#one of the worst things about it is the persecuting nature of this kind of behavior creates more people who think and act this way

[ratkingsystem]

i dont even mean this in a catchy, buzzword way but i really do think autistics trigger the fuck out of people with NPD. it keeps being a pattern in a VERY specific type of person in my work life. a lot of ppl w NPD have a very paranoiac sense of "everyone is trying to get me and tear me down" thing that comes w the grandiosity. not just 'wow i am great' but 'i will achieve greatness and i HAVE to and it won't be okay if i don't' and the fundamental belief that people 'lower' on the social hierarchy are secretly envious and making up ways to fuck you over and take what you have (yknow, bc Everything Is About You). being allistic on top of that - assuming your experience is default and everyone knows these minor social tics & anyone who doesn't respond in kind is being minorly petty at the very least - and you have someone for whom every little autistic social mishap is triggering the "secretly hates me is out to get me is trying to signal to me that i am cringe" alarms. i will play my tiny violin here and say if they see you as hot or conventionally attractive, they WILL NOT assume you are weird or neurodivergent, not in a billion years, they ONE BILLION PERCENT WILL ASSUME it's obvious that you are trying to signal you think you're better than them. it's really sad and it's a really stressful way to live but it helped me to understand WHY this dynamic was happening

[chowadoe]

so more on that role reversal au...

Shadow (created as a Weapon Against Humanity) who was eventually raised, and exploited, by G.U.N to become Humanity's Ultimate weapon and Sonic, found by Robotnik

some more expanded thoughts below ^_^

SHADOW - G.U.N AGENT

Shadow was initially created with the intention of being a Weapon Against Humanity. after a life-altering incident, G.U.N. takes Shadow into their custody, raising him to become one of their top agents, exploiting him.

he's constantly under government surveillance... inhibitor rings (developed by G.U.N.) are clamped onto him like a shock collar so he is unable to tap into his full power. (Shadow has neither tested nor does he know the extent of his strength.. he has never tried removing them. G.U.N. is the only one who can remove them.)

the hypocritical method in wanting their weapon (cough trained dog) to exercise and develop restraint on his own terms, and yet forcefully acclimating him.

Shadow’s aware of his past. Definitely struggles with Existential dread about why he’s on Earth and what he was made for. he wants to (and feels like he should) do good, but if he was initially made with destructive intent… is he compensating this way? is this what he really wants? no.. he shouldn't think like that.. Maria would want him to be good..

If not to make the world the better a place, if they still treat his kind as inferior and sometimes, even a threat to the whole human race, does humanity and this planet still deserve its rite for redemption? What is humanity? Is that something he’s capable of, as a weapon of mass destruction?

what is he trying to prove here? His docility? His ability to be obedient and be, by human standards, good? what does that mean in a world that may never accept them, and much less him- a synthetic and all-unnatural organism forged from humanity’s worst and an alien race only capable of Evil and wrongdoing. a being so perfectly suited for any and all forms of persecution. Humankind’s scapegoat. He thinks about Maria.

Maria remains a guiding light. Back then, she would sneak Shadow out to gaze upon the Earth, her former home. She misses it, the lush greenery, the sun, the people. she hopes that Shadow will get to experience what it’s like.

au shadow is emo edgy in a sad wet adult 40yo cat leon kennedy kind of way. au sonic is emo edgy like a 14yo that found out you could buy a tattoo gun on amazon without a license. I know nothing about resident evil

when he's not on a mission, he's usually in his "room" (extremely generous word for containment chamber/training facility.) he's like a hamster in a cage with toys to play with . (treadmills. race tracks. dummy robots. Ak-47s.) He's allowed to freely roam HQ from hours 6am-10pm, and if not, he is usually escorted by a guard, unless its Rouge sneaking him out. But beyond that, it's not like the ultimate lifeform needs that much sleep, and it'd be bad to have their ultimate weapon roaming the halls without supervision. but let's say there's the occasional nocturnal scavenger providing him a bit of nightly mischief that even the most complicated most difficult to navigate ventilation system cannot keep a natural-born burrower out..... (haha)

SONIC - ACCOMPLICE

Robotnik’s “accomplice” (adoptive son?)

Sonic goes along with Robotnik’s schemes but has his own ulterior motives .. after all, working under someone is still infringing on his sense of freedom, independence, and pride.

He only rlly helps out Robotnik out if it helps him… robotnik makes some new tech that tickles his , esp if smth that happens to enhance his existing abilities. sure he’s more than capable of doing things on his own but what’s better than to play with his new toys with his already existing toys (GUN. shadow.)

and if he manages to break them in a day then he’s found an issue that robotnik needs to troubleshoot immediately. eggman should really be Thanking him!

his only known goal atm is to find things that stave off his boredom. from what Shadow's gathered at least. but maybe there's more...

has a very bad No Good Fixation on shadow's inhibitor rings for whatever reason. wonder that could mean.

Still fucking around with roles and nothing's rlly set in stone. Im just kind of giggling kicking rocks and throwing pebbles in the water to see what lands ^q^

Rouge is still there! A contractor for G.U.N. A Recovering/reformed Jewel thief who joins the task force (maybe?) 

the gang is also there! still brainstorming roles though. emrmmm

[emotionaldisaster909]

​​“Hua Cheng is a stalker!”

- a word about that.

Stalking is defined as a pattern of repeated unwanted contact with a person, harassing, persecuting them, uncaring about their privacy, safety, well-being. All selfish actions for nefarious, perverted purposes.

None of wich is the case with Hua Cheng.

He’s never even come in contact with Xie Lian in all 800 years of searching, not even once, and the moment he was able to contact him, he did so openly, with one clear intention - to help him.

Unhealthy obsession? This one, sure. But not unhealthy in a sense that is in any way harmful towards Xie Lian. Rather it’s unhealthy for Hua Cheng himself, since he literally sacrificed his own life more than once, all to ensure Xie Lian’s well-being.

Though… if you ask me, I think that’s what a really, really strong, genuine love entails - the possibility for a situation which calls forth the exact opposite of a natural human selfishness - a sacrifice for someone else. Imagine a situation where you’re given a choice - either one of your loved ones dies or you die and they get to survive. Won’t you choose the latter?

I think I would. I think most people would.

And besides that

If you really love someone, someone who was really kind to you when everyone else scorned you for just being, someone you know is worth so, so much love, because they truly are a great, selfless, wonderful person, kind and understanding, always striving to be better, to help others - if you know that this person suffered tremendously and lost everything and everyone they loved and is now damned to an eternity of humiliation, contempt, pain and loneliness

Wouldn’t you do everything in your power to try and help them??

Simplify the situation down to realistic circumstances - if your best, dearest friend who’s literally the best person you’ve ever known, who helped you through your worst times, suddenly went through a tragedy and ended up alone, with more suffering to come

Wouldn’t you do everything you can to help them???

That’s what Hua Cheng was always trying to do

Just replace frienship with love

It’s still the same basis - genuine, deep care for a person

Now tell me

Is this a bad thing?

[ingravinoveritas]

Hi again :) I hope this is okay - I just love reading your thoughts and commentary on different aspects of David and Michael's life. You are quite the writer and seem to bring aspects to light that I hadn't noticed or considered. Thank you for that <3 I was hoping you might write a little something about them in celebration of Bisexuality Awareness Day on September 23rd?

Hi there! Aw, thank you so much for the kind words about my writing--I truly do appreciate it. (And to all of the lovely people who have sent me some amazing questions that are currently sitting in my inbox, I promise I will answer your Asks soon! This one was time sensitive so I wanted to be sure I answered it before it was too late.)

So, yes...yesterday was Bisexuality Awareness (Visibility) Day. And I think what stands out to me in particular when I think of this day and Michael and David is the word "visible." What it means to be visible.

On the one hand, it can mean that you are not hiding. It's about being who you are and simply existing as your authentic self, even if you are not announcing or being loud about it. But "visible" can also mean being seen. The acknowledgment of your authentic self by the people in your personal life--friends, family--and by the world at large. It would seem that these two things naturally go together, but as all too many bisexual folks know, not hiding is not the same thing as being seen.

When I think about the time and place where Michael and David came of age--1980s Britain, under the tenure of Margaret Thatcher and the oppressive rule of Section 28--it seems like the last thing any LGBTQIA person would've wanted to be is visible. To be seen as anything other than straight or cis meant ridicule, persecution, isolation, and in the worst cases, institutionalization or incarceration.

And so you have Michael who, fresh out of drama school, starts taking on queer roles. To this day, Michael has repeatedly quoted Oscar Wilde ("Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth"), and in considering this, you start to see how all of those roles became a way for Michael to explore a part of himself that he couldn't openly explore in real life.

It means that even working in the arts and theater wasn't a guarantee of protection, and that for Michael and for David, being who they are was ultimately at odds with the desire to advance their careers. David became the Doctor in 2005, and while the social and cultural landscape had slowly begun to shift, the demands of portraying the lead in a beloved, family-oriented British institution meant living up to a certain image. He'd moved to London years earlier, which undoubtedly gave him the freedom to explore and discover himself...but as the Doctor, a national icon, the world opened up and somehow narrowed at the same time.

So many years have passed since then. The pulsing thrum of unending work and the pressure to establish themselves has ebbed. Michael and David have found a steady place in their professional lives, and that feeling of needing to hide has lessened. They know exactly who they are and finally, perhaps for the first time ever in their lives, do not have to be afraid to show it. To suggest. To say what is in their hearts and let the words hang in the air without hastily added qualifiers or retractions.

That takes us back to the word "visible." Even as so many things have changed over time, a strange incongruousness arises. That despite knowing who they are, Michael and David are middle-aged, and the mindset still prevails that "coming out" is only for younger people. Or for people not in straight-passing relationships, or who don't have families. That being middle-aged somehow means having everything figured out and never feeling lost or confused or struggling to accept who you are. Life tells us different. And as I mentioned above, it becomes even clearer that not hiding is not the same thing as being seen.

When I think of this day and Michael and David, I think of the courage it takes to be yourself--without apology, without compromise. I think of what it was like to form an identity in a place that leaves no room for you, that tells you in one way or another that you don't belong. I think of what it must've been like to feel alone for so long, to not know if you'd find the person who understands you so completely, and then years later to fall in love with them at exactly the wrong (or right) time. I think of knowing deep inside that something isn't a phase or a fleeting desire, and the soul-draining exhaustion of having to convince others that you are here. You exist. You belong.

The permanence of being seen. Of being visible.

Happy Bisexuality Visibility Day 2023, everyone.

[laughingsour]

In defense of Garp. And his establishing moment.

(Contains Spoilers up until Marineford and some for after the time-skip, read at your own risk)

I know a lot of people don’t like Garp and they are not without reason for it. But I feel that he gets too much hate for originally choosing to side with the Marines over his family.

It’s an intended moral dilemma in the story and just because we would have done differently doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. In fact, from where he was standing there may not have been such a thing as the “right one”

Garp has been in the Marines for decades and betraying your own as well as your convictions was established from the start as one of the worst crimes you can commit

What’s more, Garp isn’t just “a marine”, he’s THE Marine. He understands that when people think “Marines and their justice” he’s the face to first pop up, that’s what his convictions have led to.

And unlike us, he doesn’t have the benefit of a story told from the perspective of good natured pirates and knowing the way into a new era. (He likely won’t be there to see the world and the Marines change as much as it will and he knows it.)

What he does have is years of persecuting unrepentant criminals who are mostly unlike Luffy and Whitebeard. This great pirate era does have the potential of being “romantic” if you have Luffy’s disposition for wondrous adventure and freedom. But that’s because he is unique and redefines what pirates can be, every fantasy has to contend with reality.

It should also be noted that this is not the kind of pirates that inspired Luffy to be one but Shanks, who is also considered an anomaly. Most of us wouldn’t have such an unconventional role model and instead have the Marines to look up to if we were regular people in-universe.

