#way more guesswork than my other theories

[slorgfest]

list of things ive observed after watching tfone 2.5 times (the 0.5 was because i was speeding through looking for image proofs etc)

starting with something funny: B's cogless form has an energon compartment.

assuming that this is standard for all cogless models, it makes it especially hilarious to think that OP during the intro chase sequence either didn't think of storing his energon, or that he's just hungy enough and he's snacking as he runs

2. cameo guesswork (excluding jazz, since he was the only one that got formally mentioned and any screentime outside of main cast). has varying confidence/accuracy levels. here we go.

moonracer, prowl, perceptor (or sideswipe), ironhide, wheeljack, hound (if it is hound, at a later scene a mech of a similar frametype had a line in a fem-sounding voice), sunstreaker, arcee, red alert, and chromia (caught only because the announcer said so lmao. im more used to her darker blue paintjob like in idw and cyberverse). i think i also saw a helm that looked like drift (not deadlock, drift) but i can't really confirm.

3. bots that appeared on the iacon 5000 leaderboards but to my knowledge no screentime otherwise (can also be seen as a list of bots that are cogged and will later join the autobots, assuming the timeline will follow traditional bot/con division):

silverbolt, deadend, slingshot, cliffjumper, motormouth; powerglide, jetstorm, blurr (of course. this is his natural habitat after all); swindle and tailgate.

admittedly i found the inclusion of swindle so so funny because like?? dude i thought you'd be running the betting rings rn lol.

4. sentinel's characterization (outside of g1, i watched reruns as a kid but i don't remember them anymore) has always been either someone grossly incompetent or a menacing/suppressive force on cybertron. i thought it was interesting that they made him devious and actually kind of cunning this time around.

anyway. i also thought his paintjob was based off of tfa, but no his g1 counterpart laid the groundwork there.

they did away with the cheeto orange (goodbye cheeto orange) but the gold is striking. really gives him that image of glamor and opulence.

telesync kinda fucked up the colors but: elita's optics have a greenish hue to them, more aquamarine/cyan than the regular autobot blues that B and OP have. D's is, of course, yellow.

verging into speculation territory, i wonder if there's a reason why they gave D distinctly hexagonal optics? the yellow is pretty obvious, its easier to transition from yellow to red than blue to red. but the hexagons are very eye catching (pun intended), given how they spin around. it's not exactly something people would miss. tune in later for my Outlier/Point-One Percenter D theory

6. sentinel's guards (excluding airachnid) are kinda weird.

theyre very homogenous in shape, no individual characteristics, not even a little kibble to separate them from one another. and when they speak its very stiff, almost droning. its most certainly not an animating/funding/studio issue, given that almost all other cybertronians (even in the background) have been personalized one way or another.

so: possibly cold-constructed mechs, mass produced and onlined for the singular task of serving sentinel. think of the eradicons/vehicons from tfp, the shapes are certainly similar enough.

7. in the cave scene after the sentinel/quintesson reveal, D stomps on something, breaking it.

that's his worker's tag. all the miners have them. pictured: D's, OP's, and jazz's. elita and B all have their own tags too.

what i found most interesting though, that directly after the sentinel surface encounter, D crushes his (as said before), B and elita remove theirs (it left a faint indent on B, which begs the question how old he actually is and how long has he been working, exactly?), but OP keeps his tag on.

(continuing in a rb, ive hit image limit lmao)

[hidefdoritos]

Haha yeah, you know me too well. Yeah, I've always been big on patterns. There was this one time when I was in like 8th grade I got invited to family game night at some friends' house. They explained a card game and let me watch a round.

In the game, the judge decides on a pattern in their head. "Red card, face card, clubs card" or something like that. Then everyone else takes turns laying down cards. The judge declares whether each card is correct or incorrect. At the beginning, it's all guesswork; at some point, the pattern emerges, and then we all congratulate ourselves and change roles.

They let me come in as the judge.

This was a mistake. I was small and full of spite. I didn't know about things like "sharing" or making things "winnable." I knew that the optimal pattern was something so complex they'd never get it but so simple my win would be legitimate. I wouldn't mess with the environment, or with counting the cards, or with a pattern of the frequencies of in/correct. It had to be a visible card pattern, and mine was going to be the best visible card pattern ever.

I chose my pattern. We started. And they started losing their minds.

From their viewpoints, there was no pattern. No rhyme or reason, no telling. I sat increasingly smug in my spot at the table. Half the deck was gone. They stared daggers at me. They had a very nice red-black pattern going, but it wasn't the deciding factor. They asked if I was sure there weren't any mistakes. I was sure. They played on. One declared she didn't have anything left to play. She was wrong, and I looked at her cards and told her so.

They started collaborating among themselves. Pointing at cards. Showing each other their cards. Two thirds of the way through the deck. Three quarters. Seven eighths. Card after card laid down, some accepted, some rejected. By far, farther than they'd ever made it in a game. It wasn't fun anymore, but I wasn't gonna call it off just because the kids were getting bored. I was full of more brainpower than those little twits could even conceptualize, and I was going to win.

One player went out--I confirmed nothing usable left in their hand. Then another. The remaining three played out their cards, swapping turns and swapping theories. Interest had waned. They stared at me glumly as they laid their cards, waiting for a verdict they couldn't predict. A parent left the room to work on the pizza and snacks.

Finally they were stuck. The deck was exhausted, and so were they. A few random cards left over, nothing discernably interesting about any of them.

"Give up?" I asked, a triumphant gleam in my eyes.

They stared at me.

I pointed to the array of cards snaking along the table. "If you'll see here," I gestured expansively, "it's a very simple pattern. Every other card has to be an even number."

They stared at me.

I swallowed.

"So, every other card could be literally anything?" asked an older sibling.

"Y-yeah," I said, losing 80% of my confidence. "...Isn't that fun?"

I was rescued by the remaining parent standing up from the table. "Why don't we start the movie now," they suggested, and started shepherding their glaring children into the living room.

"It could be worse," I explained lamely. "It could have been every fourth, or fifth, or I could have targeted people with their elbows on the table, or...." I trailed off as an adult started directing us toward pizza and snacks.

Anyway, I think that whole escapade says a lot about me in junior high school and also me as a person. Yeah, that pattern recognition is kinda like why I always get the same thing. Yeah, a number seven, ketchup only on the burger, regular fries, root beer with no ice. Can I tip you? Do you take cash tips?

[swordsmans]

If Bonney used her power on Brook would it restore his flesh? Or would he just become a younger skeleton

whether you meant this as a joke or not, ive been rotating this in my head for like four days straight (thanks for that) and i think i've FINALLY come up with my answer: i think brook would just become a younger skeleton!

spoilers for egghead below the cut!

we don't know a lot about bonney's fruit (not even the NAME) so it's hard to pin down exactly how it works, but after rereading egghead to answer this i think her devil fruit is possibly something other than a model of the toki-toki no mi (my original assumption). the base model toki-toki no mi works strictly with time itself, but bonney's fruit seems to have several "functions" that are different from time itself.

when aging someone forward in "time", she has access to multiple possible futures (likely why the straw hat older designs in the SBS's have had multiple versions, actually). it's not stated anywhere that she has access to the true future (although given OP's shaky stance on fate, this could be a little bit of meta in and of itself)

when she "de-ages" someone, they shed jewels of some kind--it's not a "clean" time travel

and (most importantly) when she "de-ages" someone, they retain certain features from adulthood, including but not limited to scars and body modifications

in short, her fruit isn't straight across the board linear time travel, but something a little weirder, a little more ambiguous. (i'm excited to learn more about it from a lore perspective, tbh, especially with the devil fruit info about parallel universes--but i digress).

i am largely basing my brook answer on the third point, illustrated here:

jinbei has been "de-aged", but he still has a scar over his eye from later in life, and--

vegapunk has been "de-aged" but he is still missing his brain and retains the punk records transmitter even though we know he did not remove his brain until much later into adulthood. AND the transmitter still has the circumference of his adult-sized head, so it has stayed "separate" from his body despite the transformation--while still acting as a replacement for his missing brain.

with this in mind, i have two theories about her fruit: one, she cannot undo major/permanent body changes in people she "de-ages" and i suspect if she were to "de-age" luffy, he might retain his chest scar! and two, she cannot undo devil fruit powers. in short, she cannot change the "whole" of a person, just their "current essence".

realistically (lol, as realistic as we can get here) brook has had his skeleton since birth. if she were to "de-age" his skeleton, it would be his skeleton that is impacted--his "current essence". his flesh is gone, and cannot be reproduced from nothing (just like vegapunk's brain!). essentially bonney would be moving his skeleton itself back and forth in time, not the (missing) "whole" around it.

knowing what we do about oda's sense of humor (and the type of gags brook usually gets), i dont think it's unfair to assume that we might actually get this exact scenario--bonney trying to "de-age" brook and (visually) nothing happening. even if it's played off for laughs, it works with what we know of her powers! plus, there's this panel:

and who do we know that's not technically a living thing? brook! personally, i think it would be very funny (and not beyond the scope of oda's silly little mind) to give brook a semi-permanent power up by having bonney "de-age" his skeleton to a younger, stronger version of itself (again, visually no different at all lol) and then just... staying that way until she manually undoes the power or something.

of course, all of this is just guesswork. honestly, im very intrigued by bonney's age-up/future powers, and im looking forward to more of her this arc!!

