#this is not a condemnation of river by any means. i LIKE river a lot actually and my appreciation for him only grows as time goes on

[wraithsoutlaws]

listen i think river is a really interesting character and reducing him to just "cop" is a huge disservice to him but i also think it's equally disingenuous to completely divorce him from that as well. i think it's important to recognize he was a cop, and that even if he wasn't actively involved with corruption he probably did harm while he was with the ncpd just by merit of being with the ncpd and upholding a violent and broken system. that should not be ignored even if he is no longer a cop at the end of his story, in fact it should be examined, it should be unpacked ESPECIALLY as someone leaving the force and trying to find new and better ways to help people and to cope with what damage the ncpd does to people and the power that it holds.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hi Miss Raven! I’m new to twisted wonderland, so I’m still confused by a lot of things, and I still can’t understand Idia’s curse and what it exactly does. Also, I don’t understand, why his friends memories will be erased? Can you explain it to me? I’m really lost

I believe you’re bringing up some points I mentioned from this post (since I got this ask shortly after that original post went live)?

Your questions are answered in book 6 of the main story. However, I realize that not everyone has access to the game, the time to read/watch it, and/or the cards to power through to that deep in the story. It’s easy for newcomers to understand the gist in the beginning (~prologue and book 1), but books 6 and 7 are packed with detail and lore that can be overwhelming to understand without sufficient context.

Firstly, the Shroud family curse originates from the Age of the Gods. The Shrouds are considered a branch family to the Jupiter family, and during this time period they attempted to overthrow them. For their defiance, they and all their descendants were inflicted with a curse which quickly burns away blot (the byproduct of magic). This seems like a strength (since that means it’s hard for a Shroud to overblot), but in reality it condemns them since their bodies will start to burn away at their own magic/life force if there isn’t any blot around to consume. In other words, the curse is detrimental to the health of Shroud mages.

Back when mages were still feared and the relationship between magic and lot was not well understood, the Jupiters sealed away overblots and a Watchman (from the Shroud family) was appointed to guard them. Over time, the Watchmen would become Styx, a secret independent organization that researches blot. Some Shrouds they could perhaps find a cure for their curse through these endeavors. Being around blot for their work also technically benefits them, as their bodies would burn the blot in their environment, thus making it less burdensome on the Shrouds’ physical status. However, Idia often phrases their circumstances as shackling and restrictive, as the Shrouds have basically been put in positions they cannot escape from due to the nature of their curse. His childhood is also presented to us as very dreary, as he grew up in Styx HQ, isolated from the real world and in a sterile environment surrounded by Styx staff.

In book 6, Idia reveals himself to the OB boys up until that point as the acting director of Styx. He then proceeds to conduct experiments on them and they goof off a little as well. Ortho expresses hope that Idia could maybe become friends with the OB boys, to which Idia is pessimistic and claims it’s pointless to try since they’ll “be sent down the River Lethe” eventually. In Greek mythology, that river is said to wipe the memories of those that submerge itself in its waters; in TWST, it’s a special program thar Styx uses to purge the memories of outsiders brought into their HQ. This would allow the outsiders to return to normal life without issue while also preserving the secrecy of Styx. It’s like… the ultimate NDA 😂

Because the OB boys are outsiders, Styx has to wipe their memories as a safety precaution before they can be released. This means that all of the fun times Idia spends with them in Styx will be forgotten too, so Idia doesn’t believe it’s worth it to make an effort to befriend them. It’s implied that Idia has always been pessimistic about his chances at forming friendships because of his isolated upbringing in combination with the expectation that he is going to become the future director of Styx—a thankless job that forces him to toil in a cold, dark place, far away from any intimate human connections.

Hope that helps ^^

[weemietime]

Why the FUCK are you bringing up the Iraq war to defend Israel

That's like saying "oh you think ISIS is bad? Did you know America dropped agent orange on Vietnamese?"

Nigga we think both of those things are fucking terrible

Why the FUCK are you bringing up the Iraq war to defend Israel

Read my pinned post, for it explains in excruciating detail why it is important to treat every person and every country on Earth with equity and dignity. It is that fucking simple.

we think both of those things are fucking terrible

The problem is that you don't, actually.

Because you treat equivalent situations (actually, the Iraq war was far worse) with different standards. Which means that you don't actually have a problem with the situation, but rather with the parties involved.

It is not my fault that you are unable to read and comprehend the very plain and clear explanations that I have already laid out for you. But just in case you didn't get the memo, here are some posts I have made in my private friend group that elucidate it clearly to you fucking imbeciles.

Honestly it's an emotional thing for me because I've seen a lot of the unrwa materials for schools in Gaza that actively teach kids to cheer for dead Jews, sinwar was found with a unrwa employee tag, unrwa members participated in Oct 7th, the UN is being very quiet about condemning the sexual abuse that happened during this pogrom. They did finally say they found it credible but this was instantly buried and is never brought up by any UN officials any longer, the UN first didn't even admit to complicity and now are saying they want immunity for their unrwa employees who were complicit, countries like Russia and China are using their seats at the UN to push the narrative of genocide with no evidence and zero pushback while the UN platforms their voices and refuses to condemn their genocidal actions and it just feels like, you know, part of the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust is that the international community at the time, the league of nations, was also very lackluster about condemning the genocide against us and did indeed have many member states who openly supported and participated. I mean this was an attack that was planned for 15 years by people who pretended for generations to be the friends of these peace activists and shit. It's just a theme of betrayal and the feeling that we Jews are alone. Because the loudest voices from every country are shouting from the river to the sea lol. Is it a totally factual statement, is it a cognitive distortion, probably. But there is a real sentiment behind the words that is born from pain, not just shit posting

Of course it's a lot. Even one is too much. But every time these dipshits talk they say "Israel killed 40,000 children." No, the official number given by Hamas and the UN is 7,797. Plus 4,959 women. That's 12,756 civilians. Out of a 40,000 death toll, that is 27,244 Hamas combatants killed meaning the ratio of combatants to civilians dying is 2.25:1. This is an INSANELY good C/C ratio and is the numbers that Hamas has given. The normal C/C ratio is 9:1, the USA C/C ratio in Iraq was 4.46:1 out of 174,000 meaning a 77% civilian casualty rate. And look at how people talk about the war in Iraq and Iraq war veterans and Americans and tell me that matches how people are discussing Israel. You know? I'm not blaming people for being antiwar. For being horrified. For not wanting to send ammunition or weapons. For being appalled at Israel's use of Lavender. But the double standard is very devastating because when 9/11 happened the world mourned with the USA. When Oct 7th happened, a literal pogrom, people literally spit in our faces, shut down universities, scream at us on the streets, fire bomb our synagogues, gang rape our children for being Jewish (happened in France), cheer gas the Jews, you will not replace us, Zionists are rats, kicking us out of cafes, interrogation us to see if we're a "good Jew". Like you don't understand how the atmosphere has changed in North America and how virulently antisemitic its gotten. Our memorials for our dead have to be held in secret. Because people deface them, vandalize them, and show up to protest screaming through a megaphone that we are baby killers while we are crying over our babies being killed. And eighteen year olds are being sent to fight in war in our behalf because every country around our homeland has declared they wish to exterminate us. And that taps into the very real intergenerational pain of the Holocaust.

I've seen protests that look no different than Nazi Germany protests against the Jews. It is wrenching. Most Jews I know have lost their entire friend groups literally over night. Lost their living arrangements. Have professors fail their work if it's about Jewish history. Teach that Zionism means Jewish supremacy and conquering the middle east because we are all from Poland. It hurts. It hurts. And I know that Palestinians are suffering, too. 12,000 innocent people were killed. And I mourn them as much as I mourn my own people. But no one else is going to mourn our dead but us. The world has shown that they cheer when we die. And that hurts.

If I say "I'm grieving the actual people that I PERSONALLY KNOW WHO DIED IN A POGROM" people turn around and scream at me that I am a pedophile rat Zio Nazi genocidaire baby killer. When this first happened I posted the article "bombs fall in sderot" and joked "haha idk if my friends are safe." well my friend wasn't safe. She fucking died.

Ppl don't understand how small the Jewish community is. Whenever Jews meet up we play Jewish geography and we ALWAYS find someone we know in common. When Pittsburgh happened people in my community bc we are conservative Jews too, knew the victims. Ppl I know post about having to go to a bomb shelter all the time, their friends dying in terrorist attacks, experiencing terrorism as children etc these are innocent people who have nothing to do with fucking ben fucking Gvir

My friend is a gdmn [redacted] she deserves to die???? Okay all Americans deserve death because of Iraq. All Russians deserve death because of Ukraine.

Conscription is wrong and we should be protesting against it but no not every Israeli deserves death just as no Palestinian civilian deserves death even tho many of them are radicalized as children to want Jews dead and to join Hamas and get conscripted as well. THIS SUBJECT IS COMPLICATED. and anyone who reduces it to one side vs the other good vs evil is full of fucking shit.

Like I always say the settler colonial language I feel is misguided in some ways because of the whole Israeli population we have 70% Jews, 61% of that 70% were not migrants during waves of Zionist aliyah they were expelled and murdered and ethnically cleansed from Iraq Afghanistan Iran Ethiopia Yemen (every single Jew in Yemen was expelled to Israel) and they literally have no place to go.

Which is why from the river to the sea, means they will end up being literally pushed into the sea lol. And then 20% aren't even Jewish they are Arab, where will they go if Hamas takes over Israel and tries to enact extremist fundamentalist religion when they're used to living in secular democracy? They go into the sea too. Now 31% are European descent of those, many are from Russia which means they were kicked out and not Zionist oleh as well. But then we get into the west Bank where Israeli Jews are literally living as settlers and literally calling themselves settlers and perpetrating violence. The legal terminology of this all is also twitchy. Technically it isn't apartheid because Palestinians aren't Israeli civilians but we cannot ignore Hebron where Israelis literally dump piss and shit and garbage on their heads so they had to build a fucking net. Okay maybe it's not legal apartheid but it's obvious fucking degrading and they are not free to move or work or have the same rights regardless of who is in charge and we need to fix that. We also can say ok it's not a genocide in Gaza bc the numbers suggest of 40k, 12k were civilians according to Hamas themselves giving a 2:1 civ casualty ratio. The normal ratio is 9:1 so it legally cannot be called genocide. But Lavender is indiscriminate targeting civilians and bombing the place to fucking rubble which is a war crime and the Israeli government must be held accountable for this. Hamas does war crimes too they fired 20k rockets per year for 20 years into Israeli residential zones

[10:38 PM] Anyone who reduces this conflict to one side good one side bad is a fucking idiot. There is harm and suffering and complexity on both sides and both sides must be held accountable and then work for peace and prosperity

In conclusion: if you have nothing constructive to say, you can do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.

