#or does that only exist in the liberal mind palace?

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Fuck this fucking timeline

Haha. Oh, the NYT was overreacting. Democrats don't need to nominate Mitt Romney to reach across the aisle and pick up more moderate fascist votes, Harris can do it. Look at her go.

Lincoln Project bullshit. Let me put it this way, were I to hear a knock at the door and find a Republican who will not vote in lockstep for more fascism standing out there, I would be walrus-level surprised. I think a fairy would have an easier time of it.

I'm also losing my faith in the existence of Democrats who will not vote in lockstep for fascism-in-a-blue-hat. There must be SOME, but the majority don't like them. Why oh why can't these morally-superior/bankrupt leftists understand that resistance is conditional? I dunno, folks. I had a hard time responding to being browbeaten into submission, even when my parents could deprive me of food, sleep and safety. I guess I'm just contrary.

The Republican establishment doesn't like Trump. We've known this. He's loyal to no one and he won't stop saying the quiet part loud. That doesn't mean they won't vote for everything he wants, because they want that shit too. The tiny spark of humanity that says they shouldn't is drowning in their lust for power, their ignorance, and their fear. Any support that Harris wrings out of them is gonna evaporate the instant she tries to do anything to make a positive difference - even if it's fucking Republican policy like Romneycare. They don't want Trump, but they have no interest in making Democrats look good. They want the next Republican to walk away with all the marbles. They're betting she'll help line them up, and they can block her from making a play to take any amount that matters in the meantime.

Quoth Timon of Lion King: ...And everybody's okay with this? DID I MISS SOMETHIN HERE?

These guys can't be both a threat to democracy and your friends with different opinions who deserve a compromise. There can be no "unity" with the anti-democracy party if you want the democracy to continue. Of course, if you want something other than democracy, you can team up and go for it.

And, I say this knowing it would only scare moderates into wanting lockstep voters even more, if they saw it. Look! That one wants standards and accountability! Even when we need to win to save democracy!

*sighs, shakes head* What democracy, you guys? What democracy are you gonna save this way? For how long?

[theintrovertbean]

Hi! I hope your summer is going well!Can we pretty please get some submissive Nadia headcanons?

Hello Anon! Thank you, it's been alright. I hope you are well!

So we all want to top and dom Nadia, huh? I knew I was not the only one. Not sure if I did a good job with this one because I kinda feel like something is missing. I might add a thing or two later.

Anyway. Enjoy!

Submissive!Nadia headcanons

Listen. Nadia might seem like a dom. She is mommy as fuck and always in control. But once she is a dom!MC's good hands; it's over. She is completely baby girl. Well, at least when she is subbing.

The easiest way to make Nadia sub is by teasing her. By teasing her, I mean doing it until she's begging MC to do something, anything.

Nadia knows that MC would be a good dom, but she doesn't think that she would be a good sub. Wrong. It doesn't matter why she has never subbed for anyone else until MC came into the picture, but good gayness, her mind is blown after their first session.

Who would have thought that being on the submissive end could be this amazing? She is usually in charge when it comes to everything, so the first time she subs for MC, she feels liberated and completely satisfied (assuming MC allowed her to come.)

And if MC wants her to sub again? Count her in.

Nadia might need some time to warm up to certain ideas, such as her being tied up. Giving up control is not always easy, and this is a huge change for Nadia. Still, she is keeping an open mind.

She knows that she is a strong woman and that even her presence can make people feel intimidated. Therefore, Nadia is a powerful sight even when she is on her knees with her hands tied behind her back. Those crimson eyes scream dominance. And yet, MC has the power to make her submit (but only MC, and she lets them know that.)

Still, tying her up soon becomes a must because otherwise, when she is being pleasured, her hands are everywhere. Tangled in MC's hair, gripping the sheets, holding onto the headboard, etc. She may or may not end up scratching MC unless those pretty hands are bound.

Being called a good girl is something that Nadia never thought she'd enjoy until, during one session, it accidentally slipped out of MC's mouth. But she is a good girl.

The Countess's work is a hard and tiring job, so Nadia needs to blow off some steam pretty often. What else could ease the tension from her body than making her come until she forgets her name and her voice is hoarse? The Countess needs to be fucked and overstimulated. It's not an order. It's a plea.

Nadia begging MC to please fuck her 💦💦💦💦💦

Speaking of begging. Edging Nadia is definitely an easy way to get her to beg. She tends to be quite needy, and MC can use that against her.

She has such long, gorgeous hair. Not pulling it would be a shame, and she always moans a bit louder when MC does it.

Nadia loves it when MC presses her against the wall, then tells her to be quiet and eats her out, knowing that she will have trouble containing those sweet moans. Bonus points if it happens in a public place, such as the streets of Vesuvia or the palace hallways, where they could get caught at any time.

The tongue and fingers combo is her ultimate favorite, but she really enjoys toys too.

When something is wrong, she lets MC know without hesitation. They agreed on a safe word or action beforehand, and she's not shy about using it (as it should be.)

There are certain things that she definitely won't do (at least not at first,) and she has to discuss those things with MC before anything happens. Never, ever slap her face. That's gonna make her angry for AT LEAST a week, and she might even consider ending the relationship. Spanking her ass is occasionally allowed. She is not getting her face fucked (whether MC is amab or afab. Strapons exist, and some people might be into that.) She doesn't want anything too painful or unpleasant.

Generally, Nadia is quite good at following orders and rarely needs to be punished. She really is a good girl.

Gentle aftercare with lots of hugs, praises, kisses, and cuddles ❤ She loves it when they take a bath, and MC washes her hair and then lets her relax in their arms.

Nadia lying in MC's arms with her head against their chest while she is a hot, satisfied, trembling mess 😍

She is the little spoon after subbing.

[forbidden-sorcery]

Since the European 'Enlightenment' era revolution has often replaced religion as the glimmering hope for many idealistic and struggling peoples. Power is assumed to be located in the ultimately-replaceable palaces and barracks, which simply need seizing or, in more radical minds, dismantling. But power is much more complicated and insidious than that, having no single centre that can be overthrown in isolation. An examination of the history of 'revolution', which in the past has exclusively led to further hierarchical brutality and coercion into strikingly similar work under new masters (and pretty indistinguishable in its impact on non-human life), may show us the trap that this mentality sometimes sets. In fact it can easily be more accustomed to the continuation of blind faith by other means than a practice of meaningful liberation. Every revolution to date has centred around the distribution and use of power, to be wielded over the individual or community by whatever national/religious/'proletarian' regime which as anarchists we seek to destroy along with all other domesticating social institutions.                  Revolution, even when not presented to us as a fixed program such as that which the bureaucratic Left salivate over, presupposes a generalised popular rebellion with some coherent values – a conscious 'awakening' of 'the masses' for the imposition of a new order of some kind following the disposition of the old. (Max Stirner once commented that Revolution tends toward new arrangements, whereas insurrection leads us to not let ourselves be arranged, but to organise ourselves, and does not set its hopes on future arrangements.) The obvious remoteness of this situation (of a coherent mass consciousness that is – of course rebellion and subversion exist at all times) leads cheerleaders of The Revolution (the only, singular, definitive Revolution) to browbeat insurgents who won't wait for the mystical ripe conditions that allow the glorious awakening to proceed before pitting their own refusal against that which dominates them. Aside from the blatant authoritarianism of any external force dictating 'the moment to act' for freedom, we think that this highlights a glaring contradiction with our purposes: we aren't interested in leading The People into some bright new global future where we all agree and think as one. We don't want 'power for the masses', we want to destroy all power, and for those masses to dissolve into individuals who are masters of their own lives. We want to finish with civil society.

Return Fire (issue 1)

[skxrbrand]

Ulthuan, Palace of the Arch-Tempter

This isn't the warp.

It's the first thought he has, his long disparate consciousness finally gain some semblance of...something. Even thinking is difficult, not as he recalls it. Worse, there's something preventing him from fully grasping his thoughts. Two somethings. One is unfamiliar, but snaps easily enough with the sheer force of his will. It is weak, pliable, and subsumed. But the other is more like him. Like the restless, roiling waves of the warp. Hard to grasp, harder to contend with.

But it a small mercy, however unintended, for no sooner does the first barrier snap is he subjected to the full weight of existence. Bone, organs, skin, and all the sensations that came with. They fell upon him all at once and he convulsed as they did, gasping like a drowning man even though there had been no water.

The next thing he felt was pain. That had been familiar. His response to it had been instinct, the mortal form he wore seizing and swinging blindly towards where the foe lie. Talons erupted from soft rounded fingertips, slicing through daemon-flesh. Blood, death, an enemy vanquished. Yes. This he knew and so he swung again, not in defense, but malice. Blood would give him strength, give him clarity--

More flesh glommed onto him. Not his own, but of other beings. Impossibly smooth, pleasantly fragrant. It become harder to think, it-- it was them. The Keepers of that second barrier, the fetters on his very mind. If only he could throw them off, he could--

--

" -- Quickly! Bring the fiends! Down the bastard!" Alluress Fy'tiin shrieked to her sisters, watching in alarm as the Red Sage she was charged to watch suddenly overcame the delicate array of carvings placed liberally within his very hide. He was near-to overcoming her daemonettes too, six exalted maidens of slaanesh who fought viciously with the half-mortal.

Next to them was Zyssa, her rival and sister, dead on the ground. It had been her turn to watch the Bloodkin and Zy's attentions had always been sadistic. Many of the designs written with blades and knives across his skin were her own doing and today he sought to repay for them by tearing her throat.

Fy'tiin's vengeance for her kin would've been swift, but there was something different about Ulf now. The glyphs his body, formerly little darker than his skin, now glew an angry red. To even be near them was painful and not in a way she enjoyed. The Alluress did not envy her sisters, screaming as they held the prisoner and when the Fiends of Slaanesh finally did arrive, even they were hesitant to approached. Spooked like great, misshapen horses they did as they were bid with their stingers, stabbing and dumping their venomous output into the half-mortal's skin.

Nothing. Fy'tiin called for more fiends. Better fiends. Blissbringers; a pack of them. Between them all enough venom to make a Bloodthirster comatose if not outright dead. Ulf, who had fought to his feet by now, was merely groggy. Stumbling too and from on it's hooves, a curious mixture of confused and angry, but not a whiff of fear.

Only then did Fy'tiin feel comfortable enough to bring her chitinous claw down about his head, cuffing him into back into unconsciousness with one solid blow. He dropped, around him, more had died. All of her exalted sisters. One of the fiends had even been maimed, the poor creature mourning the loss of it's tail and one pincer. The others began the circle, angry and vengeful just as she, but they had merely the intelligence of beasts. Fy'tiin stopped them with a word, then shooed them away with another.

Still trembling with emotion, she called to the nearest subodrinate.

" Secure him. Our deepest cells, our strongest wards. Cut his hamstrings, ruin the tendons in his arms." She answered. " And you--"

She selected the next nearest daemonette to her.

" -- Inform our lord what's happened."

[lingshanhermit]

Lingshan Hermit: How We Make Excuses for Ourselves

When we find ourselves feeling uncomfortable with a viewpoint, if we deeply observe our inner selves, we will find that the viewpoint has touched on one of our sore spots. Therefore, we must oppose it to maintain our sense of superiority. However, few people have the ability to deeply observe their own motives. Usually, when we find a viewpoint that makes us very angry, we will criticize it instead of observing what exactly caused us to feel uncomfortable with it. There are many such cases. For example, when I used to eat meat, if I saw someone promoting the benefits of vegetarianism and listing various examples of how eating meat does not conform to the Dharma, I would feel very uncomfortable. Next, I would oppose the holder of this viewpoint. I would come up with various reasons to prove that there is no necessary relationship between eating meat and liberation. I would tell the other person that many people in Tibetan Buddhism also eat meat, and they have also achieved attainments. Just because you don't eat meat doesn't mean you're better at practice than them.