[fuckmelifesucks]

Quick note: so i wrote this bit on June 9, 2022 and left it in the draft and forgot about it and then found it again and couldn't remember the exact end point of this. It's just a half assing of some theory, i think. I honestly don't remember. But hey it's basically a rant on my part and me over analysing things. Feel free to scroll past or if not, add to this if u like🤷‍♀️ well, that is if you do understand in it. I just posted it because I wanted to. So, eh.. why not.

Mating bonds

Let's talk about mating bonds in acotar. So far we know that it's some kind of a bridge of connection between souls and that a mating bond is the most sacred thing for fae and that they are super rare (yeah, not like everyone is getting a bond right and left 😐).

So, Rhys and feyre had the best mating bond by far. Theirs was one that was of pure love and connection. Feyre only accepted her bond with Rhys after she started falling for him. Similar with Nesta and cassian.

Now elucien mating bond. Their bond is similar yet so different from the feysand and nessian mating bonds. It is similar on the surface level. Like Lucien's need to taste, touch and smell her. But emotionally, it's so different. Because there seems to be no emotional connection at all.

Anyway, so we know the whole thing how people want elain and Lucien to end up together cuz of the bond between them, even though it's evident that the bond makes both the parties uncomfortable af and that both don't actually want it.

And i don't know about others but I'd rather not read about a couple who's been forced to be together without any actual sense of choice. But, what if their bond is not meant to actually be a start of their romance but rather something to help with furthering things. Like something with a different hidden meaning to it rather than a way for a happily ever after.

So here is how Rhys described the mating bond and its true nature.

And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some … preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.

— chapter 24, ACOWAR

So we know it's not some soulmate uniting bond but just something that may help in the long run of things sometimes.

Mating bonds that didn't go so well and are examples of this exact thing were tamlin's parents and rhysand's parents.

“You said your mother and father were wrong for each other; Tamlin said his own parents were wrong for each other.” I peeled off my dressing robe. “So it can’t be a perfect system of matching.

— chapter 24, ACOWAR

So again it's probably not for finding your soulmates. But it's also said that a mating bond can have a reason behind it. If not love then something else entirely.

Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason.

— chapter 24, ACOWAR

So there has to be some reason why two persons are picked to be together. And i believe that a mating bond is initially just something that brings two people together and that every mating bond has so sort of ulterior motive and not just love.

Let's talk about reasons why Rhysand's parents were mates. Why, out of all people, rhysand's mother was mated to the high lord of the night court. She was a local illyrian seamstress. From what we know there is nothing that special about her. Then why was she mated to rhysand's father? He could've been mated to any illyrian female if it had to be an illyrian, specifically. And he was 900 years old. So why, after 900 years did he get mated to rhysand's mother? He was one of the strongest high lords and his mate an illyrian female with no particularly exceptional powers. Because there were ulterior motives for the mating bond snapping between them.

Firstly, because of their union, Rhys came into existence, becoming the most powerful high lord to walk the lands of prythian.

That brings me to the question of how? Again rhysand's father was the powerful one. And his mother was in no way his father's 'equal'. Or maybe she did have some powers or so sort of lineage we do not know know of but still. Rhysand's father could've been mated to anyone else. Preferably someone who was considerably powerful too. Maybe that would've resulted in an even stronger offspring.

That indicates that their bond was more that just production of the strongest offspring. There were more ulterior motives to their bond than just the birth of rhys.

And now let's look at what's happened due to rhysand's parents' mating bond.

Rhys being the strongest High Lord with his night power, wings and possibly some of that illyrian killing power too.

Since Rhysand's mother was illyrian and it was custom for (half)illyrian youngling to train at the illyrian camps, Rhys was sent to the windhaven camp to train.

Rhys with his power combined with the illyrian training made him even stronger.

And windhaven is where he met cassian and azriel, his brothers.

Rhys, who would eventually grow up to be the strongest high lord, united with Azriel and cassian, two bastards who would eventually grow up to become two of the strongest illyrian warriors to ever exist with each possessing seven siphons for their massive killing power.

Then the bat boys together won the blood rite, becoming Carynthians. Hence, resulting in cassian and azriel being no longer looked down upon (kinda).

Rhys in that camp with Azriel and cassian resulted in mor meeting them, which resulted in mor giving her virginity to cassian to get out of an arranged marriage she didn't want. The consequences were brutal, yes but at the end of the day, she was freed from the clutches of the court of nightmares.

Then they met amren, the fallen angel, who helped Rhys control his own power so as to prevent it from consuming him.

And then the formation of the inner court.

These are the few things that took place because of the mating bond of rhysand's parents.

Now what would've happened if they weren't mates.

Rhysand probably not existing or if he was hypothetically, then he's not the strongest high lord.

Not meeting azriel and cassian which would've probably led to the two not achieving siphons or being able to take part in the blood rite.

Mor would've probably been the lady of autumn 2.0 cuz she would've had to marry Eris.

Mor wouldn't have been able to get away from the court of nightmares either.

They wouldn't have found amren so if there was Rhys, say, with incredible power, his power would've probably consumed him.

No inner court.

Rhys probably wouldn't have been who he is and maybe would've ended up actually being a cruel high lord.

You get the drill.

Anyway, so these were few reasons for the mating bond between rhysand's parents and it being them specifically.

Now why i went into this long ass rant...

Elucien bond is quite similar to the bond that rhysand's parents had. It's painfully obvious.

Both Lucien and elain do not like each other.

They are uncomfortable with the bond.

The only reason why they could be together would be the mating bond.

No choice for either of them.

Both had been thrown at each other.

They can't stand to be around each other for long, much like rhysand's parents.

Now it's already been discussed by many other that the mating bond between elain and Lucien could have other reasons behind it.

What are the possible ulterior motives for the cauldron to make them mates since now we know that many of the bonds are not based on love and equality between two people but with other intentions.

They could have really strong offsprings. Maybe even the next most powerful high lord, given, Lucien is the sole heir to the day court and elain is the made cauldron blessed seer.

Their bond could help in defeating koschi or at the least free vassa.

Lucien being son of helion the spell-cleaver, could also help in other things like helping elain somehow free the fae trapped in the stones of the prison.

Somehow, just maybe, the helion and lady of autumn drama would also unwrap more and possibly solve their problems too.

And many more.

What has happened till now because of the mating bond...

Lucien left the spring court and tamlin.

He traveled to the human lands to help find vassa, hence meeting with papa Archeron and the other humans, helping them come to the battlefield.

He met vassa.

His friendship with vassa and jurian.

Him finding a place for himself in the human lands and the band of exiles.

[quibbs126]

You know, it really is fun finding old headcanon relationships between Cookie Run characters, before they were proven otherwise

I can only list two I’ve seen off the top of my head, and both relate to Dark Choco, but the ones I saw were one where Dark Choco was related to Princess Cookie and thus by proxy Tiger Lily (and possibly their father), and another just now where Dark Enchantress was his mother, though I think in that case it was adopted

To be honest, I can kind of understand both (I’m gonna try and explain myself, but this is just going off of guesswork years after the fact, I don’t actually know the true reasons, nor am I stating these ones as the truth)

For the one with Princess and Tiger Lily, while I don’t know when exactly that one was made, it must have been before Kingdom, and going off of what just Ovenbreak tells us, we know all three were at some point royalty and there was, as far as I can tell, only one known kingdom in Cookie Run. We know Dark Choco was exiled from his kingdom, but we (I assume at the time) hadn’t known just how long ago that was, or how a guess of how old Dark Choco was. Not to mention the fact that both he and Princess share red eyes, and you got a relatively solid theory

Edit: I found the post I was looking for, it dates at around April 2019, so it checks out

As for the Dark Enchantress one, the posts I saw about that one seemed to be from around late 2017. At that time, the only “dark” cookies would have been Dark Choco and Dark Enchantress, so it seems to make sense to have them be in some way related. Throw in the fact that they both shared a prefix, which could be evidence of a relation, and again the red eyes. Yes aside from that they look very different, but I mean, Matcha and Dark Enchantress are related and don’t look all that similar other than the horns. So again, it makes sense. Also from what I understand, this was about a year before Relationships were added to the game, so Dark Choco’s feelings on her were not yet known

Honestly I’ve only been able to find these via random images on Google, then looking at the page they���re on, but it’s still fun to see these regardless, wish I could find more

[into-september]

Have you watched the Dutch dub of miraculous? If you have I noticed that in seasons 1+2 LB calls CN poesjes and then after that she refers to him as katje. Is there a reason they made this change?