[naamahdarling]

What was the last book you read? Are you reading anything currently? Do you have any book recommendations?

(I hope that’s not too many questions. I appreciate you. <3 Grover, Cinnamon and I send our love. )

Oh gosh they're gorgeous! What good beasts! ❤️😺❤️

The last book I read wasssss....hmmm. I think it was Paladin's Hope by T Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon, for the third time I believe? The series are standalone novels with different protagonists so you can get away with reading them in any order. Paladin's Hope is my favorite. I haven't read the new one yet, but I will soon! I highly recommend the series.

I'm currently reading Chuck Wendig's Black River Orchard, which is not at all what I was expecting but is still very very good. It's my first book by him. His prose is beautiful without overdoing it, and he seems to have a fairly rare ability to scrub the writing of his own authorial presence. Some authors are very present in their work, letting you know how they feel about things by various means, and this is not even remotely a bad thing (Seanan McGuire comes IMMEDIATELY to mind, and T Kingfisher as well), but I don't see Wendig doing it here. I'm frankly not used to it, and so there are things the characters say and do that are...not great, and a couple of tropes that he indulges that I don't like, and there is very little apology or condemnation couched in the prose or in the characters' thoughts. The fact that I can see why he is making the choices he does and for the most part consider the reasoning valid is helpful, but it doesn't make it comfortable. I think people that expect every narrative to call out and explicitly condemn every sin of every character, and who want characters we are supposed to want to see succeed to be free of asshole behavior, would be bothered. That said, I am enjoying it a lot! It's a unique idea, the characters are interesting even when they are not likeable. It's good.

Right now I will rec the Murderbot books by Martha Wells, for anyone who hasn't been made aware of them. Sci-fi doesn't have to be your thing to love these! I haven't read very many new books this year, I've mostly been comfort-listening to my favorites. Most of the new-to-me books I have read haven't impressed me enough to recommend them, sadly.

[starlightshadowsworld]

The houthis atacked israel Ships because they are antisemitisc plus they are starving yemenis

They might be for Palestine but they are not the Good guys

Israeli ships are being targeted because they are carrying and supplying weapons to Israel.

Which are being used to kill Palestinians.

But also because attacking the ships will encourage other countries to halt trade with Israel.

This actually was a key step in the eventual dismantle of the South African apartheid.

And lest we forget, Israel is an aphartied state.

Aphartied for those that don't know is a policy that is founded on the idea of separating people based on racial or ethnic criteria.

So, racism and thinking your race is more superior than another. Like thinking Israeli's are superior to Palestinians and Arabs in general.

The at the time, Jamaican Cheif Minister Norman Manley during the South African apartheid said:

"The ban on trade with South Africa is logical and proper. And done in respect of a country which denies its own people all the basic human rights. And denies coloured people all over the world every right to human rights intercourse.

Since we cannot send a coloured athlete to South Africa nor even a cricket team with any pretense of dignity. Why should we send our goods?"

I bring up Jamaica because they were one of the first nations to condemn South African apartheid.

They banned trade and travel with South Africa despite still being a British Colony.

Something that in a lot of ways mirrors how Yemen, is one of the first countries to act in direct resistance to Israel.

So no it's not antisemitic, just a tried and true method used to aid in the dismantle aphartied regimes.

But than Pro Israeli's much like the Israeli government see every form of resistance against them, no matter if it's peaceful or violent, as antisemitic and terrorism.

Israel can tell the world it wants to make Gaza into Auschwitz but than be afraid and mad when Palestinians want to be free from the river to the sea.

As for the second part of your ask... What are you 5?

Newsflash, there are no perfect heroes this isn't a movie or a cartoon.

Turkey stands with Palestine, they're sending a case to the International Criminal Court in regards to Israel's genocide of the Palestinians.

Which is great.

Doesn't negate the whole Armenian Genocide and the shit they're doing to Kurdish people.

Britain's over here talking about a ceasefire when they've still got colonies.

They're funding the civil war in Sudan, the atrocities against the Congolese and many many more.

Not to mention shipping weapons to Israel.

All of this doesn't mean they shouldn't be speaking out against Israel.

In fact I'd argue it's a more of a reason for them to speak up, because they have the power too.

Also on the topic of starving Yemen, let's not pretend that the UN didn't drop Yemen from their world food programme.

Seemingly in response to Yemen standing against Israel.

Which means the UN like Israel are inflicting collective punishment. Which is both a war crime and a violation of international law.

Yemen standing up for Palestine is a brave and amazing thing, because they have nothing and are doing everything.

Of course they have their own issues, but that doesn't suddenly make what they're doing to aid Palestinians have any less of an affect.

"They aren't the good guys"

Be fucking for real, every country has blood on its hands.

Some more so than others. And those continuing to cause bloodshed need to be held accountable.

That doesn't change that Palestine deserves to be free. As does Yemen as does every country and people facing oppression.

Isrsel has been actively committing a genocide for 75 years, they need to be stopped.

That's an indisputable fact.

[queerprayers]

i'd really like to compliment the thoughtfulness and generosity of thought and time on your blog, first of all. i spent a lot of time reading it today, and it resonated with me a lot. i was raised by two atheists who are smart people in many ways but live in the 'all organized religion is dum and evil' camp. i've had to unlearn their beliefs/fight them on antisemitism and islamophobia for most of my adolescence and adulthood. in terms of personal faith, i have firmly believed for a long time that 'there is no god' is an ontologically unprovable belief that i could never feel comfortable espousing, but i still never understood the purpose of organized or personal worship until the last month. it took me many years that get that god is not an authoritarian dad looking over your shoulder and criticizing you but can be something a great deal more unknowable and complicated and on-my-side than that.

but i was wondering: do you have any advice for someone balancing their curiosity about faith and their weird nostalgia about the Rituals of catholic school with their fears that a) they are wishy-washily turning to it just for kicks in a year when they've lost a lot, and shouldn't talk to anyone about it, b) they are just unconsciously emulating their partner, who is a queer catholic with a personal theology they admire. i have always found something religion-shaped in mountains and rivers and the sky and the love of other people, and that's never going to change. but the idea that i could or do want Something Else , and that christian beliefs resonate with me, is scaring me because of all of the identity fluctuations i've ever experienced, it's not one i've thought i'd ever see. it feels like a very scary thing to talk to people about in real life, even though the two closest people in my life would both have a lot to discuss with me about it.

Welcome, beloved! Thank you for your kind words! I pray this will resonate with you as well.

I'm proud of you for working to unlearn some of your parents' beliefs—I really respect people who recognize the harm religion has done, but you're right, you can't condemn it inherently without bigotry/racism. We all have to choose what belief/tradition to take with us, and I admire you so much for recognizing that you'd have to leave that behind. And I love your changing understanding of God—there are many gods I don't believe in, and an authoritarian dad looking over our shoulders to criticize us is one of them! Acknowledging the Mystery is such a beautiful thing.

Curiosity and nostalgia and ritual-seeking are factors that bring a lot of people to faith! Those aren't stupid reasons—they're parts of you that recognize something meaningful there, and want to explore it! Similarly, many people turn to faith when they're hurting. This has definitely been painted in a bad light, but to me it makes so much sense. It's so much easier to claim you understand the universe and everything's rational and knowable, when you're comfortable with where you are and confident in where you're going. Losing things brings a realization of our lack of control, our complete lack of knowledge in how everything works. Seeking more, seeking mystery when we are hurting is a completely reasonable response.

Seeking what we need, like comfort, in faith is not evil. We all need to be comforted, and believing in love is what many hurting people need. This doesn't mean religion is stupid—in fact, the fact that it seems to be the practice best equipped to help hurting people would point to it being one of the most valuable things of all! If a worldview can only accommodate people who are confident/in control/have everything they need, I don't think very much of it at all. (Of course I know there are many nonreligious worldviews that accommodate hurting people, and I respect them. I also know that there is organized religion that will take advantage of those who have lost things, and I condemn that wholeheartedly. Faith at its best, though, welcomes those hurting in a way I rarely see in other places.)

We don't want to create a faith practice that only serves us when we're hurting—but we should always carry our hurting with us as we find what we're looking for. Don't only hurt your way into faith—but bring the loss with you.

Whatever your reasons for being drawn to faith, even if you think they're bad reasons, are real reasons that can serve you. Wanting comfort/ritual is a completely natural response to the world, and finding what you need in practices that are designed for people wanting those things is the perfect reason to come to them!

Many people convert to their partner's religion—obviously there's lots of historical/cultural reasons for this, and in some cases it is out of pressure or because that's just what you do—but it's not crazy and doesn't inherently mean you lack autonomy. Getting to know someone deeply involves learning what they value and how they see things. Loving someone completely means loving those practices and perspectives. I think interfaith relationships are perfectly possible and healthy, but I can't imagine a relationship with someone of a different faith/worldview if I did not love theirs and they loved mine—I have trouble with friendships where that love is not present!

You admiring and caring about your partner and their faith has included listening to and learning about their faith, and seeing how they live it out—it makes complete sense that this draws you to this or similar faiths! You were brought up thinking that this is dumb and evil, and now you're in a relationship with someone who identifies with and practices a faith. Often people don't truly understand religion until they're exposed to someone who has it as part of them.

This is all to say that valuing a practice more because someone you love practices it is, of course, subjective and biased, and it is also beautiful and holy. Every faith is subjective and biased. I am Christian partially because my parents are Christian—because I was brought up in this faith, and it is my home. If you are connecting with something because it's something that's a part of your life (catholic school and now a catholic partner)—that's kind of how connection works? I don't know if that counts as "unconsciously emulating" but like, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with connecting to something so much, seeing it all around you, that you're drawn to it? (My favorite movies consist solely of movies I have seen, and they're all ones I watched at a point in my life when they were meaningful to me. These aren't stupid reasons to like a movie—they're the only reasons to like a movie.)

Honestly if a faith is not something that comforts you, not something that you're drawn to when you experience loss, not something that satisfies desires for ritual, not something that holds your childhood self close but also reflects your changing worldviews, not something that is a part of your life and that you've seen lived out in beautiful ways, I would actually advise against becoming a part of it! I would list these things as essential reasons! It doesn't mean you have to, but it means you have good reasons. This doesn't sound just for kicks—you're thinking about this a lot, and reaching out to someone for advice, and taking it seriously. And many faith changes happen kind of suddenly, anyway—this doesn't sound sudden, but if it was, there are many beautiful examples of people all at once realizing what they're meant for.