Of course, my motive was definitely not to prove that there is indeed no necessary relationship between eating meat and liberation. My motive was only to find a reasonable excuse for my own meat-eating behavior. Each of our minds hides a defense lawyer. Usually, when we want to make excuses for our wrong behavior, he will appear. He will tell us that what we are doing is not as unreasonable as others think, that we are right and others are wrong.

However, this situation no longer exists because I no longer eat meat. If I see such an article again, I will be very calm and have no desire to refute it.

The purpose of me giving this example is to prove that it is a very difficult thing for a person to look at problems objectively. We often oppose something simply because it hurts us, not because we think it is incorrect. Because the Dharma is very profound, the Buddha often says things that seem self-contradictory to the layman, so it is not difficult for us to find examples from the sutras to support our viewpoints. Whether you are for or against, you can use the Buddha's words to prove your point. This is also why Buddhists argue more. For example, on the issue of attaining enlightenment, a layperson who has no intention of becoming a monastic will basically hold the view that lay and monastic practice are the same. If they admit that enlightenment cannot be attained as a layperson, it would be a great hurt to them, and their practice would lose its meaning. Many ordained teachers also do not like the view that "enlightenment can also be attained as a layperson" very much, because if so, the significance of their ordination would be greatly diminished. Of course, it is not impossible for a very small number of people to truly maintain complete objectivity.

In the history of Buddhism, it is not difficult to find examples of laypersons attaining enlightenment, but there are many more examples of monastics attaining enlightenment. This at least illustrates one problem, which is that the possibility of attaining enlightenment as a layperson is not non-existent, but undoubtedly, attaining enlightenment as a layperson will encounter more difficulties and demonic obstacles than attaining enlightenment as a monastic. Attaining enlightenment as a layperson is a very difficult thing. Otherwise, there should be far more laypersons who attained enlightenment in history than monastics who attained enlightenment, and the Buddha should have continued to stay in the palace and continue to be a good father, good husband, and good son instead of taking a bowl and traveling around to teach people. Of course, this does not mean that attaining enlightenment as a monastic is as simple as making a cup of coffee. Everything is only relative. Relative to being a layperson, we believe that for most people, it is easier to attain enlightenment as a monastic.

A person who has truly renounced for the great matter of life and death has vowed to give up all worldly pleasures. The merit and determination they possess are far beyond that of ordinary laypersons. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that there are lay bodhisattvas who have the same determination, but only we ourselves know whether we are such lay bodhisattvas. It is a very foolish thing to deceive oneself on this issue, because sooner or later we will have to face the reality that we are not such people. If we lie to others that we are lay bodhisattvas, then the situation is not so serious. At least we know that we are lying, and this is self-knowledge. If we even deceive ourselves, then we are truly incurable.

There have been too many teachings on the necessary conditions for attaining enlightenment. Becoming a monastic is of course the ideal choice. However, in our era, many people regard becoming a monastic as a very terrible thing. For many people, becoming a monastic means that you can no longer do the things you want to do. You can no longer have a girlfriend, have sexual behavior, or often go home to visit. This will make your parents feel very sad. Nowadays, for most people, monastic practice is not realistic. However, do not be discouraged because of this. The great Buddha will not give up on anyone. For this group of people, he allows you to practice as a layperson. You can have a girlfriend, get married, and often go home to visit. Your parents will not feel sad. You only need to take some time every day to practice. This is the greatest skillful means in Buddhism.

In Mahayana Buddhism, to attain enlightenment, one must have renunciation, bodhicitta, and the view of emptiness. Whether lay or monastic, if one does not have these, it is hard to imagine the possibility of attaining enlightenment. I must admit with great shame that I myself do not have renunciation. As for compassion, I have a little. Sometimes I don't go out for several months and practice every day. At this time, I will accumulate a little renunciation, as well as the secret joy of having a little renunciation. However, the good times don't last long. When I go out, the little renunciation I have painstakingly accumulated is reset to zero by the outside world. Many things arouse my desires and pull at me. It seems that it would be better for me to shave my head and find a cave to learn from Milarepa.

For some people, practicing as a layperson can better shoulder the responsibility of universally liberating sentient beings. However, we often find that those who support lay practice are often just clinging to various things in the mundane world. They don't want to leave their homes. We can probably judge from this that this person does not have renunciation. If he is not even willing to leave his own home, how could he think of leaving the three realms? Of course, in the past, some great bodhisattvas manifested as laypersons. They did not leave home in order to better and more conveniently use the identity of a layperson to liberate sentient beings. But let's not be deceived by ourselves. We often think that we maintain the identity of a layperson in order to more conveniently universally liberate sentient beings, but in fact, we are very afraid of becoming a monastic. Of course, only we ourselves know whether we are the former or the latter. We must be responsible for our motives. If we are just afraid of becoming a monastic and dress ourselves up as a lay bodhisattva, then our prospects are not good. This is something that each of us should pay attention to.

This article was first published on March 3, 2006.

灵山居士：我们是怎么给自己找借口的

[shine-of-aldhani]

This post is going to be fandom-critical and Loki series-appreciative, so get out and block/unfollow/whatever while you can if that's not your cup of tea.

There is a trend in many fandoms of characters who are in opposition to the hero (villains, antiheroes etc) that is critical of the "redemption through death" scenario. The latest that comes to mind is Star Wars, but there are countless examples. The typical in-story narrative is that the villain had committed too many crimes and there is no place for him in the new world where the heroes won, so he's killed off - usually not by heroes but by tragic circumstances that allow him some positive light before the end (Loki in Thor2, Ben Solo in SW). Fans of the character argue that a fully realised, slow redemption would be an awesome storyline, and that it'd be both interesting and refreshing to look at the life post wrongdoing.

So far, no mainstream media has ever done a fully realised, psychologically grounded redemption storyline. Hollywood go-to idea to rehabilitate the villain is to make the villain useful to the heroes and ultimately just "forget" about the initial transgression. The initial bad deed is never looked back on, addressed or analysed except maybe as a funny oneliner. Because addressing shit is hard... And also because, as Loki series has shown us, the fandom doesn't really want to see the true psychologically grounded redemption storyline.

For the Loki series is exactly this: the first time a character must face uncomfortable truths about themselves, to better themselves. This is a process that isn't nice. It's a beatdown after a beatdown. It's humiliating, soul-destroying, there is much kneeling and grovelling and unflattering names. The character isn't shown as pretty and composed, he isn't allowed to wear nice clothes that give him a feeling of power. He feels useless, powerless and messes up a lot, for his self esteem is gone. He doesn't strut around showing off magic feats and yes, almost everyone around him is shown in better light. Because that's what a true redemption storyline is like. It's a deconstruction of the ego. Eventually, it will lead to a stronger and better sense of self, but first we must crawl on the floor. And the fans, who usually overidentify with the character and his background, just cannot take seeing him, and by extension themselves, in that light.

So what does the fandom do?

1) Insist that Loki does not need a redemption storyline. Because he was tortured by Thanos (this is fanon), because he was influenced by scepter (this is still mostly fanon but has a bit more substance), because he was emotionally abused by Odin (this is almost canon). Now before you crucify me - these are my favourite fanons, my go-to fanfiction, I adore them all. But. There is absolutely nothing incorrect or malicious with the Loki series going "You know what? Loki still carved out that eyeball, and I am not going to sit here and "address" the fact that Odin emotionally neglected him, because that's already been shown and is in the past. I am going to postulate that Loki, deep in his core, is ashamed of himself for his deeds, and that bringing up Odin isn't going to solve that shame, and explore how Loki can move forward from there. The story isn't not going to be about Odin or Thanos, who are both gone and dead, it's going to be about Loki -who is the one who gets to live with the consequences."

2) Insist that the series hates Loki and was written specifically to humiliate him. This ties back to my thesis that the fandom simply does not want to see what a true psychological work of a redemption storyline looks like, for the ego beatdown is the essential part of it. This is how the story of Ben Solo would have had to look like, had he survived Star Wars. This is how Thor 2 would have looked like, had we been following Loki and not Thor: Loki being chained by the same soldiers he commanded, being stripped of his armour, being led down the rainbow bridge and into the palace. In that movie, it would have been worse because he had personal history with all these people. In the series he gets TVA's indifferent approach, which should incidentally be easier to swallow.

3) Insist that Loki is not the protagonist of his own series. Apart from this not making an ounce of sense, this reading comes from the idea that only physical deeds are valid storytelling material. Sylvie is stronger than Loki, hence she's the protagonist. Mobius is in the position of power, hence he is more important than Loki. All the while Loki is out there, doing enormous self-work, changing by the hour and showcasing more stable coping techniques. But he's not glamorous while doing it and he's kneeling a lot, so it cannot be that the writers actually like him and wish him to do well in the long run.

4) Insist that the new Loki is OOC and give him a plain, insulting new nickname to differentiate him from the beloved and cool old Loki. The one who liberated eyeballs while clad in impeccable clothes because he was terrified of Thanos. Or the one whose non-existent coping mechanisms almost made him kill his own beloved brother in despair. The one who had plans upon plans and was always so ready for betrayal that he had no friends on his own. The one who would surely glamour awesome clothes onto himself to avoid signalling any weakness. The one who was incredibly high strung and could never allow any weakness. You guys want that Loki back? Ok, that's fair. That guy was deeply damaged, and very interesting to watch. But then, a story that takes these aspects from him (and make no mistake, all of them are maladaptive and trauma induced - all -of - them) isn't hating on Loki, or making him dumb, or exists to hurt you personally. It allows him to overcome his internal hurdles, lower his defences and eventually arrive to a better place.

So here I rest my thesis: actual well written redemption stories, of which Loki is the frigging first (and how groundbreaking is that) aren't really wanted by the fandom. Most fans would rather whitewash or cocoon themselves in the trauma aspect, leaving the actual responsibility and consequences out of it. Which is fine as a comping mechanism, fiction is escapism after all, you're all perfectly valid... But there should at least be enough self-awareness to differentiate between a good story that's uncomfortable/too heavy for you and a bad story with evil writers who either have no idea about Loki or specifically want to punish his fans.

The Loki series isn't the latter. It might not be the fantasy escapism most would have preferred, but it has a very specific and respectable goal and it's going about it in a grounded way which is - actually - fully respecting of Loki as a person. I swear that the series sees him as more capable of doing the work he needs to do than his own fans.

[morihaus]

Apotheosis

Winds howl outside of the Imperial Palace. Belharza, son of the Emperor Alessia, sits alone in his chair in the chamber of the council. The weather has not been the only thing weighing on the city of Rumarium; for days now the Emperor has been poor of health, the toll of all her life's toil and struggle finally arriving to meet her on her deathbed, the somber hand of Arkay, the bitter kiss of Kyne.

Twelve hours hence, she has been dead. Her son survives her as only child and heir to her throne. The city mourns her, and as word spreads, all of Cyrod mourns its mother, its liberator and caretaker, its Emperor for 23 years- just 23, such a pittance when stacked up to the tyranny of the Ayleid hegemony, which to men seemed to stretched beyond the farthest point of remembrance, so many lives ago that the time before exists only in myth. The First-crowned Queen-ut-Cyrod deserved better than this. Belharza's mother deserved better.

He feels a breeze blow in from behind him, a wind coursing through the marble halls of the palace, blowing his long dark hair over his shoulders. It is only wind, and then, footfalls on the floor, slow and heavy, in stark contrast to the flight of the wind. Belharza lifts his head and glances over his shoulder. A massive minotaur fills the doorway to the council chamber, long hair waving and curling down his shoulders like a sky of black clouds. His horns are tall and proud, wrapped with rings of gold and ebony, strung with strings of hawk's feathers. Two large wings are folded on his back. The cold wind blows behind him.

He regards his son with deep blue eyes, clouded and gray, belying his true age. The old bull looks weary. "Belharza." His voice is deep, carried and reverberated by the chambers even as he addresses him gently. He steps forward, his armor of fur and iron the only noise apart from his footsteps, and the gentle wind that surrounds him.

