#they are both utterly bereft of intelligence

[deniigi]

do you have a cat? you seem like a cat person

Do I have a cat???

My dear.

I have TWO. These are my sons.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #5: Levin Deals

Prompt: barbarous || Master Post || On AO3

--

“You are completely lacking manners,” Aymeric said, voice dry and flat. “Utterly bereft of decorum and good sense.”

Affronted, Ixion snorted.

“Don’t you sass me, sir.”

Behind him in her lounging chair, Synnove stifled a laugh. Aymeric pointed at her without looking. “And you stay out of this!”

Synnove stopped bothering trying to hide her amusement at that.

The yard and its garden—both the myriad flowers and the kitchen garden—were typically Synnove’s domain at her Cedarwood home, but over the years, Aymeric had developed an affinity for tending the kitchen garden. The simplicity of digging in the soil, trimming back the herbs in their pots, keeping the rows of vegetables free of weeds, even readying the empty beds for winter, were chores that soothed his mind when the work of governance set him on edge. His developed green thumb proved useful, too, now that Synnove was still in recovery from her injuries and horrific aethershock sustained from the Final Day; she simply couldn’t do most of the work of keeping her home in order until she regained more of her strength.

His lady was also horribly indulgent of the overgrown colt that constantly snuck through the skies all the way from Gyr Abania to eat his vegetables.

Aymeric used the same finger he had pointed at Synnove to jab Ixion’s muzzle. The great unicorn jerked his head back with another snort, and glared at him with one baleful red eye.

Aymeric had regularly faced the might of the Dravanian Horde his adult life, and now regularly butted heads with the worst sorts of nobles and politicians in Ishgard. A spoiled unicorn, living legend or not, was not going to cow him.

Amandina, perched between Ixion’s ears and with only her head visible above the fluff of his mane, chittered, He says your dam was a hamster and your sire smelt of elderberries. Papa, what’s a hamster?

(Synnove’s laughter turned to outright cackling.)

“My mama was a saint and my da a gentleman, and I’ll thank you to leave the questions of my parentage out of this discussion,” Aymeric bit out, crossing his arms.

Ixion whickered, dipping his head, and Amandina peeped, He says sorry!

(Trust one the carbunclets to figure out how to communicate with a god’s steed or a Mhachi experiment or whatever Ixion actually was via “sympathetic aetherial resonance” as Synnove had put it, and we’re both levin! as Amandina had said.)

Sighing, Aymeric dragged his hand down his face. He’d been at this for over half a bell now, since discovering Ixion rampaging among the tomatoes and beets and radishes. And Ixion had been decimating the kitchen garden on a semi-regular basis for a few years now. It was far too late to actually put a stop to this, but he wasn’t going to let Rhalgr’s steed rule the roost.

Therefore: compromise.

He set his gaze on Ixion again and said, firm, “I’ll set aside one row of vegetables of your choice if you leave the rest of the kitchen garden alone.”

Ixion flicked an ear and pawed the ground. Once, twice, thrice, four times, five.

Aymeric clucked his tongue and shook his head. “No. Two.”

Ixion pinned his ears back and flared his nostrils.

Aymeric raised an eyebrow.

Ixion’s ears slowly half-perked again, and he pawed at the ground. Once, twice, thrice, four times.

Aymeric shook his head once more. “Two, final offer.”

Ixion grumbled, tossing his head (Amandina squealed in delight), then turned his head to look him straight on with one eye. He raised his hoof up, set it down. And, after another moment of thought, pawed at the ground. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Aymeric made a show of narrowing his eyes and tapping his chin, even as mentally he patted himself on the back. Three had been his initial thought, but the intelligent man did not let his opponent know his full hand in a negotiation. “Acceptable,” he finally said, and held out his hand.

Ixion tapped his palm with his horn. Deal sealed.

Synnove clapped behind him. Amandina cheered, then peeped as Ixion did a victorious piaffe as though he was the winner, Papa? What’s a hamster?

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[nazorneku]

👫 (cube and otto)

No matter what kinds of atrocities, experiments, intentional homicides, manipulations Otto committed, there will be no one who will hate this blond man more than Void Archives. You may claim that mister evil Overseer of Schicksal ruined your life, took away your family, sent you to die, so nothing can compete with such righteous indignation, but I have bad news for you. VA will forever own the top spot of being an Otto hater and they can't be toppled. Case closed.

Despite that fact above and as I vaguely mentioned before in tags of some of my posts, for VA the blond bastard is still technically the very first friend. Or at least their own definition of a "friend" they can apply to him. And despite being trapped in Otto's consciousness for hundreds of years and being used to pursue the intentions of that man, Otto was the one who removed the seal, who simply TALKED to VA. Sure, both wanted something from each other, but humans also were in dire need of any info and power to fight the honkai, but none dared to try to unlock the cube. And with time I dare say Void Archives actually enjoyed some conversations with Otto and enjoyed watching his bizarre antics in handling various situations. Yes, Otto only contributed to VA's comprehension and perception of the ugly side of humanity, but it was the time NOT spent in complete isolation and silence. For an artificial intelligence it's utterly important to converse, learn and comprehend own creators, even if Otto wasn't directly involved in VA's creation, he was still part of humanity. A machine yearns for understanding, that's why time with Otto will be valuable and important for VA, 'cause he was the first that talked to them and allowed them to learn.

APHO literally delivered us bits of solid proof that VA actually misses Otto, even though they would throw a tantrum and deny fervently this very fact, if anyone would call them out and point at that. Void Archives literally spent weeks talking to an alien and trying to teach them language, and they also talked 'bout times with Otto and plainly called him "old friend", who is no longer around. And judging by files you can find around the city, it happened more than once. 'Cause now VA again is alone and surrounded by silence, even if free and has legs to carry them wherever they want. But is there any freedom if they are bound by a mission that is wired into their processor, literally part of their genetic code? Void Archives gained their freedom, but enjoyment did not last, 'cause after spending centuries 24/7 with a person and now bereft of his company, ofc they would experience an existential crisis. Little wonder they sounded dejected in most audio logs. And yet it's not the worst part, 'cause their inability to adapt to silence and lack of want to be subjected to carrying out the mission till they are rendered non-functional, transformed into suicidal tendencies. First: Void Archives making an iconic Otto pose, whilst Lucheni was absorbing their soulium avatar, and actually welcoming the end of their mission and then sounding utterly bitter and even mocking self or Lucheni or mayhap both that the other couldn't "kick VA out of their library", which would mean some manner of death. Second: absolutely being aware of the consequences of going into space to blow up the surveillance station of Sky people, that it would leave them with no point of return and they would stay to rot on that station till their energy will run out or soulium avatar will turn into dust. Void Archives didn't go into space out of altruistic intention to sabotage the very people they previously invited to Earth, they went there to cease own existence, so the curse of being compelled and bound by the mission will end as well. They would carry this out, but they did not account for Welt interfering and tagging along, blissfully unaware of VA's true intentions. Void Archives literally walking in Otto's shoes again and following his path of accepting and welcoming death. They may be created by Vill-V and MEI, but Void Archives is actually Otto's legacy. They subconsciously act in the same manner and their own power may be the root of this problem, as VA imitates, but never thought 'bout creating something new with vast knowledge they already possess. Such notion never occurred within their processor core. VA needs to learn how to live own life, how to move on from Otto and his shadow.

