#she was a grown-ass woman

[jupitermelichios]

(spoilers for the ending of assassins creed 1, and i guess technically the whole franchise)

Her name was Helena Petrovna Hahn von Rottenstern, aka Madame Helena Blavatsky, and she's one of the most influential people of the 19th century, and for some reason we don't talk about her

in response to being married at 17 to a man 40 years older than her, she ran away and travelled around for a bit (we do not know where, because she lied about literally everything all the time and 99% of the things she said about her own life were probably bollocks - we only know for certain when and where she was born because her mother was a reasonably well-known writer and her life was therefore documented by people who weren't compulsive liars!). She claims these travels included going to tibet - as it was a closed country at the time which did not allow foreigners to visit, this is probably bollocks, but who knows

eventually she washed up in america in the 1870s with minimal money and a hundred-a-day smoking habit to fund, so she immediately starts running the popular scam at the time of pretending to be nobility in hiding so people will let you stay with them for free (she was from a noble family, but a pretty minor and unexciting one). While doing this, she encounters spiritualism, and claims to be an immediate convert. Actually, she's just spotted a good grift.

she works as a medium for a few years, conning people in a very mundane and kind of sad way, and then has the genius idea that actually the best way to make money from this would be to start a religion, so she does.

it was called theosophy, and it was mostly based on the Edward Bulwar-Lytton novel fantasy novel Zanoni, which she was very familiar with because her mother did the russian translation for it, with a big dose of spiritualism and orientalism on top, and its big innovation in the cult and spirituality space was the "secret masters"

see actually madame blavatsky wasn't a fake medium, she was the student of an immortal enlightened being from tibet (because being a closed country meant it was cool and mysterious and also you can't prove it's not full of immortal wizards) called koot hoomi, who was part of an order of ancient beings who had been guiding humanity from the shadows for centuries. (in some accounts they specifically lived inside the earth which was hollow, but i can't remember if she introduced that or one of her followers later on. probably once tibet opened its borders and everyone realised it was just a normal country full of normal humans)

for the low low price of massive donations to her cult, and also maybe moving to india to live in their compound, you too could become a student of the secret masters and learn the wisdom of the ancients!

my favourite thing about this grift is that she had a papier mache koot hoomi head which would get pulled up on a wire during seances to convince people he was a) real, and b) physically mannifesting in their house.

(she also convinced her followers she could teleport, and to do this she'd pay their servants to drop cigarette buts and ash in their houses and then tell them they were from her cigarette when she teleported in earlier. no really, she was here, she left just before you got in. the 'i have a girlfriend she just goes to a different school' of fake magic powers)

my least favourite thing about the grift is that a group of her followers calling themselves the order of the star in the east became convinced that the son of one of the compounds gardeners in india was actually the messiah so they basically purchased this kid off his dad and raised him in the cult to be the messiah, and she was cool with this. (he ended up shockingly well adjusted, basically did a press conference when he turned 20 where he publically announced that he was definitely not the messiah, and moved away to the country to live a pretty normal life)

the big long term effect of theosophy is a) every modern cult that isn't just 'existing mainstream religion but real extreme' is just theosophy in a funny hat, and b) the idea of this super intelligent powerful ancient race that taught humanity everything they know and you too can gain their knowledge for the low low price of loosing all your friends as you fall down a conspiracy rabbit hole caught on in a massive way.

this leads to a whole of lot very bad nazi and nazi-adjacent beliefs (the nazi spin is that the aryan race were the secret masters and all blonde people are their direct descendants). then in the 50s you get roswell and the alien sighting craze, and suddenly everyone's asking 'but what if the secret masters were aliens'

that gets us to another horribly influential terrible person, Erich von Däniken, who publishes Chariots of the Gods in 1968 about how ancient brown people were too stupid to do anything and actually everything cool they did was done by aliens who visited them (and probably looked like white people - not all ancient astronaut belief systems are racist, but like 99% are)

this book became massively popular and pushed the secret masters idea fully mainstream, and you started getting a whole lot of pop culture stuff based on it (so much of marvel comics. so much. jack kirby fucking loved that stupid book. the Eternals are literally just chariots of the gods fanfic)

from there, it's a straight step to Assassins Creed, a game about how the bible and also greek mythology is actually just describing a race of super-advanced immortal aliens who have guided humanity and gave them technology etc etc (if you did not know that's what those games were about and instead thought they were about being a cool assassin doing stealth missions, sorry for the spoilers. this tumblr post is allowing you to experience first hand how fucking jarring the final act reveal of that game was without needing to spend $20 and 30 hours playing it - a bargain!)