Belharza stands up from his seat. He meets the eye of Morihaus- he can see now why his mother has often remarked their resemblance with a melancholy smile, although his own hair does not roll like the clouds do, his own eyes do not hold the dangerous glimmer of lightning, nor does his form hold the foreboding rumble of thunder. He did, however, sprout a small pair of wings from an early age- too small to be useful, but just enough to be there. It is among the only things his father has ever given him.

"Father." Belharza speaks flatly, his mood dark, unfit for this meeting he had always dreamed of. He never knew Morihaus growing up, he'd taken flight from the Imperial City before he was born, something his mother had never been bitter over, and for the most part, he'd followed her line of thinking. He had often wondered, though, speaking with the clan of Morihaus- for he was a great uncle to many war chiefs and soothsayers- and hearing tales of his greatness, his good humor and passion for song, and he wondered too while speaking to the Paravanics who had fought alongside him and his mother, who spoke of him as a great general, savior of men, one who could clear a treeline with his voice- he wondered what it would be to meet his father, this mythical figure of his boyhood who so many grownups seemed to know.

He wondered, but he had never pictured the meeting like this.

Morihaus walked so that there was only a small distance between the father and son, and then bowed his head- in sympathy, in apology, in reverence, Belharza could not say.

But he says this: "She is gone." And when his father does not move, he continues. "She has left us. Gone to join you, I suppose." His words are without venom, he states them as a fact he wishes to grow used to. His father raises back up to meet him. His features are set in a worried frown. "I am sorry, Belharza." He breathes into the room as a whisper. "For my loss?" He asks plainly. "Or, do you wish to amend your own absence from my life?" His face does not change. "I should like to apologize on both accounts, dear Bel."

"Did you come to see her?" Belharza asks, neutral once again.

Morihaus nods. "I felt her time approach and made haste." The face of a minotaur is not extraordinarily emotive to a man, but to a man-bull, like Belharza, he can interpret the subtleties, the shame painted on his face, the guilt in his eyes. "In service to my Mother Kyne, I have carried many souls of great warriors on wing to her realm, or to the realm of Shor... it was understood between us, your mother was a great warrior, an ardent follower of her ways, and she would have her place there. But when I arrived..." He becomes quiet, his full and melodious voice withdrawing back down his throat, filling his lungs up heavy with bitter words.

Belharza makes no motion to speak. He only looks at his father, expectantly. He continues, eventually.

"What I witnessed is... difficult to explain. You were present- did you see? As she passed?" Morihaus asks. Belharza nods. "I was there." He pauses. "...I may have seen, something. I see many things that others do not. Mother always said you were to thank for that, your divine blood." The old bull nods at him. "Aye, that is the truth. The mortal and the divine, they see things differently. On that balcony, at her side... he arrived before me."

"The Crusader." He says, half-questioningly. "Pelinal."

A huff of hair blows out from Morihaus's snout. "It looked that way. But Pelinal is dead. He was torn asunder in this tower, he spoke to me as his spirit passed into a place I could not follow. And this... apparition, in it, I did not sense his spirit. Did you hear?" Belharza nods quietly, Morihaus continues. "What he spoke of, the et'ada, the beginning place, the movements of the heavens... in life, he never did say much of the gods. He served them, and I knew him as kin, but he has always held a distaste for spiritual matters, spoken in mortal tongues. I cannot fathom why he came to Paravania, nor what he meant to say."

"He took her," Belharza says, glancing to the floor. "I saw- I thought I saw. It looked as though he carried her up, up into the heavens."

"He steals mine own honor." Morihaus snorts, almost laughs. Then, again, he grows serious. "My uncle was never one to covet in life. He hungered, he wanted, but he did not covet that which was another's. He would have nothing to do with Perrif's soul, nothing before my mother and I."

His son looks back up to him. "Where... where did he take her? To the halls of Shor?"

Morihaus shakes his head. "I have been myself- Pelinal's spirit does not reside there. It cannot reside there. I would have carried him myself if he could." He hangs his head some, recalling the passing of his uncle, and finding himself on complicated ground betwixt mundane and immortal once again. "I have thought on it in these past years. At times, I blew through the great fields and forests, delved into the deep oceans, soared to the highest points in the clouds, hunting his spirit, without luck. I am wise enough to confess my stubborn nature, for divine I may be, I am still a bull, and I hunted for long on my own before thinking to ask my mother."

Belharza tries to conceive of what his father says- the shape of a bull with the wings of a hawk, darting throughout all of creation to find a departed soul. He suspects it may be more complicated than that, some divine metaphor twisting around it, but then again, he recalls fondly-remembered stories his mother would share of Morihaus, his willfulness and the strange places it could take him- times he would cross over the Jerrals, travel half the continent while meant to be petitioning in Skyrim, to return to Cyrod and meet with her at night.

The image of his father, flighty and wild, turning over logs and stones searching for the lost Pelinal, it's almost enough to lighten his expression. But this is just his own mind wandering. Perhaps they are more alike than he knows.

"Understanding my mother is no mean feat," He says, regarding his son. "Strange as I must seem to you, know that to me, my divine parent is just as alien. I am her, but as am I my mortal mother, my mortal people, my mortal self, and some of her perceptions are all but lost on me. She told me little, she told that Pelinal had done what was needed of him, and to die with the revolution's victory was a good end... but as to his whereabouts, she said he was not her soul to keep." "Then whose?" Belharza asks. He is met with silence, frustrating silence. He asks more forcefully. "Whose? Where is my mother's soul? What did he do to her?" "He pulled her up- made her from mortal to spirit, so she might lay among the heavens forever. Queen-ut-Cyrod, brighter than the stars-" "I don't care for your poetry-" Belharza loudly asserts, his own voice now booming in the hall. "I don't care for your god-talk- dammit!" He turns to one side with a huff, boots clattering against the tiles of the chamber. He paces away from his father in no particular direction, approaching a column and glaring into it.

Morihaus looks on, forlorn. He sighs, and the breeze almost wraps itself around Belharza's shoulders as it tussles his hanging braids, like some form of comfort. "I'm sorry. This... is what I hope for, Bel, but whether it is the truth, I cannot say."

"What do I care?" Belharza shakes his head, clenching his fists at his sides. "Whether her spirit is in one place or another- she's gone, that's what has happened today, and that is the grief I will carry for the rest of my life. What is the point in wondering where she is? The realm of Kyne, of Shor, of Akatosh, it makes no difference, she is gone to me any way." His voice grows ragged as he chokes with tears, his eyes stinging with bitter sorrows. Though a grown man, he feels helpless like a child in the face of such a loss- his mother had been his world, and now the shadow of death had ripped her away from him, and she was gone, forever.

His father approaches him, but leaves a fair distance, just slight enough for his whispering voice to carry to him. "Do you remember what she told you, Bel, about me? When I was gone to you?" Belharza does not reply, only taking a breath as he remains fixed on the pillar in front of him. "...I am a spirit, Bel. I am more than my body, more than a man-bull. I am the skies and storms, the thunder; I am movement, I am the movements in the hearts of men, I am their battlecry; I am the wind in the rolling hills, blowing the grasses and flowers; I am the breeze in the canopy of the forest, swaying the branches; I am the gale upon the sea, the scent of it in your lungs, I am the very breath that you take." Belharza finally turns to face his father again, without expression, with tears on his face. Morihaus is not shaken from his words. "When a mortal dies, their spirit is released into a vast cosmos. They are gone from their lives, from their loved ones, but from there, there are many roads, countless paths that a soul can take... do you understand?"

He only receives an expectant look. Belharza's face lightens somewhat. There is hope in the winding words of Morihaus.

"Though I was forced to leave you, and could no longer walk this world as I had, I found my ways to you- to both of you. It has been, and will be forever, a great pain that I could not stay... but there are some ways in which my presence could be felt, some ways in which I was there all along." Morihaus steps forward, slowly raising his hand to brush Belharza's hair from his face, as gently as the breeze, as his own mother's hand. "Your mother will be gone as I was. You will feel her. She will still be with you."

---

Belharza was anointed Emperor before the Elder Council and the citizens of the Imperial City, including his divine father, who could not stay for long, but was pleased to see and know his son as a man, and content to answer the questions of the citizenry to the best of his ability, or at least his want.

The new emperor spends the first weeks of his reign still in mourning, but more hopeful for having spoken with his father and his other relatives, who gave him heart to imagine his mother at peace. He spends much of his days outdoors, honoring her memory in the gardens and outside the city walls, even beyond the shores of the Rumare and into the jungles. On one occasion, which would be a moment only for him to know and remember, he stumbles upon a field of flowers below a small hill. He finds it a good place to say his piece, and there he would speak to his mother, expressing his deepest affections and tearful goodbyes. All of the sudden, he feels drops of water landing on his bowed head, and he looks up to see a spring running from the rock, a spring which had most definitely not been there before. As though the land of Cyrod itself were weeping for him.

At this, Belharza only smiles knowingly.

[balioc]

Responding to this post, in a format that doesn't stick an enormous text wall on everyone's dashboard.

OK. To start with, this is super important:

“This is what we hold to be important because it’s tradition” is not, and has never been, the traditional outlook. It is, as we say, the traditionalist outlook. Or, if you prefer, the LARPer [derogatory] outlook. It is a bastardized, incoherent justification employed only by alienated midwit theorists who are desperately trying to hold onto something that they've already lost and never properly understood. And if you pretend that it is the animating spirit of conservatism, you will fail to understand actual conservatives, very badly -- both in the sense that you're not engaging with their good theorists who have meaningful things to say, and (even more importantly) in the sense that you won't understand the inchoate forces that are driving the rank and file.

The pious man does not pray to God because it is the way of his ancestors. He prays to God because God is good, because he wishes to be saved, because he is overcome with humility and gratitude in the face of his Maker.

The macho man does not hew to his traditional gender roles because they are traditional, and he values tradition so very much. He hews to his traditional gender roles because he wants to be a real man (and not a faggot), and he has a pretty clear picture in his mind of what that means.

When you say "people should do what is good for them," the conservative replies with: Yes, very true, people should do what is good for them. It is good for people to pray to God. It is good for men to be men and for women to be women. That is what goodness is, and if your measurements say otherwise, then your measuring stick is wrong. And he will probably add: But even if we use your warped atomized liberal measure, and just check whether people are happy and "fulfilled" -- which is, again, not actually the same as goodness -- the results of that measurement will still favor my program. It turns out that chasing after every whim doesn't actually make you happier, not in the long run, and being able to rely on the people around you living up to their proper social roles does make you happier. Your principles have created a world where it's normal for women to be mentally ill and normal for children to want to kill themselves; at what point do you admit failure?

And then you get into an argument over what "goodness" means and how you measure it, and soon enough you find that you have incompatible axioms, hooray.

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

If you give people the freedom to choose --

-- well, the results will depend a lot on where they started. No one exists in a vacuum, and there is no possible choice that is unfettered by the soul-defining pressures of society.

If you give Amish teenagers the freedom to choose their lifestyle, for example, they will overwhelmingly choose an Amish [extremely conservative] lifestyle rather than anything more modern or more liberal. That's exactly what rumspringa is. This is, in part, because rumspringa is kind of a cruel trick; if you take someone from a smotheringly-communitarian milieu and throw him into atomized modernity with no preparation, then surprise! it's likely to go very badly. But it's also because human beings spend their childhood, in large part, learning what they value -- what things like "goodness" and "beauty" and "admirable conduct" mean. If everything you're raised to value is exemplified by an Amish community, then the "English" world isn't going to measure up very well.

[SIDEBAR: Part of the reason that conservatism failed so badly on a cultural front, in the modern Westernized world, is that the mid-20th-century model of self-righteous capitalized conservatism was so corrupt and so hypocritical that it failed to provide good value even by its own standards. If you teach your kids to value being rich, they're going to leave your conservative community behind to pursue economic opportunity. If you teach your kids to care deeply about what the neighbors think, then when the neighbors start to disagree with you, your kids will too. Etc. In fairness to conservative intellectuals, most of them have realized by now how badly their immediate predecessors shit the bed on this front.]