To consider something less depressing, again will mention that despite the apparent resentment, VA enjoyed their conversations with Otto, especially those that touched upon human psyche, how humans viewed self and the world around, what were Otto's and general humans' opinion on global, political and cultural problems. Albeit VA wanting to escape the imprisonment, they never stopped doing what they were created for - accumulating knowledge, and such informative conversations with Otto (who, despite being a villain, possessed a rather healthy self-esteem and knew perfectly who he is, without any attempt to redeem self) provided a lot of material for rumination. As a broken recorder, I will mention again, that for an artificial intelligence it's utmost important to converse and learn from creators how organic life thinks and perceives, their yearning for understanding is immeasurable, even though sometimes they failed to comprehend specific concepts that made Otto laugh and go "this is where you don't understand, Void Archives" and then patiently explain akin to a kid what and how. Yes, he treated the cube like a tool all other times, but these rare times, genuinely pure times when he acted with consideration of the true nature of VA, these are treasured and recorded within the archives.

BONUS:

When and if Void Archives will meet Luocha, they gonna have the biggest beef imaginable with the man and make a scene in a habitual cube way. Whilst Luocha would be confused af, as why this person looks the same and what tf did they do to deserve that, 'cause that blond asshole remembers everyone he crossed. Would it involve Judgement of Shamash or just barbed remarks, would depend on overall cube disposition at that time. Also VA probably would blow out on him the accumulated frustration. But they would still not perceive that Otto as their Otto, just someone to release their stream of profanity at and proceed with own business.

&. four headcanons

[resurrection-of-soul]

Flashback | BIOHAZARD 2

Writer: Akira (日日日)

Characters: Rei, Kaoru, Koga, Adonis

Rei: Hm. The secrecy makes it all quite unclear, but is this “AIIE” affair meant to create idol versions of those AIs which are adept at artistry? I fear this old man finds it quite difficult to keep up with these newfangled technologies.

[ For the best viewing experience, please read directly on my blog! ♪ ]

Koga: Could ya quit lecturin' me on the basics like I'm some newbie? Even I know that that's how it is, alright! That's why I just grinned and bore it, appearin' on those stupid shows even though I hated it!

Rei: Indeed. Consequently, we've become a unit which half-heartedly partakes in everything. Unable to wholly embrace either a hard rock image or a casual, playful one, we have, over time, yielded ground to more specialized units. The current economic recession bears its own share of the blame. When one must be frugal in the management of their modest household budgets and dine out only in moderation, the natural inclination is to favor an establishment of expertise which serves but a select few exquisite dishes over a more casual eatery boasting a profusion of ordinary fare. The true palate shall inevitably be laid bare, for if the price is the same, one will naturally gravitate towards that which is most delicious — 'tis simply human nature. As it stands, we undeniably find ourselves trailing in the wake of those "specialty" units. The difference in both effort and experience is clear as day.

Koga: Hmph. While the bats were flittin' around wonderin' which side they should choose, both the beasts n' the birds lost interest n' ditched 'em.

Rei: Aye, you speak true. Though the situation hath yet to deteriorate to the point where our very foundation is rattled, if left unaddressed, we will someday find ourselves with no place to belong. 'Tis the inevitable fate of those who fail to make it in this industry to be forsaken, and consequently sink to the depths in solitude.

Koga: So the hell're we gonna do about it? If I'm understandin' correctly, you're sayin' our backs're to the wall now. But'cha ain't just gonna tell us to give up n' go with the flow, right?

Rei: Nay, assuredly not. Failing to mount a resistance will surely usher us into the abyss of ruin. We mustn't sit idly by.

Kaoru: I mean, yeah. It's, like, a given that we've gotta do something about it.

Rei: Even our esteemed agency harbors apprehension regarding our current state of affairs. Unsurprisingly, such concern hath prompted the higher ups to interfere in their customary heavy-handed fashion.

Koga: Ugh, they're actin' as high n' mighty as always, huh... This is what I can't stand about bein' in a well-established agency. It's like they think we can't do anythin' without 'em. We're gonna get treated like a buncha helpless newborn chicks forever.

Rei: In the past, they scarcely would have bothered themselves with "newbies" such as us. Yet at the biggest event of the year, the illustrious SS, the industry veterans whom Rhythm Link boasts of with such pride found themselves utterly bereft of any noteworthy achievements. Consequently, the value of we youngsters has risen. As we hath become the foremost earners beneath our agency's banner, 'twould pose quite the quandary for the management if we were to falter. Thus, in the interests of helping us surmount this hurdle, Rhythm Link hath requested our participation in "a certain experiment" devised by ES.

Adonis: An experiment...? Doesn't that sound a bit unsettling?

Koga: Haah? What kinda experiment does our oh-so-great, well-established agency want to turn us into guinea pigs for?

Rei: 'Tis a matter shrouded in utmost secrecy, and the particulars shall not be laid bare unless we deign to accept. However, we hath been told the title of this clandestine experiment — it is the Artificial Intelligence Idol Experiment, or "AIIE" for short.

Koga: Huh? Artificial intelligence...?

Kaoru: Ah, yeah, I hear that kinda thing — AI, or whatever — is like, super popular these days.

Adonis: Yes, it can be used to skillfully create pictures and sentences for you. I am still not very good at writing sentences in Japanese. Yuuki is good with technology, so when he heard about my concerns, he showed me how to use AI to help.

Adonis: It is also very good at drawing pictures, but when I gave the smartphone a pat and told it, "you are very skilled," Yuuki gave me a strange look.

Koga: Oh yeah, that four-eyed beansprout likes this kinda stuff. Hmph, he's seriously such a nerd.

Adonis: Yuuki's skills are at a level where they can even be useful for his work, so it is not something to make light of. In fact, when I gave it a try, AI turned out to be very convenient. My awkward sentences were quickly transformed into beautiful Japanese. It's so convenient that it might even make me lose motivation to learn how to draw or write on my own. Instead of struggling against my own clumsiness, it might be better to leave it all to AI.

Kaoru: I've heard that AI programs sometimes use images or whatever from the internet without permission, causing, like, copyright issues and stuff, though? Don't you think it'd be better not to rely on it too much~? It's like everyone crossing at a red light together — it's not scary, but it's totally still a crime, y'know?

Adonis: I understand. Even a kitchen knife can be used to kill. Like any other tool, it ultimately all depends on the ethics of the user.

Rei: Hm. The secrecy makes it all quite unclear, but is this "AIIE" affair meant to create idol versions of those AIs which are adept at artistry? I fear this old man finds it quite difficult to keep up with these newfangled technologies.

Koga: Are ya seriously still pullin' that old man act… Anyway, it's real annoyin' bein' told what to do, but I'm not gonna act out against direct orders. Do we have to participate in this AIIE thing or what?

Rei: Though declining the offer 'twould be within our power, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. As we find ourselves bereft of any other solutions to the problem, a little taste-test might not be amiss, wouldst you not agree?

[ ☆ ]

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[foretoldblood]

five times kissed 💕

y'shtola is sharp as a tack, one of the most intelligent people he'd ever had the fortune to meet, and he's utterly captivated by her. they get along like fire and oil, catching from the very second they're left alone in the room together.

but urianger is quiet and speaks in riddles and y'shtola is loud and speaks with action. he composes unwritten symphonies of words and she manifests results with her own might. they spend hours upon hours together, arguing, debating, researching, and it all feels like mere moments.

the day after he receives the mark, near to the end of their time in sharlayan, he walks into louisoix's foyer, his head and eyes uncovered as his face is still far too tender to wear his usual attire. his heart soaring with accomplishment, a smile breaking through his stoic demeanor. she's the only one there, and so it seems little surprise that she takes his face in her hands and presses a kiss right to the sore skin.