I really should not be the go-to person for commentaries on anything relating to linguistics but I'm guessing it's a fairly limited group of people who

a) watch MLB

b) have a satisfactory mastery of the biggest north- and west Germanic languages

c) genuinely enjoy talking about the implications of vernacular choices in dubbing

Sadly I haven't been watching MLB in Dutch, since my comprehension is probably some 60-70% in reading but considerably lower in listening. Checking it out mostly just made me silly about how much of it I did understand thanks to knowing ca. the topic of dialogue beforehand

But looking it up was an instant hit, because I'm pretty sure she calls him "Katje" at 2:23 in this

(which I think is Belgian since the same distributor has the exact same trailer out in French? dear internet, correct me if I'm wrong in assuming that Flemish Belgium imports Dutch dubs like French Belgium presumably imports French ones. anyway I'm low-key obsessed with that trailer in ways I haven't been with any of the other ones. and also legit why is the acting so good, like seriously this might be the best of the Germanic dubs so far, not counting the English one)

ANYWAY with the lengthy dive into my incompetence and excitement at the topic over with, here's what little I can say for sure:

Wictionary says both "katje" and "poesje" are dimminutives (I'm guessing -je corresponds to the German -chen, thank you for making me google the geographical distribution of German dimminutives, turns out -chen is more common in the north). As such, the real question would be what differences exist between "kat" and "poes".

And that's the point where I really can only do guesswork based on adjactent languages thanks to the fact that I've never learned a blessed word of Dutch in my life, but this was also the point where my dumb brain decided to remember that I got kind of hung up on that one in Norwegian because there are definitely instances of Ladybug calling him "pus", and that one is, shall we say, pretty eyebrow-raising.

Assuming that the Dutch kat/poes are used in approximately the same as the Norwegian katt/pus - and that is a bold assumption to make, given that both these words seem to go back to Proto-Germanic and are thus old as balls with a lot of time for semantic drift in both languages - then there'd certainly be some weird romantic overtones to "poesje" that are absent from "katje".

Weird as in "pus" (in Norwegian) is used in two ways: either as a cutesy way to adress a cat, or as a somewhat infantilising romantic term of endearment. The romantic connotations in "pus" does not seem to be incidental either, since the internet tells me that the Dutch poes/poesje can have the infamous double meaning of the English "pussy". (the Norwegian word does not, but I've ran across at least two different German dialectal variations of the word and at this point I'm genuinely curious to know if they have it)

I expect they'd never have used the word "poesje" in the first place if the vulgar meaning was as common as the English one, and that it does sound innocent to the ears of the target audience. That leaves me with two theories about why they changed it: they possibly toned it down to avoid any problems with parents who would know about the adult meaning, or possibly the word - like in Norwegian - made Ladybug come across as rather more romantic towards Cat Noir than what the show originally intended her to be.

That's the best guess I can give you, but for all I know there was just a change in translating crew that never watched the first two seasons and knew that they'd established her as using the other one. And honestly, I suspect that to be the most likely explanation here, all things considered. Which isn't worth a lot, I guess, but at least I had fun looking all this up.

[luminary-lady]

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what the ultimate truth is here, but the idea that someone in Alba’s position would purposefully post an embarrassing video like that doesn’t hold water to me. All the theories I’ve seen as to why should do that make zero sense, and seem to forget a very simple fact: she is followed by her mother and brother, not to mention other older relatives. I don’t care how attention hungry you imagine someone to be...there’s no way in hell any person outside of the Kardashian clan would put that out there for those family members to see on purpose. Especially considering that those same family members are probably the ones most likely to have notifications on for her posts. So, even if she did delete super quickly, there’s still a chance they’d see it. I’d run away and join the circus if my family ever saw a video of me intended for a sexual partner. And that’s not even touching on how mortifying it would be to break the news to your partner’s family. So how the heck did this happen?

I feel gross even theorizing about something like this, given that it’s such a crappy situation she’s in, but since others are pulling BS out their behinds I’ll offer a counter theory. If I had to bet money, I’d say a some super zealous Chris “fan” managed to hack in to her account. If she used the same password for her social media and iCloud (unadvisable but common), it’d be pretty easy to screw her over. Whoever hacked her could’ve then deleted the account. Which sounds pointless, until you realize it could make re-accessing the account significantly more difficult:

“...if your account has been totally deleted, you might be out of luck. Instagram itself says, “When you delete your account, your profile, photos, videos, comments, likes, and followers will be permanently removed.” You can create a new account with the same email address you used before, but you may not be able to get the same username.

That said, there is a window in which you can recover your Instagram account. “If someone has deleted your account, you technically have 30 days to contact Instagram to explain that you have been hacked and [ask them] to put your account back up. Instagram claims it stores your data for that long,” says digital marketer Jonathan Simon, director of marketing and communications at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. “However, this is a long shot. Once your account is deleted, it is likely gone.”

I’d guess that this refers to normal accounts, and there’s a back up fail-safe for verified, blue check accounts like hers. She can probably get back in eventually if this is the case. However, given that it’s the weekend, it’ll probably take a while, which means she’s just SOL for the time being.

The fact that this happened now, when she’s been in the news and there are a least a thousand pissed off obsessives wishing for her downfall, doesn’t strike me as a coincidence. There’s a lot of people who’d definitely do something like this to her if they could figure out how. We’ve got people in this fandom looking up property deeds, tracking private flights, cyberstalking underage family members, and more. It’s not inconceivable to think someone tried 300 password combinations of “yoga-lisboa97″ and the like until they got access to her accounts.

Again, this is total guesswork and I could be completely wrong, though I don’t think it’s any more unlikely than some of the other theories I’ve seen bandied about today. Whatever the truth is, the gleeful cruelty I’ve seen from many people today has only confirmed what terrible people they are. Thanks for proving that point, so any shred of your moral credibility is now destroyed.

[subjects-of-the-king]

A New Theory on the Saxon Settlement of England

An original essay of Lucas Del Rio

Note: My previous recent essay had focused on the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and to some extent it was a more general historiography. Continuing with a historiographical theme, I had initially intended to follow it with an essay comparing primary accounts of conflict and warfare between Brythonic and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the early Middle Ages. During my research, I developed a personal theory that I propose below.

Little is known for sure of the years that immediately follow the withdrawal of the Roman army from Britain sometime around 410. The Latin works that were characteristic of the Roman era almost completely vanish except for a few texts penned by a handful of monks. Literature in Old English does not appear for centuries and is long limited to hymns and poetry, as is virtually everything written in Welsh. Histories written on Britain that discuss this era are mostly from much later in the Middle Ages. The first manuscript of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a historical text on England commissioned by King Alfred the Great, does not appear until 891. It is sometimes difficult for modern historians to determine when their medieval counterparts recorded the truth versus when they jotted down contemporary legends, especially when they were often writing centuries after the alleged events occurred. Meanwhile, conclusions from archaeological evidence are largely guesswork. 

Several names have been coined for this era, including “Sub-Roman Britain,” “Dark Age Britain,” and “Britain in the Age of Arthur.” Developments that historians do know of are reflected in these terms. Roman Britannia now ceased to exist, and the provinces there which had for centuries been under the central control of Rome had fragmented. The Britons had regained their former autonomy, with the Romans that stayed behind now dwelling in the decaying remains of once prosperous towns. Petty tribal kingdoms reappeared and resumed their old quarrels with one another. Decentralization of national authority meant that there were numerous tiny armies led by local chiefs rather than a massive imperial force that could crush insurgencies. With no organized administration beyond competing warlords, society no longer functioned the way that it had before. Roads ceased to be maintained, aqueducts fell into disuse, bandits opportunistically plundered the countryside, Irish and Norse pirates raided the coasts for loot and slaves, and a barter economy took the place of the discontinued system of Roman coinage.

Not all historians agree that everything about Britain after the Romans left represented a “Dark Age,” however. French writer Jean Markale goes as far as to call the era a “Celtic renaissance.” It is true that the end of Roman administration allowed the Celtic Britons to govern themselves once again, and not always in small chiefdoms. The medieval Welsh clergyman Geoffrey of Monmouth writes of a new Brythonic dynasty emerging in the wake of Roman withdrawal. While Geoffrey of Monmouth is very frequently criticized by scholars, modern historians do recognize that Britain did indeed have some very powerful Celtic kings such as Urien ruling over vast realms like Rheged at the start of the Middle Ages. Some of the wars between these kingdoms were said by contemporary Britons such as the bard Taliesen to have seen massive battles, descriptions of which can still be found in Welsh poetry. Local economies, infrastructure, and security all collapsed, but Celtic culture clung on through these calamities. Christianity fused with traditional pagan elements to form the British Church, which held certain unique beliefs from Rome despite occasional accusations of heresy by popes. Through the efforts of members of this church, especially St. Patrick, the other Celtic nation of Ireland also saw most of her population converted to Christianity. 

Sub-Roman Britain has thus sometimes been romanticized by the Celts of later eras, who do not hold the view that this was truly the Dark Ages. The most immortal hero of the Celtic Britons symbolizes this phenomenon to a greater extent than anyone or anything else that can be said about the period, hence why the term “Age of Arthur” has been used by some scholars and enthusiasts. On one hand, Arthur can be viewed as representing the glory of the Celtic Britons, although he can also be said to be a personification of their downfall as told by their descendants in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. By the late Middle Ages, there had been a number of popular “Arthurian romances,” and these novels tended to focus on classic tales such as the sword and the stone, the knights of the round table, and the quest for the holy grail. While some aspects of these stories had roots in Celtic lore, the King Arthur that authors were writing about in the 1400s was far removed from Celtic society. Descriptions of Camelot and his court were actually more representative of that time than the Brythonic era. To the old Britons, however, Arthur was a king intent on preserving the traditional Celtic ways. His earliest appearances in two early medieval chronicles, the 833 work The History of the Britons and the 1136 work The History of the Kings of Britain, portray him as a heroic leader who battled the invading Saxons.

