large bed, covered with a red veil so thin that you could see the emperor lying on his bed. 

An old man, who was undoubtedly the medicus Caracalla mentioned just ago, looked at you with curiosity.

“Your Highness,” he nodded, his eyes were on you.

“She will check our emperor,” she said firmly.

“But this is a girl and-“  

“I said, I want her to check my son’s condition.” Her voice was sharp.

“Yes, highness.” The man bowed his head and stepped aside, squinting at you, Julia crossed her arms and gestured at you. You turned your head to Geta, lying motionless on his bed, a thick satin sheet draped over him. He was wearing a red tunic with gold embroidery, he seemed delirious, his golden blond hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, his skin was almost white, you quickly lifted the bedclothes, took his arm in your hands and examined it. It was swollen, red, his neck had the same symptoms, it was definitely plant poisoning.

“Hemlock?” You murmured.

The man opened his eyes wide. “But how-“

Julia was surprised too. “Yes, they said that. Now that you've realised that quickly, you can make an antidote, can't you?”

You put your hand on Geta's forehead and checked his body temperature. It was burning. "We need to lift the covers now," you said, and grabbed the covers with your hands, lifting them completely off him and pushing them to the other side of the bed.

“I asked you if you could make an antidote!”

You ignored her question and asked, "How long has he been like this? Has there been any vomiting? Was it something he ate or drank?"

She froze for a second, thinking quickly. "It was after dinner. He threw up a lot, yes, and then he fainted. He was delirious."

"That's good. The vomiting," you said, checking his neck and lips with your fingers. You parted Geta's lips, still and pale. There was a little bit of food in his mouth, on the edge of his tongue, and you put it in a clean cloth and put it aside. They didn't even make him drink some water? “He needs to drink water and-“

“But highness, he shouldn't be uncovered like this, he will get cold, we need to keep his body warm,” the other medicus interrupted you angrily. Julia frowned.

You rolled your eyes and stood up. “Sir, you obviously have knowledge, but I don't think you've ever dealt with hemlock poisoning before. His body is fighting with poison right now, so we need to lower his body temperature. In fact, we need to get as much fresh air in here as possible. Please be sure open all the windows and I need clean water and cloths.”

“You heard her!” Julia shouted at the emperor's slaves. Then she turned to the other medicus. 

“Is it true? That you've never encountered hemlock poisoning before and you've never treated it and you didn't tell me?” Her voice was so sharp and loud that he trembled with fear.

“You've been living in this palace as a medicus for years, maybe even longer than this girls age. But you can't do anything against this poison. Even this girl knows more than you. And you have the nerve to tell me that my son doesn't have much time left?”

“Your Majesty! I did not want to upset you-”

“Get out!” She barked.

Then she turned to you. “Antidote?”

“No, there is no antidote for hemlock,” you shook your head. “But I can get the poison out of his body in the most undamaged way possible.”

Julia was confused. “So you mean I can hope that, my son won't die?”

You smiled at her. “No, at least not tonight, highness. I ask you to trust me.”

She nodded, “Do whatever it takes to heal him,” her eyes filled with tears.

When the water and cloth you asked for arrived soon, you put them on the bedside table, dipped the cloth into it, squeezed it a little, put the cloths on his forehead and neck, and took your medical bottles out of your bag.

“What are you doing?” Julia asked curiously. 

“I'll have to make an herbal mixture to-.”

“Didn't a plant already poisoned him?”

“Yes, but to reduce and neutralize this poison… Can I use the kitchen? I'll need to examine the food he ate for dinner and the drink he drank.”

“All right, come with me.”

You left him alone on the bed and went out with Julia while the slaves opening all the windows one by one, as you'd asked. The General and Octavius were waiting just outside the door. Caracalla was the first to notice you. 

He approached you two, looking you over, and then turned to his mother. “Mother?"

"He'll be fine. Let's pray for him," she said, putting his arm around his son. Then she called to one of the slaves, "Take her to the kitchen," pointing at you. Acacius was looking at you, but Julia stepped between you. "General Acacius, I need you to do something for me. Come with me," she commanded. 

Reluctantly he had to go with her and he must be hated it.

You called Octavius over as you and the General were walking in different directions. The slaves went ahead and showed you the way to the kitchen.

"Sir, I need your help with something.”

“Of course, what is it?”

"I was going to ask you to help me in the kitchen. We need to be quick."

Octavius nodded. He trusts you.

"Do you know where the empress and the general have gone?"

"She trusts the General, so she is having him question those who cooked and served the emperor's food. But what I don't understand. Everyone must have eaten the same food, right? Why is only Emperor Geta poisoned?”

“Thats why we're here, to find out.”

There was no one in the kitchen because they had gathered all the cooks and other slaves in the other courtyard like he said.��

You asked one of the slaves to help you get the bowl Geta had eaten from and the others. He went to the dining hall and brought the bowls that the other medicus had examined. You took a piece from Geta's bowl and put it on another plate. 

You took a quick sniff, without bringing your nose too close. You knew that the smell of hemlock was very pungent, but this didn't smell like it. That was a bit unexpected. You put the remains from the corner of Geta's mouth on the other side of the plate and compared them. It was clear that he had eaten from this bowl. You quickly looked at the remains of the food in the bowls and cauldrons where the others had eaten. They were all the same and there was no sign of poison in any of them. 

"It wasn't what he ate," you murmured. "It's what he drank," your eyes locked onto the wine cups. 

Octavius and the other slaves looked at each other, watching you curious to see what you'd do next. You looked at the slaves as you compared the cups. "Can someone tell me which is the emperor's drinking cup? Has a new wine jar been opened recently?"

They exchanged glances and murmured.

"Does she mean the one that that slave just opened today?"

"Maybe."

“Explain please?" you asked.

“One of the slaves spilled the wine during the drinks service, the emperors got pretty mad and told him to bring a new one. He ran to the kitchen and came back with a new decanter.

"And he poured it into Emperor Geta's cup first, didn't he?" you asked. Everything seemed to be cleared up, although you still didn't know what exactly had poisoned him.

"Show us that decanter now!" Octavius barked.

The slave girl nodded and ran into the dining hall to do as he said. A moment later she came running back with the decanter, but you got angry when she spilled some on the floor.

"Be careful! It must be poisoned!”

You quickly poured the wine into a cup and took a sample. The smell was a bit unusual, but you were relieved when your nose recognized it, you encountered before, back Egypt.

"Amanita muscaria," you said quietly. "He mixed it in with his wine."

"What's that?" 

You glanced up at Octavius. "It's a poisonous mushroom, made into an herbal extract and mixed into his wine. It's not an easy process, and not everyone can do it.”

You remembered the medicus from earlier. But you had better things to do right now than to blame him. The next step is to remove the poison from Geta's body. To do that, you had to make a natural antibiotic. You got the ingredients out of your bag and started making it right away, but then you had a sudden realization: everyone who cooks and serves food is about to die.

“Sir, please inform the General, I don't think it's the other slaves or cooks’ fault.”

Octavius nodded and turned on his heel and rushed out. You were praying as you making the herbal concoction with the help of the slaves standing beside you. While not as potent as hemlock, mushroom poison was still quite deadly, especially when combined with alcohol. But fortunately, unlike it, it is possible to make an antidote.

After what felt like an eternity, you finally finished the concoction and headed for the courtyard to go upstairs in rush. The other slaves ran behind you, stumbling as they tried to keep up with you on the stairs. You went into the room, put the bowl on Geta's bedside, and leaned over to check on him. You had so much you wanted to say, so much that hurt, but as a medicus, you were used to focusing on doing your job properly.

All you could think about was getting him better as soon as possible. You gave him the herbal concoction to drink with his slaves help. His breathing was weak, but you made him drink it all. You bowed your head when Caracalla came into the room. He was angry.

"Did you ask them to interrogate my slave?"

That slave who served Geta belonged to him, no surprise.

"He was poisoned by what he drank, not what he ate, and that makes him the prime suspect."

"Are you accusing me, you whore? Who do you think you are?”

He barked quite loudly, and at that moment, as you looked into his eyes, which were glowing with anger, you knew for sure that he was responsible for this. You forced yourself to remain calm.

"Never, Your highness. I would never accuse you of something your slave did."

He came closer to you, his eyes filled with menace. "Once my brother's long gone, all your show of healing will be in vain, and you'll be the one who answer for it, I’ll make sure of that."

You want to blame everyone but yourself, you cunt, you thought as you looked into his eyes.

You were both startled by a sudden deep cough. When you turned to look at him, Geta was propped up on his elbow on the bed, staring at you. 

"Who dares to make so much noise at my bedside?"

"Highness!" You couldn't believe your eyes to see him awake.

Geta raised his eyebrows, squinting. "You? Am I dreaming? Must be seductive one,” he smirked.

“Brother!” Caracalla rushed to his side and leaned over the edge of the bed. He was certainly a very good actor, you had to hand it to him.

“What happened to me? What is she doing here?” Geta was looking at you with his pale but alive face. Seeing him like that a proud smile spread across your face.

“Don't you remember?” Caracalla asked curiously.

“I remember I threw up like damn fountain, after drinking the disgusting wine, and then it was a bit dark,” he murmured, pursing his lips.

“My son!”

Julia burst into the room. The slaves must have informed her immediately. With a gentle touch, she led Caracalla to sit on the edge of the bed and hugged Geta. Caracalla stood up and crossed his arms. 

As you looked at them from where you stood, you felt envious that his mother was alive so she could worry for him, hug him, kiss him. You never had that chance and never will. 

“You are indeed a good medicus, what will you become next, I wonder.” The implication in Caracalla's voice sent shivers down your spine, you could almost imagine what he would do when he found out the truth about you.

Julia stood up and came to you, and for the first time you saw sincerity in her eyes.

“You gave me back my son's life, how should I reward you?”

“I have only fulfilled my duty, Your Majesty.”

“How decent.” Caracalla muttered.

“My head is still spinning,” Geta gasped, lying back on the bed.

“You should get some more rest your highness, and keep drinking the concoction through the night,” you said as you looked at him.

Geta sniffed the concoction and a disgusted expression settled on his face. “This is the most disgusting shit I've ever smelled. What’s in it?”

Just as you were about to say, he silenced you by raising his hand. “Don't you dare tell me, I don't want to know.” Then covered his face with his arm and pointed at you with his other hand. “I am indebted to you. Provide her with whatever she desires, mother.”

"That is very kind of you, but my sole desire is to see you recover," you said sincerely.

Caracalla laughed out loud which made you startled, Julia rolled her eyes, Geta laughed too.

What was so funny?

Geta turned his head to you as he was lying on the bed. “I get better why the General is so fond of you.”

When you heard his name, you looked at the door, but he wasn't there. 

"Let's give highness some space to rest," Julia said, gesturing to the door.

Caracalla pursed his lips, and you could tell from the look in his eyes that he wasn't happy at all. Julia took your arm, you were a little startled but you stayed still. "Are you sure you don't want anything? Everything has a price, and everyone has something they want in return."

You looked at her face as you walked down the hall together. "I just want good days for Rome, Your Highness. That's all I want.”

“It will be so, since you saved our emperor,” she smiled. 

You were beginning to warm to her, but something inside you kept telling you were putting yourself in danger. 

“I see you live with him as the General's medicus. Is it true you saved him in Egypt?”

You swallowed, but you had to tell the truth.

“Yes.”

“You lived there? He brought you here?”

You nodded.

“Do you have a name?”

“Highness!”

Macrinus came running down the hallway towards you. His eyes met yours, and you knew instantly that he carried a warning message. 

