#it's not identified as a dead or dying language here

[aromanticofficial]

aromance language???

I motion we all learn aromanian

[garkgatiss]

{{esquivalience}}, The Auteur, and Doctor Who the TV Show

alright so this novella.

First, its provenance: I was googling the Twist at the End song last week because it's catchy as hell. I ended up on the Tardis wiki and realized that there was a song by the exact same name that appeared in a licensed DWU novella that was published April 9th. As in, last month. Which is weird. It's hard to say how weird, but given the timing, it either has to be a) pure coincidence (lol), b) someone who worked on the show abusing their advance knowledge of plot details for personal gain, or c) intentional coordination between showrunner and novella-writer, a la Joe Lidster writing John Watson’s blog for BBC Sherlock.

The likelihood of (a) is decreasing by the week. I feel like I have to entertain the idea of (b) happening, but it's hard to square why a DWU-writing supernerd who is also involved somehow with the production of the show would risk a lifetime of blackballing from DW for a bit of cheap promotion for their extended-universe tie-in novella. I am so sorry to be saying this, but I think (c) might actually have legs.

The novella's title is {{esquivalience}}, which is a fake word invented in real life by editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary. The invented word means "deliberate shirking of one's official duties", and it was added to the dictionary to protect the copyright of the electronic version. In S9, Face the Raven showed us a “trap street", i.e. a fake street drawn on a map by a mapmaker to identify any copyright infringement of said map -- a dictionary entry for a word made up by the dictionary editors operates similarly as a copy-trap. The definition is apt for a copy-trap as well, because anyone illicitly copying a dictionary is themselves shirking a job they ought to be doing themselves... it's clever, it's very fun, we're off to a great start.

{{a crash course in esquivalience below the cut}}

THE STORY:

The unnamed protagonist applies for a custodial job at this library that serves basically as a databank for the history of everything in the universe. If a book about something is thrown away, that something ceases to have ever existed. Exhibit A: Protagonist works in the Dead & Dying Language Department. They throw away The Book of Belgian Dutch, and a) a couple coworkers with Belgian Dutch heritage either disappear or get completely different names/family trees, and also b) everyone quickly forgets that Belgian Dutch was ever a thing to begin with.

The librarians cover for this accidental deletion of reality by copying/fudging a new book on "Belgian Gerench", their name for what they replace Belgian Dutch with. They try to catch most of the people who were deleted, bring them back, and fit them into that new language/culture/ethnicity bucket they just made up.

(The narration explains that because both Belgian and Dutch still exist separately as concepts, there aren't too many knock-on effects in terms of loanwords in other languages that needed to be modified/recovered. It also explains that time-traveling back to make an exact copy of The Book of Belgian Dutch wouldn't work because of the universe's copyright laws or something.)

Protag then comes after the head of their department, the Head Dictionary Contributor, or Head DC. They find him in a hidden room called the Internal Reference Room. Instead of languages, the books here hold the life stories of every employee, which auto-update as the person lives their life, but can also be edited or destroyed to alter that person's reality. Protag sits down with the Head DC's lifebook and starts adding and erasing things.

It turns out that Head DC knows how wrong editing these books can go from personal experience. Years ago, wanting to leave his mark on the universe, the Head DC chose to add his own copy-trap into The Book of Dutch -- the fake word "esquivalience". This action seemingly created the concept of cutting corners at your job, leading to the insufficient vetting of Protag for this job and therefore their subsequent hiring, which results in Head DC's eventual death.

Head DC pleads with Protag for his life, but Protag is undeterred. They finally tear out the final page in Head DC's book, which kills him. Protag then writes themselves in as Head DC. Settling into their new role, they turn their attention to The Book of English (8th to 25th Century). They first look up the dictionary entry for “esquivalience”, which says it came to English from Dutch, and then flips to the entries for “ravel" and “unravel”, described as contranyms from Dutch roots, both “meaning variably to tangle or to fray”.

This is the central story of the novella. There is also a Prelude and Postlude that describe the lives of two young men, first in a reality in which they never meet, and then in a reality in which they do meet and fall in love (their meeting is enabled by one of them skivving off work in time to make it to see the movie where they first meet -- esquivalience!)

Just before the Postlude, there is also printed the lyrics to a song (see below), and an excerpt from The Book of English, this volume covering the 4th to 5th billionth centuries of history. This excerpt again gives the definition of “unravel”, but refers the reader to an appendix for the full list of definition, and notes they are “largely in usage as reference to Unravel, The” and “N.B. to be used with extreme care and caution”.

NOVELLA-SHOW CONNECTIONS:

Mavity [Wild Blue Yonder]: Mavity happened all the way back in Wild Blue Yonder, so it's not necessarily surprising to see it in a novella published in April 9, 2024, but there's a whole scene establishing that the M has seemingly replaced the G in all Romance languages, while Domhantarraingt in Irish-Gaelic is unaffected.

Rope [The Church on Ruby Road]: We're all learning the vocabulary of rope now! The Unravel is what the novella calls the meta-historical revisions caused by making edits to the books. There are also rope/weaving metaphors everywhere. Again, the rope themes of the TV show predate the April 9 novella just far enough that in theory it would have been possible for the novella to have taken inspiration from the 2023 Christmas Special. Except. The wiki page for The Unravel credits ownership of the concept to Jamie H. Cowan, the author of the novella. Not just that, but The Unravel was used – with credit to Jamie – in a DWU short story collection published December 26, 2023 – the day after The Church on Ruby Road aired.

Dot and Bubble [Dot and Bubble] : At this point, “Dot and Bubble” is a contextless episode title to me, first announced on March 31. In the novella, we get this:

The Twist At The End [The Devil’s Chord] : Just before the novella's Postlude, there are the lyrics to a song called “The Twist At The End”. Just listed there, no context, like an azlyrics.com entry. They are not the same lyrics as the song in The Devil's Chord, but then, meta-historical revision would kind of be the point, wouldn't it? There's just this sentence to connect it to anything happening in the narration: "Somewhere, in the far distance, as ______ continued to erase, an old 1960s Earth tune began to play."

EDITED TO ADD: @corallapis has pointed out to me that not only did the existence of the song "Twist at the End" by John Smith and the Common Men leak, but the novella's author tweeted about it in December 2023.

The Chumerian languages of the planet B’llauit, for instance, needed much consideration. Particularly Krulvan. There was still a great deal of work to be done in compiling the post-technoweb aspects of Krulvan. Like how most emotional words and phrases contracted more and more, until finally, they were little more than abbreviations. The old dot-and-bubble effect.

A parent’s love was no longer expressed post-technoweb as “Kal-at lur amoi”, but instead as merely “KLA”. Which needed to be carefully distinguished in the relevant encyclopedia from another abbreviated Krulvan phrase “Kal’ati Lepr’en Acrumpsal” – which was something rather equivalent to the expletives of other languages like “D’Arvit”, or “Bleno”.

It's only a brief mention in the book, so it's possible in theory that it was added after the episode titles were released, or even after the novella’s publication (Amazon allows post-publication changes up to 10% of the text, and it’s not possible to track those changes). I’ve included the second paragraph because it’s interesting that the example they’ve given is the word for a parent’s love, which we can see as a running theme in this season of DW (though Moffat has said before that the only thing he writes about is a parent’s love, so who knows).

Not the strongest evidence of two-way coordination, but we may learn more when the episode airs.

Dutch [Space Babies, Boom]: Yeah, as in, the Dutch language. The words “spoor” & “smelt” both get a "oo, good word!" callout, spoor in Space Babies and smelt in Boom. These words both have Dutch roots. Splice, the daughter's name in Boom, is not only from a Dutch root, but also means the joining two pieces of rope. I read this novella just before Boom dropped on Disney+, so I can personally confirm that this is not a post-hoc addition to the novella. It hardly could have been anyway, this element is much more integral to the novella’s narrative than any of the other pieces.

The Auteur

This is where this all becomes relevant to the “Doctor Who is a TV Show” theory.

While the Protag is shredding the Head DC’s book, the Head DC is in the room, and what follows is an extremely meta narrative-aware pre-death monologue from the Head DC. He's pleading with Protag to stop changing things in his book, but he also refers to an "It" whose power surpasses them both.

He held eye contact with them as they looked up, “You didn’t pick up Belgian Dutch by chance. It’s how it plays. In weaving coincidences.”

“Just stop reading. Stop changing things. Stop, and we can be spared. Be free! If you keep going, then it will get what it wants. It is a happening [sic]. Out there, and in here in the basement. Everywhere. It will win if you keep going.”

“One day, you’ll make the same mistakes. Goddamn, you will. Because it’s all already written. It has already written it all. The paths, the choices. Rewrites, erasures, and even the contradictions. If you don't just... stop... it will... Unravel us all."

The "It" in question is presumably the author. Like an author writing a story, "It" plays by weaving coincidences, "It" gets what it wants when we keep reading, "It" has already written everything.

The Head DC mentions a special disposal chute, which had recently appeared as if by magic, which enabled Protag’s destruction of Belgian Dutch. Head DC’s references to this “It” suggest that his decision to create a word meaning cutting corners caused his eventual death, not by inventing the concept of cutting corners, but by creating a set-up that the Auteur, a godlike being that cares only for the rules of narrative, was compelled to write a satisfying follow-through for. The Auteur changed reality in order to weave a narratively-satisfying coincidence.

The Auteur is a character from the DW-spinoff series Faction Paradox. The creator of the Faction Paradox universe describes it as “on the surface an SF universe, but it works on the same principles as traditional folklore.”

I am but a humble Moffat scholar, so explaining the character of The Auteur is immediately getting into lore that I cannot even begin to decipher.

But it seems plausible that in the show we’re dealing with a godlike being, someone along the lines of Maestro or the Toymaker, but instead of caring only for the rules of play, cares only for the rules of narrative.

And this being, The Auteur, is altering reality and creating the narratively-satisfying coincidences in 14’s and 15’s timelines, possibly starting all the way back with the coincidence of 14 regenerating as David Tennant and immediately bumping into Donna Noble.

And it seems plausible that this season was created in cooperation with these DWU authors to whom concepts like The Auteur and The Unravel are licenced, and the novella is a tie-in text full of references to the current season to lead savvy superfans on a merry chase that foreshadows the season’s big bad.

Because I... don't really have another explanation for the existence of this novella at this point.

[manicpixiedreamedwins]

What is your all time #1 God tier established relationship payneland headcanon?

Oh my god I have to only pick one??

Okay. Going to do my best here, because I have a lot of them. Here’s one I think is important though.

I think Edwin was one of the only people who was ever truly, unconditionally good to Charles in the way that he needed. He was attentive, patient, kind, and defended him (the best he could, as a ghost) from harm. This probably meant a lot to Charles, considering how he grew up. When he was dying, he tucked him in and read him to sleep death. I earnestly think that moment changed his brain chemistry and made him go “this is my person”, thus why he’s now devoted himself to protecting Edwin. Charles may not love being dead, but he has said he wouldn’t want to be dead with anyone else.

So we know he doesn’t want to be dead with anyone else. We also know he likes being close to and touching Edwin (I’m pretty sure it’s a love language for him, or at the very least some form of self soothing). He’s constantly leaning on him or in his general space, even in the first few episodes. Here’s a couple of cute moments:

Now, my HC: Charles likes to lean against Edwin and listen to him read when he’s had a long day. Edwin humors him and reads him whatever reference book he’s working with because

1. he feels some sort of way about him, even if he hasn’t identified it yet before the series

2. he’s not happy he couldn’t save Charles that night in the attic, but there’s a small part of him that feels so very special Charles would pick him over possibly heaven.