If you start your people off in a liberalized milieu -- which is to say, with enormous freedom of choice, and very little guidance (or pressure) regarding what they should value --

-- then, yes, it's true, conservatism is going to fail super hard in the marketplace of ideas and lifestyles, virtually no one is going to buy what the trads are selling.

But in the long run, even in the medium run, whatever you value is going to fail just as hard.

Because the completely liberalized marketplace-of-ideas-and-lifestyle is an untended garden, an environment that optimizes ruthlessly for the most competitive memes, and nothing else. In the end it will give you heroin and porn and Cookie Clicker and Twitter dogpiles, and nothing else. Heroin and porn and Cookie Clicker and Twitter dogpiles are the things designed to scratch that basal human urge of [gimme stimulus], and nothing grand or glorious or sublime can match them on that front. All the things that lie beyond that, all the "interconnection and new knowledge and new experiences," all the cathedrals and palaces, all the wonders of science, all the works of art and literature that I would consider worth a damn, require

(a) having your values molded past the baseline of the greedy infant -- by community elders, by wise and clever teachers, by some weird book on which you imprinted, by something; and

(b) cultivating the art of letting those molded values override your basal click-the-cookie instincts.

At which point we start talking about how to do this, and also about which values are best, now that we're in the business of trying to shape people's values to begin with. And this is (at the most abstract level) the conversation with which conservatives can, plausibly, engage in a productive fashion.

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

On the object level, I don't think I actually disagree with you, particularly. One of the major problems with conservative ideologies is that their premises make them inflexible; whatever your program is, some portion of the population is going to end up saying "this is really really bad for me," and there are some legitimating myths and moral structures that allow you to work with those people, but "God said so" (etc.) just makes them into implacable enemies. And on an even object-ier level than that, I do in fact care deeply about individual flourishing, and I do think of the individual human mind as the measure of all things, and not having any safety valves for oddballs and deviants is super terrible.

But if you're going to wrestle with powers and principalities, they should be real ones, not shadow puppets.

[badbuddhism]

Emptiness negates the self.

Sunyata, emptiness of inherent existence or essence, is a negation of the self? Why? Because upon reflecting deeply, where do we find our "I"? Is the "I" in the mind? But where or what is the mind? The mind is not lasting, or permanent. Is the "I" in the body? But what in the body can we identify as lasting or permanent?

Is the "I" both the mind and body? But we have identified nothing permanent or lasting in either of them.

Is the "I" somehow something different to the mind or body? But where or what is this thing, and what possible relation could it have to mind and body, yet not be of them?

Finding nothing which is self-created or permanent, we are left with only temporal existence and not inherent existence.

Devotion negates the ego.

When our hearts well up with love and devotion, does the power of these energies seep inwards only to us? No! They show outwardly in our speech and behaviour, and positively affect everyone around us. Whether our loving devotion is to a bodhisattva, a Buddha, a loved one, a stranger, or the entirety of the universe, when we are full of devotion to the path and to life we have, by necessity, overridden our usual self-centred orientation towards life. Whether this devotion, this selfless love, occurs momentarily or endlessly is not the point. Each moment in devotion is as a beautiful block of stone in the building of a Palace for the Buddhas.

Awareness prevents identification.

We usually operate through the lense of "I am conscious of x" and yet, as the self-centeredness gives way to the other-centeredness, as the self is seen for what it is, our awareness does not lessen. In fact, it often open right up! When our mental focus is not so tightly knotted to our idea of a "self", it is free to expand to the beautiful immediacy of our momentary world. Consciousness, as is commonly understood in the west, is a function of the senses and mind - it is changeable and limited. Awareness, pure awareness, however, is unchanging. It has no filters, no preferences, no limits.

The conscious (and unconscious) experiences of life itself are known in awareness. We cannot see or hear or touch or taste or smell awareness; awareness cannot become a known subject within consciousness. Awareness is what we are. It has no characteristics and leaves no traces, though it can be said to be both luminous and empty. When we strip ourselves back to just this awareness, what is there to identify with?

Surrender prevents resistance.

Resistence, like desire, is one of the fundamental causes of our suffering. When we refuse to accept the reality of a moment, just as it is, we do not change the reality we only bring ourselves trouble. Acceptance of everything without preference or judgement is the way towards contentedness.

Now, this does not mean we must stand by and do nothing when we feel like something must be done or changed. It is not submissiveness or powerlessness! It is only once we have accepted the reality of a situation or moment that we can come to fully utilise our wisdom and compassion to decide upon proactive action. We accept everything, including the things we dislike or wish to change first, and then we move towards remedying them.

In perfecting all four states, completeness of being is found.

This all sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Hefty goals for us poor mortals. Luckily, the Dharma does not demand perfection in exchange for liberation. Were the Masters perfect? Can anyone actually be perfect? We need only hold these lessons in our hearts and minds with devotion in normal, everyday life. There is no failure, no achievements. Only a gentle winding path towards love and contentment.

[marginal-notes]

TLOK Episode One a.k.a. Korra immediately goes on a rampage

So, as mentioned, I’m finally getting around to watching The Legend of Korra with all of my terrible tastes and general thoughts. 

Don’t give me spoilers, my indignation will be funnier without them. 

What I Know About Korra Going In:

If the show can have all of Aang’s bending teachers still around for the audience’s nostalgic pleasure, Suki better be alive and kicking too or I am going to throw a fit

Technology progressed pretty intensely in ways that I will want to pick apart later

Listen, what the fuck is Republic City. Why. Why does this exist. Show you better answer me fast with why this exist for a legitimate in world reason that isn’t just: “The audience is a bunch of American kids and teenagers and we want to uphold the liberal ideals of democracy because of course that’s the motives of the victors after a global war of probably unprecedented scope despite like, Zero (0) indication that the idea of democracy was rattling around anyone’s heads in ATLA.” 

If this is the reason, I’m going to quit watching. Disgraceful. Disgusting.

Something involving anti-bender sentiment.

Something involving something called the Red Lotus which I am side-eyeing the shit out of 

Bloodbending?????

Spirit World shenanigans and Avatar backstory that’s on thin ice with me. 

Love triangles. UGH. TERRIBLE. WHY DOES MEDIA DO THIS. WHO FINDS THIS INTERESTING. PLEASE RAISE YOUR HAND SO YOU CAN EXPLAIN TO ME. 

Alright, here we go. 

WELL, 30 SECONDS IN AND I GOT MY WISH FOR AN EXPLAINATION ABOUT REPUBLIC CITY.

Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko transformed the Fire Nation colonies into the United Republic of Nations, a society where benders and nonbenders from all over the world could live and thrive together in peace and harmony.

Okay. I’m.... I’m going to withhold judgement for now until I watch like, literally more than 30 seconds to fully form my thoughts about this move. I THINK IT’S A DUMB MOVE AND IF THIS IS WHY PEOPLE KEEP HAVING FIRE NATION DEMOCRACY FICS I QUIT.

So. We get a panning shot into this city. Very urban city that’s the product of the industrialization and like whatever the hell that propaganda voice over is talking about. 

As a method of setting the scene and immediately letting the viewers feel and know the passage of time between ATLA and TLOK, I love this shot. There’s no mistaking this for being immediately after ATLA. We’re listening to one of Aang’s kids. There are skyscrapers. The Fire Nation palace in ATLA probably counted towards the architectural development towards urban skyscrapers, but that architecture is fully formed by TLOK. Brilliant. 

I'm the Avatar! You gotta deal with it!

What a cute brat. Her poor parents, oh my god. 

Also, is she supposed to be a prodigy. 

Again with immediately setting contrasts against ATLA. Very cool demonstration, extremely effective distinction between Aang’s journey around the world trying to find teachers and learning how to bend in the middle of a war vs. Korra at peacetime with a whole entire facility dedicated to her. 

Not sure about how I feel regarding the White Lotus’s presence. 

IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE KATARA????

That's your grandmother, Meelo.

Does he not visit his parents. It can’t be that hard to swing by for like. Yearly festivals if the Water Tribe has those. I don’t see why not. Maybe something for when the winter night ends, I can see that being festive. 

Tenzin do you like. Not call? Not write?? Sir???

Oh my god, Pema. I hope she really likes kids, despite how rowdy they are. 

Wait. How old is Tenzin. Thirties to forties? 

How old is Katara. 

Is this going to be a repeat of the Fire Nation royal miracle babies. 

I get that, but I don't think keeping me locked up in this compound like a prisoner is what he had in mind.

Going by the episode title, I bet we know what Korra has in mind. Speaking of this compound, where’s the Southern Tribe? The aerial shots look like it’s in the middle of nowhere. Is she so far removed that she doesn’t even spend time with the tribe she was born into? Cause that sure as hell wasn’t how Aang was raised. 

Honestly fascinating as these contrasts keep coming. The bizarre presence of the White Lotus. The way her teachers come to her instead of her seeking her teachers the way Aang and Roku did. 

The Avatar must have always been a special political figure, without any good contemporaries to our world, to be honest. Back in ATLA, we see that Roku isn’t beholden to Fire Nation citizenship - he seems to transcend that. And it honestly seems important that Roku and Aang went out to the world, experienced the other nations and their ways of life. I think Aang does have a line regarding this. 

Because Korra’s situation? Can easily turn into a nightmare, given the realities of what being the Avatar could easily mean. 

OKAY THIS SHIP. Very cool looking, very neat, I continue to love every visual manifestation of the passage of time between ATLA and TLOK. One small question. What’s with the rigging poles. 

(source)

To be fair, this is a battleship from the British navy, but aesthetically I think we can say this is a fair inspiration. From what I remember while researching the coal fic, the rigging and poles there serve no function. It’s aesthetical. At best, there’s a limited function, but it’s predominantly for aesthetics in the transition into the ships like the Titanic with no rigging at all. 

Which raises my question about WHY ON EARTH?? The Fire Nation navy in ATLA??? Were clearly way past this stage in design? Literally during Sozin’s time too??? Almost two hundred years before this current shot in TLOK? Why would the ship design regress like this??? The Water Tribe ships probably wouldn’t evolve into the designs that Europe used? Earth Kingdom ships would probably be more inspired by East Asian designs which also wouldn’t end up with this system for sails? 

Where does this aesthetic come from. 

IS THAT A CAR. 

....

.......

..........

I am not qualified at all for dissecting the potential social and cultural explanation for the western influenced aesthetics appearing. I am but an ignorant banana, I don’t know shit. 

.......

oooooooh this is going to slowly annoy me isn’t it.......... 

That will be twenty yuans.

[Jaws theme]

The city's huge. I bet we could find a place to rustle up something to eat.

You know, I’ve seen plenty of weird shit in Central Park and around NYC before. Korra, you are so unprepared.  

Are you tired of living under the tyranny of benders? Then join the Equalists!

Oh boy. Let’s.... let’s put a pin in this thought. I’ll come back to it once I know more about what’s going on. Because. This will either be fun. Or I’m going to have to create a second spite fic folder. Please, show, don’t give me reason to create a second spite fic folder. 

On a different note though, I really do love the choices so far for setting up this show’s forward path. There’s no way to mistake this as a rerun of ATLA. This is it’s own separate story and I love that. I really do respect that. The way the different threads are emerging feel really smooth: 1) the impact of Korra’s isolation towards her culture shock in the giant city - which must smell and sound REALLY weird to her; 2) her prodigious talent in the physical, exciting parts of bending meshing with her teenage nature and also clashing with the spiritual parts of being the World Bridge; 3) the absolute hot bed of chaos every part of Republic City must be. 

Kinda funny that people would still have sideburns in the same style as from like. Seventy years ago. Vintage. 

Mr. Chung, please tell me that you have my money, or else I can't guarantee I can protect your fine establishment.

My terrible taste in interests rears its head again. Listen, you cannot imply something like the mafia or the triads exist in universe and not have me immediately ALL OVER THAT. Republic City, you are such a mess. Like, for this alone, I might write a single fic for TLOK that’s just about trash collection and disposal. And corruption. And- 

I am fascinated by the genetics and molecular/cellular biology behind the yellow and white eyes in this universe. 

