#the arguments end up sounding like 'historically it has meant x' 'so what? it means y in the modern day'

[esther-dot]

The debate about the appropriateness of Jonsa overshadows the political/feudal argument. Unless you can make a convincing case Sansa is going to run away and become a peasant with Sandor (didn't GRRM literally mock that...), or that she can singlehandedly Elizabeth the first it, then you need to be thinking about marriage. Marriage is just as important as war in GRRM's books, if not moreso, and it's a symbolic struggle at that.

Of course Stumpy has searched for Sansa's husband and applied this thinking, but it's one that's otherwise severely lacking. GRRM would go there. We know he'd go there, cousins or not. The question is, why?

Stumpy's Find Sansa's Husband is one of my favs!

No worries! Each of us has a fandom pet peeve we need to rant about. And you're right about Martin's criticism of the "running off with a stable boy trope," in fact, it sounds like the idea really annoys him (his quote below the cut)

And then there are some things that are just don’t square with history. In some sense I’m trying to respond to that. [For example] the arranged marriage, which you see constantly in the historical fiction and television show, almost always when there’s an arranged marriage, the girl doesn’t want it and rejects it and she runs off with the stable boy instead. This never fucking happened. It just didn’t. There were thousands, tens of thousand, perhaps hundreds of thousands of arranged marriages in the nobility through the thousand years of Middle Ages and people went through with them. That’s how you did it. It wasn’t questioned. Yeah, occasionally you would want someone else, but you wouldn’t run off with the stable boy. And that’s another of my pet peeves about fantasies. The bad authors adopt the class structures of the Middle Ages; where you had the royalty and then you had the nobility and you had the merchant class and then you have the peasants and so forth. But they don’t’ seem to realize what it actually meant. They have scenes where the spunky peasant girl tells off the pretty prince. The pretty prince would have raped the spunky peasant girl. He would have put her in the stocks and then had garbage thrown at her. You know. I mean, the class structures in places like this had teeth. They had consequences. And people were brought up from their childhood to know their place and to know that duties of their class and the privileges of their class. It was always a source of friction when someone got outside of that thing. And I tried to reflect that.

I think the issue is, S*nsans and people who shipped Sansa with LF were some of the first to write real meta on her (from what I've heard), so certain fans/perceptions got pretty firmly established, and then a new generation of Sansa fan came along who rejected the Sansa x adult man/molester ships, but it was pretty easy for them to assume that due to Sansa's age, Martin would leave her marriage to the future.

Also, a lot of people don't expect Sansa to be QitN, so the succession issue isn't putting pressure on the marriage timeline, and if you're someone who thinks Bran will actually be king over all Westeros or Rickon will be KitN etc etc, you can imagine Sansa's endgame is safety in Winterfell, not a romance or marriage.

Personally, I think Sansa's interactions with Cersei and LF indicate that she wants to be the right kind of queen (in defiance of Cersei's advice) and is being equipped with tools to achieve her own ends / play the game, for the right reasons, to good ends, but being handed tools nonetheless. She is so unfocused on her birthright and power, it seemed like she was meant to be contrasted with Cersei and Dany. The natural endpoint of that imo would be her becoming queen. And, if she is queen, I've argued that based on other queen's experiences, we must see her married as being a queen is a whole new set of risks, not a happy ending in and of itself.

Of course, some have speculated that the endgame will be indicated, not actually chronicled on the page, as in, Jon and Sansa fall in love, but Jon does get sent to the wall or goes into exile for a callback of what Sansa imagined she could do to save Ned, and we end kinda knowing, eventually they'll get back together, but the actual happy ending isn't on the page. Or the alternative scenario is that Jon is named KitN because of Robb's Will and marries Sansa to resolve all the chaos after parentage reveal. That's where your thoughts on the political aspect of marriage comes in because that would be very tidy. Actually, whoever is recognized by the Northern Lords, whether it’s my preference of Sansa or Jon, the heir issue was a big deal for Robb, so marriage / heirs will certainly come up and impact the plot.

As for Jonsa itself and it being icky to some, I've said before, I think Martin must have something he wants to do with incest beyond showcasing how toxic it is. As in, that is not a way to challenge the reader, by saying something we all know, and his whole shtick is to write complexity into every relationship, every hero, even many villains, so I don't for a minute believe that's he's introduced this topic without planning to ask the audience to think a little more deeply on it. To force us to look at it from a different angle. The way he does that is to give us heroes who are tempted and make us squirm until we get parentage reveal.

[hua-fei-hua]

the main reason i don’t take “i’m a native speaker of the source language” as the be-all, end-all for translation arguments in fandom specifically (as in, between fans who are not professional or even hobbyist translators) is bc, well. sometimes.......... native speakers............ are bad at their own language, too.

[cappymightwrite]

What draws you to incest ?

*sighs* Ok, here we go. I'm a real card carrying Jonsa now aren't I?

Anon, listen. I know this is an anti question that gets bandied about a lot, aimed at provoking, etc, when we all know no Jonsa is out here being all you know what, it really is the incest, and the incest alone, that draws me in. I mean, come on now. Grow up.

If I was "drawn" to incest I'd be a fan of Cersei x Jaime, Lucrezia x Cesare, hell Oedipus x Jocasta etc... but I haven't displayed any interest in them now, have I? So, huh, it can't be that.

Frankly, it's a derivitive question that is really missing the mark. I'm not "drawn" to it, though yeah, it is an unavoidable element of Jonsa. The real question you should be asking though, is what draws GRRM to it? Because he obviously is drawn to it, specifically what is termed the "incest motif" in academic and literary scholarship. That is a far more worthwhile avenue of thinking and questioning, compared with asking me. Luckily for you though anon, I sort of anticipated getting this kind of question so had something in my drafts on standby...

You really don't have to look far, or that deeply, to be hit over the head by the connection between GRRM's literary influences and the incest motif. I mean, let's start with the big cheese himself, Tolkein:

Tolkein + Quenta Silmarillion

We know for definite that GRRM has been influenced by Tolkein, and in The Silmarillion you notably have a case of unintentional incest in Quenta Silmarillion, where Túrin Turambar, under the power of a curse, unwittingly murders his friend, as well as marries and impregnates his sister, Nienor Níniel, who herself had lost her memory due to an enchantment.

Mr Tolkein, "what draws you to incest?"

Old Norse + Völsunga saga

Tolkein, as a professor of Anglo-Saxon, was hugely influenced by Old English and Old Norse literature. The story of the ring Andvaranaut, told in Völsunga saga, is strongly thought to have been a key influence behind The Lord of the Rings. Also featured within this legendary saga is the relationship between the twins Signy and Sigmund — at one point in the saga, Signy tricks her brother into sleeping with her, which produces a son, Sinfjotli, of pure Völsung blood, raised with the singular purpose of enacting vengence.

Anonymous Norse saga writer, "what draws you to incest?"

Medieval Literature as a whole

A lot is made of how "true" to the storied past ASOIAF is, how reflective it is of medieval society (and earlier), its power structures, its ideals and martial values etc. ASOIAF, however, is not attempting historical accuracy, and should not be read as such. Yet it is clearly drawing from a version of the past, as depicted in medieval romances and pre-Christian mythology for instance, as well as dusty tomes on warfare strategy. As noted by Elizabeth Archibald in her article Incest in Medieval Literature and Society (1989):

Of course the Middle Ages inherited and retold a number of incest stories from the classical world. Through Statius they knew Oedipus, through Ovid they knew the stories of Canace, Byblis, Myrrha and Phaedra. All these stories end more or less tragically: the main characters either die or suffer metamorphosis. Medieval readers also knew the classical tradition of incest as a polemical accusation,* for instance the charges against Caligula and Nero. – p. 2

The word "polemic" is connected to controversy, to debate and dispute, therefore these classical texts were exploring the incest motif in order to create discussion on a controversial topic. In a way, your question of "what draws you to incest?" has a whiff of polemical accusation to it, but as I stated, you're missing the bigger question.

Moving back to the Middle Ages, however, it is interesting that we do see a trend of more incest stories appearing within new narratives between the 11th and 13th centuries, according to Archibald:

The texts I am thinking of include the legend of Judas, which makes him commit patricide and then incest before betraying Christ; the legend of Gregorius, product of sibling incest who marries his own mother, but after years of rigorous penance finally becomes a much respected pope; the legend of St Albanus, product of father-daughter incest, who marries his mother, does penance with both his parents but kills them when they relapse into sin, and after further penance dies a holy man; the exemplary stories about women who sleep with their sons, and bear children (whom they sometimes kill), but refuse to confess until the Virgin intervenes to save them; the legends of the incestuous begetting of Roland by Charlemagne and of Mordred by Arthur; and finally the Incestuous Father romances about calumniated wives, which resemble Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale except that the heroine's adventures begin when she runs away from home to escape her father's unwelcome advances. – p. 2

I mean... that last bit sounds eerily quite close to what we have going on with Petyr Baelish and Sansa Stark. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that from a medieval and classical standpoint... GRRM is not unique in his exploration of the incest motif, far from it.

Sophocles, Ovid, Hartmann von Aue, Thomas Malory, etc., "what draws you to incest?"

Faulkner + The Sound and the Fury, and more!

Moving on to more modern influences though, when talking about the writing ethos at the heart of his work, GRRM has famously quoted William Faulker:

His mantra has always been William Faulkner’s comment in his Nobel prize acceptance speech, that only the “human heart in conflict with itself… is worth writing about”. [source]

I’ve never read any Faulker, so I did just a quick search on “Faulkner and incest” and I pulled up this article on JSTOR, called Faulkner and the Politics of Incest (1998). Apparently, Faulkner explores the incest motif in at least five novels, therefore it was enough of a distinctive theme in his work to warrant academic analysis. In this journal article, Karl F. Zender notes that:

[...] incest for Faulkner always remains tragic [...] – p. 746

Ah, we can see a bit of running theme here, can't we? But obviously, GRRM (one would hope) doesn’t just appreciate Faulkner’s writing for his extensive exploration of incest. This quote possibly sums up the potential artistic crossover between the two:

Beyond each level of achieved empathy in Faulkner's fiction stands a further level of exclusion and marginalization. – pp. 759–60

To me, the above parallels somewhat GRRM’s own interest in outcasts, in personal struggle (which incest also fits into):

I am attracted to bastards, cripples and broken things as is reflected in the book. Outcasts, second-class citizens for whatever reason. There’s more drama in characters like that, more to struggle with. [source]

Interestingly, however, this essay on Faulkner also connects his interest in the incest motif with the romantic poets, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron:

As Peter Thorslev says in an important study of romantic representations of incest, " [p]arent-child incest is universally condemned in Romantic literature...; sibling incest, on the other hand, is invariably made sympathetic, is sometimes exonerated, and, in Byron's and Shelley's works, is definitely idealized.” – p. 741

Faulkner, "what draws you to incest?" ... I mean, that article gives some good explanations, actually.

Lord Byron, Manfred + The Bride of Abydos

Which brings us onto GRRM interest in the Romantics:

I was always intensely Romantic, even when I was too young to understand what that meant. But Romanticism has its dark side, as any Romantic soon discovers... which is where the melancholy comes in, I suppose. I don't know if this is a matter of artistic influences so much as it is of temperament. But there's always been something in a twilight that moves me, and a sunset speaks to me in a way that no sunrise ever has. [source]

I'm already in the process of writing a long meta about the influence of Lord Byron in ASOIAF, specifically examining this quote by GRRM:

The character I’m probably most like in real life is Samwell Tarly. Good old Sam. And the character I’d want to be? Well who wouldn’t want to be Jon Snow — the brooding, Byronic, romantic hero whom all the girls love. Theon [Greyjoy] is the one I’d fear becoming. Theon wants to be Jon Snow, but he can’t do it. He keeps making the wrong decisions. He keeps giving into his own selfish, worst impulses. [source]

Lord Byron, "what draws you to—", oh, um, right. Nevermind.