That’s it, that’s the HC

**I MISREAD THE QUESTION SORRY, I thought you meant pre-established in canon verse! I am so dumb for them lmao

[sweetflanfiction]

Second Chances - Part 3

Universe: Read Dead Redemption 2

Pairing: Arthur x reader

Disclaimers and Warnings: I just realized that the whole farming thing is very similar from the epilogues. It was definetly no intentional! Not finished, not proofread. English isn't my 1st language. All I know about 1899 is from google, so inacuracies will be plenty. The reader is on the older side, and identifies as a female

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

• ··········· • ············ •

“Fight them demons.”

He heard it inside his mind. He hadn’t seen the deer again, his mind wandering through green forests and cool lakes. The only time he saw it again, it disappeared at the entrance to a familiar campsite.

“Arthur my boy!” He heard behind him. His heart pounded as he turned but he saw nothing. “One more job Arthur!” 

“No!” He shouted. “You always have a plan! One more job! No more!"

“Don’t let the demons get you…” A soft woman’s voice whispered.

“We…need…the…money!” The older man’s voice enunciated each word.

“No more!” He said to the sky. “People died for you! I died for you! Hosea! Sean! No more."

The campsite changed a couple of times. Sometimes it was two small wooden cabins in the snow, sometimes it was a big dilapidated house in the south. The world spun around him and he fell to his knees.

“No more.” He mumbled

“Fight them demons.” The voice whispered and he nodded absently.

“I’m done…No more.” He said and his mind became black.

• ··········· • ············ •

A few more days passed and the stranger got progressively better, to the point where your father had almost demanded that you keep the door open at all times when you were inside giving him his medicine. He was still quiet, obedient, sad and incapable of anything other than breathing, eating and sleeping. Whether the last part was because of sickness or his state of mind you didn’t know.

As usual, you kept helping the stray and it ate you inside that, unlike the animals, he didn't react accordingly. It didn’t make you angry or frustrated, but it made you feel sad too.

“When can I leave?” He asked one evening when you started to leave the room.

“Whenever you want.” You said and he hummed.

“Why did you save me?” He asked again and you stopped and turned around. He was eloquent and conscious, but most surprising, he talked in full sentences.

“Because I couldn’t come home knowing someone was dying out there.” You said and leaned back on the wall.

“I wasn’t dying. I was already dead.” He stated with conviction, looking up when you chuckled.

“Well, I might just have to call the priest then, seeing as you seem to have resurrected from a cave in the mountain." You joked but his face was blank, so you turned serious. "Listen, you either came back to life or at least three people have gone mad and have been talking with a ghost.”

“You should have left me there.” He looked up at the ceiling.

“Maybe. But I didn’t.” You sighed. “Listen, the truth is you ain't dead, not even close to it. You had the flu accompanied by a mighty fever. You seem better now…whenever you wanna leave, just walk down the stairs and out the door. Ain’t nobody gonna stop you from getting back to where you came from, back into your own life and loved ones." 

His brows furrowed at the last part of the phrase.

“But…” You continued and he turned his head to look at you. “I talked to Pa and you can stay here a little while longer than needed. The ranch is very large, and we are always in need of help. If you want to stay until you get your mind together, you can. If not, like I said, the door is downstairs.” 

He kept looking at you, studying you from across the room.

“Why would you offer a complete stranger a seat at your table?” He asked, his expression changing between blank and questioning. “For all you know I can kill your whole family, rob you, burn your house down, kill your kids.”

“I can hear you pacing in this room at night, when you think we are sleeping.” I smiled softly when his eyes widened. “You pace back and forth, and when the floor creaks, you stop. This means you’re mobile. In all fairness we did sleep with our guns the first night that happened, but then we realized that you didn’t even try to leave the room. The door has been unlocked this whole time and you never made a run for it. So, correct me if I’m wrong but whatever your end game is, it doesn’t involve harming us.”

The man’s face changed expression three times in five seconds. Initially, it was guilty, then it was angry, and finally it was defeated.

“Y’all don’t even know my name.” He said under his breath. “Hell, I don’t even know y'all's names.”

You told him your name, walking towards the bed, one hand extended. He moved slightly, his brows betraying his blank expression, telling you he tensed up at your movement. He pulled himself up to lean on his elbows and grabbed your hand firmly but not threateningly.

“Arthur M…Callahan…Arthur Callahan.” He announced and you nodded.

“Welcome back into the living world Mr. Callahan.” You smiled softly, shaking his hand.

• ··········· • ············ •

The two manly voices from upstairs kept an amicable tone as you strained to listen. You were sitting at the bottom of the stairs with the two family dogs keeping you company. Much to your delight, both men seemed to be calmly discussing something.

When you told your father about the plan to ask the stranger to stay and help he looked at you sideways, a furry black eyebrow raised upwards, leaning back into his chair. He had learned over the years to listen to your opinion, much like he had done with your mother, and take it into serious consideration.

You had placed your arguments on the table: the ranch was indeed in need of help for the upcoming season; most of the families in charge of the surrounding lands weren't getting any younger, you being one of the youngest and even then you weren't exactly a teenager and finally, your instinct kept nagging that the man somehow had nothing left to go back to.

"Oh if it's your instinct then…sign him right up." Your father grumbled sarcastically.

But at the moment he seemed to be having a conversation with the man. He was either laying down some rules or letting him know the fastest way to the train station. The voices grew quieter and you jerked your head back up the stairs as you saw not only your father, but the stranger, Arthur following behind him.

He was wearing the clothes you'd found him in. They had been washed, but you didn't stitch the holes.

"Well, it seems like Mr. Callahan will help us for a while." Your father stated, coming down the stairs. "I'm gonna grab the horses and give the man a tour of the ranch."

"Alright." You replied getting up from your place on the stairs and looking up at the men. "Miss Brant asked me to help her set up the beehives that had arrived."

The older man nodded. You looked back at the almost healthy Arthur.

"Glad to see you up and walking, Mr. Callahan." He nodded silently and you left, grabbing a hat from the hanger by the door.

• ··········· • ············ •

You arrived late in the evening, your horse on a rhythmic trot. The house was mostly dark, but the front porch had a soft orange glow coming from a lit lantern that your father usually left outside if you weren't home after the sun went down.

There was a shadow next to the lantern and you soon discovered Arthur sitting next to it, looking at the darkness in front of him. Lost in thought, he didn't hear you approach, didn't even notice when you stopped Dusk right near him.

"Hello Mr. Callahan." You tilted your hat to the man, still seated on your horse.

His head jerked and he snapped up to look at you, surprised by your sudden appearance.

"Oh.." he cleared his throat and nodded his head. "Good evening Miss Graham."

"You alright there?" You asked leaning into your saddle horn.

"Ah…just thinkin' I guess. It's the first time I've been out at night after the whole…ordeal." He trailed off and shook his head. "Your father didn't seem very worried about you not showing up for dinner." 

"Bad news travels fast in Captain's Corner. If something had gone wrong, he'd know." You said, only moving to pat Dusk's white mane. 

"Captain's Corner?" The man asked with a hint of, what you assume was, alarm in his tone.

You stood straight in your seat and opened your arms, gesturing to the air around you.

"It's the name of the land Mr. Callahan!" You said enthusiastically "Welcome to Captain's Corner Ranches."

• ··········· • ············ •

[korokspiesofhyrule]

I wrote a short horror movie idea about a swedish tradition I learned today called the Gävle goat.

Some movie quotes from my friend @hilariousseagoat :

"Your goats will come back to haunt you....every year...."

"Yule Be Sorry"

"Yule Have To Watch Out"

Here's the story I hope you enjoy it and it was a rush writing process so it's not perfect.

Title: Goats of yule tide past

The first goat was financed by Harry Ström. On 1 December 1966, a 13-metre (43 ft) tall, 7-metre (23 ft) long, 3-tonne goat was erected in the square. On New Year's Eve, the goat was burnt down, and the perpetrator was found and convicted of vandalism.

On Dec. 1, 1966, the 43-foot-tall goat was erected in the square. A few minutes into New Year's Day, 1967, the Gävle Goat was on fire. It was the first act of arson in what would become a holiday tradition of violence against the animal. Since the goat is a yule spirit it grew bitter of every year someone tries to burn down the beautiful tradition, and every year the yule goat spirit watches everyone who attempts to burn the statue. The gävle goat indeed takes the bad luck of the year, but it only uses it to kill or harm those who harm it.

An elite team is tracked down and payed individually 50,0000 to burn down the goat, even if the people remake the goat, they're tasked to burn it too. They're hiding in a closed store as a base of operations when they get a stern warning that they will be harmed if they attempt to complete their mission, ignoring the warnings they burn down two of the goats, but the team quickly finds their teammates killed in gruesome ways near the goat statues. Before they die they see a huge black goat dressed in red and bells.

Terrified of getting killed after seeing the goat kill a teammate, the few left (assume a team of 10 people) run and hide while two teammates are about to shoot the goat. In an attempt to stop them the goat kills both as the arrow hits the statue, making the goats anger and power double once again. The three team members left swear off destroying the statues, it's not enough for the yule goat so it kills two. The last remaining member begs the host to let him live and he'll help protect the statue at any cost until he's old and dies, and for a moment the goat thinks about that. But seeing as the entire team and him were having a great time and joking around when they were burning the previous statues down he finds a easy solution.

"I'll let you live" the goat spoke calmly. Tears in his eyes clinging on the red robes the yule goat wore the last remaining arsonist on his team, Quinn, bowed on the cloth "thank you, thank you so much! I'll protect the gävle goat with my life!". The yule goat nodded it's head "yes you will, as the gävle goat statue." Panicking Quinn looked up fearfully"you- you mean making sure it doesn't burn down". The yule goat squinted it as before ripping out Quinn's heart in the blink of an eye. Eyes huge and pleading with mercy to find none, blood trailing out of the hole his heart once was, and choking on his own blood as the yule goat stared down at him struggling to breathe. The yule goat didn't budge, not once. Not as he fell over freezing and dying in a puddle of his own blood, reaching a hand out but the yule goat spoke an ancient language over his heart. Plumes of red, gold and orange smoke appeared at the ends of his robe swirling around to the hooves around Quinn's heart.

Quinn's body disappeared completely leaving a puddle of blood in its place and the snowy outline of his body and the hooves of a goat a foot before it. Police found 9 massacred dead bodies in a closed store three blocks from the annual gävle goat statues. There seemed to be no evidence of how the 9 arsonists died or what could have killed them, the tenth arsonist was identified by his blood but never found. The missing body of Quinn Alexander bank was never found but police refuse to share the leads they have on the case. One civilian watching the massacre happen says it was the mythical yule goat, with the video evidence to back up the claim. Police paid the person to never speak of the incident to anyone.

The gävle goat Is attempted to be burnt down every year, and those that are nearby claim they hear screaming coming from the gävle goat, this claim was checked out but nothing was found.

[kamari3]

Another Vent Post

(typed this on my phone)

I just saw someone else on twitter say what I wanted to say so I'm gonna say it too.

It really makes me uncomfortable when people say "i'm not proship but i'm not anti: i'm normal." Because what I internalize from that is that you aren't willing to stand in solidarity with me.