Police! Freeze where you are!

Bitch what the fuck. How many of these rigid airships are part of the police. Are all of them for the police? Are the police literally patrolling people from the sky? 

Also, that better be helium in those ships instead of hydrogen by this point in time. I’ve already made my post about the fleet of hydrogen ships in Sozin’s Comet. 

How much property damage is being inflicted thanks to these couple minutes. The police just. Stab the brick work. There have got to be so many bitchy lawsuits about that. 

This poor girl’s culture shock. 

HEY I HOPE THAT POLICE OFFICER SWUNG THEMSELF ON A CLOTHLINE, NOT AN ELECTRIC LINE LIKE I FIRST THOUGHT. 

HEY YOU CAN RIP SOMEONE’S SCALP OFF LIKE THAT. 

HEY WHAT IS WITH THIS WHOLE SCENE. 

HOW ARE THEY JUST RIDING ON THOSE WIRES, HOW MUCH TENSION IS IN THAT STUFF. 

HOW DOES THAT ZEPPLIN MOVE THAT FAST AND LIKE. AGILE. 

YALL. 

WHY DOES THE POLICE STATION LOOK LIKE THAT

Well then, why are you treating me like a criminal? Avatar Aang and your mother were friends. They saved the world together.

Oh this bit is fascinating, I love it. It’s only been 18 minutes, but the level of sheer propaganda everywhere trailing after Aang is really cool. There’s so much I want to know now about how Aang got from the end of ATLA, where he probably wasn’t thinking AT ALL about this kind of cult legacy forming around him, to this. 

Lin Beifong’s shut down of Korra’s attempt to use her status as Avatar is great. Just because Korra’s born into this elite role and then locked up and probably pampered in her compound, where everyone is well aware of her status and what it means, it doesn’t mean she gets to strut around with no idea how stuff works or the context behind what she’s seeing and then doing whatever she wants. 

Contrasts, love ‘em. 

On a different note, the design of this room. 

As far as I can tell, it’s a dim, doorless room, which is honestly. Really terrible design. And it says something about the way the Republic City police functions and how that reflects on the chaos of the city itself. 

Putting someone dragged into the police station in a dim room without any door as a sign of a possible escape is just a terrible idea. The only thing you’re going to succeed in is making the person tenser and more belligerent. Your suspect or witness gets more nervous, gets more combative, gets more unreliable in this kind of environment. In turn, the police probably starts feeling more and more entitled to harsher retaliation. Conflict resolution? De-escalation? That really doesn’t look like its in the core of the city police. They’re wearing armor for god’s sake. 

Everything so far in this first impression of the police is really damning about their attitude and Lin Beifong’s leadership. Rather than using a rappel line down from the airships, they damage buildings. In chasing Korra, they further damage property. The armor, this freaking room. The fact that so much about the active police shown so far depends on metalbending, which implies that very few people can join the field police. The fact that for the gang to be so blatantly in the open about their presence and territory, there must be dirty cops on their payroll. 

There has to be so much Lin Beifong hate in this city. 

I have done my best to guide Republic City toward the dream my father had for it, but you're right. It has fallen out of balance since he passed.

If anyone tries convincing me Republic City was ever in “balance” they’re a punk ass liar. I don’t think the city could have ever been in balance, whatever that is. The way it was created, the speed it expanded, the life that must be lived there - balance? Don’t kid me with that propaganda. 

Tenzin could be trying to find a balance alright. I just wonder how many people vehemently disagree with his idea of balance. 

Hello? I'm Korra, your new Avatar.

Well, TLOK is definitely in the era of mass distribution of news and the idea of public sentiment at a level never seen before. This is going to be very interesting for its populist implications, along with other developments regarding politics. 

Oh Korra. Did no one try rehearsing this with you? This is a terrible first impression for you to give to people. 

Also, what is this building. Is this like a city hall? Why is the roof on the building to the side slanted like that. That’s an angle I’d expect from like. Snow concerns. In northern Europe. 

Love that Avatar Aang propaganda. Starting to feel like we’re going to see a lot of it going forward. 

Oh my god, everything about this press briefing (?) is highly concerning. This rampaging teenager suddenly appearing without any warning or announcement. The clear lack of script or practice. The open location just to anyone instead of to a select set of journalists who would be sympathetic/under government control. Lin fucking Beifong and Tenzin being the only people accompanying Korra on the stage. 

What a disaster. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

You know, I’m enjoying this more than I expected to. The general writing is great, the use of visuals and other small details to set the time and place is excellent, the worldbuilding implications are rich in potential. I’m looking forward to exploring where the plot threads introduced so far will lead towards!

[lovelilijazunde]

And It All Fell Down

Fic: And It All Fell Down

Writers note: Hey, this is my first fic I’ve posted on here, so, while constructive criticism is nice, please try not to be too harsh. This is a fic I wrote for @deafgirl-and-hercoven ‘s Heir AU, which you should check out if you haven’t already.

Ships: Romantic Dukeceit/Demus

Warnings: Remus being Remus, zombie mention, Virgil, Patton, and Roman being kind of jerks (If I need to retag, tell me! Still new at this)

Word Count: 1822

Summary: Remus, Deceit, and Princess have had a relatively secret life together for the past six years. No one knew about Princess, and Remus and Deceit didn’t really advertise their relationship, but then an unexpected Summoning raises questions.

It had been a relatively normal day in the Dark Side of the Mind Palace. Princess had woken Deceit up at one in the morning for no real reason, and they had fallen back asleep reading, cuddled in a huddle of blankets stolen from Remus (he was a space heater, he didn’t need them). Princess had gotten up to work out with Remus roughly four hours later, giggling as she sat on the bar while Remus benched twice her weight, and sitting on his back as he did push ups. Then Deceit had woken up around noon, reluctantly leaving the blanket nest, and Remus had left Dee and Princess alone for the day. 

The two of them had amused themselves quite happily. They colored in the coloring book Remus had made for Princess (begrudgingly, he had made them PG13), read together from some of Princess’s favorite books, and Deceit had juggled apples using all of his arms - all of Princess 626’s favorite things. A normal, everyday routine.

Now, though, they had decided to try something different. And messy.

“Stop wiggling!” Freezing, Deceit tried not to smile as Princess grabbed his face again. “If you keep moving, I can’t make you look pretty!”

They were in the Dark Sides’ living room, where Princess 626 had decided to have an impromptu makeover session. And, really, who was Deceit to deny her? They had snuck into Remus’s bathroom and borrowed some of his makeup products. He was still off bothering Thomas, probably would be for hours more, and wouldn’t mind them using his stuff, anyways. He would probably be delighted that Deceit was allowing himself to be unprofessional enough to apply makeup at all, much less let Princess 626 do it. 

Deceit was standing relatively where Logan would stand in Thomas’s living room, and Princess 626 was standing on a stool in front of him. He had offered to sit, to make her job easier, but she adamantly refused. She wanted to feel tall, Deceit, presumed. He could relate.

Deceit looked down at his princess softly. Her rainbow-dyed hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was frowning in concentration, completely absorbed by her work. Her hetero-chromatic eyes were squinted, with only slivers of the red and purple irises visible. Her dress, a miniature version of Deceit’s tunic, had the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her nimble hands were liberally spotted with excess makeup and freckles.

As they were each doing the other’s makeup, Deceit had offered to go first, to show her how it was done, but Princess adamantly refused, insisting that she knew what to do and how to do it. She had allowed him to apply his own mascara though, as she understood that it was not always pleasant when another would do that for you. 

Princess carefully applied a layer of lime green lip gloss onto Deceit before noticing that his eyes were open, and told him yet again to close them.

“Don’t ruin the surprise!”

Trying not to smile, Deceit closed his eyes again. It was impossible not to be happy when 626 was around.

***

“Ugh, Remus, why don’t you just leave Thomas alone?” Virgil snapped. 

Remus hid a flash of hurt behind his ever-present painful grin. He was having fun, right? Pestering Thomas, scaring Patton, annoying Roman . . . the usual interactions. Virgil wasn’t having it today, though. He wasn’t scared by Remus’s antics anymore. He used to help Remus - their jobs were easier when they worked together. But Thomas got older, and then Virgil didn’t want to help Remus anymore. Then he used to shiver and shake when Remus used to imply particularly lovely things, but  . . . now he would more often treat him as if Remus was an annoying child who needed to be silenced. Remus squashed the anger that always bubbled in his chest when he thought about Virgil down. Who cared what the anxious side thought? He obviously didn’t care about Dee or Remus, so why should Remus care about him?

“Why, you should ask yourself that, Emo Nightmare! Aren’t you just as bad?”

“No! Virgil would never hurt Thomas!” Patton interjected, offended, ever the defender of his famILY. “I don’t see why you have to hurt him, either.” 

Remus wanted to growl at him. Remus was just doing his job. It wasn’t his fault that Papa Pretentious had a stick up his ***. Ugh, even his thoughts were censored when he was too near the Moral side. How would Patton like it if Remus was able to shut him up about what he like to talk about? Deceit could do that, but not Remus. He was the opposite. Just think, no more puppies, kitties, cookies . . . Hmm, would Patton stop liking puppies if Remus put zombie dogs in his room? Ooh, should Remus shape shift into a zombie dog and take a chunk out of Patton’s leg? Maybe that would shut him up. He wouldn’t need Deceit for that. Remus decided to address this question to the general room. Patton flinched, and Roman groaned.

“Why must you always tell us what goes on in that creepy head of yours?” Remus’s brother complained. Remus wiggled his eyebrows.

“What, I thought Thomas wanted to be honest with himself? Isn’t sharing being honest?”

“You know what, Remus, I think we could benefit from a little less honesty out of you.” Thomas finally said, annoyed. Logan glanced at him, eyebrows raised.

“Well, Thomas, if a little less honesty is what you wish, shouldn’t you summon Deceit?”

Thomas blinked. “I  . . . well, I mean, if you think I could deal with both of them at the same time, sure.” 

Remus felt his smile falter. While he was always glad to see his boyfriend, he and Deceit both knew what would happen if Princess was left alone - poor kid. He started to speak up, to stop them somehow, but he was cut off as Thomas raised his arm and commanded “Deceit!”.

***

Princess added the finishing touches, and Deceit was still trying not to smile. “Okay, just a few more seconds, then you can look!”

Deceit waited a few seconds, but there was silence, and nothing touched his face. He started talking as he opened his eyes “Princess, are you done?”

He wasn’t in front of Princess anymore. He was in front of the other Sides and Thomas, who were staring at him as if he had shown up in a clown suit. Oh, no. They must have summoned him. And he not only was looking completely unprofessional (he wasn’t wearing his hat, caplet, or gloves) he was wearing makeup (probably obviously) applied by a child! They would either think him incompetent or insane. And there goes that respect fear factor.

Deceit suddenly felt guilty of thinking badly of Princess’s work - Princess! He had left Princess alone with no warning. And when had he popped up? What if they heard him say her name? No, no, no, no, no!

“Deceit?” asked Logan quizzically. He was taking in Deceit faster than the others were, apparently. He started to continue, but Roman cut him off.

“Are you wearing makeup? I thought you hated makeup!”

Cut out of his frozen state by familiar contempt, Deceit curled his lip at Roman. “No, Roman, I detest makeup. I truly despise  it when someone does it for me.” Deceit made direct eye contact with Roman as he said this, in an attempt to avoid looking at Remus in hopes that they would forget about him, and he could slip away to Princess. Remus, thankfully, seemed to catch his drift, and sunk out. Unfortunately, his swift exit did not slip past Virgil. 

“Hey, what - Why did Remus leave so fast once you got here?” he demanded to Deceit. 

Lie. Deceit summoned his gloves and put them back on as he spoke. “Me and the Duke are not on the friendliest of terms. We prefer not to be in each other’s vicinity.”

“Why? I would have thought you and that disaster would get along swimmingly.” Roman said. Deceit wanted to rise to the defense of his boyfriend, but that would defeat the purpose of the lie he was constructing.