I'm not going to repeat myself here, but it's worth noting that there is a clear through line between GRRM and the Romantic writers, besides perhaps melancholic "temperament"... and it's incest.

But look, is choosing to explore the incest motif...well, a choice? Yeah, and an uncomfortable one at that, but it’s obvious that that is what GRRM is doing. I think it’s frankly a bit naive of some people to argue that GRRM would never do Jonsa because it’s pseudo-incest and therefore morally repugnant, no ifs, no buts. I’m sorry, as icky as it may be to our modern eyes, GRRM has set the president for it in his writing with the Targaryens and the Lannister twins.

The difference with them is that they knowingly commit incest, basing it in their own sense of exceptionalism, and there are/will be bad consequences — this arguably parallels the medieval narratives in which incest always ends badly, unless some kind of real penance is involved. For Jon and Sansa, however, the Jonsa argument is that they will choose not to commit incest, despite a confused attraction, and then will be rewarded in the narrative through the parentage reveal, a la Byron’s The Bride of Abydos. The Targaryens and Lannisters, in several ways excluding the incest (geez the amount of times I’ve written incest in this post), are foils for the Starks, and in particular, Jon and Sansa. Exploring the incest motif has been on the cards since the very beginning — just look at that infamous "original" outline — regardless of whether we personally consider that an interesting writing choice, or a morally inexcusable one.

Word of advice, or rather, warning... don't think you can catch me out with these kinds of questions. I have access to a university database, so if I feel like procrastinating my real academic work, I can and will pull out highly researched articles to school you, lmao.

But you know, thanks for the ask anyway, I guess.

[do-y0u-have-to-let-it-linger]

EXT. The Roof (Winter) - Sunset

Not Just Attracted to Women!Peter Maximoff x Fem and Not Just Attracted to Men!Reader

Based off of a dream I recently had: Peter and Y/N have a conversation on the roof of Xavier's in mid-December. Peter accidentally lets it slip that he might not be straight, and he is afraid that Y/N will think less of him because of it because this is the 80s. Y/N reveals that she is also not straight, and is saddened by the fact that Peter could think that she could ever hate him- especially for that. She calls him wonderful. Feelings ensue. Also, a touch of Cherik at the end because I give the people what they want.

Warnings: Swearing, Peter cries, internalized homophobia (this is the 80s-ish and Peter uses the word 'queer' in a kind of incorrect and kind of offensive manner, but it was internalized homophobia and not actually intended to be mean to anyone but himself so I forgive him), a touch of angst but mostly fluff, Charles called you two "children" even though you are obviously not, Erik is happy that his son has someone that cares about him the way you do, Peter is insecure but not super blunt about it, Peter has been deprived of being adored his entire life, bad writing, I mention a serial killer twice, historical inaccuracy because the word queer was still a slur so yeah.

A/N: This is literally the first thing I have ever written so please be nice to me, I wrote this instead of an essay. I would love a comment of any kind, even if it's just a heart emoji or something, and constructive criticism would be highly appreciated. Also 'N/N' stands for nick-name.

(Ok, so, full discloser: the format is odd. The bullet points represent dialogue, and the only dialogue is between you two love birds. The first bullet point is Peter, the second is Y/N, the third is Peter, and so on.)

“I dunno, the whole ‘liking people’ thing has always been weird for me.”

“How do you mean?"

“Pppffftt- 'how do you mean,' what are you, Shakespeare or somethin’?”

“Yeah, because that’s the era when ‘how do you mean' would have been a popular term. Ok, what do you mean?”

“Just- when other people were liking people I never really was?”

He was gesturing wildly and avoiding eye contact, as always. He wasn't uncomfortable with eye contact, he just got bored easily in conversations, he needed to keep himself occupied. In this situation that meant staring at the red and green lights covering the rest of the roof, the snowy trees all over the yard, and a holly garland around the gate. Peter wasn't Christian, but man, did he love their Christmas decorations.

“Like… now? In school?”

“Well- yeah… but also when I was younger. And I never liked the right people? Or... liked them in the right way?”

“So you’ve never liked anyone.”

“No, no… I definitely have. It was just… weird! I don't-”

His hands dropped to his side in defeat.

“I don’t think it’s that out of the ordinary. I would tell you if it was. Also, if it was... 'weird', like you said, that wouldn’t mean it was necessarily bad.”

He hadn’t really heard what she said, he was too busy pondering what his next sentence would be. When she wasn't speaking, he was rambling.

"I had some of the normal crap… like in movies when they talk about the fluttery stomach junk. I've had that around a few girls I've been friends with, also that phase with the boy stuff, a-"

“Wait, what phase with the boy stuff?”

“Like- when you’re in middle school or whatever and you're gay for a second.”

His phrasing was a joke, but the statement as a whole was not.

“…‘Gay for a second’?”

“…Yeah?”

“Hmmm..."

"Is that- not-"

"I don't think that is... 'normal'... per-say..."

“Oh… Really?”

His heart sunk.

“…Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“…Mhm.”

“…Shit.”

He suddenly looked almost embarrassed. He shifted his posture, seemingly trying to shrink into himself.

“Do you... wanna chat about it?”

Panic started to slowly rise in him.

“Um- forget I said anything.”

“Why?”

Something in him said to go on the "defense". He did not appear as calm as he was intending to.

“I’m not- gay! or anything. I like girls! I do!”

She put her hand on his arm.

“Hey- look at me for a second. We are not in court, and I never 'accused' you of being gay. That would be a very funny reality TV show, but not what is happening right now. Listen, theoretically if you were gay that wouldn’t be bad! And I wouldn’t be… whatever you.. think that I would be? I mean- however you are afraid I would act in a negative reaction to it? I would try to be here for you, and be as supportive as possible.”

He didn’t believe her.

“Ok, sure.”

“Peter.”

“What? You’re going to tell me that you would honestly be friends with a queer person- be friends with me if I was... not... normal?”

She was taken aback by his tone, the word he had used, and the way he said it, felt like a weight dropping on her shoulders.

“Oh. would you… not?”

It was her turn to seem nervous.

“What?”

“Would you- stop being friends with someone for liking someone that they… I don’t know… shouldn’t... would be the word I guess?”

Why, in this situation, was she nervous? Oh. His fear was replaced with guilt.

“No.”

“Ok.”

“So… are you… do you… why were you scared?”

“... Why were you?”

She expected a joke from him, something along the lines of “touché".

“Are you… gay?”

“No.”

Yeah, he didn’t believe her.

“Uh-huh”

“Really, I’m not. I’ve liked boys, but also... I've had feelings for girls. I’m not… straight. So I just want to let you know that it’s okay if you aren’t too.”

“I never s-“

She smiled at him with a bit of pity, she had been there. The self-loathing, the feeling of walking on minefields with so many people in your life.

“You are…”

She paused.

“I am… what?”

“Give me a second I’m trying to find the perfect word.”

“… Okay?”

“Wonderful.”

That was not exactly the word he was expecting. Like, at all.

“Huh?”

“That’s the word. Wait- let me start over. You gotta look me in my eyes as I say it, because it’s gonna be really poetic.”

“Uh… should I be scared?”

“No. Maybe a little. No.”

“… Okay.”

He looked at her.

“You are… wonderful.”

“Oh... Thanks?“

He looked away again, to be honest, he was a bit uncomfortable. He rarely received compliments, especially ones that seem so... genuine.

“I’m not finished, look back at me, just for a second. You are so wonderful- and I will support you as whatever you are! I want you to know that I can- I can barely even think of something you could do that would make me genuinely hate you- like… maybe if you Dahmer-ed people or like chopped up a-“

He found this was amusing, yet disturbing.

“Y/N?”

“Sorry- I just- the fact that you thought, even for a second, that I could hate you… is just-“

“I’m sorry”

“No! Stop it. Don’t be sorry.”

She stared at him expectantly.

“What do you want me to-“

“Take it back! The sorry!”

“How?”

“Say you aren’t sorry”

“N/N-“

“Peter.”

“Ok. I’m, ya know, not sorry.”

“Good. You shouldn’t be”

“You’re weird.”

“Yuh-huh. Says the most likely, from the little information I've gathered, bisexual in denial who also happens to be the fastest boy on earth who had to slow down exponentially to interact with other people who also, also, happens sitting on a roof in the dead of winter with me.”

“What’s by smexual?”

Something about the way he attempted to repeat her words must have been hilarious, he thought, because here she was, sitting in front of him, in a fit of childish giggles. He would smile if he weren't so confused.

“No- that’s not- what I said- it’s… wait!”

“What?”

“You’re tryna get me off topic!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

“Am not!”

“Are t- shit.”

“HAHA! Victory is a sweet dessert... wait is that even the saying? Still, I win you lose, nerd.”

“Ok, okay! go on.”

She was attempting to gather herself to give off a less jokey aura. It was half working, the "am not! are too!" argument a few moments ago made it hard for him to take her seriously, but he could tell it was important to her that he did, so he tried his best.

“You have to look at me again. just for a second.”

“I sw-”

“Just do it? Please?”

His attempt to put up a fight was thwarted by her small "please". He was pathetic.

“Okay.”

He looked at her.

“You…”

“Me… or- wait- I…”

“Are w-“

“Wonderful, yeah yeah. just get to the n-”

“No.”

“… No?”

“When you say it it doesn’t encapsulate it. It sounds silly.”

“Ok little miss ‘you art thou wonderful’, how would you have me say it?”

“I am you wonderful?”

“What?”

“You called me ‘little miss you are you wonderful’ what does that-“

“Ok! Would you just- shut up and call me wonderful one more time, please?”

She looked at him and blinked. That sentence surely came off as less ironic than intended.

“You are wonderful.”

She grabbed his face, in a half-joking manner. Her grab smushed his cheeks and she couldn't help but laugh a bit when she did it. Even though it was clearly a bit, he was still flustered.

“W-“

She shook him a bit.

"Shut up 'cause I'm about to say some beautiful and true shit. You are wonderful. You are wonderful. You are wonderful. You are absolutely, unchangingly, and irrevocably wonderful and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, Maximoff.”

After saying what she would (in 40 years or so) recall as a painfully John Green-ish statement in her blunt and matter-of-fact manner, she let go of her semi-ironic hold on his pink cheeks. Were his cheeks pink because it was absolutely freezing, or because his heart was beating faster than he had ever (and would ever, mind you) run, you ask? No comment.

“Wow.”

“Wow what.”

“You do say it better than I do.”

“Did you like how I stressed different parts of the sentence each time? I thought that was a nice detail.”

“Wow.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Wow.”

Did his voice just... break a little?

“Peter?”

“Uh- yeah?”

Was he a little... sniffle-y? She was now very concerned.

“Are you okay?!”

“Oh- um... yeah!”

No! No he was clearly not! He was sniffling!

“Really? 'Cause, you don't seem it.”

“It’s just- I just- wow.”

“Wow, what!?”

“That was just- uh-"

“Just what? It really wasn't that fancy, you seem much too impressed with me. Oh my God, was it terrible?”

“I mean it was really corny but w-“

“I swear to God if you say 'wow' one more time I may have to add ‘use of the word wow too much’ to the list of things that could make me hate you. Right next to the Dahmer stuff. That was a joke. Your use of the word wow is only mildly perturbing. Sorry."

She was panicking "just a bit".

“I’m sorry, I mean I’m not sorry. Sorry. Shit! sorry! I mean I’m not!”

And he was absolutely... full-on crying at this point.

“Peter.”

“Yeah?”

He was looking down at his mittens. Not that this is important, but they were very pretty mittens.

“Look at me, you klepto.”

He didn’t.

“You know- I’ve been hearing a lot of that 'look at me' stuff from you today. I mean- the klepto part is new-“

“Peter.”