More modern archaeological finds do not indicate there being a sole “King of the Britons,” as Arthur is often called, anytime after the Romans withdrew their armies. Perhaps the Celtic Britons had a system where a single figurehead took charge of the different regional kings during a time of crisis, just as Cassivelaunus had done centuries earlier when the Britons resisted Julius Caesar. Maybe the knights of the round table were an echo of elite Brythonic warriors in the battles that Arthur led. The historicity of Arthur is irrelevant, however. What is more important is that the greatest significance of the most iconic figure of British lore is his involvement in an epic struggle between two peoples laying claim to the land that would become England. Such a narrative dominates much of English historiography. Gildas, the Venerable Bede, Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Henry of Huntington, and many other early chroniclers highlighted a Saxon invasion that pitted them against the Britons in the southern half of the island. It created England, thus transforming the island of Britain forever. Since medieval times, historians have continued to tell this story.

Like all intellectual disciplines, of course, the study of history evolves. Recent evidence has caused some scholars to challenge the notion that there was a grand war between Britons and Germanic peoples such as the Saxons. They say that the old idea that the Britons were systematically killed off and England was conquered is not supported by the new science of genetics, as the English today still share similar genes with the inhabitants of the region millenia prior to the alleged invasion. The remains found in 1995 of a prehistoric individual in Cheddar Gorge, despite being nine thousand years old, were discovered to be quite genetically related to the locals. A much larger genetic study stretching from 1994 to 2015 concluded that as little as twenty percent of modern English DNA is Germanic. Both of these findings are examples of why these scholars say that the earlier inhabitants of England were never exterminated by the Saxon newcomers and that they merely blended with the indigenous population. D. F. Dale, in his book The History of the Scots, Picts, and Britons: A study of the origins of the Scots, Picts, Britons (and Anglo-Saxons) in Dark Age Britain based on their own legends, tales, and testimonials, even suggests that there may have been a Germanic population in some parts of England even prior to the Roman conquest. Nor can the Britons be considered a homogeneous people, they say, for the same study that was completed in 2015 found great genetic variation between the modern Welsh, Scottish, and Cornish populations. 

All of this new evidence from a rapidly growing scientific field has prompted certain researchers to deny that there was a Saxon invasion at all. Instead, they say, there was a process of gradual settlement. Such a notion completely contradicts primary accounts, however. While medieval chroniclers can certainly be unreliable, they did genuinely understand aspects of their era that we undeniably cannot, and the fact that all of them agreed that there was a Saxon invasion makes it difficult to deny that it happened in some shape or form. Another finding from the aforementioned study could potentially show some degree of ethnic cleansing, for example. People living in Wales today show substantial genetic differences from all other regions of Britain, with the Welsh being more related than everybody else to the original British hunter-gatherers. Wales is a predominantly Celtic region and is notable for the fact that many of the locals still speak Welsh, a Celtic language, unlike Cornwall and Scotland where Cornish and Gaelic, respectively, are spoken only by a small minority of the populace. The Celts, then, can be shown genetically to be either the indigenous population of Britain or at least one who eventually mixed with an older group, and there was likely a great deal of violence in England to cause fewer of their descendants to live there than in Wales.

Considering, however, that all parts of Britain show far greater diversity than mere Germanic descent, it can be concluded that simply more Celtic Britons survived in Wales than in England. This does not mean that there was a genocide against the Britons per se, but rather that ethnic identity in early medieval Britain was closely linked to politics and war. Celts, Saxons, Scandinavians, and the Irish lived in every region, but certain areas were increasingly dominated by clusters of kings from one group or another. The Celts, once the unchallenged masters of the entire island, would go on to rule Wales and Cornwall. Meanwhile, England became the domain of the Saxons, and the Scottish emerged from earlier Celtic, Pictish, Irish, and Scandinavian inhabitants of the north of Britain. English, Welsh, and Scottish kings all had their own armies, of course, each composed primarily yet not not exclusively of their respective nationalities. These armies periodically clashed, and the fact that the kings and nobles belonged to certain ethnicities meant that civilians of other groups were more likely to be victims of violence during wars, even when a kingdom may have been very diverse. Within the various kingdoms in the different regions, one group may have had the privilege of controlling the nobility while another was forced to be under the yoke of serfdom. To put it simply, kings throughout the island had an array of subjects, although the hierarchy of society was still dependent on ethnicity, and the importance of this during wars led to regional stratification. 

To support these arguments, consider the writings of medieval chroniclers. Their stories share both many similarities and differences. All seem to agree that the island had once been the exclusive domain of the Britons, with the Picts and Scots arriving sometime before or during the Roman era. According to the English monk the Venerable Bede, in his 731 work Ecclesiastical History of the English People, states “some Picts from Scythia put to sea in a few longships, and were driven by storms around the coasts of Britain.” Later, “the Picts crossed into Britain, and began to settle in the north of the island.” In describing the origins of the Scots, the Venerable Bede writes “they migrated from Ireland under their chieftain Reuda and by a combination of force and treaty, obtained from the Picts the settlements that they still hold.” He tells both of these stories prior to his description of the arrival of the Romans. Welsh clergyman Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his 1136 book The History of the Kings of Britain, differs in this respect, instead writing of the Picts and Scots appearing at the time of Roman imperial control. Geoffrey of Monmouth writes that “a certain King of the Picts called Sodric came from Scythia with a large fleet and landed in the northern part of Britain which is called Albany.” Next, “Marius thereupon collected his men together and marched to meet Sodric” and “once Sodric was killed and the people who had come with him were beaten, Marius gave them the part of Albany called Caithness to live in.” Regarding the Picts and the Scots, he says that the latter “trace their descent from them, and from the Irish, too.”

These events occurred before the dawn of the Middle Ages and the subsequent coming of the Saxons to Britain, but they demonstrate a similar historical trend of wars based on ethnic control yet not ethnic cleansing. It was a middleground of sorts between genocide and mere settlement because there was indeed violence, although it was to assert political control rather than carry out a campaign of complete extermination. King Sodric of the Picts had the ambition of violently wrestling from the Romans territory that they controlled in Britain, with the Romans then tolerating a local Pictish presence once this hostile foreign king was removed as a threat. Reuda of the Irish would conquer territory that had formerly belonged to the Picts. They must have subjugated the Picts rather than killing them off, however, for the two peoples later mixed to form the Scots. Geoffrey of Monmouth writes that the “five races of people” in Britain were “the Norman-French, the Britons, the Saxons, the Picts, and the Scots.” When he wrote his chronicle, the Normans had conquered England relatively recently, and this shows that they made know attempt to wipe out the Saxons despite stripping them of their power. In his book History of the English, the last edition of which was completed in 1154, Henry of Huntington asserts that the Picts “have entirely disappeared, and their language is extinct.” The Picts thus eventually did die out. Since they survived for as long as they did and the evidence for their decimation was the fact that their language was no longer spoken, it can be concluded that the Picts were gradually assimilated after a long period of Scottish domination.

The appearance of the Picts and Scots in Britain was long before that of the Saxons and the coming of the Normans long after. Medieval accounts show that the newly arrived Saxons were initially quite aggressive towards the local Brythonic inhabitants. At the time that the Saxons emerged on British soil, there were already ongoing political struggles between kings of different ethnic groups. In the most contemporary account, the 540 text On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, the Romano-British monk Gildas describes how the Britons were to be ruined and conquered while “inviting in among them like wolves into the sheepfold, the fierce and impious Saxons, a race hateful both to God and men, to repel the invasions of the northern nations.” These “northern nations” were presumably the Picts, for the Venerable Bede writes that the Britons “for many years this region suffered attacks from to savage extraneous races, Irish from the northwest, and Picts from the north.” They were vulnerable to attack because the Romans “informed the Britons that they could no longer undertake such troublesome expeditions for their defense.” According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, “about this time there landed in certain parts of Kent three vessels of the type which we call longships” which were “full of armed warriors and there were two brothers named Hengist and Horsa in command of them.”

Apparently, according to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles commissioned by King Alfred the Great of Wessex centuries later, the reason that the 443 plea for aid was refused was because the Romans were struggling to fight Attila and his horde. With the Britons desperate for any form of help, Hengist and Horsa are said to have earned their trust and then stabbed them in the back. Historians today have no direct evidence for the legitimate existence of Hengist and Horsa other than chronicles written long after the Saxons had established a foothold on the island, yet the story nonetheless reflects a genuine historical timeline. Gildas, for example, claims that the Saxons arrived with full permission from “that proud tyrant Vortigern, the British king.” In The History of the Britons, a work of disputed authorship which may have been penned by the monk Nennius, the Saxon brothers are said to have become friends of Vortigern after their exile from Germany. The Venerable Bede says the result was that the Saxons commanded by Hengist and Horsa fought the Picts on his behalf and “received from the Britons grants of land where they could settle among them on condition that they maintained the peace and security of the island against all enemies in return for regular pay.” These events are early evidence that Britain in this era may have been divided into kingdoms with rulers of particular ethnic groups, but their subjects were a different story. Vortigern was a Britons who presumably was in a power struggle with one or more Pictish kings, although he was willing to both incorporate Saxons into his army and grant them fiefs. Furthermore, his kingdom was structured in a way where society was built around its ethnic makeup. Saxon warriors employed by Vortigern sound as if they earned actual wages, an extremely rare practice in the Middle Ages and even more so in the earliest centuries of the medieval era.