“Well, my purpose goes directly against his purpose, so, no, we do not get along.”

Virgil frowned. “What? Last time I saw you, I thought you two were all buddy-buddy, you liar.”

 Sneering at him, Deceit pulled on his bowler hat. “Well, it’s been a while, Virgil. You haven’t been to visit. You haven’t been around. Things have changed.”

Virgil hissed at him. Deceit hissed back.

“Hey, Deceit, who’s Princess?” Patton interrupted. Deceit’s already cool blood chilled.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” He pulled on his caplet as he said it, as if the question were beneath him, and he could not be bothered with such trivial things at the moment. His attitude didn’t dissuade the other Sides in the slightest.

“Well, you obviously know, so why not tell us?” Roman asked. 

Deceit felt like he was being torn in half. He knew this day would come, when they would figure it out, put the pieces together, he had prepared for this, he knew. He had lain awake night after night imagining this day, what he would say, what he would do. Princess would want to bake cookies and play stuffed animals with Patton. Logan would be able to sate her insatiable curiosity about the world around her, and outside Thomas’s head as well. And, of course, she would probably want to meet her unknowing donors biological parents. She would want to sing and act with Roman, and sew and listen to music with Virgil. But he couldn’t stop himself from trying to delay the inevitable. And, besides, they hadn’t seen her. What proof did they have that she existed? Maybe they would give up. All he had to do was misdirect them. That was what he was good at.

“Tell you what?”

“Really, Deceit, you’re not fooling anyone. When you rose up, you were talking to someone who you referred to as “Princess”, and you were uncharacteristically relaxed and calm, and . . . happy looking.” Logan paused. “Princess must be special to you.”

Deceit blinked slowly. Out of all of the “Light” Sides, he thought that Logan would not be the one to notice immediate emotional connections, since the logical side to ardently tried to deny even having emotions, much less noticing them in other Sides.

“You know, if you won’t tell us, we could always summon whoever this ‘Princess’ is,” Roman announced, motioning to Thomas, “If you would, Thomas.”

Deceit’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait, no, don’t- STOP!”

But it was too late. Thomas had already raised his arm, commanding “Princess!”

For a split second, Deceit thought that perhaps it wouldn’t work. Perhaps Thomas couldn’t summon a side that he didn’t know existed - and was Princess even a Side? He probably couldn’t summon her. He could convince them that Princess was nonexistent, or imaginary, or - 

Princess rose up.

[spellnbone]

London Theatres Part II

There are three types of Wizarding Theatres.

Mirror Theatres

This first type is the most common. These theatres can be found spread across all of London, even the whole of Britain, wherever older Muggle theatres stand. The access is simple: one goes to the box office and asks for a ticket for the Wizarding play one wishes to see. In some larger theatres there’s a separate box office designated for Wix, though they usually also sell normal Muggle play tickets for the few confused Muggles who wander up to it.

The tickets are little one-time keys, which one uses to open a backdoor on which a sign reads: Staffs Only. This is (similar to the Shifting Wall in the Leaky Cauldron) the entry to the Wizarding World. Muggles often believe that their theatres are haunted, but that is only because the veil between the worlds is thin in those places and when it’s quiet between shows, one can hear the grunts and moans not of ghosts of actors past, but of Wizarding techies working their butts off.

The plays in these places range from ancient to modern. Who they hire and who they let in depends on the place. Most places welcome every type of paying customer, some even Muggle relatives. Some will be more restrictive, perhaps only allow adults. Tragedies, comedies, tragiccomedies, some abiding to the dramatic laws of Aristoteles, some following traditional Wix rules, it often all depends on the director.

- The Old Vic

- The Palace

- The Lyceum

- Prince Edward

- The Palladium

Purean Wix Theatres

One of the oldest theatres in London was torn down in 1605. It went by the name of The Rose and has since then been lost -- to Muggles. Wix however, who used to share the place with the Muggle acting troupe, were quick to rebuild it. A charm akin to the one that hides Hogwarts has since made the place invisible to Muggle eyes. Whichever Muggle does happen to wander out to the ruins of The Rose and gets too close, is suddenly magically reminded of The Globe and starts wandering away, reciting Shakespeare.

Since 1606, a Pureblood family has kept The Rose with all its traditions intact. The old laws of theatres apply here still and one will only ever find plays written in ancient times, singing of old customs and the honorable ways of the old Purean Wix World.

Make no mistake, though, those old Purean traditions are perhaps not as open minded as the modern Muggle Witch but they date from a time before the Statue of Secrecy was crafted, a time before Witches were burnt at stakes, a time before Wixkind loathed mankind. Those plays do perhaps depict a world where Wix were believed to be gods, where masters of divination were called oracles and hailed to speak ever-truths, where Wizards ruled side by side with Kings and were respected more than that -- but they don’t speak of a segregation between the magical and non-magical folk. Those Purean traditions believe that the only way to liberate Wixkind is by letting them rule of Muggles once again and guide them towards a better world.

Which is why, in 1979, when a Muggle archeologist decided to rebuild the old Rose (it took him multiple attempts to even remember his endeavour), the Wizarding World broke a sweat. Should they move The Rose? Should they destroy it to make sure no Muggle could find it? Should they keep it, talk to the new owners and re-establish the old Mirror? It’s probably going to take the archeologist a couple of years to go through with his plan (seeing how he’s currently forgotten about his endeavour again...) but what is a decade to a people that’s as old as time?

So last year, a new Purean Wix Theatre has popped up in the far west of Wizarding London (right at the end of Knockturn Alley): The Proud Elm Tree.

The facade is imposing and made of black stone, standing in a grand open space, not touching or mirroring any Muggle place, and the name is inscribed in  a gleaming silver, which as you look more closely, you realise is a snake twisting in cursive across the banner. This theatre has yet to open but rumors have it that the first play they’re rehearsing right now has hired only Purebloods, from the playwright to the actors, and that the director has no interest in reviving ancient Purean Wix Plays at all. In fact, those who have glanced at the script are certain to have never heard those lines before, and that their modern verses are spewing arguments against the old traditional beliefs which The Rose held so dear. No The Proud Elm Tree doesn’t want to reunite Muggles and Wix in peace, they want to dominate the former -- or perhaps worse.

- The Rose

- The Proud Elm Tree

Underground Theatres

The third kind of theatre is perhaps the most underwhelming kind, to both reader and audience. Those places are to be found at the back of smoky pubs, in cellars or behind backdoors so inconspicuous, you need a special guide to find them. They house directors who have fallen from grace, actors who’ve made a name for themselves for being particularly terrible at acting, and faces who will soon be the new stars of the Wizarding World but are yet still undiscovered. But more importantly: they house ideas.

Those places are perhaps nestled deep into Wizarding London with no money to afford a cross-door to the Muggle World like the great theatres do, yes, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t open-minded. Muggleborns find voices here, Half-Breeds scribe their stories, and their audience is filled with eager eyes with all sorts of different looking pupils. The plays are -- in the eyes of the Pureblood Elite -- outrageous, an insult, and the epitome of why Voldemort is right. And perhaps that’s why those theatres are currently thriving: they’re an outspoken, safe space for people to gather and discuss, exchange ideas and find friends.

Those places are hard to find, and sometimes on purpose as it’s better not to name what mustn’t be known by the wrong kind of people, but when you do find them, you will see the proof that Voldemort’s rise to power has not yet scared everyone into silence, and that as long as those communities continue to make art, true silence might never exist.

- List of underground Theatres (and other Shops in Wizarding London)

[credit goes to amos and ilya, too]

[bestworstcase]

how's everyone in bitter snow feel about the justice system in Corona? also how are the guards in bitter snow, how do these people treat their positions as guards?

okay anon you said “everyone” so like

gonna talk specifically about all the character’s perceptions right now, as of chapter 9, because a lot of these feelings evolve over the course of benighted and also the rest of the series 👍

major characters!

cassandra!

she is well aware of the harshness of the system. her own birth parents were executed for their crimes—we’ll get more into that later >:)—and given who her father is and what her aspirations are, she knows some of the more unsavory details about what guard work can mean. there is a part of her that is… uncomfortable with this, but she rationalizes it as a discomfort related to feeling like she’s trapped in the shadow of the (very serious) crimes for which her parents were executed. she has very much drunk the kool-aid that all of this stuff is correct and just because it’s only being done To Criminals, who of course are not like regular people, who must be protected From Criminals (like her parents, there’s this whole nasty feedback loop of self-disgust going on with this). 

she also very much has her dad on a pedestal and doesn’t want to think badly about anything he does, and she wants to make him proud, and in her mind making him proud = succeeding as a guard. so that’s another huge thing tilting her in favor of the coronan justice system. 

rapunzel!

i don’t think rapunzel has quite made the connection between the existence of the king’s watch and what they actually do, which is arrest people and feed them into the horrible justice system. she knows that eugene was arrested and nearly hanged, and she doesn’t feel good about that, but she also has not been exposed to this system as a… daily thing with a wider scope than simply being something eugene escaped from. she has a very particular kind of self-centered naivety where it is still hard for her to grasp that people… exist, outside of her life, almost like a lack of object permanence where the concept of Other People is concerned? because she grew up in a tower with nobody but gothel. she’s beginning to develop inklings of this, but it’s not there yet, and with frederic and everyone in the palace actively trying to shelter her from the more upsetting pieces of palace life still, she’s still kind of navigating around obstacles that she can’t see in order to get there.

anyway all of which is to say she’s laboring under the impression that everything in corona is hunky dory. still very much in the homecoming honeymoon phase.

eugene!

eugene is in this weird transitional place where he, by his own actions in the last chapter, has been rather rudely shocked out of his own complacency and now he’s looking around at all the luxuries and privileges he has been granted purely by virtue of being the guy who happened to bring rapunzel home and he’s going: oh. oh i didn’t earn any of this actually. 

he knows exactly what corona is like. if you’re a thief in this world you know not to get arrested in corona. and he did get arrested in corona and he came very close to losing his life because of it. for a while there, i think he just fully embraced his pardon and decided to live it up because, well, why not, it’s what he deserves after a lifetime of hard living and fighting to survive… but fundamentally, he’s not an asshole even if he is sometimes an ass, and the more he lets go of the flynn rider persona the more his natural empathy reasserts itself. right now, his focus is on being better for rapunzel, but i think he sort of has in the back of his mind how very, very lucky he got in his brush with the coronan justice system and that inclines him to at least feel… dubious about becoming a cog in it. 

lance!

he’s sort of similar to eugene, in that he has this criminal background and he knows exactly what sort of reputation corona has in the criminal world… but there’s also this element of, he’s sort of… adjacent to law enforcement now. thief-takers are sort of like private investigators and sort of like bounty hunters, and they exist in the weird margin between law enforcement and criminal activity and lance has this very personal experience of having been sort of… invited into that space as an opportunity to reform his ways, and that worked for him.

i think he and eugene could probably have a really interesting conversation not too far down the line about how they got out of the thieving business and became better people and ways that could be applied on a broader scale versus just chucking everyone in prison, which i imagine tends to be the default not just in corona but in most countries in this region. lance sees his experiences helping victims of theft as intrinsically linked to his personal decision to never steal again, whereas eugene reformed because rapunzel, specifically, treated him with compassion and dignity. put those two things together and you have a decent platform for a restorative approach to criminal justice. 

varian!

varian is a kid. he has no clue about anything but his alchemy lol. i think he probably has a lot of romanticized notions of adventurous thieves in the vein of flynn rider and is accustomed to seeing guards/watchmen as The Enemy through that lens, but he has very very little actual real world experience with either and to him it all has this aura of fiction. it’s something that happens To Other People, not to him. 

caine!

caine saw the coronan justice system tear her family apart when she was nine years old, over a petty theft her father committed to feed his starving family. also, she’s saporian, so she has this extra pile of cultural grudges against corona in addition to this personal trauma. she hates corona, and unlike in canon—where the narrative need to make everything About Rapunzel demanded that her motivations be dumbed down—she puts the blame for what happened to her squarely where it belongs, on king frederic’s crackdown and the system backing it. though she’s not a separatist herself, she’s perfectly happy to work with them to attack corona, and she sees her piracy as… sort of a campaign against corona and its allies? in that she targets mostly trading vessels belonging to the seven kingdoms and has definitely liberated coronan prison barges in the past. 

as far as she’s concerned corona can just burn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ up saporia

sirin! 