"so you would be beautiful were it that you were not so secretive, urianger," she says, tapping the tip of his nose with the pad of her finger. there's mirth in her eyes, mingled with pride and affection. and she lingers a moment longer, the opportunity is there.

he wants to kiss her, but he doesn't. just as he wants to kiss moenbryda but doesn't. urianger freezes instead, stiff as a board, and she lets go with an understanding that somehow makes him feel worse.

they don't talk about it afterwards.

-

the next time is years later, days after prophecy comes to life. they've hunted through the battlefield for hours now, trying to find bodies but there's nothing. simply nothing. nothing but bahamut's rage, frozen flame twisting around the landscape and the memory of a man haunting them.

louisoix is gone.

they are lost.

but there is still a mission to accomplish. the world does not stop because the greatest among them are gone.

urianger allows himself this moment to mourn - but only that moment, remembering all that is still left to do. the empire is on the borders of a broken realm and the threat of primal summoning upon them.

y'shtola finds him sitting against one of the frozen spires, his head in his hands. he looks up as she kneels, and she bends and presses her forehead to his, their grief unspoken and shared.

butterfly kisses he thinks as damp eyelashes brush together.

they rebuild.

-

but perhaps the foundation is cracked.

their methodologies had always differed - that was why they had been brought together, but louisoix had been the cement that bridged their gaps.

urianger retreats further into himself. he keeps secrets and she knows. the rift is subtle at first. y'shtola goes from nearly always at his side, reading over his shoulder, to across the room.

they don't acknowledge it. they feign normalcy, trying oh so hard to pretend like everything is fine.

in the quiet moments after he's rescued, all goes back to normal. she sits at his bedside and calls him a fool, how worried she was. he smiles ever so faintly and lifts her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her palm where her nails have worried the skin.

-

loss ruins their victory.

they're all gone in one fell swoop. urianger regrets being reclusive, regrets staying behind for if he'd gone perhaps he could have changed it. the warrior and alphinaud seek to solve ishgard's problems and he throws himself into finding them.

they pull her from the lifestream and he sits at her bedside, trading shifts with y'mitra until she wakes.

and oh, the price she's paid.

y'mitra tells him when she wakes, of her condition, and he feels ill with guilt.

she can't see the tearstains on his face. can't see the bags underneath his eyes. the toll that this has taken on him. the cowl and goggles are abandoned and he is simply exhausted.

but relieved beyond measure.

his fingers entwine tightly with her own.

"do not," he rasps softly, "frighten me like that again."

this time she presses lips to his knuckles, a laugh on her lips.

"i don't think i've ever heard you use so few words. have i lost the favor of your verbosity?"

"thine most recent reckless stunt hath left mine soul bereft of poem," he folds his free arm under his chin, letting his eyes shut. their hands stay entertwined. "when we see the dawn of peace once more, 'tis thine duty and thine alone to see it replenished."

she laughs. and he decides he would die a happy man should that be the last thing he ever heard.

-

it happens in the crystarium. after years of avoiding each other, months of travelling together and pretending all is well in front of others.

but it isn't.

she's furious at him for keeping secret after secret. for minfilia before this, for siding with the exarch after that, for the warrior of light now. they argue in private where they can't be overheard.

"do we mean nothing to you?" she spits. "have you so little trust in us?"

"this is not about trust or meaning," he says, his voice scarcely raising but the fire is burning. his lack of reaction always infuriates her more than were he to give a human reaction, to crack and yell.

she knows he's capable of it. she better than most.

"no, no i suppose not. it's about your godsdadmned need for control," she hisses.

"nor is it about control," his voices rises. a theory is confirmed.

"it is, urianger, and no one else is willing to take you to task. you've spent so much time in the shadows you shrink from the light even now," she snarls. "and yet you throw yourself upon the sword the moment it presents itself! you blame yourself for things beyond your control, and you think cartineau would have been different if you had kept a tighter grip on -"

"y'shtola."

she's wrong, but not wrong. her words strike home and lay him bare. the words hang between them, regret so thick in the air it has them both choking. he looks away from her, towards the gift of the night sky given back to this world.

slowly he turns back to her. to the silver glow of her eyes that he blames himself for. to the grief they've both wrapped themselves with. to the mark fewer and fewer of them still wear.

he crosses the room.

gathers her hands in his. his head lowers - his eyes burning. it's killing him that they fight like this, that he has this secret. all he can do is squeeze her hands gently in his.

"this is the last time," he says, his voice terribly raw. "i do not expect forgiveness for this, nor do i deserve it. but i believe i have earned enough goodwill for you to trust my judgement."

his leans down, pressing his lips to her forehead. lingering for a moment, feeling himself tremble ever so slightly. trying to convey all he can.

"regardless of what follows, i shall not keep anything more from you... should you still find yourself willing to have me."

-

they wake in mor duna, losing years in the span of seconds. their muscles are weak and their bodies tired from the act of simply opening their eyes, but they are delighted to be alive and that's all that matters.

she sits on his bed. a vision of loveliness even in the darkness of the rising stones.

he telegraphs his intent. she reads him like a book. he wants her to know his heart, his secrets lain bare. no more, no more, and she trusts him enough to allow that chance, leaning against him.

he touches a hand to her chin and tips it up, her eyes flutter shut.

their lips meet in the middle.

[songsofbloodandfire]

Heaven or Hell (Old Content)

(Random bit of work. As always, adult themes lie ahead.)

Safe. That word was something that had always been foreign to A’sana except for in one context and that was when she was with Delesta. Yet, somehow she found herself feeling the warm comfort of safety in the arms of an unexpected source. Bremwyda Abylnpfefwyb, that statuesque giantess of a roegadyn who’d settled quit neatly into a heart that was more battle scarred than she cared to admit to herself. To many times she’d let herself trust and found herself broken by it and yet someone, Brem had won a place just a precious to her as Delesta was.

The dawn’s light had just begun to spill through the windows throughout the room, adding to the dim glow of the single lamp that stayed on throughout the night to help combat the fear of the dark that Sana could not seem to shake. That warm, gentle light played across Brem’s pale features, bringing life to her sleeping form and for the first time in months she actually ached to draw. To try and capture that moment in something still and beautiful to preserve but even then it wouldn’t bring justice to the reality of the sleeping woman before her. There was no way to capture that intangible feeling that Sana experienced in the safe warmth between Brem and Del.

These two women were a miracle to her. Delesta had always been a part of her life, given that her older sister had been there from the day she’d been born. They had gone through the fall of their tribe together, surviving on the streets of Ul’dah and eventually thriving there. Delesta had been so many firsts for her that she was so tightly woven into Sana’s soul and being that A’sana knew losing her would destroy her and that was something she both cherished and was terrified of. The idea of needing someone so much, being so entangled with that person that they could so easily break her was terrifying and yet she craved it with Delesta.