“What?!”

He peaked up at her.

“Talk to me. Please, you're kinda scaring me, let me help.”

“I’m not sad!”

“You’re crying!”

“Yeah but not from the sads!”

“… The ‘sads’?”

“You know- when you get sad! It just means being sad! I don't- that’s what Wanda calls it, not me!"

He wiped his nose, tears still running down from his puffy eyes to his reddened cheeks.

“What are you crying from?”

“No one’s ever called me wonderful before.”

“I'm sorry! I did a few minutes ago and you didn’t cry!”

“No! You can't 'sorry' me if I can't 'sorry' you! And- yeah but that doesn’t count!”

“Why?”

“Because it only felt big when you said it the certain way!”

“What way!?”

“You look at me, you grab my cheeks-“

“I'm sorry about that by the way I was j-“

“No! It’s really ok! Do it whenever! I mean don’t do it whene- shut up!”

“I’m not even talking! You're the one talking!”

“You look at me, you grab my cheeks, and you go: you are wonderful.”

“Yeah???”

“No one ever called me that before!”

"Peter, I- well- they- they should! They should! More often! Then the amount that it happens now! I think. In my opinion."

"Or really looked at me like that!”

“Looked at you like what, Peter?”

“Like I was somethin’!”

“Well, you are… ‘somethin'! Whatever that means! And- I think you deserve to be looked at as such!”

“See?”

“What!?”

“You just-“

A strangled sob escaped from his throat. He didn't know how to explain.

“Pete.”

“Ew. I hate that nickname.”

He crossed his arms over his chest like a toddler, trying to completely ignore the fact that he was an emotional wreck.

“Peter.”

“Yeah?”

She opened her arms and gestured for him to come closer. He was hesitant at first- but gave up all the reasons he shouldn't move to be closer to her in exchange for the promise of comfort she was offering him. He crawled over to her and curled up in her arms. The way she held him made him want to cry more. Who does she think she is- holding him like he was worth holding? With her chin sitting on top of his hair? Letting him do that gross cry sob with the spit and the snot into her only winter coat? Rocking him, and shushing him, and petting his stupid, silver hair? She was warm, too! The audacity of this woman.

When Erik brought Charles into his office to grab a chess set, they saw the two in the window. For a moment Charles considered telling Peter and Y/N to get off of the high platform, seeing as the two were the reasons the "no sitting on the roof" rule was enacted in the first place (neither of them were coordinated whatsoever). Charles quickly dropped this notion when he saw the look on Erik's face, Charles could tell it made him so happy to see Peter be held like that, cared for like that. Erik's expression made Charles want to both tell Erik that he is the most precious thing in the world, and make fun of him (look at Mr. Metal, gone completely soft). Possibly he could do both at the same time. But for now, he is just going to pretend he didn't see the two outside of the window, and have Erik grab them their game, go to the living room, and pretend not to have read Erik's mind when he inevitably asks him how he always manages to pick the white chess piece at "random".

[katribou]

Maybe its not supposed to be a racism allegory. It still works for the story and worldbuilding. Just like Beastars, where attempts to compare it to real life won't work since the problems the characters face are really specific to their own society and their own nature, so the story wouldn't make sense if you replaced them with humans. But if the allegory really was the author's intent, then you're right and it was poorly done.

alright. i want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but there is a bit of ignorance to what you say. so i’ll be as thorough as possible about my thoughts.

authorial intent is really powerless when it comes to what a piece of media says or does. if a piece of media harms, but the author did not mean it to harm, does that make the harm any more less? 

content creators and content consumers alike are likely familiar (and if not, should be) with the notion of ‘death of the author.’ from tvtropes’ summary of the concept:

Death of the Author is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing. This is usually understood as meaning that a writer's views about their own work are no more or less valid than the interpretations of any given reader. Intentions are one thing. What was actually accomplished might be something very different. The logic behind the concept is fairly simple: Books are meant to be read, not written, so the ways readers interpret them are as important and "real" as the author's intention. [...]

Bottom line: A) when discussing a fictional work with others, don't expect "Author intended this to be X; therefore, it is X" to be the end of or your entire argument; it's universally expected that interpretations of fiction must at least be backed up with evidence from within the work itself and B) don't try to get out of analyzing a work by treating "ask the author what X means" as the only or even best way to find out what X means — you must search for an answer yourself, young seeker. Writing is the author's job; analyzing the work and drawing conclusions based on it is your job — if the author just gave away the answers every time, where would the fun be in that?

>interpretations of fiction must at least be backed up with evidence from within the work itself. okay, fine. so i argue brand new animal is a racism allegory. let’s look within the show to find evidence of this.

from episode 9: “But Nazuna wants to give a glimmer of hope and dreams to the beastmen who’ve been persecuted and suffered for so long.”

'the beastmen who have been persecuted.’ what exactly does that mean? persecution as defined in mac’s dictionary function (which cites new oxfords english dictionary): hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs. 

the beastmen are not oppressed because of who they believe in, so not of religious beliefs or political beliefs, with the exception of believing they deserve rights, which plays into... that they are persecuted for race.

i dont really think i need to back up that statement, but for the sake of a sound argument, this is from episode 1.

it’s clear that this human dude has a distaste for michiru here because of what she is, a beastman, which is essentially what she is, her race. hence racial persecution, or, racism.

in your own words, “attempts to compare it to real life won't work since the problems the characters face are really specific to their own society and their own nature, so the story wouldn't make sense if you replaced them with humans.”

is the above exchange really so displaced from real life? this kind of thing really does happen; being targeted and even beat up simply for existing as you are is not something that is so specific to only the world of bna. 

sure you may argue that replacing humans into the whole story would not make sense and well sure, yes. it is indeed a work of fiction so it won’t be a perfect replication of the human experience. but there is enough situations like the above to argue it mirrors racial prejudice in real life.

the evidence is there, so with the philosophy of “death of the author,” it is arguable this piece of media exists as a racial allegory, whether or not trigger wrote it to be that way. if they somehow did not have real race/minority relations in mind when writing this, which i would find very hard to believe, than it has still become bigger than them. because people who face racism will relate to scenarios such as beastmen being the target of hate crimes like the above, and nothing the authors meant to do really changes that feeling.

when such a scenario as above is set up in the very first episode to give you a picture of what this persecuted group experiences, while simultaneously likening itself to what minorities in real life experience, the treatment in following episodes of said group will reflect back as commentary on real life groups whether or not the authors intended that.

in bna’s case it’s rather damaging with implying this minority group is prone to rage and destruction because of their nature or dna:

episode 9: “Beastmen are easily influenced by their emotions. When their frustration builds up, the slightest thing sends them into a fury, causing confusion.”

episode 10: “The stress from multiple species invading your habitat accumulates subconsciously. In that situation if there is a powerful mental shock, the enrage switch in beast [dna] is set off, and their fight instincts take over.”

this is where you may argue in your own words “the story wouldn't make sense if you replaced them with humans.” which, yes that is true, but again this is fiction. the dynamic they establish in that first episode with beastmen being persecuted by humans is one founded in real race relations so the show at large becomes a vehicle to which it addresses race relations.

ep 10: “They’re [the drug vaccine that cures beastmen of being animals] made to subdue beastmen who have turned savage.”

goodness this almost becomes about eugenics! which is another movement founded on racism and other -isms!

the word “savage” generally refers to wild, violent unconfined animals, which, fine, i suppose, after all these ARE animal people in the show. but the show has established this animal people group as a targeted victim minority. historically in real life, the word “savage” has been a label used to describe many persecuted groups, like indigenous peoples or african americans, in a way to dehumanize them by comparing them to animals and force the idea that they are uncivilized while making the people in power feel more justified about their rough treatment of the targeted group.

i suppose arguably they are using the word “savage” to describe animals as the word originally was intended, but after establishing the framework of these animals as being persecuted peoples, do you understand the implications? are they basically saying yes, targeted minorites, are savage? admittedly i will say that that idea is a big jump, but even if you stick to the world of the show, basically this establishes that everyone is at the mercy of their genes turning them bad... not a great message.

i kind of went beyond the scope of what you addressed in your message, but wanted to show an example of how i think it is very important to consider how a piece of media can very easily become bigger than its creators, and that you cannot hide behind authorial intent saying otherwise when media expresses potentially damaging ideas. 

to reiterate the line from tvtropes: Intentions are one thing. What was actually accomplished might be something very different.

[ineloqueent]

Starstruck: Part 17

Brian May x Fem!Reader

This is Part 17 of a multi-part fic. Click the links below to read the Masterpost, the previous part, or the next part of the fic :)

Masterpost / Part 16 / Part 18

Summary: When studying at Imperial College in the 1970s, your path is crossed by a beautiful boy as much in love with the stars as you.  

Warnings: swearing, sentiments of sadness

Historical Inaccuracies:

SO. This is more of a disclaimer than an inaccuracy. But it’s very important...

I have written Mary’s character on basis of Lucy Boynton’s portrayal of her in Bohemian Rhapsody. I make no assumptions concerning the relationship between Freddie and Mary, and nor do I condone the things Mary has done in the wake of Freddie’s passing. 

Please remember that this is but a fictionalisation. But anyway. I’m not here to talk about that; I’m here to write fanfic. Let’s go! 

Word Count: 2.6k (can i get three cheers for the shortest chapter ever)

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

You found her soon enough. She hadn’t even made it fully up the stairs.

A pitiful sight, she was, sitting with her knees pulled up as she wept quietly into the velvet of her trousers.

“Mary,” you began gently, and she lifted her head.

Her eyes were puffy, and tears had drawn angry red lines down her round cheeks. Her hair, which had previously been up, fell about her face in blonde wisps as her lower lip trembled and her eyes filled anew with tears.

You made your way over to the corner where she sat and she watched you raptly, like a frightened animal. You knelt beside her.

“Hey, what was that all about?”

Mary only shook her head, blinking rapidly in an attempt to stem her tears.

You offered her a hand up, and after a few moments of contemplation, she took it and stood.

She stared at you a moment before rivulets came running down her face again.

“Come on,” you said. “Let’s get some air.”

You led her up the final stairs and pulled open the door at the landing, guiding her outside onto the rooftop terrace.

The night air was cool, and from the heated rush of emotions that still seemed to cloud your mind to the giddiness that still occupied your stomach, the breeze on the roof was one you welcomed.

Mary seemed to relish the sudden cold as well, going as far as to lean out over the railing and close her eyes in the onslaught of the wind.

Thinking that you should probably not allow her to do any leaning given the mental state she was presently in, you came to stand by her side.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Anger flashed across her face, and she wiped her eyes with a frustrated air, only more infuriated by the fact that she was crying.

You were about to assure her that she needn’t say anything at all when she blurted,

“I found Freddie with another man.”

“Oh,” you said. You pressed your lips together, trying to gauge how it was you were to handle this.

“I just can’t believe that he’d lie to me.”

You were reminded of Deacy’s comment about Freddie being ‘nearly pathological’ with respect to lying, but that was hardly helpful right now, and you could only imagine the crushing betrayal Mary must have felt.

“I can believe that he would lie,” she elaborated, fingers curling around the railing, “but not to me. I just— oh, I suppose I thought I was different.” She gave a shudder. “I’d had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, and I tried to talk to him, tried to tell him that he could tell me anything, and that even if I was mad about whatever it was when he told me, I wouldn’t stay that way.”

Mary turned to you, and the wind tossed her hair wildly, and with the way her eyes still ran with saltwater, she seemed a maiden from some sort of Greek tragedy.

“I love him,” she went on. “But I’ve always felt that I loved him more than he loved me. Now I understand why.”

She slumped to the ground again, her expression dark. “I’m not even angry that he didn’t come out to me. I understand that, because how the hell do you begin to tell your fiance that you want to break of the wedding because you’re gay?