"Religion-shaped" is a great phrase! Whether or not you find your way to a specific practice, knowing that you have those connections and appreciations is beautiful and valuable. However your identity changes, whatever practices find their way into your life, you have mountains and rivers and sky and love. You have God, in whatever ways you learn to find Them.

It's acknowledge it's scary to find your way to something your younger self would never have guessed! We surprise ourselves sometimes, and it's terrifying! But I give you permission to be scared and to surprise yourself. To honor who you'd thought you'd be and to change. We know we can't see the future, but we still find ourselves arriving in a future we didn't see and being surprised about it. This change—let it break down more walls. This mystery that's always with you—welcome it as you unlearn and relearn.

Know that you can always change again. That opening up to people about something you might want doesn't mean you always have to want it. That beginning a practice is not a promise to always practice it. That breaking down walls doesn't mean you can never rebuild them, and saying a truth doesn't set it in stone.

It's so often easier to open up to people we don't have a personal relationship with! I'm so grateful that what I write resonates with you, but (sorry) we still don't actually know each other, and you also have the space to be anonymous—that's probably really nice for you right now! Me and most of the queer people I know came out to random people on the internet before people in real life—inherently because we cared about/knew them less. Those we care about most can be the scariest to open up to, because we have the most riding on their response. Of course I encourage you to tell them at least some of what you've told me—it sounds like they'd love to hear about it and would accept these changing parts of you. Don't wait till you have it all figured out to share it—that won't really ever happen, and I'm guessing you'll regret not letting in as you figure it out. But give yourself grace, honor your privacy and time. They're there when you're ready.

It's scary to change, it's scary to question our worldviews, it's scary to admit our vulnerabilities and our need for something greater than ourselves, it's scary that people might think you have bad reasons for your beliefs/choices. But the people that you love you want your fear too. They know you'll change—everyone does. If they only loved you if you stayed static, if you only made logical unbiased decisions, if your circumstances didn't affect what you value—that's not loving a person. It sounds like you trust them and know that they would welcome these questions and want to talk about them. Go to the mountains and the rivers and the sky and go to them, the love of other people. That's where God will be—with you already, walking with you on the road, and there waiting for you. (There's a trinity right there!) Mystery and paradox and comfort and ritual and the simplest and most terrifying thing in the world.

I'm in your corner. I don't know the road ahead of you but I know you have so much beautiful time. I can't see the future but I know it will surprise you. God be with your going out and your coming in, from this time forth forevermore. May your ways be safe and your homecomings joyful. Now we know in part, but someday we will know fully, even as we are fully known, face to face.

<3 Johanna

[alwida10]

When Covid hit and some deeply problematic people started attacking Asian restaurant owners in New York for “the Chinese virus” I was glad to see people call them out. I was glad people mentioned how weird and nonsensical it was to accuse Asians who lived their whole life in the states of conspiracy. When a crowd gathered around a falafel restaurant in New York and demanded the owners to come out, I did not see people stepping up to their defense. In fact, I didn’t even see anyone here mentioning it happened.

U consider this stuff equal? Babies are murdered but it ok since no restaurant close down. Also why expect ppl condemn hamasall time when a person said free palestin but it ok if they say israelve right to be exist which mostly said after asking them if theyre ok w all this murders? Cs it look like israelsupporters are ok w murders bombings tortures if victim is not white or israelins

Just to make my position on the conflict clear before I address the rest: I am not ok with the bombing of civilians in Gaza. It’s a crime and a horror what is happening there. Killing children is not ok, and neither is killing women or men. I condemn the widespread bombing and destruction the Israeli government is doing in Gaza. My heart bleeds for the people who suffer there. Also, I don’t think it’s a good military tactic, since people who get hurt repeatedly will not grow into a mindset of “oh, guess it was wrong to hate the people who killed just another child/relative/friend of mine”. Imo it’s dumb, cruel and absolutely worthy of condemnation. Additionally, I have absolutely no problem with criticism of the israelian government, the actions of their army or my other person/institution actively involved in the conflict. I love it when people point out lies on social media. But I draw a hard line at antisemitism.

To your ask:

I consider defending Asians against “you (the restaurant owner, taxi driver etc) are part of the conspiracy that invented Covid to attack the western world” and defending jewish restaurant owners against “you (the restaurant owner) are committing genocide” when both of them lived in the states for years equal. As long as I don’t have any knowledge on that specific person being part of an underground virus lab or an underground anti-Palestinian terror organization I consider them not part of the events aside from them being victims of people who feel like it’s ok to attack bystanders. You cannot control in which family you get born, and condemning people for something they cannot control is bad.

Also why expect ppl condemn hamasall time when a person said free palestin but it ok if they say israelve right to be exist which mostly said after asking them if theyre ok w all this murders?

A) I recommend stating your (addressing everyone, not just you specifically) how you think about the massacre on 07.10 because “free Palestine” is a short version of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. It implies that the whole area between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea (which is basically all of Israel) will be “free”. You may wonder why this could be considered confrontational, since “free” is something good. The point is that -while Israel’s population consists of ~21% Arabs, and ~18% Muslims which have equal rights their own party and fill several office functions- there is not one Jew living in Gaza. This is an overview over the Jewish population in some of the Middle East countries, which btw is not exclusively white:

Combined with the Hamas leader’s words that October 7th was only a rehearsal, there is a lot off evidence this “free” does not mean “living in freedom”, but “free of Jews”. This equals the statement “let’s destroy Israel”. Some people say it outright, too, calling for all Jews to leave the Middle East entirely and Israel being disbanded. Hamas targeted everyone in Israel, including people of color (including the Thai workers that had been taken hostage into Gaza) and Arabs. Claiming all Israelis would be white/jewish/of european descendant and all Palestinian people would be people of color or brown who originated from that area is a lie to justify antisemitism.

So, as long you don’t clarify your position, it’s not clear if or if not you want to see Israel gone and all Jews either dead or displaced. If you want to make your point clear, I recommend saying where you stand. People cannot read minds.

Some people have adopted the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be equal”. I love this because it clearly states the support for Palestine but makes it clear it does not call for displacement or genocide.

I don’t think Gaza should be destroyed because of the actions of their leaders, the Hamas. People are not their leaders/government and they should NOT be punished for their leaders’ actions. Equally, Israelis are not their government and should not be punished for the government’s actions.

Imo, the moment you decide that one child is worthy of life and another one deserves to die, you have been made a tool of extremism.

[eponinesflowers]

'Indigenous people throughout the world overwhelmingly stand with Palestine because they have also had their land stolen, lived under apartheid, and been subject to ethnic cleansing. I would rather listen to Indigenous people than speak for them' So have the Jews and no one cares, everyone calls them white colonisers. 6 million Jews have died just during Holocaust. On the other hand, before the terrorist attack on October 7 and before this war started, there were more Palestinians than ever before in history. How exactly was there genocide? You forgot to mention that Arabic countries attacked Israel the day after it was proclaimed. And then again and again and again. You also omitted the fact Gaza was under Egypt for almost 20 years. And also the fact that the wall was built after many terrorist attacks from the side of Palestinians. Speaking of Egypt, how come it did not help Gazans when the war started? How come other Arabic nations did not get humanitarian aid through Egypt borders to Gaza? Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among richest countries on Earth.

Speaking against apartheid is definitely a good thing and yes Israel should definitely work on that. Hard and like yesterday. Fighting for marginalized groups is definitely a good thing. I am behind you on both. But blindly supporting Palestine is not a good thing. Shouting From the river to the sea and basically calling for another holocaust (because that is exactly what is meant in that chant) is not a good thing.

Lastly, i feel like the point i was making, namely indigenous people supporting Palestine because of fight against white colonisers, kinda got lost. If they did it because they want to support an opressed group, i would understand. But most of them base their support on fight against white colonisers when it's actually indigenous people fighting for their land in which they have lived for millenia (there was continuous presence of Jews in Israel, even though Arabic population did their best to ethnically cleanse them), that is just wild and should be called out. Because this breeds hatred which has real consequences and it already caused millions of Jewish lives. Not just during holocaust.

I feel like you’re missing my point. Jewish people have absolutely been through a lot of suffering, but that doesn’t give Israelis a pass to enact similar suffering on other people. I definitely care about what Jewish people have been through, and I do my best to fight against antisemitism when I see it.

Why do y’all keep pointing out that the population increased? That doesn’t mean that ~25,000-30,000 Palestinians haven’t been purposely targeted and murdered by Israel, as well as hundreds of thousands forced to relocate, in an attempt to remove them from their homeland in the past 3 months. Genocide scholars, genocide survivors, and multiple reputable human rights organizations have called this a genocide. Genocide happens in stages, it isn’t irrelevant until there’s even more mass murder.

I never said that I supported those other nations, so that’s not relevant to the argument that I’ve been making. I think that the world watching tens of thousands of children get bombed without taking action is abhorrent, and I would feel that way with any group of people being killed like this.

I’m not “blinding supporting Palestine,” please stop making up my arguments for me. Members of the Likud Party have said multiple similar phrases of “from the river to the sea” and I have not heard a single Israel supporter condemn it for being genocidal rhetoric. Hell, there are Israeli land developers creating ads about “oceanside property” that will be available soon once they force all of the Palestinians out of Gaza. I’m not denying that Hamas has expressed genocidal intent, and fuck them for harming innocent civilians. But it’s not exactly fair to say that demanding a Palestine where people can live freely is a call to genocide while the Israeli government can utilize genocidal rhetoric and actions towards the Palestinians with no critiques of genocide. If you haven’t read the proceedings instituted by South Africa on December 29, I would encourage you to do so, it outlines many of the issues with the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

The government of Israel has been actively encouraging Ashkenazi Jewish people, who are predominately white, to immigrate there more than other ethnic groups of Jewish people since its conception. The Israeli government sterilized Ethiopian Jewish women. The government, especially the current alt-right iteration, does rely on a good number of white supremacist and colonist tactics, which is why I believe that people bring that up. I do have a difficult time seeing people who claim indigeniety to a region salt the ground and burn ancestral olive trees that are sacred to many Mediterranean people. There doesn’t seem to be much respect for the ancestral land that people are being slaughtered over, which is another reason why many Indigenous activists have issues with Israel’s actions.

If you would like to have civil, respectful discourse, you can message me, but I’m don’t want my blog to be overtaken by this argument and I don’t want to argue with “anonymous”

[the-firebird69]

Finally we have something to do that's a lot of fun I'll get it together with her we go up there and take a look at it and that's it probably not

Freya

No that's not it and probably not all of it no. You have a lot of work to do and we're going to do it. In the meantime we have some issues here and they're not being clarified or cleaned up so we're going to take a look at it.