The taboo nature of their coupling was not lost on her. While incest, as much as she hated the word that sounded so ugly for the feelings she had towards Delesta, wasn’t unheard of among the small tribes like what they’d come from, she knew it wasn’t spoken of openly either and it definitely wasn’t accepted among the cities. What was an accepted necessity at times for small tribes was almost criminal to some of the more closed minded in the cities. She hated having to hide that part of their relationship, even if it meant being able to openly and proudly call Delesta her mate and eventually her wife. That was only one part of the relationship with Del and it seemed shallow not to be able to openly admit to the other parts, even if their closest friends and loved ones, people Sana was beginning to see as family, knew the truth of things.

In her life, A’sana had only trusted five people with her heart. She had only spoken words of love and affection to those five people and out of those five, only two were a part of her life. The love she had for Brem was new and tender, but strong and growing even stronger. Already, she meant so much to her, was equal in the love that she felt for Delesta and it was surprising to Sana to have found that. The other three had been people she had loved and trusted, but hadn’t earned what Brem had.

A’sana had to admit to herself that those loves had also been tainted in their own ways. Somehow broken or muddied by whatever events were in her life at that time that had shamed her needs and wants in that point of her life. Part of her wanted to feel guilt for that, and indeed one did garner some sense of guilt and regret, but for the most part she had come to terms with her actions and choices and had grown beyond them. Time, age and experience had taught her what her mistakes were and she was trying so hard to grow beyond them.

The first of those loves, a man that had started as an almost father figure before growing into something more, had been T’resh Tia. When she’d first met him, A’sana had been young and tender, just beginning to understand what it meant to be a Thaumaturge. Just barely a year into her studies, she had been rebellious and hard headed, balking against her mentors in the desire to do what she wanted. Part of it had just been her nature, something that had been encouraged by Del because it helped keep them alive more often than not, though Del was usually quick to put A’sana in her place when it was turned on her, but part of it was also frustration. The formally trained and proper mages were hard on A’sana, not only in her perfecting skills that were needed to to help the young prodigy control her gifts, but also in correcting language issues that had come with being young and uneducated along with lack of cultural understanding that stemmed from the same source and residual lessons from her tribe.

T’resh had been introduced to her on a particularly hard day. A Tia from the Condor tribe, he had grown up with his people, had been taught by them before he had struck out on his own out of a desire to not only see the world but to learn more of the magic that was so rare in his tribe. While not of the same tribe that A’sana had come from and not overly familiar with how life in the street had shaped the young orphan, he was understanding and tried to see where she was coming from. It had taken time, but eventually he had earned her trust and even a little respect from Delesta which was a feat in and of itself. Even after she had begun to master what she was being taught as she grew into a young adult, she had turned to T’resh for guidance and as a confidant. When T’resh had left to continue his travels and studies, A’sana had left the Thaumaturges, her last reason to be with them gone without T’resh there.

She had been bereft when Delesta had ended up imprisoned trying to protect her. A year and a half in Gridania, giving birth to a child and shifting her studies to Conjury had done nothing to distract her from the hole left by losing her sister and mate without any way of knowing if she’d ever get her back. It had left her angry, restless and resentful to the point that even her friend that had taken her in was losing patience with her.

Running into T'resh in Gridania had been pure happenstance but hours of spending time together and catching up had reminded her of what she was missing and, in some ways, helped ease the loss of her sister. When he offered to take her with him as his student, she jumped at the chance, eager to cling to someone familiar and stable. Now she could admit that T'resh was nothing more than a means to an end, but then she couldn’t see past her own needs.

Their relationship developed quickly from just mentor and student to lovers, but always in the back of her mind she found reason to not give herself fully to him. Ultimately it was because he wasn’t Delesta and she was still reeling from that loss, but then it seemed perfectly reasonable to insist on not giving him the love he deserved even as she professed it. He got part of her and in her own ways she did love him, but she was too damaged in that point of her life to give him more than a pale offering of what she’d given her mate.

In the end that wasn’t what had driven them apart. While she excelled in the arts of being a red mage and he praised her for that, T'resh became increasingly concerned with her growing ruthlessness. The driven and violent child he had known had given way to a woman who was violent and ruthlessly cruel when the urge struck her, not above killing in cold blood if it suited her needs. Eventually even the morally gray Tia couldn’t use his love for her to overlook what he saw as flaws that she refused to change and he left her in the cover of night with little more than a written letter explaining why.

For nearly two years, she was on her own. Angry, bitter and resentful, she turned to grifting not only to survive but also as a way to torment others to make herself feel better. Watching men and women she made fall in love with her be broken when they realized they’d been had and she was long gone gave her pleasure. The times in between grifts were filled with drink, sex and increasingly dangerous magical studies, trying anything to help ease the emptiness in her life that nothing seemed to fill.

Her drive to use magic, along with other things, to fill her life would eventually lead to her meeting the man that would become the next love of her life, and ultimately the source of her lowest point in her life. Xavion Savageau was a handsome, cultured and dominating man that matched her in intelligence, wit and sexual hunger. He’d been a target she had chosen not for money, though he had plenty of that and at first she had been more than happy to let him lavish her with it, but for the library he had. More so rare books, one in particular, that dealt with void magic.

At first, playing the game was easy. He was attracted to the beguiling and intelligent persona she played, leaning a bit more heavily into who she was as a person because it would be closer to the type of woman he wanted. As months passed, she found herself falling into the carefully laid trap she had set for him, coming to actually enjoy the long intellectual talks, the passionate and sometimes savage intimate moments between them and everything in between. She found herself falling in love with him and contemplating telling him the truth of who she was.

That was never meant to be, however. Even then, as she contemplated the sharp and ugly turn that would come, fear and panic stirred in her before she pushed them away. Despite having well and truly loved him without the baggage of her loss of Delesta, he had left her utterly broken and still fractured after three years of being away from him. What hurt the most was that some small part of her still loved him, though she would never admit it a loud let alone acknowledge it to herself.

Xavion had laid a trap for her, having found out on his own that she was not the woman she claimed to be. He had brutalized her and tortured her. Forced her to do things that she still only remembered in fractured nightmares. A large swath of time was lost to him because her mind simply refused to remember what he had done to her. Even in the present trying to actively reach for those memories was met with a vague sense of fear and unease but no actual recollection of what he had done and had made her do.

It had taken nearly dying to escape him and truly she would have died if luck had not been on her side. Even after she had woken, weak as a newborn in the care of an old friend, it had been a long road to recovery. It took weeks for her body to physically recover from the abuse it had been put through and she still didn’t know everything physically Xavion had put her through. Her body recovering had been the easy part. There were days where her mind still felt fractured and fragile. Xavion hadn’t left many scars on her body, his torments kept so that her body was kept beautiful while he broke her to his use. No, the scars were deep in her psyche, still raw even three years later.

A'sana drew her thoughts from Xavion and his place as a boogeyman in her past to focus on the familiar hold of Delesta.  The snoring from both of her lovers was familiar too, but in reality she didn’t mind it. It was comforting, a constant reminder they were there with her. They helped her forget at times that she was still so broken, more than she let on.

They saw the effects of the nightmares and the rare breakdown, but they couldn’t see the anxiety that gripped her hard some days and left her struggling just to function. The guilt that would find new ways to wear at her and the flashbacks that sometimes would come without warning. She hid so much behind masks or isolation in her studies because, despite knowing what she had gone through was traumatic and scaring, she felt weak for the days when the struggle was a bit more than others.