At best, it means you dont have the energy or time to engage in activism and you want to curate you experience to avoid as much drama/conflict as possibe. i get that. the way you said it made me feel unsafe, and if i were a little less wise i would immediately interpret the statement as you saying you also want to hurt me, but i get it.

you dont have to get into fights you dont want to. you have every right to curate your experience no matter what side of the issue you fall on, and i will support you doing so 100%. no exceptions. no matter how upset i get, this fact does not change.

But you saying that could also mean you do also want me dead and just dont have the time or energy to shoot me yourself.

Yes, I get that it's cringe to have convictions about internet things. but this isnt dying on a hill about how fuckable you think hatsune miku is. this is about whether or not you are willing to support your community.

and whether you like it or not, the internet is also a community you are taking part of. you are literally here.

Like. Bro.

What do you even mean by "i'm not proship or anti, the whole thing is stupid"?

Do you mean it's stupid to have an opinion about how you treat other people?

Do you mean it is stupid to have an opinion about freedom of speech and censorship?

Are you trying to make me ashamed for caring about a political issue just because it most prominently affects online communities, and the farther reaching implications and impacts on these stances aren't obvious and dont use the same jargon?

(surely you know that the proship/anti issue runs parallel to the democrat/republican issue, and the anti-authoritarian/authoritarian issue. surely you know it also runs parallel with the queer/bigotry issue, since it uses all the same arguments and rhetoric. and the sex-work/puritanical issue. and the trans/transphobia issue. surely you understand that just because these political stances have nuances, differences of purpose and circumstance and vocabulary, doesnt mean they arent interconnected. they all still have threads of commonality and logic that interconnect them in parody and parallel. surely you get that the underlying root problem is a difference of ethics thats permeates nearly every polar difference of opinion and that talking about one leads to talking about all of them. surely you understand that these are nearly the same words in different languages and cultures-)

Do you actually mean, "i also think all you nasty proshippers are morally bankrupt and i hope you all die, but i dont have the energy to be a political activist so i will just let the ones that do rip you apart while i watch?"

Do you mean, "i also think that thought policing is wrong and that we shouldn't be judged for or treated badly for our fantasy/fiction indulgences, but i just dont think that it is worth getting into a fight over, and therefor i will not help you when other people harass and abuse you over fiction?"

i understand the idea of wanting to curate which labels you identify yourself with. you dont have to use the labels of proship or anti if those arent for you. but declaring the argument stupid or that anyone who has strong stances on it "needs to touch grass" only does harm. you arent making it clear whose side you are on. and while it sucks that there are sides to pick in the first place, that doesnt change that the sides are there and the fence is up.

and i'm not sorry to say that i trust someone who picks the side of the fence that wants to protect my person and my agency and my freedoms a lot more than someone who thinks me arguing my right to those is stupid.

idk maybe it IS terminally online to think controlling other people's fiction and personal life choices is bad. maybe it IS terminally online to say queers deserve to enjoy their media and representation too. maybe it IS terminally online to say "hey, maybe we shouldnt tell people their intrusive thoughts make them bad people". maybe it IS terminally online to say adults deserve the agency to be able to consent to whatever sex they want with other consenting adults, and that includes fictional sex acts they read, write, draw, and look at drawings of (wherein the artist consented to share the work, and the consumer has the agency to choose whether they view it or not, and change that at any time).

i dont think it is. but i'm just one person who has loud annoying opinions.

[thehoundera]

Neil Druckmann said around release: “We want you to try to empathize with that character, understand what they're doing, and say, ‘OK, I'm going to role-play ... I'm going to try to think the way this character thinks.’”

What’s being spoken over here is that the work of developing the game is setting parameters on what the player can think when being so strongly focalized on a character. That framework, the formal structure of the game, is one in which a Black woman is killed by the protagonist while the game itself is unwilling to engage with representing that violence. There is no body. There is nothing left of Nora but a specter that exists entirely to be consumed by Ellie’s guilt-ridden whiteness. The entire visual framework of [The Last of Us] Part II’s universe bends toward the exclusion of Blackness as anything other than death to be absorbed and processed by whiteness. No dignity, not even in death.

. . .

David Marriott opens his Haunted Life[: Visual Culture and Black Modernity] by tracking Damilola Taylor through CCTV screens. He moves through library grounds, up and down, and then gets on an elevator. He exits the screen, is cut from the surveillance system, and then later he’s found bleeding to death in a stairwell. For Marriott, being able to trace Taylor’s journey up to a point and then losing him, knowing that he will next appear dying and then dead, points to how the medium of television works in a broader sense. To watch Taylor walk through his life in the footage still means that he is framed by the “irreparable cut” of when he leaves the frame for good. Marriott wonders “what kind of gaze are we being asked to identify within the tranquil flows of CCTV; what kind of mourning or penalty is at work when the subject represented is either dead and/or raced?”

cameron kunzelman, "destroyed in the cut"

I was in a university in Toronto showing 88:88 and a student asked, “Why is there so much racialized language if no one in the movie is black?” The other students in the class immediately said, “the main character is black,” and then the initial student said: “I couldn’t tell what race everyone was because the cutting was so fast.” As a quick note, I also try to say “count-as” before I name some sort of racial identity — I don’t want to naturalize any of these concepts. But anyway, perhaps if I cut slower like Griffith and segregated everyone via the cross cut, you’d be able to tell what everyone counts as much more simply. Again this why I’m not into that type of narrative and you can see this link between how certain stories are told and how it naturalizes concepts of race and who should appear where. These aren’t the most useful categories or ways of telling stories to understand peoples’ lives as characters in the double sense, as persons and figures of thinking. It speaks to how we have been conditioned to accept certain stories, certain appearances, and how to organize who should show up where, and how, in a film.

isiah medina, from a talk at nyu

[rosandguilaredead]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Doomed

propaganda for @doomed-bythe-narrative's poll tournament

(I’m combining the propaganda I wrote for both rounds into one post)

vote for them here!!

Even though Ros and Guil identify some of the “logic at work” (31) they refuse to grasp the nature of their world to the full extent. According to William Babula, “SCRIPT IS DESTINY. For Ros and Guil in Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead destiny lies in the plot of an Elizabethan revenge tragedy”. They are compelled by the script of Hamlet, whose force renders them dead before the play even starts.

Guil tells the Player (a master actor) : “You die so many times; how can you expect them to believe in your death?”; yet Ros and Guil also “die so many times”: their death is in the title, they die every time someone reads or watches the play; in a sense, they die metaphorically and hypothetically every time they talk about their own deaths, but when it is time for them to ‘actually’ die, they simply “disappear from view”. This is how Guil thinks they should die: not by acting out their anguish and despair, but by subverting an audience’s expectations.

Dying according to Guil’s theory of death is the only choice they can make, the only way they seem to be able to take their destinies into their own hands, because “what they need, what they should be striving for, is freedom of will” (Keyssar-Franke). They want to have made an impact all on their own, they want to act unscripted: “Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we’d know that we were lost”.

Thus, their novel way of dying fulfils for them that very same purpose, to somehow act outside the script, to make a real choice, to have a death that is final, a death that is real, a death that one cannot return from, death as human beings and not as characters. Yet, that is of course, impossible, but they cannot tell the difference.  

What is more doomed than being caught up in an Elizabathen tragedy (THE Elizabethan tragedy), a play that’s been performed on stage for more than 420 years?

Imagine having a 400 year old conciousness that actually encompasses just a few moments of a tragedy that you get to relive night after night on stages all around the world. And then you’re taken and given moments of conciousness in another play. You’re given just enough time to sense that something is wrong, just enough time to start questioning the nature of your reality.

Just enough time to realize that you might have no free will of your own, no spontaneity, that your thoughts and actions are of no real consequence. Your are left on your own, destined to play with language, the very substance your world is made of, yet you cannot seriously alter it.

Your very identity is a joke. Ros and Guil cannot tell each other apart, their very identity is entrenched in the other (codependency to such a degree that they cannot exist alone, without the other). (But they were written this way by Stoppard, because across centuries, productions of Hamlet had the rest of the characters mix them up.)

Inevitably, Ros and Guil are at the mercy of the script, the power of which they do seem to sense at times. However, they are unable, or unwilling, to put all the pieces together: in their search for free will and spontaneity, the truth of their situation would crush them.

They would rather remain ignorant than discover that their only wish is perpetually unattainable. For the signs are there, they have some insight into the authority which controls their world and into how their very existence is constrained by it, they sense the “logic at work”, but it does not seem to pose an issue to them before they realize they have become its victims.

They are characters on the edge of sentience, never quite able to see beyond it. They are doomed to relive this turmoil afresh together every time the play is put on; because their other option is not to exist at all.

They come alive and die every someone watches or reads the play, every time someone reads the title; they are dying in your mind right now. Because they are characters (and in their fictional bones, they know it): they exist in the mind of an audience, only you can save them, only you can make their miserable lives worth suffering.

(so vote!!)

[reverend-dog]

Birthright

Dear Danielle,

If you are reading this, your father and I are dead and you are not yet thirty. I had hoped to be there for you when things came to fruition, but fate had other plans.

You have no memory of ever being sick or injured. Your medical records reflect the same thing. The reason for this goes beyond healthy life habits and good luck, and is the reason for this letter.

You were born three months premature. You spent the first weeks of your life in an incubator, fed fluids intravenously. I lost count of how many times your heart stopped. The doctors gave you less than fifty-fifty odds of survival.

The pregnancy was difficult for me, and the doctors insisted on tubal ligation after you, because another baby would probably kill me. So you were our one and only chance.

One day at the hospital, a woman approached your father and I. She identified herself as a doctor, but was not affiliated with the hospital. She had overheard conversations and knew your condition, and the odds of your survival. She offered a treatment that would make you well, better than well. She didn’t ask for money, in fact she scoffed at the idea when your father asked, thinking it was a scam. Her only conditions were that we never tell you, and that we keep watch on you until at least your thirtieth birthday.

Desperate doesn’t even come close to how we felt. Having a baby together was one of the fondest dreams your father and I shared, and the joy we felt when I became pregnant defied measurement. I won’t deny also that there was some cold pragmatism to our decision. You were dying, despite the doctors’ best efforts. If we refused Dr. Rossovich’s offer, we would lose the only baby we could ever have.

Dr. Rossovich’s treatment succeeded, as you yourself can attest. You are strong, fit, agile, and smart. Your beauty, I refuse to credit to Dr. Rossovich. There’s just too much of your father and I in your looks.

As you grew, your father and I could not help but notice your physical ability. We pressed Dr. Rossovich about it, and she assured us it was a harmless side-effect of the treatment. She warned us to not call undue attention to it, but let you grow up thinking you were a normal “gifted” girl.

Shortly after your twentieth birthday, Dr. Rossovich got into an accident. We were surprised when we were called to the hospital, and even more so when we learned we were listed as Dr. Rossovich’s only next of kin. We even had power of attorney!

Dr. Rossovich was dying. She knew it. Even the miraculous treatment she had used to save your life could not help her. On her deathbed, she confessed to us her real reasons for what she did. We did not believe her at first, but the evidence she produced could not be dismissed.

Dr. Rossovich was not human. That is, she was not born on Earth. She fled here to escape a planetary invasion. She brought with her the DNA of her planet’s native race, so that even if all of her planet was killed, they would live on. She also modified the DNA, encoding knowledge and skills that would activate at a specific time. Somehow, she spliced this DNA with yours, and that’s what saved you. I know, it all sounds ridiculous, something out of the stories you love so much. But I promise you, it’s all true.

Which brings us to now, and your upcoming birthday.