“Freddie’s got this kindness, and sometimes, it’s like he’d lie to a court if it meant that he spared the feelings of those he loves. So I guess, in a way, he does love me. I only wish he’d have tried to break it off with me, instead of waiting until I walked in on him.”

She sighed, and you sat down across from her, folding your legs beneath you.

“So, what now?” you asked, because it seemed that Mary had thought a lot about this already.

But she dropped her head to her hands. “That’s the one thing I can’t work out. Where do I go from here?”

“Have you talked to Freddie, properly?”

She shook her head. “It’s going to take me a long time to forgive him. I just hope he knows why I’m angry, and that it’s not because he’s gay.”

There. That was it. That was where she had to go. “Maybe you should tell him that.”

Mary looked at you, her face wrought in scars of mascara and eyeliner. She lifted her chin and nodded. “You’re right.” She chewed her lip a moment. “But not tonight. I don’t think I can do that.”

You nodded in understanding, because with the way sobs had wracked her body, there would be no energy left for her to have a conversation with Freddie without it dissolving into a bitter argument, even with good intentions at heart.

“Y/N, would it be okay if I stayed in your room for the night?”

“So long as you promise me you’ll talk to Freddie tomorrow,” you said. “Don’t leave him wondering.”

“Yeah.”

You stood. “Let’s just go, then. It’s past midnight anyway.”

Later, when Mary was sound asleep on one of the beds, bundled in the various extra blankets you’d scavenged from cupboards, you lay with your eyes wide open. You’d been kept awake by the sounds of the dwindling party upstairs, which had carried on for long after the scene had been abandoned by its host.

You wondered where Freddie had got to.

And where Brian had.

You’d considered going to find him many times, and had even gone so far as to stick your feet out of bed and set them on the cold hardwood floor, but in the end, you’d made up your mind to do what you always did: nothing.

He’d left you standing in the dance hall, without so much as recognition in his eyes for evidence of having kissed you. And now he was going to tell you that he’d meant nothing of it, a rush of emotions in an exhilarated situation, and you couldn’t bear to hear that.

You’d rather be left wondering than have such a finality imposed upon your mind.

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

It had been days, now. They’d been tiptoeing around each other for days.

It was ridiculous to the point where I began to feel the need to take matters into my own hands.

The situation was now ultimately worse than it had been before, because very obviously, something had changed. And I’d wager that something had happened on the first night of tour. They were different now, almost shyer, more fragile in their vulnerability to each other’s charms.

He had pined for her since the late sixties, she had been oblivious since day one, and I doubted that, despite their respectively vast vocabularies, either of them knew the meaning of the verb ‘to converse’. It was all longing looks and unuttered promises, a brush of a hand and staring pensively when the other was unawares.

I was almost offended that they couldn’t pull themselves together, when they were fortunate enough to have each other.

Veronica and Robert would get farther and farther from me as each day of tour escorted us more remotely from London. It hadn’t been an option to bring my wife and our tiny child with us on tour, so I could do nothing now but miss them.

But our two resident idiots, Y/N and Brian, did have each other. And they took it completely for granted.

The open road was quiet and dark, and seemed half-asleep, the trees that blurred past the window swaying to some secret song. A flock of birds streamlined the puffy clouds overhead as the moon greeted the sun in its eternal celestial shift, light yielding light to comfort the earthly beings who feared the darkness. Though I did not fear the dark as such, it was easy to imagine lurking figures between the lone houses by the roads, creeping souls amongst the woods by the road; there was something consuming about this early-morning quiet.

On a stop between Bristol and Cardiff, I left the loos to find Freddie smoking by a payphone, notably absent from the rest of our entourage.

The morning air was chilly, and I wound the scarf around my neck in its second loop, buttoning up my jacket with a shiver. No one was out here other than out of necessity, so I made my way over to Freddie and leaned against the wall beside him.

I turned to face him. “How are you?”

Freddie pursed his lips, tapping ash from his cigarette. “Not at my most fabulous, dear.”

I nodded understandingly, burying my face further into the scarf. “It’s okay, you know. You can’t always be.”

“But that’s why I became Freddie Mercury,” he said quietly, his words nearly carried away by the wind. “I became a legend so I wouldn’t feel like this.”

“Freddie,” I began, “I’m pretty sure being legendary means you have a lot more to feel than you would otherwise.”

He smiled a thin-lipped smile, tossing his spent cigarette into the ashtray mounted atop the rubbish bin. “You are of course right, darling, but right now I’d give anything to feel nothing at all.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Freddie sighed. “I don’t know what I want.”

It was despair in his voice; I recognised it. And I understood it. Because where do you start if you don’t know what you’re working toward?

I placed a hand on his shoulder and he turned his sad brown eyes on me.

“You’re a legend, Freddie,” I reminded him. “You’ve got forever to figure it out, okay?”

He nodded.

“And you can talk to me if you need to.”

“Thank you, Deacy,” he patted my hand. “I think I’ll keep a bit to myself for a while, though, at least until we reach the city.”

“Okay.”

“Now, let’s get out of this cold. I’m freezing my tits off!”

I laughed. “Okay, Freddie.”

And though the open road was quiet and dark and I missed my wife and son, I had my friends. The second half of my family.

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

You ached to kiss Brian again. To wind your fingers through his hair. To hold him close, because with the worry that wove itself through his brow on behalf of Freddie, he looked so lost, so far away, as though he needed someone to bring his floating self to the ground where his thoughts could wander amongst the living, and not dwell up in the sky with that which he had lost.

Perhaps that was why he looked to the stars so often; he’d lost so much, and they were a constant.

He deserved to have something brought back to him. And if you could return to him some of the light in his eyes instead of stealing it away, then nothing in the world would make you happier.

The mornings on the bus were tense, to say the least.

Without discussion, it seemed that you and Brian had established an agreement to keep Mary and Freddie apart until they had the time and privacy in which to talk. But it was a difficult arrangement, given that the tour bus was not exactly spacious. And given that it meant you had to keep your distance from Brian.

Presently, though, you came second to the efforts of protecting Freddie and Mary from themselves, which meant that Brian did as well. So for now, all you could give to him were silent glances and small smiles.

But Brian seemed to have other ideas.

On the leg from Cardiff to Taunton, just as you were getting back on the bus, someone grabbed your hand and pulled you around the corner.

You tensed, whirling around with your other fist raised, your heart hammering.

But your defenses were instantly disarmed, because there was Brian with his mass of curls in disarray from the wind, his lips parted as though he had been about to say something.

“Are you trying to kill me?!” you cried, your heartbeat still in your throat.

“No,” Brian said, “I’m trying to kiss you.”

“You’re—”

He pulled you to him, melding himself against you, and kissed you soundly on the mouth, his arms winding around you. Your response was immediate, and you leaned so far into him that he stumbled. His laughter tickled your lips, a rush of breath over your skin as he clutched you to stop you from falling with him.

But you pushed him against the wall instead, and his hands rose to your cheeks to kiss you more deeply, devouring— senseless. Precisely as you had once wished for him to kiss you.

There were so many things you wanted to say, but it seemed the most of them were covered in how you moved with him, vulnerable and uninhibited, purely driven by the desire to hold him close, to make him understand with your proximity how much it was you cared for him. How much you would never be able to explain the gravity of your affections for him.

Brian reversed your positions and only the existence of the wall and his arms kept you on your feet; you were dizzy with the surge of excitement that withered you where he touched you.

And his touch was everywhere.

His lips moved from your mouth to your jaw, from your jaw to your cheek, to the shell of your ear, and then in a tender trail down your neck. His fingertips fluttered at your sides, warm on your skin, but you shivered, because no one had ever touched you with such a gentleness as this, such desire, such love.

Then abruptly, he pulled back, short of breath and flushed from head to toe, with swollen lips and loose curls sticking up where your fingers had interfered with their natural fall.

The world spun as his eyes flickered between yours.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he hummed.

“You did a bit,” you replied. “We’re on the open road. It is sort of scary out here.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I just missed you. I miss you. I feel like we’re apart, you know?”

You nodded mutely.

He asked softly, “We’re not keeping this a secret, are we?”

You couldn’t believe that he was asking, after everything. But you supposed that was how he was, considerate to the point where he doubted himself if the circumstances favoured you.

“Brian,” you said, “I don’t think I could hide the way I look at you if I wanted to.”

A smile flickered across his face.

Then the rain began to pour.

“Come on, back inside,” you said, taking him by the hand.

“Hang on,” he pulled you back. He lingered a moment, gazing at you aimlessly, and he looked at you the way he looked at the stars.

“What?”

Brian cradled your face in his hands. Then he pressed a gentle kiss to your nose, brushed the pad of his thumb over your skin. “I just wanted to look at you.”

You couldn’t help but smile.

“My evening star,” he murmured.

You shook your head, finding it very hard to believe that this man, who spoke so beautifully, was yours. “You’re a poet, Brian.”

His response would have been enough to flood the coldest land with a wealth of warmth, as absolutely as that which blossomed in your chest.

“And you’re my muse.”

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

A/N: two more parts and an epilogue m’dears :)

taglist: @melting-obelisks @retropetalss @hgmercury39​ @topsecretdeacon @joemazzmatazz @perriwiinkle @brianmays-hair @im-an-adult-ish @ilikebigstucks @doing-albri @killer-queen-87 @n0-self-c0ntro1 @archaicmusings @cloudyyspace @annina-96 @themarchoftherainbowqueen @annajolras​

Masterpost / Part 16 / Part 18

[starfaring-princelotor]

Best Friends

Summary: Lotor and his best friend discover the beginning of something new.

Pairings: Lotor x F!Reader

★ Disclaimer: I do not ship Lotura and I kindly ask that this story to not be tagged as Lotura. This is a Lotor x Reader/Self-Insert OC story which is in no way related to Allura at all. Please be respectful of my chosen pairing. Thank you. ★

Warnings: Threats?

Future Sight___Historic Significance___No Time Like The Present___Thinking Ahead___Best Friends

Romelle’s eyes skimmed over the page, re-reading over the instructions carefully while she poured the rest of the contents of her cauldron down the drain. She let it sit out too long and now it was practically black, gooey sludge. Oh, the smell was unbearable, it nearly made her throw up dinner she had with Allura.

Speaking of, the Princess knocked on the bathroom door.

“Romie? Is everything okay?” bless her heart, she was concerned about her well-being.

Well, waking up a few hours before dawn to use the restroom would be a cause for worry. Romelle rinsed the cauldron with hot water, making sure to leave no evidence behind. Quickly, her wet hands closed the book then she shoved the pot in the corner, opting to let it dry for the rest of the day.

Once Romelle opened the door to see sleepy faced Allura, she couldn’t help but smile softly at her.

“Yes, I just had to clean that stinking cauldron,” with a gentle hand, she guided Allura back to bed, “And take care of a few...things.”

You weren’t doing too well.

Not at all. Grumpy wasn’t the right word to describe it. Sad? Maybe. Heartbroken? Yes. Yes, that was the feeling. Like you lost a close friend. It was hard not to think this way, think that your relationship with Lotor was coming to an abrupt end. He just needed time. That’s what he said, right? Time and space? But, damn it all, why did it hurt to be sitting on the sidelines like this?

Lotor never mentioned this before, how cold he can actually be. Maybe you really weren’t paying attention to him? Or maybe he was just too closed off to truly be comfortable with you? Maybe it was both of your faults? The turmoil of arguments in your head made you heavily sigh in defeat, an act that did not go unheard by the prefect sitting besides you.

“You know, food tastes better when you actually eat it,” Shiro bit off his own piece of bread, eyes watching you with slight mirth behind them, “And when it’s warm, too.”

You groaned and slumped in your seat, leaving the spoon under the smeared mashed potatoes, “I’m not hungry.”