"I'm truly sorry for what happened. I came as soon as I heard. Could you please let me know how our emperor is doing now?”

"He's better now, thanks to this girl. It seems your and Caracalla's medicus wasn't as good as this girl."

Macrinus' expression made it clear he was not pleased. 

“Thankfully, he's alive. We should probably offer a sacrifice to the Gods.”

"I'll do that first thing tomorrow, but I'm not sure you're being completely sincere. You haven't called off the council meeting tomorrow, have you?"

"I would if it wasn't so important, but I thought Emperor Caracalla would lead it. He agreed."

From the way he looked at you, you knew immediately that the meeting was about you.

"If I could speak to His Majesty-"

"No, he will rest. Caracalla is also very tired, maybe you should come tomorrow. It has been a very hard night.”

"Have the perpetrators been punished? Who is responsible?" Macrinus was very curious, which made you also suspect him.

“The General is dealing with that,” she said with cruel smile.

You felt a pang of guilt for having forgotten him amidst the chaos.

"Your Highness, if I may, I would like to ensure that the General and I have completed our duties here.”

"I perceive that you are fatigued; they shall accompany you. You may leave.”

“Thank you.”

You nodded to them and hastened to the general, disregarding Macrinus' disapproving gaze. 

As you walked briskly towards the main courtyard, you thought it would be a good idea to get out of there with the general as soon as possible. You assumed he was upset that you hadn't listened to him. When you passed the tall pink marble column with gold inlay on the sides and came out into the main courtyard, you saw Octavius first. He was standing opposite the general and looking down at something. Then you saw the general himself, with his back to you. To see what he was looking at, you had to get past the stunted trees. Then, as you got closer, you noticed the strong smell of iron and then saw the sword in the general's hand. You were taken aback to realize that the smell was of blood dripping from his sword onto the ground. 

Then you saw people in slave clothes lying on the ground, including Caracalla's medicus. You were petrified. Julia and Caracalla must have had the General do their dirty work. When Octavius looked up at you, the General turned around and his eyes met yours. There was blood on his sandals, his leather armor, and his neck. His face was expressionless. When you saw him like that, you felt fear and horror. But when his expression changed and he looked sad, you threw all your fears aside and approached him. He pulled back and turned his head away. He wiped his sword on a rag Octavius handed him and sheathed it. 

"You saved him," he said, wiping the blood away from his leather armor.

"Yes, the empress said we could head out now,” your voice broke.

It wasn't just that they killed these people without a trial. They even had the General do this dirty job, and it made you angry. You forced yourself to ignore the people who were lying on the ground, lifeless.

You didn't like the way he avoided looking at you though, so you went over and took his hand, pulling him closer. "We're done here, General. Shall we go?" You touched his face with your hand and turned him towards you. His brown eyes shone like gems in the light of torches on the courtyard walls.

"Wait for me in the carriage. I'm not done yet,” he said coldly.

"I'll take care of it, sir," Octavius said, clearly worried about his friend. "Please go to your villa and rest." 

"You heard him. I want to go. I'm exhausted," you said, tugging on his arm, but he was like a statue and wouldn't budge.

Acacius turned his head to him.

Was he ignoring you?

“Thank you, my friend.”

But he must not have liked you tugging on his arm, so he grabbed your arm instead, you liked the way he touched you with a protective instinct. As you strode out of the courtyard, your gaze fixed on the general's face, you felt a sharp, piercing pain in your heart. You were not used to seeing him like this. You would have done anything to see him smile again.

It was after midnight when the carriage arrived at the villa, there was no moonlight tonight, it was quite dark. The General was silent the whole time, he joined you in very short sentences when you told him what you had done to save Geta. It was hard to tell if it was because he was angry with you or because he had to kill those people against his will. He was a man of justice and honor, it must have been hard for him, and you felt very sorry for him. You checked his beautiful face as you entered the courtyard of the Villa, still looks upset, it was getting unbearable. Without thinking, you stepped in front of him and put one arm around his waist and one around his neck and embraced him. You could feel the surface of the leather armor under your skin as you pressed your cheek against his chest. 

“I'm sorry you had to do that.”

"I was on the verge of doing more,” he said in a sharp tone, almost as sharp as his sword.

You gazed up at his face to ascertain what he was talking about. In the gloom of the night, with only the light from the torch on the wall of the courtyard, the color of his eyes appeared to be very dark. “If you couldn't save him, she was ready to kill you. She was so mad and was willing to spill blood. I made my plan right in that moment. I was as ready as she was."

You swallowed hard, wondering if he was talking about a suicide plan.

“To her, you saved yourself by saving his son. That's it. She put Caracalla's medicus life on the line without a second thought. She could have done the same thing to you," he hissed.

You felt guilty when you sensed the tremor in his voice.

“I'm sorry, I disobeyed you.”

“You'd better be,” he muttered.

You took a step back and looked at him. Finally his expression had softened, and you felt a sense of relief.

“But you were going to kill the empress and the emperors just for a slave girl?” Raising your eyebrows curiously.

He smirked. “Wasn't it you who shout in my face that you were not a slave?”

You bit your lip and gave a shy smile. “I did. I’m sorry for that too.”

“And you still didn’t tell me who you are.”

“I will, but, with all due respect you haven't answered my question, General.”

He lowered his head and looked you in the eye. “Not just for a slave, I'd kill them all for you even if I don’t know who you are.”

He couldn't have been more seductive with that sharp tone, your heart began to race. But no matter how tempting it was that he was ready to kill anyone for you, you couldn't get out of your mind what Macrinus had said before. You couldn't bear to make the General look guilty when he knew nothing about it.

“Can I tell you tomorrow? I'm really tired. It's been a long day and night."

“It certainly was. Fair enough. Tomorrow then.”

The next day, you woke up feeling so tired you didn't want to get out of bed. You had a lot of bad dreams about the General. You also thought about Caracalla's attitude, how ready he was to kill you, Julia's cruelty, and what she made the General do. It was all torturing you, and you didn't know how to deal with it. You were sure that even if Geta recovered thanks to you, he wouldn't support the General against Senate. There was nothing but tension between those two. Macrinus was so keen for you to introduce the congress tomorrow that he didn't even care that the emperor almost died. You knew that man's determination well enough. He wasn't going to back down from this, no matter what. He was only interested in power. He wasn't helping you because he cares about you. 

 He was using you as a pawn to achieve his goal. And you were aware of that. It's possible that everything he said about your father was untrue. Who knows what will happen to you when you show up in the council meeting. Or the general. You hated being in the middle of everything and didn't want to put the general in danger, so you felt your heart ache as you forced yourself to admit that the only thing to do was to leave. You wanted to go home, to your old land, where no one could reach you. If you could be invisible like before, maybe everything would be as it should be and the general wouldn't do anything to put himself in danger. It was a dumb idea, though. You weren't the type to run away. The emperors and their mothers had already seen you, and your absence when Macrinus convened the senate would have been an admission that you had run away. They would find you no matter where you went. There was no escape.

No, that's not an option. With so few options on the table, it was down to just one. However, there was something you wanted to do before telling him who you were. Now that you know for sure how you feel about him. As Aya, you wanted to do something as his slave. Yes, you were ready, maybe not physically yet, but you were absolutely sure as mentally.

A moment later the door opened and Norell walked in.

“Aya, are you alright? Master told me to check in on you.”

You sat up to look at her.

“I’m alright, nothing to worry about.”

“It's almost evening and you're still on the bed,” she complained.

Almost evening? Has it really been that long? Norell closed the door and came over.

“Or is it your moon? Do you want me to get you something warm?”

Fortunately, there were still a few days until then.

“No, I'm just a bit tired.”

“Yes, you came late last night, it was you who healed the emperor, but the master warned us to keep our mouths shut.”

“Well, I did what I could, yes. Is he all right?”

“The master? Yes, why?”

"Yesterday was a very tiring day for him and for me."

"He took his bath in the morning and then asked about you while he was eating, but he seemed fine."

Right, the bath.

"Shall we go to the bath today?" you asked her. You needed to take a bath before the night.

"Today? But I'm still bleeding, you know," she said, pursing her lips.

"Oh, right."

"But I don't think the master will mind you using the balneum," she said with a wink. "Is there any particular reason you wanted to take a bath today?" She raised her eyebrows suggestively.

When she saw you blush, a wide smile spread across her face. 

"Ah, so tonight's the night?" She clapped her hands gleefully. 

"Shhh, be quiet."

"No wonder you've been so pensive all morning."

You let out a deep sigh. She was right; you had definitely thought about it too, a lot. 

"But you haven't eaten anything yet. Why not come with me and eat something in the kitchen? Then I'll help you take a bath.”

"I'm fortunate to have you," you said, smiling, hugging her, looking at her reddish-orange hair, which represented ginger, thinking about what would happen after you revealed yourself. You didn't want to lose her friendship.

As you were leaving the room, you were pretty surprised to see the General right outside the door. Was he about to knock?

“I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing.”

Norell bowed her head and walked away to leave you two alone, giggling meanwhile.

You ignored her and eyed him up and down. He was wearing a white tunic with gold leaf embroidery on the hems, a brown belt with embroidery of the same colour and pattern, and a red shawl over it, as if representing Mars himself, which was stunningly attractive. You tried to stay calm, but it was hard.

“I'm alright, well, I guess I'm still tired from yesterday.”

"I see. It must have been quite tiring for you. I didn't get a chance to ask you much yesterday because I was angry with you, but now I understand better how hard it was for you," he said in a soft, velvety tone.

He looked better than yesterday, the anger and sadness in his eyes were gone, and seeing him like this filled you with joy. It was so hard to wait till night.

"But you promised for today," he said, his voice gentle but insistent.

"Yes, if it's not too much to ask, could I come to your room tonight?”

Acacius' brown eyes met yours, first with a hint of surprise, then with a growing sense of excitement. 

"You picked the perfect time to talk," he said with a smirk. You felt your cheeks flush, and at that moment, you felt a strange moisture between your legs. It was a new feeling for you, a combination of lust and desire. It was wonderful, full of life.

"I have to go for a while, but I'll be back tonight."

"May I ask where you're going?"

His smile faded but his expression was soft. “I need to see how the emperor, Geta, is doing. Other members of the senate are going to visit today. Sort of like a visit to see if he's still alive, I suppose.”

"Oh, I see. One more thing, I was wondering if I could use the balneum. Norell said she couldn't come to the baths and I didn't want to go by myself."

"Don't go," he said abruptly. "To the baths. I mean, never. The balneum is yours.”

“Thank you,” you said with a shy smile.

He took your hand and kissed the top of it.

"Enjoy your bath, wait for my return at night," he said almost commandingly, looking under his eyebrows.

He touched your cheek, where it was blushing, and gave you a gentle stroke. Then he walked out of the courtyard. Even though you felt a little abandoned by his leaving, you were pretty excited because you knew he was coming back, so now was the perfect time for a bath. 

Norell accompanied you to the balneum, where you had a long chat. Thanks to her and the hot water, you were almost relaxed, and now you had only one thing on your mind. After getting dressed in your room, you combed your hair and applied rose essence with your finger tips on your neck and hair. It was your favorite, helps you to stay calm, and it smells so nice. 

It was almost night time but the General still hadn't returned, he had been gone a long time and you were getting worried. It was like bedtime for Norell and the other slaves. Cato, the General's squire, was waiting for his arrival in the courtyard. The water flowing from the fountain provided a soothing backdrop to the night, accompanied by the sounds of crickets. While you were playing with the water from the fountain, the black cat you had named Mau suddenly appeared and crossed between your feet, brushing its tail against your skin. She's been away for a while, and you missed her much. 