-the rain is nailing the middle of the state so it's coming this way of course A lot of it is going to the East Coast and is going to be flooded and this area the river is going to be flooded and it might not be it's almost high tide and it's going to go down but it's filling up right now it's only two feet below the high mark with the clams are and it says way to get another foot and it's true it's about a foot more then it's a problem and it begins to be one he probably have two feet after the clan mark so it's not too bad and we don't hopefully it won't fly but rain is coming now it's going to hit about the same time but really 3:00 it starts going the other way it's going to erode a lot of poop out and the storm has gone away and another few hours it'll be off of Florida and there's another one that's going the wrong way meaning it's the right way it won't hit

-there are few other things happening we are gaining some control in some areas and we mean of the planet and we know what it's like and here we're not getting any control it's a total mess and disaster and we need to have controls and so I'm calling for it I'm going to have a meeting and set up some stuff and just keep doing it until it works

-there's several trials that began and evidence was Heard and John remillard was screaming that he has not had due process is saying it's a trap and it's not his fault and people are wondering what he's talking about this guy Dave and led to the Max and nobody's doing anything and I'm getting crushed and taken from by everybody and he starts saying him and he has no so he's saying it could be him taken for me and people aren't doing anything and he's so sudden code and he was on his way out cuz he didn't speak today but he heard the evidence he said no way and he's going down the river and they said it to him on the way out they said did you have a good time today and he said no they said good you're not supposed to and they hate him and it's really he's taking them on and he sucks at it. What is living after his role model Dave and others and it's not his fault that he sucks at it.

-several more things happened people notice that they're there and people trying to do stuff and they got shut down and some power it's with power.

-the child went well if you were the prosecutor. He was asked to enter a plea and he said not guilty and the people with him said not guilty and the prosecutors presented the case the situation the story and some of the evidence and said evidence will be further presented tomorrow and they stopped the case and that's not true it's still going on now and it started at 10:00 a.m. they'll probably go to 5:00 p.m. and they're presenting evidence right now and they'll do it as long as they have to you know they have evidence to present that would probably take 3 days but they're told to condense it and they're halfway through it I think that they'll just present evidence today it's very damning and condemning it's very compelling there are pictures of him fingerprints DNA all sorts of things you thought they would not have corroborating evidence witnesses and he had the stuff in his place and the dead people are friends of one of the judges there

-it's going ahead that they are seeking the death penalty and they don't need proof of body they had a funeral there's also some other stuff going on these people are at our son 24 hours a day regardless of what's happening to them it's kind of the same stuff we started going after them today and said why don't you shut up you f****** pig and they said no we hit him now we're hitting them a lot and they don't seem to understand what we're saying didn't have any different response

-there's one thing called being a rebel and you're not rebels and you're not in the same group as our son and even Biden is much more of a rebel than you and you're a , they have a term for it in prison... It's like a worker that works for the sheriff or the jailers and he's an inmate and they call him it's a weird name that's what he's doing so people hate him

-this other factors occurring today that made today kind of strange they're asking her son to do things all the time that he can't do cuz he doesn't have the money or the stuff with or food with him or can't do the activity cuz of an injury and then constantly doing it to him and they're very mean and it's like this regular person and he's a giant and today they got an earful of it from the max I said what kind of taking his plan over and we planned it on purpose and you're so mean that we have to come in and get rid of all of you and her son's been saying it too they don't want to hang on for the show or the ride or the mystery of the stuff they just want to sit here and harass me so we're going after them in a moment with both fists I'm going to hit him and pull them flat and I'm so damn sick of these people it's not even funny how ugly they are and we have to do it I'm pretty soon they're going to realize they were mistaken.

-there's other things happening too he's not in great shape but he's getting sore muscles and stuff from walking two or three seconds he's getting cramps and it's deficiency and certain vitamins mostly it's potassium it's taking a lot of it and it's not doing it so we're a little bit worried about that he says it works it's just not enough and we get that

-there are other things happening and they're going on shortly there's a huge number of people that are trying to get into Florida and they sent 40 out and that's households it is down to about 1:40 and it's not down not much but it's down and they're going to get hit today

-it's a few other things to mention it is 2:00 p.m.ish and in a few hours the crabs might be going active and that means they might be on the marsh and they might be going very fast to get there too fast to stop if they coming close enough but didn't put some big ships out there and the 50 mile crab will stop for a 10 mile shift cuz they know it has stuff on it that can hurt it and they plan to put them there and these guys keep sticking around with when they're doing it and it's getting very heated and there's a whole bunch of armies that are upset about it

-the storm looks very weird like it's not circular and it really isn't it's getting ripped apart and we think it's going to dissipate shortly

-so few more things happening the guy next door is being a dick and he always is and right now he is pretending it's getting something so we are going to go after him there's a ton of things wrong with it

-we are at war with these people for the most part these cards and being sent and they are there's a lot of them and people are sending tons of them now and to our son and said the max should be in the way and these guys might be cover and even DJ said you have to dig cuz I can't tell and it's a lot of people it's a huge amount of money you would not know what to do with it or even be able to handle that much money a day he would not even be able to open that much money a day if it got here. Now is that much money it's trillions and trillions of like $1 bills and he's thinking would have to hire a company tons of people are saying it too you have to hire a company to open it all up and doesn't seem possible and so he said he could store it somewhere and open it when he could and that's a weird thing to do but that's how he is doesn't have anything he store this huge tax and go in and open tons of envelopes and to say need to save the envelopes so you'd have to have a warehouse and you can rent one and on one side would be money and the other side would be envelopes. Give me a giant job it would be a giant job and it is probably too much for him but it's money we estimated he can open about $30,000 a day and about 4 hours a day so he said I need to open a few days in a row and buy a truck van did rent a van and he and Ken was sitting in the van and opened it up and then bring it into the bank. And you have to start with in the apartment and put the envelopes and bags and afterwards he's going to try and store though envelopes but people want it him to store them now but the post office is going to take a picture of it. They didn't think of that too and they want to be famous so it's a huge day okay you think they'll come in slower probably like 10 grand the first day and 20 the second and he could do that and then he would have huge stacks of paper and we we do see what he's saying even getting donations he would have to come up with a way to do it it's not easy and you have to go to the bank and deposit these huge stacks of money you'd have to go down there with like a bag and he says he called Ken and have Ken bring a taxi guy do you have an approximate dollar value and you can put these things to these bands on them that gives you an idea and it'll be around so much thousand and deposit it and he didn't bring these dollar bills in and people would be wondering where the hell is coming from and it's not in kind it's donations that's a gift and social security would be interested so he might have to buy stuff. There's a few downsides but really don't have to report it for a while it's not right away and I don't know what they consider it it's not really a gift it's a donation cuz he needs money because of the injury and social security would be up in arms.

These people are not dealing well with it they think that he's a freak and a problem I'm getting reports that everyone's getting beat up because they won't let us let us through no sun says those are my letters you have no right to touch them you're breaking federal law they can go to prison and you will and it's none of your business it really is none of your business then I'm going to make your business mind because you're doing that that's what happened to John remillard. Now they're pissing and hissing but really they're not in the mood to get beat up by everybody and they're going to

-there's too many people here bothering him and we need these trumpsters out of here the huge assholes and probably 70% of the idiots getting beat up and killed or in the way of the letters of them and even in front of Christmas letters and they're getting the s*** kicked out of them and I mean it this will probably finish them off there's not enough for them to do this and they're getting their heads bashed in and they're getting taken apart in the parking lot all day long these idiots are getting the s*** kicked out of them they're huge huge losers and they're not going to make it there's tons of people saying it too these people are getting hammered and it's going on today and it's going on quite a bit huge numbers in them and they are not ready for what's happening to them and they don't understand it yeah they get it they're in the way of our son's life and the way of him having a decent temperament and trying to survive so they're going down bja too they're fighting over the letters and the pictures and imagery and videos went all over the world to everybody involved even a lot a lot of the people who sent the letters and there's a huge fight almost everybody is against them doing it even the max they say it's kind of a threat it's kind of a real weird thing and the letters average about three bucks so you get 10,000 letters it's 30 grand but there are so many letters he'd never be able to open them and you'd have to hire professional money service and they do understand they have to be pretty close to the number and they would lose money if they didn't I mean they'd be in trouble but you know. So we do understand he says this way to do it and there is a machine that doesn't and he can buy some of those and Ken knows how to put those in and if you're sitting this room all day long counting money and it's like for cartoon balloons or something I think that sounds that sounds correct. It's really Ken who is selling the cartoon balloons a little and others but really there not going that much of it at that house although some of them were addressed there and really if they do that they're going to get beat up because some people think it's their code and the max are realizing that these trumpsters are stupid. Huge numbers of people are trying to watch their mail and they're figuring out it's not getting there and they're getting mad and then tracing it and find out he doesn't have anything and they're looking at the account a lot of people getting read out from spies and checking with people they were saying how long will this stupid crap go on for so Hera wants to have a word

Thor

Wow that's a lot of money and I mean it and we probably will have to slow down but I don't think we can it's already out there this is after a while it will after the holiday or people realize it's not going to get here but I don't know when that would be and he says that and I don't know when that would be either or just keep trying

Freya

Is the weirdest feeling I've ever had I've never had so much hatred for people as for the people here I don't care for the same page or not these people are going to take care of you you don't want anybody to get him anything ever I'm kind of people are you but losers

Hera

And Garth and his sister are getting the living s*** kicked out of them for not doing anything people are mad at them and the trumpsters too pretty soon they're going to get ousted from everything and they're in the way of the mail and they're using the cops and lawyers and judges you should see how ridiculous it is these all these panting f***** come running in I can't believe it's happening and s*** like that trying to arrest people trying to stop the mail and you don't want to it's not for anything that helps them they're bunch of morons and addicts and that's exactly what our son and daughter said I can't believe you had this idea this is intense but it happened with the GoFundMe page which is up and running again and it's amazing just really amazing how much money is coming in

Thor Freya

He's also worried about child support and it was each of the wives might be the same woman but about 3 million and that's usually what it is and nowadays it's about 6 million and he means Melissa and Sunday and Carrie and kerry said she had babies and Jen and Katya who might be two different women or the same one and that's what he says and Jolene and there were a few more Amy aldonus but his version. And of course there's a girl from Tijuana baby doll and there's the other girl from San Diego and the girl from Tijuana who looks more like her and she's probably the Jersey girl and really is women who are with him Colleen powers and you mustang girl cuz she's blocking it. And the woman that they think is Lady Gaga but she's not it's a different woman and then there's the girl they think is Cassandra but that's not her and some people think they know where she lives and they could use some money and he's asking for people to send denominations of $10 because when you're a single mom you don't have time to open a million letters and if you want to send a small note that would be great. So they're going to send stuff but if you really don't have money it's okay to send less and I'm saying that