“You mean today,” Danielle murmured as she paused in reading the letter. “Sure would have been nice to get this ahead of time.”

The executor smiled and spread his hands apologetically. “Estates can take time to settle. Especially in the case of sudden death, as with your parents.”

“Gee,” Danielle snarked, “thanks.” She lifted the letter to resume reading. The time was 2:58 pm, exactly thirty years since her birth.

Floodgates opened. A star birthed. Information poured through Danielle’s brain. A language never spoken on Earth. History that owed nothing to the world in which she had grown up. Locations where equipment and resources hid, accessible only to a person with the right genetic profile. Skills to use the equipment. Combat. Strategy.

Most horrifying, though, was the discovery of why all this had been bestowed on her.

Danielle stared past the executor, out the window behind him. “Danielle?” the executor prompted. “Are you all right?”

“They’re coming,” Danielle whispered.

[gvtted-ratz]

read all our tags/ratings. they r important n give u all u need 2 decide if u wanna actually read or not. do not like the tags/rating? do not read.

FEM ALIGNING/IDENTIFYING PPL (unless mutuals/friends) DNI WITH OUR MLM WORKS. fem ppl can still request tho. respect our wishes or get blocked. yes we do read/check everything. we tag appropriately/use tags that go with our posts.

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Freakiest Freak

Hannibal Lecter x Billy Lenz

Last Edited: 02/20/2024

TW: stalking, sexual talk, foul language, breaking and entering

Requested: no

Word Count: 3,885

AO3 LINK -> HERE

Notes: no gay sex but knowing billy? Plenty of his swearing n sexual words.

@rppik (editor/co-writer): Rat went "does anyone want me to make this crackship" and didn't wait for an answer. Alternative title for the fic: "The drooling is coming from inside the house". Also,  SHAFT♡

He’s cold and hungry. The last time he remembers eating was sometime before he began jumping from car to car. He’d been hiding among people’s belongings in the backseats and trunks to arrive in some new place he’s never been. To think some people didn’t lock their cars’ trunks or back doors was odd, but ultimately this works in his favour. Up until it doesn’t, that is.

The screaming of the young couple in the front seats causes him to start yowling like a dying cat in return. He claws his way out of the pile of their belongings that they somehow spotted him within, trying to get unburied as quickly as possible. The woman driving swerves the car off the road in her panic, landing them in a ditch. With no weapon but his own hands, Billy chooses flight over fight and tries his best to throw open the door.

The man in the passenger seat unbuckles himself and tries to climb into the back to grab the yowling intruder . After another attempt on Billy’s part, the car door opens, and he flings himself out, landing in a heap on the cold ground. Upon hearing the man's yelling continue as he exits the car next, the hysterical fugitive clambers his way onto his feet before taking off down the road. The cops will surely be called and on their way. So, with no better course of action available , he changes his course to the woods.

Between walking and running, his progress occasionally punctured by wheezing cackles, Billy makes his way deeper and deeper into the wilderness of Maryland. In his adrenaline filled state, he trips and falls into shrubs, their leaves and twigs getting his hair tangled. It doesn't take long for him to get small scrapes on his hands from the multitude of falls within the unknown terrain he’s found himself in.

“Hungry… Billy’s hungry ,” he mumbles to himself, chewing on his fingers as he walks farther along in the cold weather. Some odd humming here and there leads to incoherent ramblings , combined with a few pig noises and meowing, as he travels onward.

“Little baby bunting… Daddy’s gone a-hunTING!” A screech follows the last syllable. A few giggles from his mouth keeps him from finishing the lullaby for just a few moments. “Gonna fetch a rabbit skin… To wrap my baby Agnes in.”

 Any sort of happiness he derived from the lullaby he sings disappears in the blink of an eye, his attempt at self entertainment short-lived and ineffective . Gurgles mixed with groans leave his throat; his hands claw at his face and hair as the stress from the multiple days pile on him. Screams echo off of the trees around Billy, all of it coming from the man himself, but none able to drown out the screaming within.

“Dead! Bleeding! PIGGIES! FUCKING CUNTS!” Over eight hours, Billy’s been fleeing, running from what he did in Canada. He warned them! He really did! But did they listen? No! None of them did! Just like little Agnes.

With a sore throat, runny nose, and aches covering his entire being, he spots house lights between the trees. With a sense of burgeoning hope for a chance at reprieve, Billy quickens his pace and enters a clearing with a grand home in the middle. It’s quite large, much larger than any of the homes Billy’s used to, even the sorority house he'd last snuck into. Back in Canada, the only homes approaching this size he’d seen tended to be grouped together, almost like a cul-de-sac. This one stands by its lonesome, making it that much more intimidating by contrast, giving the impression that some wealthy fellow must live here. In Billy’s mind, it translates to more places to curl up and hide away in, as a large home has a multitude of hiding spots.

A quick glance over the outside shows many entry points he could take advantage of. With more windows to choose from than teeth in his mouth, Billy grabs a rather large stone from the surrounding area—  originally meant to be used for decorative purposes— and lobs it at one of the large windows on the first floor.

As loud as thunder, the sound of the glass shattering destroys any semblance of peace in the clearing. Just as quickly as it happens, however, the cover of quiet falls over the clearing once again as Billy climbs through the shattered remains of the window. The alarm that is tripped upon his intrusion is just as silent, no one but the proprietor of the home made aware of his crime.

A few more cuts appear on his hands, broken glass still clinging to the window cutting into the meat of his extremities. Some blood smears along the window pane during his entrance, although he pays no mind to the bodily fluid being spread around the home.

Billy finds himself in a large living-room. It reeks of wealth , the quality of items held here making it obvious. He ignores it all in favour of stumbling his way to the kitchen, having some difficulty navigating the huge floor plan of the building.  

With his parched, sore throat, he hasn’t yelled nor screamed after his trek in the woods. His fatigue, alongside hunger, only adds to the aches and pains he feels. As a result, when he falls into the kitchen, tripping over his own feet, he's almost desperate to get some proper sustenance; the deafening silence around him and lingering panic in his veins making him feel further on edge Rummaging around in the cabinets, he finds a bread container and a few bottles of wine. The loaf within the container appears to be homemade and has yet to even be sliced before Billy starts to shove it down his gullet. In his eagerness he chokes on the starchy goodness, hacking it up, and proceeds to pop the cork off the wine in hopes of washing it down properly. A large sip of the bottle's contents, however, prompts Billy to chuck the bottle at the wall, shattering it.

“Nasty! Nasty, Billy! WHAT DID YOU DO, BILLY?!” He screeches, coughing afterwards from the ensuing raw ache in his throat. With the wine discarded, he shoves the rest of the bread into his mouth, cheeks puffed out as he tries to shove it all down into his stomach faster than he can chew. It takes a bit before the remainder of the bread has been consumed, drool dripping down from the edges of his mouth. It coats his lips, some of it having dripped from off him and onto the counter below.

With his meal done, he goes for the fridge, rummaging around to find something to drink. He pushes around jars and bottles, searching for anything that he knows is both safe and familiar. In the back, a jug of milk is found. He turns the lid, letting the opening line up with the spout. From there, Billy proceeds to drink straight from the opening; some milk leaks out from his mouth, trailing down his throat. He stops drinking like a dying man for only a moment to take in a large gulp of air before continuing to chug more of the milk.

Distantly, he hears the sound of tires on gravel. Freezing, he listens a tad bit longer; the car stops, the engine cutting off. Billy drops the jug, spilling the remainder of the milk all over the nicely tiled floor. With his heart thumping like that of a rabbit’s, Billy takes off and out of the kitchen. He’s quick, wasting no time climbing the staircase. Finding a bedroom, he enters it and grabs a few blankets, yanking them off the well-made bed. On the bedside table, he finds a small hand-held phone and grabs it to take with him, too.

Blankets in arm, he goes back out into the hall, searching along the ceiling for a door. At the very end of the hall, he finds it: a small rope dangles from the hook holding it in place. He grabs ahold of it, pulling it down with all his might, and a loud thump rings out around him as the ladder slams down onto the floor. Without hesitation, Billy clambers up the ladder and pulls it shut behind him. With the door closed, he can feel himself relax— as relaxed as an unmedicated, delusional man on the run can be.

Journeying farther into the attic, he finds a vacant space behind many stacked boxes . He arranges a few to completely cover the spot from view in case the person living here does search for him up here. After a bit more shuffling about, Billy makes a small little resting spot out of the blankets he took from the bedroom. Right beside it, he places the phone on the floor for later usage. With all the stress from the day catching up to him, Billy allows himself to finally curl up in the nest of blankets he’s created. It doesn’t take long before he’s out like a light.

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

Waking up, the man is a bit disorientated, making his heart drop for a moment as he fails to recognize his surroundings. It takes a minute before memories of the previous day finally surface in his mind, helping his nerves settle— hearing no activity in the floors beneath him, he decides to relieve his remaining tension by lashing out at some unsuspecting victim, as always .

Wiggling out of his nest of blankets, he grabs the little hand-held phone. Turning it on, Billy starts to file through the phone’s contacts. Here, he finds a contact that interests him more than the others. None of the other contacts have a suffix in front of them except for this one. Clicking it and letting the phone start to ring, he puts the device to his ear to listen to the ringback.

It rings. And rings. And rings .

“Dr. Lecter speaking ,” an accented, smooth voice enters Billy’s ear. In response to his words, Billy lets out a loud, manic chuckle.

“Pretty Piggy… Such a pretty piggy!” He squeals, oinking at the other man. Moans, gurgles, and gargles escape from deep in his chest, laughing and yowling. He goes on for minutes before slowly quieting down into a fit of soft giggles. There’s silence on the other end. For a second, Billy thinks he’s been hung up on, despite the lack of a beep to have signalled the end of the call.

“I assume you’re done then? It’s rude of you to call only to make such obscenities,” Dr. Lecter tells him, not sounding the least bit fazed. Billy’s giggling has stopped, frowning intensely at this off-handed scolding. “Now, I have a strong suspicion that you’re the man responsible for the wreck in my kitchen? Not to mention the explosion of glass in my living room.”

Billy simply gurgles at him, not intending to answer the guy’s questions but finding it amusing that he's once again managed to phone the resident of the very home he's taken refuge in . A sigh of exasperation is the only answer Billy gets to his nonsensical response. The line goes dead afterwards, showing that the man truly isn’t interested in entertaining a criminal .

Billy turns the phone off, moving to sit cross-legged, letting himself flop back on his blankets. He stares off, slowly starting to zone out. Mumbles leave his mouth as he rocks himself from side to side to pass a bit of the time. Doing this is calming, helping him reflect some of the things he’s done recently. While he doesn’t particularly have an issue with his memory , he does tend to find it easier to recount things in a safe environment while feeling somewhat calm— and up until now, he's felt anything but.

In this state, he lets the events from the sorority house play over in his mind. He hums, remembering the first to go in that house. Claire seemed just like Agnes… They all seemed like her in a way. But the more he thinks about them all, the harder it is to determine what exactly it was about them that he found to resemble Agnes at all.  The more he tries, the more his thoughts are derailed by memories of Agnes. Soon enough, the sorority girls and Agnes start to blur together in his mind, just as they had that night, making his lips curl up in revulsion. His mind races, voices unlike his own clawing their way up his throat, repeating words that he can never unhear.

“Disgusting… DISGUSTING! NASTY BILLY!” He cries out, voice high and shrill.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE BABY, BILLY?! WHERE’S THE BABY?!!” He smacks a box of items from its spot, letting it crash to the ground.