Garp was stuck in a place where, no matter what side he took, he would be betraying someone; his family who took their choice feeling it was the right one, or his lifelong comrades and friends in the force with whom he shared some ideals.

In the end he couldn’t completely choose one and tried to take a middle ground to allow Luffy to reach Ace without dishonoring his position.

He’s also not the only marine who has his doubts regarding them and most of those who do still choose to stay with them because it feels like the right thing. Like Smoker, Koby and Kuzan, who took years to decide to leave even after Ohara. And his decision to side with Blackbeard is also questionable.

Now don’t get me wrong, as much as I love Garp, he’s still reprehensible for some things like his “tough love” and abuse to his grandsons, which traumatized Luffy and played into part of his choice to be a pirate.

At the same time, there’s some true affection for each other and Garp took a route most others in his place wouldn’t when faced with the son of the Pirate king, which is why Roger told Garp specifically about Ace.

Garp is just like his relationship with Luffy, messed up, complicated and self-contradictory. He’s a D. on the Marines, that alone should be enough to tell you how much of a contradiction he is by design.

One of my personal favorites moments with Garp is one that’s not talked about a lot, the moment his character is established.

It’s put as a comedic moment but it perfectly sums up who Garp is, he’s impulsive, irrational and even violent and inconsiderate in the worst cases. But the fact his subordinates address him this casually shows he doesn’t consider himself above others and prefers to address everyone as an equal. He’s also not completely unreasonable and ultimately takes responsibility for what he does.

You’re welcome to disagree with me on this, but remember to keep it civil.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

On the new age book I just bought (recommended to me by a person I will identify only as "friend B"):

Aspects, by Robert Anton Wilson, presents a grand worldview that's hard to believe is a book from 1994. It's basically a summary of a lot of disparate things you hear about in terms of self-help culture: quantum physics, quantum psychology, metaphysics, astrology (including an account of the Big Bang, some really interesting stuff on the kabbalah, etc.)

So far it's pretty interesting, with good ideas and a few real insights and a few real insights that only seem like good ideas but wouldn't be out of place somewhere in the text. I do wonder if it was written by a single person.

In terms of "the author's beliefs," it reads to me as a kind of "all of the above, actually" book, and it is much more convincing to a materialist who feels like he has to be convinced of the Big Bang and everything else.

Some quotes:

The word "law" (which may be defined as a set of relationships between parts of reality) must always be distinguished from the word "lawyer" (which may be defined as a specialist in the art of making people go to jail).

There's an odd sense in which there is a universe of laws, including some "deep" "psychological" laws ("there is a reason why X" etc.) that don't seem to be discoverable. But for some reason, people still manage to use these rules for their own purposes, and find ways in which they seem to match up with reality (even if we don't understand why).

There is no such thing as luck. It's all illusion.

In a sense, this is almost tautologically true, because to be a random variable, you would have to be able to choose the outcome with no relation to "the system" in the sense of "the rules of logic, the laws of nature and of quantum mechanics." But of course, that's also the sense in which you "are" a random variable. Maybe these sentences should be considered as contradictory -- but at least I would consider it a very good one.

One of the worst things that happened in the 20th Century was the establishment of the idea of free will: that human beings are capable of independent thought and the exercise of conscious choice, with a consequent denial of cosmic and social order, the subordination of human reason to the dictates of unreason, and the destruction of all the hopes and hopes of the 20th century.

It seems to me that the belief in free will was established much earlier than the 20th century (especially the 19th century, when the idea of "free will" had a much narrower definition). If you believe in determinism, and there was no reason that you, personally, couldn't have made a different choice (because the rules of your brain and body worked just the way they were supposed to), it seems hard to argue that free will is a delusion.

A fundamental feature of the modern state is the suppression of all the creative, free-thinking and independent aspects of human endeavor.

This one feels like it could be true if there were a "new" society and I were there -- but it seems strange to suggest that it's a feature of how the society today works. It's more about the modern nation-state than about the modern individual. (I mean, it would still be a feature if I were in a totalitarian police state, but I doubt they would go to the extent of preventing people from "thinking freely" that the state of nature seems to allow us in our modern life.) And, if I take Wilson's own account of the 20th century, many of the free thinkers he describes were in fact persecuted by the state.

Anyway, it's hard for me to believe a writer of this book was able to actually look at his own life and feel that this book would make sense as the result of a thought process he engaged in over decades.

[lolimsofuckedup-nm]

Abuse / Persecution / politic shit / Vent / cry-for-help kinda trigger alert (?

•

Idk where to start, but here we go...

I joined in a volunteer program in the uk that helped me get out my country (Venezuela, a small Latin American one that's fucking going down, you'll know if you're into politics or anything probably) two months ago, with the hope to apply for an asylum just like a friend of mine did three years ago or so

But the thing is, even tho i complain every day of how life was back there, I've feared death too many times, I've lived in the must insecure ways possible, I've give up bc of how imposible it is to live there even tho i was breaking my ass in more than three different jobs at the time while still trying to study something even tho i had no money or support from my family to get into a university, and my high school fucked up my documents to apply for a public one, and the sistem of the country doesn't gives a fuck to fix things when it comes to documentation if you're not a government active supporter, the house i lived in with my aunties is literally sinking down on a whole in the ground because of a Natural Disaster that nobody seemed to care about taking in control (Wich means is going to get worst this month with the rain season starting again for 6 months)... And well, a very very long etcetera of things

Even tho i consciously know all of this, when i just read in the uk government page the requirements for applying for the asylum “To stay in the UK as a refugee you must be unable to live safely in any part of your own country because you fear persecution there.” all of the misery in life I've been put through bc I don't support a political party (mustly bc its nonsense but also bc I've been underage for must part of my life, cmon I'm on my very early 20's), seems suddenly so invalid and small to me.

And then memories keep popping up on my mind, like when for weeks this motorcycle guys with guns and bombs tryed to get into my house when I was like 16 and all my mom and i could do was turn off all the lights and block the front doors with all the furniture we had at home, just because there was people protesting against the dictator president, so he just sent bunches of those dudes to make chaos and kill and steal on the suburbs to get protestings out the streets.

Or the time when we got caught in the car on the way back home from secondary school, because the police was persecuting the students that were protesting to ""arrest them"", but then the next day mothers all over the neighborhood were crying over their murdered young sons or tortured and raped young daughters. My mom didn't even let me go to school again for a month, get out to the garden; literally not even be on the room of the house with big windows, and she was not the only mother worried about their kids in the country, all of us as a big community were scared.

Or all the many, many calls I've got since I was 12 or so about kidnapping threats or trys, just bc I have a cousin and aunt that actively works on the political party against the government. When I was 18 I got persecuted on a van after some calls faking my mom's identity, and even tho luckily for me there were some men walking down the street that figured out what was happening and approached and helped me get home (wich was scary too, because I didn't know them and the whole situation was making me feel small and insecure already), i got panic attacks for two months every time I even thought of going out of my house to the bakery one block away.

And those only had to be with the hard way of living for any other venezuelan in the country, but then I have this fucked up clown of a parent that acts so cool in front of everyone, but it's been persecuting me or any of my siblings in the must creepy kind of ways every time we decide for our own sake to get away from him . And I'm not talking just about an over-strict parent. I'm not talking about a jerk kind of a parent. It's a motherfucker abuser that did nothing through all the years of suffering my older mid-brother (fuck it, I'm calling him my brother anyways) had to go through bc his mother is a crazy bitch that tied him up to beat him in ways in cannot even describe without losing my shit. Or all the beat ups i had as a child, some of them till I bleeded, because of stupid little things like spilling my juice on the table, or not knowing how to properly write the letter "R" in fucking first year of primary school, and so on. Or humiliating and degrading my sister for being homo. Or manipulating me to talk to him through not giving us food for weeks, but giving my sister the best giant pizzas and banana's splits so I could "learn my lesson" and stop being a brat like my older brothers, one of them running away from home twice to avoid killing himself bc of not being able to handle our fucked up family anymore. And all just bc I was to scared to fucking talk to a person that's a sexual abuser, even tho nobody else in the family (as long as I know) knows this for a fact, even tho everybody just look somewhere else when he does the fucking inappropriate sexual jokes about my little 11 y/o cousin's body, or tries to have girlfriends as close as his fucking daughter's ager, or goes out of boundaries with my brother's partner. And I'm the one that's wrong for facing him and only talking to him on those moments to tell him to stop doing those fucked up things.

And being happy and sad at the same time when he left the country to persecute my brother to fucking Peru, the country he had to go to on bus from out city we lived at to be away from all this trouble, just to discover that, unlike my brother, his useless ass is not going to make it through in a country where there's no mommy to relay on when you don't want to work anymore even tho you are past the 50 years old. So he came back again to my country, and putted me to cry for days when I got the news, bc I won't be able to visit my grandma anymore without seeing my abuser's face. I won't be able to walk around the city in peace without the fear of him just showing up suddenly at any time, because he stalks me on all my social medias and activities, putted a shit to access my computer when i was a teenager and got into my accounts on fucking everything, follows and stalks every person that I'm related to, learns my routines, just so he can feel he's on control of my life, and even worst, so he can make me (and my sister, and my mom, and so goes on...) Feel like he's on control of our lives. He just suddenly takes any other member of the family phone just to pretend he's them, so he can get to talk to me and know about me. Or worst, sends ultimatums to me, or threats, or insults when he's mad at the fucked up life he created for himself.

And you know what's the worst part about the fear? The need to make it seem unreal. Like when i found fucking porn searchs in his phone about pederast incest, i fucking couldn't believe it (somehow) and just, pup! Erased it all. Or the calls and messages? Got furious, so I cleared the chats and blocked his number, and new number, and grandmother's number, and so on and on (just so he could say how bad and bratty i was for just getting away from all the family without any reason but just me throwing a tantrum). And well, whatever, for years I've felt guilty for erasing the only prove that i had, so I didn't speak up about it, bc how can people believe that such a cool guy could do those things anyways? So I just kept on a cicle for years of erasing and then feeling guilty and regretful, but then feeling alone so doing it again, because I never thought that i could do something about it. And now I'm here and i need proves of everything, and I've been stupid enough to left me with nothing but bad memories and traumas, that has no fucking use in a legal process to try and get my life together somewhere else away from the pain.

And at the end, does all of this count for other countries governments? Because I lost track of the difference between a normal hard life, and miserable life in some point of my growing up in Venezuela experience. But i don't want to go back anyways. I don't want to live life being scared, not knowing if tomorrow will be a normal hard day, or if my life is just going to suddenly go crazy and I'm going to lose someone else on the streets, or their house, or just because they left for a better opportunity in another country and I'll probably never see them again, or the crazy bitch of my father is going to start a new drama. Who can support a person that's been trying their hardest in life, who doesn't wants to give up? (even when there doesn't seems to be other options, because that's what they want you to feel, to control you through fear, through making you wake up and go to sleep every day on survival mode). I don't want to live that way.

And i don't want a life full of luxury either. All i want is a small house or apartment to live in, where i know I'm safe in, and a stable job with a boss that doesn't try to find every possible way to get you to work out of your job and personal boundaries, (both legally and illegally, bc in a country without law and lots of corruption that doesn't matter), with a small salary, enough to get me to buy a treat once in a week if I want to without having to give up on a basic need product like soap or shampoo for once. All i want is a normal life. Nothing more, with normal problems, normal solutions, a normal family, and normal experiences.

[volterran-wine]

Crepusculum Maleficarum || Caius & Marcus (HC)

Requested by Anonymous: "I saw your Aro witch mate HC, I was wondering can you please make a Marcus and Caius with a witch mate HC too? Thank you ❤️"

Once more witchcraft makes its way on to my blog! There has been a lot of witch requests coming in the last couple of weeks. Is it the season? Or does my little blog just attract that kind of energy? Either way, here are the two other kings reaction to discovering their mate is a witch. Aro's headcanons can be found here.