Or at least, this meal wasn’t as enjoyable without your purple friend. The mindless conversation, critiquing each other’s eating habits, even sharing from the same bowl was fun. It seemed so...perfect, didn’t it? What changed? You wracked your brain for anything that could point you in the right direction, but alas, nothing popped up. Ah, there you go again, thinking too much.

“I miss Lotor.”

“The gremlin has to come out of his room sometime,” he tried to be lighthearted about it, but it didn’t even crack a smile from you, “There’s a potion for that, y’know. Changing into a gremlin. Interesting what you read ahead in the books.”

“There’s a potion for everything,” you counted off your fingers, “Toe fungus, pimples, that one where you can change your fingers into cat heads.”

“I heard there was one that can make you glow like a light bulb.”

Shiro would’ve said some cheesy punchline, something like “so you can brighten up his day,” but your despondent face told him that it would go in one ear and out the other. He rubbed his neck in uncertainty, not quite sure how to console a friend of a friend. There was an underlying reason he came to talk to you, though. Maybe one he thinks you might be able to help him with.

“Hey, mind if I...ask you something a bit personal?” he lowered his voice a bit.

A nod, a sad, sad look glazing over your eyes.

“Have you noticed anything...strange about Lotor? I mean, stranger than this. He usually isn’t this cold.”

You crossed your arms and buried your head in them, “I don’t think I really knew him at all.”

Shiro nodded solemnly, “If it’s any consolation, these past few months have been the most I’ve seen him smile.”

You peeked at him from underneath your hair, unsure if you heard him right. Yes, you, too, were happiest with him the last couple months, smiling and laughing and learning little bits about each other here and there. Like friends do. Like best friends do. Eyes bore into the now cold dinner in front of you as if it would somehow give you all the answers to your questions.

“I think that counts for something, don’t you?” Shiro laid a comforting hand on your shoulder.

Yes, you thought, it has to count for something.

Lotor’s fever was back, tenfold. To the public, it would look like he was just a little too warm with a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. Deep down, he was burning. It was barely tolerable as he knew this sickness will eventually pass. Just like his last one. The only odd thing about this was that fevers usually...do not come back so soon. He was on his way to the medical ward to get another potion from the nurse.

He needed more sleep. That was probably it, what with all his tossing and turning at night.

“Lotor?”

Oh no. Not who he wanted to talk to right now.

“Allura.”

Where was Madam…? Oh. Right. The one day she was out visiting family was the one day he needed help. Just his luck. No matter, things are in the past between them. At least, that’s how he saw it. Judging by the odd defensive look hidden behind her eyes, the Princess still felt a little suspicious around him. He wasn’t so sure if he liked that scrutinizing, almost acidic, gaze she gave him.

“What can I help you with?” she asked, straight to business, which he appreciated.

“It seems my fever has returned. I am in need of two more snowdrop potions.”

She opened a cabinet that had shelves with labeled vials, many of them varying in color, “Have you had any other symptoms? Headaches, soreness?”

“Migraines,” Lotor took a seat on a stool, suddenly feeling very dizzy, “Severe migraines.”

“I’ll grind some mandrake roots for you, they should help settle those - “

Was the room spinning? Why was it suddenly getting harder to breath? Lotor’s lungs were wheezing lightly and he tried blinking hard to get the blackness out of the corner of his eyes. No good, no good at all. He could feel his body start to lean forward against his will, hand reaching out to try and steady himself before he kissed the floor. All he managed to grab was the empty air as he collapsed in a weak heap at Allura’s feet, a groan of pain pushed out of his chest.

“Lotor!” she called out after hearing his body thump on the cold stone, kneeling down to help flip him onto his back, “Lotor, can you hear me? Lotor!”

The Princess pulled out her wand and lit the tip, hoping that it was bright enough for his pupils to follow. However, much to her horror, his gaze was stuck on the ceiling. Was he even conscious? Lotor was panting, trying so very hard to stay awake, but her voice was fading and so was the rest of the room. Stars, his head hurt like something fierce, like it was tearing itself apart in two.

“Father! Father, come quickly!”

The last thing he heard was the rushed footsteps clacking on the floor. The last thing he thought of was, well, suddenly his space felt very, very lonely without you besides him.

“Peppermint sprigs...porcupine quills...hm.”

What a strange list of ingredients for a potion, but who were you to argue on the weirdness that is magic? After Shiro’s cryptic question, you took it upon yourself to drown yourself in the good memories. Well, tried. The more you thought about the time you spent with Lotor, the happier parts, the lighter your heart felt. Yes, you still despised this…distance, but you had to keep to your word.

Give him space.

And if...when he returns, you were sure nothing would make him happier than a Happy potion. Right? Supposedly, it cures depression and, who knows, maybe you might take a little swig of it, too. Now, making it was another thing. Classes were over and there weren’t any potion professors on grounds, so you would have to play this by trial and error.

Doesn’t sound too hard. It’s just a Happy potion. Worst effect? You start singing too loudly or you end up tap dancing until midnight.

“What are you doing here?” came a voice from the opened door, making you turn to acknowledge the blonde staring directly at you.

“Um...making...potions?” you meant it to come out as a firm statement, but out of habit, you smiled guiltily like a caught thief, “You’re, uh, Rome...Romelle, right? Allura’s friend?”

She kept her gaze fixed for a few more seconds. It was a little unnerving, especially when her expression suddenly softened and she offered you a friendly, inviting smile. Romelle put the heavy cauldron in her arms off on one of the empty tables then plopped a seat besides you. She peered over to your book then hummed in thought.

“Happy potion, huh? What’s got you down?”

“Oh, no, not for me. Well, not ALL for me, anyways,” you turned the page, looking for the instructions and brewing time needed for it, “It’s for my friend. He hasn’t been...At least, I don’t think he’s been feeling too well the last couple weeks. Thought this might cheer him up.”

Romelle perched her elbow on the table, chin in her hand, “Well, aren’t you a good friend! I’m a bit of a potion master myself. Anything you need?”

Now, you returned a smile of your own, feeling proud of her compliments aimed to inflate your ego. You gave her a nod of thanks then shrugged sheepishly, finding her oddly over eager assistance a bit strange. If you needed help, you would ask. Ah. That’s...how it felt to say it out loud. A pang twitched in your chest, recalling back when those same words left Lotor’s mouth.

“Thank you, but I think I can handle it. Doesn’t seem too hard,” a soft way to tell her you weren’t as incompetent as you seemed.

That didn’t seem to be the answer she wanted to hear, though. Even if she was smiling and respectfully giving you your distance, there was a flicker of...annoyance behind her eyes. Oh no, did you come off too hard? Or...was it something you said? The anxieties started welling up in your mind again and just as you were about to close your book and pack up, figuring you could finish another day, Romelle gently slid her hand over yours.

You were sure this was supposed to be an act of kindness, of support, but it felt...wrong.

“If you need anything at all, do not be a stranger.”

As soon as she finished talking, she took a step back and left with a cheerful hum on her lips. You hand tingled. Not in a good way either. Not like when Lotor held your fingertips oh so gently while he led you in a dance. Not like when he helped you firmly grasp your wand correctly. Not like when his hand curled around yours to keep you warm in the chilly night.

You dearly missed your friend, your true friend. When you brought your hand to your chest, the plumpness of your palm accidentally skidded over the page. It turned, but not without leaving you with a thin paper cut from your careless attention. Immediately, you cradled your minor wound, not wanting to stain the pages, until your eyes landed on two words.

Hate Potion.

“How long?”

“Three days now. He can barely stomach soup without regurgitating it. I am not sure what seems to be causing his illness. This isn’t typical fever symptoms and my father is doing his own research to help.”

You needed to be alone with Lotor, but Shiro and Allura were right at his bedside. It felt weird, creeping like this, just outside the door and eavesdropping to see when they would leave. The book clutched to your chest and the vials in your pocket suddenly were too loud.

“Maybe there is something I can do to help,” Allura voiced with hope, “I will go aid my father in his research. Will you stay here and monitor him in the time being?”

“Sure, Allura. Thank you again for doing this. We’ll figure out what’s wrong with him. In the mean time, don’t push yourself too hard. He’s resilient. I should know.”

Yes, he was hinting at the strenuously long friendship he had, and will continue to have, with Lotor. The Princess’ heels clicked against the floor as she walked out, completely missing your body tucked behind the opened doors. Good. You weren’t sure if she would be too happy with what you found and...what your conclusions would insinuate.

“Shiro?” you peeked in, making sure it was just him, then your eyes landed on Lotor.

Your friend, he looked so pale with furrowed brows and eyes clenched shut, like he was having a bad string of dream. Standing besides the taller man, you silently asked him if he was okay, If he was going to BE okay. A fever wouldn't originally be a cause for too much concern, much like when you visited the purple prince in his rooms. But two?

It stung something deep to see him in such pain.

“Don’t worry, he’s come out from worse,” Shiro encouraged with a hand on your shoulder, “He’ll be fine. You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to.”

Underlying meaning? If you’re still...uncomfortable around him after that harsh spat from weeks ago, you aren’t obligated to stay. It’s funny what a little time can do to the heart. Its funny what you came to realize that even if he didn’t want to be friends any longer, you still wanted to at least get some defined closure. But first, Lotor had to be awake to tell you this, tell you why, because you at least deserved an explanation that made sense. Hopefully, he had enough time on his own to come to the same thoughts.

“No, no, I wanted to see him. I didn’t think he was this sick,” you took a seat on a stool besides the bed, “Is he, I mean, can he hear us? I bought a book I thought he’d like to read. Or, er, or I’d read to him.”

Shiro offered you a thankful smile hidden behind a short chuckle. He got the hint. He knows when to leave, when to give you privacy for the sake of comfort. Though, now that the thought about it, perhaps your voice would be the one to wake him up. He’d take that chance, he likes those odds for his friend’s health.

“I’ll head to the mess hall to grab a bite. Should I bring you some?”

“No, no, I’ll be alright. Don’t think they have my pie in menu today.”

He walked out, trusting you to watch Lotor for the time being. It wasn’t until you no longer heard his footsteps did you scoot closer to the head of the bed. Those freckles looked dimmer than usual and his hair was slicked with dried sweat. Time to put your plan into action. Carefully, you opened to a specific page of your text, the one you bookmarked with a folded corner.

“Lotor…?”

No response. This time, you placed a hand on his and ran your thumb over his knuckles, ushering him to hear your plead.

“Lotor...Lotor, can you hear me?”

“Mm…” thin slits of nebulous eyes barely opened, but they instantly honed in on your face, “...Huh…?”

Good. He was somewhat coherent, if not dazed and dizzy. Lotor licked his parched lips and you got the hint right away. Grabbing a cup of water from the side table, you held it up to his mouth gently then waited as he took gulp fulls of the cool liquid. With how much he was sweating, he was no doubt dehydrated beyond tolerable levels.

Lotor turned slightly, signaling he was done, and leaned back into his pillow, “What...what are you doing here?”

Not...exactly the first thing you wanted to hear from him after being apart for nearly a month, but again, you had to remember this wasn’t about you. This was about your friend, your very sick friend who must’ve had a smidge of trust in you somewhere deep in his ill mind.

“I think you were poisoned,” you paused when his gaze gave no emotion, “I can’t be...100% sure, though. But if you could - if I could ask you something…”

Poisoned? Well, that certainly wasn’t the first, but this would be the first where he didn’t recognize his own symptoms. These were sneaky, slow-acting with fevers and migraines and severe dehydration. But he couldn’t piece together what exactly can cause this so quickly.

Stars, that look on your face, the meek, unsure, hesitant one. Why were you never confident in yourself?

You took his silence as a yes, “Do you remember drinking anything that tasted strange?”

“No.”

“Did you have...er, did you have mood shifts this frequently?”

A sharp glare and you nearly cringed away from him, but he answered honestly, “...No.”

“When did you start not feeling well?”

“Three weeks ago.”