Hengist and Horsa were two Saxons who had the ambitions of being kings of their own. The Venerable Bede writes that “a larger fleet quickly came over with a great body of warriors, which, when joined to the original forces, constituted an invincible army.” It was then that they chose to rise up against the Brythonic leadership, and the fighting did not strictly pit all groups against each other, for he also says “the Angles made an alliance with the Picts.” In these wars, it was the power of a king and not the power of the ethnicity he belonged to that mattered, and he would fight or partner with whoever he had to. Unfortunately for the Britons, they appeared to be cornered on all sides by the newer inhabitants of the island regardless of who fought alongside who at a given time. Gildas records the final and unsuccessful Romano-British plea for help from the imperial forces as including the haunting phrases “the barbarians drive us to the sea” and “thus two modes of death await us.” However, local leadership may still have been deliberately misrepresenting as genocidal persecution of what really just threats to their own power from Picts, Scots, and Saxons. 

Chroniclers in the centuries that followed demonstrate in their writings that the local rulers went many years without letting battlefield setbacks break their resolve. While both Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth tell of Vortigern fleeing to a remote hideout and eventually being killed, several of the historians note the victories won by a Romano-British general, or perhaps even king, named Ambrosius Aurelianus or Aurelius Ambrosius. According to the Venerable Bede, he was the last remaining leader in Britain from the Roman era and in 493 led the Britons to win a battle against the Angles for the first time. In one battle that Ambrosius apparently led, Henry of Huntington says that Horsa finally met his death. Geoffrey of Monmouth claims that Ambrosius and his brother Uther Pendragon both were poisoned by Saxon assassins, but the latter was the father of Arthur. Nennius writes of Arthur being chosen by the different Brythonic kingdoms to lead their warriors in twelve victorious battles against the Saxons. He states, however, that this did not cause Saxon leaders in Germany to cease continuing to provide support to those fighting in Britain.

All of these details suggest divisions in Britain between native kings and the Saxons, but none of them demonstrate anything beyond that. Vortigern must have been a highly influential king over large parts of Britain, or else he would not have had the power to have incorporated enough Saxon vassals into his domain for them to gradually muster such enormous military strength. If Vortigern was a king who exercised significant hegemony, it was strategically important for ambitious Saxon war leaders to drive him out of power, but nothing suggests a full-scale deliberate attempt to exterminate the native Britons of his kingdom. The chroniclers all record widespread violence against civilians, but this would have been a tactic of forcing the majority of them into submission. Gildas writes that the Britons “constrained by famine, came and yielded themselves to be slaves forever to their foes.” Class divisions based on ethnicity, often very severe, were emerging in the new kingdoms that were ethnically diverse despite the ethnic divisions in the area of kingship. Mutual oppression unquestionably would have created major animosity and was certainly used by war leaders, such as Ambrosius and Arthur on the side of the Britons, to rally support. Saxons undoubtedly did the same.

In the centuries that followed the arrival of the Saxons, their kings assumed control of more and more of the island. Kingdoms led by Britons persisted in the southwestern regions of Wales and Cornwall, while in the north the Scots settled down and absorbed the Picts. Just as the Britons had historically quarreled, so, too, did the Saxons, who began to be called the “Anglo-Saxons” as they mixed with the Angles. Some of their kings, including Edwin and Oswiu of Northumbria, started to become quite powerful. The Anglo-Saxons found a sense of national unity when they faced a foreign invader of their own, the Vikings, in the 800s, with strong leaders such as Alfred the Great taking charge. During the 900s, the Kingdom of Wessex established the Kingdom of England after uniting all of the Anglo-Saxons and securing a dominant position over Wales and Scotland. A Welsh poem from that century called “Armes Prydein” prophesied that the greatest of the Brythonic leaders from the 500s and 600s would be reincarnated and unite Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Scotland, and Ireland against the English, yet this has long proven to be wishful thinking on the part of whichever wandering bard wrote its words. Many centuries later, however, the Anglo-Saxons have never fully replaced the indigenous Celts of Britain or her neighbors. Wales still has the Welsh, England still has the Cornish, France still has the Bretons, Scotland still has the Scots, and the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland still have the Irish, even though all but two of these six countries are now a part of the United Kingdom. Britain was diverse then and is diverse now despite the tensions still caused by differences in national identity.

[thekingofwinterblog]

Amphibia Prophecy Theory

Three Stars Burning Bright, Come From Beyond to Expel The Night, Should They Fight Or Embrace The Fall, Their Choice Will Determine All.

One thing that struck me about this prophecy that Andrias built his entire plans to subvert, is where we find it. A map presumably showcasing how Amphibia's colonial Empire looked like.

There's some valid speculation that one of these planets is the planet the Owl House takes place in(Since we know that these two series are set in the same overall setting as Gravity Falls), but what i find more interesting is what we can gleam from this picture.

The only thing we actually know about the worlds that Amphibia subjugated, is that the Mossmen originated from one of them, and the Shadowfish was presumably from another.

However, from this map, it looks like Amphibia had at the time of its fall subjugated 3 other worlds(judging by those straight lines), and at the time of this prophecy was in the process of subjugating another(The bottom left, which has some weird stuff with the lines going on).

And finally, there is Earth. Earth is clearly different than the other 4 planets, since it doesn't have a single line between it and Amphiba(messed up or straight), and in fact looks like it's deliberately marked off from the others.

Presumably, Earth had been scouted out by Amphibians, but was at the time planned for a later conquest(Once the current on was done.), one that the Amphibians never got around to doing before Andrias resurrected the Empire of old.

But this does raise the question. Why was this prophecy about the defeat of the core, put alongside a map of Amphibia's overall empire?

Well, there is the possibility that though the rulers of Amphibia didn't know where these supposed "Burning Stars" would come from. But they knew enough about the world to realise that "From beyond" meant from another world. So they listed all the worlds they knew about at the time, and guessed the answer was that this threat would come from one of them.

Given the sun and moon imagery on the top of the page, along with the text around the page, it seems that this section of the book was an in universe speculation on the prophecy. What is the night? Where will these "Stars" come from? On this page, the author laid out all his speculation on the topic. Including listing the planet where the stars would eventually come from. Earth.

And when Andrias friend stole the box and crippled the empire, she decided that the best place to go, was the one planet the Amphibians knew about, but who would not have any negative experiences with it, which would for obvious reasons make her a hated figure in her exile.

Why, mayhaps the only reason she knew about the Earth speciffically was through this book that was meant to warn the rulers of this coming danger, thus ironically laying the foundations of the Core's demise in the book meant specifically to help future monarchs protect it.

Mayhaps it was Andrias himself who showed it to her, showing her the world that HE would take and "civilize" for the empire(Or whatever justification they would have been raised on to justify their colonial empire). Maybe he even took her there personally to impress her, or sweep her off her feet.

And in the end, when going into exile, she choose this planet, that Andrias himself introduced her to. Choosing Earth, over him.

It certainly would go a long way to explain why when remaking the empire of old, Andrias has a particular hatred and obsession with Earth, despite it never having been a colony.

[soapdish290]

On page 164, the 7th RB / Varun / Judith under the madness speaks to Nona alone and says:

 “Dust of my dust—such similar star salt—what they did to you and what they wrung from you and what shape they made you fill—we see you still—we seek you still—we murdered—we who murder—you inadvertent tool—you misused green thing—come back to us—take vengeance for us—we saw you—we see you—I see you.”

And if I wasn’t an idiot, this would have confirmed that Nona was Alecto/ AL / Annabelle Lee / the split and sundered soul of the entire fucking earth. I wasn’t even that far away. The note I put in on my initial read:

oh, FUCK.

Is this a revenant inside Judith? if so, is it recognising whatever is inside Nona? the "shape they made you fill"?

I mean this sure as shit isn't Judith speaking?

Seems to aid the theory that there's something revenenant-ish inside Nona.

“revenenant-ish”. I mean, I guess I tried? By the end of the book we know that John ate and then reshaped the soul of the earth, whilst simply killing the other planets (and pluto, yeah yeah fuck off it’s not a planet anymore idc).

This is also where we get told 100% for sure that this is the 7th RB, the same that caused havoc during the end of Harrow, because Judith asks after her cavalier and then says

“Because I saw her in the waves—she was there in the grey water—I saw them all—they hurt me—where is my hunger? I eat and eat and eat without surcease, my green thing, my green-and-breathing thing…”

which is obviously referring to the post canaan house spirit bubble assault on the RB in the river, which Marta’s soul took part in.