𝐀𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬, 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐰.

��𝐚𝐢𝐮𝐬 𝐕𝐨𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢

Caius is a man of science and reason. In his eyes, everything could be explained in a logical manner. Even vampirism had its own regulations and laws, it could be studied and understood. So when he came across his mate, who happened to be a witch... he had to spend a lot of time simply wrapping his mind around the concept of magic. The first time he walked in on them practicing their craft he simply stood still as a statue in the door way. No words were spoken and he promptly left. Not today. His mate would be saddened but would not give up on Caius just yet.

Is not overly fond of the existence of witches in the very beginning. A whole other supernatural species is a major security risk in his mind. It was already difficult to keep humans in the dark about vampires, shapeshifters and werewolves. Now witches had been added to the mix. His mate would talk to him about how they had been persecuted already, by humans. Their words would stir something inside of him, the urge to protect them growing stronger than his anxieties.

Will want to see how well they would do in a fight, against both vampires and humans for that matter. Would personally oversee any kind of training they would have to complete. His mate would not be someone easily killed.

Caius' mate ended up being quite gifted when it came to illusions and tricks of the mind. One day they had grabbed on to his hand, leading him outside to the busy streets of Volterra. It was a sunny day, and that's when all hell broke loose. Guards not being able to stop his mate before one of their kings was outside in direct sunlight. For a couple of seconds Caius was well on his way towards a panic attack. Until he noticed... nobody was paying him any particular attention. His mate raised a compact mirror to show him his reflection, he looked as human as he had been the day he was graced with a vampires bite. Tawney eyes stared back at him in bewilderment. His now tanner complexion accentuated both the scar running across one of his eyes and his light hair. They had glamoured him completely.

"Perhaps there are good uses for your little tricks after all." "I thought you said you despised magic Caius," "... It's not the worst when it's yours." "Just mine?" "Yes, just yours."

𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐕𝐨𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢

Like his brothers, he is well learned and is familiar with all sorts of concepts. For sure the most philosophical of them. When his second chance at a mate appears he is a bit dumbfounded, even more so when they reveal that they are a witch of all things. It takes some time but Marcus comes around. More than willing to accept this gift the fates had bestowed upon him.

Is highly fascinated by their magic, will watch with rapt attention as they perform magic in front of him and his brothers at their first meeting. He had seen many things, but this was the first time in many years he felt truly perplexed.

Falls in love a little bit more ever time he sees them perform every day magic, the domestic nature of it making his cold heart almost flutter. Wether it be simply grabbing something from a high shelf, or aid when cooking was irrelevant. It made Marcus smile regardless.

Much like Caius he would worry for their safety. They were seemingly physically inferior to his kind. Could they protect themselves? They would insist that they were more than capable, willing to show their mate if that would ease their worries. Marcus arranges a sparring match in the underground training room with the guard he trusted the most: Demetri. His mate ended up proving themselves to be able to defend against the guard at least in a controlled environment. Marcus would scoop them up into a loving kiss, Demetri conveniently turned his back and tuned out whatever was happening behind him.

One thing that would cause worry to settle into Marcus' heart is the topic of their mortality. They had divulged that their magic was too potent for them to be turned, so where did that leave them? It would silently eat away at him until his mate noticed that dark thoughts had rooted themselves in him. After a lengthy discussion Marcus' was reassured that their lifespan was lengthened. Witches could outlive mortals by many years. Just how many he did not wish to know.

"You are enchanting η κ��ρδιά μου" "I did not know ancient vampires were ones for cliches" "I thought it was rather poetic." "Careful, I'll put a spell on you"

𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: Crepusculum Maleficarum: Twilight of the witches η καρδιά μου: My heart

[lyraasilvertongue]

I've been seeing some discussion about how mad Sirius's imprisonment without trial was etc. and I've also been thinking about it for my own fic so here are some very rambly thoughts:

(also, I'm not suggesting that, at any level, jkr intended to explore the complexities of a corrupt justice system, all of this is a consequence of her many, many plotholes/poor worldbuilding, not her "genius")

Firstly, I think that Sirius was immediately assumed to be guilty because of his family. By this time (1981), the Death Eaters are basically synonymous with the Black family (inc. the Malfoy's, etc.) We know via Walburga's portrait, Kreacher, etc. that this family was unashamedly and loudly devoted to blood purity, to power, and to Voldemort.

But we also know that despite their obvious guilt, the Black family & co. were practically invincible because of their wealth and influence. Even after Voldemort's defeat, most of them successfully evade prison! It's not clear (bc why would it be...) but it's definitely implied in GOF that the attack on the Longbottom's happened a while after Voldemort's downfall. The Death Eaters felt "safe" in attacking the Longbottom's and that kind of security in their freedom definitely wouldn't have happened in the immediate aftermath. Meaning? They lived comfortably, freely for at least a few years after Voldemort's defeat in 1981.

The Ministry is simultaneously desperate to convict as many Death Eaters as possible (and prove their competency) but also letting some of the most notorious go free? Make it make sense!

Like, there is no way this is going to make them popular with the people, right? But also, the Black family & co. are extremely powerful in the Ministry. I think they absolutely had tons of blackmail material on the Ministry (corruption, secret supporters of Voldemort, etc) as well as being financially important too. We see this with Lucius Malfoy throughout the series - they clearly know he isn't a good guy and yet, he has considerable power in the Ministry. The Ministry can't risk losing the backing of these families but it had to do something to prove itself to the public.

Enter, Sirius Black.

Disowned by his family, he didn't seem to pose any real risk to the Ministry's relationship with the Black family; why would they defend their disgraced former heir? Even if Sirius did turn out to have become a Death Eater (i.e. returned to their "side") and did actually commit this crime, they still wouldn't have been willing to defend him because they were obviously doing all they could to distance themselves from Voldemort. Their son is found at the scene of a mass murder committed in Voldy's name - not exactly going to help their case in defending the "real" Black family. Sirius is a pretty safe target for the Ministry to pursue and be seen to be doing something right.

(Similarly, I think this is why Karkaroff is said to have had a trial much closer to the events of 1981. He isn't attached to a family name, he doesn't seem to come from any wealth, etc. He can be imprisoned without any real consequence but shows the Ministry to be successful in bringing justice.)

Sirius was also at the heart of the most significant event in the fight against Voldemort. The Potter's house in Godric's Hollow becomes a monument, it is visited by thousands of wizards who leave messages, Harry is repeatedly stopped in the street by strangers and thanked, he is stared at and fawned over. The Potter's become the ultimate symbol of the tragedy of the war. Their deaths (and Harry's life) become public property, it becomes personal. Everyone feels a sense of entitlement to the Potter's as if their tragedy belongs to the entire wizarding community. So naturally, the public would turn their attention towards the person who apparently made this happen. Not only someone who is a member of the notorious Black family but was an apparent mass murderer and a traitor too!

It was so easy for the Ministry to leave Sirius to rot in prison without a trial because who was going to defend him? Not his "family" who were too busy trying to save their own skin, not the public, and his real family were gone too: James and Sirius' parents were dead, James and Lily were now too. Peter was the real traitor. Remus was seemingly nowhere to be found and even if he was there, he suspected Sirius already (plus, I doubt the Ministry would accept his testimony or whatever because of his condition...)

Sirius was twenty-one. He was alone, vulnerable, grieving, obviously suffering from PTSD, and found to be the centre of one of the worst events in the war. I think ultimately he was an easy target for the Ministry to protect their reputation/public standing and cover up their miserable attempts at persecuting actual Death Eaters.

Is referencing a thing on hp meta? Idk but this was totally inspired by @wolfbuck and @allalrightagain and also this article about the Longbottom's attack.

Edit: even more thoughts on this here!

[autisticandroids]

"Emotional in*est"- Do you even hear yourself? There's no such thing as emotional in*est. Just say you're a win*est shipper and go. I hate how freaks like you always try to grasp at straws to seem all "intellectual", when you're nothing but a freak who faps to things like ped*philia, best*ality and in*est. THAT'S why Jensen hates shippers. You don't want to see a positive queer relationship, you just want to read about Jensen getting fu*ked no matter who or WHAT it is. You're disgusting

now, i want to be clear, i received this ask at 2:46 am, about an hour after posting this answer. i want you to read that linked post. it’s a discussion of familial abuse. specifically, anon was talking about how upsetting they found the nature of trauma in supernatural - how none of the characters ever break the cycle. they mention how i had talked about sam and dean as a potentially emotionally incestuous relationship as something they found relatable to their own situation of familial abuse. i responded by agreeing that it’s upsetting that supernatural did that, and trying to comfort them a bit.

this anon saw that, and immediately not only accused me of incest fetishism, but sent similar anons to my mutuals.

@steveyockey messaged me this anon that he received, seemingly at about the same time i did. it’s clearly the same person. now, i love ziz, but we don’t have a significant public relationship. we don’t, say, talk about each other in posts or tags. i think i’ve mentioned her once. i reblog a lot of his posts and he reblogs a few of mine, but i have many other much more obvious public relationships, some of them with other BNFs like ziz. i expect that as they start to wake up, they too will notice that they’ve received anons like this.

all of this over explicitly talking about the familial abuse dynamics legible in supernatural, a show whose perhaps most persistent theme is toxic and abusive family dynamics.

the obsessive moral panic over the existence of wincest is fascinating to me, especially coming from destiel shippers. i’ve discussed in the past how i personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with people shipping wincest, as long as they do it far away from me, because i find incest gross and don’t want to hear about it. 

sam and dean have a dynamic in the text of the show that you could reasonably read as emotionally incestuous - they fill the role traditionally filled by a romantic partner. this is emphasized by the fact that when sam tries to escape dean, which he does with some regularity until season eight, which is when he just gives up, he always immediately finds a romantic partner, and is then eventually dragged away from her by dean. sam knows, on some level, that in order to escape dean, which he wants to do, he needs to replace dean in his life with someone else, in order to make it more difficult for dean to reclaim that role by force. 

this stuff is all in the text of the show, with not that much interpretation. it’s a pretty solid depiction of cycles of familial trauma and abuse. john parentifies dean (which is a form of abuse related to covert incest), dean turns around and does covert incest to sam. 

when i’m analyzing supernatural seriously, one of the things that interests me the most is the theme of familial abuse. this interpretation inevitably comes up when i’m discussing that, because it’s an intensely plausible interpretation of the text. the fact that i immediately get accused of being an incest fetishist (and a pedophile and zoophile?) for mentioning it seems to indicate that there is, frankly, something wrong in the destiel fandom.

but frankly, i don’t like this defense of myself. it’s a little too “no, not me! you have the wrong witch!” for my tastes.

even if i were an incest fetishist, it is intensely creepy to me that not only did i get an angry message about it, other people did as well. the wave of purity politics that has overtaken fandom spaces is intensely unsettling to me, especially the anti-sex bent that it’s taken in recent years. 

when i was a teenager, there was still a very damaging purity culture in tumblr fandom, but it was around social justice - how do you be the least racist, least sexist, least transphobic, least homophobic, least ableist person, and so on. this culture was intensely damaging to me, psychologically, exacerbating already present obsessive compulsive and other anxious tendencies, but at least i agreed with the basic project: i do think it’s good for people to try to become less racist, less sexist, less homophobic, less transphobic, less ableist. i think that participating in a terrifying, abusive purity cult is a bad, damaging, and ineffective-in-the-long-term way to do that, but i think the intent is in the right place. 