You picked her up, thinking it would be a good idea to play with her for a while, but she quickly got out of your arms and jumped down. She went to the west side of the courtyard, where the General's chamber was, and meowed at you. It looked like she wanted to show you something. You were curious, so you went over to her. She meowed and ran past the door and into the garden where you first officially met the general. It was hard to keep up with her speed, but you rushed to open the door and enter the garden. She was licking the remains of food on the ground. She probably stole something from the kitchen and brought it here, but she must have still been hungry. Tullia usually shooed her off, so she probably came straight to you. You felt sorry for her, so you went to the kitchen to get her something. 

You opened the door slowly and sneaked in. The kitchen was pretty tidy. You opened one of the food bowls, added some food, and closed the door. She started to meow louder and louder as she caught the scent.

“Sshh, you'll get us both caught,” you whispered.

You went back to the General's garden, afraid that Tullia would find a bowl on the floor in the morning and get angry. Mau ate all the food happily with a purr that made you smile. Once she was done, she licked herself clean with her paw and curled up next to you, ready to fall into a peaceful sleep. Unlike her, you were not so sleepy, you lay down on the grass to watch the stars, twinkle like jewels in the dark sky. It was mesmerizing.

"I hope you don't find yourself falling asleep there again."

You were startled by his voice. When did he arrive? You sat up and looked around. It was hard to see in the dark, so you looked up towards his balcony and noticed him. He was standing with his arms leaning on the balustrade, watching you from above. He had a wonderful smile on his face.

You stood up, quickly brushed your dress and hair with your hands and headed for the stairs. As you took each step, you felt your excitement and nervousness growing. When you got to the last step and were on the same level as him, he took his hands off the balustrade and looked at you.

You smiled when you realized from that distance that he was just as excited as you were. In the darkness of the night, in his white tunic, he shone like the stars in the sky, as if he had just descended to earth through them. As you approached him, he took a few steps towards you, never breaking eye contact. He closed the gap between you slowly, and you saw his dark brown eyes in a way you had never seen them before. They were dark but sparkling, full of desire, an open invitation to you that you couldn't refuse.

You stood there for a while, just speaking with your eyes. At first, you weren't sure how or what to do. You didn't know how to kiss. You'd never kissed anyone before, but you were eager to learn and you really wanted to touch his lips.

You reach up and pull his face closer to yours. You closed your eyes and tried to make your clumsy lips work, hoping that your kiss would be seen as acceptable. You brushed your lips against his and kissed his lower lip. Then you pulled back and looked at his face to see how he reacted. A gentle breeze came from his nose and between his lips, hitting your face.

Was he laughing? You probably looked a bit silly because it was your first kiss. You felt a bit embarrassed.

“My apologies, I've never kissed anyone before,” you murmured.

“Then you'll have to learn,” he said softly. “Allow me to teach you.”

He puts his hand under your chin to make you look up before kissing you. Then pressed his lips against yours with all the passion he has. And Gods! He was a very passionate man. You're so shocked that your first impulse is to reject him. But your slight push on his muscular shoulders doesn’t do anything to stop him. If anything, his kiss gains intensity.

He ventures a hand to your waist pulling you closer. When he started to lightly touch your lips with his tongue you parted your lips and let his tongue touch yours, not hurried but restrained. His tongue tasted like sweet wine, the sweet smell of his skin took your breath away, your blood raced, boiled under his lips. The way his mouth explores yours, the way he keeps rubbing his body against yours, all tells you to surrender to him. Instinctively you raised your arms to wrap them around his thick neck and tangled your fingers in his curly partially gray hair.

He broke the kiss and smirked. You were out of breath and surprised to find yourself in this situation. "You can stop me by saying no," he murmured while rubbing your earlobe with his nose. He pulled his head back gently, his eyes fixed on yours, waiting for your approval. You could see the passion in them.

“I’m afraid that,” he placing his hand on your chin and stroking with his thumb, “if we go any further, I may not be able to stop myself, and you should know, there's no turning back.”

The thought of it almost broke your heart, you wanted him more than anything, you were almost ready to beg him to kiss you again.

"Are you really certain about this?"

You were certain, and you wanted to throw yourself into his arms.

"I am, sir... Marcus." You took his other hand and placed it on your waist as if it belonged there. "I want to be yours.”

His face lit up with a gorgeous, radiant smile. Piercing you with his brown eyes, his huge hands land delicately on your hip and the contact is so intimate that you have to remember how to breathe. His low, deep voice sounds confident. “You have no idea how long I waited for you to say that.”

And before you can even react, he kisses you, but not as gently as before, much more eager, much more passionate. You completely given yourself to him with each deep, passionate kiss. 

His long, thick fingers traced a path from your neck to the hollow of your back, then to the knot of the thin belt you had tied around your waist. You gasped as he quickly undid it, and you found yourself in his arms.

He lifted you so easily in his strong muscular arms, your heart felt like it was going to burst out of your chest when the air hit your face as he carried you to his room. He set you down, near to his bed, you didn't break eye contact as he slowly undresses you, you were sure your cheeks were redder than ever. The dress falls to the floor and gathers around your feet. He pulls your hair aside to expose your neck and collarbone. The atmosphere in the room changes, and you realize your body is shaking. He must have noticed it too because the tenderness in his eyes turns into something else. 

“You have a rare beauty,” he whispers, stroking your collarbone with his fingers, ”Your skin is like a pearl hidden in an oyster shell for me to open.”

When you averted your eyes from him, he cupped your chin in his hand and turned it toward him.  He scooped you up and lays you gently on the bed. The feel of the soft fabric against your skin is pleasant, but nothing compared to the sight of him standing over you and running his eyes up and down your body. At first you squirm shyly under his piercing gaze, his eyes screaming at you: You are so beautiful. I want you. This not only relaxes you, but also makes your body squirm with anticipation. Hot desire.

Your eyes widened when he took off his tunic, you had noticed how gorgeous his body was while he was bathing, but now it was even more impressive. A strong masculine chest, a muscular stomach and a perfect v line. The scars he has add to his rough beauty, perfect.

Marcus unhurriedly puts his knee on the bed and crawls over your body until he's standing over you. You weren't sure if he was trying to gauge your reaction or trying not to startle you with a sudden movement. He brought his face close to yours and began to run his lips along your neck and ear, his fingers caressing your shoulder to your collarbone, and then your arm. 

“Don't be nervous, try to relax,” he whispered in your ear, and when his warm breath hit your face you were getting impatient. He was being too kind and you were grateful for that, but you wanted to be his, you wanted to know what it felt like.

Then he uses his weight to pin you to the bed. The feeling of bare skin against bare skin is incredible. You start rubbing your body against his, savoring the friction. The contact of his body against yours makes you shiver. It feels thrilling. Arousing.

His mouth eagerly finds yours and turns into an all-consuming kiss. Warm, eager lips slide down from your chin to your collarbone and down between your breasts, sucking your sensitive skin in their path. You've always tried to imagine what men's lips would feel like on your skin, but nothing could prepare you for this overwhelming wave of sensations. It feels better than you think. Your back arches and you find yourself wanting more, more of his hand, more of his eager mouth. He stops and stares at you as he hovers over your breasts. You squirm in impatient anticipation. What is he going to do?

He runs his nose and mouth around your breasts, his hot breath caressing your sensitive skin. Marcus blows lightly on one nipple before bringing it to his hot mouth. He sucks gently at first, making you tingle all over. When his mouth presses on your nipple with long, deep, almost wild sucking movements, the sensation is almost unbearable. You moaned, writhing with pleasure beneath him, his mouth slides down to your stomach, torturing its way south until it reaches your ankles. Then he slowly slides up your leg until he's licking your inner thigh. 

He keeps your body arched as his lips repeat the sensual orbit up and down your other leg. He lifts your leg and pulls you down a little to better position it, puts it on his shoulder. You love that he is so strong and uses his strength to move your body. He runs his warm tongue alternately over both your thighs and slowly approaches the top of your thighs. 

He uses his strong hands to spread your legs, leaving your most sensitive area ready and well exposed to his tongue. A sudden flush of embarrassment makes you raise your arm to shield your eyes as he takes a good look at your most intimate parts. Marcus grasps your arm, pulling it back. "Don’t be embarrassed,” he murmurs. “So beautiful.”

He hums into your folds, making pleasure run through your body. His erection sears your skin, making you aware that he’s getting pleasure from driving you crazy with his mouth.

He kisses the area softly; he flips his tongue and sucks you sensitive lips gently. Relentlessly.

And his tongue finds your most sensitive spot. You gasp, writhe with pleasure as your legs stiffen. You cry out, exchanging your fluttering, flaming tongue for hungry lips. This pleasure is more than you can take. Your muscles tense, your toes curl. You didn't want it to stop, but it was becoming too much. Your insides begin to tremble. Finally he increases the pressure of his suction on your clit. Pleasure, scorching, pure, exquisite pleasure, overwhelms you and you explode. You try to muffle the vocal expressions of your pleasure by biting your lower lip, but he parted your lips with the tip of his finger.

 “Let me hear you,” he says as he gently kisses your lips and chin.

Still on his knees, he takes you in his big arms and embraces you. He kisses you sweetly as you slowly begin to descend from Elysium.

He murmurs satisfyingly. “It’ll be less painful now that you’re so ready for me.” He places soft kisses on your shoulders. “Do you want me to continue?”

You pressed your forehead to his muscular chest and nodded.

He gently lays you on the bed once more, you look at his erection nervously. Like the rest of his body, it is large, hard, and beautiful.

He leans to kiss you and you forget that you're nervous. In a swift move, he puts his hands on your knees, bending them, spreading them apart gently.

“Look at me.”

 You obey. The look on his face is hungry, almost predatory, as he settles between your legs.

You gasp when you feel your Marcus -your General- slowly rubbing against your folds. Coating the tip of his erection in your wetness. You squirm under his torture.

Still keeping your knees spread apart, he bends his body to kiss your mouth. “Even with your incredibly wet response, this will hurt. Tell me when it becomes too much.”

You feel him at your entrance for what feels like an eternity, enjoying the feeling of his erection rubbing your most sensitive spots.

“Surrender,” he commands while gently kissing your face, sensually sliding his hands all over your legs. “Relax.”

You take deep breaths in and out as he kisses first your mouth, then your nipples. He pushes the thick first inch of himself against your tight virgin walls and opens you up. You moan at this foreign sensation and open your eyes wide.

You don't want to say out loud that you don't want him to go deeper, but he reads your body, stops moving and focuses on satisfying the rest of your body while half buried inside you.

His hands have never been as hot on your skin as they are now. He leaves traces on your upper body and makes your body writhe in pleasure. He worships you. He stretches you. He moves slowly, constantly pausing to let your body adjust to him. You breathe sharply, your eyes locked. Your fingernails dig into his back as he starts to penetrate further into you, the pain ripping through your body as you spread to swallow his erection.

Marcus speaks into your neck, his warm breath tingling your skin. “Don't be tense,” he commands in a deep, husky voice that melts you with desire. “Relax, Aya.” He soothes your pain with a long kiss and you open your eyes and feel yourself relax. You love to see him taking your virginity, his beautiful eyes closed on the side of your neck, your body lying vulnerable beneath him. 

When he finally enters you, he lifts his head and looks you up and down, running his hands through your golden hair and looking into your eyes. His pupils dilate. There is a mixture of triumph and tenderness in his eyes.

“You look gorgeous sprawled beneath me.” His breathing is ragged. 