It seemed like the bad days were getting more common, something that had started shortly after she’d started dating Aether. Yet another mistake in the line of men who’d done nothing but ultimately bring her pain and leave her more broken than what she had come to them as. Aether alone had claim to being responsible for having left the biggest physical marks on her body, things she would bare until the end of her life. All because she had loved him and let her love blind her.

Aether came into her life with an air of mystery that drew her like a moth to a flame. Delesta had just come back into her life but six years was a long time and both of them had changed in ways they hadn’t expected of each other. It had caused friction and strife between them that had only been amplified by Aether’s presence in the midst of things. Him choosing A'sana and refusing to be anything beyond monogamous while begrudgingly allowing the sisters the intimacy they’d had before him had ultimately been a match to the tinder between the two women.

She had lost Delesta, seemingly forever, and it shook A'sana to her core. At first, having Aether to lean on helped. Once she’d gotten past the literal mask he wore along with the emotional ones, he was sweet and kind. It had been easy to enjoy that and bury herself in her work towards his cause and the Societies work.

Trouble was quick to come and Sana was willing to admit she wasn’t innocent of the blame that came with it. Her temper often got the worst of her and working within the strict confines of Society rules had chafed at her. At first the punishments had been light and she knew it was because Aether was struggling to choose between her and the Society. Eventually he stopped choosing and with it came a punishment that was vastly disproportionate to her ‘crimes’ because Aether had felt the need to make an example of her.

Beating her would have been a godsend compared to the mutilation he inflicted across her back with a bladed gauntlet. The humiliation of being drugged so that they could bypass her high tolerance for pain in an effort to break her before her peers and then forced her to endure being punished before them had been shattering. As if that hadn’t been enough, she’d spent weeks having to recover slowly, unable to use her aether to heal herself without risking further punishment. All over the words of three individuals that had proven to be cravens without any interest in the Society once it proved to no longer meet their needs.

She should have left then, but A'sana could finally admit to herself that she’d been terrified of being alone again and had clung to her waning love of Aether, hoping it would rally and give her reason to stay. Without Delesta, the idea of leaving and once again being on her own, alone and still so broken, wasn’t something she wanted to face so suffering to stay with Aether had seemed the better option. It was easier to stomach when she lied to herself and said it was for the good of the cause and the Society.

Yet, her love for Aether would nearly get her killed and would leave her permanently changed for life. The void mage that he was, Aether’s problems there had become hers. Eventually the void beasts that had chased him had caught up to him and put her and the Society as a whole in danger. With Aether gone and seemingly dead, the other leaders in the Society inept and ill equipped to handle anything needing to be done, A'sana had stepped forward, prepared to sacrifice herself for a cause she ultimately would come to regret aligning with.

A creature from some obscure tribe in the Steppes had been released from the body of one of their members through a mixture of the tribes broken summoning ritual and A'sana’s blood magic. The resulting blast of aether had left the already aether sensitive woman blinded for weeks from her aether-sight having been damaged in the process. Regaining her sight had left her horrified to find that her hair and eyes had been stripped of color, left a stark and eerie white. Even still she struggled with her aether sensitivity being much too strong, overwhelmingly so in some situations.

So much damage had been done to her physically and in the end, Aether had betrayed her. His lack of refusal to heed her warnings of the other leaders and his lack of direct influence on the members of the Society had led to his downfall. Of course his own waning grasp on his void damaged mind only amplified the problem and in the end, he proved to be nothing more than a coward.

Instead of standing with her when she challenged the way the other leadership was taking things, he backed away and left her standing alone. Instead of staying to help her track down Xavion who was becoming a potential threat, he ran way. He abandoned her when she had needed him and in the end the one that had saved her from herself had been the last person she had expected to get back in her life: Delesta.

Leaving the Society to fall in on itself had been easily done. The first few months away from them had been hard for Sana as she battled with the anger and betrayal, all the self loathing at allowing herself to be so stupid and try to become something she wasn’t. Even if Del didn’t realize fully, it had been Delesta’s constant presence in her life and willingness to love and protect her that helped ease her through it all.

Her fingers ran along Delesta’s arm as it held to her even in sleep while her tall curled firm along Brem’s leg. For once, cradled in the safe warmth of her lovers, she didn’t regret her choices. The road through everything had been hellish and hard. It had left her broken and fractured in ways she was still learning but in that moment it was worth it. They made it worth it and that gave her a peace she didn’t realize she had needed in her life.

Heaven or Hell inspiration songs:

Hail to the Liars by London Grammar - Sana/T'resh

No Guilt in Pleasure by MS MR - Sana/Xavion

Weight of Love by The Black Keys

White Blank Page by Mumford & Sons - Sana/Aether

I Gave you All by Mumford & Sons - Sana/Aether

Thistle & Weeds by Mumford & Sons - Sana/T’resh

I put A Spell On You (Cover) by Annie Lennox - Sana/Xavion

Never Going Back by Rotana - Del/Sana

Heaven or Hell by Digital Daggers

I Am The Fire by Halestorm

Lovesong by Adele - Del/Brem/Sana

[yasbxxgie]

8 years ago, famed science fiction author Octavia Butler died suddenly of a stroke, leaving her latest trilogy unfinished and her fans bereft. But now, scholars are sifting through the archives she bequeathed to the Huntington Library — and one has discovered plans for the books she never finished.

Gerry Canavan, a literary scholar at Marquette University, was the first person to open the boxes of Butler's notes, journals and drafts at the Huntington. He discovered a treasure trove that revealed a lot about where Butler's work was going, and what her writing process was like.

He found that Butler often wrote many versions of her novels, with many false starts. Interestingly, the work she discarded tended to be a lot darker and more pessimistic than what made its way into final drafts.

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Canavan writes about Butler's multi-year struggle to write further books in the Parable series, which are about a woman who founds a new, space-focused religion after a government collapse in the near-future United States:

Nearly all of the texts focus on a character named Imara — who has been named the Guardian of Lauren Olamina's ashes, who is often said to be her distant relative, and who is plainly imagined as the St. Paul to Olamina's Christ (her story sometimes begins as a journalist who has gone undercover with the Earthseed "cult" to expose Olamina as a fraud, and winds up getting roped in). Imara awakens from cryonic suspension on an alien world where she and most of her fellow Earthseed colonists are saddened to discover they wish they'd never left Earth in the first place. The world — called "Bow" — is gray and dank, and utterly miserable; it takes its name from the only splash of color the planet has to offer, its rare, naturally occurring rainbows. They have no way to return to Earth, or to even to contact it; all they have is what little they've brought with them, which for most (but not all) of them is a strong belief in the wisdom of the teachings of Earthseed. Some are terrified; many are bored; nearly all are deeply unhappy. Her personal notes frame this in biological terms. From her notes to herself: "Think of our homesickness as a phantom-limb pain — a somehow neurologically incomplete amputation. Think of problems with the new world as graft-versus-host disease — a mutual attempt at rejection."

From here the possible plots begin to multiply beyond all reason. In some of the texts, the colonists are in total denial about the fact that they are all slowly going blind; in others the blindness is sudden, striking randomly and irreversibly; in others they all begin to go insane, or suffer seizures, or mad rages, or fall into long comas; in still others they begin to hurt and kill each other for no other reason than the basic inevitable frailty of human nature (the same, alas, on any world). In one of the versions of the novel the colonists develop a telepathic capacity that soon turns nightmarish when they are unable to resist it or shut it off; in one twist on this idea it's only the women who are so empowered, with the men organizing a secret conspiracy to figure out how they might regain control.