“BILLY! BAD BILLY! DISGUSTING PIG!” A lamp goes flying across the attic, shattering upon impact on the wall. A screeching wail explodes from his lungs, bouncing off the walls of the small enclosure he’s taken as his own.

It takes half an hour for Billy to calm down, panting and wheezing. He allows himself to crawl back into his nest of blankets. Whimpers and whines leave him as he shakes from the after-effects of his fit. He’s tired, so very tired.

“Claude… Meow… Meow!!” He lets himself remember Claude, the one creature that seemed to care for him in a genuine way. Regret churns in his gut at leaving the poor thing behind, the feeling fading along with his consciousness as  exhaustion overtakes him. 

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

Waking up once more, Billy is left reeling in the feelings of the past day. Has it been a day? Maybe days have passed. Or could it be weeks? Time is incomprehensible to his messed up mind, much less in the windowless attic.

Not to mention, t here’s too much stimulation going on around him to think. How is he supposed to process anything with all the screaming, crying, begging, and yelling happening? At this point, Billy himself can’t seem to tell if all those sounds are from him, within his head, or occurring outside in reality; it’s too jumbled up, mixing and distorting his senses beyond comprehension. For all he knows, up is right and left is sideways.

He claws at his blankets, chewed-down nails sliding across the sheets. Is he even sane any more? Or maybe he never was. He’s unable to understand those simple things these days. Everything is too much; it’s drowning him.

A sound from down below makes him freeze up , breaking through his disorientated distress. While an odd noise usually wouldn’t have given Billy pause, it’s the fact that it’s right beneath the attic door that scares him— a scrape against the wood, a clink of metal, he can't be sure what exactly. He holds his breath, trying to keep himself from so much as twitching. He listens as the sounds continue before they cease and footsteps retreat down the stairs. With the space beneath him now silent , Billy lets himself uncurl from the fetus position. Slowly, he crawls out of his blankets and towards the attic’s door. Smooshing the side of his face into it, he listens for more sounds.

With nothing reaching his ears, Billy tries to open the door quietly. Despite his efforts, the ladder slams down onto the floor below once again. The bang it makes rings out, making his pulse jump in his veins, but no one comes to check out the noise. Slowly, he creeps down the ladder, leaving it open in case he needs to scurry back into his hiding hole. As such, he fails to notice the new addition to the trap door.

Moving as silently as he's capable of being, Billy makes his way through the hallway and down the stairs. He hasn’t seen this Dr. Lecter, yet , and plans on getting a little sneak peek. It’s when he’s creeping down the stairs that he notices, at last, how expensive everything is: while it’s not flashy, it’s good quality and nice on the eyes, befitting for a wealthy doctor's home. The surrounding items are truly cared for and made from the best products available. Running a finger across the banister, he spots no dust nor dirt. Everything is spotless besides the attic. To think that the one area that isn’t tidy would be the place he's taken as his own; it’s the perfect spot for the Canadian to hide, with it being about as clean as he is .

He looks through the rail pegs as he continues his descent. At the bottom of the stairway, he can hear someone in the kitchen. There’s a whistle of a kettle, sounds of chopping on a cutting board, and bubbles popping like that of something boiling in a pot. Billy finds himself inching closer to the kitchen, hoping to catch a glimpse of this lavish home's owner . Convincing himself that it is worth the risk, he lets himself have a gander.

There, he sees a well-dressed man. With a blazer, dress pants, and shiny dress shoes, he stands in the kitchen preparing a meal for himself. An apron is tied around his waist, shielding his front from any grime he may splash on himself. His hair is nicely combed, with not a wrinkle in sight on his prim clothing. Just by peering at him, Billy knows he’s something to be watched closely. Even while presumably thinking himself to be alone, the man holds himself as someone to listen to and to fear.

While Doctor Lecter is himself a feast for the eyes, the smell of the food he's preparing is just as delicious. Billy can feel a small bit of drool leak past his lips, making him cover his mouth to keep the giggles and spit from spilling out. He knows, by simply staring, that there will be plenty of leftovers once the man finishes… But Billy hardly has the patience to wait that long for scraps.

Thinking quickly, he slinks off to where he remembers the living room being. Scanning the shelves when he arrives, he spots a fine vase, clearly delicate with its shiny glass. It's a pretty thing, and he has a penchant for breaking those, fingers twitching eagerly as he reaches for it. In the next moment, he chucks it towards the fireplace ,the loud sound of its shattering bursting well past the room. In the kitchen, the sounds of chopping cease .  

Billy’s quick to hide in a tight spot by the stairs, waiting with bated breath for the doctor to investigate his distraction. As the man walks into the room, the Canadian killer slips out of his spot,  slipping into the kitchen. Once inside, he messily grabs some of the cooked meat the wealthy man had been cutting. Another grab and his hands have got ahold of some oranges as well, proceeding to bundle it all up in his shirt, holding the hem up like a makeshift basket.

With his food secured, Billy turns to make his way out of the kitchen, only to freeze like a deer in headlights as he sees Dr. Lecter standing in the doorway.

“So, you’re the rat running amok in my home.” His proper demeanour doesn’t disappear as he talks. Even when faced with an intruder and vandal; his voice has an accent that Billy cannot make out, and now that it isn’t being filtered through the receiver of a phone, it sounds unnervingly smooth to his ears. It makes him want to slam glass in his ears, if only to keep the too-perfect sound from bouncing around in his skull for the remainder of the day. Beyond that, the lack of screaming in terror or any sort of anger gives Billy great pause, not knowing in the slightest how to proceed, allowing Lecter to continue. “With all the destruction, I was quite sure I was dealing with a pig.”

At the mention of a pig, Billy's mind starts back up, the man starting to make oinking sounds mixed with breathy giggles. The calmly stated insult is one that’s familiar to him, leading to him latching onto the word.

“Pretty Piggy… Preeeeeety Piggyyyy,” He drags out ‘pretty piggy’ with his laughing and sounds. The other man hardly seems bothered; it’s almost like he expected this reaction. “Pretty Piggy wants to suck his juicy, fat, COCK!” A sound between a wail and a cackle erupts from his throat.

“Now, Mr. Lenz, there is no need for this foul language. Come, take a seat. I have prepared you a meal.” While he moves with confidence, there’s a cautiousness in the way the ex-surgeon moves, almost like he doesn’t want to spook the unwell man into fleeing. Through his giggle-infused haze, Billy follows the other at the promise of food, while staying a few steps behind in case he feels like he needs to run.

The smell of cooked meat fills up Billy’s senses; it makes the man’s mouth start watering in hunger. Bread and milk are enough to keep one from dying for a month or so, but not enough to keep them from wasting away completely. With that in mind, Billy knows that he has to eat some of the offered meal as he’s eaten very little else during his time on the run; he’s lost quite a bit of weight, losing much of his energy and strength from the lack of nutrients.

When he sees the hunk of roasted pig flesh sitting on the plate, he doesn’t hesitate to grab it in his vibrating hands. The next thing the psychiatrist sees is Billy trying to shove the entire thing down his gullet, having been practically starving from his poor diet. It takes a bit of choking, gurgling, and excess spit, but Billy does manage to eat the entire plateful of pork.

“I do hope it was satisfactory, Mr. Lenz. I can see that your diet has been lacking. For as long as you remain here, I can promise you that I will keep you well-fed.” It’s stated as a promise, though Billy isn’t certain if it will be carried out , why would it?

“Piggy’s name… Tell Billy Piggy’s name,” More odd sounds ring around them as Billy delves back into his usual noises, eyes intent on the doctor as he seeks to understand his strangely accommodating host better.

“My name is Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist and ex-surgeon. I do hope you’ll enjoy your stay here, as you seem peculiar.” Hannibal’s words sound more like static as Billy starts to feel even more weak than usual. Eyes darting from Hannibal to the kitchen’s exit, he finally darts out and away from the other man.

Hannibal doesn’t follow Billy as he turns tail, knowing he’ll be finding the ward escapee in his attic. If only Billy had accounted for the fact that said attic could easily be locked up if one wanted to keep another captive there, the new locking mechanism on the trapdoor going unnoticed once again as he struggles to even lift the ladder back up.

It’s only as Billy dazedly collapses, beginning to lose consciousness inches away from his make-shift nest , that his rattled mind comes across a peculiar realization- he'd never told the man downstairs his name before.

[delusion-of-negation]

I posted 14,825 times in 2022

984 posts created (7%)

13,841 posts reblogged (93%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@delusion-of-negation

@spaghetticordez

@joey-wheeler-official

@catgirldick

@ace-pervert

I tagged 999 of my posts in 2022

#jokes - 57 posts

#in jest - 57 posts

#youtube - 46 posts

#spotify - 29 posts

#for future reference - 28 posts

#old recipes man my beloved - 22 posts

#long post - 15 posts

#mighty need - 12 posts

#exactly - 7 posts

#tw food - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

we need to move away from almost 100% of positivity posts being "this gets better" "this gets easier" "you'll survive this" and things of that nature. that stuff helps some people and should exist, so don't jump to the conclusion that I'm saying it's bad and shouldn't exist or whatever. but some people actually are terminal, & other people have the kinds of chronic health issues that will get worse or stay this bad, even if not necessarily deadly or not immediately deadly, and for those people it won't get easier and it won't get better and they won't survive it. and I know when making a positivity post, you don't want to be like "well, you're dying but I still want to cheer you up!" because that seems grim to you, but some people actually do need that right now, some people can't relate to your "happy" ideal of everyone getting better and living through this. and I think that's just a symptom of the problem here, we associate dying or being ill forever with misery, with constant bleak emptiness, with simply no joy to be found. that idea is what we need to somehow shift away from. since people who are in the thick of that aren't really capable of changing the entire rest of the world's perception, some of y'all do need to actually make an effort to alter your language, at least some of the time, to include people who won't get better or survive.

525 notes - Posted October 7, 2022

#4

people online will find an obscure fetish page with like two hundred followers that's appropriately tagged, and be like "guys, look at this fetish page!! how dare this exist!! anyone could see this!! imagine if lots of people saw this!! that would be so so terrible!!" to their fifty thousand followers, with absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever.

1,184 notes - Posted July 18, 2022

#3

"less than one percent of the silent generation and two and a half percent of boomers identify as gay, but the youth-"

"that doesn't totally account for-"

aids. aids killed a bunch of them.

"even back when they were young, less identified as-"

it was illegal, sharon.

"you should at least consider social contagion-"

no, because if sexuality were contagious we'd all be straight. there is zero credible scientific evidence that gay is contagious.

"but-"

but nothing. we know what caused the increase - social acceptance and legality and not being dead. sorry it's more boring than your gay cabal spreading the gay theory, but that's the facts. if you're unable to accept that then that's your problem not mine.

2,661 notes - Posted June 16, 2022

#2

you're allowed to be messy, you're allowed to fuck up, you can be emotional and stupid and frantic and confusing and weird and any other embarrassing thing. anyone who makes you feel otherwise, or who makes you feel like you're walking on egg shells, like you're doomed if you slip up, they shouldn't be such a big part of your life.

edit: stop saying "I gotta distance myself from me" you're unfunny and unoriginal. distance yourself from the thoughts, and realise I was making a post supporting people who are being made to feel like shit. including myself. and you're just mocking my attempt to reassure myself and others that we don't deserve that treatment.