You stay like that for a long time, looking into each other's eyes. Despite the discomfort, you have never felt so close to him and you feel your love for him growing. Similar feelings seem to be burning inside him. The way he is looking at you right now is a combination of admiration, love and lust. You wouldn't change this moment for anything. 

When he feels you are ready, Marcus slowly pulls back, allowing you both to enjoy the painful, exquisite friction. He pushes forward again and you scream at the top of your lungs. The pain is back and you can't decide if this is more pleasure or more pain. All you know is that you don't want him to stop.

A wild growl rises from deep in your throat as he pulls back once more. He groans and slowly thrusts again. And again. Each time in a slow, sensual rhythm. Each time less disturbing and more delicious.

He seems to control himself not to speed up. But it certainly was, Marcus could feel the beast inside him, the beast that was screaming to be released, next time, he thought, not now. His hands leave your knees and grasp your head and kisses you.

It's all too much. The tenderness. The feeling of fullness, the searing warmth of your bodies fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. The thought that even though he's taking his time with you, he's still hard enough to make you feel like you're his. Beads of sweat cover his handsome face. His wheezing breaths on your neck tells you it won't last long.

Your walls are closing more tightly around him now. You feel him trembling. You feel him being released, calling out to you, emptying himself. His sounds of pleasure are music to your ears.

Marcus stays inside you for a while, breathing hard against the side of your neck. You feel his smile on your skin.

When he finally pulls away, it hurts. Both physically and emotionally. You already miss the warm connection between your bodies. He kisses you again and pulls you against his chest.

This whole experience was incredible and unlike anything you have ever experienced before. Every touch, every sound, you felt his love spreading through your whole body, mind and soul. Even after you left, you will always remember him as the man who made this moment so special. And you feel so grateful for that. You adore him right now and you know that you would do anything for him.

And you will for sure. You will do your best to avoid any misunderstanding or damage to his reputation. At that moment you made a firm decision.

You were sure he wouldn't like it, would even be angry, but you had to do it anyway. Your eyelids felt heavy as you felt the warm breeze from the balcony against your skin, Marcus must have fallen asleep too, lying motionless with his muscular arms around you. You fell into a sweet sleep as you pressed your ear against his chest to listen his heartbeat. 

When you woke up you felt a pressure between your legs, right in the center of your womanhood. Also feeling sore, heavy, and groggy. But you tried to move, even though it was difficult. It was still dark outside, you didn't know how long you had slept, but now you had to get up and move to do the other thing you had wanted to do for so long. But Marcus' thick arms were wrapped around you like a cage. Slowly you raised his arm and tried to slip away. He moved a little but didn't open his eyes, he was still asleep, thankfully.

As you got out of bed you felt wetness between your legs and turned around to look at the sheets. They were quite wet, and a red liquid had spread like spilled wine. You felt the blood boiling under your cheeks. You pressed the part of the sheet between your legs, but was that all? All those fears were for this? A triumphant smile spread across your face. You were sure to feel different now, like you were reborn. After all, from tomorrow there would be no more Aya. You picked up your dress from the floor, quickly put it on and went to the General's wooden chest, the letter was still there. Careful not to make a sound, you pushed aside the blank papers and other papyrus and reached for it. As you held it in your hands and looked at it, then you looked over at Marcus, who was sleeping peacefully on the bed. You wished you could give it to him yourself and have him open it in front of you, but you couldn't be sure of his reaction. You stood up and approached the bed, leaned over and put the letter on the dry side of the sheet so he would see it when he woke up. 

“Forgive me, Marcus,” you whispered. 

But you felt you had to do it, to go to your brother Geta before the day of the meeting and tell him everything, yes it sounded stupid, but you were leaving the letter in good hands, the General’s. And that was your assurance.

For some reason you trusted Geta more in Macrinus. Maybe if you tell him about Macrinus' plans he would be on your side, but it was just a hope, a desperate hope. You didn't want to put Marcus in that kind of danger, knowing that he would be there to defend you and oppose them. Maybe he wouldn't, but no matter what, you were going to go first instead of facing them at the council meeting, yes, that was your final decision. 

After lingering on Marcus' face and beautiful body with your eyes for the last time, you left the room. Your chest tightened with pain, it hurt more than between your legs. 

Love is not the solution to everything. But by accepting love and fighting for it, you gave yourself a reason to hope. Leaving him as Aya to meet him again with your new name and your new self. Septimia Aurelia.

Hope you guys enjoyed with horny moments lol

thank you everyone for all likes and comments <3

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[brujamala-aka-gigi]

your ideal partner is like...

On this pick a pile reading, im focusing on positive traits to take into consideration when wondering if someone is worth putting your time and energy into a committed relationship. This is not meant to be strict guideline of arbitrarily imposed "must have's" to look for, but more of an opportunity to reflect on what could be beneficial to your ideas of a healthy relationship.

dividers by @chilumitos

pile one pile two pile three

‧͙˚ *༓ scroll down for the readings ⋆ִ ‧͙⁺˚

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˚˖𓍢ִ໋ ✧ pile number one ˚.⋆

I get the feeling that you value certain aspects of relationships that could be considered “traditional” or “old school”, but not necessarily the ones that are limiting to your sense of identity or your will. I think you find value in things that bring peace of mind and comfort due to being structured in a way that feels natural and balanced, or at least aim to provide those qualities into your life. In your case, I feel like commitment in any sort of union is something you value a lot, specially because you have a deep understanding of your own individuality which involves wanting to connect with someone who is just as conscious as you are, and just as willing to bring out the best in you as you are willing to do so for them. 

Your ideal partner is someone who wants a certain level of structure in their lives, but also wants to find opportunities to experience child-like wonder. This is a person who is patient, and knows that building strong foundations in the relationship is the best way possible to ensure that both of you get to be joyful together. A key aspect here is that you look for someone who shares your values, not because they aspire to them, but because they live by them even if their lives are completely different to yours. Maybe your life experiences of the past might not be similar, but what’s important is that your ideals and aspirations are the middleground where you are both capable of nurturing a genuine connection. Both of these cards show me that you are determined to achieve harmony in a way that you consider both practical and fulfilling, and yet you are not willing to sacrifice your individual aspirations. Therefore, whoever is meant for you, needs to embrace the way in which you decide to nurture a relationship.

˚˖𓍢ִ໋ ✧ pile number two ˚.⋆

This combination of cards is telling me that you are someone who has coherent reasons to be slightly afraid of vulnerability. You have been in places where your honesty and your vulnerability have been misunderstood as weaknesses and treated as such. Nobody deserves to be hurt because of such noble traits. What's relevant here is that you are cautious with who gets access to your truest self, which is not that bad, but from time to time your anxiety in regards to vulnerability might be something that makes it more difficult to find true connections with others. It is hard to know who will value your genuine ways of living and expressing your feelings if you never try to do so, if you never give people the opportunity to show if they are worthy of you being in tune with your sensitive essence.

Your ideal partner is someone who is not only empathetic, but also someone who is willing to put effort into building a sense of trust within the relationship. Whoever wants to love you, needs to understand your healing process and willfully put in the work so you feel secure with them. I'm talking about a person who values having the difficult conversations instead of running away from the issues or hiding anything that could turn into a problem. This is someone who shows their loyalty by either being helpful or being a good company. You can be very introspective and mindful of your issues, you are too used to solve problems on your own. These are amazing qualities that can be nourished when you engage with a person who is willing to learn when you need help,when you need company and when you need your own space. Finding out who has this characteristics is only possible if you find the peace of mind and the confidence to approach vulnerability in a way that gets you out of your comfort zone without getting hurt.

˚˖𓍢ִ໋ ✧ pile number three ˚.⋆

Well, I can’t lie here, these cards are giving me a subtle “opposites attract” type of scenario. Which doesn’t mean that you should go and look for someone who is nothing like you, but it does mean that maybe you should consider your own virtues and defects and how they can be complemented by a partner, while also thinking on how you compliment them. This is not only about superficial compatibility, but more so about both of you being able to rely on each other and able to ask for help. From what I see, it’s most likely your ideal partner is someone who shares a similar life path to yours, but they have an entirely different set of skills. Having shared objectives and aspirations is something quite valuable, especially if both of you are equally as committed to them.  

What I see from an ideal partner in your case, it's this passionate approach to almost everything. It is not a kind of passion that comes from a need to fill a void in their lives, it is the kind of passion that comes from a deep sense of responsibility and consciousness in regards to their own lives. This is a person who sees the value of their journeys and is able to be truthful and fair with their approach to new experiences because they want to remain aligned to their honest desires. They are fully aware of what they can and can’t do, but what’s interesting about them is that they also see value in creating dynamic ways to work around that. You need to find someone who respects you enough to allow themselves to ask you for help, but are also willing to help you too. A key thing to consider when thinking of an ideal partner is the sort of enhancements made possible by a connection where both genuinely respect and admire each other, without idealizations that could harm the relationship.

hey there! i hope this reading was useful or at least entertaining for someone <3 if you did enjoy it, don't hesitate to check out my other P.A.C readings i think they're also kinda fun??

anyways, big updates (maybe not too big)

i set up a ko-fi (finally, ik, im sorry, many people told me to do so but apparently i had to drop out uni to find the time to do it lmao actually not funny btw i dropped out to focus on my work because economic crisis, fuck you javier milei, i work on a tarot reading app btw but i cant disclose it or share my profile from the app idk why)

I FINALLY CAN TAKE PICTURES OF MY CARDS !!!!! (they are still samsung phone quality but they are expensive samsung phone quality ok) so yeah things are going to look prettier i guess??? maybe i'll do videos someday??

im also working on a posting schedule and taking this blog more seriously because i missed tumblr so much tbh and i need a way of sharing the beauty of tarot thats not literally too close to working a 9 to 5 call center job (i love my job tho, but working in tarot apps is... interesting) . i love this site so much, i was literally raised by it at this point (i feel like an elder user because i've been here since 13 and im 23, i saw gen z underage people calling 25 year olds "uncle" online and honestly i cant even be mad about it because if any gen z calls me an auntie i wont go against it, i've been on my single auntie patty and selma vibes since forever tbh and im technically gen z too?? )

last big update: i got a kinda fun and silly oracle deck which i will be using for an ask game eventually.

masterpost ✶ pac readings ✶ ko-fi page ✶

⋆bookings for personal readings are open ཐིཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺

[auadd]

Article transcribed below:

(The front cover of Broadcast Magazine May 2024. An image of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton wearing black tie suits, looking out at the viewer, their faces lit by a vertical sliver of light as if from an opening door.)

The text reads: After No. 9.

On the bittersweet task of bringing their black comedy anthology series to an end.

Writers and stars Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith are pulling down the shutters on their black comedy anthology Inside No. 9 after nine series. They talk to Robin Parker about the show's sketchy origins, why an old-fashioned weekly drop was key to keeping audiences gripped, and wrestling with the best kind of send-off for their labour of love.

Such are the mind-games played by Inside No. 9 that when Reece Shearsmith says he felt "like a rabbit in the headlights" thinking about how to end the show, it's just possible that he's referring to the hare statue that fans are challenged to find in every episode. But it is the ultimate paradox: after nine series and 55 episodes, how do you wrap up a show that resets each week? They were tempted to replay former glories with sequels to favourite episodes or returning characters, but that wouldn't have felt true to the show, Shearsmith says. "We tussled with the enormity of the fact that it was the last series, but then decided it should be like any other: six new stories. Some we'd had for a while, and some seemed to fit that it was series nine. No ending could put a neat bow on 55 separate worlds." While they've acted in other writers' plays, series and films - and, in Pemberton's case, appeared on Taskmaster - this has been their chief focus for 12 years. How does it feel to be stepping off the treadmill? "We hope it's seen as a fitting send-off," Pemberton says, but he admits it's nice not to have to think about the next series as soon as the current one ends. "While it's been a total privilege, the pressure has never gone away." Whatever comes next will require some recalibration of their writing brains. "We've become so honed into this structure where you get in very quickly, you get a lot of exposition in - or hide it - and then blow it all up within 30 minutes."