and then michael fassbender made one of the worst decisions of his whole career, and now I have to get jumpscared by a 19th century conwoman and her stupid papier mache ghost when i'm just trying to learn about d&d mechanics, lmao

tl;dr - conartist creates a cult around the idea of secret immortal beings guiding humanity, second different conartist goes 'yes but what if they were aliens and also racist', this idea goes on to be central to way too many marvel comics and also the assassins creed franchise

i was watching a video about d&d and the creator said he thought it would be cool to have a setting where elves are a lost race of powerful ancients rather than a current-day player race, so now i'm thinking about how much of modern pop culture wouldn't exist without one specific 19th century conartist again

(also cults. so many cults. minimum 50% of modern cult belief systems wouldn't exist without her)

[kalopsic-lagomorph]

i think she shouldve changed outfits each game it wouldve been cool

kinda redraw of these

[coffeenonsense]

people protesting you can't ship lucy and the ghoul bc of the age gap are so fucking funny the man sold her organs for drugs, cut off her finger and lassoed her like a runaway calf; I get why THAT might turn you off (couldn't be me but like, I get it) but some of you looked at that situation and went "ew gross they can't smooch, he's old"

[cinamun]

I enjoy peace | Next

Do not click the cut if you forgot my blog is for adults only, if you are in the presence of coworkers, your mother, children or your pastor...

18+ <-

[anonymocha]

sharing leftover energy bars with the doctor’s dogs

this ost on loop btw

[sarafangirlart]

I don’t like it when ppl draw Hades as a young emo guy bc part of the appeal (at least for me) is that he’s an older more mature guy. Like idk man I’d rather be kidnapped and married to Disney’s Hades rather than a guy I’d see at hot topic.

[taylorftparamore]

imo, taylor's been writing about loss of innocence since speak now. the nature of entering adulthood is you mourn that loss of childhood, and tbh? folkmore & midnights & ttpd follow a theme of accepting adulthood, that her girlhood is completely gone & never coming back to her. it's not about "being a girl" but rather "becoming a woman, and accepting all the wisdom that comes with it"

[thewickedkat]

long post incoming; meta enthusiasts may wish to digest this in chunks.

i am so completely exasperated with Laudna as of the latest episode. however, i temper that exasperation with my enjoyment as a viewer; indeed, i am feasting on the conflict, thinking finally, some good fucking food, because i think (and have always thought) that Laudna is terrifically interesting as a character and she presents wonderful opportunities for growth not only on her end, but as a catalyst for others.

that being said. the sword. how she handled it. how she handled her own trauma bubbling up, how she handled (or didn't) Delilah, how she handled Orym and Chetney and Dorian and the whole miserable mess she made.

it was selfish. there. i said it. you may disagree with me, i care not, but her course of action was terribly selfish and destructive.

i know many people out there have been likening her behaviour to that of an addict's (and there are many common factors there: the hiding, the lying by omission, the shame, the acquiescence to bad behaviour), but i think in some ways that to do so is reductive, and also removes agency from Laudna herself.

she is allowing her trauma to almost make her decisions for her, allowing it to define her, and she is not giving herself the opportunity to realise that growth beyond it is possible--or, perhaps, she does realise this and is simply too afraid to reach out and grasp it. i think even if Delilah weren't trying to subsume her, Laudna would still be self-sabotaging and self-destructive and still try to hide the parts of her she felt were undesirable; Delilah in many ways simply makes it easier for Laudna to do so and, if pressed, provides a rationalisation for Laudna's choices and actions (as in 'it wasn't me, it was her, she made me do it).

first and foremost, Laudna was a victim of heinous trauma, being murdered and then being put on grotesque display. then she was further traumatised in coming back from the dead and being forced to isolate herself from people for many years, with only Delilah's honeysweet venom dripping into her ear for that time. then she is murdered again as an object lesson for the woman she loves, then stuffed down so deep into her own psyche by the one who first killed her; she is fought for and brought back by her friends...who then seem to do little to check in with her, to make sure she is stable, or coping, because they each have their own baggage and oh by the way, the world is possibly ending. to be fair, there is little time for therapy and stability when you are literally running from crisis to crisis and trying to stop something you haven't even conceived of in your nightmares.

she feels dismissed, often, minimised, and she never developed healthy people skills or coping mechanisms (i am sorry but as much as i love Pâté, a dead rat does not a support group make). so she lashes out, has poor emotional regulation, and Does Crappy Things. so i also understand when she said 'what else have i to give, but myself?'

all that being said. what she did with Orym and the sword was fucking selfish. she is behaving like a child, as if she is the only one whose tragedies matter; she's playing Oppression Olympics, and can i just point out that Orym was the one to say 'i'm sorry' but Laudna never apologised for accosting him while he slept and hurting him? saying 'i didn't mean to hurt you' is not the same, because that implies that if she had not hurt him, stealing from him was perfectly acceptable and reasonable.

i don't believe her when she said 'i accept responsibility' because that means one must accept the consequences of their own actions, and right after she said that, she argued with everyone, told the oldest member of the Hells that he had no right to talk about loss to her, and then fled. that isn't accepting responsibility; that is mouthing platitudes in the hopes you will sway others to your point of view and when it fails, leaving in a huff like a child having a tantrum.

she didn't even bother to ask Orym why he kept the sword. she just tried to take.