…honestly you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who hates coronan justice more than sirin does because [spoilers lol]. she keeps it on a very tight lock, because she is a pragmatist first and foremost and she isn’t interested in expending her rage on a doomed cause. when she acts on her hatred, she wants it to matter. and she’s also a leader, with a lot of vulnerable people relying on her to keep them safe, so she can’t just lash out the way she might want to if she had no other obligations. so she’s cultivated this very cold, very methodical anger and is proceeding with her plan very carefully but also, definitely enjoyed getting her hands bloody in the prologue. 

assorted secondary and minor characters (just the ones i feel like talking about, rip to everyone else)

commander peter!

it is peter’s job to enforce the coronan justice system. fundamentally, he has to agree with it. i think he has this ideal of what justice should be in the back of his mind and he sees all the ways that coronan justice doesn’t line up, and he’s trying his best to close those gaps while working from within the system. he cares very intently about his country and its people, and he firmly believes that he’s working to keep everybody safe—even if it comes at the cost of this harsh, sometimes unfair system. 

as part of this, he keeps very high standards of conduct for his watchmen. abuses of power do happen—peter can’t always be watching every single man in his force, and while he ostensibly commands the city watches in the rest of corona’s city’s too, in practice his influence tapers off outside of herzingen simply because of distance—but he tries to stamp them out as best he can.

(there’s definitely a big range within the king’s watch itself vis a vis how the guards approach their work. i think, taken on average, they... are cops. their job is to enforce the system first and foremost and they wouldn’t get into that career if they didn’t believe in it; some try to be more compassionate about it than others and some are just in it for the authority but they’re all... working to serve the system.)

arianna!

she’s both a foreigner originally—she was born and raised in eldora, one of corona’s neighbors—and very well traveled, so she has seen a lot of other models of justice in action and this leads to her taking a dim view of the way corona handles things. i think she and frederic probably have a lot of heated arguments about his crackdown in particular, and it’s one of the biggest points of contention in their marriage. she does often succeed in being a moderating voice, and i imagine she is a vocal proponent for reform not just in corona but in the seven kingdoms generally, but unfortunately she has no real authority in corona (because frederic is the monarch, not her) so her influence in this regard is limited. 

frederic!

in contrast to arianna, frederic i think truly believes that cracking down harder on crime is the only way to make it go away. he’s thinking about how a criminal in a jail cell is a criminal who isn’t out on the streets hurting people, rather than thinking about where these criminals are coming from in the first place. he listens to arianna—and to ludolf and peter, who are other moderating voices in this regard—but he also has a very hard time stepping out of this mindset of “we just need to take the bad people and put them somewhere else so the good people will be safe.” in a way, i think he has a very similar mindset to rapunzel in that they both tend to engage in black-and-white thinking, but where rapunzel sees only the good parts of the world, frederic tends to see things in the most bleak light possible. 

gilbert! 

gilbert is a career military guy in a kingdom with no standing army during a time of peace. this… absolutely has an impact on his approach to domestic justice, and in particular he takes the attitude that criminals and dissidents are The Enemy. he feeds into frederic’s worst impulses and fears because in his mind, frederic is too cowardly to do what must be done to quash The Threat. i think… like frederic a lot of this ultimately comes from a desire to keep corona safe, he’s just jumped fully overboard into not considering the “wrong” sort of coronan part of the country he wants to protect. and then him seeing everything through this military lens is fuel on that fire. 

ludolf! 

he’s a champion of compassion. he hates the existence of the prison barges and the gallows, but i think he also does not have much in the way of actionable alternatives; he’s has this kind of idealized, almost rapunzel-esque idea that if they just apply a little faith and goodwill then the problems can be solved (and this tends to weaken his stance politically, because he runs into the “well then what do you propose we do” problem; he works best in tandem with someone like arianna or peter, both of whom are details people who can come up with real solutions). 

quirin! 

having been… sort of? the closest thing aphelion had to law enforcement back in the day, i think he has strong opinions on corona’s system—namely that it’s all wrong—but he keeps them to himself because he’s not one to talk about the past in general and he’s also well aware that in corona, he’s just some peasant and his opinions aren’t wanted. mostly, he tries to keep his head down, keep himself and his kid out of trouble, and focus on preserving the simple life he has constructed for himself. 

(in aphelion, i think criminality was dealt with through the moonstone cult—this decayed somewhat over the course of the dedication, as aphelionese people lost their strong connection with the moonstone, but the basic philosophy still remained, and the basic philosophy was “work to understand the root of the problem, then shine the light of truth and understanding on it until the problem reveals its solution”)

adira!

adira very much thinks coronans are all a bit nuts and unlike quirin is not at all shy about voicing this thought when it happens to come up on the rare occasion that she stops being a vagrant long enough to talk to somebody. but that doesn’t happen very often. mostly she’s been too focused on searching for the sundrop and fixing the moonstone to care much about what corona does with its criminals, but also if she were directly asked she’d be like “were you trying to create a criminal assembly line? because that’s what you did” lol

nigel!

i think nigel is a very fearful person in general but this also wars with a degree of practicality. the notion of criminals frightens him but he can also recognize that many people turn to crime out of desperation or fear, and he has a tough time navigating this dissonance. on the whole i think he’d tend to lean toward whoever argued the most reasonably on any specific subject where coronan justice is concerned, which in practice means he ends up aligned with peter a lot—he respects peter’s authoritative experience in dealing with criminals, and peter tends toward this reasonable-sounding, incremental reform approach to the system that speaks to both nigel’s fearfulness and his practical side. 

feldspar! 

he’s in kind of an uncomfortable situation, in that he is saporian but i don’t think he is particularly open about that fact and would really prefer his coronan neighbors not… know about it. because being saporian, he has a clearer view of how the coronan justice system disadvantages his people and how the crackdown landed especially hard on saporia. i think he lives in perpetual anxiety over the possibility of getting in trouble or being accused of a crime and having his whole life destroyed as a result. also with his friendship with cass, there’s definitely a part of him that wants to just. shake her. until she wakes up to the injustices being done; but he’s far too anxious to actually do something like that so whenever she starts going on about being a guard he’s just kinda like :| 

xavier!

as the royal blacksmith and thus supplier of the weapons and armor used by the king’s watch, he has this closeness to the law enforcement side of it that definitely biases him a bit in favor of them; they’re one of his primary customers and biggest sources of business. but also, he’s a very intelligent, very well-read person, and i feel like he spent some time traveling in his youth, so he’s in a similar boat to arianna where he knows for a fact that this is not the only or the best way to do things and he could probably be coaxed into a lengthy conversation about it with the right questions. 

[noreachspeak]

Supergirl Season 5 

Will Supercorp happen?

Remember in DC Legends of Tomorrow? Snart is alive in an alternate earth with a boyfriend. It’s entirely plausible in a cross-over to have it already be a thing. I mean, they did a delightful hella gay musical, out of the blue, so anything is possible! Remember on Person of Interest, the simulations that Shaw underwent? What’s great about that show is that “labels” or “coming out” wasn’t included at all. It simply was. The love between these two women, Root and Shaw, who had a string of subtext throughout the series and some not so subtle moments; and yet, the viewers knew it, understood it, and loved it. Frankly, I think this is how it ought to be, but I also understand the delicate nature of representation on tv or film, because we are only liberated to a point in the US/Canada/UK, etc. as there is still much stigma and that is just not the case in 72 countries where it is a crime to love someone of the same sex, wherein 13 of those countries it is a crime punishable by death. Alex’s character has already gone through this process. Introducing love for one person only, where gender doesn’t come into question, is really key to integrate and normalize what is already there, as not being a big deal, simply because it shouldn’t be, as stressed so well in the telenovela, Amar a Muerte. Juliantina is a beautiful example of this and it has had an enormous effect on people worldwide. I think Supercorp could be like that, but perhaps with even greater reach, stripped of labels or a need to come out--I am not saying that this is not important because it is, esp. in our day and age, but moving forward, it would be monumental to have two people who are destined to be with one another. It’s a show about hope, love, and fighting for people to live peacefully and to be authentically themselves, afterall. It’s also plausible that Kara is Lena’s “safe place” just as Root was for Shaw in POI (Person of Interest), and maybe we get to see this in a mind palace episode. If there will be a season 6, I think this season could very well gradually set this up to be a possibility or even an awareness for them, while we have the omniscient POV thus far...building upon a broken friendship that struggles to mend, but the bond is so strong that perhaps they aren’t even aware, or have put it “in a little box and shoved it way down” then trust is slowly rebuilt, friendship repaired via heroic acts, of course, then perhaps the flirting returns and the relationship moves past best-friend-friendship into something more. It would be a treat for fans to witness, revisit those past scenes of their “moments” from either of their POVs. I think because the people/audience/fans want Supercorp, (simply because it has been hinted already), it would/could be honored. I was told long ago that at a certain point, a book writes itself, or a painting paints itself, or in this case, drama, where the actors deliver what’s written in the stars, ie. the script writes itself. At the very least, I think there will definitely be more subtext to which there will be no straight explanation. It’s also plausible to enter inside of Brainy’s calculations and scenarios...also, similar to the machine in POI, we get to see theoretical ideas played out for the best outcome. The subtext from previous seasons, whether the writers had intended to create a romantic involvement between the two or were even aware they had a hand in it or not, and whether the rest of the cast does or does not think/believe/see it is irrelevant; because, it certainly does exists. Lena (Katie) and Kara (Melissa) had these not so heteronormative moments along with micro-expressions that naturally existed. From a director’s standpoint, seeing this type of chemistry onscreen, especially within the LGBTQ+ community, is  e v e r y t h i n g-- exceptionally rare and valuable. It simply would be a crime to waste it, when it can embrace it and inspire the world.

[lettersandinkstains]

so said the king excerpt | spoiler warning cw: spoilers, violence, character death characters: zephyr, the queen, aster

Zephyr gives a deep bow, their thick curly hair falling forward -- the silver and blue headdress falling to the ground. With one arm still behind their back, they stand up straight again. Yet, they know it is no secret as to what they’re hiding.

Despite how the cold nips at their skin, how the Queen's eyes gaze upon them and how they feel so hot underneath the anger, they keep their smile, however grim it may be.

"It is nice to finally meet you, your majesty," She speaks no words in return. "Princess Sage looks so much like you." They take a step forward, knowing full well this could lead to their death -- but dying to free their Ilmyria, letting Atia cast her light upon Lythria again is more important than their own life. There are many more things that are more important than their life, Zephyr thinks. They would gladly die over and over again if it meant keeping the ones they love happy.

"You did grand, raising her." Still, the Queen remains tense, terse to Zephyr's presence -- Sage had once told them that she always felt like they were reading her mind. They had laughed it off, told her not to worry but it is true, to an extent. To order the death of the Ayathian prinxe would be utterly stupid, they know this. It would not be Atia's wrath one would fear. "Her heart, your heart, holds heavy, doesn't it?" They look around as they continue the slow trek forward. One wrong move and they will die before their mission is up, and that could mean the end of everything. Eteus would not grant them mercy for disobedience.

He had heard stories about Lythria's beauty upon ice and snow. It was once beautiful with ice waterfalls and blue birds that braved how cold it was -- the throne room was once etched with history, promises of alliances now covered or destroyed by a king gone mad.

Or perhaps, a queen.

"And you messed up, your majesty. The game you chose to play with a mere man's heart, how far you continued it -- you are thought to be a traitor among the gods. What were you looking for?" Thoughts of how Ayathia had burned years ago due to this woman burns in their mind. The way they had feared the end of their freelands once more. "Certainly not love, when you cast your eyes upon your own flesh, there is nothing there. I only ever see hatred, even as a young child visiting your palace -- you spoke to her as though she were a mere stranger who had long stayed past her welcome."