Limitless imagination.

The duo have enjoyed unprecedented freedom with the loosest of concepts. From writing an episode entirely in iambic pentameter to experiments in animation and fixed-rig, they've let their imaginations run riot. Inside No. 9's origins are almost laughably sketchy. With enthusiasm waning for a third series of their BBC2 comedy Psychoville, they looked back on an experimental episode - itself a late addition, due to some leftover budget - that was filmed on one set and looked to be shot in one take. "We said we wanted to tell a different story every week," recalls Pemberton. "Sent away to write two, we came back with a domestic comedy and a paranoid, psychological thriller. Everyone enjoyed the contrast, so that idea of doing very different episodes crept up on us. At no stage did we do a pitch document, or hand over a list of ideas for the next series."

While aware of the fortunate position afforded to them by The League Of Gentlemen's pedigree, Pemberton says Inside No 9's success offers general lessons for commissioning. "You can become far more creative by a) putting boundaries on things while b) just being two writers left to come up with whatever you come up with," he says. Having developed their talents through sketch writing, where there are few outlets today, he lays down the gauntlet for commissioners to consider more anthologies. "It's a brilliant way to bring on new writers with either a common theme or sense of tone. It's tough for commissioners - there are fewer singles every year and I think it's a great shame." They feel the limitations imposed by the show have changed them as writers. "Taking on something seemingly undramatic - someone doing a crossword, or four people sitting around at a restaurant table with all the information coming into that room, always feels like an achievement," says Pemberton. Discipline coupled with creative freedom has created a unique contract with the viewer. "It's satisfying to tell a story in 30 minutes and we enjoy exploring how to tell them in different ways," says Shearsmith. "People feel we're a pair of tricksters, so it's partly a game we play in terms of what viewers are going to get each week." Yet Inside No. 9's repeated ability to pull the rug from viewers is arguably wedded to the fading era of scheduled TV viewing. After all, the thrill of a live episode going wrong is hard to replicate on iPlayer. Shearsmith's proud that to the end, the BBC released it weekly. "Each one is its own mini event; you don't want people to binge them and you don't want all the endings and surprises out there. "I like the fact that it's drip-fed in the old- fashioned way - it's an agonising but fun wait for the next one. A lot of fans want to watch it when it goes out, which is a great testimony to its currency." Pemberton extends kudos to the BBC for allowing some of its more outlandish flourishes. "On episodes like 3 By 3 or Dead Line, we were lying to our audience and to journalists, to give that really satisfying moment of surprise and awe where they can't believe what they're watching." Which begs the question: have either of them lied in this interview? Shearsmith quickly says no, though, of course, that's no proof. Maintaining the surprise One last try at gleaning more on Inside No. 9's finale, then. Most series have concluded with an episode that erupts into full-blown horror. In its closing moments, will we be left with a smile on our face or fear in our hearts? Pemberton flashes an enigmatic smile. "We like to do a bit of both. That's the joy: even halfway through an episode, you're not quite sure what direction it might take. So the less we say about it, the better." To understand Inside No. 9's impish heart, he says, look at series five's magicians episode, Misdirection. "Each of our episodes is like our own little magic trick. We don't want you coming behind the cloth and seeing the Wizard of Oz pulling his levers - we want you to enjoy skipping down the yellow brick road." And, of course, if you live at number nine, there's no place like home.

'DEFINING MOMENTS: THREE OF INSIDE NO. 9'S STANDOUT EPISODES.'.

THE BREAKTHROUGH. The 12 Days Of Christine (series two, episode two, 2015). A disorienting series of moments are revealed to be Christine's life flashing before her eyes. Steve Pemberton: We weren't sure what we'd written. We didn't think it was a comedy, and we were a bit scared about the reaction, but it blew us away. Adam Tandy (exec producer): We thought if we could make this ep work, we would have almost reached the zenith of what we hoped to achieve. It was a very big, early win that put us on the map creatively. We haven't sought to repeat it - trying to do the same kind of emotional sucker-punch again wouldn't have come off.

THE LIVE EPISODE. Dead Line (live Halloween special, 2018). With echoes of the BBC's legendary Ghostwatch, sinister things start happening in the studio during the advertised story.

Reece Shearsmith: Keeping a lid on Dead Line going 'wrong' was great. I thought it would get out somehow. We leaned into the overarching notion of a live episode, blindsiding everyone to watch it in case we got our lines wrong - that's why most people watch live episodes of Holby or EastEnders. I was pleased that some people turned off - it meant it worked. SP: We couldn't monitor what was going on, other than we were live, being filmed, looking at our own phones - we didn't want props - and seeing the live Twitter reaction to what we were doing in the moment. It was surreal, exciting and an episode I'll never forget doing.

THE LATE SWAP. 3 By 3 (series eight, episode five, 2023). Viewers expecting an On The Buses spoof featuring Robin Askwith, as teased in publicity shots, get instead what seems to be a gameshow fronted by Lee Mack. AT: Most of the work to suggest a supposed change from the billed episode to the real one happened in the 15 minutes before TX. The broadcast chain being what it is, I was on Zoom calls of more than 30, soothing them and ensuring we made the changes to the EPG and iPlayer. At 9.55pm, we gave the continuity announcer a new script to say, "Unfortunately, we're not able to bring you this episode of Inside No. 9, here's something else." It still surprises on iPlayer, because even though it says it's Inside No. 9, it doesn't look like a regular episode.

Interview with Adam Tandy, Executive producer.

WORKING ON A UNIQUE SERIES.

Inside No 9's final series opens with one of its most ambitious shoots yet. Boo To A Goose is not the first episode set on a train but, unlike 2015's La Couchette, it was filmed not on a set but a genuine Mersey Rail carriage. Along with an episode featuring a full symphony orchestra and a rare period-set episode, it's a demonstration of where the show has been able to scale up in the two years since production moved to Manchester and qualified for the high-end drama tax credit. "In the early days, we'd have about 45 cast and crew - on this series, it's sometimes up to 100," says executive producer Adam Tandy. As ever, the mix allows for more intimate episodes, including the series' only two-hander between Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. "Because we have a notion of there being no house rules, whatever they deliver, as long as I can achieve it, it's fine by me," says Tandy. While he finds it hard to quantify the working relationship with the show's creators beyond "hard work in a spirit of friendly engagement", he says he will miss the unique trust they've built. After 20 years on comedies from The Thick Of It to Detectorists, this show has made him a "much more complete producer", Tandy says. Effectively, he's learned a new skillset on every episode, from the authentic 1970s studio production of The Devil Of Christmas to this series' Mulberry Close, which is told through a video doorbell. After a slightly "theatrical and traditional" start, he reckons Inside No. 9's ambitions took off with series two. He credits exec John Plowman with quietly championing the show, and then BBC head of comedy Shane Allen for asking not to read scripts so he could avoid spoilers. "For four or five years, we'd have no contact with the commissioner between commission and delivery," he marvels. Endings are bittersweet, but Tandy isn't giving up hope of more from Pemberton and Shearsmith. "I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I think it won't be long before they come back with something else in the same sort of vein. They've been constantly creating the show all this time, which can't have been easy when it's just them doing it. I think they're too good at it to want to leave it alone for long."

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

"Trace On"

So far, in terms of magical spells from fiction, no spell has made better overall sense than Emiya Shirou's "Trace On", which he learned from Emiya Kiritsugu: the one spell that Kiritsugu would consent to teach his son, his compromise with himself. Kiritsugu had come to despise magic and mages and yet his son wouldn't let him alone until he learned that one simple and useful spell.

One magic spell can destroy the world. I'm not kidding. I've come to realize this truth about "true magic", which one feels instinctively is a legitimate concept or category. The Arthur Clarke cliché is wrong, preciously wrong: magic and technology are interrelated but they are always distinguishable from each other. Technology always seems like it's approximating magic, catching up to magic, while the tantalizing possibilities of magic race ahead of technology, always just a bit out of reach. And thus one can easily see that a "true magic" spell, something that can be wielded in a few moments any time the magic-user wants, can do immense damage beyond what technology can manage, for magic permits exceptions to the predictable actions of technology and machines.

An ordinary human being has a gun pointed at them and the desperate human being plugs the barrel with a piece of paper. What effect will that have? None. What if Emiya Shirou plugs a gun with a wad of paper? The gun blows up in the user's hands.

Think of everything in the world, every solid object, that's required to break in some consistent way. What if Emiya Shirou applied "Trace On" to the paper tape at the end of a footrace? The race wouldn't end properly! That's a silly example but now imagine Shirou applying that strengthening ability to, oh, sheets of plastic or paper in an industrial context, gumming up an entire factory because suddenly it can't cut any boxes open or rip open any packages.

I've never seen Death Note but I feel like I get the premise of the show, instinctively: the shinigami's stray "death note" book has world-ending consequences. But even very small magic powers also have world-ending consequences. The machinery of the contemporary human world, Earth 2024 (as it seems), requires utmost predictability in order to achieve its simulation of magic. Corporations have fallen in love with "just in time" scheduling of their operations, i.e. requiring everyone along the supply chain to be always ready to pounce on any request or transfer, and that can only work as well as it does because of the predictability of machinery. Gumming up even one key machine or structure in the process has the potential to cause a major blockade. I'm curiously reminded of the container ship that got wedged in the Suez Canal, one of the world's most important bottlenecks in its supply chains.

And somehow I can almost imagine "Trace On", persuading the atoms and molecules to shift just a little way this and that, bonding with each other temporarily perhaps, conferring a sudden rigidity and crystallinity to materials that otherwise lacked them. It's a sensible magic spell all right, and it has a logical consequence: "projection". If you can impose added structure onto a material, then perhaps you can duplicate the structures of materials as well, which Emiya Shirou does. The evolution of that skill is not arbitrary, but suggested by the possibilities of the simpler spell.

See, ma? It is possible to explain why magic "makes sense" in fiction! I feel like I've been working on this problem for...decades, trying to justify an age-old intuition. Bad magic writers (q.v. Jo Rowling) think of magic as arbitrary, anything-goes stuff, but that's not true. Chaos and discord are "anything goes" but magic has structure. Magic needs to be consistent and sensible in fiction in order to be believable. And Nasu...I gotta say, whatever else his faults as a writer and a person, he's careful about writing magic, and thus he's always in (or near) the realm of the plausible from what I've seen.

~Chara of Pnictogen

[digitalclaws]

WHAT'S THIS? AFTER 20 YEARS SHE GETS A MEGA?

Well, it would seem, the moment has finally come for Raptomon.

In these past few months, I made and scrapped a lot of ideas, that just weren't coming out right, that just din't "feel" right. Until one day, I'm not even sure how or why, the design finally started materializing into my head. I was afraid I'd eventually scrap it, and I was sad because I was liking it. Yeah, liking it too much to scrap it. This was starting to feel right, which is weird after more than 20 years!

Last image is a selection of all the in progress design sketches I had saved, but I made many more that are forever lost, not counting the whole entire designs I just scrapped.