2,844 notes - Posted October 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

every time I get to skip a queue because I'm disabled, I think back to my one guardian using that as one example of how actually it's marginalised people who are privileged. ma'am, it's because I can't stand up for that long. and it's trans privilege that I once got given vip passes, as the only working gender neutral toilet was in the vip area of the club. ma'am, it's so that I didn't get beaten up. ma'am, it's not a privilege for somebody to do something nice for you that is aiming to circumvent a danger you're subjected to. I can't skip a queue now without thinking "I wonder how many people are bitter that I can do this because they're standing in the cold for an hour", and then I think that the solution to these situations should never be to harm me, it would be to improve the venue's entrance (more metal detectors, etc) and waiting area (cover, places to sit, etc) so that the waiting experience doesn't suck enough to make anybody feel bitter upon seeing someone skip it for the sake of their health. and I don't even ask to skip btw, it's just protocol in a lot of places, and they let those with you skip it too so that you're not separated.

5,885 notes - Posted November 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[selkiedoodles]

A selection of some vampire OCs I’ve made and loved over the years ❤️

Sebastian ?? - He/Him - Creation: ~12 years old

A sarcastic dead pan snarker, best friend to the protagonist. 16 years old. Was turned against his will and is absolutely disgusted by the taste of blood. Tries so hard to just be a Normal Dude.

Ikol - She/They - Creation: 16 years old

An entity of chaos who was never human to begin with. Not technically a vampire so much as the inspiration for the legends. She can change her appearance, but usually just changes her hair, always to a style that looks busy. Humans are like little bugs in jars that she likes to shake.

Alexander “Alex” Lyell - They/Them - Creation: 24

A late 1600s baby originally from one of the Thirteen Colonies. Changed in their mid twenties after dying at sea as a pirate. They are perpetually dissatisfied and the biggest nuisance on the planet. Will literally just sit there and complain like an old curmudgeon, only half the time they’re complaining about something that stopped existing a century ago. Has hated every place they have ever lived and despite having been around for centuries can only speak English. They moved to France and learned French once but they hated it so much that they swore to never learn another language. If they still know any of the language they refuse to engage with it. Has spent most of their life in North America and hates it. Has somehow managed to refrain from engaging with every single notable historic event.

Aruelius / Rue - He/They - Creation: this week

Looks like a teenager, actually a couple of thousand years old. No, he doesn’t know how old. Time changed! You keep adding and taking away months and he never learned to count past 20. He wasn’t important enough for a last name and there weren’t any other Arueliuses in the village. And now there are none and it sounds stupid so he just goes by Rue. He’s an easily bored Drama Queen who has long since grown bored of the moral quandary of existence and is now just here for the funsies. Took a break at the bottom of the ocean for 70 years then came back up and promptly saved a guy’s life because he wanted to know who the little creature on his keychain was. Now he refuses to leave his house and identifies as Mimikyu kin. Luckily the guy’s twitch audience think his new roommate’s “bit” is funny.

[d3nt4l-d4m4g3]

A few days ago, I emailed my former professor about a paper on women’s food practices in the middle ages. At least, that’s what I told him it was about, initially. 

But actually, I wanted to discuss heresy. This professor teaches a women’s rights course every year. Every year at the beginning of the class, he calls attention to why he, a man, is talking about women’s rights. He looks us in the eyes and says, no one else is doing it, and I’m sorry it’s me.

This man made us read the SCUM manifesto, Gerda Lerner, Maria Mies. He grazed the subject of the Lesbian Sex Wars, delicately, so gingerly, posing the question: “Can sex work ever be just work?”  And my  (all woman) classmates, generally mute—in a Women’s Rights class, they all seemed averse to saying the word “woman,” at all. Then one woman raised her hand. and she said, “Sex work is real work.”  A statement that, as I hope you know, is a deflection and a discussion killer.  

At the time I was non-binary. Hah. I submitted a comic at the end of the year of my final project. My thesis for that project was this: the very language female people have to use for themselves was constructed by the patriarchy. for example, the english word “vagina” comes from the latin word for “sheath”. so the vagina invokes the act of penetration upon its utterance. Whereas the word “penis” has no clear etymological root, implying that it is original while the vagina is constructed for him. Why should I carry the fact that I will always be a tool, the hole, of the human that is man? My solution, at the end of the comic, was to continue using they/them pronouns, to shield myself from the horror of being a wo-man, a s-he—an appendage of Him. 

I got a good grade. A stellar report. And it wasn’t a bad comic, for what I knew then. For my condition of blindness and deafness. I made a compelling argument, using sources from class.  But oh, how much older I feel now. I’ve always felt old but now I feel almost like I’m dying. Like I don’t have enough time to fix the world before I disappear. And women’s stories never survive. They are not surviving. networks spring up like mycelium and then every century at least they are burned. Witchcraft is in the air shared by women in a room of their own, and witchcraft is doused in gasoline.

I don’t have enough time to explain how the veil lifted for me. Maybe I forget the big moment. the days after were a blur of searching the no-no tags like radical feminist, GNC, gender critical. Amazed at the wealth of journals that these women linked to with real statistics showing that children are being sterilized for no reason. Mostly gay children. like me, a lesbian, who now lives in a house with three  “non-binary afabs”. This summer, one of these women, who I have known since freshman year, will start taking testosterone, a procedure I took up  for three turbulent months during my freshman year of college. I get to watch her become what I turned away from, knowing the experience fractured my sense of self to a point of  terror and estrangement. I get to watch her hide from her problems and cut herself off from womanhood the way I did for 3 years. I am not a woman, so do I not feel Woman’s pain, she is telling me, I told myself, when I was in a dream.  She has so many problems, she laughs. But trans is a separate problem that has nothing to do with those other problems. A coincidence.

 (For any trans people reading this, you may think: This transtrender fake-trans never-was-trans woman is treating these nonbinary people as if they were dead! as if they weren’t happy people finally living their truth! —well. I put my mom through the process of trying to convince her that I should have always been a man. and I did lose her, for months. For her it was the height of cognitive dissonance that I should want to go on a life-altering hormone to cure my lifelong social awkwardness and self-hatred and self-harm and depression. And I blamed her for not accepting my real self. I was basically made to shun her and my family because of transphobia.. It is disrespectful to anyone’s sanity and integrity for me to perpetuate that cognitive dissonance in this post.)

So I eventually got through to the professor. I knew because of the texts he had us to read for class. He is gay.  He has read all the theory, and lives by it.  And no (woman) student wants to speak to him. To bring the theory alive. They cannot breathe into it and it sits dead in his mouth.

Maybe it is because he is a man. because the presence of one man in a space of all women immediately sends up alerts.  lockdown. Certainly that is the case. Radical Feminists here: I know he’s a man. But I don’t have a woman. And I felt on the strength of the texts he’d given us that he would be my best bet. Maybe somewhere in the corrupted, rotting heart of my college there was a person who knew about thoughtcrimes and was thinking them anyway.

My professor starts with diversion. He starts by talking about my paper. I find it disconcerting that he starts that way. I worry that he won’t want to refer to my email. Where I say: I have woken up from a dream to the apocalypse—Does this man think I’m crazy? Chipper and kind of frantically, he lists off  primary sources of medieval nuns and women saints. for my paper.  Does this man think I’ve turned into a bigot?  Am I confessing lunacy, like a flat-earther?

But I steer the conversation to the meat at his first tentative encouragement. I tell him something like: “children, mostly gay children, a whole generation of gay children, are being sterilized. Porn is a symptom of late-stage capitalism—men’s ownership of women’s bodies. trans is an extension of this. I was part of this. I was in a cult.” I was shaking a bit. I don’t think I’d uttered those words out loud. They sound crazy. Some of the things I said did sound far-fetched. disorganized, remote. But I prayed that my professor would believe some of it, any of it. 

 What I will say is that he believes me.  Thank fuck, right?

He tells me something along the lines of this, vocalizing my fears: 

that all of academia is being scrubbed of anything that doesn’t support Trans.

And it is trans-identified female students and women who are reporting him to Title IX, who spend all their time in his classes fuming at the lack of validation for trans women in the  history of women. My sisters, footsoldiers for the cause. What cruel irony. This man is holding onto this class by his fingernails, speaking through his teeth, hoping any of the twenty young adult women staring blankly or angrily at him will hear him and listen.

 Looking back, the professor’s responses to my emails are vague, completely refusing to acknowledge a point of view other than “WOW. I look forward to discussing this.”  I think he thinks he could be blackmailed. Anything he says on gmail dot com can and would be used against him. It’s like, really, really, really that bad. 

No ideology should involve a cultural cleaning of women’s history feat. witch hunts. 

I will end here with an excerpt from my first email to this professor:

I'm sure you know what a total bummer it is to realize this. 

[little-schonbrunn]

Well, I’ve had a chance to look through this new book on Maria Theresa (and the chosen daughters Maria Christina, Maria Carolina and Marie-Antoinette) and let me tell you, if you’re concerned with the truth and historical fact, you’re gonna want to skip this one. I’ve only really even gone through the MA chapters and they’re enough to make my head spin and not trust the author enough to even bother reading through the chapters on Maria Theresa, Maria Christina and Maria Carolina. If you can’t trust a writer of history with said history, why bother?

The adventure begins in the introductory notes, wherein the genealogy of several generations of Hapsburgs and Bourbons are listed. When we get to Louis and MA, we have:

Children of Marie Antoinette by Louis XVI:

1. Marie-Thérèse (b. 1778 - 1851)

2. Louis Joseph (b. 1781 - 1789), Dauphin of France

Children of Marie Antoinette by Count Axel von Fersen

1. Louis-Charles (b. 1785 - d. 1795), Dauphin of France after the death of his older brother, later Louis XVII

2. Madame Sophie (b. 1786 - d. 1787)

So we’re going to credit the paternity of two of the Queen of France’s children to an alleged lover, instead of her husband, with no foolproof evidence before we’ve even started Chapter 1.

The author works tirelessly to convince the reader that Louis XVI was a person with autism, which, in all fairness, he very well may have been, but her evidence to support the theory is so flimsy and remarkably inept in some instances that her case is in no way convincing — I’d classify it as reaching to the extremes. The author’s insistence to make us believe in her half-baked theory comes off as offensive to people actually diagnosed with autism. And her dragging out of a modern specialist to support her diagnosis is a bit desperate … it reminds me of frantically trying to diagnose yourself on WebMD (“see, I found someone who agrees!”). Here are some of the author’s footnotes on the subject:

1. I do not use this term lightly. Had he lived in the present century, Louis-Auguste would certainly have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of ASD include “resists cuddling and holding, and seems to prefer playing alone, retreating into his or her own world”; “has poor eye contact and lacks facial expression”; “Can’t start a conversation or keep one going, or only starts one to make requests or label items”; “Repeats words or phrases verbatim but doesn’t understand how to use them”; “Doesn’t express emotions or feelings and appears unaware of others’ feelings”; “Develops routines or rituals and becomes disturbed at the slightest change”; “Has problems with coordination or has odd movement patterns, such as clumsiness or walking on toes, and has odd, stiff, or exaggerated body language”. “The child you describe checks every box for Autism Spectrum Disorder,” confirmed Dr. Linda Gray, a noted developmental pediatrician with three decades’ worth of experience at Yale New Haven Hospital, when I contacted her about Louis’s behavior without identifying him.