Thor Freya

And I said a lot of the above and they say most and I did and really my mom is in a lot of trouble and she needs funding and Grandpa Ken is poor and money to them is code from you and you have to figure out what I mean because I'm not telling you this is kind of evil and his grandpa-in-law Preston and there's Big Joe and of course stan is related but not by blood Sherry is but not by blood and they're married and she's the girl who reviews cars they're real expensive ones but she doesn't have a ton of money and she's getting ostracized. But I didn't have children with them if you want to send to them it's up to you. And Garth and sister always poor constantly poor and he thinks open the envelopes is just fine but really my wife's would be charging me with child support so you can leave a note it's for child support to try and see the reaction no it's because I know them like 6 million each and I don't have any money to they're the only people I owe money to

Zues

Holy s*** I'm getting a lot of calls and I mean out here in Venus and people are going nuts they wonder what I'm doing and I'm saying nothing he's doing it he thinks I need money it's kind of a little slow

Hera

I'm stunted

Zues

That's good that's good really I'm start collecting money now and you forgot a few it's Suzanne powers and you said no she's the Marlboro girl with the Ford mustang and okay that's not what she's from she's from Worcester. You dated a couple girls but they we're not me and kerry Doyle was not me. And you don't know that but I do and she was kissing you and stuff what you say is you said it was you and I did but it's not it's just like that other girl's not that was actually Korean and she's related and and Carrie Doyle is supposed to be she is actually Trisha he said wow that's odd there's a few more girlfriends but not many. No that one covers it and we were together and it was a very nice time I do appreciate it and I do need the money and I know how to open money that I can get the machines.. oh he says the girl that looks like penny and that's true too and Robin and it's not Robin good friend it's someone that looks like her and people are looking now and I did forget a few he says and it's more than that and he says I don't think so and it's true

Jen Katia sunday Hera lol it's quite a few and I was some girls that he did not mess around with and Crissy I took her place, when was Chrissy at UMass and one was Chrissy and wister at the party and I was saying them and their witnesses too and say that they saw both the same day in different places and too fast and there are some of the song same time no different clothes and they say I could have changed but they're talking to each other about it. The girl in New Hampshire was supposedly Paris Hilton or was the girl from the strip joint down here in Port Charlotte was me and had something to do with where Arnie was tossed well it was not Arnie and it was not myself of course and we know who it was someone who worked for Dave and it was not his race

[shammah8]

The Lord will allow you to be very drunk in His presence, but sober among people. I like to see people so filled with the Spirit that they are drunk like the 120 on the Day of Pentecost, but I don’t like to see people drunk in the wrong place. That is what troubles us, somebody being drunk in a place of worship where a lot of people come in that know nothing about the Word. If you allow yourself to be drunk there you send people away;

they look at you instead of seeing God. They condemn the whole thing because you have not been sober at the right time.

Paul writes, “For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God:

or whether we be sober, it is for your cause” (2 Cor. 5:13). Y ou can be beside yourself. Y ou can go a bit further than being drunk. Y ou can dance, if you will do it at the right time. So many things are commendable when all the people are in the Spirit. Many things are very foolish if the people round about you are not in the Spirit. We must be careful not to have a good time at the expense of somebody else. When you have a good time you must see that the spiritual conditions in the place lend themselves to help you and that the people are falling in line with you. Then you will find it always a blessing.

While it is right to covet earnestly the best gifts, you must recognize that the all important thing is to be filled with the power of the Holy Ghost Himself. Y ou will never have trouble with people who are filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, but you will have alot of trouble with people who have the gifts and have no power. The Lord wants us to come behind in no gift, but at the same time He wants us to be so filled with the Holy Ghost that it will be the Holy Spirit manifesting Himself through the gifts. Where the glory of God alone is desired you can look for every needed gift to be made manifest. To glorify God is better than to idolize gifts. We prefer the Spirit of God to any gift; but we can look for the Trinity in manifestation,different gifts by the same Spirit, different administrations but the sane Lord, diversities of operation but the same God working all in all. Can you conceive of what it will mean for our Triune God to be manifesting Himself in His fullness in our assemblies?

Watch that great locomotive boiler as it is filled with steam.

Y ou can see the engine letting off some of the steam as it remains stationary. It looks as though the whole thing might burst. Y ou can see saints like that. They start to scream, but that is not to edification. But when the locomotive moves on, it serves the purpose for which it was built, and pulls along much traffic with it. It is wonderful to be filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, and for Him to serve His own purposes through us. Through our lips divine utterances flow, our hearts rejoice and our tongue is glad. It is an inward power within which is manifested in outward expression. Jesus Christ is glorified. As your faith in Him is quickened, from within you there will flow rivers of living water. The Holy Spirit will pour through you like a great river of life and thousands will be blessed because you are a yielded channel through whom the Spirit may flow.☕️Smith Wigglesworth

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

[edenmemes]