Zephyr was always believed to be unassuming, along for the ride -- and perhaps they were. But what fate that would entwine their life with a princess and an unfortunate girl, well, not one to be mused about. They had been told of their job -- one that would be easier on everybody.

Lead the lamb to the throne, let her blood flow and the gods would take over. But yet, her smile enraptured their heart, how naive and stubborn she was to save the world when her goal changed. How could the possibility of one person's death change the course of the future? This, they had never quite understood. Was it not the gods who could change everything? It was not Sage’s fault she was born -- no, it was a human’s and a god’s. 

Nyx was supposed to lead Sage away from Lythria, but not kill. She did her job perfectly without even knowing. Zephyr had known from the very beginning that was not her job -- she has a heart of gold, not coal. When Azlir had approached them with the task of killing the Lythrian princess, they had been hesitant at first. Ayathia had remained untouched by the king of madness, they do not attack unless threatened -- this is the law of their country. Yet, the goddess spoke so softly, so convincingly. The princess was a threat to their world -- the princess, whose only sin was to be born -- but the goddess never told them how or why. Only she possesses a magic beyond their understanding.

"What a cruel fate," they mumble. "When the gods command you to kill, you do it." Zephyr says this loudly, their voice echoing along the walls painted with blood. "Yet we Ayathians, we're a peaceful people. We do not believe in the killing of others." Their fingers curls around the dagger -- a heavy sadness clinging to their heart. What punishment awaits them for the actions they will take?

"What happens to someone who disobeys a god?"

The queen levels her gaze, she does not call out for the guards who will not come to help her. Why should they -- what do they get out of keeping such a wretched being alive?

"You suffer for it," she finally speaks. "Gods cannot die."

"Gods cannot be killed by another god's hand, that was the covenant." They are standing in front of her now. Whose wrath do they fear the most?

Or better yet, which are they afraid of? Sage's tears or the gods condemnation? Her only request was for her parents to live -- just dethrone them. Perhaps jail. And that's Sage's greatest weakness. She wears her heart on her sleeve and no matter who, a genocidal god or a thief, she believes so much in redemption. Zephyr only envies that on the bad days.

"Perhaps, a human should not kill a god." The queen says. "We are why all of you exist."

"And you are why we are all suffering," Once upon a time, Zephyr had believed in Atia. Her liberation of Ayathia, her strength of the sun -- to heal and burn. "And, my deepest apologies, your majesty," the poison of the words itch their tongue. They are not the slightest bit sorry. "I have been a rude guest, but I feel no regret in my words."

"Young Zephyr, if you are to kill me, do so now."

Zephyr steps back. They look over their shoulder, expecting to see Sage. It wouldn't have surprised them -- the queen loves to torture her daughter in any way she possibly can.

"You will break her heart, otherwise."

"I don't care," they answer. Yet, she reads their heart. "The crown and power blinded you. A goddess of victory and war is not meant for this world anymore." The world that will come after -- there will be no place for such things. This is what they had promised Sage, they all will work to create that world. And Cena, who sits before them, high on her throne of gold, whose halls had once been flooded with the blood of innocent men and women.

"I've made my peace." Yet, the goddess’ voice cracks with those words. She is not ready, Zephyr knows this. But nobody is ever ready to die, god or not.

"May the next life be kinder," They whisper.

"And may her wrath burn you."

And they slam the dagger through her throat, and they quickly step back as the queen makes a horrible choking noise as she tries to breathe. They could never quite handle death, it was not something they were ever raised to handle. They watch with horror as the life slowly fades away, chest heaving desperately. Where a dead god goes, Zephyr does not know -- but they sincerely hope she will find peace elsewhere.

Stepping away from the throne and down the few small steps and quickly exits the room. Surely, no guard will come but they don’t want to risk being found by the wrong person. Sorrel already dislikes them, Aster hardly trusts them -- Nyx. They don’t even know about her. And Sage. Sage...they swallow a lump in their throat. Forgive me, princess.

With much surprise, they bump into Aster outside the throne room. They stare down at her, eyes wide. It is obvious of their sin -- and it is obvious of her anger.

When they had entered the castle, Zephyr deliberately sent Sage and Nyx on a goose chase, and Aster had asked what they were up to.

"Only to help her find answers," Is all they had said.

And now, here she stands, shoulders squared, eyes narrowed and staring up at them. Despite their height difference, she is terrifying when angry. And it’s not because she has terrible control over her magic, but because her silence can be the worst.

"What did you do?" She hisses out.

"Only what should have been done in the first place." Zephyr answers as they move past Aster. "Sage won't die, I promise you this, little Aster."

"They are -- the gods are angry!" Aster’s voice is raised in pitch, the fear and disbelief in her voice. Her country burns outside.

"I do not care about that, Aster," Zephyr hisses out. "Listen, we find Sage and and Nyx now. This isn't where any of us should be."

"So where--"

"Ceres."

They watch as all color drains from Aster's face. Nobody enters Ceres alive.

[margridarnauds]

4 & 5

Mandatory disclaimer: I'm not a trained historian and I'm an anglophone researcher, which means that my access to materials is HEAVILY restricted. As a result, I can't in good conscience stand behind EVERYTHING I say because, simply put, there might be another source out there.

But! Let's talk Arch-Thot Louis-Philippe Joseph d'Orléans, aka Philippe Égalité

4. In your eyes, what is their biggest strength?

He was a very brave man. We have accounts of him, say, going DEEP into coal pits to see for himself what conditions were like. He was THERE with the Montgolfier brothers with one of their experiments with balloon flights, taking off from Saint Cloud on the 14 August, 1784, and actually having to poke holes in the balloon itself when they rose too high. He jumped into a stream in order to save a groom of his who’d fallen in. You get this idea that he was very much a hands on type of guy who was constantly trying to be IN the action. 

On top of the physical bravery, this was also a man who was willing to openly defy the royal family, which sometimes came back to bite him in the ass. During the séance royal in November 1788, he said “That’s illegal” to Louis XVI in 1788, causing him to be exiled to one of his chateaus for 5 months sans visitors (Louis’ response was, naturally, “It is legal because I want it”). He was an openly liberal member of the royal family who supported the Revolution and, when the time came, took off his old surname and replaced it with “Philippe Égalite.” I won’t say that he did well with EVERYTHING, he was, fundamentally, a ROYAL trying to be a Good Revolutionary and sometimes I think he fell back on his 18th century patriarchal BS, but he had some really, really solid moments. You’ve got to respect the ATTEMPT at least. 

5. What is the most ridiculous statement on them you have ever read?

Like. Pretty much 90% of the currently existing secondary material on him. I have many Thinky Thoughts on why this is and why people still...never seem to have made their peace with him, but suffice it to say, I think that we’re still a long way from it as far as the historiography’s concerned, especially in terms of pop culture. The Royalists, I don’t think, have ever really forgiven him for not walking in line with them, and the Anglo-American take on the French Revolution is, historically, heavily pro-Royalist. 

But, let’s start with this page. Now, SOME things here are technically true. So yay. But it ALSO GAVE US. 

His son was so disgusted over his vote for King Louis' execution (for treason) that he abandoned him and defected from France, taking his brother (who was imprisoned with Philippe) and sister (who Philippe sent off with her governess, Madame de Genlis, and tried to take back before her name was added to the list of émigrés, though he was too late and so ended up ordering her to remain abroad for her own safety) with him. (Which is funny given that Louis-Philippe would devote considerable page time in his memoirs to trying to demonstrate his father’s innocence.)

He is strongly believed to have instigated the October march on Versailles by deliberately withholding grain from the starving peasants (because that’s in-character for the man who sheltered the poor from the cold in the winter of 1788), and by paying people to march on the Palace at Versailles.

He claimed to have been in Paris at the time of the march (Because he was), although (Biased) witnesses claimed to have seen him lead the angry mob chanting 'long live our King d'Orleans' to the Queen's bedroom (Funny that he doesn’t pop up in any of the eyewitness accounts of what went down in the Queen’s bedroom). Some accounts (Who?) also claim he was dressed as a woman. 

He was a sadist who, when the Princess Lamballe's head was brought to his window on a pike, merely stood up, looked at it, and sat back down to his supper.

Whatever ambitions he had to seize power went unrealized when he was arrested and executed by Revolutionaries along with the remaining Bourbons under suspicion (*cough* karma *cough*) (If you dare to hope that the world might be a better place, you deserve to be ripped away from your family and then executed. Sympathy for victims of the Terror is only to be extended to. Like. Royalists.).

Some of this, like the Versailles thing, are pretty much. Recognized as being false. Like, WHATEVER role he MIGHT have had in organizing the March (which...I honestly don’t like that line of thinking because it really does take the agency away from the women who DID PARTICIPATE, and ties into the usual Royalist take that the people were incapable of independently rising up, there HAD to be an evil, aristocratic genius on the sidelines), he was not IN THE AREA. We have multiple ACCOUNTS of him not being in the area at the time. 

The Lamballe thing...MIGHT be true, I have read the accounts of that one, though Grace Dalrymple Elliot, who renounced her friendship to him after he voted for Louis XVI’s death, said that he cared a great deal for Lamballe and would have done anything in his power to save her. The truth is so muddied at this point and the Legende Noir around Philippe is so thick that I can’t be sold one way or another. I really, really don’t think that he was a sadist, though, regardless. That goes against everything that I’ve read about the man, every fact that we do HAVE about him. And, at the risk of being an apologist...IF the story is true, and that’s a BIG if that I’m not willing to concede, people can react very differently to shocking events. Sometimes, you see something horrific, go about your business, and then freak out three hours later. 

And, IF he had any ambitions to the throne, which...again...we can’t KNOW for certain, I don’t know if the stray thought entered his mind at 2 AM one day, but IF he did, he went about it in a very, very stupid way. And that’s possible! But what I firmly believe, given the evidence and his own personal statements, is that he genuinely did NOT want the throne and would have been perfectly happy as an English squire with a passion for horse racing. Every single time allegations about him wanting power came up, rather than openly working to unseat Louis, he tried to go off somewhere else. At one point, he allegedly wanted to go to America, but his longstanding favorite, Madame de Buffon, said that she wouldn’t go with him because, essentially, she could never take the blame for when he came to regret it. After Lafayette pinned him over the March to Versailles, rather than take the accusations head on, which MIGHT have salvaged his reputation, he went into voluntary exile in England much, much longer than he needed to. 

And, of course, there’s the various and other rumors spread about him via the various pamphlets that were written about him. One of the longstanding favorites, dating back to his own lifetime, is of course that he sexed the Prince de Lamballe to death. (The claim is that he wanted the Prince’s fortune and, since he was married to the Prince’s sister, he hoped to get the inheritance via her, so he had the Prince sleep around in hopes of getting the venereal disease that would eventually end the Prince’s life. Though there is also a distinct feeling of Dorian Gray and Lord Henry in the descriptions of the Prince’s “seduction,” he was not by HIMSELF accused of personally sexing him to death. It was a sexing him to death by proxy, really. Even Talleyrand thought it was ridiculous, with the real explanation simply being that the two of them were thots.) 

Orléans’ sex life in general tends to be amped up to 11, even past the thottiness that can be confirmed via actual sources. Like, it tends to become one more aspect of his “villainy,” with the “wholesome” world of the Royal Family and the more conservative, domestic family values that they exemplify  being contrasted with the Depraved Duc D’Orléans and his various and assorted fuck-a-thons (”Yeah, it’s fine to support an oppressive class system that heavily punishes any transgression from the social norm, whether in terms of sexuality, gender, religion, or just. Saying something like “I think people should have human rights.” But I for one draw a line at fucking between multiple consenting parties.”). Pamphlet writers really stumbled over one another trying to outdo themselves with describing the scenes in lurid detail, like they’re fascinated by it but they’re also repulsed at the same time. 

Really...there are just. Too many ridiculous takes, too little time.