I’m open for any guesswork on “my green thing” though. It’s mentioned FAR too often to be throwaway. I literally did a keyword search for ‘green’ and made the following, probably incomplete, list, again notes from my initial read:

Green. Herald blood. Ortus' eyes. Pyrra's original eyes. The ‘eye’ of the 8th RB. ???

Alternatively, jealousy. Envy. Less literal, more metaphor?

Anyway, back to John and Alecto.

This is also kind of interesting in that it implies the eightfold way is eating the soul of a single human being in the same way John ate the soul of AN ENTIRE PLANET. Which, sure, does explain why he’s an order of magnitude above them, AND it implies there’s some way to create a body for the soul you’ve eaten, at least in John’s case - he CREATED A.L. She didn’t exist in that form until after. 

But there are, then, 3 or even 4 varities of ‘lyctorhood’ present?

1. John eats the soul of the Earth, or tries too. It’s too much for him, and he houses part of it in another vessel (he calls it a house, which is definitely a deliberate detail, houses are important. I’m not going to think about it too hard). This becomes Alecto.

2. Mercy and Augustine etc etc. An existing person is killed and their soul ‘eaten’ in full. The soul becomes a battery seemingly much more powerful than the sum of it’s parts, for reasons unknown (or missed). 3. Pyrrha and 1st ed Gideon. Not sure the how of it, but we ended with 2 souls timesharing a body imperfectly. Based on the Cam/Palamedes and Pyrrha/Gideon differences, whose body it is matters. I sincerely wish Nona gave more of a fuck about this so we in turn knew more about it all. Alas.

4. Paul. A true mixing, based on scraps Nona overhears but, again, gives no fucks about and doesn’t examine. a ‘new’ soul. No real idea what their power level etc actually is because, AGAIN, NONA.

5? Anastasia and Samael. Harrow, pg 482:

She’d learned the trick was to do the Eightfold slower—more methodically—and it was still more of an accident than design. But it’s not as simple as her getting it right, and me stopping her. She panicked midway through. She hadn’t got his soul inside her all the way—if she had, Samael dying would have killed her too … They were both in danger. I killed him for her benefit, and she knew that at the time.”

I reckon if I was to do a proper cross referencing through John’s consumption of the Earth I’d work out what ‘the trick’ was, but I haven’t done so and this is long enough. For now, just something to highlight. I’ve a LOT of ‘just something’s to highlight, but I think this has already crept a long way away from my original point

[cheyj05]

Marvin is *not* a member of IRIS

 There’s very few solid conclusions you can come to from the new video only guesswork but here’s one that I’m pretty sure of.  “But Chey!” you may ask “how can you be so sure? We didn’t even see Marvin in the newest video!”. That is a good question and one I will answer here today!

   First of all let’s establish one thing very quickly, WTCHR is most likely before all of the other videos chronologically, this is not a sure fact, but it would make sense if it were, so we’re going to be acting like it is a sure fact in this theory.

  That would mean WTCHR is before Argentum Inanis. In WTCHR it is said that IRIS has an Antimatter generator. In Argentum Inanis, the book says IRIS = ANTMATTER. This is where my theory comes in. 

 You see, in the book there seems to be two different writings.

 One written carefully and neatly and another in big dark strokes oftentimes scribbled in the corner and sometimes seemly having blacked out some words of the original text. They are visibly different handwriting so they’re not by the same person. The neat writing is probably the author of the book, that would only make sense considering it’s the majority of the text. The dark writing is probably Marvin’s notes. Scribbling things he knows but the book doesn’t say into the corners and crossing out stuff that isn’t true/irrelevant. He even underlined Argentum Inanis! That meaning that Marvin was the person who wrote IRIS = ANTIMATTER.

 But see, that begs the question; if Marvin were a member of IRIS, why would he write that? As a member of IRIS he would know all about the Antimatter generator, wouldn’t he? So why would he need to note down that IRIS = ANTIMATTER? Also the note feels a bit...impersonal. Like he doesn’t IRIS personally. That’s not really founded on anything, it’s just a vibe.

  Besides Marvin comes across as someone searching for information but getting way more than he bargained for in Argentum Inanis. If Anti was really created by IRIS as we’ve theorized, wouldn’t he know? Honestly it seems like: IRIS made an Antimatter generator, something went wrong and Anti happened, Marvin caught wind of some shit going on so decided to investigate, and Marvin gets in over his head and gets possessed. 

  The dark notes *could* be written by someone other than Marvin. Maybe by Marvin’s teacher or predecessor who got murked so Mavin decided to take up the mantle. We have no proof this person exists so let’s just assume the notes are Marvin’s.

   In conclusion, Marvin is not a member of IRIS, he’s just someone who got more than he bargained for.

[stormblessed95]

Hey storm actually I wanted to ask you if you think that there are any BTS songs that are related to jikook not directly obv maybe Indirectly? Because the other day I read a vmin blogger who wrote a whole damn essay on how spring day is a vmin song or indirectly is their song I didn't read all of it yet cuz it was way too freakin long but I wanted to know about your thoughts on this ps I am not trying to prove anyone wrong in this ask,we all know at the end of the day that noone is 100% sure about these ships so just saying.

Have a good day 💜

Are there any songs that I personally might relate to them and associate with them? BTS or otherwise, yes. Songs that I think are about them indirectly but for real? Not really.

Serendipity is Jikook's song. It was NOT written for or about them though, not really. They claimed it, openly and freely, afterwards. They took that romantic song of Jimin's, that was for BTS's album, and said, this song fits us and is ours. I talk about that here:

The only other song that I think might be for them, or that they might have claimed, although much quieter, is Magic Shop. I talk about that here when I talk about theories over JKs solo songs:

As for any others, again, I don't *really* think so. Does that mean that there are no songs they pulled inspiration from when making up their lyrics of their own feelings, it's possible. I just don't see any strong enough to make theories off it. They haven't shared with us at least.

As for spring day v/min theories. I cannot possibly think of one that would hold any ground. Although I went looking and think i found the blog you stumbled across too. And just... everyone ever has to have a my ship compared to jikook debunking post 🙄 lol oh well. They hadn't posted their theory yet and are apparently writing a novel. I'm a little curious, but not that much. They both have songs they've written thay they confirmed were for each other and much more easier to put on them songs too. Spring Day, other than their choreo together, confuses me. But I digress. Not my ship theory, not my problem 😂😅

Theories are guesswork at the end of the day and that's all like you said. As long as they are respectful, I have no problem with anyone making any type of theories they want. Again. As long as they are respectful about it. Hope this helps answer your question!

[squeeneyart]

Breathe in the Salt - Chapter 24

AO3

Beta reader as always is @thesnadger!

Keeping busy makes the day go by.

Martin and Jon discuss household chores.

Martin took great care to not make too much noise as he walked down the stairs. He still avoided the creakiest steps, and down he went as quiet as the house would allow.

He didn’t wonder whether the night before had been a dream. His dreams weren’t like that, so vivid and specific. They weren’t narratives he could make sense of, if he remembered them at all. On waking, he was usually left with the anxious certainty that he had made a horrible mistake or had forgotten to do something important. But that night had been real.

Still, when he made it to the ground floor he peeked in the downstairs toilet to make sure Jon’s clothes were hanging on the shower rod along with the small bag he’d been carrying. Those items were present. What he didn’t find was the seal skin.

Martin continued to the living room door. Curled up into a tight ball, Jon remained buried in the blanket and couch cushions. Martin let loose the breath he’d been holding. He continued on to the kitchen to make his breakfast in silence.

It was nothing to dwell on. Jon must’ve stowed the coat somewhere while Martin was asleep. They hadn’t known each other that long, so it wouldn’t do to keep something so important openly hanging in the shower when Jon had had such a scare with the thing. He’d trusted Martin enough to tell him the truth. It didn’t matter that Jon had squirreled the skin away in the dead of night.

Had Jon believed what he’d said about his mother leaving? Was it suspicious that she was gone?

Toast popped up hot and ready, making him jump. He looked back into the living room, checking if the noise had been enough to wake Jon, but the man was sound asleep in his little cocoon. Perhaps all of the caution wasn’t necessary with someone who was sleeping well for the first time in weeks. Longer, if his habit of calling without any thought to the time was any indication. 

He should’ve checked on Jon. Even if he hadn’t had reason to suspect anything it’s what he would’ve appreciated in Jon’s place. Just because he hadn’t felt like making the effort-

Would it have helped, though, if Tim and Sasha were ready to cover things up? What excuse could they have given except that Jon had lost his mobile or switched numbers and hadn’t given out his new one yet? He hadn’t had a real reason to pry into Jon’s business. A barely established friendship didn’t count.

He could have tried anyway. Hopefully letting Jon stay would make up for it, even if there was no bed to offer.

While he wasn’t against letting him use his own bed in theory, Martin knew he was too bloody tall to sleep comfortably on the old couch all night. If things went on long enough it could be discussed, but it was better for both of them to get sleep.

Hers didn’t count.

Thinking that far ahead wouldn’t do any good, so he pushed his mess of thoughts to one side and focused on eating breakfast and scribbling onto a small piece of paper.