misc poetry sentence starters

❝  one gets so used to one’s own horrors, one forgets how they must seem to other people.  ❞ ❝  you remind me what love lives in this skin.  ❞ ❝  you are the most phantom-like of all; you are a mere dream.  ❞ ❝  i’m not telling you a story so much as a shipwreck—the places floating, finally legible.  ❞ ❝  the world was made so we can find each other in it.  ❞ ❝  the night isn’t dark; the world is dark. stay with me a little longer.  ❞ ❝  i want you desperately. i want your strength and your softness, your hands, all of you.  ❞ ❝  is that too much to expect? that i would name the stars for you?  ❞ ❝  against your cheek my hand is warm and full of tenderness.  ❞ ❝  the world grows green again when you smile.  ❞ ❝  your share of pains would fill a sea.  ❞ ❝  i’m so stuck on the ‘was’ of people.  ❞ ❝  what i love in you is your power of loving, a bit wild, a bit primitive, but absolute.  ❞ ❝  i like figuring you out. you are so human and puzzling.  ❞ ❝  the unwillingness to try is worse than any failure.  ❞ ❝  you wanted happiness. i can’t blame you for that.  ❞ ❝  i did violence to my own heart.  ❞ ❝  i don’t know how to stay tender with this much blood in my mouth.  ❞ ❝  like a magpie, i am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales and dead languages.  ❞ ❝  and here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue.  ❞ ❝  you kiss the back of my legs and i want to cry.    only the sun has come this close, only the sun.  ❞ ❝  sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof you’ve been ruined.  ❞ ❝  when will it cease, this monstrous rage of yours?  ❞ ❝  i will plant my hands in the garden. i will grow, i know, i know.  ❞ ❝  i had it all and i want it back again.  ❞ ❝  i don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.  ❞ ❝  we are two reflections that cross swords with each other.  ❞ ❝  as for me, i am a watercolour. i wash off.  ❞ ❝  do you dare send me away as though you were were waiting for something better?  ❞ ❝  my dear, you are in danger of being burned by your own flame.  ❞ ❝  i am three oceans away from my soul.  ❞ ❝  you, occasionally, glimmer with a light i’ve never seen before. it frightens me.  ❞ ❝  i went to sleep last night so i could see you.  ❞ ❝  even the eyes of gods must adjust to light. even gods have gods.  ❞ ❝  how much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?  ❞ ❝  it does me no good to be good to me now.  ❞ ❝  i may look alright, but if you were to look more closely you wouldn’t find a single healthy bit in me.  ❞ ❝  i must clothe myself in other worlds.  ❞ ❝  suffering is the privilege of those who feel.  ❞ ❝  sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it was mine.  ❞ ❝  the vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. when you lose that, you’ve lost everything.  ❞ ❝  i can be bold, because i have you with me always.  ❞ ❝  you are shaking fists and trembling teeth. i know: you did not mean to be cruel. that does not mean you were kind.  ❞ ❝  not that i want to be a god or a hero, just to change into a tree,  grow for ages, not hurt anyone.  ❞ ❝  i laughed today. for a second i was unhaunted.  ❞ ❝  you are sunlight through a window, which i stand in, warmed.  ❞ ❝  there’s something electric in your blood.  ❞ ❝  you say you are broken,   but broken mirrors like you create the most beautiful patterns of light.  ❞ ❝  time doesn’t obey our commands.  ❞ ❝  i love you quite passionately, and with a touch of tragedy.  ❞ ❝  to feel anything deranges you. to be seen feeling anything strips you naked.  ❞ ❝  i love you --- like a storm bursts overhead --- i must confess it; all the more fiercely because you burn and bite.  ❞ ❝  and i have seen rivers, not unlike you, that failed to find their way back.  ❞ ❝  i am less a god now that you’ve touched me.  ❞ ❝  your words are gentle; but my blood runs cold to think what plots you may be nursing deep within your heart.  ❞ ❝  you said i killed you --- haunt me then.  ❞ ❝  your soul is frail and solemn, loyal and spring-like.  ❞ ❝  you look like you’ve eaten the sun, like you drank so much sunlight you’re drowning in it.  ❞ ❝  strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.  ❞ ❝  you will hear thunder and remember me.  ❞ ❝  ever think it’s possible for us to be happy?  ❞ ❝  and i would wonder across all the deserts of this world, even after death, to search for you.  ❞ ❝  since we’re bound to be something, why not together?  ❞ ❝  i am ashes were once i was fire.  ❞ ❝  this mouth will destroy you the moment you mistake it for something soft, for something that is yours.  ❞ ❝  it’s no easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness.  ❞ ❝  kill the light! i’d rather wallow in the dark.  ❞ ❝  i have thought of you often since the darkness.  ❞ ❝  with your presence the sun becomes irrelevant.  ❞ ❝  there is no god left in this skin. there’s just the ash. just the ash.  ❞ ❝  open your eyes, look more sharply, see me as i am.  ❞ ❝  what the hell is tragedy? i am.  ❞ ❝  i’ve got a lot of feeling for you. you’re kind.  ❞ ❝  how beautiful it is, how beautiful, that glow before the stars break.  ❞ ❝  so much to do today: kill memory, kill pain, turn heart into a stone, and yet prepare to live again.  ❞ ❝  i am myself. that is not enough.  ❞ ❝  i may be mad, god-seized, but i will stand outside my madness.  ❞ ❝  my power, which to me is still a curse ---  ❞ ❝  ocean sea with its caressing swell; it has so often cooled my heart.  ❞ ❝  do you bathe in perfume, and dry yourself in light?  ❞ ❝  i like you; your eyes are full of language.  ❞ ❝  let me tell you what i do know.    i am more than one thing and not all of those things are good.  ❞ ❝  you are the cause and the cure --- both.  ❞ ❝  i have kisses for the back of your neck.  ❞ ❝  your beautiful glance is unbearably cruel.  ❞ ❝  we might meet again, someday between dreams at dawn.  ❞ ❝  suffering is a terrible fire; it either purifies or destroys.  ❞ ❝  lately it hurts more to imagine you are a stranger rather than a destroyer.  ❞ ❝  and i say to myself: a moon will rise from my darkness.  ❞ ❝  since you walked out on me, i’m getting lovelier by the hour. i glow like a corpse in the dark.  ❞ ❝  i will not whine. i will obey and be forever still.  ❞ ❝  you move like the moon.  ❞ ❝  my eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears.  ❞ ❝  in your eyes, the fires of twilight.  ❞ ❝  do not haunt my soul; i have done well forgetting you.  ❞ ❝  i am no one. i cannot love. it’s in my blood.  ❞ ❝  you’re wearing your armor to protect your heart. who can blame you? it only makes sense in a world like this one.  ❞ ❝  you are not real. you are a dream of a dream.  ❞ ❝  there are so many things i’m not allowed to tell you.  ❞ ❝  i am indeed a shameless, evil-minded and abominable creature.  ❞ ❝  come this evening --- i am eager for stars.  ❞ ❝  i am on fire with that soft sound you make, in uttering my name.  ❞ ❝  i want you mostly in the morning when my soul is weak from dreaming.  ❞ ❝  to me you are the desert and the sea; everything secretive.  ❞ ❝  i thought i was wounded to the core but i was only bruised.  ❞ ❝  it is a dead heart. it is inside of me. it is a stranger.  ❞ ❝  i live --- but i’m mutilated.  ❞ ❝  if there is a light then i am going to swallow it.    if there is a god then i’m going to make him cry.  ❞ ❝  i am condemned to be a saint or a monster: unable to be the one, unwilling to be the other.  ❞ ❝  you will open your wounds and make them a garden.  ❞ ❝  i come home --- and i feel like a ghost returning its haunt.  ❞ ❝  i planted roses, but without you they were thorns.  ❞ ❝  everything inside me is in revolt.  ❞ ❝  how this darkness soaks me through and through.  ❞ ❝  give me my robe, put on my crown; i have immortal longings in me.  ❞ ❝  say something dangerous like i love you.  ❞ ❝  listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?  ❞ ❝  in times of crisis, we must decide again and again whom we love.  ❞ ❝  breathe the scent of little, earthly things. let the twilight touch you.  ❞ ❝  my heart is just like the ocean, has storm and calm and tides.  ❞ ❝  you became for me a sacred being, not to be touched save in adoring thoughts.  ❞ ❝  gods are stubborn. so am i.  ❞ ❝  is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?  ❞ ❝  there’s something soft in me. i killed it and it’s rotting.  ❞ ❝  beware. beware. there is a tenderness.  ❞ ❝  half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. real gods require blood.  ❞ ❝  i’m alive. like a wound, a flower in the flesh, the path of aching blood is open within me.  ❞ ❝  you dangle on the leash of your own longing; your need grows teeth.  ❞ ❝  i have it in me...to scare myself with my own desert places.  ❞ ❝  my mouth still houses century-old magic.     in my ears i hear a ringing and singing and no god.  ❞ ❝  keep talking. i’ll keep walking toward the sound of your voice.  ❞ ❝  i’m full of poetry now. rot and poetry. rotten poetry.  ❞ ❝  this skin is sick with loneliness.  ❞ ❝  memories are sharp. they bite. i have spent most of my life trying to grow a thicker skin just to make sure i would not bleed out whenever i felt those teeth scrape up against me.  ❞ ❝  i wonder if i will ever find a language to speak of the things that haunt me the most.  ❞ ❝  after fury, what do you do with the remains?  ❞ ❝  come on, dance with me. the earth is spinning. we can’t just stand on it.  ❞ ❝  let’s admit, without apology, what we do together.  ❞ ❝  try to find the right place for yourself. if you can’t find it, at least dream of it.  ❞ ❝  it takes grace to remain kind in cruel situations.  ❞ ❝  i am too full of life to be half-loved.  ❞ ❝  today you want nothing because wanting comes too close to feeling.  ❞ ❝  there’s nothing more terrible, more alluring, more mysterious than love.  ❞ ❝  heavenly wine and roses seem to whisper to me when you smile.  ❞ ❝  my soul is devoutly and wholly under your spell.  ❞ ❝  will you see the human in my being?  ❞ ❝  if i had a flower for every time i thought of you…i could walk through my garden forever.  ❞ ❝  part broken part whole, you begin again.  ❞ ❝  i don’t know if love’s a feeling. sometimes i think it’s a matter of seeing. seeing you.  ❞ ❝  i wonder which will get you killed faster, your loyalty or your stubbornness?  ❞ ❝  whether you come as a lover or an exeutioner, i am ready to receive you.  ❞ ❝  i think i understand your longing. it looks so much like mine.  ❞ ❝  i’ve had so many knives stuck into me. when they hand me a flower, i can’t quite make out what it is.  ❞ ❝  i like the sea: we understand one another. it is always yearning, sighing for something it cannot have; so am i.  ❞ ❝  do i not live? badly, i know, but i live.  ❞ ❝  something of you stuck with me. a splinter.  ❞ ❝  i clung to your hands so that something human might exist in the chaos.  ❞ ❝  sometimes i shut my eyes, and shut my heart towards you, and try hard to forget you because you grieve me so, but you’ll never go away. oh you never will.  ❞ ❝  my golden love, if only you knew, what precious honey you are for me.  ❞ ❝  i had an old wound once, but it is healing.  ❞ ❝  always this in-betweenness, this almost, this it might be that...  ❞ ❝  when i close my eyes, i see you. when i open my eyes i want to see you.  ❞ ❝  dark as it is --- you see, that little flickering, is the light of my soul.  ❞ ❝  am i a monster or is this what it means to be a person?  ❞ ❝  i am talking about evil. it blooms. it eats. it grins.  ❞ ❝  sapphires are those eyes of yours, ravishingly sweet.  ❞

[codenamesazanka]

TOGA!

and the answer she’s looking for: a very long ramble. 

Toga! Toga Himiko! Her quirk lets her transform into anyone she wants, provided she’s got their blood. When she was 14, she reportedly stabbed a classmate she had a crush on to take a sip of his blood, and from then on, she’s been on the run. Spent the next two years on the streets, dodging Heroes and avoiding capture, until she joined the League of Villains. Now she’s 17 years old - still a minor, though, and that’s likely why Giran says her name has been kept under wraps, at least until Kamino:

So that’s 14+ years of her life living as a “normal” kid, going to school, having friends, living with a family— as far as we know, out of the League, Toga is the one member that had been living most adjacent to the standard norms of the world; been enculturated/socialized as a person living in a Hero society. (Shigaraki was raised from age 5 by All For One, Twice was on his own as an homeless orphan for more than half his life, Spinner was a hikkikomori, etc) She was from “the other side”, she was from the “right” side, part of the civilian population that Heroes had a duty to protect.

In other words, she would’ve learned, from an early age, that when she’s in trouble, a Hero will come save her. Heroes are good people, Heroes are there to help, Heroes protect everyone. Symbols of justice and peace, associated with fairness and kindness and all that nice stuff, etc etc. Heroes are people who save people.

So... why is Toga so scared of Heroes?

Ever since her attack on her classmate, she’s been running, desperate to avoid capture. When I say ‘desperate’, I do mean desperate.

Everyday she has had to run, and so she had to learn some street smarts, gain new skills, train her instincts. Within two years, she’s mastered her quirk and all it entails - like observing people, behaving just as the original person did or close enough, and measuring the exact amount of blood needed to finish her goal without killing the person (Camie). Within two years, she can hold her own in a knife fight and more, she has learned to be sneaky as heck and gain a frankly supernatural level of hiding, and who knows what else.

Which is understandable. She’s up against multiple Pro Heroes, which Shigaraki has said regular Villains don’t stand a chance against, probably because Heroes are trained combatants who have mastered their quirks and have years of experience. So she had to learn fast and quick. Toga says the trick is to not see the training as training - because to her, it wasn’t, it was like being thrown into a rushing river to learn how to swim or else drown.

But still— why? Why this amount of fear? Why throw her lot with Villains and the underworld at 14 years old, instead of going to juvenile court and rehabilitation?

Why in the world did she think she’ll be better off hiding among vicious, dangerous Villains than Heroes that are supposed to help her, like she’s been (supposedly, I admit) taught her whole life? Heroes, who are people who save other people.

And she’s still scared! She’s joined up with the nation’s most notorious terrorists, but she kept her wariness. Moment more Class A students - kids younger than her, still just trainees - shows up, she’s retreating, she picking flight over fight.

—saying she doesn’t want to die. It’s a statement that I think we can logically say comes from a belief of something like, “Heroes can kill me,” which then also logically means—

To Toga, getting caught by Heroes will mean she’ll be killed by them.

No, she’s not insane. No, she’s not some airheaded teenager prone to melodrama. No, she’s not a ‘psychopath’. Toga’s got some strange ideas about love, but otherwise she’s perfectly functional: she’s clever, she’s able to assess the situation and risks and act upon that information, and she’s shown to be observant and empathetic to her teammates, especially Jin. Any ‘damage’ she has isn’t from reasoning or understanding social norms and cues. She’s smart, she gets people, and she knows that as a Villain, she’s liable to be executed by a Hero. Even if that was just a fear before, she’s now seen it happen in reality to Twice.

I think we can all agree that in a civil society, people who have done wrong still deserves to have the right to due process and a trial, and not be executed right then and there on the street. That’s the agreement most societies has come to on conflict resolution - innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and despite what crimes you’ve committed, there’s a system to give you a fair chance for amends and atonement. Ideally, when you know you’ve done something wrong, you’ll turn yourself in because you expect to still be treated as a person and that the justice you’ll receive is appropriate. At the very least, that’s the better option than living the rest of your life on the run, always looking over your shoulder, possibly committing even more crimes because you’ve run out of options in your effort to not get caught.

But that’s not what’s happening here, with Toga. Whatever she learned from her 14 years of life in Hero Society tells her that now that she has committed a crime, a Hero will come and kill her.

And that’s kinda messed up. Why is that?

Putting aside Twice’s situation for now, we haven’t seen blatant proof of this - that if you’re a Villain, you might as well have a target painted on your head for a sniper’s bullet. What we have seen is the masses’ quick and harsh condemnation of potential criminals. Toga’s parents essentially disowned her after the stabbing incident.

But even with people who haven’t done anything wrong yet, people are so quick to judge.