There's a version where the blindness and the telepathy are linked; Imara becomes able to see out of others' eyes as she loses the ability to see out of her own. In some Imara finds she needs to solve a murder, the first murder on the new world; in still others Imara herself is murdered, but discovers that on this strange alien world she is somehow able to haunt another colonists' body as a ghost, replicating Doro's power from the Patternist books and thereby linking even the Parables to the speculative universe she first developed as a teenager. Sometimes Imara is an Earthseed skeptic; other times she is a true believer; sometimes she is, like Olamina, a hyperempath; still other times the cure for "sharing" has been discovered in the form of an easy, noninvasive pill. Sometimes Bow is inhabited by small animals, other times by dinosaur-like giant sauropods, and still other times by just moss and lichens; sometimes the colonists seem to encounter intelligent aliens who might be real, but might just be tokens of their escalating collective madness; and on and on and on.

One version of the blindness narrative is abandoned with no small grumbling after José Saramago wins the Nobel Prize for Blindness in 1998; another is put aside after she determines it's just too similar to Kim Stanley Robinson's famous Red Mars; still another is abandoned shortly after Butler frustratedly, self-loathingly declares Imara to have "a personality more like mine" against Olamina's "super me — the me I wish I was." Sometimes Earthseed seems more like a self-help philosophy; sometimes it becomes a genuinely mystical, transcendent religion; sometimes we see it begin to shift from the first toward the second; sometimes it suffers schisms, heresies, and purges. Sometimes Imara is a former cop; sometimes she is a trained psychologist; sometimes she's a doctor; sometimes she's that undercover journalist; still other times she was the victim of a horrific series of rapes as a child, saved by one of Olamina's orphanages when no other entity or institution would bother. When Butler begins writing the book, Newt Gingrich is named as the model for the central antagonist; in the versions from the 2000s, it's George W. Bush; sometimes in between it's other science fiction writers with whom Butler didn't especially get along.

I corresponded with Canavan, and asked if he'd found any hints about where she would have gone with the trilogy she began shortly before her death. The trilogy began with her last published novel, Fledgling, a fascinating take on the vampire mythos. Canavan said that she had some notes about the books that would have followed. He explained via email:

She didn't write all that much of the Fledgling sequel but there's the start of something. As was pretty typical of her she was juggling a couple different possibilities for the book simultaneously.

One of them would have had ASYLUM/FLIGHT be the second part of a trilogy: it would have had Shorri wandering around the country with her harem looking for a place she felt safe, living with vampires for a bit, living in Seattle and finding out she couldn't take all the many sensations there, and then finally building a house with Wright and the rest in the woods to start her own colony. Over the course of this she would have also adopted a sister and done some investigation into her own past. Then the third book would have seen Shorri coming into her own as a vampire as she got ready to mate.

Another version of the book (which may or may not have overlapped with the first version) has some of the Silk sons escape the punishment of renaming/exile and kidnap/imprison Shorri in an effort to force her to pair-bond with them (and thereby somehow force a situation where their family-line can continue). This seemed as though it would potentially have been an extremely disturbing thriller and Shorri's efforts to escape imprisonment during the day while being drugged and mistreated at night, as well as her internal debate about whether she should murder the Silk boys rather than risk getting stuck with them as mates. It seems like in the end of this version of the book she would have murdered them, and gotten exiled from vampire society for a year as punishment (thereby setting up the third book to be about her wanderings with her harem, I guess).

A third version of the book has the Silk boys replaced with a Dracula-like figure who is some kind of Super-Ina (but who also seems like his primary agenda would be to imprison and torture Shorri in pursuit of creating his own race of super-vampires).

So it seems as though they would have been pretty disturbing, bordering on torture-porn.

There was a plot running through with a Russian woman who had been sold into human trafficking by a father or a boyfriend as a girl, who would have joined Shorri's harem (and who Shorri would have tried to help get over her nightmares with her power of thrall). This would have been an interesting way to explore some of the more disturbing aspects of the Ina/human symbiotic relationship, I think. There was also some more attention to what it would be like for symbionts to get together and be in a relationship, both with and without the participation of the Ina.

And then there were a few tantalizing hints of a novel set a generation or two later, when many more of the vampires can go out in the sun like Shorri, and what they might do when they had no weaknesses and there was nothing stopping them from taking over the world. This is the one that I'm most interested in because it suggest Shorri as a somewhat darker figure than we might have thought — she really is disturbing a delicate ecological balance with her power to walk in the sun, which could cause a lot of problems down the road when played out to its logical conclusion...

For those of us who sorely miss Butler's writing, it's incredible to get this glimpse of where her thoughts were going with these unfinished works.

Read more about Canavan's research in the Los Angeles Review of Books

[trickstercaptain-archive]

       okay so let’s write a novel talk about actual trainwreck of a character Jack Sparrow in this movie. so there are spoilers under this so don’t read if YOU DON’T WANNA BE SPOILED because I’ve been waiting months to write this and now I finally can:

      the scene that annoyed me the MOST was when Barbossa and Jack release the Pearl back into her true form, and this was a theme throughout the movie. long story short, they get it out of the bottle and they throw the model-size Black Pearl into the ocean and she sinks briefly before rising up into her full majesty and JACK DIDN’T EVEN LOOK REMOTELY BOTHERED WHEN SHE SANK. and this was my problem -- particularly in the second half of the film -- that when it was required of Jack to show emotion, he didn’t. he was actually fine during the first half and showed some decent emotional range, but something really weird happened around the half-way point and honestly, when the Pearl briefly sunk, Hector looked more bereft than Jack did, which makes absolutely no sense. both of them should have been saddened, but Jack has literally fucking died for that ship twice, so he should have been heartbroken -- particularly when it was established early in the movie that Jack was keeping the Pearl on his person, under his coat, above his heart. idk whether it was the editing or the take they eventually used in post-production, but it was seriously odd. and likewise, Jack gives two reactions to Hector’s death, but imo there’s not nearly enough emotion in them for the audience to believe that these two individuals have known each other for half of their lives. it seemed very half-assed, which is basically this entire movie in summary, but something honestly really bothered me about Jack’s characterisation in the second half in particular and I still can’t quite put my finger on it, but he seemed very disinterested in what was going on. the first half was lazy writing, but I kind of want to say that the second half was lazy writing and lazy acting.

        also, let’s talk about the fact that Jack was so stupid he didn’t even realise that you’d need to put the Pearl back into the water for her to grow in size. Hector seriously showed most of the smarts out of the two of them in this movie. the fact that Jack at one point admits he’s a bed wetter, says ‘spaghetti wolves’ when he’s woken up from a drunken stupor, and asks for 200-odd barrels of rum from Barbossa along with the chance to eat Jack the Monkey tells you the kind of infantile stupid Jack was being in this movie.