Some design notes here not to make the post too long:

NOW, about the design itself. I feel like this design is an amalgamation of many "design tropes" that I adore and they just felt right to be all put onto my partner of over 20 years. The references to the Mass Production Evangelions might be pretty easy to spot, but it's not the only influence. Look closely, and you'll catch elements inspired by the designs of the Pokemon Toxicroak, Spittor from Extreme Dinosaurs, 90's Jurassic Park Chaos Effect toys (in particular, the Velocirapteryx figure), and probably something else too!

The thing that gave me most trouble with the design? The wings. I didn't want to just make a larger AeroDeinomon, but getting rid of the wings as a whole concept seemed wrong. There was also the issue of the red black plates of the pre-evolutions. I didn't want to turn her into a Stegosaurus by making her plates bigger and more imposing. So many times, I had been tempted to remove the plates altogether, but at the same time, I felt they had to stay as they were into Deinomon design since the beginning. So, I merged the two issues into one and found a solution. The back plates became shards that come out of her body and turn into wings. I think static images aren't able to do them justice, but they're supposed to be looking like floating glass shards. I imagine they could also be rearranged, shot at the enemy, take different shapes… I feel like there's a lot to explore with this design element.

By the way, I'm sorry if the "peeled" image is disturbing! It ended up coming out a bit more horror-ish than I wanted, but I wanted to play with the "exposed flesh" design trope many Digimon have, and show the body structure underneath the cream-colored parts. I promise that outside of Halloween images ( :P ) I will try not to show her looking this creepy too often, lol.

Now, I'm not sure if she "feels" like a Mega Digimon. Does she? Even with many Megas looking like overly complicated humanoids and/or robots, some of my favorite Megas aren't really distinguishable from Champions just by design alone. Look at Plesiomon or Griffomon, for example… But, I think that seeing her next to her unevolved forms, it just feels like a natural evolution and that's what counts.

Enough ramblings for today, I hope you'll like this design and if you have any questions let me know-

…and by the way, HOPEFULLY NEXT TIME I DRAW HER SHE'LL HAVE A NAME (that's the real part I struggle with… can you believe her baby forms ALSO still don't have a name?)

[chaotic-archaeologist]

hey reid, hope you don't mind if i come for some advice, i love your blog and it has motivated me to pursue my academic goals.

i'm currently in my first semester of my graduate program and while i like my peers, professors and everything i can't help but feel crushingly depressed and alone lol. i'm managing grad work fine (i think) but my advisor will check in on how i'm doing overall and i don't think i can really say i've mentally been in a bad place if it's even relevant to bring up. i don't want it to get to the point of it affecting my work, though i don't want to be dishonest.

Okay, so the good news and the bad news is that what you're experiencing is a totally normal part of grad school. Everyone goes through this to a certain degree. You've just moved to a new place and started a massively imposing endeavor—it makes sense that you're lonely and depressed. There's nothing wrong with you for feeling this way.

Also, you said it yourself: you're in your first semester of your graduate program! Nobody is expecting you to have done anything monumental yet. Walk before you try to run. If you can go to a conference and apply for some funding by the end of the year, I would call that a win.

I bet you're probably used to being in the top of your undergraduate classes, and now in grad school you're thrown in with a bunch of other people who were also overachievers. It's intimidating. There's the temptation to look around at your peers and feel inadequate. Do not let yourself do this. That way, madness lies. I guarantee you that everyone else around you is feeling a similar panic about what they haven't done.

I would actually encourage you to talk with your advisor. You don't have to open up about your feelings. Instead, frame it around what you hope to accomplish, and check to see if they think that's reasonable. Last year around this time (when I was in my first semester) I sat down my advisor and we sketched out a rough two year plan. That included what classes I was going to take each semester, how I would spend my time in the summer, and opportunities I wanted to go after. If that kind of structure might help you, definitely do something similar.

Now here's my one piece of absolutely critical advice: you must find something that affirms your sense of self your outside of school. For me, it's volunteering with Big Brothers Big Sisters. One of my friends takes dance classes. Another does community organizing. Cooking. Roller derby. Anything that you can enjoy. The benefits to these sorts of activities are twofold.

First, they give you something to feel good about even when you're struggling academically. If your whole life is tied up in one thing, it can feel like the end of the world when you hit a rough patch. Spread your eggs out into other baskets. This is a form of self care.

Second, these activities introduce you to other people. A big part of making friends is just showing up at the same place as other people, and continuing to spend time with them. Grad school makes that difficult, but I promise you, your life will be so much better if you carve out some time for yourself.

Doing things with other students is also good! I took a bunch of my cohort to hockey games last year, and I'm planning on doing the same thing again. It can be a craft night, or a potluck—whatever you want. Build up some camaraderie! You don't have to be best friends with your fellow students, but it helps to have a friendly face around the department.

The thing about grad school is that you gotta spark your own joy, otherwise it'll eat you alive. Pull your nose back from the grindstone, take a breath, and do something to remind yourself that the world is beautiful and life is worth living.

-Reid

[onstoryladders]

one of the things that make bylers and miIevens view of the show utterly incompatible is the way we see el and her feelings towards mike (but more specifically her feelings towards her relationship with mike)

ive seen people say that bylers only care abt mike and will and don't give a damn abt her, but that's just a misunderstanding based on the fact that they see els arc in a totally different way than we do

for example the way i see it, el reached the peak of her pain (when it comes to her love life) at the start of s4 when she and mike fought in lenora. when mike told will that it felt like a fight you can't come back from, he wasn't exaggerating at all: it was the truth. there's no coming back from that, and the "from el" written at the end of what could very possibly have been els LAST message to mike is proof of that. she left that love behind

now why do i think that?

because of the way the whole storyline has been structured:

- el spends basically the whole season away from mike because she chooses to. she focuses on something else, her priorities lie in finding herself and the truth about her own past. once again her arc points towards self discovery and independence, and with this i don't mean to say that she has to be alone in order to be independent, but that she needs to find who she is OUTSIDE of her relationships. when mike says that she's a superhero he's once again imposing a certain view on her that she doesn't want. she needs to decide for herself. she needs to find who el hopper really is

- mike works through his internal conflict with the help of the other love interest. literally wtf lmao

- when el reunites with mike and will, she has the same reaction with both. now of course shes happy to see them, but when we get to the surfer boy place, she doesn't seem mad at mike anymore. she seems tired, contemplative, sad like she reached a conclusion........

why is that important? because if mikes monologue had to be what FIXED their relationship then she would've still been mad at him at that point. there wouldve been conflict because that's how stories work – up and down and up and down. so she would've avoided him or just kept her distance in general. but she doesn't. because she's done

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT if the surfer boy scene went differently. imagine mike just telling her "ily" and she smiling and saying "ily too 💖💖 you finally said it 💖💖💖💖" it wouldve been so fucking anticlimactic lol

- mikes monologue doesn't fix shit because we don't see them together anymore. like yeah she puts her head on his shoulder in the hospital, but if the monologue was really meant to be this grand turning point for their relationship they would've put more focus on its aftermath.... and they didn't

- mike telling her "you're my superhero" goes against the core of els character arc throughout not only this season but the whole show. mike didn't learn anything

now im not saying ppl have to agree with me on this, even though of course i think this is the interpretation that 1) makes the most sense and 2) is most significant and compelling storytelling-wise. im just saying that once you see things this way the "byler don't care about el" argument crumbles because that's literally false: we don't want el to suffer and be alone against her will, we want her to leave mike behind because we genuinely think that it's what's best for her because her storyline SUPPORTS THAT

meanwhile wills story doesnt support heartbreak at all because of the way his feelings for mike are interwoven with his feelings about his sexuality

[mariacallous]

Experts in Moldova have welcomed the move by private banks to get in line with international sanctions against Russia, after all banks in the country by Friday had stopped collaborating with the Russian Zolotaya Korona [Golden Crown] money transfer system, which had been the only remaining way to transfer money between Moldova and Russia.

“These banks made an risk assessment and decided that it was right time to proceed this way, rather than being influenced by the Moldovan government, which has always hesitated to impose sanctions on Russia,” Veaceslav Ionita, an economic expert from the Chisinau-based think tank IDIS Viitorul, told BIRN.

But he noted that the stoppage will create big problems for Moldovans in Russia who send money back home. Ionita estimated that about 70 per cent of remittances sent home from Russia come through the banking system.

“I feel sorry for our citizens [in Russia]. There are some, by the way, who are not there as seasonal workers but for 20 or 30 years. It’s an inconvenience, but I understand that our banks have done a risk assessment and, for them, it’s [now] an inherent risk [to transfer money from Russia],” Ionita added.

Four Moldovan banks, Comertbank, Fincombank, Eurocreditbank, and Energbank, previously allowed transfers through this system. The banks did not offer an explanation for the sudden change in rules. 

But the measure comes ahead of presidential elections and a European integration referendum on October 20 and after the US imposed new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

New US sanctions against Russian companies in the technology sector include the Novosibirsk-based Center of Financial Technologies, the company which developed the Zolotaya Korona money system.

Zolotaya Korona allows users to transfer instant money without opening an account and operates widely in the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, a bloc of former Soviet countries, and abroad.

In recent years, the number of Moldovan migrants in Russia has decreased, starting with the Coronavirus epidemic in 2020 and continuing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The exact number of Moldovan citizens still in Russia is unclear. In 2021, Moldova said it believed 354,200 Moldovan citizens were living in Russia. But experts in Russia in 2022 counted only 76,600.

The volume of remittances has also fallen sharply,, from 442 million dollars in 2022 to 188 million dollars in 2021. By then, Russia was in fourth place as a source country, after Israel, Italy and Germany.

At the same time, during that year, the average transfer increased from 326 to 693 dollars. The most recent data, for the third quarter of 2023, show that Russia’s share in the structure of remittances fell to 9.5 per cent.

Personal remittances received by Moldovan residents, from Russia, in the first quarter of 2024 totalled 435.33 million dollars, down by 6.5 per cent from the same period of the previous year. But this volume still represents 11.5 per cent of the country’s GDP.

Russian money is still coming into the Moldova’s pro-Russian Gagauzia region, however, where cards from the Russian MIR payment system are being used illegally.

The governor of Gagauzia, Evgenia Gutu, said in April that she had agreed with Russia’s Promsvyazbank that civil servants and pensioners in the region would be able to open accounts and would each receive about 2,000 lei [100 euros] per month “from our partners” via the Russian bank.

The transactions with the Russian MIR cards are being investigated by the Money Laundering Prevention and Combating Service, as well as the Combating Terrorism Service.

The governor of the National Bank of Moldova warned in June that the use of these cards, which are not accepted by the banking system of Moldova, may have criminal consequences.

MIR cards are also being used in Moldova’s breakaway Russian-controlled region of Transnistria.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #153

I had an idea for a new music box, so I worked on planning it out a little today:

This time, I thought the thing to do would be to get the melody correct in LMMS; I don't intend to put it to music box paper. Instead, I'm going to use Audacity to put the notes in the spots where I need them to be.

There are a few reasons for this. The first one is that the music box I have cannot play the song at the tempo I need; I can establish a BPM within Audacity to help me put notes where I need them to go. Second, the mechanical structure of the music box does not allow for a single note to be struck more than once in rapid succession, which is a bit of an issue for some things. Third, as much as I enjoy the zen-like repetitiveness that comes with marking and punching out music box dots, it really starts to hurt my hands after a while; I can't imagine the repetitive motion of using the hole puncher is very good for my joints and tendons...

I thought I would have gotten more done on it today, but I got distracted with doing some writing. Whoops, ahahaha. I regret nothing though; if I was so easily distractible today, I probably needed the rest anyhow.