“Does he even have a future?” That’s harsh, Journalist man. Bakugou’s a kid, 15 years old, he’s the victim here of a Villain plot, and here you’re talking about “no future” - meaning no career, no functional role in society, no chance for a normal life. That’s like giving him up for the dead. There’s not even a body and you’re already chipping in the words for the gravestone. Except maybe even worse, because there’s at least the courtesy to not speak ill of the dead; Villains tho, Villains are ‘bad’, ‘evil’, ‘violent’. Demon child.

What we have seen is a terrifying ostracization of anyone deemed criminal, considered acting against a Hero’s work, considered outside the norm. You’ve got people giving up on you, you’ve got your property getting vandalized—

And maybe you even eventually get a lost kid denied help for not looking like a proper victim.

If you’ve got any association with being a Villain, Heroes aren’t gonna help you. Even if that’s not true, I think people can be forgiven for thinking that from what we’ve seen. Toga certainly thinks this. Villains won’t be helped, even if they need it. That’s what she has gleaned from all her years living in Hero society; that’s what all the Heroes might do to her, if she ever gets caught, and she’s not getting caught to find out; and now that’s what she has seen, her friend dying right in front of her, killed by a Hero. Villains - and those who approach that label in any capacity - don’t get saved by Heroes; they are at best defeated, at worse killed.

So then, if Heroes are people who save other people, then who exactly are those who Heroes don’t save?

And that’s the answer she needs to know.

[evolutionsvoid]

Mantle of Agony, Keeper of the Woeful River, Acheron is one of five aquatic beasts that dwell in the rivers of the Underworld. Acheron resides in the river of pain, which shares her name. She spends most of her time stalking the haunted waters, eager for prey that may draw close. When swimming, she cuts through the water with her armored mantle while propelling herself with bursts of water. She retracts most of her spines when swimming, to help cut down on drag, which also creates a curious illusion. Those who peer into the waters while she lurks in the depths will swear they see a human-like figure. Some believe this striking silhouette is meant to lure victims in, while others say it is a hint of some type of nymph form she possesses. Regardless of its purpose, it does unfortunately slow curious souls down long enough for Acheron to realize there is fresh prey close at hand. When she detects a presence close to her shores, she will rush to the surface and breach onto dry land. Her powerful tentacles will act as legs and lift her body high into the air. Acheron shows no discomfort when on dry land, though she obviously enjoys being in water more. In the end though, she will take any place as long as there are plenty of souls for her to torture. As the beast of the River of Pain and with her bladed anatomy, it should be obvious what Acheron does best. She doesn't even require special powers to do damage, as every part of her is covered in razor-sharp spines and flesh-rending blades. Snaring prey with her tendrils, she will bind them in thorny tentacles or impale them on her many retractable spikes. Of her weaponry, the strongest are her two armored tentacles. Covered in spikes and ending in wicked blades, she can use them as spiny clubs or barbed lances. On their undersides are shredding limbs and hungering maws, which can capture human-sized prey and slowly peel them apart layer by layer. What makes this torture even worse is the powerful neurotoxin that is within every spine. Those jabbed by a single spike will be injected with a cruel venom that hijacks the nervous system and overrides the pain receptors. Those affected will be wracked with agony as it tears at their nerves and sabotages any immunity or resistance that could dampen the torment. Even souls hardened by war and battle will find her brand of torture worse than anything they have ever experienced. Shredding and flaying creatures that get close to her is rather cruel, but it is not the worst she can do. Those doomed to the Underworld for causing death and agony will become special targets for her. If she finds those who tortured innocent souls during their mortal years, she will hunt them down and feed them to her endless maw. Sitting in the middle of her mantle is an orifice filled with countless shredding jaws and slicing teeth. It is said that it is a mouth with no end, and those who are fed to it will be sent down a bottomless chasm of blades and fangs. Forever falling as they are ripped apart, only to regrow their violated flesh and be torn to pieces again and again. It is unknown if there is a way out from this agonizing realm, perhaps only if Acheron is willing. If there is an escape, then many have yet to find it, judging by the echoing screams that endlessly pour from that slavering maw. The pain and torment Acheron causes is not just out of duty, but out of fun as well. She appears to greatly enjoy torturing souls, regardless if they deserve it or not. She does not require a reason to dole out this agony, she just needs to catch them. This is why many stay far away from her river, as being near its shores is enough to catch her attention and make them targets. In water, she will lash out with tentacles to over turn boats and yank people off the shores, dragging them down to her homemade hell. If they retreat to dry land, she will pursue and shred them with glee. The sheer joy and amusement she gets from this act has made folk think that she is less of a pain-loving torturer and more of an eager child that loves to play rough with their toys. Gathered from conversation and observation, it appears that she doesn't really think that much about what she is doing to her victims, she just loves the squirming and funny noises they make. This is all for fun, besides, no matter how many she breaks, there always seems to be more. This may be true in the Underworld, where the condemned will survive any torture and regenerate to receive more punishment, but the mortal realm doesn't work that way. When she winds up in the world of man, it is pure carnage. There are a ton of new toys for her to play with, not to mention those wonderful play sets they all come with! Tall fancy things that can be knocked over and smashed! Hard little shells to crack open and scoop out the screaming insides! And watch out for the falling bricks! The only way to escape this horrible fate is to either outrun her or find protection through the ferryman. Of all the beings in the Underworld, it appears the ferryman is the only one she listens to when he says "no." He may step in on his own to protect the truly innocent or visiting deities, or he may be convinced or bribed to tell Acheron that they are not playthings. When denied her fun, Acheron will be disappointed and leave in a huff, but she will always listen to the ferryman's words. This just means she will have to find new toys and take her frustration out on them, which is not so great for those on the receiving end.       With Acheron obsessed with causing pain and misery, many assume she would get along with Cocytus. Surely this beast of torment would find enjoyment from an entity consumed by it? It seems, however, that Acheron does not gain any pleasure or glee from Cocytus' miserable state. In truth, her wailing and song seems to disturb Acheron and put her on edge. As she puts it, "that isn't the fun kind of pain." Often she kind of just sits there awkwardly and silently as Cocytus mourns, unsure of what to do. Occasionally she has been seen trying to cheer her fellow beast up, but her idea of "funny" and "uplifting" involves a whole lot of screaming victims and brutal mangling. As the embodiment of misery, watching such bloody shows just makes her mood worse, and Acheron is left confused and hopeless.   ------------------------------------------------------------ Number 3 for the Beasts of the Infernal River. At first this started as a sea urchin-iron maiden thing, but then it turned into a squid somehow. Not sure how that happened, but I like it!

[flowerflamestars]

Hey hey hey 😀 not sure if you've been getting my asks(could really be my WiFi too) or Tumblr has been up to no good again, but hey how was ACOSF? I gather from your updates and posts you're just disappointed by it. A lot of us are. Hope you've been doing well after reading Acosf 😅

Hey babe! I know I have at least one from you that I need to answer- entirely my bad, I’ve been going through my inbox in little chunks. Yall have been too lovely and the influx is great :)

Disappointment is very much the right word. 

The big thing- ignoring that Nesta as a character was meaningful, or that the baby plot line was big swing in every wrong way possible, the plotting is a MESS- is that I think the story resoundingly fails on both it’s goals.

It’s a recovery story, a healing story. And a romance.

BIG SPOILERS AHEAD

Nesta is stripped of her autonomy. And I want to be extremely clear on that- this is framed as an intervention and it is not an intervention. It is not, at any point, really about Nesta becoming healthy. It’s about control. Rhys says it, Feyre says it, Cassian says it: Nesta is a problem. Nesta affects their reputation. Nesta needs to be punished.

Morrigan, a fellow abuse/assault survivor, tells Cassian with absolute seriousness that they should just throw Nesta into the Court of Nightmares and leave her there. Because she’s just as bad.

WHAT

The entire structure is that Nesta needs to change- but it isn’t about her being safer, her finding her way- it’s about the fact that her being suicidally depressed makes her sister sad.

So yeah, Nesta gets stronger. Because one of her two-pronged punishments is army training with the man she once loved and has been trying to distance herself from for YEARS. Who proceeds to control what she wears, when she sleeps, WHAT SHE EATS. Who laughs, when she gets hurt. 

By the end of the story, the issue Nesta has confronted, from her laundry list of trauma is...that she’s bitchy to her sisters in instances of extreme distress/hardship. 

That she...blames herself for the death of her abusive, absent father, who in no way contributed to her life from the time of her mothers death into her adulthood until he showed up for...ten seconds in acowar, named a ship after her, and immediately died. Watching a parent die? traumatic as hell. Retconning an ENTIRE parent-child relationship to make a character have something more palatable to struggle with? Bad writing.

Rape hangs over Nesta like a cloud this whole novel, but she never talks about it. It never in any way comes up while her and Cassian are having rough sex on every available surface.

She never heals, and she never becomes comfortable as a faery. She gives up her power. 

Literally AND figuratively- Nesta is the same person at the end of the novel, but now she can punch really hard? has no magic, gave up a destiny the book STRONGLY IMPLIES was actually, really, always about Rhysand. All that changed is now she’s finally bent enough to play by the rules of the same people who condemned her for responding to the terrible things that happened it her...in ways exactly like they have and continue to do.

It makes me so sad, you know?

Which brings us to Cassian.

Who is supposed to be the emotionally intuitive one. The one who has survived so much, who understands trauma. Who more than that, understands Nesta, better than anyone else.

That is not the man in this book. 

He’ll make this earnest declarations that sound...almost right? and then ten seconds later he’s guilt-tripping her. Saying just, absolute bullshit to her. Sexualizing her in her lowest moments.

It’s not enemies to lovers- Cassian is ashamed of Nesta when the book begins. Takes active glee in physically punishing her when she’s having a breakdown 600 pages later, on what it supposed to be the great tipping point of their relationship.

At no point does this man seem to even LIKE Nesta. He wants to have sex with her. He want her to do what he wants and obey 1) him and 2) their High Lord and Lady. 

Nesta, who even toward the end of the book, as I said STILL IS NOT HEALING AT ALL, tells Cassian: “I don’t deserve you, and I never, ever will.”

Cassian’s response it to...kiss her?

Tell her: “You’re not going to marry Eris.” “There will be no one for else. For either of us.”

And then Nesta says yes, cries more, and they have sex again.

oh yeah, and then in the morning he runs off? To have a snowball fight? And then doesn’t speak to her or see her for three days.

I just. This dynamic never gets better. Proud, strong, intelligent, ferocious Nesta is always kind of like: will you look at me? you’re good and i am not. 

She’s not safe in this love. Not comfortable, not ever on even ground. The entire dynamic of this relationship has brought her low and keeps her there.

So like, in the end. They have this fight where Cassian fully starts yelling at her...in public...because she isn’t saying yes! we’re mates! I’m going to quote it here:

“I am your mate, for fucks sake!” Cassian shouted, loud enough for people across the river to hear. “You are my mate! Why are you still fighting it?”