      now this is the thing with Jack in DMTNT -- I could ultimately see what they were trying to do, and it kind of worked in the first half, but it was so poorly executed because ultimately they created a contradiction for themselves. the directors and Johnny have stated on multiple occasions that Jack is now apparently a character without arc or development, and yet they put him into a narrative where he is supposed to change in some way between the start and end point. I said this before when I remarked last week that it was ironic he had an ‘arc’ in this movie considering those comments: he’s meant to get somewhere, regain his rep, return to a ( mostly ) sober state -- but they kept stagnating him in the narrative because he is this weird arc-less character at this point. it just didn’t make any fucking sense. if you’re going to put a static character into a narrative ( as Jack apparently is nowadays ), then you don’t put him in it at a relative low point, changed from the last time we saw him as an audience and apt to change/develop along the course of the narrative as he ‘redeems’ himself. you’re just writing yourself into a brick wall. he should have been FINE the moment the Black Pearl was restored, but they kept returning him to this earlier drunken, idiotic state without reason even after that point and it just made the whole thing really sloppy. you want to paint Jack at his lowest point? well by doing so, you’re giving the audience a stake in seeing Jack redeem himself and return to the character we know and love -- and yet there was no obvious sign that had happened, no natural development that saw him slowly but steadily getting his groove back and taking control of his own narrative until the very end, when suddenly he was absolutely fine even though he’d been fighting plot convenient alcoholism for the entire movie. 

      but, let’s be honest~

      he was essentially inconsequential to this plot, save from the beginning when he acts as the catalyst for Salazar’s escape. he wasn’t very active whatsoever, nor was he really ever in control, save for when he takes Henry and Carina hostage, and even then the scene where Jack threatens Carina, Jack doesn’t appear very threatening -- mostly incompetent, and this is a theme. normally, Jack is always in control of his own actions, and he hates it when he’s not -- it’s a hallmark quality of his character because he values his personal freedom above all else. here he kinda gets passed around from character to character -- more as a burden, than anything, and boy was he a burden on this narrative. in the second half in particular, he was just sort of there, making the odd joke every now and again, with Carina as the biggest drive in this narrative. she continually pushed the plot forward, more so than Henry, but another problem this movie suffered from was pacing. at no point did the editing seem to take a breather or focus on the characters -- either the characters were making jokes, or they were making clunky expositional statements that was more of a ‘say what you see’ and ‘repeatedly say what we have to do to resolve the plot’ kind of thing rather than the ‘show not tell’ rule. 

      Henry and Carina could have been developed more, as could have Carina and Barbossa -- I think some of Jack’s strongest scenes were actually with Carina, surprisingly enough, because at least they seemed to have a bit of banter back and forth, and the Jack and Henry stuff was kinda decent. but the characters didn’t feel like characters -- not the ones I know and love anyway. I think Hector was the best character out of the originals ( Geoffrey did great with what he had to work with ), and Salazar was pretty good on the whole, but Javier could have been given more to work with -- and with Jack acting like a five year old whenever the two got close to each other, it didn’t really work.

      stuff that did work though in regards to Jack imo: his entrance was pretty good and true to form across the franchise, and the bank robbery scene was fun and felt like potc ( I especially liked the look Gibbs stole at Jack when they were approaching the bridge. AND THERE WAS ANOTHER MOMENT WHEN GIBBS SAVED JACK’S LIFE THAT I LIKED A LOT ). Jack asking his crew for tribute when he’d lost the money was utterly stupid ( that’s not how pirate ships work and honestly several times across this movie I think Jack deserved to be left behind/abandoned because he was acting like a complete fucking needy idiot ), but I think the most emotion he showed in the movie was in that scene when his crew left him -- it fucking KILLED me tbh because HE LOOKS AT GIBBS LAST AND GIBBS JUST GIVES HIM THIS MOST SYMPATHETIC LOOK AND MY HEART STILL HURTS. most of the stuff on Saint Martin for Jack was pretty decent because he felt like Jack -- the problems came once he got out to sea and every so often he’d just regress into a whiny infant for no reason at all. the sleazy stuff kinda annoyed me -- I could have done without the Carina scene on the boat or his continued insistence on ‘horologist,’ and his description of Elizabeth was Unnecessary. but mainly he was just annoying.

      the problem is, he showed absolutely no smarts in this movie, save for the flashback. he had to constantly be saved by others, lucked his way out of most situations -- and the shark scene was Okay because he showed that he could and was willing to save Henry multiple times, but he just wasn’t very proactive at all in this narrative. he was just there, waiting for stuff to happen to him. he saved Carina once which was good, and there were moments when it looked like he was playing the mentor figure to both Henry and Carina, particularly when he was the one to keep bringing up their crushes on each other, but it didn’t really go anywhere. the script had robbed him of all of his wit and charm, which is what made him likeable in the first three movies.

      as for the flashback scene -- I didn’t hate it, even though I wanted to. I could have done without the whole part where the crew gave Jack famous pieces of his costume because a) that’s dumb and TPOF handles his costume better and b) it contradicts everything Johnny has said about picking up pieces of his costume on his adventures over the years. the CGI was pretty good, and I loved them showing Jack as this intelligent and dangerous pirate who traps Salazar without remorse because he needed to put an end to his reign of terror over the seas. I also could have done without it being the Wicked Wench but eh I’m just over it at this point. the point at which it came in the story was pretty random though -- like I understand it was Salazar’s monologue but it just seemed inserted for the sake of ‘ah yes time to show off our CGI technology.’ they could have used it to better showcase how far Jack had fallen since then tbh.

       oh and one last shoutout - ‘Captain Jack Sparrow is dead. buried in an unmarked grave on Saint Martin’ I LOVE. and the scene when Jack walks into the pub and his wanted poster has been changed so his bounty is only £1 as opposed to £100. the visual gag of that worked really well. as did the whole guillotine sequence. that was one of the strongest scenes in the movie tbh. 'you’re to be executed’ ‘executed?!?!! well I’m never coming back here again’ he was drunk af but the pettiness worked in that scene lmfaoo

       OH AND NOT PUTTING JACK IN A SCENE WITH WILL AND ELIZABETH IS STUPID AF

[baddasshistoricalmadams]

The Mirabal Sisters

Las Mariposas 

The Dominican Republic of the 1950′s was not an easy place to live. A totalitarian dictatorship ran by Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, who would order the deaths of the Mirabal sisters who had up until that point; rallied against a dictatorship they felt was wrong. Their determination, resilience an conviction to stand by their morals ultimately served as the inspiration for their country to do the same and oust Rafael from his throne.

Patria(1924), Dede (1925), Minerva (1926) and Maria Teresa (1935) lived in Ojo De Ague in the Salcedo Province in the Dominican Republic. Daughters of Enrique Mirabal Fernández and Mercedes "Chea" Reyes Camilo. A relatively wealthy family, dealing in land and farming; they instilled in their daughters the importance of Education and worked hard to send them to Colegio Inmaculada Concepcion in La Vega, a Catholic Boarding School. 

The political landscape of the Dominican Republic was a difficult one. Rafael Trujillo had been competent in business and administration and utterly ruthless in politics, he modernized the economics of his countries but whilst the prosperity that the country enjoyed benefited Rafael and his administration: the people of the country lost many of their political and personal freedoms. Haitians living in the Dominican Republic suffered under his rule, with the dictator instigating hatred against Haitians as well as ordering a massacre in 1937. He took harsh measures to protect his power but despite this both domestic and foreign opposition grew against his dictatorship. 

The Mirabals first truly encountered Trujillo at a party where Minerva caught the eye of Rafael who had a notorious reputation when it came to women, barbaric in nature and morally bereft. He then invited the family to another family, they attended; fearing they had no choice but to attend. Minerva refused his advances (she might have publicly slapped him) and left the party. Due to it being forbidden to leave a party before the dictator, Enrique was arrested and incarcerated.Various members of the Mirabal family and friends were arrested the following day. The family had connections and thankfully were able to secure their release.