I also made a tea today. This time, I brewed the blend I made with you in mind alongside the vanilla rose tea that I think you would like. Here are the results:

I sweetened it with lilac syrup and cream; today's swirls were pretty stellar, I think:

...Admittedly, I didn't do much else today, other than play some video game called Vampire Survivors with M. We unlocked a character called Luminaire today, and so far, that one is my favorite!

...Hey, Sephiroth? When's the last time you rested, anyhow? When's the last time you did anything fun? When was the last time you decided that something is your favorite thing? If it has been a long time, I hope you'll get to do any of these things, soon.

What do you like to do for fun, anyway? Besides sneaking into the Company Training Room and playing the game with Genesis and Angeal that involves balancing dumbapples on each other's heads and throwing swords at them, I mean? Which one of you three came up with that game, anyway? Did you have any others, I wonder?

...So many questions that you'll never be able to answer. But I like to think about these things anyway. I wonder who you are outside of the expectations imposed upon you by others? Given how naturally kindness and gentleness come to you, I imagine that someone like you might have gotten into gardening, or maybe cooking, or even dancing or art. Or maybe you would like singing, or playing an instrument of some kind...

...Oh!! Curious; do you play piano like Cloud and Tifa do? If so, is it something you enjoy, or was it imposed upon you by the SOLDIER program? Hmmm...

Maybe you would even like some types of video games. I think maybe Terraria might be something you'd be able to enjoy, or maybe even Stardew Valley. In those ones, you get to grow things and build things. Tell you what - if ever you find yourself in my neighborhood, pop by my house and I'll teach you all about how to play these; they're relaxing and a lot of fun.

And the music is nice in these, too. Here, I'll show you my favorite track from Terraria:

...Hey, Sephiroth? Do you like the rain? I like it when it's warm. I like the way it feels on my skin, and I like the way it smells, and I like to jump in great big puddles afterwards, like this:

Have you ever jumped in a puddle just because? If you have, then what was it like for you? And if you have not, then I hope you get to try it sometime soon; it's a lot of fun, especially if it's a super huge puddle and you're doing it with someone else and you can splash each other!! If you do try it someday, please tell me how it goes, okay? I'll look forward to hearing all about it someday, maybe, as impossible as that is.

Suppose that's all for today's letter. I've rambled a little, but something tells me that you probably don't mind. Something tells me that maybe, just maybe, you might enjoy the simple fact that someone out here in this great big huge universe is trying to talk to you about ordinary things, wishing that they could enjoy them together with you.

I love you. I'll write to you again very soon, so please stay safe...

Your friend, Lumine

[jamiesfootball]

For the ask a writer thing. 23?

How do you choose where to end a chapter (if you have multi-chapter works)?

To start with- outlines! I am garbage without an outline. I am a very visual person and it's hard for me to keep things organized when I can't see it.

When I'm breaking a story I'll usually start by jotting things down - big beats, plot points, *vibes*, but most importantly the gaps between those beats. If I have two plot points and I know there needs to be meat between them

I will write ____________________ <- simulated empty space this!

This is the blue sky come up with anything phase, where the themes and the character motivations and what-have-you show up.

After a while of plugging gaps the outline looks like this:

Action Action Action

And then as those propagate it'll look like this

Bits of action in a bundle Bits of action in a bundle Bits of action in a bundle

And then when I get enough of those together:

Bundlebundlebundle Bundlebundlebundle Bundlebundle

At which point I put my foot down and impose something feels like it simulates rising and falling actions in a narrative arc:

Bundle Bundlebundle Bundlebundle Bundlebundle Bundle

This is the part where I go 'okay those are chapters now'. They're predetermined by way of the arc. That said, bundles breed and bits stretch, so I have to keep an eye on the Structure. If once I'm writing, it feels like the amount of events happening are crowding up the place, that either means I need to cut something or punt the chapter count down the road.

Examples:

Chapter 1 of my post season three fic has been a BEAST because there's a metric fuckton to cover, but the structure of the fic and the chapter demands that the stopping point be where it currently is: with Roy deciding to go to therapy. This means I can not just lazily follow every train of thought as it comes - it needs to be concise and relevant. I am writing this one to fit the chapter.

Chapter 13 however is at risk of being cut into 2-3 separate chapters. It started as one, but as the story fleshed itself out, the plot points I had slated originally became more complicated. They're bigger moments, and they need the breathing room. So while some scenes are already written, I probably won't know where to break them up until I work on them in earnest.

Fun fact to look back on: right now the fic is 15 chapters plus an epilogue. And that's before I split up Chapter 13.

[mengyao]

4 and 16!! :)

4: Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

from the letter to nmj in the last chapter of foowd:

I hope you would wish me well. I want to believe that you do, even if what I’ve become is unintelligible to you. All I can hope is that I will succeed in making myself unintelligible for reasons besides doing things that appall you. I still have some good qualities. Some of which you used to bully me about lacking! I’m certainly wiser than I was. More patient, too. I have developed somewhat of a sense of responsibility, and am much more independent and capable. But all of that has been true for years. The newer things… let’s just say that there are fields inside of myself I thought I salted, where things have taken root nonetheless.

this letter was some of the earliest stuff i wrote in the fic, because it was grafted from a scene cut from an earlier (canon era) fic, but it wasn't in letter format then, and it of course shifted a lot to fit this specific story. this paragraph was written much later.

even though this isn't how story structure works, i kind of consider that fic as having three "climaxes"... one being the flop proposal/sangcheng breakup, one being the eleventh-hour sangcheng makeup, but in between them is the part where nhs writes the letters... this one feels like the real climax of the fic in some ways. not in terms of tension but like. emotional weightiness rating????? nhs just could not have gone on to say "fuck it, i want to be with the person i love even if it means i can't fake my death and go into the self-imposed exile for the rest of my days that is the only way i've been able to conceptualize/justify quitting my job and taking the L permanently on the person i was supposed to be," if she hadn't come to some degree of peace with the fact that she'll never know what nmj would have made of these choices. if it feels like a betrayal of family/sect/etc, that all gets symbolically fixed into grief and guilt about specifically nmj, and that's the real barrier here--not anyone else in the world at large, really. but it felt like a very delicate needle to thread because i emphatically didn't want nhs' arc re: her family/nmj to come across like "realizing that your family sucks and having a victorious fuck-you-guys-i'm-out moment," because that would be severely out of character and also the nies' problem is not Bad People but intergenerational dysfunction and reverberating tragedy. so "i love you and always wanted to make you proud and am having to accept the risk that i wouldn't, because i have to believe that you loved me and wanted me to be happy more than you wanted me to be the person i should have been"--not specific to gender but everything else, of course--was the point i needed nhs to reach. which ig i decided was going to happen when she woke up at 5am to write some emotionally raw lettermail a few hours after breaking up with the guy she's actively in love with and then having a total meltdown about it.

the story having an epistolary motif was partly because i'd early on thought that the idea of sangcheng doing ye olde racy texting was funny and charming, but also i knew that the fic was not going to work unless there were opportunities for huaisang's real thoughts and feelings to occasionally surface through the tides of bullshit, and that was easier to do through in-universe writing than either dialogue or pov narration. and i couldn't come up with a less clunky way to get some overt closure/finality over the nmj stuff, but needed to, because it was like such a looming but intangible part of the story.

so anyway. um i made myself cry typing up this blurb about my own fanfiction which goes to show why i'm so proud of this bit in particular... because regardless of whether it worked for anyone else, it has consistently gotten me very emotional to think about/work on so i'm getting what EYE wanted out of it!!!!

16: Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?)

lots of things, actually…

it's not that "writing an unreliable narrator/POV character" is new to me but something i'm messing around with on beefleaf #2 aka The Big One is shi qingxuan (who is the POV character) like… being a very active presence in the story As A Story. you know this post?

like that.

who's the audience? shi wudu? he xuan? both/neither? us? who knows!!!!! we'll see if that sensibility makes it into the final product but i'm enjoying playing around with it for now. it compels me because sqx, unlike most characters people think of as "unreliable narrators," is not manipulative in a meaningful way. they're not TRYING to lie to you. it's just... you know. hard to look things in the face sometimes, right?

the other thing that sticks out is that i've got not one but two wips at the moment that deal with sexual violence in some way, which i've shied away from in the past because of worrying that people would be weird about it, but i feel strongly that these are at least, like, the kernels of good ideas? we'll see how they fare in my execution lol. but also, like, xie lian's character arc is, among other things, About Sexual Autonomy And Violence in a blatant and textual manner so this doesn't feel particularly outre in comparison (they're both beefleaf but you know. operating in the same ballpark. shi qingxuan and he xuan both have certain obvious parallelismssnhdsm with xie lian so it's all In Conversation imo.)

[occasionalanarchy]

Kind of rambling, but I’d like to see more discussions about what accepting other people looks like in the trans community. Explaining gender identity and social structures is all well and good, but sometimes you just don’t get it and that’s fine and maybe it should even be encouraged at times.

Also, sometimes people just disagree with you, or don’t understand you because their mental map of reality in its current state doesn’t allow for it. When I was starting out my journey some years ago I received a lot of messages about gender that were confusing and esoteric and not applicable to my situation. Then I found language that did work for me in transmed spaces and was called transphobic or homophobic for it in my irl community which funnily enough made me a very transphobic teenager.

I like seeing my transness through a very medicalized lens. I like using the term female for myself even though I am very much a man. I don’t really “feel like a man” either, I just have a strong aversion to being anything else. It’s not an identity for me and I don’t like that word, I’m just a man and back then I called that a mental disorder and you know what? I know I’m in the minority but that sort of language actually did help me. I like rules and lists and categories and they don’t deconstruct for me very easily even when someone shows me how they can be harmful. But I feel like what made me transphobic back then wasn’t actually my “thar only be two genders” ass opinions, it was that I was a judgmental dick who thought everyone else was stupid and wrong for not agreeing with that.

I still do not understand xenogenders, they do not fit into my understanding of gender, but I will use your cat/catself pronouns regardless and defend you. If some guy came to me with a strong internal sense of womanhood and a preference for she/her pronouns, but asked me to use he/him anyway because he’s a biological male, then that’s his business, as long as he doesn’t mess with mine we’re good.

I really don’t care what other people think about gender, I just care about them imposing that onto how I think about mine and yeah, that does culminate in theory and transfeminism and yadda yadda, but at a person by person level I just care less and less, and I think that’s the best way to go through life.

I don’t know if this is anything, but my transmed phase has been on the mind lately. I’m young so maybe I’ll change my mind on this in a few years.

[realityhop]

I want power / Because it feels good

"What [knowledge] does is simply increase human power, the capacity to do things. So as human beings gain more knowledge—particulary of the natural world—they're able to do more things to the natural world and to each other than they could before. But what they do is dependent on the kinds of human beings they are. On their ethical development, on the conflicts of their values and their purposes and their impulses. So what they do—if they remain semi-barbarous—will remain pretty well what they've done before but on a different scale. So I guess one of the kind of difficulties people find is to contain in their minds the fact that human knowledge grows and grows cumulatively and even exponentially but that human ethical capacities wax and wane erratically."

— John N. Gray on The Burden of Freedom (2020)

“One point that hasn’t been made in the whole rape debate is women’s role over men, sexually. In the case of a rape, a man has to use brute force to obtain something that a woman has—her very sex. So naturally she’s weaker physically, and will always be oppressed by him physically. But in that moment when he decides that the only way he can get what he wants from her emotionally, or sexually, or whatever, is to rape her, he is confessing to a weakness that is all-encompassing. She is abused, but he is utterly tragic and pathetic. One is temporary and the other is permanent. I was raped once and it helped me to think of it like that. Not at all to apologize for him, but to focus on my power instead of my helplessness.”