Where does one begin? I’m dying a bit at the author not mentioning Louis’ identity to the professional, because one would think a doctor would hesitate at trying to diagnose someone who’s been dead for over 200 years. In addition, some of these symptoms do not apply to Louis XVI at all. Others are a great reach — the suggestion about rituals … Versailles was nothing if not based around the strictest of rituals, where Louis lived most of his years from birth, of course his daily life was regimented in a fashion that was out of the ordinary. I can’t help but mention too that a shy child is not always autistic, that a child who doesn’t outwardly display emotion is not always autistic, etc. You have to offer better evidence than this if you’re going to attempt to diagnose the mental condition of a historical figure, and quite frankly, if the author based her argument around the idea that Louis might have been autistic, that’s an entirely different story — it’s her determination to say that Louis was autistic that’s unconvincing, in the same way that she hammers home that Fersen fathered two of MA’s children throughout the book without sufficient evidence.

2. Again, people diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder can find initiating the simplest conversation to be extremely stressful.

3. That a healthy, intelligent, twenty-three-year old male had to have the mechanics of intercourse explained to him would again seem to indicate some form of autism.

So, not understanding sex means that you’re autistic? And if you’re autistic, you don’t understand sex? Also, not all young men at Versailles behaved like Artois or Louis XV, perhaps Louis XVI wasn’t greatly interested in sex, and perhaps he never had it adequately explained to him, much like MA. Statements like this are just so nonsensical — I gather from this that the author believes that if you’re a young male and you’re not sexually experienced, you must be autistic, and if you’re autistic, you’re automatically clueless about sex.

Shall we get into Fersen? I was surprised to learn, after twenty years of reading books about MA, that Fersen was actually in the Queen’s bed the night of the storming of Versailles!

This is from the chapter detailing the events of the march on the château:

It is almost certain that Marie Antoinette was not alone in her bed that morning. Three days later, Fersen would write to his father, “All the public papers have told you … what happened at Versailles on Monday, 5th, and Tuesday, 6th … I was witness of it all.” Like every one else in the palace, Fersen would have seen the vicious mob arrive the night before and heard the threats to the queen’s life; it is difficult to believe that the man who had once written to his sister that he would never marry because “I cannot belong to the only person I want to belong to, the only one who truly loves me, and so I don’t want to belong to anyone” would have left the woman whom he considered to be his wife to face mortal danger alone … Marie Antoinette and two of her ladies now took off down this corridor, with Fersen staying behind in her rooms to ensure the queen’s escape.

Footnote: Two years after these events, a visiting English lord asserted that, through a third party, Madame Campan had confessed that the Swedish count had been in bed with the queen that morning, and that he had to don a disguise, which the lady-in-waiting had provided, in order to escape. This, of course, is hearsay and so does not qualify as historical evidence. But, especially in light of Fersen’s later behavior, it would have been out of character for him not to have been there.

What on Earth? So, in your source for the allegation that Fersen was in MA’s bed that night, you admit that it’s hearsay and not proper evidence, but then you go with that information anyway and present it is as an almost certainty in the text. And because of how Fersen behaved at some later point (the behavior is not explained), he must have been there that night? This is such ridiculously irresponsible writing of history. Yes, the night that MA left her family to stay in her bedchamber out of fear for their well-being and stayed up most of the night with terrified anxiety, with a literal mob outside her windows, sounds like the perfect night to spend in her lover’s embrace, right in front of her ladies. And let’s just base history on what random people, who weren’t there that night, said that their friend said that Madame Campan said. If that’s the case, we might as well start basing history on the pamphlets. I’m not here for this rewriting of history. Because Fersen was present at Versailles that night, he must have been in bed with MA? Because he told his sister at one point about his feelings for MA, that’s where he was at this moment? “The woman who he considered his wife”, by the way? Are you kidding? We’re still debating whether or not their affair actually happened, whether emotional and/or physical, and now he considered the married Queen of France his wife? Furthermore, let’s just say that Fersen was in her apartments that night … why is it always about having sex with these two? At Trianon, in the private apartments at Versailles, in the Tuileries, etc. Writers are just obsessed with these two sleeping together. I don’t believe Fersen was in her apartments on October 5th, but even if he was, why couldn’t he have been there to console her, to protect her, to help guard the double doors? These two might very well have had a decades-long love for one another that was never physical. But we have to jump from maybe there was an affair to Fersen being in bed with the queen while Versailles was being stormed, since he considered her his wife. There’s just so much wrong with this one passage. This is from a history writer, everybody.

We get back into the paternity case again not much later. This is a footnote from the chapter concerning the stay at the Tuileries:

1. She also found an oblique way to reassure her lover that her feelings for him remained unchanged. “When I am very sad I take my little boy (the dauphin) in my arms, embrace him with all my heart, and in a moment this consoles me for everything,” she wrote. She did not mention her daughter.

Yes, because she mentioned the consolation her son gave her during their imprisonment, it must be a sneaky, veiled way of declaring the paternity of said son to the man she’s writing to. And the omission of her daughter must back up that argument. This is so ridiculous. This is reaching to the ends of the earth in extremes.

This is from the Epilogue, about her son’s remains:

In 2004, the preserved heart was tested for DNA against Marie Antoinette’s and found to be a match, thus confirming its authenticity. In a curious omission, Louis’s remains were never publicly tested for paternity.

Perhaps because such a test is unnecessary? Maybe the French government doesn’t seriously question the paternity of Louis XVII? Because there’s speculation that MA and Fersen may have had an affair, which may not have even been physical, that uncertainty has to be dragged into the forum of history as if it’s a probable fact and a concern towards Bourbon lineage? Even the children of Catherine II of Russia who, in probability, were not those of her husband, aren’t exhumed for DNA testing, so you expect allegations with no concrete evidence to warrant that level of testing? Because some people want to believe in an idea that has such little evidence to even suggest the chance of its likelihood, it has to be publicly and openly assessed? It’s offensive to the memory of everybody involved. The chance of Louis XVII not being the child of Louis XVI is so so unlikely, based off of so so much information, and the author’s hellbent mission to convince readers otherwise is so sensational, uninformed and dangerous.

Honestly, reading this book infuriated me so much that even smaller details got on my nerves. In an earlier chapter on MA as dauphine, the book reads (about Versailles):

It was a court stuck in time, like the fossilized mansion of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, with Marie Antoinette playing the part of Estella.

It’s just such an odd comparison to make. Versailles was still the most envied court of Europe, the finest palace that was copied all over the continent and whose society, while tremendously rigid and defined by etiquette, was the model for royal and aristocratic decorum. It was not stuffy nor stuck in time — it only became outdated with the hindsight of the Revolution, really, and with reflection on how much society had changed at that time. Sure, it was a bit of a ghost town in the last years of the monarchy, but it was hardly a relic of the past. Even after the abolishment of the Bourbons, the other courts of Europe still operated with great worship to the ways of Versailles into the 19th century. MA may have found Versailles limiting and difficult, but it was no “fossilized mansion”, nor was MA a shut-up recluse. It’s not offensive the way the author’s other writings are, but it’s still a clumsy and quite incorrect comparison.

I have other little trivial thoughts … there were a few examples like the Great Expectations one that read like they didn’t belong. There were also very specific comparisons that I know I’ve read in other books about MA that left me with the feeling of semi-plagiarism (“little jewel box of a theater” is used to describe the theater at Trianon … I know I’ve read the same words in another book but I can’t remember which one … there were a few instances of this). I was overwhelmed with how much I found wrong with this book. On top of everything else, in reading the MA chapters, they all read very much without any real introspection or understanding. So much of it flows like a recitation of facts, especially in the sections about 1789-1793, during which an incredible amount of story happens but is summarized in such a simple way that barely explains the gravity of the events, nonetheless any interesting exploration of what is going on. It definitely felt like it was too much for the author to handle and the ending felt very rushed.

tl;dr Please don’t read this book. Buy Antonia Fraser’s or Caroline Weber’s or Chantal Thomas’ or Stefan Zweig’s or Dena Goodman’s biographies/essays instead. It has so much misinformation in it that is passed off as fact and so many theories that are presented as truths or probable truths, with such inconsistent and unconvincing evidence. You might as well just read historical fiction, and even then, I can recommend you historical fiction on MA that is more respectful to the facts. The author thinks she’s doing something “different” by playing armchair psychologist to Louis XVI, and her assertions can be both offensive to people with autism as well to the actual comprehension of historical fact and evidence. The Fersen paternity case delves into outright fantasy at some points.

It genuinely makes me sad that books like this get published, because these are the types of history books that the general public reads. This book will no doubt be on the New Arrivals table in bookstores, it will get reviews in major newspapers and mentions in trade publications. The author is a popular history writer, despite her reputation for misinformation and lack of evidentiary support, so this book, like her others, will be widely read. And just as we’ve had to witness before, serious historians and academics, who’ve worked to dispel falsehoods and shed light on the truth of Marie-Antoinette, will have to stand by once again as yet more false information gets perpetuated about her.

Luckily, we’re getting a major Maria Theresa biography in the winter from Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, an acclaimed German historian, so I’d say just pause on this one and wait for her book.

I did pick up Caroline Weber’s fantastic Queen of Fashion after this just to read her impressive notes and have some faith in MA scholarship restored to me again.

Dying to know what @vivelareine and @bunniesandbeheadings think of this book.

[goliath-de-senfina-sango]

I’m on mobile, so ya know, but for @five-rivers @floralflowerpower and I just checked, lemme amend to @uwuplasmiusuwu

This is Fathering a Phantom

It was a bright summer day in Amity Park, Danny Fenton was in the grove - no one wanted to say “Amity Park Park” - doing a handstand while braced against a tree. “See? I told you I could do it.”

“You’re not using your powers to float into that position, are you?”

“Sam, I am offended that you would imply that I, of all people, would cheat at things with levitation.” Danny laughed, flopping down onto his belly in the grass. “Appalled, really, how dare you?”

Laughing, Tucker ripped up a handful of grass from his side and sprinkled it down into Danny’s bird’s nest of hair. “No of course, you are the most noble in character there is. As we have seen, you are a superhero through and through. Complete with bedsheet cape.”

Danny groaned while the three of them laughed and shook his head. “Alright, listen.”

“You, wearing black and white alone, looked at me and asked if I was willing to wear bright primary colors, Danny.” Sam patted his shoulder blade and Danny rolled his eyes. “A ghost asked a goth to wear bright colors. You shall never live that down.”

“There are pastel goths,” Danny countered with a pout. “I checked, there are goths who wear bright colors. It’s a mindset, not a fashion statement.” Tucker draped yet more grass on Danny, who turned to stare at his best friend and deadpanned, “Dude that’s kinda gay.”

Tucker snorted and laughed himself back into the tree they were sitting in front of. “H-how exactly is that gay?”

“Grass, in flower language, represents homosexual love,” Sam supplied.

Tucker covered his heart with a hand and gasped loudly. “Oh goodness me, I, a bisexual nerd, cannot be gay good sir and madam, that is simply unacceptable. Truly, this is the end of my world.”

“I will write you a gorgeous eulogy seasoned with memes,” Danny said, patting Tucker’s thigh as the latter flopped over, putting on his best ‘dying’ act. Then a chill completely at odds with the summer sun shining down on them went up his spine and out of his mouth as a cloud of icy mist. “Shit.” Danny braced for impact, a dome of green light erecting itself over the teens just in time for five missiles to strike it and explode.

When the smoke cleared and Danny transformed in a flash of light – pale skin tan, snow white hair, glowing green eyes, black and white jumpsuit, all the staples of half dead teendom – Danny locked on to his attacker. A large, mechanized man with flaming green mohawk was grinning down at him like a predator baring teeth to prey. “You’ll have to survive to his funeral first, whelp, and I assure you that’s not happening. I’ve gotten a few upgrades since last we fought, and The Hunt is on.”