She let the truth, voiced at last, wash over her.

“You promised me forever on Solstice,” he said, voice breaking, “Why is one word somehow throwing you off that?”

“Because with that one word, the last scrap of my humanity goes away!” She didn’t care who say them, who heard. “With that one stupid word, I am no longer human in any way. I’m one of you!”

He blinked. “I thought you wanted to be one of us.”

“I don’t know what I want. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Well, I didn’t have a choice in being shackled to you, either.”

GUYS. I hate this fight to unfathomable levels.

so yes, he immediately tries to recant it...but like, let’s follow the thread for a minute. They’re together, really together, ever since the stupid moment Nesta said she was trash and didn’t deserve Cassian and Cassian said...you and me! forever! let’s fuck about it!

I get that the matebond is a precious thing- but god, it could not be clearer Cassian just...doesn’t respect Nesta even a little bit? She won’t use the word, so he’s yelling at her.

a page before: “That word means nothing to me, Cassian,” she said, voice thick as she tried to keep people who strode past from overhearing. “It means something to all of you, but for most of my life husband and wife was as good as it got. Mate is just a word.”

BECAUSE SHE WAS HUMAN. Because, very validly... Nesta has been fae for, two years? Her baseline is human, that’s how she feels. And she’s not wrong??

Faeries get married too. It’s not mates or nothing. 

In my imaginary book, Cassian goes: why Archeron, is that a proposal? Because I’d love nothing more than to be your husband.

In THIS BOOK, he snaps: “That’s bullshit.”

Annnd cue fight.

Not only is Cassian so, so disrespectful of Nesta’s feelings...HE THOUGHT SHE WANTED TO BE A FAERY?

Are you kidding me, canon? Nesta was drowned against her will in the Cauldron! Cassian was there, unconscious in a pool of his own blood, still trying to reach her and save her. The ENTIRE pivot of her character that slides her into the dark place this book is meant to heal her from is her complete loss of autonomy at Hyberns hands.

and then the shackle line. I just...obviously, people say things in arguments they don’t mean, But Cassian never once stops going for what hurts the most where Nesta is concerned, and is yet baffled by her responses. He understands how to hurt her, but not how to comfort her when they’re fully clothed.

And then the end is...they’re mates. They’re going to have babies. They’re going to have a big faery mating ceremony. Nesta��s feelings aren’t not addressed, they magically cease to exist.

I’m sorry this turned into a FULL RANT- but yes, I’m disappointed. 

Its always the same story: the difficult woman has to soften. Learn to be nice. Power? she can’t have that. She’s going to have a mate and babies, that’s her journey, because that’s every woman's journey.

There is one bright spot, which I do have to mention. I love Nesta’s friends. 

They’re her real chance at recovery, that the IC have nothing to do with. And you know what? she makes them right off the bat. It’s crazy how if you treat someone like a person, they can function like one.

I just want them to have their own story far, far away from everyone else. 

[mellometal]

Hiyo!

For everyone new here, welcome! Glad to have you here. Hope you enjoy your stay!

For everyone who's been here for a while, Y'ALL ALREADY KNOW WHAT'S ABOUT TO GO DOWN.

Yep, this is part two of why I hate Glee so much.

Let's get it. (If there's anything I forgot to mention, go ahead and add them on in the comments or reblogs.)

Obligatory TW: This contains subject matter that may be triggering for some audiences. The following post contains homophobia, biphobia, ableism, underage drinking, faking a pregnancy to manipulate a partner into staying with them, teachers being creepy towards students, mentioned past child m0l3stati0n and invalidation of the victim's trauma, statutory r@pe (between teachers and students), pr3datory behavior....you get the picture.

If anything mentioned above is triggering for you in any way, again, feel free to scroll past this and consume media that's safe for you.

Gentle reminder: This is all my opinion. This is my take on specific moments in the show, plus evidence to back everything up. Not asking for anyone to agree with me or anything.

***If you like the show, good for you. I couldn't care less. As long as you're not out hurting people, I don't care. Live your life.***

Sit back, relax, grab some snacks and drinks, and let's get to this thing.

How about I talk about Artie for a few minutes? He's a character I have a ton of issues with. Not because he as a character is disabled. That has nothing to do with why I have issues with Artie. The issues there have to do with his actor, who I'll get to in a minute. It's because everything Artie says that's considered problematic is excused and/or ignored simply because of his disability. They only focus on the fact that Artie requires a wheelchair to get around and nothing else. Honestly, it feels like they pity him and praise him just for being in a wheelchair. While he has had some rough times in the show, it doesn't change that he's no better than anyone and he's just as bad.

There are physically disabled actors who play roles of physically disabled characters and they never make it about how they require a wheelchair, a walker, or any other equipment to get around. An example of a physically disabled actor off the top of my head would be Michael Patrick Thornton. He plays Dr. Gabriel Fife on a show called Private Practice, which nobody mentions the chair and his character is a lot more than his disability.

Kevin McHale, Artie's actor, is an able-bodied actor who was cast as a physically disabled character who requires a wheelchair to get around. The way that Glee portrayed disabled characters in general was inaccurate, extremely unrealistic (i.e., Artie joining the football team and then being told that his wheelchair would be a safety risk....like, don't you have sports made for disabled people at that school? Because disabled sports teams do exist.), the storylines with Artie made no sense (i.e., his whole backstory, how he was the lead dancer in one episode and was never mentioned again), and it was offensive. There is a term for this that I didn't even know, and it's called "cr1pface". Basically, that's when able-bodied actors are cast as physically disabled characters. This is a reoccurring theme in live-action media and it's gross.

Glee could cast a Down's Syndrome girl JUST FINE. That's great. Love that. YET THEY COULDN'T BOTHER TO CAST A PHYSICALLY DISABLED ACTOR FOR THE ROLE OF A PHYSICALLY DISABLED CHARACTER. SPECIFICALLY A YOUNG PHYSICALLY DISABLED ACTOR. Because I very rarely see them in live-action media, if at all.

There are more physically disabled characters in cartoons than in live-action media. At least younger physically disabled characters. My point about how younger physically disabled characters need more representation in live-action media still stands. Just in GENERAL, y'all.

Artie isn't all innocent. Here are some screenshots of him sex-shaming Mary Sue and Blaine (a.k.a., Diet Br3nd0n Ur!3) for them not being close in their rendition of West Side Story:

Hey, ummm....news flash, this isn't what directors would actually require their actors to do, let alone request them to do. Unless a director is putting together an on-stage production that has anything to do with sex, they wouldn't do this. (I'm mainly talking about stage productions here, not movie productions. Movie productions are a little different in that aspect.) Also....why would a director who's supposed to be Mary Sue's and Diet Br3nd0n Ur!3's friend ASK FOR THIS? YOUR PLAY WILL NOT SUFFER IF THERE'S NO SEX WHATSOEVER. YOUR PLAY WILL BE FINE.

(I mean it this time. This is your last chance to scroll past this post, click off, whatever you gotta do. This next scene contains mentioned child m0l3stati0n and invalidation of the victim's trauma.)

I want to bring your attention to this scene:

This is the nail in the coffin for me to lose any respect I had for Artie left...which I didn't have much of, to begin with.

Ryder confides in the Glee Club about he was m0l3st3d by an older woman as a child. The older woman was HIS BABYSITTER. A person who was being paid to watch over him by his parents. An eleven year old child...just children in general CANNOT CONSENT to s3x.

(By the way, pedos, this is your daily, unfriendly reminder that your attraction to children is disgusting. Pedo apologists, the fact that you justify pedos being attracted to children is also disgusting. Get professional help. NOTHING can justify grown adults being romantically and/or sexually attracted to children. Stay the fuck away from kids. Pedos and pedo apologists will NEVER be welcome here.)

He didn't ask to be m0l3st3d as an eleven year old boy by a babysitter. When it's an eleven year old girl who gets m0l3st3d by her babysitter who just so happens to be an older man, people are more sympathetic towards the girl and condemn the man. Rightfully so. On the contrary, if it's an eleven year old boy who gets m0l3st3d by his babysitter who happens to be an older woman (like Ryder), people congratulate the boy, tell him he's "lucky", and they don't take what he went through seriously. Why? Because men are expected to ALWAYS want to have s3x, women are pretty much always assumed to be asexual and s3x-repulsed....you get my point. Men don't always want to have s3x. Women actually have s3x drives! SHOCKER.

Artie's response to Ryder telling him that he was literally m0l3st3d AS A FUCKING CHILD makes me SO angry, and I'm about to tell you WHY. They play it off as Artie being naïve and not knowing any better...ALL BECAUSE HE'S PHYSICALLY DISABLED. THEY TREAT IT AS IF HE'S MENTALLY DISABLED TOO, WHICH I CAN'T RECALL IF THEY HAVE EVER DISCUSSED THIS ANYWHERE IN THE SHOW. Seriously? Can you stop pitying and infantilizing disabled people who use wheelchairs to get around all because they use a fucking wheelchair? Naïveté is one thing (this is ONLY IF Artie GENUINELY DIDN'T KNOW anything about m0l3stati0n), but you know, they could've used this moment to teach him about m0l3stati0n and how it fucking affects people. Someone could have CALLED ARTIE OUT because he said something extremely fucked up DIRECTLY TO A VICTIM OF CHILD M0L3STATI0N! But nooooo! Apparently boys can't be victims of m0l3stati0n, according to the dumbasses plaguing the fucking planet, so I guess fuck the THOUSANDS of Boy Scouts who were m0l3st3d by their scout masters since 1944, right? /s

ENOUGH SAID. Let's move on.

The second character in this part I really wanted to get to is Mr. William Schuester, or Mr. Schue for short. Good GOD, this teacher...if I can even call him one at this point, is a terrible person and creepy as all hell. I will call Mr. Schue "Mr. Pr3dat0r" because he's a disgusting waste of splooge who should be in jail.

We can talk about how Mr. Pr3dat0r doesn't have any friends his own age (except for his fiancée, who faked a pregnancy to get him to stay with her), he was literally in the boys' locker room spying on Gary Stu (Finn) WHILE HE WAS IN THE FUCKING SHOWER because he was singing, blackmailed Gary Stu into joining the Glee Club™️ by planting drugs, he has put on racist costumes on quite a few occasions in the show, encouraged his students to twerk to the song "Blurred Lines", and got off on two of his students shaking their asses to the song "River Deep, Mountain High". He's fucking gross. I'll put down the screenshots as evidence so you can see what I'm talking about.

Mr. Pr3dat0r shouldn't be a teacher. I don't think I need to elaborate more. These pictures say enough.