‘Jon,

Help yourself to food. Be back in the evening.

-Martin’

Martin considered the note for a moment, then scribbled his number at the bottom. 

‘For emergencies.’

What emergencies he could help with he couldn’t say, but he left his number all the same. The chance of Jon having it memorized was slim to none and it wouldn’t have been fair to keep Jon with no contact at all. It was the best excuse Martin could hope for.

He gently laid his plate in the sink in one final attempt to keep the silence, and got ready to leave.

--

Jon didn’t call him at any point that day. And rightly so, following prior agreements of safety and secrecy. It was fine, no calls meant no emergencies, but as the hours passed it was easy to forget the outside world and its greater goings-on. The window on the front door wasn’t much of a reminder, not with how tiny and far away it was, and not with the crappy weather blocking any light other than what could seep through the endless grey. 

The wall clock was placed in an awkward location from where he sat, so timekeeping felt like guesswork. He’d stopped checking the clock often to avoid the disappointment of finding himself only five minutes closer to leaving. It could be any day of the week if he kept his mobile out of sight. 

But he could feel lunch time. He could feel when he was to climb the stairs and complete his tasks by muscle memory. And he knew in his bones when he was meant to leave.

In the dark of the evening the timelessness clung to him. It wasn’t until he got to the bottom of the cliffs and saw the windows lit up from the inside of his home that he felt himself settle back into the present. There was a person in his house, and for a while he stood back by the forest path and stared at the little square of light that was his kitchen window. 

He felt like an intruder, a spy peering in through his own kitchen window from afar, and it took a particularly large gust of rain-splattering wind in his face to get him moving again.

It was his house. There was just a person in it other than himself.

The smell of cooked food was the first thing he noticed when he walked inside, even before he saw the small and scuffed brown shoes on the rug, or the thin jacket on the end hook he normally used. Something was being cooked, fried, and he spent a minute on the front rug not knowing how to proceed.

From the kitchen, he heard a tentative, “Martin? Is that you?”

“Oh! Yeah, it’s me.” Finally placing the damned coat somewhere, he slipped off his shoes and walked toward the kitchen. 

Jon peeked his head through the kitchen doorway, wariness falling from his face as he saw Martin for himself. “Barely heard the door open over the wind outside. How were things today?”

“Fine, I guess? What’s-” Martin looked over Jon’s head and saw a pan hissing on the stove, alongside a boiling pot of water. “What’re you making?”

“Something easy and not made of fish,” Jon replied, heading toward the stove top. “Hope you don’t mind, I used some of the chicken in the freezer and box pasta. Should be enough for the both of us.”

Head running on empty, Martin could only nod and take a seat at the kitchen table, threading and unthreading his fingers in front of him. It felt wrong to be sitting there in his own kitchen without a task, but Jon had already put in the time and effort to make dinner. Still, his hands were painfully idle in his lap.

He said quietly, “Smells good.”

From the stove, Jon raised an eyebrow but kept his eyes on the pan in front of him. “I’d hope so. Can’t go much more basic than this.” He lifted the pan to show breaded chicken frying away.

“Still, it’s nice of you. Thanks.”

“Mm.” He flipped the stove off and went to strain the noodles. “Anyway, now that I’m awake, thank you for letting me stay the night. Hopefully this helps make up for my sudden appearance.” 

“It’s no trouble. Would’ve liked more warning, though.”

Jon frowned. “Well… I would’ve called if I could.”

It didn’t feel like a purposeful accusation, but it stung anyway. “Can’t change things now. Speaking of calling, though… Did you want me to get in touch with Tim or Sasha about this? I know you said you wanted to wait until they were here, but I don’t know when that’ll be.” 

“No, not yet.” Jon placed a strainer full of noodles back over the pot and leaned against the counter. “Call me over-cautious, but I don’t trust anything traceable right now. I’d considered calling Georgie over your phone line to pass on a message, but I don’t think her going in a second time would fly under the radar.”

Chewing the inside of his cheek, Martin said, “So until they get here…”

“Until then, I’d like to stay here. We can explain things to Tim and Sasha, figure out your situation, and then-” His face fell. “I’m not sure what comes after that.”

In the silence that followed, Jon busied himself with assembling two plates of food, turned in such a way that Martin couldn’t see his expression. It was an uncomfortable quiet that ate away at the composure he’d managed to pull together throughout the work day. 

When Jon set the plate down in front of him, he jumped in his seat.

Jon’s brows scrunched together. “Are you all right?”

“Just… tired, is all.”

“Right. So-” Jon set his own plate down and sat on the other side of the table, a perfectly natural choice of seating. “We didn’t talk for long last night. I know part of what you’re going through isn’t- it’s not by business, but if I’m going to help then I need to know if you’ve noticed any changes, with the lighthouse or with- with other things.”

Martin stared down at his dinner. It was plain, breaded chicken with noodles. Smelled a bit of lemon and garlic. 

“Everything’s fine. Nothing’s changed besides what you already know.” 

It was fine. The taste was about what he would’ve expected from the smell, and it was better than anything he’d been planning to make with his remaining energy. It was a nice thing for Jon to do. He forced each bite down through the sting of his throat.

“It tastes all right?” Jon asked casually. 

Martin nodded with a raise of his eyebrows, taking another bite of chicken.

“Good. I’m not out of practice.” 

After that, the only sounds remaining were those of clinking silverware and the beating of rain on the kitchen window.

It should’ve been nice, but as Martin ate the pain in his throat only grew, spreading through his head and upper chest. It was nice that Jon had made dinner, and he’d kept it simple enough that even Martin could pay it back in the future. Something as tiny as this shouldn’t have made him feel anything other than full. Instead his head pounded behind his eyes.

“You… You don’t have to eat it,” Jon said. When Martin looked up he was met with an expression of mild exasperation. “It’s fine if you don’t like it. I’m not holding you at gunpoint. Though if I’m going to be living here we should probably settle what we each don’t like.”

“What?” God, that wasn’t a pleasant sound, especially with food still in his mouth. Martin swallowed down hard, realized he had nothing to drink, and stood up. “I need some water. You?”

Thrown off somewhat, Jon sputtered, “N- Well, yes, but-”

“Great.” Martin strode across the kitchen and grabbed two glasses from the cabinet to fill in the sink. As he held one under the faucet, he noticed there were no dirty dishes underneath.

From behind he could hear Jon shift in his chair. “It’s really not a big deal if you don’t like it.”

With two full glasses he returned to the table, taking a sip of his own and then setting them both down. “What is? No, right, yeah, dinner tastes fine. Don’t know what you’re on about.”

“Martin, that’s not very convincing when you were just staring at it like it was a lump of mud.”

“I wasn’t-” He took his seat and reached internally for some excuse with no luck. What kind of faces had he been making? Reaching for his fork, he said, “It’s fine. Good. It’s good.”

“There’s something else, then.”

“I… The food is good. It was very nice of you to make it.” His throat went tight and he said no more.

Frowning at his meal, Jon said defeatedly, “Okay. If you say so.”

The rest of the meal passed in silence. If he made any other sour faces then Jon ignored them, and Martin did his best to be more aware of what his eyes and mouth were doing while eating as quickly as he could manage. 

It wasn’t soon enough, but he finally finished and put his plate in the sink. God, he’d barely gotten home and was ready to run upstairs and hide away for the night. Was eating dinner with someone always so exhausting? The answer came easily to mind, but this felt worse than meals spent with stubborn silence or bitter exchanges. 

Jon had wanted to be nice, and-

“So, we should discuss… things. Not the food-” Jon said from directly behind him, dirty dishes in hand. He inched around Martin to place them in the sink. “-but we need to talk about how it’s going to work, me being here. I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

Martin cleared his throat, taking a step to the side to give Jon some room. “You’re not a nuisance. You didn’t have much of a choice in this, if any.”

“And you didn’t ask to have me knocking in your door. Here, let me-” Jon rolled up his sleeves and got to work scrubbing the dishes.

Martin bristled. “You don’t have to-”

“I’m the one who made dinner.”

Martin’s face scrunched. “I don’t think that’s how it works. You made dinner, so I should clean up.” He watched with some irritation as Jon continued his task.

“Next time, then. I already got a head start this morning.”

An even better reason for Martin to be the one to wash up after dinner, but that ship had sailed without him apparently. 

“Look, I’m-” He pushed through the tightness in his chest. “I’m glad you’re here, all right? Better than you getting eaten by a shark or something.” 

Jon squinted at him. “So… we’re fine?”

“What? Yeah, ‘course we’re fine!” In spite of everything, a laugh crept into Martin’s voice. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

A troubled look crossed Jon’s face. “No, you’re right. The last few weeks got to me I think, not seeing people.” 

With some hesitation, Jon continued, “If it makes you feel better, I’m glad to have something to do.” He paused, sudsy glass in his hand. “Sitting around all day doesn’t come naturally to me, and I’ve been all but useless for weeks.”

Ah. Martin felt the indignation seep out of his jaw and shoulders, leaving him rather deflated all of a sudden. All that bristling on his part and Jon had only been bored to the point of doing chores.