however, because of certain changes in online culture, that kind of social justice has kind of become “cringe” and therefore fallen apart. like, it’s still present, but far less strong than it used to be. but the purity cult has remained, only now it’s explicitly only about sex. people will try and hunt down the most deviant expression of sexuality they can find, and put that on trial. it doesn’t matter what that sexuality is. i am frequently on record as saying that if wincest didn’t exist, destiel would be considered the irredeemably problematic ship of the supernatural fandom, and in fact i’m constantly surprised that i, personally, have never been cancelled for romanticizing abuse, something which i try not to do, but walk a pretty fine line on. but no one cares about the toxicity of destiel because rather than having a sensible barometer of reasonable behavior, everyone is simply fixated on finding and persecuting the most deviant option available. thus, since destiel is by comparison less deviant than wincest, it’s fine. 

but this culture doesn’t actually have anything to do with, like i said, a sensible barometer of reasonable behavior. it just goes for the most deviant option available. the same culture that comes for wincest shippers is the culture that comes for, i don’t know, people who ship the wrong she-ra ships. as you can probably tell, it’s been a while since i’ve been in a giant fandom full of youngsters. it’s not actually about the specific morality of shipping wincest, it’s about asking “who is it okay for me to hurt” and finding the most deviant people available for an answer. 

this is why they reached so hard to try and accuse me of being a wincest shipper. they wanted to bully someone, or perhaps they had a problem with me (though given that they don’t seem to have searched my blog, because if they had they would have found better ammunition, i suspect it’s the former), and so they accused me of shipping wincest - the worst possible accusation, an accusation that makes it okay to accuse me of anything and do whatever they like to me. 

like, you, The Girl (GN) Reading This, should be creeped out by this behavior. no matter what your opinion of wincest. even if you post “wincesties die” every day. because you will more than likely at some point in your life find yourself on the wrong end of this culture, for something which you consider totally innocuous. that, or perhaps you will be coerced into participating in some kind of bullying campaign, which is traumatizing in its own sense - even if you enjoy it at the time, it’s likely you will grow to regret it. hurting other people sucks.

i’m going to bed and i’m going to leave this as my last post until i wake up in like, four hours, so as many people can read it as possible. i would love for people to think about the kind of fan culture they’re participating in where not only me but people i interact with get sent these kinds of messages.

i don’t know, i feel like this *checks notes* fifteen hundred word essay i’ve written is a touch pearl-clutchy. anon hate is something normal on the internet. i get it about once a week, and normally i respond with jokes. some people are just assholes. i’m unusually sensitive about this kind of thing because like i said, i’ve had some formatively bad experiences with social justice purity politics. i also put a lot of value on having my cards on the table - if someone is going to get mad at me for saying “i don’t think wincesties should die” i would like them to get mad now, and not wait until i trip over a landmine. so those things were definitely part of the reason i wanted to write this.

but in this case, this person who decided to be an asshole was also sending messages about me to other people i know, which is creepy in and of itself, but also: i don’t necessarily trust the people i know in this fandom not to decide to shun me on the strength of an anonymous accusation of wincest shipping. that’s how strong the purity culture is in this fandom in specific. and i personally find that incredibly distasteful. like, you’re gay people aren’t you? you’re aware that mainstream society will always consider you sexual deviants no matter how respectable you are? yes? like this person wants to intentionally destroy my social connections and reputation. which is much more threatening than just saying nasty shit to me on anon.

[365days365movies]

Historical July IV: Pompeii (2014) - Part I

...Really? This guy made a historical epic?

The Mortal Kombat director? The Monster Hunter director? The director of the first six Resident Evil films? Yeah, THOSE. The director of Death Race 2000? He made a history movie? And it was about one of the greatest natural disasters ever recorded? Oh boy, I cannot WAIT to see how this goes. OK, so what exactly is the big deal about Pompeii. To understand that...take a jump to the left.

There’s a reason that so many of these films are centered around the Roman Empire; it was kind of a big fuckin’ deal. And by the time we get to 79 AD...a lot of shit had happened. Jesus Christ was executed around 30 or 33 AD, and his new followers, called Christians, were not exactly permitted in Rome. A dude named Paul the Apostle goes on missionary journeys to spread Christianity. Even writes a few chapters in a book about the guy, which he adds onto the Jewish scripture as a sort of New Testament. Not that any of that’s gonna go anywhere, but good on him for the initiative.

On the throne, Tiberius has died, only to be replaced by his nephew, Caligula. And Caligula...was kind of a lot.

It’s not entirely known how many of the stories about him are true, but some of them are...controversially sexual. Dude was said to be a sexual sadist who through lavish expositions of debauchery, and some sources list him as being insane. But again, some of that is hearsay. We do know that he improved Roman infrastructure, and that he increased the power of the emperor for succeeding generations. And possibly quite harshly. In any case, in 41 AD, a few senators got pissed off enough by him, and pulled a Cassius/Brutus/Gretchen Weiner and assassinated the SHIT out of him.

Meanwhile, surprise! Things aren’t going great for the Jews. Yeah, history has NOT been kind to them, and around 41 AD, the new emperor of Rome, Claudius, decides to give them the boot and expels them from Rome...for the third time. Yeah, like I said, not a good history for them. To be fair, some of this is hearsay, but there’s no real reason to doubt its veracity. As they were forced out, Claudius focused his interests on Britain, and began to conquer the territories of the Celts. He dies in 54 BC, and is succeeded by...

Oh, shit. This is Nero, the last of the first line of Roman emperors, and one of the worst that they’d ever seen. On the bright side, dude was huge into the cultural life of the Empire, as well as diplomacy and trade. He was an actor, a poet, and a charioteer. On the downside...dude was an absolute asshole. Allegedly. Yeah, it’s hearsay time again. He was insanely popular with Rome’s public, but so many historians list him as an awful tyrant. The most well-known of these tyrannical acts involved the Christians, who were building in size as a group in Rome. Which was, unsurprisingly, not liked by the Senate.

In Brittania, Nero’s armies led a successful conquest of the territory, resulting in the death of the Celt Queen Boudicca in 61. And that is...another story for another day. A good one, though. But all of that took a side to one of the biggest tragedies Rome had ever seen: the Great Fire of 64 AD. It raged for nine days, and destroyed 2/3 of Rome. Which is...a lot. Nero allegedly blamed the Christians, but conspiracies mounted that he had ordered the fire to make room for construction of a palatial complex. But that is, well...hearsay. That hearsay began persecutions of the Christians in Rome, leading to that whole “feed them to the lions” thing, eventually. Meanwhile, in a small colony in Campania, near to the city of Naples..

A massive earthquake hits in 62 AD, destroying much of a tourist town called Pompeii. Nothing else bad will happen to them. They’re rebuilding while Rome is doing the same, and Nero even visits the city in 64 AD, as well as performs in their famous theatre. See, Pompeii was basically a cultural town, and their theater and amphitheater were famous. They would rebuild pretty steadily over the next decade or so, with what funding they could get from Rome or the private sector.

In 68, Nero commits suicide (sort of) after being condemned by the Senate (who hated him, of course) as a public enemy. So ends the first Dynasty. So, uh...who’s the new emperor? Since there’s no declared heir, it’s time to figure out who’s gonna rule. And since it’s Rome...WAR TIIIIIIIIIIME!

Yup. The Year of the Four Emperors kicks off in 68 AD. First, Galba takes over, and fucks over EVERYBODY, including the military and the elite unit, the Praetorian Guard. Said guard kills the shit out of him. The same day, Otho is declared emperor, and he’s gonna be...oh, wait, I’ve received word that the legions in Germania support Vitellus as Emperor, and they’re a fucking really good army! Surely word of this will not aaaaaaand Otho has committed suicide, GREAT. 

Looks like Vitellus is emperor! Parades! Banquets! Expensive food that immediately creates debt! Looks like we need money, so let’s make people call Vitellus the rightful heir to their goods and fortune, and then KILL THE SHIT OUT OF ‘EM! That’s not gonna bite us squarely in the rotund ass at all! At least we have the entire army on our side, right? What? Fuckin’ Vespasian commands the African and Judean legions, and they’re declaring him emperor? And they’re marching on Vitellus right now, as he’s desperately trying to bribe his way out of this? Well, maybe it’ll aaaaaaand dead. With that, the year is over, and Vespasian is now Emperor of Rome for the next 10 years. God.

So, Vespasian is now the Emperor, and the next few years aren’t abysmal for Rome. They expand in Britain, he reforms the financial system, and he builds the Colosseum. Dude brings Rome back to stability, beginning the Flavian Dynasty, then dies in 79 AD. His son, Titus Vespasianus, ascends in 79 AD. Dude was a legendary general, crushing the first major Jewish rebellion in 69 (geez, guys, sorry history’s been absolute garbage to you), and then taking and destroying Jerusalem. He completed the Colosseum as well, as would be known as a good ruler in the end. But rulers are only judged by their response to adversity. And adversity...thy name is Vesuvius.

August 25, 75 AD. After bubbling and brewing for a long time, the volcano known as Mount Vesuvius blows its top, and molten rock and ash explode from that top violently. We’re talking a force 100,000 times more powerful than fucking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yeah. Holy fucking shit. The eruption was large enough to cover miles of land in pyroclastic flows, flash burning and killing every living thing in its path. These flows buried the settlement of Pompeii. And. Herculaneum. And Oplontis. Oh, and Stabiae. YEAH. FOUR FUCKING TOWNS.

Did you know that shit, because I DIDN’T. The reason we know Pompeii so well is because it was actually most fully recovered. So was Herculaneum, but Herculaneum was much smaller, and didn’t have the whole body imprint thing attached to it. But it’s still a worthy site that deserves to be talked about more. Will this movie do so?

Of course it won’t. Come on.

I want to talk about Pompeii and Vesuvius...but later, LATER! Let’s get into this literal garbage fire of a film, shall we? Can’t wait to see what film mountebank Paul W.S. Anderson has done with this epic historical event. Whoof. If you want to learn more about the day itself, watch @wearewatcher​ Puppet History’s account of it. More entertaining than I am, I guarantee it.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

Interestingly, we start with the words of Pliny the Younger, who wrote a famous account of the events of the fateful day. I’ll mention him and his famous uncle more next time, I think. They are, and I quote:

We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a clsoed room. You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore.

Um...wow. Damn. Holy shit, that’s fucking terrifying. I mean, I already knew this, but retyping it now...FUCK. And also, the movie misquotes this. Technically, it’s a different translation and some paraphrasing, but it’s not the exact quote. But OK, the movie opens with that butchered quote over the famous petrified bodies of Pompeii. And I’ll hand it to them, it’s pretty impressive looking.

And then, we cut to Brttania in 62 AD. Huh. OK? Far as I know, the battle pictured of the northern Celtic horsemen never actually happened, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. After all, famous Celt queen Boudicca had just died the year before, attempting to fight against the Roman Empire. So, yeah, this isn’t crazy. The Celts are slain by Romans, led by the general Quintus Attius Corvus (Keifer Sutherland), and their bodies are piled up, while others are...hung from a tree, which doesn’t seem like a Roman thing to do. I guess it’s technically gibbetting, but I thought the Celts did that to the Romans, not the other way around!

But OK, let’s not split hairs. I’ll be here all day if I do. A child escapes from the massacre, and flees into the woods. His mother was killed in front of him by Corvus, and his father was ne of the guys in the tree. Eventually, he’s caught by slave traders, and...Conan the Barbarian, is that you?

Yeah, this is just the story of Conan the Barbarian! What’re you gonna do, strap him to a wheel for seventeen years?

So, 17 years pass...and we cut to Londinium. In a gladiator pit with terrible lighting, we meet a manager of gladiators, Graecus (Joe Pingue), who’s being all Roman and shit. You know, being fat, eating grapes, so on and so forth. He’s all annoyed at being brought out here in the poorly lit rain to watch a gladiator fight, especially because the gladiators kinda suck. And that’s when...the Celt comes in.