Laudna often reacts from a place of fear: of pain, of more trauma, fear of inadequacy, of loss. all of these fears are valid. they are understandable, given all that has happened to her. but just because her fears are valid does not give her the right to make others pay for her emotional baggage. this is what makes her behaviour in ep 95 selfish. all of her actions in the back half of that episode are things she chose to do, and now she must sit in the mess she made. Laudna seems to be falling into the same mental rut that many victims fall into when their trauma isn't dealt with in a healthy fashion: they start fucking others over, as if being a victim excuses it. it does not.

and before others come for me, i say that as one who used to do the same fucking thing but i was lucky enough to have therapy. Laudna doesn't have that luxury--none of the Hells do. there simply isn't time to make space for any of their issues, not just Laudna's. Imogen is still wrestling with her mother; Fearne is wrestling with her parentage; Orym is just trying to keep his feet under him and do what he feels is right without betraying anyone he cares for (yes, including Laudna, shut up); Ashton is still trying to process the loss of Fresh Cut Grass (for gods' sakes, the crafting night was a fucking wake for the lil guy); Dorian just lost his brother and watched his friend succumb to a Betrayer God that turned her into a monster; and Chetney? Chetney is an old man who, i personally think, can pick his battles and knows how to compartmentalise better than any of these kids.

Laudna is not unique in that she has suffered horribly. no one is saying she hasn't, but her behaviour implies that she believes they are saying that. her actions imply she believes not only that she does not trust her friends (thanks, Dorian), but that acknowledging others' losses somehow negates hers. there just isn't time to healthily process any of this, which sucks. it does. i do think her friends love her, care for her deeply, and i think part of the reason they haven't checked up on her as much as they could is because a) they're afraid that her problem with Delilah is much worse than they thought (duh, it is); b) they can't fix the Delilah Problem right now even if they were qualified to do so (even Pike couldn't scour that bitch out of Laudna, she said as much); and c) they run the very substantial risk of wholly alienating Laudna if they press the issue too hard, thus not only losing an asset in the fight against the Vanguard and Ludinus, but also a friend and lover.

it's shit, all around, we all know that. but to pretend that it's okay she did what she did to Orym--or worse, somehow transfer responsibility from her onto him and make it his fault--is infantilising and disingenuous at best, and more than a little insulting.

[bmpmp3]

finding out ur coworker is way older than you thought and having to very quickly reorient how you talk to them

[crimsonender]

Deserve? You sure are a funny lady, miss Taxxon.

[moliathh]

i really love this interaction between alucard and seras because alucard just went full nagging mother mode on seras and she just stood there bearing it while holding back tears this is so asian mother and child interaction

[adamshallperish]

defending ethel cain online is not enough. i need a gun.

[mingot-studios]

Can I say something that might be controversial?

I HATE Maria's original outfit.

Not because it's sexualized or revealing, but because it's just an eyesore!

Like, what is even going on here??

I mean that burgundy cropped sweater-coat thing with that bright pink leopard print tube skirt with a matching choke while wearing those idk black flat-heeled work boots that don't go with anything??? Coupled with that amateur looking makeup??

I'd say she must've gotten dressed in the dark but it's accurate to say the dark dressed her.

Oh before you go and say "o it was based on an outift Christina Aguilera wore🤪" I AM AWARE! 😡

Unfortunately, the color scheme (and those fucking boots) they decided to give Maria just makes it an assault on the eyes

all i can say is thank GOD bloober team decided to give her a much-needed glow-up,

[s0ap-bubbles]

Genuinely love how every modern depiction of Sonya Blade has made her so aggressively annoyed with Johnny only for her to get angry when someone hurts him (or hits on him in mk11 sindel’s case)

[zootopiathingz]

Sabrina Carpenter’s songs: I’m horny I’m horny I’m really really horny I want this man to defile me I want him to tie me to the bed and breed me till my legs don’t work anymore

Parents: mm yes what a great song to let my young child listen to!😁

Sabrina Carpenter: *bends over on stage while singing said songs*

Parents: 😡😡😡😡😡

[magnetic-dogz]

Jokes aside as an autistic person I hate hate hate the fandom trend of taking an adult autistic character or a character that's seen widely autistic-coded and just like. Infantilizing them and stripping them of any agency in fanworks. Making them this innocent naive helpless sexless uwu cutesy baby. It's gross and demeaning as all hell and especially if it's coming from someone who claims to be supportive of autistic people it's like. Going full mask off and showing what you really think of us