While Skulker popped out a new cannon, Danny turned to check on his friends, both of whom were pulling out their own Fenton ecto-pistols. When he turned back there was an explosion of golden light and the screeching of tearing metal, and Skulker was missing half of his mech before Danny could even quip at him. Danny dropped his shield, turning to stare at the source of light with everyone else, and found his jaw had dropped very literally to the ground.

Something that could be a bear mixed with a goat, an electric eel, and at least three kinds of birds was aiming a bow at Skulker, an arrow made of golden light already knocked and shining brighter with every second. Each feather was a different color, oscillating in intensity, but overall, it was both hard to look at and impossible to look away from. “Hi there,” the ghost said with a voice that could have been a thousand people speaking in tandem. “You are going to leave in the next five seconds, or I am going to traumatize these children by showing them just how one Ends a ghost. Four. Three.”

Danny had never seen Skulker fly away so fast, especially with only one turbine to boost himself. He couldn’t even blame him, not with the burning fountain of energy beating their kaleidoscopic wings in front of him, aiming at Skulker until buildings were in the way. Danny charged up an ectoblast of his own even as the arrow dissipated. “Well, ever since all this ghost stuff I didn’t believe in guardian angels. Get lost in the Zone?” Much to Danny’s pleasant surprise, the angelic ghost laughed.

“Gods, your aura is screaming ‘fight me,’ did you know that?” The ghost turned to Danny and all the animal features melted into each other until Danny was looking at what could almost pass for a regular human being. Blond hair, brown eyes, some weird old-timey robes, and a single pair of feathery wings that reflected the light catching them like crystal glass. In the next moment, Danny was being dragged into a tight embrace, cut off from the world by arms and feathers alike, and he blinked several times, tense as a bowstring.

“I’m gonna need you to back up before I zap you,” Danny said with his hands up and a buzz traveling from his chest toward his fingertips. The ghost backed up, hands held up where everyone could see them, and wings half folded around him like a cloak.

“Apologies, my response to seeing kids almost getting hurt is to hug them. I should’ve asked first.”

“That’s very true,” Sam said with narrowed eyes. “Who are you, exactly?”

“Yeah, we don’t get many new ghosts around here who know how to speak English,” Tucker said. “Or any who help us.”

The strangely human looking ghost took a deep breath, eyes glowing from brown to golden-orange and clasped their hands together in front of their face. “Well, that explains a few things I’ve observed of you in the past two minutes. Right, so, first thing’s first; hi, I’m Tobias Lumano, you kids can call me Toby. He/him and all that.”

Danny shook the hand extended to him, ignoring the fact that a hand was held out to all three of them. “Danny, Phantom currently.”

“Tucker Foley.”

“Sam Manson. What exactly did you observe of us?” Sam still held her pistol, ready for a fight. Toby chuckled and shook his head.

“Well, Danny here is screaming ‘fight me,’ with his body language and if all you’ve ever met are hostile adult ghosts then that makes sense. You’ve got that Still Warm feel to you, like you’re only recently dead. Which makes the rumors about you impossible, of course, cause I’m pretty sure none of you are even close to being adult humans unless people look a lot younger per quarter of their life in this Realm.” Toby settled with his wings crossed over his chest, relaxed but not quite limp, and Danny cocked his head to the side.

“How do you even see with those glowing in your face all the time?”

“What about Danny screams ‘fight me,’ exactly? He’s totally chill right now.” Tucker gestured at all of Danny, bobbing idly up and down on some kind of current that he had yet to identify.

“Oh, my dear summer child, ghosts communicate in ways that non-psychic humans cannot perceive fully. You see this?” Toby brushed a feather against Danny’s glow and the teen made a face, drifting away from the odd sensation. The glow stretched with his movement before Toby backed off. “That’s your aura, little man, and it’s currently positioned in a way that’s sort of giving the finger to everyone around you. How long have you been liminal if you don’t know about your aura?”

“How long have I been what now?”

“I think he’s talking about you being half ghost,” Tucker said, whipping out his PDA and tapping away at the screen. “We’ve never actually heard a term for it before other than Sidney Poindexter calling Danny a halfa. No offense to Poindexter but that’s a really dumb name.”

Toby laughed, covering his face with a hand, and shaking his head. “Right, ok, you’ve got a lot to learn, but I think I can help with that.”

“We should probably take this discussion somewhere a bit more private than the open park,” Sam hissed. “This is supposed to be a secret, remember Danny?”

Danny rolled his eyes and turned his head around 360 degrees. “There’s no one here right now, Sam.”

“Well, if you’re keeping this a secret then yeah, you should probably find somewhere secure to talk about this at.” Toby rolled his eyes and became translucent, spreading his wings and circling around the three of them. “Here, you take this feather and just break it when you feel ready to talk with me. I’ve got some things to figure out around here.” One such feather fell into Sam’s hand, taking on the hue of several leaves in a gradient, and Toby winked at Danny before vanishing entirely from view.

[alyssadeliv]

The Forgotten One

First      Previous

Chapter 9

For the first time after so long, Marianne finally felt home. Even as she bled on top of a dark building, she did not care. As long as she kept on holding him everything would be alright. She could feel his tear on her neck, and she could imagine he felt hers on his. It was strange, she dreamed of this moment more times she could count, but not one of her imaginary scenes did she feel this immense happiness in her soul. It was as if she was finally whole. He held her with such force she was sure she would suffocate, but she kept quiet, just enjoying the warmth of his body on hers. It was only after she started feeling dizzy that she detached him from her. 

He was different, more mature. The years only served to enhance his beauty. It didn't matter that he was wearing a mask, she would recognize him everywhere, but she still longed to be able to see his green eyes again. No one said a word, using their body language to determine what to do next. It was Damian that decided to take the lead.

He stood up and helped his sister on her feet. He kept supporting her, knowing that the wound he inflicted on her must be taking some toll on her body after their intense fight. She was barely standing on her own, having lost too much blood. His Robin costume was coated in red, and that left a bad taste on his mouth. With her secure at his side, he turned to his Father. There was so much he needed to tell him, years of feelings he trapped inside of him could finally be let loose. But first, he had to make sure he still trusted him. 

“I promise to explain once we get to the cave… but she needs help.” He pleaded. He wasn’t sure if it was the tone of his voice or the fact that his family just caught him in his most vulnerable moment, but they agreed. 

Damian carried her to the Batmobile, Todd, and Grayson trailing after him. Batman led the team in silence. Meticulously thinking about the connection of his youngest son with the passed-out assassin. She wore League attire, but it was a strange symbol on her clothes that made him wary. He remembered seeing that symbol in the clothes of a dead Gabriel Agreste early this week, and there was no doubt that they had some kind of connection.

He wanted to interrogate her as soon as possible, but he would wait until Damian gave his explanation as to why he acted in such a way that night. They obviously knew each other, so they must have met when his son was still in the care of his mother. That information did little to calm his worried mind.

It was a unanimous decision that petrol was canceled that night. So they all entered the Batmobile and made their way to the Cave. They didn’t have to worry about their identities, as the girl was falling in and out of consciousness during their short ride. 

Dick kept a close eye on the girl in Damian’s arms. Her face was nested carefully in his brother's neck, keeping him from being able to identify her face. Her blood coated the interior of the car, and only the fact that the Batarang still impaled at her side was helping to stop the bleeding from totally draining the girl kept him somewhat calm.

Jason was the only one that wasn’t in the car, having opted to use his bike, he went ahead and notified Alfred that they would need his assistance, with the injured girl.

By now Damian knew that all his family was notified of this incident, and would most likely be waiting for them to return. He could only hope that his father would hear him first. He wasn’t worried about his sister, he knew she would be alright. After years of training with her, he knew she bled easily, but was stronger and healed faster than most. 

When they arrived at the Cave, Damian immediately laid her in one of the gurneys. But before he allowed Alfred to assess her wound he removed the weapon. He heard the shouts of indignation coming from Grayson but ignored him.

He knew what they must be thinking, that his weapon was the only thing keeping her from bleeding out, but what they didn’t know was that Marianne’s body reacted faster when she was in danger of dying. So it came to no surprise to him when her wound started to heal itself. What started him was the glow that came with it. That was new.

“She will be fine. Just need a couple of hours to recharge her energy” Damian clarified.

"She's Meta…” Dick whispered, eying Bruce carefully. It was no secret that the man did not normally trust meta-humans very easily. His expression was hard, and everyone could tell his patience had come to an end.

“Explain.” He demanded.

“I do not know how to start…” From his body language, they could see he was nervous. He ran his fingers through his hair, something he never did.

“From the start would be great!” Jason tried to lighten the mood. He hadn’t moved from his sitting position on the round table. Barbara and Tim were sitting with him, both anxious to understand the situation. He wanted to go see this mysterious girl, but for the sake of his family, he stayed put, for now.

“Father… You might want to sit for this…” 

Bruce nodded. And they all sat. Damian sat in front of his father, with Grayson and Todd at his sides, while Gordon and Drake sat by Todd’s side. No one dared to sit close to Bruce, fearing his reaction.

“Do you remember how I was conceived?” Damian started, not meeting his father’s eyes, and ignoring the snickering coming from his brothers. He knew this was a sore subject, but he needed to approach the subject somehow.

“It was of extreme importance that Mother produced a male heir for Grandfather. But what you do not know is that I was not the firstborn” This causes everyone to widen their eyes in horror. 

Bruce pales but otherwise keeps quiet.

“I explained before how I was raised in an artificial womb through my development stages. And there is a reason for that... Before me, Mother was pregnant, the traditional way, but a female was born. She was born” He points to the direction of the girl resting behind the curtains of the medical bay. 

“How… When…” Bruce is at a loss of words. When Talia appeared two years ago with his secret child in tow he felt only despair first. He had lost so much of his son’s childhood. It took him so long to accept that he had what it took to care for his blood child the same way he cared for his wards.

“She was born six years before me…” Damian explains. “Mother never told me anything about that, only that she did it to appease her father.”

“Wait, wait, wait! So you're telling me that the scary kid we just rescued is B’s long-lost daughter? Why are we only hearing of this now?” Jason as always wasn't able to keep quiet anymore. 

Damian lowers his head and covers his eyes with his now gloveless hands. Sensing his distress Jason allows him to recompose himself. 

“She was dead… Or I thought she had died. In the same attack that made Mother bring me to live here.” They could see that it was hard for him to talk about that day “Except she did not die!” He exclaimed in anger, rising from his seat. 

“There’s where you're wrong.” The melodious voice attracts their attention. She stands just a couple of steps apart from where they are sitting. But no one heard her coming. She wears green, but the cape that once covered her hair is lowered, and they could clearly see her long black hair left loose. She had blue eyes and was rapidly analyzing every single one of them until her eyes landed on Bruce. Her father. Damian could see the insecurity in her, so he calmed himself, and went to her. “I did die that day. It was only thanks to Tikki that I am alive now” And with that, she knew her brother would understand. After years of living with her, she taught him a little about the Order.

“Father…” Damian tries.

Bruce stands up. And goes in their direction. He stops just a couple of steps from his children. His children. 

“This is Marianne, your daughter.”

So there we are! Another chapter. Do you love it? Hate it? Please tell me I love to read your opinions!

I feel like I must warn you all that I only planned to have one more chapter on this story, but after some consideration, it came to me the idea of making a Part Two of this story. Would that be something you all be interested in? Let me know!

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