Oh my God, I already hate this fucking movie. It’s just so...stereotypically late-2000s. It’s like Paul W.S. Anderson went to Frank Miller, whom I picture as living in that fetish house from 300, and said to him, “Teach me your unsubtly homoerotic ways!” And then Frank Miller talked about women and Muslim people in a misogynistic and racist way for, like, three hours, until eventually just lending Anderson a copy of 300. 

Anyway, yeah, this is Milo (Kit Harrington), AKA the Celt. He’s just the best gladiator that ever gladiated, and they decide to take him out of there to see how well he does in more professional circles. He’s put on a procession to Pompeii, and meets a woman in-they’re gonna fuck.

Look...they’re gonna be the main couple of the film. Duh. FUCKING DUH. THIS IS JUST PEARL HARBOR IN ANCIENT ROME. Anyway, this Inevitable Love Interest is Cassia (Emily Browning), attended to by her assistant, Ariadne (Jessica Lucas). Their horse was injured on the way to Pompeii, but Milo offers to help it. And he does so by...breaking the horse’s neck.

And I get it, he’s putting it out of its mercy, that’s entirely fine in this circumstance, but...he breaks it as easily as I blow my fucking nose! Like...like picking up a child’s napkin from a fucking table at a birthday party, IT WOULD NOT BE THAT FUCKING EASY! So...yeah, that’s incredibly stupid, and the tone is set for this movie. And of course, Cassia comes away from it like, “Ooh, that silent horse-killing gladiator slave man is, like SUPER-FUCKING-HOT, amirite?” God, this is gonna piss me off.

Cassia, it turns out, is from Pompeii, and her father Severus (Jared Harris) is the city governor, while her mother, Aurelia (Carrie-Anne Moss)...has the worst British accent I’ve ever heard, holy SHIT, Carrie-Anne. I liked you in The Matrix, and I fucking LOVED you in the first season of Jessica Jones, but GODDAMN are you absolutely terrible in this movie so far. But yeah, Cassia’s the rich girl who’s life is perfect and has horses and yaaaaaaaay

Meanwhile, Milo’s dealing with administrative issues, as his fellow gladiators start a fight in the cafeteria. This catches the interest of fellow gladiator Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), the black best friend of the movie, probably. Which is also very Gladiator, now that I think about it. Have I mentioned that I fucking really hate this movie so far?

Anyway, one of Cassia’s servants (who is black, because this movie is very awkward in a lot of ways) takes out her horse for a run that night, only for him to die by upcoming plot device. The next morning, Milo meets Atticus, says that he’ll have to kill him one day, gets saved from death by one of the assholes from the cafeteria, then says that he won’t kill Atticus, and I hate this movie.

Meanwhile, Corvus arrives in town, BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES, and I now have to wonder...was Pompeii anywhere near this major of a town to warrant this much fucking attention? Well, after looking into it...I mean, kinda. Naples isn’t too far away, so I feel like that would’ve gotten more attention. But anyway, Corvus is invited into the home of Severus to discuss their grand plans for Pompeii, whatever those’ll be.

Cassia’s not extraordinarily happy about that, because she dislikes the corrupt new emperor, Titus Vespasian, who...who is one of the most generous and greatest emperors that Rome ever had...period. I...but...we...WHY? WHY ARE WE PAINTING THIS GUY AS AN ASSHOLE, THEN? Just to paint Cassia as a morally-perfect being whom all the edge Celtic gladiators can fall in love with I FUCKING HATETHISSTUPIDSHIT

...OK, maybe I’m overexaggerating here. Fresh eyes, fresh mind, let’s get back into it. After Cassia’s horse returns without his keeper, we switch back to the prison, where said edgy Celt is being all edgy about the whole gladiator thing again. Meanwhile, Atticus is the wide-eyed optimist, believing that he will be freed once he defeats Milo and wins the day. Also, he has a really bad-looking scar. Like, picture a scar with stitches. The most stereotypical scar you’ve ever seen. Yeah. That’s on Atticus’ cheek.

The gladiators are marched into the palace, because this film doesn’t really understand the difference between normal gladiators and normal slaves in terms of treatment. But it’s there that he sees one of the guys present at the destruction of his village, because of course he does. We also learn that the gladiators are treated not only as slaves, but as prostitutes...which DID NOT fucking happen. There is NO PROOF that this happened, and I feel like that would be a risk that managers wouldn’t want to take for various reasons.

Cassia might be wishing that was the case, though, because she catches Milo’s eye at the party. But she’s soon led away to be introduced to Corvus, who she already apparently...oh, goddamnit. It’s also this story? Corvus is gonna wanna fuck her, huh? I just...this movie is a living, breathing stereotype of a film.

But just then, Cassia’s horse starts freaking out SO FUCKING HARD that she excuses herself from Corvus’ advances. And yeah, he does wanna marry her, and has wanted to since she met him in Rome and said no. Anyway, she gets the best horse killer she knows, Milo, and has him tame her horse’s wild nature. And despite having no proof that this’ll work (or that he won’t kill this horse just like the other one, which would be hilarious), it does indeed work.

Cassia goes in, and they share their mutual hatred of Rome together. They also get on the horse together, and burst out of the stable to ride off into the sunset. I...just...this would not only have SO MANY TERRIBLE RAMIFICATIONS, but would also be insanely unlikely due to class structure at the time. This is just...so dumb.

OK, so let’s fast-forward this bullshit, huh? They get caught, Cassia asks Corvus to spare his life, and he agrees to do so if she agrees to fuuuuuuuuck’im, and she does. Corvus makes sure he’s whipped, and then arranges it so that Milo fights first the next day, and ideally dies first. Back in her quarters, Cassia pines for Milo, and back in his quarters, Milo gets wine dumped on his back to heal his terrible looking whip-wounds. 

And as Milo and Atticus share their hatred for the Romans, the earth shakes beneath their feet, which Atticus states is a sign from the gods. And given what’s about to happen...yeah, could be. The next day, the quakes continue as the arrangements are make for Milo to die, hopefully.

God. I need a break. 

Imma rewatch that Puppet History video really quick. See you in Part II, I guess.

[adarkrainbow]

Oh yes I can confirm that the "abuse of Cinderella by the prince when she is in rag" is very typical - and it is also part of many oral/folkloric versions of both Cinderella and Donkeyskin in French tradition. In fact I suspect the abuse-joke is part of all the oral traditions of Europe when it comes to this type of fairytale about the persecuted heroine in disguise - again, Cinderella and Donkeyskin are basically twin tales.

And yes this is supposed to be a joke and/or a revenge. I can safely claim that because since I have been looking into the various oral folktales of France I have a bit of the bigger picture when it comes to this specific episode - and I suspect it will be true for other countries. Now here's the thing: the problem with collected oral tales is that, very often, due to their oral nature they are "incomplete". Details in them are omitted in many ways - either because the narrator forgot them, or because it seemed obvious, or simply because they didn't know it had to be said. That's the nature of oral tale, they are in a constant flux around some core elements, and this is why some of those stories seem very abrupt or nonsensical, they are just cut short. So to have a complete idea one needs to collect and compare a lot of versions together to reconstruct some of the "worn-out" elements. And this whole "three times hit" joke has a full version, but which only comes out when you piece together the variations.

(That, or the reverse, maybe the original joke was just very short, simple and abrupt, fit for a cruder time - after all oral fairytales did start out as crass, crude stories of sex, gore and violence, so abuse jokes were VERY very common, still in oral folktales of France you have a lot of instances where men beating up their wife or abusing their animal is treated as a joke, reminding of the kind of mindset stuff such as the Punch and Judy show or the Reynard tales came from. But maybe with time people felt a need to expand on the joke was needed, and thus it was woven into a longer narrative to better have the idea, or to turn just the "haha he hits her" into a more vengeful plot showing the heroine's cunning. It can go both ways, and with oral fairytales we can never be sure)

So, after this very long introduction, here's what I mean: The core joke is that, the three times before she meets the prince at the ball/party/mass whatever, Cinderella-Donkeyskin (I'll call her "the persecuted heroine"), in her disguise of poor, ugly, stinky, worst of the worst slave-girl, gets hit as a way to punish her unfairly, each time with a different object. And when she appears before the prince in her beautiful, impressive, fairy-dresses, and when he asks where she comes from or who she is, she uses the object that hit her as a pun. (For example she can say she comes from the country known as Broom, or the land known as Bucket). Now, I need to mention that in oral folktales it isn't always the prince that hit her. In many stories, it is rather a third party - in Cinderella tales it can be the stepmother that hits her for daring to go to the ball ; in Donkeyskin tales it can be the person she took refuge with and works for, and who will for example hit her for daring to say "Can I have some free time?" before agreeing to let her have this free time, but only in a limited way. In such cases, it seems to be part not so much of a joke as rather a way to sublimize her own abuse, and is more of a symbolical clue or riddle the prince is given to solve about her true identity - because she cannot just simply tell him "Oh i'm just a scullery maid, your probably saw the little wriggling mount of dirt in a corner of the kitchen, that's me". So rather, she says more poetically "I am where the broom is", or "I come from where the bucket can be found", only for the prince to completely miss the riddle.

But we are here to talk about the cases where it is the prince himself that abuses the persecuted heroine, and that throws an item at her/hits her with it before each "ball". In this specific case, which happens often, important points have to be highlighted, most notably - very often the prince doesn't simply act just like that because he is an abusive brat (though sometimes it looks like that, because the story is cut short/not developed), but he precisely is said to be in rage or angry because of the preparations for the next "ball" and his care that everything must be perfect for when his beloved return, or his anger at not being able to find her. As such, he can lash out at the persecuted heroine for what he perceives as her doing a bad job - and here we go into the bizareness of their entire relationship, because yes the prince hits her when he does not recognize her, and basically uses her as a punching ball that just happened to go by here - typical medieval slapstick comedy - but he often does so precisely because of his love FOR her, even though he doesn't know it, and thus in a paradoxical way Cinderella/Donkeyskin seeing the prince being so anxious/worried/angry at the thought of seeing her again, or not seeing her again, proves to her that it works and that his feelings are true... though it also comes at the negative consequences of him hitting her and abusing her (though again, hitting servants was not seen as a bad thing back then, it was just regular stuff - again, the way the world and society was viewed was VERY different, and masters had the right to beat up their servants, it was the social contract).

What is very interesting with folk-Cinderellas is that they have this deep ambiguity within them or... what exactly is Cinderella trying to do? What is going on in her head? What is her real plan? Does she even love the prince at all? Notice how in many oral versions, if not all, the word "love" never appears when it comes to Cinderella - she just wants to go to the ball. The prince's emotions and psyche are very clear and simple, but Cinderella is a mysterious figure just as secretive as her otherwordly helpers. And thus, her "game" at toying and playing with the prince with the three "abuse-answers" is also part of this bizarre, ambiguous plot that can be interpreted in various ways depending on how you tell the story.

Each time the prince asks her where she comes from, she uses the item he himself used earlier to hit her (usually the very morning before the ball). Is it a form of mockery, is it toying with him, blaming him in hope that he will know she somehow spied on him, only for the prince to be too dense? Or are we still in the "sublimation" of abuse" I described earlier in cases where the prince is not involved, and is she trying to give him subtle clues about who she really is in hope he will pierce the mystery only for him to completely fail? Is she trying to hide her identity as hastily and clumsily as possible by saying the last thing she recalls tied to him, or is she preparing the way for him regretting his actions towards her once she revealed her identity?