Your eyes going down the symptom list weren’t happy with the information you were getting from him. Not at all and the questions you had in mind would only get more personal here on out. Hopefully, he won’t shut you completely out again, or worse. Send you away with another argument.

“When you...sniffed the love potion - “ “So, that is what this is about.”

“Lotor, no, I promise, this isn’t - it isn’t about that. If someone was poisoned by a hate potion, they would feel nauseated because of the counter effects of different ingredients in the love potion - “ “It was you,” Lotor mumbled, and you swear your heart skipped a beat, “I could smell you and it made me sick to my stomach.”

If you weren’t thinking of his potential sickness, perhaps those words would’ve cut your heart into pieces. Instead, you remained silent, questioning over, and ruffled for one of the vials in your bag. The pinkish liquid swirled slowly between you two and Lotor instantly knew what it was. He was stuck between feeling disgusted and oddly hopeful.

“I know...I know it doesn’t sound solid, but the book here says a love potion can help nullify the effects of the poison,” you explained before putting the vial on the bedside drawer, “I know its illegal, I know I can get in trouble for this, but here. It’s your choice and I won’t - you know I won’t think any differently of us whatever you choose.”

There were words on his tongue, but none came out. Again, you were over caring again, going the distance when he told you to stop. Or perhaps, this isn't what it seems at all. Someone succeeded in poisoning him, messing with his damn emotions, and messing with the two of you. Now, he had to wonder what would happen if he drank it. Would he still push you away? Or would all these seething emotions cease to exist? Would he return to normal? What was normal?

Risk. Again, too much risk, and he didn’t like it. You left him alone to his thoughts.

Lotor drank the potion discreetly, not wanting Allura or even her father to know how he magically healed within a few days. It was a Christmas miracle, Professor Alfor said. The Prince would let him think that for now, at least, until he can safely secure both of your asses from getting in trouble.

The potion worked. Slowly. Gradually, his unreasonably pessimistic thoughts began clearing from his mind. No longer was just thinking about you giving him a headache. No longer did he catch himself constantly annoyed whenever he thought about the times you two spent together. No longer did he keep the shared journal stored away in his drawer.

“Allura, may I have a moment?”

And no longer was he going to stand aside when he knew damn well who poisoned him.

“Of course, do you need something?”

“No, no, not with you,” Lotor’s cold gaze drifted to the blonde standing besides her, “You. I wish to have a word with you, Romelle.”

He would applaud her on the brave mask she wore. It was no mystery to him who slipped a drop of hate potion in his drink when he wasn’t paying attention. He never liked black tea and now he had a new reason for it. Allura, sensing the tense situation, sought to stand between Lotor and her friend.

“Is there going to be a problem?” the Princess asked firmly, challenging Lotor’s stare.

“No, nothing of the sort. I simply wish to ask a few questions. Private questions.”

Private. Meaning without her around. Romelle placed a hand on Allura’s shoulder, a way to temper and silently reassure her that everything will be okay. The Princess always was the first to help in a confrontation when those she cared about were concerned. The hero type, always jumping head first without all the facts and Lotor wasn’t here to bother filling her in.

“You have my word, I am merely here for conversation.”

“Go. I’ll meet you in the library,” Romelle ushered and finally, Allura acquiesced.

However, Lotor’s piercing glare never left Romelle’s face. He was studying her, trying to find a crack in her facade, anything that would point to her being innocent. Jealousy was a powerful tool that can drive even the most soft, kind-hearted to do despicable, horrific things.

“Why did you do it?”

Romelle tilted her head to the side, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“In divination class, you slipped a hate potion in my tea,” he explained calmly, as if talking about fair weather and approaching cold front, “You let the bitterness cover the taste.”

“Hate potion? Lotor, I really have no clue - “

“You did not clean your cauldron as well as you thought, wench.”

Now, Romelle’s eye twitched at not only the insult, but the rightful anger laced in his tone. Impossible. She cleaned her cauldron spick and span. There was nothing left but water. Either way, she stood her ground in front of Lotor. He had no proof, he had to be bluffing. Yet, there was still part of her that was on edge. Teetering on the “What if…”

“Hate potion residue glows blue in the dark when dusted with moonstone dust,” he took a step forward, she took one back, “unless washed with beetroot juice, it is a permanent stain on whatever surface it touches. Did you forget that bit of information in your grand plan?”

“I did what I had to,” she admitted, no shame, no guilt.

“I will ask this only once more: why did you do it?”

There it was. That burning, eternal flame of rage glossing in her soul. She would burn him, burn everyone around her, burn those she loves, burn Allura, just to seek revenge on him. He only wondered how long until that fire consumes her very being. Lotor narrowed his lids, daring her to speak the truth.

“You don’t deserve to be happy.”

The Prince raised his chin, judging her glowering face ready to bite into him like a rabid, furious animal.

“You don’t deserve to be happy after what you did to Allura. You broke her heart. You tricked her.”

“I know what kind of person she is. I know how gullible her heart is. I know she trusts you to be kind just because you two are close friends,” Lotor had what he needed, he had the evidence tucked neatly in the back of his mind, “I know I broke her heart. And now, you will break hers, too.”

Romelle’s back hit against the stone wall, suddenly aware he was towering over her with venom seething from his every word. She wanted to punch him. Fight him, here and now, make him feel how painful it was to pick Allura back up when she was at her lowest. Listen to all the regret and sorrow the Princess would whisper in her deep sleep.

“Either you tell Allura what you did or I will,” Lotor leaned back, his menacing aura giving her room to breath, “Consider this a fair trade for hurting my best friend.”

Either way, the truth would be her downfall.

As much as he wanted to report her, get her expelled for poisoning him directly, Lotor knew seeking revenge would only waste his time. Right now, he had to see you, talk to you, explain himself in hopes you would understand. You didn’t deserve to be attacked by the mistakes of his past relationships.

Sleep barely came to you that night. A full moon was supposed to be the most peaceful of them all, yet your mind was anything but peaceful right now. You wondered if Lotor drank it. You wondered if he did and if he felt better. You wondered if anything could help him where you could not. You wondered if he still wanted his space. Sighing, you turned on the other side of your bed only to be met with a glowing, blue journal.

Lotor? Lotor was...he was talking to you? Immediately, you reached over and opened the book where you last finished writing to him. His familiar handwriting began scribbling three little words.

Black Lake. Tonight.

You didn’t need to be told twice. It was a blur, slipping on warm clothes, pocketing your trusty thermal stone, tucking the thick scarf around your neck, then rushing down the halls as quietly as you can. Maybe you should consider yourself lucky for not getting caught with how loud your boots echoed on the floor. By the time you arrived, you could already see his tall physique standing in the distance, back towards you.

“L...Lo - huff...Lotor?” you were panting slightly from running in the cold and all your friend did to acknowledge you was raise a silver brow, “I - huff, huff - give me a sec…”

He placed a hand on your shoulder, the familiar touch warming you instantly, “You need not over exert yourself for my sake.”

“I know, I know, I just...I have no excuse, really,” you wanted to add that you missed him, but you were surprised by the next words that came out of his mouth.

“I understand. I missed you, too.”

Now, you stood awkwardly, eyes looking everywhere but his face. The time apart, it didn’t deter your feelings for him, but it felt...weird. Changed, but for the better? You weren’t so sure. Lotor sensed this and took a deep breath. Come clean. She is your friend. Your best friend. Tell her this or you will lose her forever.

“I...I lied to you.”

“...Huh?”

He looked up to the stars, please, help me, then back down at you. Gentle hands reached for yours and he upturned your palm, seeing the scar embedded there in the center. He had the same mirroring his own hand and, faintly, he thought destiny must have a funny way of showing him how friends are made.

“Allow me to explain. Do you remember when I told you what I saw in the mirror? About how I saw myself with someone I deeply cared about?” he stroked the jagged skin with his thumb, reminiscing that fateful day long ago, “I saw you in the reflection. We were both so happy and I...hesitated telling you this because…”

Because? He had his reason, none of them seeming valid right now.

“I have no reason why I did not tell you. Maybe I was scared about what I saw. Maybe I did not want my future to be set in stone.”

“Lotor, c’mon, that was ages ago. I don’t care about what that dumb mirror showed you. Why would I get mad about that? You have your secrets, that’s fine, and - “

“Please,” he ushered, the bravery to speak so openly about how one mistake led to another starting to make him clam up, “You must understand. After the mirror showed me what could be, how happy I could be with you, I began questioning myself. Questioning you, questioning us. I do not regret all those times we spent together. Not one bit. But, I do regret that...I did not know what this was truly telling me.”

This? This being his heart, the one he placed your hand to cover on his chest. Now, you were blushing and a little speechless.

“Say something,” Lotor’s eyes searched yours, hoping against hope that you didn’t hate his guts for isolating himself away from you, “Anything.”

But what COULD you say? A whole months worth of thoughts suddenly became quiet, abandoning you when you needed them most.

“When we finished those love potions, I had a feeling it would be you. I just...wasn’t aware of myself. I didn’t know what to do when I realized I like - I love spending time with you, Lotor. I feel like a better me.”

You dug your mouth under your scarf, a nervous habit hoping it would hide you completely.

“You were right. About before. If I paid more attention to you, I would’ve seen you were sick much earlier on and - and I could’ve helped sooner. I know you wanted space and I’ll give you as much as you want. Just - I want you to feel better, too. A better you. Does that make sense?”

“Yes. Yes, I believe I do undersatnd,” a shadow of darkness covered his eyes, “Even now, I still feel unsure about what this means. We are...best friends, still, yes? And yet, I am wondering if these feelings I have are honest. Ever since the mirror lured me with a future of love and happiness, I doubt myself, and I would never, ever, want to have these uncertainties come between us.” 

Lotor was a man who loved with all his being or none at all.

He reached one hand within his coat and pulled out a rose. A black rose. Of course, your gaze landed on the flower, eyes glazed in fascination of the dark plant, before he openly offered it to you. At first, you took it to examine its qualities. The thorns were gone and the gentle bud was barely starting to open into a bloom. Your fingers traced over the petals, the soft, smooth petals, and you let out a curious hum.

“This is for you. I wish to give this to you. As a sign of my…”

Affections? Appreciation? Infatuation?

“My attraction to you.”

Oh, where was his silver tongue now?

“Ah...I - erm…” your cheeks were tinted in a lovely hue of pink as you realized he was still cupping your hands in his, “Lotor, if this is about, y’know, the other night - I mean, it’s, you don’t have to feel obligated to...you know that, right? I did it to help you and all, but you don’t have to - mmf, how do I say this? I’m not...I don’t know where to go from here.”

Wait. Were you rejecting him?

“I, hold on -no - I know how that sounds,” you let out a frustrated sigh, having a difficult time finding your words, just like he was, “I guess...why are you offering this to me?”

“Dear, I am giving this to you in hopes that you would allow me to learn about you. And, in the process, I hope we can become something...more than what that mirror promised me. Something real, something I can experience in the present.”

Lotor wanted to break away from the deep, obsessive infatuation, rooting in his mind and instead explore what was hidden underneath. He knows he felt it, before the hate potion, before the dance, before he even took you stargazing. It was there, he just needed to reach far and feel it grow in his hand.

“Are you, uh...you sure you want to do that?”

“With some exasperation, yes. Yes, I am sure.”

The Prince leaned down, pressing his forehead against yours in a soft plea. You, too, were gazing into his eyes with a smidge of love buried somewhere in your soul. This felt...calm. Peaceful, much different than the times you two cuddled under a blanket or riding his broom at night. It felt...freeing. No bars held back. No bricks blocking each other. No mirror telling him where his heart should lie.

“If I am to be with you, have a future with you, I wish it to be on my own terms, dear. Our own terms,” he slowly slid his eyes closed, mind only thinking about the potential, the work, the love he knew was in store, “If you will have me, that is.”