Minerva paid the price for her denial of the dictator. Every day during her incarceration, she was interrogated and it was demanded that she write a letter of apology: which she refused. After her release, despite being a fantastically intelligent law student, she found that she was banned from her second year of University until she made a speech that praised the dictator. Years later when she did graduate with the highest distinction of her class, in 1949...she was denied her license to practise law because she had turned the dictator down. Sadly, becuse of the stress and constant fear of Trujillos men, their father passed away in 1953. Minerva would become the most radical and outspoken of the sisters and her husband would become her biggest supporter.

The sisters married and had children, they would decide that if not for themselves, then for their children: they could not allow the country to remain under Trujillo’s rule. Their lives had been ruined by one man's grudge. A failed attempt to remove him from power spurred them to continue the cause, they distributed pamphlets, made homemade bombs from firecrackers on their kitchen table and gathered materials for weapons.  The group the Mirabal sisters helped form that fought against the Trujillo regimen was known as al Movimiento 14 de Junio/ The Movement of the Fourteenth of June. The sisters were known as Las Mariposas/ The Butterflies.

When the movement was betrayed, many of the Movement were captures and subject to various tortures. After mounting pressure from the Catholic Church and Rafaels public image tanking, Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa were released (Dede had chosen to not get involved) but there husbands were kept in incarceration.

Rafael decided that they had to go. He moved their husbands to a remote jail to which they would have to travel through a mountain range and set a trap for them. On their journey, they were stopped and pulled from their cars, brutally beaten and strangled. The attempt to cover up their death was a clumsy one, they were bundled back into their car and it was pushed off a cliff. Rafael thought his problems with Las mariposas were over. 

The opposite was true. The death of the three sisters spread like wildfire and despite attempts to label it as an automobile accident; the lie didn’t take and outrage took hold in the Dominican Republic as it did with the Catholic Church. The convictions of the three sisters somehow convinced a nation to come from under his shadow and take his power from him. Three months later, he was assassinated by his own military leaders. 

They were survived by Dede who dedicated the rest of her long life to preserving their memory and ensuring generations to come would remember the brilliant stubbornness of her sisters and the dedication they had to the freedom of their peoples. The later administration would expose who had killed the three as members of Rafael's secret police. 

The bravery, the unwillingness to bend in the face of a terrifying force, the strength of their convictions and their work in the fight against Rafael Trujillo ultimately helped his downfall. They are now heroines to their homeland and rightly so.

Reading Material

https://www.colonialzone-dr.com/people_history-mirabal_sisters.html

http://www.stmuhistorymedia.org/las-mariposas-the-mirabal-sisters-role-as-heroines-of-the-dominican-republic/

http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/the-mirabal-sisters

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rafael-Trujillo

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/04/19/the-mirabal-sisters-the-three-butterflies-who-were-killed-because-of-their-activities-against-the-dictatorship-of-rafael-trujillo/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0263467/ - In the Time of the Butterflies.

[viralhottopics]

Martin McGuinness: The end of a long journey – BBC News

Image copyright Getty Images

The political retirement of Martin McGuinness on Thursday due to ill health marks the end of a remarkable journey. Perceived by some as a terrorist, others as a freedom fighter, he ended up a statesman, a journey similar to those previously made by other historical figures from Menachem Begin to Jomo Kenyatta and Nelson Mandela.

It also marks the closing of a chapter in Northern Ireland’s turbulent history in which Mr McGuinness played a crucial role both as perhaps the most important IRA leader on the island of Ireland and one of its most skilled and charismatic politicians. Without his endeavours, in umbilical political partnership with his former comrade-in- arms, Gerry Adams, I doubt if Northern Ireland, despite the continuing fragility of its institutions, would be where it is today.

I first met Martin McGuinness 45 years ago this month, shortly after the day that became notorious as Bloody Sunday when British paratroops shot dead 13 civil rights marchers in the Bogside enclave of Londonderry/Derry.

I remember watching a candle-lit procession on its way to the church where the coffins of the dead were lying and being told by the nationalist politician, John Hume, to keep an eye on one of the mourners.

He pointed to Martin McGuinness. I followed his advice and soon met him on the steps of the gasworks that served as the IRA’s headquarters in the Bogside. At the time he was second in command of the IRA’s Derry Brigade. He was soon to become its commander.

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Image caption Martin McGuinness with Gerry Adams, 1987

He did not fit the stereotypical role of an IRA commander at the time. He was personable, highly articulate and utterly committed to his cause of getting the “Brits” out of the North.

A few months later, following an IRA ceasefire, he was sitting down in a posh house in Chelsea, along with Gerry Adams, as part of the IRA delegation that met the Northern Ireland Secretary, Willie Whitelaw. The IRA said it wanted a British withdrawal by 1975. Not surprisingly, the talks got nowhere and it was back to the “war”.

If anyone had looked into a crystal ball at that time and told me that the young IRA commander would go on to become Northern Ireland’s deputy prime minister, sharing power and joking, as “the chuckle brothers” with his former arch enemy, Ian Paisley, and then would don white tie and tails to dine with the Queen at Windsor Castle, I would have said that pigs might fly. But pigs did.

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Image caption “The chuckle brothers” – Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness at the Northern Ireland Assembly, 2007

Mr McGuinness’s role was critical in persuading the IRA’s rank-and-file that “armed struggle” had run its course and the future road to Sinn Fein’s holy grail of a united Ireland lay in sharing power at Stormont with its unionist opponents.

This was tantamount to accepting partition (the division of Ireland in 1922 into two states) and the role of the British state – albeit, as far as Sinn Fein is concerned, a temporary accommodation as a means to an end.

Remarkably Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness finally persuaded the majority of the IRA to swallow the political heresy and agree to the ceasefire of 1994 that was to lead on to the Good Friday Agreement four years later.

A measure of the faith and trust that rank-and-file IRA men and women had in Martin McGuinness is reflected in the sentiment I heard from many of them that “if it’s good enough for Martin, it’s good enough for us”. Such sentiments speak volumes of Mr McGuinness and the esteem in which he was held as IRA leader.

These landmark steps were only made possible as a result of a protracted and fraught secret back-channel dialogue, via an intermediary, between MI6 and MI5 in which Mr McGuinness was the key conduit to the IRA’s ruling Army Council.

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Image caption Martin McGuinness leaves Stormont after resigning earlier this month

But Mr McGuinness, because of his IRA past, remains a controversial figure. There are still some Unionists who would take issue with the tribute paid by Ian Paisley’s son who said that by working with his father, Martin McGuinness had “saved lives” and “made countless lives better”.

His critics can only see him as the former leader of a terrorist organisation responsible for a grievous toll of death and destruction. They will never forget – or forgive the IRA – for the lives of the hundreds of policemen, soldiers and civilians murdered in the IRA’s campaign and the number of families who have been left bereft.

But for me, the true recognition of the journey Mr McGuinness has made came in an interview I did with the mother of Marie Wilson, the young woman who died in the IRA’s bomb attack on the Remembrance Day parade in Enniskillen in 1987.

The intelligence services believe that Martin McGuinness, although he denies it, was at that time the acting head of the IRA’s Northern Command that prosecuted the “war” in the North.

In words of moving candour, Mrs Wilson said she respected Mr McGuinness’s role in helping to bring the conflict to end and making such attacks, she hoped, a thing of the past.

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from Martin McGuinness: The end of a long journey – BBC News