And this is where I say the "extensions" or "expansions" of the tale can be of great use - because in several oral folktales... we have a follow-up on the joke. As in, some versions do mention that the prince sent his entire army, or gathered all of his lords, or sent his best agents throughout the world in search for the country/land the girl was supposed to come from, only for them to fail - some versions even go as far as to have the prince antagonize the one he put in charge of the research and consider him not as good as he claims to be, despite him doing his best. I don't know if this whole "search for nothing" element was part of the original joke, or if it was added later, but it can again lead to two very likely interpretations as to why the "abuse joke" is in here. Explanation 1: it is all to show how dumb and dense the prince is. The joke here is at the expanse of the prince/king, who fails to recognie the girl he loves when she is in dirty rags, fails to understand she is mocking him when she says her land is called "Comb" or "Rag", and fails to kow the geography of the real world (in some cases it is even worst as he believes this fictional land to be one of his provinces/domains, showing he doesn't know his own country). Or explanation 2: It shows that it is a subtle revenge from Cinderella. As a sly form of revenge for being hit earlier, she sends the prince on a "goose chase". She knows he is going to search everywhere, send all his men and probably spent quite a lot of money on searching for a country that does not exist, wasting his time and effort for nothing. And as such, it kinds of make them even - a blow on the body exchanged to a blow on the ego, Cinderella proving to the prince he can't have everything he wants, he doesn't know everything, and some beings are far beyond his scope.

But all in all, I do believe no matter how you interpret it or the way you chose to tell it, I think the fundamental trait of this episode, that always come out, is that Cinderella/Donkeyskin is supposed to be cunning, or at least to be shown as being able to manipulate and trick the prince, even in the most innocent way, enhancing her ascendance and dominance over him as a mysterious object of desire wrapped in secrets that he can't solve, despite the very clues she gives him. And again it is all part of an entire theme centered around "the desire for the unknown", "the love for the mysterious lady".

The latest series of stories I've read in Cinderella Tales From Around the World are from Eastern and Central Europe: Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

*In several Eastern European versions, the Virgin Mary is the girl's helper who gives her finery. She appears either from a well or from inside an oak tree or a fir tree.

*In most of these variants, the heroine goes to church. Only a very few have a ball instead.

*Several also have the stepmother give the heroine a task similar to the Grimms' lentils in the ashes – typically poppy or millet seeds to sort either from the ashes or from sand, or bushels of wheat to clean – and birds help her. Also recalling the Grimms' version (and many others, of course), the third time the heroine flees, the prince usually has the church or palace steps smeared with tar or wax, causing her to lose her shoe.

*In the one Ukrainian version, the heroine has a cow who magically finishes the impossible amount of spinning and weaving the stepmother demands she do every day. Of course the stepmother eventually has the cow killed, but in its entrails the girl finds a grain of corn, which she plants, and it grows into a willow tree. From then on, when she wants finery for church, the tree opens and ladies come out to dress her. In this version, she also loses both of her golden shoes rather than just one in the tar on the church steps.

*Two Hungarian versions, The Three Princesses and Popelusa, and one unnamed Polish version are all near-identical to Finette Cendron. Three daughters of a deposed king are abandoned in the forest, they find an ogre couple's castle, the youngest outwits the ogres and slays them, but then her ungrateful sisters treat her like a servant, etc. Since Madame d'Aulnoy's tale is a literary story, could this be a sign of French influence in Eastern and Central European culture?

*Another Polish version, The Princess with the Pigskin Cloak, combines Cinderella with themes from Snow White. A wicked queen has a magic mirror, which tells her that her stepdaughter is more beautiful than she is. So she orders her servants to kill the princess and bring back her heart, but they let her go and bring back a dog's heart instead. The princess dresses herself in pigskin and finds work as a swineherd, but she knows a certain hollow oak tree that's sacred to the Virgin Mary, and when she goes inside it, she finds a room where she receives finery for church. She finally loses a shoe, is found by the prince and marries him, and the queen dies of rage and grief when her magic mirror tells her the news.

*Several of these versions have the heroine run away from her stepfamily, but unlike most others that use this device, they don't have her work as a servant at the prince's palace, but just find farm work somewhere nearby, a la Perrault's Donkeyskin.

*This brings me to an issue that's appeared in many versions so far, but which I didn't bother to discuss until now. I suppose now is as good a time as any, because it's a theme that appears in many of these Eastern and Central European tales. In so many versions of Donkeyskin/All-Kinds-of-Fur, or any Cinderella story where the heroine leaves her home and finds work as a lowly servant at the royal palace or elsewhere, the prince tends to repeatedly meet her in her rags or animal skins, and he mistreats her. In the versions where she works at the palace, when she takes off his boots or brings him bath water, a towel, and a comb, he throws them at her. Or in versions where she works elsewhere, she meets him on the road, he drops things and she hands them back to him, but instead of thanking her, he hits her with them. Then at the ball or at church, when she's in her beautiful gowns and he's smitten with her, he asks her where she came from, and she replies with allusions to his earlier rudeness, which he fails to understand.

**This is obviously uncomfortable by modern standards. I suppose to the original audiences, it was funny, ironic social commentary: the prince pines over the "mystery princess" with no idea that she's really the scraggly kitchen maid he treats like dirt, and he's clueless when she alludes to her identity. But does it bode well for "happily ever after" when she marries a man who treated her badly? I think this goes to show that in traditional oral fairy tales, there tends to be less emphasis on finding "true love" than on simply escaping from bad situations and achieving safety, comfort, and preferably wealth and high status. It doesn't matter that the prince is a bit of a jerk, what matters is that he makes the girl a princess in the end. Still, when you want her to marry a worthy man and believe he'll make her happy, it's uncomfortable. Different adaptations obviously find different ways to handle it. For example, Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics' "The Coat of Many Colors" avoids all this and has the prince always be kind to Aleia, while "Sapsorrow" from Jim Henson's the Storyteller keeps his rudeness but gives him a small redemption arc, first by finally sharing a sympathetic conversation with "the Straggletag," then by agreeing to marry her when the slipper fits her before he learns her identity.

**Maybe this tradition partly explains why the prince in the classic movie Three Wishes for Cinderella is slightly bratty and rude at first. I know that @thealmightyemprex found that choice off-putting when he reviewed the movie, and I have mixed feelings about it too, but maybe it stems from the fact that in Europe's oral Cinderella stories, bratty princes are surprisingly common.

Speaking of which...

*This book includes the two Cinderella stories from the Czech-Austrian writer Božena Němcová's collection that inspired Three Wishes for Cinderella. One is called The Three Sisters, the other O Popelusce ("Of Cinderella").

**They both follow the same formula. The heroine's kind father (whom the movie replaces with a surrogate-father manservant) sets out on a journey, and his daughter asks him to bring her the first thing that knocks against his head. This turns out to be the branch of a nut tree, containing three nuts, which produce beautiful dresses and shoes that she wears to church three times.

*Each version is slightly different, though, and both are slightly different from the 1973 movie. In The Three Sisters, the heroine Anuska is abused by her own mother and sisters, while in O Popelusce she has a stepmother and stepsisters. Meanwhile, the movie uses a stepmother and just one stepsister. In both stories, the (step)mother cuts the sisters' feet to make the slipper fit, with the movie replaces with their stealing Cinderella's clothes to pass Dora off as her. As I said, both stories have the heroine go to church, while the movie draws on the Western European Cinderella tradition and has a ball, and unsurprisingly, neither the movie Cinderella's sassy tomboy personality nor her dressing as a boy to join a royal hunt can be found in Němcová's original tales.

*Still, it's clear that in some ways the movie draws strongly on Němcová's texts. In The Three Sisters, the second sister's name is Dorotka, which must explain why the one stepsister in the movie is named Dora. And Anuska's first church dress is rose colored with silver trim, just like the movie Cinderella's ball dress

**From now on, in Three Wishes for Cinderella, I think I'll imagine "Anuska" as Cinderella's real name, as it is in The Three Sisters. It's a Czech equivalent of "Annie," and she's definitely a spunky Little Orphan Annie type of character in the movie!

*There's also a Hungarian version that's almost identical to Němcová's, with three dress-producing walnuts. But it has a completely different ending. The heroine doesn't lose a shoe. Instead the prince's servant follows her as far as her house, then puts a golden rose on the gatepost to mark it. Meanwhile, her loving father can't bear to let her be abused anymore and takes her to live with a childless widow in the forest – she's still poor and still has to work, but she's better off than with her stepfamily. When the prince comes to the family's house to look for her, only her stepsisters are there, but then the golden rose magically rises up and floats through the air to the forest cottage, and there she is. But then, in a different (and sadly racist) twist on the common "false bride replaces Cinderella" plot line, a Romani woman pushes the heroine into a lake, steals her magic walnuts, and dresses in her clothes to trick the prince. But the heroine survives by turning into a golden duck, then resumes her true form and finds work as a servant near the palace. But one day, the prince brings his new bride out in public and urges her to tell everyone the story of her life. The Romani woman fabricates a story, but then the real Cinderella speaks up and reveals the truth, and the prince instantly recognizes his true bride. He has the Romani woman executed, the stepmother jailed, and the stepsisters' hair cut off, while the father marries the widow from the forest in a double wedding with his daughter and the prince.

@adarkrainbow, @ariel-seagull-wings, @themousefromfantasyland

[ejlriolope]

Bigoted and Guilty: The World Anent Gender Equality

     The world is guilty of bigotry and notorious for being unjust regarding gender equality. Gender minorities are waging centuries worth of crusades to achieve equality in this world plagued by the poisonous patriarchal system and supremacist ideologies. Gender bias and demarcation are pervasive and entrenched in our society, as they still barricade radical grants of people’s liberty. Gender discrimination is any uneven treatment, including privilege and priority, based on gender. While Gender inequality is prejudice based on sex or gender causing specific sex or gender to be more privileged or prioritized than another (“Gender Discrimination: Inequality Starts in Childhood”). Throughout the course of history, sexism and misogyny are evident and enragedly justified, while Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) are marginalized. Women back in the days did not have the right to suffrage and education, as they were blinded by the thought of their inferiority towards men. In the Philippines, it was not until April 30, 1937, when women's suffrage bill was passed. Women were abused, gaslighted, and neglected. On the other hand, homosexuality was heavily persecuted, and they were tortured into believing that their existence is an abomination of God’s natural design because of their ‘immoral acts’, they were treated with loathing and atrocity. Over 64% or two-thirds of LGBTQIA+ individuals had encountered violence or abuse (“LGBTQ+ facts and figures”). Women and the LGBTQIA+ Community were exposed to unwarranted supremacist ideologies.      Gender discrimination manifests through Economic Oppression, wherein the competency of women and LGBTQIA+ individuals were questioned. Their compensations were lower than those of males, job opportunities are bounded for them, and the worst-case scenario is that they are being abused in their workspace. This intolerance also occurs in schools, homes, and communities. They are being targeted by gender stereotypes, shaming them with twisted agendas impeding their sense of security, validity, and productivity (Santos-Lyons). Gender-based violence pertains to adverse acts targeting an individual based on their gender. It is embedded in gender inequality, the exploitation of power, and destructive standards (“Gender-based Violence”). Women and the LGBTQIA+ community are subjected to Gender-based Violence, including people from various age groups, races, and indigenous backgrounds. Statistically, 736 million or one in every three women around the globe have been coerced to intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once (“16 things you need to know about gender-based violence”). On the other hand, 26 percent of gay men, 37 percent of bisexual men, and 29 percent of straight men are raped and experienced physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner. While 46 percent of bisexual women, 17 percent of straight women, and 13 percent of lesbians have been raped (“Sexual Assault and the LGBTQ Community”). As reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority in 2017, National Demographic and Health Survey, one in four Filipino women aged 15-49 have experienced physical, emotional, or sexual violence caused by their partner (“Violence Against Women”). The statistics reports are distressing as it shows the reality of society’s treatment of gender minorities. However, it is absolutely crucial to discuss these acts of injustice to stress accountability of how these individuals were victimized. Gender discrimination exists and is not limited to women and the LGBTQIA+, as men's narratives concerning this issue are unfortunately neglected. Utmost cases are unreported or not perceived as a violation at all. Advocating the elimination of gender equality must include everyone and apply to anyone victimized by stereotypes and disparity. Still, aside from focusing on developing our country, we should also focus on these kinds of social issues because we are all involved in them. It is imperative for us to open our eyes to these human rights violations and injustices. Given that, we must stay attentive in upholding everyone’s birthrights. There have been local movements challenging these revolting acts of gender discrimination. The hashtag #HijaAko is a movement that became viral back in 2020, as Kakie Pangilinan denounced the rape tolerating and victim-blaming mindset manifested through statements of media personality, Ben Tulfo. Nonetheless, the rampant demand for gender equality education was being sustained, initiated, and supported mostly by students. Countless webinars are accomplished in response to the increasing number of people who want to become aware and hopefully help to the clamor of eradicating inequality and discrimination, specifically the shaming, stereotypes, and stigma surrounding the matter.      Consequently, Republic Act No. 9262 or The Anti-Violence against Women and their Children Act of 2004, Republic Act 11313 or the Safe Spaces Act, and the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Expression Equality Bill or the Anti-Discrimination Bill (ADB) are pivotal in promoting safe spaces and upholding human rights. Legal bases are significant to the gender rights movement as it safeguards the oppressed from exploitation and abuse as the laws ensure their welfare and future opportunities. That is why the passage of the SOGIE Bill as a recognized law is significant, as it protects not only the LGBTQIA+ Community but everyone from discrimination. The fortification of these laws denotes the grave commitment of the state to defend the interests of its citizens and actualize proper awareness condemning the stigma, victim-blaming, and shaming culture of the society and legitimately hold accountability, making the law fiercer upon serving justice. The movement regarding these issues has been overlong, abusive, and chaotic. It may sound cliché, but it is up to us whether to continue fighting against each other in the name of supremacy, or we sort out how to help people for their best interests and hold those who are accountable for committing or participating in these hateful acts. People's welfare must be prioritized in the absolute eradication of gender bias, discrimination, and inequality, striving towards the radical entitlement of people's liberty to express and be themselves and have equal opportunities ahead of them.