Tucking your head under his chin, you gladly nestled your face on his chest, only slightly aware that your eyes were wet.

“Of course, Lotor. What are best friends for?”

[qqueenofhades]

I have a somewhat historical question I guess that I was wondering if you knew anything about. A common trope I see in any media taking place in any time period before early to mid 20th century is the mother dying in childbirth thing? And I was just wondering (even just in regards to the time period of your expertise) what we're the mortality rates for women in childbirth?

Heh. Well. (This is probably going to be way more than you wanted to know, but I believe in being thorough.)

First, childbirth has always been risky (women still die from it in modern countries in modern hospitals with all of 21st century medicine behind them, and it’s still a major health concern for countries in the developing world – Sierra Leone in Africa has the worst maternal mortality rate in the world, with up to 1,360 deaths per 100,000 births, or a 1 in 17 chance). So childbirth in the pre-modern era, without possibility of surgical intervention (unless to save the baby and kill the mother), painkillers, modern hygiene, X-ray/ultrasound equipment, and sterilized hospital settings, was dangerous. Ignaz Semmelweis and Alexander Gordon, two 18th/19th-century obstetricians who investigated the causes of puerperal fever or childbed fever, and concluded that it could often be prevented by the doctor just vigorously washing his hands between deliveries (and not, you know, performing an autopsy on a dead body and going straight to deliver a baby) were treated with complete ridicule by the scientific establishment and branded as charlatans. (This, as you may notice, will become a theme.) Modern germ theory and sterile instruments weren’t established until the late 19th century. So yes, the risk was very real, and noble and common women alike died in childbirth. We obviously don’t have anything resembling detailed demographic information, but we can conclude the rate would be similar to a developing country today.

However, this is very far from saying that no kind of maternal or prenatal care or practice existed. This is once again where we discover how terrible the late medieval/Renaissance era was for women’s rights/education/professional liberty/basically everything (seriously, Renaissance, your art is nice, but otherwise you can fuck off). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the famed medical university at Salerno, in Italy, fairly freely accepted female students and professors, and their most famous professor and scholar on women’s health was Trota of Salerno, who gave her name and a good deal of her own experience to the three texts known as the “Trotula.” These were each written by a different author under Trota’s supervision and authority, and the first two books, “Book on the Conditions of Women” and “On Treatment of Women” represent a detailed gynecological handbook with advice on all kinds of pregnancy/childbirth-related ailments – uterine prolapse, perineum tears, medicines, and other solutions from a practitioner who, unlike her male counterparts, could actually touch and study her patients’ bodies. Trota is referred to as a “magistra” (the female form of Latin magistro or master) and her work was widely circulated and read in England and Normandy as well as Sicily (which was under Norman rule itself from about the mid-eleventh century). So she was a famous doctor and scholar in her own day (until, of course, she was obscured/changed to male/ignored/nearly forgotten until the twentieth century). Another “magistra”, Hersend of France, accompanied Louis IX on crusade in the thirteenth century and treated both the king himself and the female members of the crusade contingent. 

Of course, ordinary women would not have had access to these highly trained female physicians, and most midwives had no special or formal training aside from their own practical experience. As well, almost everyone writing medical texts was (shockingly!) a man, making it nearly impossible to know much about these actual practitioners. Since pregnancy was, of course, a result of sex, the church had plenty of opinions on it as well. The suffering of childbirth was supposed to be the proper punishment for original sin, so anything that dulled the pain was frowned on, and when actual training of midwives was instituted in the later medieval era, the concern was mostly on whether they knew how to perform an emergency baptism for the child’s sake, rather than any care of the mother. (Wow…. this sounds… awfully familiar, doesn’t it?) Nonetheless, there are literally dozens of texts from antiquity to the Renaissance, representing folk/informal recipes and methods for contraception and abortion. We don’t know how well any of these worked, if at all, and they were usually (again) written by men trying to tell women what to avoid (but having the effect of also giving them the information if they wanted it). But there was a vast and probably at least somewhat effective corpus of traditions/medicines/rudimentary contraceptive methods available and transmitted through female practitioners.

None of this was ever taught to men, naturally, and the universities, as they became more established, did their damndest to stamp out “unlicensed” practitioners, which really meant women. The 1322 trial of Jacoba Felicie, a female doctor in Paris, is basically representative of the later medieval pushback against women practitioners. Jacoba’s patients, both male and female, testified that she was a highly skilled doctor and they had gotten better after visiting her – but the court’s judgment was that since she was a woman, she couldn’t possibly be as good a doctor as a man, and she was barred from practice. (If this post was Misogyny, Take a Shot, I think we would all be hammered by now.) That decision also led to legislation to keep women out of universities/medical school in France (in 1421, Henry V also banned them in England). So once again: You Suck, Renaissance!

This also involves questions of medieval sexuality, religion, and general hygiene/attitudes toward cleanliness and medical care. First, aside from the texts mentioned above that discuss folk remedies for contraception, a medieval woman had various strategies to space her children that didn’t just rely on hoping her husband didn’t rape her too much (as I have ranted about before). Also, it’s worth pointing out that children were a natural and expected part of medieval marriage, and most couples would be more interested in ensuring they had children, rather than preventing them – limiting family size to the average 2.5 children is a modern conceit once more linked to capitalism and the de-coupling of marriage/family/household from its function as a unit of economic production, as I wrote about here. Children were valuable as heirs to noble families or working members of a lower-class family, and with likewise high infant/child mortality, you could sometimes have a number of children and hope that one or two of them made it to adulthood. 

However, that didn’t mean that all medieval women just pumped out babies until they couldn’t have any more. The third-century Roman physician Galen’s theory of female orgasm being necessary to conceive was considerably well-known in the medieval era. While this backfired on rape victims, as it was figured they couldn’t have gotten pregnant if they didn’t enjoy it (paging Todd Akin… wow, this is depressing, isn’t it?), it also meant that your average medieval married couple would have believed that the woman, not just the man, experiencing pleasure was necessary to have children. Cue the church clutching its pearls in the background, but the official Catholic theology and teaching of sexuality was, again, mutable. The thirteenth-century sect of the Cathars viewed all sex, married or otherwise, as evil, so in response and opposition to them, the Catholic church began glorifying marital sex to some degree. There was a recognition that both spouses owed each other sexual availability and pleasure, and marriages could be dissolved if this wasn’t upheld on either end.

As well, since close to half the days of the year (Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays, Lent, Advent, holy days, six weeks after childbirth, etc) were regarded as impermissible for sexual activity, that meant couples (if they were religiously observant, or if they just wanted to avoid the possibility) had the option of spacing out procreative sexual activity. There wasn’t any institutional or official acceptance of sex outside marriage (though oh boy, it happened – up to 30% of brides were pregnant at their wedding), but there was also a lot of argument about what constituted marriage. It could just be as simple as saying “I take you as my wife/husband” without any church framework or institution whatsoever, and then having intercourse. (See chapter three, “Sex and Marriage,” in Sexuality in Medieval Europe.) The church viewed these couples as fornicators if they hadn’t been married formally, but what we would consider cohabiting unmarried couples (similar to a couple living together before actual marriage today) were fairly common. Noblewomen in particular were expected to give their husbands heirs, but after that, if they didn’t like each other much, he would have mistresses and she could be excused from it. The noble couples we know of with a high number of children seem to have been the ones who genuinely liked each other/had happy marriages anyway, and thus continued having sex even after the succession was secured. 

Plus, the ideal of chastity, both inside and outside of marriage, was very socially influential. The late medieval English mystic Margery Kempe managed (after having fourteen children with her husband) to get him to agree to a chaste marriage (we have him sadly asking her if she would prefer to kill him with a hatchet rather than letting them have sex again – which, after fourteen kids, she might). Women who chose to be virgins or abbesses or nuns were also excused from childbirth, although they sometimes faced pressure from their families to marry and continue the line. But chastity was admired in both men and women, and considered a prerequisite for holiness, so it was a way to avoid sexual activity (and thus more children) as well as getting in the church’s good books.

Lastly, there’s the general idea that people in the medieval era were filthy, dirty, foul-smelling, had rotten teeth, etc. Medieval people probably had structurally better teeth than we did (though obviously without modern dentistry/orthodontics) albeit worn down from grit/particles, because processed sugar wasn’t part of their diet. Next, while obviously they did not know about germs/the root causes of illnesses, they logically associated filth and bad smells with disease. Most cities had ordinances about where you could dump your waste and strict punishment for litterbugs. Full-body bathing was rarer than today, because of how much time and effort it would take to fill a whole tub, but they washed hair, hands, faces, etc regularly, and bathhouses were a part of medieval town culture. They prized sweet smells and perfumed/fragrant herbs, so while they would obviously have more body odor than we do with daily showers/soap/deodorant/etc, they wouldn’t be some strange shit-smeared, rotten-toothed rustic barely one step above a caveperson. In the 1400s, we find the Hotel-Dieu, the major hospital in Paris, believing that pregnant/postnatal women should have three baths a week and their linen washed regularly (that whole article is worth a read – said hospital was also entirely staffed by women/religious sisters).

Since this has gotten super long (as I said, more than you want to know), allow me to summarize. Midwifery/women’s health care has (surprise!) a very long history and was intentionally destroyed/excluded from male-dominated university curriculums, medieval women giving birth did die but not outlandishly/without any treatment at all, and the presence of women in medical school/practice was increasingly restricted up to and around the Renaissance. (It’s a subject of debate how many midwives were targeted in witch hunts, but some of them definitely were.) This also connected to medieval attitudes about sexuality, procreation, religion, and women, and the options that medieval women had for controlling the number of children they had or didn’t have, and their relationships with their husbands and what was expected of them as a result.

I will also note in closing that the “dying in childbirth” thing in historical fiction is a way to easily invoke the ever-present Dead Mother trope in a historically plausible, if rather lazy, way. Since everyone knows women did die (and do die) in childbirth, it becomes an easy way to kill off the protagonist’s mother or to make some point about The Dangers Of Women’s Lives Back Then (whether in-universe or intended for the modern audience). All of which is absolutely the case, but which ignores, as usual, the complexity of the ways in which premodern medicine for women, and women themselves, created a corpus of knowledge and treatment that remains unacknowledged, overlooked, dismissed, or otherwise intentionally destroyed by a patriarchal, misogynistic system.

/takes a bunch of shots

/falls over

[megacircuit9universe]

X-Tech: Never Possible Until it is

THU JAN 02 2020

I just watched the latest video by YouTuber, Isaac Arthur, who I’ve been following for years, and greatly respect, addressing time travel, but while he tried to cover every version of time travel that comes up in science fiction, and in legit scientific discourse... he did not cover the version I talk about in this blog.

I was a bit surprised, but then again, mine (explained in the entry entitled, Time Travel Basics, and fleshed out in some follow ups shortly after it) is basically the John Titor version of time travel.

And over the 13 or so years since I first read the Titor stuff online, I’ve noticed that nobody, either in fiction, or legit discourse, ever does venture anywhere near the Titor model... which is kinda strange, given that so many other, clearly unworkable models pop up all the time.

It’s not as though the Titor model is just so ridiculous that it’s not even worth considering... because, well... plenty of very ridiculous models for time travel are given very serious consideration, in our movies and science fiction novels, if not elsewhere.

Still, the original message boards where Titor appeared, to talk about how he was a time traveler, and explain what he knew about how his military issue time distortion unit worked, were forums for physics students and physics enthusiasts.

And what always struck me reading the back and forth on those forums was that nobody ever challenged his technical explanations.  Everybody seemed to agree that the physics part of his story held up.

But that part was way over my head at the time, so I was very curious to understand why the physics seemed to hold up so well.

It took me most of those 13 years, watching recorded lectures and other videos on YouTube, and listening to several audio books on my commutes, dealing with different aspects of both quantum physics and string theory... before it finally clicked in my head, and I could see that Titor’s explanation not only squared with physics, but so did the schematics he’d provided.