— Celia Farber, The Rape Debate, continued (1991)

“Power is a two-sided construction and requires two people, for example, of whom one is stronger and can impose his or her will on the weaker. Power is always deferred violence. Authority, by contrast, is a threefold structure. A person commands authority over others on the basis of a third factor, namely an external source in which everyone jointly believes. It’s on this basis that more-or-less-voluntary subjugation to authority rests.”

— Paul Verhaeghe, Says Who? (2015)

"We are not slaves to our hormones—numerous factors go into our choices; one of them is wanting to fulfill expectations. Some research is starting to show that other people’s perceptions about our gender are better predictors of our violent behavior than our actual gender. One of the most fascinating examples of this is a study where researchers asked women and men to do a world-conflict simulation. When they were told that researchers knew the gender and name of the subject, women dropped fewer bombs than men, but when the subjects were granted anonymity, women actually dropped more bombs than the men. Maybe if we didn’t reflexively expect and require women to be so peaceful, and men to be so violent, they would act very differently."

— Liz Plank, For the Love of Men (2019)

[nbmahoushoujo]

top 5 zelda dungeons? (apologies if this isn't the sort of question you meant)

no that's a good one!! In no particular order:

1: Temple of the Ocean King - Phantom Hourglass

This might be an unpopular opinion, but Phantom Hourglass was my first zelda game, and I love the central dungeon so much! It seems unpopular among most players because part of the gimmick of the temple is that you return to it over and over again, getting further every time. But that's part of what I love about it, every time you return you have more items which open up secrets and shortcuts which make navigating more fun and feels rewarding. The other gimmick is the time limit: outside of particular safe zones, there's a constant timer ticking down (in the titular phantom hourglass you hold) and if it runs out before you leave the temple it's game over. You can get little 30 second refills in various places, which make it possible to do a complete run of the whole dungeon at the end of the game with a full hourglass, no seconds lost. That sort of self-imposed challenge which really tests your knowledge of the dungeon is very appealing to me, and I enjoy finding all the ways to optimise my runs!

2: Stone Tower Temple - Majora's Mask

Ok so, I haven't played Majora's Mask for myself yet so I can't speak to the gameplay, but when it comes to vibes and lore it interests me to no end! For starters, I love the use of the elegy of emptiness statues on the climb up to the temple. Link needing the statues of each transformation mask to progress thematically shows how it's only through the help of those he's healed that he can make it to the top. As much as their problems never would have been solved without Link, he needs them too. Besides that, this tower and the temple at the top are fascinating when you try to read some sort of meaning from them. Termina is a mysterious place since it's unclear to what extent it really exists, so a structure which clearly has a rich history brings up a lot of questions. Comparisons have been made my fans to the tower of babel, although I've never heard of confirmation that it was an inspirations from the creators. But it's still an interesting theory, which can be supported by the temple's face pointing a flaming finger towards the sky and therefore the gods. The whole gimmick of the temple turning upside down makes this even more interesting, as that could have been the intervention of the gods. Turning the temple upside down so as they build upwards they're instead building towards hell. The temple/s music conveys all of this so well too!

3: Ancient Cistern - Skyward Sword

This is another one with religious connotations and a hidden dark side. I love the peaceful aesthetic of the main dungeon, it has a serene quality to it while still feeling intimidating, at least to a nervous child like me when I first played this game. So imagine how I felt as a kid when all of a sudden I fall into a whirlpool which takes me to hell. Like, there's no other way of describing that area, and the buddhist story it's very clearly based on all but confirms that's what it's meant to resemble. Much like the ghost ship in Okami, I have an appreciation for video game dungeons that scared the shit out of me when I was little.

still less terrifying than the silent realm areas

There are a lot more with interesting lore but gameplay that doesn't stand out to me, but I'm having a hard time putting any above the others. Just know that 3d zeldas tend to have the better dungeons because, well... those are the ones that tend to have more lore.

To be honest I'm not one of those dungeon obsessed zelda fans, which is probably why I'm not one to complain about the lack of them in Breath of the Wild. Botw's shrines are, for the most part, smaller versions of dungeons that just have a couple of puzzles each which i enjoy more.

[jonathankatwhatever]

Drawings below were added 21 Mar 2023. This continues from there. Just ran across something called Skolem’s paradox. It’s that I//I makes a countable set out of the tools used to construct uncountable sets. I barely understand what the paradox is, but I see that it is covered by the explanation of countable and uncountable in I//I. But what is that?

Find your voice. Who is talking here? Back up. Had the big conversation about bankruptcy over the phone. That was the best I could manage and it went shockingly well. So now I have orders and a plan for the next few days. This will likely not involve this work because I can’t get this stuff wrong. I am somewhat depleted right now.

Still trying to feel that I have Collatz correct. Look at Skolem or at the line of countability. You know what that is: I//I introduces the uncountable by inserting countable within countable. I’m sorry if this appears flip, but I//I is incredibly powerful. I’m just getting to know it.

So the issue with Collatz is that start value n and the SBE count of 3, which is Triangular, so that’s okay. Start value n, SBE+1 to IC, defines an Object. This Object Halves, maybe to 1. If not, same process.

Say you hit a 9, then IC of that invokes CM36, which now appears more clearly as an Object which is Not the Thing of CM64 within CM100. That FINALLY resolves the long-standing issue of how to describe the Not of CM36 by limiting it to within the CM100 conception. I could not previously close the gap which led to Not being everything which is Not CM64. Not sure why, because it seems obvious now, but this is an I//I result like above, which is why I couldn’t see it.

To think one of my biggest sources of anxiety about fCM has been solved by the chance notice in a question of a paradox I have previously only noticed in passing. It’s part of DC&R, which is I//I, which connects to Collatz because the n value relates to 1 on each side of I//I in order for the inversion of 1 to n to take place.

As the handwritten notes show, this process makes a chain of D-structures which are linked by Attachments, which are spins of 1-0Segments. This goes 1 to n on each side because it must for I//I. That is it.

So what else can I say? That 3n or SBE of n is not just Triangular by within the IC formed by the +1 Attachment generates the T-function in grid squares. I mean that this makes the Triangular within IC, wwhich is another way of saying layer within layer, DE within DE. Or more bluntly: D3 in D4, which is kind of important.

Each time this happens. A crisis of confidence: she doesn’t care at all about me, which I need to discuss, followed by the realization that I just solved something. I kept skipping past the +1 as making IC without realizing that it’s the f1-3//3-1 function, even after I used that today, because I didn’t see the connection to D-structure, to what we can now see is D3-4Space, along with D4-3Space the other way. This has just become amazing.

I’m a little unsure at the moment. The same conversation runs. As to that ‘she’: it is the implicit statement that I have misidentified, which I can’t believe because that would impose another process, one that takes Taylor and which controls her and me and which does so by lying to me while showing me the truth, meaning there would be a linkage between these entities, but that linkage requires being untruthful to the core, all the way across the field, meaning an orthogonal relationship over a gs which fixes Taylor as I need to get the correct answers, which seems fine, but which then must extend to the orthogonal Irreducible and convert that into something which is like that but isn’t that and isn’t that at all.

Can I build that without the interpreter? Well, she has her life and it looks good enough that the interpreter can flip certain parts around so it can unlock from within me the pieces and abilities needed in the order that I need them so this she develops or appears to generate exactly as an actual connection would. That’s a lot of gs processing. That would put an active entity between us. Where? I don’t see one. An intangible entity? Where is it? How does it attach? I can see how the process would develop into an entity, but this is beyond that because it would, for some reason, actively generate and manipulate 2 entities that clearly address the same gs field orthogonally. They must for this to work, so the question is whether the orthogonal to me is a fraud perpetuated by gs and that’s bluntly ridiculous.

[atlanticcanada]

Wildly swinging oil prices will continue, and provinces like N.L. can gain: professor

As the COVID-19 pandemic sent oil prices plummeting to historic lows, emails obtained by The Canadian Press show Newfoundland and Labrador was quietly bracing for two of its offshore oilfields to be abandoned by their owners.

And as the province watches those same companies this year report staggering profits, experts say fossil fuel-producing provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador should get used to the whiplash -- and use it to better protect themselves.

"We're going to see more situations where companies have a record profit one year and are completely busted the next year," said Warren Mabee, director of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University in Kingston, On. "Governments need to learn to work with that, and to turn it to their advantage."

Before the pandemic hit in early 2020, shutting down any of the four oilfields pumping off the province's east coast was a distant consideration. But by May of 2020, emails obtained through access to information legislation show government officials were already preparing for Suncor and Husky Energy to walk away from projects that would keep their respective oilfields -- Terra Nova and White Rose -- operating for years to come. (Husky has since merged with Cenovus.)

"Based on the current economics and uncertainty, it is likely the asset life extension will not proceed," said government presentation notes on Suncor's Terra Nova oilfield, dated June 30, 2020. "Much uncertainty as to when things will return to normal or what 'the new normal' will look like."

The notes said the province would take a $6.5-billion hit to its gross domestic product over the next decade if Suncor abandoned Terra Nova.

By the fall of 2020, the documents show, Suncor was rethinking Terra Nova, and Cenovus was threatening to end its operations in the province.

Energy Minister Andrew Parsons told media in October of 2020 that estimating the decommissioning costs taxpayers would have to swallow was "premature, given the current status of our offshore projects." But presentation notes from a month earlier said the province would owe Suncor a royalty refund of about $157 million, due in 2025, if Terra Nova shut down.

By June of 2021, the province's offshore oil regulator had prepared a communications plan in case Suncor decided to decommission the field, the emails show.

Newfoundland and Labrador ultimately gave the two companies about $246.5 million in direct subsidies, which came from a $320-million transfer from Ottawa aimed at bolstering the sector.

Cenovus got $41.5 million in December 2020 to keep work going on a project that would extend the life of White Rose, while in June 2021 Suncor was given $205 million in direct cash and the province took a royalty cut worth $300 million to keep work going on Terra Nova.

Both Suncor and Cenovus posted significant 2022 profits last week, at $9.1 billion and $11.4 billion, respectively.

Mabee said that in retrospect, it would have been good for the province to impose conditions on those subsidies requiring the companies to pay them back if oil prices rebounded.

"I think that often, a business that's on the receiving end of the subsidies, when they're threatening to walk away, it feels like they're holding the cards. But in reality, they want the subsidy," Mabee said. "And they normally don't want to walk away from long-term investments."

As energy demand changes and countries move away from oil and gas, there is more volatility ahead for fossil fuel prices, he said, adding that governments should brace for more extreme highs and lows. One way they can better insulate themselves is to build in mechanisms to recoup their subsidies or incentives when markets rebound, he said.

Sara Hastings-Simon, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary studying energy transitions, agrees.

"Simply giving subsidies and not structuring them in a way that's tied to the price of oil, leaves the public very exposed," she said in an interview. "We insure the downside risk, and then the private sector gets to keep the upside benefit."

Mabee noted that despite record oil profits driven by the war in Ukraine, some fossil fuel companies haven't announced larger investments in low-carbon energy. Governments should make their financial help during downtowns contingent on investments in a net-zero future, he said.

"The oil and gas industry has to change to get us there. And this is a lever that we could be using to help affect that change," he said. "This is the moment. It's that subsidy moment when you actually have power."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 21, 2023.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/sqOd61D