Bibliography “16 things you need to know about gender-based violence.” Concern Worldwide, 25 November 2021, 16 things you need to know about gender-based violence. “Gender Discrimination: Inequality Starts in Childhood.” Save the Children, https://www.savethechildren.org/us/charity-stories/how-gender-discrimination-impacts-boys-and-girls. Accessed 2 January 2022. “Gender-based Violence.” UNCHR, The UN Refugee Agency, https://www.unhcr.org/gender-based-violence.html. Accessed 29 December 2021. “LGBTQ+ facts and figures.” Stonewall, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/cy/node/24594. Accessed 25 January 2022. Santos-Lyons, Maria Aimee. Recognizing GBV & Advancing Gender Justice. WISDOM PUP. 11 December 2021. https://www.facebook.com/wisdompup/videos/1052766305571592. “Sexual Assault and the LGBTQ Community.” Human Rights Campaign, https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-community. Accessed 29 December 2021. “Violence Against Women.” Philippine Commission on Women, https://pcw.gov.ph/violence-against-women/. Accessed 29 December 2021.

[wolf-and-bard]

Resigned To Fate

Prompt: Memory Alteration / Gaslighting

Relationships: Guxart/Vesemir (from one of the witcher-centric cards), Lambert/Aiden (background)

Rating: M

Content Warnings: heavy angst, suicidal tendencies, grief, mild gore, self-harm allusions

Summary: In the aftermath of the betrayal of the Cat school, Vesemir has not only his own school to hold together, but also a traumatised lover to care for. In which: Vesemir is strong and Guxart is weak and they find it hard to meet in the middle.

Word Count: ~2k

@witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo​

I.

Witchers survive.

Witchers endure.

Witchers outlast.

No matter the tragedy that befalls them or how difficult the contract. When they're being persecuted and beaten, starved and denied basic human decency. There's always a way forward.

Survive. Endure. Outlast.

Those are the thoughts Vesemir clings to, each sentiment falling as a whisper from his cracked and splintered lips to puddle at his blood- and gut-soaked feet, each word accompanied by the low wheeze of his shovel penetrating dry earth.

He couldn't fight for them, has to bury them. All of them.

He doesn't cry like the pups do, they haven't yet understood.

This is no genocide. This is merely a manifestation of what has been a long time coming, a natural course of history.

Vesemir cradles that truth tight to his chest. He survives, endures, outlasts. It's his birthright, duty, privilege, honour, burden, curse, cure, calling, punishment. It's a law of nature, the first one the new recruits learn when coming to the keep.

Nothing breaks Vesemir.

II.

When the wolves all sleep, the living in bed rolls pushed together in the great hall, the dead in their forever resting places of hard-packed dirt, the new day is already sloshing over the horizon in waves of muted scarlet. Vesemir finds no beauty in that, he doesn't think he will find any beauty in and around Kaer Morhen ever again. All that was tranquil about this place has been soaked in blood and so, it seems, has the sky. He fills a pack with their sorry dinner's leftovers - stale bread, hard cheese, dried berries - foregoes the soup and the spirits. Two deerskins of water and a faded quilt blanket. It smells like cinnamon and honey, like comfort he hopes. It's not cold enough to warrant any kind of coat yet, but halfway across the courtyard, Vesemir finds himself shivering. He unpacks the blanket and wraps it around his own shoulders, then briskly walks out of the keep's enclosures, the sun a cool caress on his stained cheeks. He's never hated her more than in that moment.

III.

She follows him even into the dingy half-dark of the outpost's only bedroom. The curtains are drawn, the room lit by a single artificial torch, but Vesemir finds another echo of the red horizon in Guxart's eyes as they meet his across the few paces that separate them. Seeing him is somehow still a bit of a surprise.

Guxart doesn't look haggard and wrung-out the way Vesemir knows he himself does. In the wake of their shared misery - the imprisonment, the wait, the release to find their schools in ruin and their charges mostly dead or mutilated - Vesemir aged a century while Guxart is frozen in time, barely more than a shell of the witcher Vesemir begrudgingly fell in love with.

His salt-and-pepper hair falls in curls just below his ears and his greyed beard looks freshly groomed, obscuring the permanent tremble of his lips, pressed together to contain the creature of mourning that grows in his chest. His slitted pupils are constantly thin so that they nearly drown in the red hue of his irises. There are but two things about Guxart that have changed in their trudge through agony - in physicality that is. He is pale now - almost as pale as Vesemir, who always used to look like a wraith next to Guxart's light-brown skin - and his voice has lost all its natural thunder. A husk, yes. But not irrevocably so.

Guxart may be broken, but Vesemir is barely more than cracked and he can hold it together for the two of them.

"Ves," Guxart croaks from his perch on the bed and Vesemir doesn't pretend like this is a happy meeting. He draws the door shut behind himself and opens the curtains with a precise blast of Aard. The light that filters in is grimy still and Guxart turns his back on it. It's the only thing he can do. In an act of protection, born from love, Vesemir had to shackle Guxart's wrists and ankles, just so the other witcher wouldn't hurt himself. Last time, Vesemir was nearly too late and that is not something he will stand to experience again. It's a precarious arrangement, temporary, but Vesemir didn't know how else to help either Guxart of himself. Bringing him to the keep would have been certain death for them both.

"I brought food."

"I'm not hungry."

Vesemir puts the pack down by the window and slips out of his boots, then crawls up on the bed and drapes the quilt over both their legs. The sight of it puts his gut in a twist.

This is where he used to let go. Relax his shoulders and drop the teacher, the torturer. Just be. Guxart gave that to him and he to Guxart. Had he any imagination, he would let his head fall to the brick behind himself and close his eyes, imagine it's just another morning after a night spent tangled up in each other, relishing dawn's kiss and each other's presence.

Vesemir is exceptionally bad at self-delusion.

"Will you have water?" he asks. Guxart shakes his head, remaining in his strained position, even when Vesemir jerks his chin to the side in an invitation to sidle up to him.

Guxart, for his part, is exceptionally bad at accepting love and pain at the same time.

"I'm not thirsty."

"Fine," Vesemir replies and they look at each other. It's not a staring contest like they sometimes held across the training fields when their students were locked in combat. It's searching for some remnant of joy and coming up short.

"There's dirt under your nails," Guxart murmurs without breaking the eye contact. "You buried them."

"I did."

"Mine also?"

"They took them back to the Camp."

Vesemir can still hear the hisses of cats, wolves, and swords alike as the witchers collected the bodies of their fallen comrades to separate and honour them. Vesemir suspects that what he feels for Guxart will be the last love ever lost between the two schools.

"It's all my fault."

"Come here," Vesemir says, keeping his tone levelled, understanding. He opens his arms a fraction, a more blatant invitation.

Finally, Guxart slumps against Vesemir, a heaving dead weight. Vesemir brings his arms around Guxart and presses his face into his curls. He finds little comfort there and lots of reminders to all that he lost at the hands of Treyse and Radowit's damned mage. Guxart presses into Vesemir with all the strength his restrained body can muster. They don't fit together quite so well anymore.

"They gave me a choice," Guxart says. "They gave me a choice."

"What choice?" Vesemir asks, mouth dry. He blinks rapidly as he rubs soothing circles over Guxart's sharp shoulder blades. In a moment here, he will have to think about how to feed the other witcher against his will, a painstaking process. Why keep at it?

Because he has to.

Nothing breaks Vesemir.

"They took me away one night," Guxart continues. "When you were asleep. They took me away and told me how I was to arrange it. Their death sentence. And they gave me a choice."

"What. Choice."

"They said they would spare them. All of them, all of our beautiful pups and kittens. They said if I throttled you, they wouldn't make me act out the treaty. It's why we were put in the same cell after that first week."

No such thing happened.

Vesemir knows.

He feared for their schools during their time in Radowit's dungeons, but his mind was sharp always, awake and waiting. Even then, he knew of Guxart's tendencies to slip from reality into madness fashioned by others. A consequence of the meddled-with cat mutagens perhaps, or a personal disposition. Doesn't matter. What does is that Vesemir was awake in the cell opposite - never sharing, never touching - watching his lover pass from one fever dream into the next as they kept him drugged, whispering to him, sentiments Vesemir himself managed to deflect when the guards - or his own mind - threw them at him.

This is your fault.

You brought this upon them, mutant scum.

They will die for your sins.

Nothing. Breaks. Vesemir.

"A lie," Vesemir sighs and presses his lips to Guxart's scalp. The other witcher shudders and the worst part about this is that he knows they will have this conversation again. And again. And each time, Guxart will believe a little less.

"They were our children, Ves. They were our children and I betrayed them. Traded their life for yours. If you had been given the same choice, would you have been strong enough?"

They both know the answer to that. If it had been between Guxart and his wolves, Vesemir wouldn't have hesitated to kill his lover. But that is entirely beside the point.

"There was never such a choice and what happened is not your fault."

"But it is. My fault. I spared you. And then I went on to kill them all. Treyse, he tried to stop me once we got out, but I gave the command anyway. We could have stood together, could have flattened all Kaedwen to dust, but I was greedy. I wanted you and the reward. I wanted... I wanted..."

Nothing ever. Breaks...

"You're talking nonsense. We were only released after the massacre took place, remember? Treyse was the one to commit treason, he gave that command."

"I have to die," Guxart says numbly. He doesn't listen now and his bound hands paw at Vesemir's thighs. "I have to die. You have to kill me."

"No."

"Please, I cannot live with this pain. Knowing it was all my fault, I cannot... how can you?"

Vesemir closes his eyes. Nothing. Nothing has yet broken him.

IV.

There is no containing Guxart forever. Vesemir knows this, Guxart knows this.

He waits, tends to his lover until such a time that he feels he's coaxed Guxart away from the brink of self-destruction at least. At the end, most of what hangs between them is fatigue and resentment, indistinguishable from the scraps of nostalgic affection they yet harbour. Vesemir does not remember what it felt like to love without care. He has to let go.