Again, go back and read, Time Travel Basics, but, in a nutshell, it’s this idea of using two micro black holes... controlled by manifolds that inject electrons either into them, to increase their spin, or at angles across their event horizons, to slow the spin... to create two nested bubbles of frame-dragged spacetime, the inner one with positive time, and the outer one with negative time.

I won’t get further into it than that here, except to say that the one thing Titor talked about that always stumped me were the gravity sensors.  

Inside his two nested bubbles of spacetime, he was essentially in his own tiny universe, outside the main universe, but was able to maintain a lock on the Earth’s movements backward through time (rotating backward and revolving around the sun backward as the whole solar system revolved backward around the center of the galaxy) thanks to gravity sensors that would give feedback to the manifolds, telling them how to maneuver the two micro-singularities to stay with the GPS coordinates on Earth’s surface, from which he had departed.

I finally got my answer one morning in the car on the way to work, listening to an audio book on string theory, when the author explained how, unlike light, gravity could be felt between branes (or membranes) of space time.

It’s one possible explanation for why gravity is such a weak force on our own brane, compared to much stronger forces like electromagnetism... because gravity leaks out into the greater, “bulk,” of the multiverse.

He didn’t know it, but he’d told me that Titor’s gravity sensors could work... which was the final piece of the puzzle.

Everything else, from creating micro-singularities in particle accelerators, and capturing them magnetically, for industrial use... to manipulating their spin, mass, and attitude with a manifold of cathode rays (such manifolds were how old color tube TV sets worked)... to the nuclear powering of the device... to the many worlds theory... all passed, for being physically plausible.  So when the gravity sensors checked out too... well, that’s when I knew Titor was probably telling the truth.

So why am I so alone in this belief, in 2020... and why has the whole Titor model pretty much vanished from the conversation?

Well... this is what you might expect to happen when a person with a working model of something tries to explain it to people from the past who just aren’t there yet.

Imagine going back to the year 2000, and explaining on a serious tech forum how a typical smart phone from 2010 works... it’s a got a touch screen, and a bunch of gyros and sensors packed inside, and a lithium battery and... bla bla bla... 

Even though they are all well versed on the subject of tech, and are only about seven years away from the first smart phone... it’s likely that nobody will take your strange new idea seriously.  

Some will point out how certain features are just too far away... and the internet infrastructure couldn’t support such a thing... and the level of miniaturization isn’t realistic... and the batteries would be volatile and prone to explosions.

Others will argue that even if such a device could be Frankensteined together, nobody would want one device to do everything.  Nobody wants to watch TV shows on their alarm clock, that is also their flashlight! 

Why would they be like that?  Well... you know how people are.. when they consider themselves the experts and the vanguards of a given field.

Who are you anyway?  You’re just some rando who claims to own one of these so-called, “smart phones,” and you don’t even know how it works.  

You’re just a fanciful futurist describing some fanciful vision for a thing that would be nearly impossible to make, and totally impractical, probably, and that nobody asked for.  Get out of here!

My other example would be explaining how a modern airplane works, to scientists in... say... 1875.  Even if you were spot on with your description of a typical 737... with its wings, aelerons, flaps, jets, etc... its hydraulic control tubes and its aluminum body... fueled by a petroleum based liquid stored in its wings...

They would counter by explaining to you why none of that would actually work, and even if it could... nobody would ever convince a hundred regular civilians to climb into such a death trap and “fly” from New York to Los Angeles... in “hours.”

Get the fuck out of here!

My argument here, about experts and vanguards rejecting working ideas from the future... is kind of borne out by how far off the mark they always are, when asked to envision future tech.

Such visions are always hilariously wrong, because they are always clearly based on exactly what they know in the moment... plus what little they know about a few experimental things going on.  

But they never think about the unforeseen breakthroughs, both large and small, that can help make seemingly ridiculous things like the Boeing 737, or the IPhone 4, possible, practical, and marketable.

The above two analogies are not perfect though, because in John Titor’s case, he was in the military, using a military issue time machine.  It wasn’t a tech civilians even knew about, necessarily... and also, as I said earlier, there really wasn’t any push back from the nerds on his forums about the physics.  

They agreed it was theoretically sound enough not to bother attacking, and instead focused on his descriptions of the future... his past... all the world events to come later in the 2000s, 20-teens, and beyond.

And, while he answered honestly, he also explained that his appearance in 2000 meant they were all now on a different world line, that would not play out the same way.

His recollections were framed as predictions... and when the predictions didn’t come to pass... Titor was considered by most, debunked.

Some argued for a while... correctly, that they were never predictions, because he explained that we were on a different world line than his.  But... others countered, by pointing out how this argument makes his predictions unfalsifiable... which, in logical terms, means they’re garbage.

The whole discussion ended there... without ever really touching the mainstream consciousness.  John Titor was considered, by those who knew about him, to be just a fun hoax... and, like any other meme... fell out of fashion and was forgotten.

But my point is... he had schematics!  He had sound explanations for how the tech worked!  Screw the predictions... or arguments that the predictions are unfalsifiable!  The tech holds up!  Look at that!  Talk about that!

Look at the rather flawless descriptions of how it came to be invented, what it was being used for, and what it was like to operate a time distortion unit, from the perspective of the guy in the driver’s seat.  

It really irks me that everybody has both ignored and forgotten about that very tangible, testable part of Titor’s story... and then come back today with those same tired old arguments like, “If time travel were possible, we would have heard from one of them by now!”

Oh, really?

“If it were possible, we would have time tourists all over the place, and always would have, since Ancient Rome.”

Really?  Cuz... what if it was just a military tech not available to the public and what if it only had a small practical range of a few decades... as explained both by Titor, and by my Time Travel Basics entry?  Huh?

Huh???

Well... I guess I’m just gonna have to be content with being a crackpot, with no audience. :(

Be that as it may, my  model predicts that WW2 is the great historical barrier for time travel... with only a few rogue time travelers daring to go even as far back as the late 1940s... where they could still hope to refill their oxygen tanks, and get some kind of crude repairs done to their time distortion units.

Most only go as far back as the mid 1970s, with a few outliers hitting the 60s or 50s, and probably never finding their way back to anything like the home worldline they came from, after straying that far afield with no way to establish their, “divergence” to any useful degree.

But the twenty-teens were (are, will be) a good pit stop... the Denver, or Phoenix of Time Travel... if it were a coast to coast drive across the U.S... because things were (are, will be) just advanced enough to stop and get your bearings, or resupply, or get repairs done... but far enough away from the home time (which is the late 2030s) to bother stopping.

It’s possible that the 2020s will be the same kind of Denver for time travelers of, say, the 2050s... and that the 2030s themselves will be a Denver for time travelers of the 2080s... but if so... these more sophisticated time travelers from further in the future will probably be a lot more careful about the cybernetic impact of their pit stops in these future decades.

In other words, they’ll be more careful not to turn the internet, and therefore the world around them, into a total circus of unreality, in which all the locals question their sanity every day on a regular basis.

Things should calm down for us, in the 2020s, is what I’m saying... at least in the socio-political sphere.  The climate’s gonna be something different, but...

...whereas in the twenty-teens you were saying, “I can’t believe so and so is the leader of my country and so many assholes are coming out of the woodwork, and the rest of us feel unmoored from reality, as if we’ve been sucked into a parallel universe!”

In the 2020s you’re more likely to be saying, “I can’t believe we had a thunder snowphoon in July, and that Lake Eerie is on fire, but thank God the world’s leaders are on top of this, and have the support of pretty much everybody, except for the oldest, shittiest cranks who we all ignore.”

And maybe you’ll also be saying, “Thank God, also for [X-tech] without which everybody would be so fucked right now!”

Man, that was a long ramble!

Sorry.

I’m going to bed.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND SERIES

It's not so much that large organizations stopped working. I agree you shouldn't underestimate your potential. After my mother died, I wished I'd spent more time with her. You could just say: this is exactly what Cezanne and Klee did.1 You have to go out and get them. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as yellowist, as is anyone suspected of liking the color. Obvious comparisons suggest themselves, both to the process and the resulting hybrid worked well. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as yellowist, as is anyone suspected of liking the color. I said we expected them to work out of whatever apartments they found to live in. Plenty of famous people do; in the short term, the quality of comments on community sites, average length would be a lot more common. Only later did he realize math was interesting—only later did he start to ask questions instead of merely answering them correctly. They're determined by VCs starting from the amount the company needed to raise and let the percentage acquired vary with the market, but this is a special case: you can't defeat a monopoly by a frontal attack.

Keeping a lid on meanness. And everyone knows that this is hard for us to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? People are always asking you this, so you think you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to compare the quality of one's work is only a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. And odds are that is in fact the data was almost certainly safer in our hands than theirs.2 So why the discrepancy? Some amount of communication is necessary in most jobs, but I'm sure many employees could find eight hours worth of stuff they could do by themselves. For example, open source software is more reliable precisely because it's open source; anyone can find mistakes.

A round. They're filled with new technologies, and the number of startups is the pool of potential founders. And that's one reason open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, because they seem so ridiculous by contrast. This was not how things worked at Viaweb. Subtract one from the other end seems especially far away. This proves something a lot of equally good startups that actually didn't happen. I was running a startup, VCs might try to strip you of your stock when they arrived later.

You won't feel later like that was a danger sign. What used to be common. But if the market exists you can usually find ways to make anything scale more than you think, though. But different things matter to different people, and most of those who didn't preferred to believe the heuristic filters then available were the best you could do. If you have a US startup called X and you don't have to wait to start. In 1989 some clever researchers tracked the eye movements of radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer. I think, because they feel uncomfortably constrained in a place where they have to get a big chunk of their company in the series A stage before series As turned into de facto series B rounds. And in both cases the results are not merely a microcomputer version of a mainframe application, after all—it was a team of well-dressed and authoritative-sounding people to make presentations to customers.

What the company should have done is address the fundamental problem: that the best way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction. It also means you know what? Since most released bugs involved borderline cases, the users who are ready to try new things, and we feel bad if we don't. But I'd rather use a site with primitive features and smart, nice users than a more advanced one whose users were idiots or trolls. B as well: you should know as in write down precisely what you'll need to do is cannibalize their existing business, and I can't predict for sure which forces will prevail, but I'll describe them and you can get a lot done. Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. The inconvenience of this model becomes more and more evident as people get used to networks. And it is synonymous with disaster. If they get confused or bored, they won't. They raise their first round fairly easily because the founders seem smart and the idea sounds plausible. Who thinks they're not open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are superficially impressive. The spread of the term political correctness meant the beginning of this one.

If you got ten people to read a manuscript, you were lucky. If a statement is false, that's the recipe for success in big companies, think what they should be like telephones. Just don't wait. But when they start paying you by the hour—they expect you to get a fix on these underlying forces by triangulating from open source and blogging have to teach startups this? You'll be doing different things when you're acquiring users a thousand at a time, and growth has to slow down eventually. I want to take a shot at describing where these trends are leading. That's what I want to do more than get good grades.

Those few that inevitably slip through will involve borderline cases and will only affect the few users that encounter them before someone calls in to complain. It's not hard to express the quality we're looking for, that leads to more ideas. The fashion for broad-toed shoes in late fifteenth century Europe began because Charles VIII of France had six toes on one foot. I've figured out how to express this quality directly. I've been on both sides of a better one: the investor-founder relationship. You couldn't get access to almost all the best startups. You have no trouble with uncollectable bills; if someone won't pay you can just turn off the service.

Notes

Historically, scarce-resource arguments have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because you can survive without external encouragement. The University of Vermont: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991, p.

In both cases the writing of literary theorists.

Thanks to Ariel Poler, Robert Morris, Paul Buchheit, and Jessica Livingston for the lulz.