"I'm sorry, Ves," Guxart says when it's time to part, a whisper over Vesemir's lips in what will likely be their last ever kiss. "I know you mean well, but I cannot believe you. I have to repent."

There is no penance for a crime uncommitted. The only forgiveness you should want for is mine once you leave me here to grief on my own. You will wander and you will weaken and you will wither. Nothing will break me like you will, the moment you fade from sight.

Vesemir bites down on these thoughts. They're silly, selfish, and he is neither.

"Take care of yourself."

Guxart nods and turns and walks away.

And Vesemir doesn't break.

V.

Decades pass.

Vesemir fixes up whatever fissures did sneak up on him, he remains whole, he moves on.

Guxart may be out there, he may not. Vesemir will never know what fate Guxart has resigned himself to and that is acceptable.

It is acceptable.

Until the day Lambert comes home, announcing that he has given and lost his heart to a young cat by name of Aiden. He howls through the night and Vesemir holds him, the way he himself needed to be held back then perhaps, and he understands that all the glue he has been applying to his own heart was a sorry fake.

Vesemir has been broken for a long, long time.

And once he accepts that, he feels the years fall off his shoulders like leaves from an old tree, preparing for another winter. Possibly its last.

[butwhatifidothis]

r/Edelgard seems to have completely turned against Claude now. But the weirdest part is that they keep calling him an imperialist, while at the same time denying Edelgard is one.

It was only a matter of time before they did honestly. While Dimitri and Edelgard more directly oppose each other ideologically, even if it’s merely stated as so by the game Claude and Edelgard are presented as being “closer aligned” in terms of ideals, and any character shown to be a potential ally to Edelgard is seen in a good light in their eyes and any character that is shown to be unable to be an ally is a villain/bad person, so he was given some leeway until recently. 

Look at how they bend themselves trying to make AM the villain route, how they sometimes completely discard Rhea’s words in favor of Edelgard’s despite the former literally being present when history was happening and the latter having Imperial Telephone tell her the totes fer reel correct version that happens to paint humanity as pure good, at how Edelgard’s treatment of Seteth and Flayn is excused and sometimes justified, at how Dimitri defending his land against an invading force that has the explicit goal of conquering them is painted in the worst possible light. It’s a consistent tendency to put down every character that could even potentially make Edelgard look bad... so Claude was never going to escape this treatment forever, since he arguably makes Edelgard look the worst. Not because of what she did to him - that trophy is being valiantly fought by Dimitri and Rhea - but because of his actions and goals and accomplishments compared to hers.

Remember Edelgard’s supposed goals, according to her stans? Claude does them, with far more peaceful results. 

“Reform the Church” - Edelgard gets rid of it entirely in the majority of her endings and has it state-sanctioned if she does allow it to stay all the while actively persecuting the faithful in the Empire during the war, Claude always has the Church around and it is stated to be going through more natural reforms under Byleth and Seteth’s guidance and like the rest of the non-CF routes gives refuge to the said persecuted faithful. 

“Unify Fodlan” - Edelgard forcefully unites Leicester and Faerghus back under Adrestia’s banner and erases their cultures while doing so, Claude unites Leicester, Faerghus, and Adrestia under a new banner (the United Kingdom of Fodlan) with no explicit mention of the erasure of the former nations (unlike “the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and the Church of Seiros both vanished from the people’s memories” like in CF’s ending narration). 

“Reveal the truth of Fodlan’s history” - Edelgard only tells a “truth” that goes directly against everything established by the game’s foreshadowing and never looks farther into what she assumes to be true, Claude finds the actual truth and does so by asking Rhea, someone who would for sure know the truth of what happened (all while risking the chance of her blowing away his previous assumptions of what’s been happening)

“Reveal the truth of Fodlan part 2″ - Edelgard/CF has multiple instances that reveal that portions of history are being deliberately covered up (Dorothea/Edelgard endings revealing censorship, Ferdinand/Byleth endings revealing certain battles not being recorded “ History books extol Ferdinand's success as a lord of his territories, but they do not make mention of the hard-fought battles he endured alongside his wife. Thus, half of his life's work is lost to time”), no mention of such things happening in Claude/VW’s endings

“Better relations with Almyra” - this is a throwaway line in Edelgard’s story that is completely optional and easy to miss as well as never appearing in any of her endings whatsoever (as well as any mention of bettering foreign relations), this is Claude’s entire goal which he is stated and even somewhat shown to have accomplished in the course of his story

“Looking out for the weak” - Edelgard intentionally strips the weak of support by taking away most any semblance of a church and explicitly states that the weak will inevitably learn how to grow strong by themselves, Claude acknowledges the Church’s importance to the people even if he personally doesn’t like religion and explicitly believes that strength is found by relying on, opening up to, and believing in friends and close ones

“Looking out for the weak, part 2″ - Edelgard explicitly states that she is completely willing to sacrifice her men as well as the people of Fodlan as a whole in order to achieve a greater good and then goes on to endanger her people, Claude explicitly states that such methods are too bloody and goes on to go out of his way to protect the people through evacuation or by placing himself in front of them or keeping them out of the fighting entirely

“Achieving a peaceful Fodlan” - The majority of Hubert’s endings reveal the need to constantly spy on the populace and/or put down rebellions/assassination attempts, the only mention of something similar occurring in VW is putting down Imperial loyalists + TWS’ attempts to disrupt the peace

“Wanting help from others” - Edelgard never attempts to reach out a hand in friendship to anyone at any point of the game, Claude tries multiple times to do so with Dimitri and actually succeeds in doing so in AM (not to mention him giving his help to and asking for help from the Church in non-CF routes)

This is just what I can readily think of off the top of my head, but we see that Claude manages to accomplish much of what Edelstans say Edelgard wants to do with better results, and that’s not even getting into how Claude needs no “softening” from Byleth in order to be a more approachable person, how he never initiates fighting towards Faerghus (as in, not the Kingdom army but the nation itself, unlike Edelgard) and never tries to conquer it whatsoever (again, unlike Edelgard), how he keeps his word and assists in helping Rhea despite not liking or trusting her unlike how Edelgard claims to want to make peace with Rhea despite thinking that her and her kind need destruction, how Claude mourns the deaths of his friends and allies while Edelgard says nothing if any of her friends and allies die (even Hubert, someone she’s known for close to 20 years, one of the longest relationships of the academy students’ circle. she says nothing of his passing) save for Bernadetta whom she can set on fire, and, again, other things that aren’t coming to my right off the cuff. He makes her look horrible

And, well, ya know what that means. Claude’s actions can’t be actually good, because they make Edelgard, the hero of 3H, look bad, so there has to be some kind of catch everywhere. 

Claude bringing in Almyran reinforcements, with the approval of the Alliance’s most renown general, to help secure Fort Merceus in a more secure way (and is actually shown to have possibly actually helped in pulling off the ruse, seeing how SS tried the same thing without them and failed)? Him doing the same in some of his endings, where he sends Almyran forces to help settle the Imperial revolts that are happening? This is actually him trying to invade Fodlan, sending Almyran forces as a show of force and establish Almyra’s superiority over Fodlan, not him showing that Almyra wishes to help Fodlan reform so that their centuries long feud can finally begin to be properly set aside and allow for positive change to occur between the two countries.

Claude keeping the Alliance out of the war? This is actually him biding his time to strike back against both countries so that he can win the war and he only succeeds if he manages to trick Byleth and the Church (and Dimitri, in AM) into helping him, not him recognizing that the Alliance is weak even if fully united (let alone in the divided state they’re in) and wanting to keep his people as far away from the war as possible.

Claude giving the leadership of Fodlan to Byleth? This is actually him giving an ambitionless puppet rulership so that he can control Fodlan through them (even though even pre ts he doesn’t believe Byleth has no ambitions and will full on deny the belief that they don’t) and not him putting his faith in Byleth that they will be able to rule Fodlan justly

Claude showing concern over his friends’ wellbeing? This is actually him only trying to make sure his “tools” are kept up nicely, not him genuinely caring about those around him.

Claude coming across as insensitive in his Jeralt’s diary scene? This is actually proof/a hint of Claude’s true persona as a manipulative sociopath, not a genuine fuck up on his end (or, if you want to be nicer, a look into how he himself deals with traumatic events, though that’s up for interpretation so not the main point)

Claude saying that he wants to be supreme ruler of the world to Edelgard? This is actually him outright revealing his plans and showing regret that Edelgard managed to thwart him.

Oh, and we can’t forget how Claude actually wanted to wage war himself and was only stopped by Edelgard, and how he stole all of the progress Edelgard was making in changing Fodlan’s society, and how he never would have been able to do anything without Edelgard, and how him not siding with Edelgard is proof that he never wanted the best for Fodlan, and how the warmongering Almyrans would never want to make peace with Fodlan with that being more proof of Claude’s “true” ill intentions since he’d totally know that’d be the case

The second to last point being, of course, the only time you should take Claude at face value. And again, these are just the points that readily come to my mind as of right now. 

Like I said, there was no chance in hell Claude was going to stay in r/Edelgard’s good graces, given how so much of his character directly shits on Edelgard’s. Friendship ended with r/Edelgard, now Dimitri and Rhea are Claude’s best friends.

[daneesoro]

Hi! Sorry if this question is invasive but what are you're thoughts on atheism and leaving the church? I'm genuinely curious it's nice to have discussions with people about these sorts of subjects!

ayy though I still can't make sense on how everything can come from nothing, i have more respect for atheists than liberal Christians since they act accordingly to what they believe.

I mostly say harsh things towards people who claim to be Christians cause atheists are outside the body while believers are IN the body of Christ. of course I'll be rebuking you. better than to let you fall and experience a worst death than unbelievers

Christians who don't obey His commandments are better off never hearing the Gospel at all

Revelation 3:15-16

"‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."

/believers who genuinely tasted the Lord and yet still chose to follow their own desires will have more severe punishment than those who never did.

2 Timothy 4:3-4 ESV

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

2 Peter 2:20-22 CJB

if they have once escaped the pollutions of the world through knowing our Lord and Deliverer, Yeshua the Messiah, and then have again become entangled and defeated by them, their latter condition has become worse than their former. It would have been better for them not to have known the Way of righteousness than, fully knowing, to turn from the holy command delivered to them. What has happened to them accords with the true proverb, "A dog returns to its own vomit." Yes, "The pig washed itself, only to wallow in the mud!"

/so many Christians get one encounter and think they're good so they never talk to Him again. then they naturally look for people or sources that will tell them what they wanna hear instead of going to Yeshua. it's dangerous and they don't even realize their hardening their hearts till its worse than before

/Now unless you mean atheists that never did have an intimate encounter with Yeshua, I don't got much to say cause its your decision. Still wish youd come to Him before you get to the point of desperation and hurt. I don't want people coming to Christ through trauma cause it gets challenging. the enemy will remind you of it to torment you. Of course Yeshua can heal anything but innocence can't be restored.

so I don't blame atheists for not wanting to follow, Christianity is harder than what people claim to be. if youre of the world, you're an enemy of God. not to say u have to be a weirdo but you will be set apart. to not go with what most of the world thinks is right. Its why were called to be followers of Christ, it means to experience the hatred and hurt He experienced.

John 15:18-19

/of course there's joy and peace, freedom from trauma, addiction, suicide etc but unless you're half in and half out, you won't experience the fulfillment Christ offers

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” -Matthew 5:11

being a Christian means you need to care more about people than caring about what they think of you. and laying yourself down for the sake of others, just as Yeshua the Messiah did

now for my fave verse

Matthew 16:24-26 ESV

/idrk what you meant by my thoughts on atheism, cause all I know is they don't believe in the existence of God but believe in the evolution and the big bang. I don't like debunking these things on an art blog of all places but I know multiple scientists have claimed that the arrangement of planets, how even the tiniest details are placed in a way that balances the habitability of the living things on Earth. How many mention that there is a creator (but still not choosing to use the term God)

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?