“That’s... not your fault,” Martin replied quietly. He leaned back against the counter top and tapped his fingers on the rounded edges. “But okay. Sorry.”

Resuming the job at hand, Jon kept his eyes down and stayed quiet. There wasn’t much to wash off of the plates, but he was diligent in scrubbing down the frying pan until not a speck of grease remained. His fingertips began to prune.

Eventually, he spoke up. “As I was saying before, we should talk about me staying here because of situations like this. If you have… particularities with housekeeping, I should know.”

Martin rolled his eyes. “It’s not a- whatever, do what you like. I suppose it’s better to live with someone who keeps clean.”

“As much as the average person,” Jon said, rinsing off the last bit of soap from a plate. He reached out to grab a hand towel. “Don’t expect me to always be this eager for chores.”

“What, is the excitement wearing off already?” He’d been aiming for a light, teasing tone but ended with dry judgment.

“You know me, always looking for the next thrill,” he deadpanned.

Martin leaned back on the heels of his hands. “Jon, you’re a professional ghost hunter.”

Jon tossed the towel back onto the sink. “I am not. I research the paranormal and complete necessary field work.”

“By looking for static in recordings and breaking into buildings.”

“That’s not- your situation is a special case. I assure you, my regular days are based almost entirely around paperwork and fact-checking.” He walked into the living room and with a scowl plopped onto the couch. After a moment his mouth untwisted into a small frown. “They were, anyway.”

Martin followed behind and looked at him, looked at the lines on his forehead and under his eyes, at his bouncing knee. He looked better than he had the day before, but it would take more than a single good night to make up for weeks of wandering and disconnection. Another apology sat behind his own lips, but he let it die as the useless thing it was. 

There was one thing he could help with. Walking over to the ancient desk in the corner, he picked up a bulky old laptop from the drawer and brought it over to the couch with him. “Probably should’ve mentioned it in the note, but I do have wi-fi. Technically.” 

The laptop was old. He’d bought it for himself years back but with the weak signal he got it wasn’t easy to deal with, and in his mind the very concept of social media was never going to work for him. So, it was largely a clunky and underused alternative to his phone. It sat heavy on his lap and he remembered why he rarely bothered with it.

Jon’s eyebrows shot up, and he scooted closer on the seat. Voice dripping with relief, he said, “I’m shocked you can get a signal down here.” 

The sudden proximity made Martin’s heart skip. He opened the computer on his lap and focused on the screen. “Mind you it’s not good wi-fi, but it should help pass the time. Still has a disc drive as well.”

It took far longer than he would’ve liked for the thing to boot up, but against all odds it reached the desktop with its default background and sparse folders. He really hadn’t done much with the thing, had he? Perhaps when everything was done with he could sell it.

For the time being, though, Jon was clearly itching to get his hands on it, so after a quick check that it still connected to the internet he passed it over. 

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that he immediately hopped onto a site for sifting through journal articles, but Martin stifled a laugh. Whether pushed by professional diligence or personal interest, Jon was too engrossed to notice. 

With a small sense of accomplishment, Martin pushed himself onto his feet and moved toward the hall. He made it halfway across the room before he was noticed.

“You’re not going to bed already.” 

The tone of the sentence sat between incredulity and a statement of fact, and it gave Martin pause. When he glanced back, Jon was still looking at the laptop screen. 

“I mean… no, I was just going to get into pyjamas?”

“Okay. There was a short documentary on architecture I found when I was still doing research at my flat. It might be helpful to our ends.” He typed something and made a face. “It might also be complete bunk, but I should be able to track it down while you’re upstairs.”

It was enough of a dismissal that Martin could only say, “Oh. Um, all right?” Then he left the room in a hurry, as he apparently had things to do that night.

Back upstairs he went with a new if unexpected purpose to change out of his work clothes, still skipping the loudest steps as best he could.

Around the time he’d managed to slip on some flannel pyjama pants and an old t-shirt, tears had leaked from his eyes and then ceased almost immediately. There were no sobs to choke back, just streaks of warmth on his cheeks that dried as quickly as they’d formed.

He rubbed his face with the back of his hand, grateful that his eyes wouldn’t be red and puffy, and then walked back downstairs.

[kingandfireheart]

Mating Bonds: a mostly neutral analysis of the bonds in ACOTAR universe

I know everyone is like SECRET AZRIEL MATING BOND, but isn’t the whole point of the mating bond in non-Maeve situations supposed to be that once it snaps, the instincts takeover and it’s hard to ignore, or miss? In doing this analysis, I noticed some trends with mating bond, but mostly realized that I have a lot more questions than answers when it comes to how these bonds actually work in practice. My musings are below:

[Since TOG is a different universe and Rowaelin's mating bond is complicated because of Maeve's foul play, the coexistent Carranam bond, and the blood oath, this analysis does not include any discussion of their bond, and is limited to the bonds discussed in ACOTAR. ]

How the bond choses a couple?

The concept of the bond is a bit nebulous. Rhys hypothesizes that the mating bond is the result of guesswork, possibly related to power, offspring, or a soul-bond, but we don't really know how accurate that is.

The power theory makes sense with the bonds we know exist, if the Cauldron is able to predict the power the Archeron sisters have after being Made. While we have evidence that Nesta and Feyre are mated to Cassian and Rhys prior to being Made, they don't gain that power until they are Made. All of the mated pairs we know are incredibly powerful (either high lords, a high lord's heir, and Cassian, and three Archeron sisters, Rhys and Tamlin's moms, and Vivianne).

The offspring theory, makes significantly less sense, unless we assume that the Cauldron/Mother/whoever decides these things is all-knowing. Clearly, Rhys's parent's mating resulted in the most powerful high lord. However, with same-sex mates, this theory immediately fails. Even if the offspring theory for some reason didn't apply to same-sex couple, or couples that were otherwise unable to procreate, it still doesn't work for the Illyrian Male + High Fae Female bonds, which would likely lead to death, unless the Cauldron was able to predict the changes Nesta makes to herself and Feyre. Any offspring of the Made Archeron sisters would be incredibly powerful, if they were able to survive childbirth.

The soul-bonded theory has failed with Rhys and Tamlin's parents, has succeeded with Feysand, Nessian, and Kallias x Vivianne, but the jury is still out on Elain and Lucien.

Even though the rationale of the bond isn't necessarily important (I firmly reject all of the "Azriel's mate must be able the have his kids" theories), how the bond works is also portrayed inconsistently.

How the bond works?

Feyre and Rhys's bond seems to play more into their daemati powers, and is easily masked by their bargain. We don't know if or how Vivianne and Kallias, and Cassian and Nesta can communicate through their bond, since there are such few scenes with them together (post-bond acceptance).

It's also unclear what "snapping" and "rejection" mean in the context of the bond.

Cassian and Rhys fear the bond being "rejected" after their bonds are "locked into place permanently" and "became unbreakable". Rhys seems to imply that "rejection" doesn't actually alter the bond, it stays in place as a tether, and the males often go insane from the rejection. This seems to to imply that "rejection" is more of a concept of practice, a "breaking up" of the couple, rather than a breaking of the mental and soul connection that the bond creates.

Prior to ACOSF, I believed the mutual acceptance of the bond was the "snapping," because in ACOWAR, Rhys says that it's hard to detect whether Nesta and Cassian are mates until after the bond "snaps," but it's clear from ACOSF, that Cassian was aware of the bond well before this moment. However, in ACOSF, we see that Elain and Lucien's bond is something that Azriel can detect, even though their bond hasn't been accepted.

I've separated bond-related evidence into The Male Realization, the Female Realization, and Bond Acceptance, because those are the scenes that are most recognizable. [All of this is based on the idea that the male has the earlier realization of the bond and the more powerful instincts, because we haven't seen the process of recognizing and accepting the bond for the same-sex couples in SJMs works (Emrys and Malakai in TOG and Thesan and his suspected Peregryn mate mentioned in ACOWAR). I'd assume for these couples, one person had the realization before the other, but the mating instincts are all the same, but again, SJM's work is inconsistent when it refers to the gendered nature of bonds.]

The Male Realization

We've never seen a male's perspective when they recognize the mating bond for what it is, but Feyre observes the realization for both Rhysand and Lucien.

Even though Rhys had long suspected the bond, going as far as trying to kill Amarantha because of it, he literally stumbles in shock when the bond snaps for him, and his first words to Mor upon returning to the townhouse are “she’s my mate.” Rhys clearly feels protective of Feyre since he first met her. He describes the moment of realization, saying "I think transforming you into Fae made the bond lock into place permanently. I’d known it existed, but it hit me then—hit me so strong that I panicked." This "locking into place" seems to be a reference to the bond not being as strong, or being tenuous when Feyre was human, and then the bond gaining strength when she became fae, since Rhys still fears Feyre rejecting the bond in ACOMAF.

We see Lucien whisper it at the worst possible time in Hybern, when Elain comes out of the Cauldron. He is able to break free of Hybern's holds and defend Elain throughout the Hybern scene. We also see him struggle to control his instincts when around Elain, which shows us his realization and manifestation of instincts.Lucien’s perspective also shows us that the bond literally speaks. "Touch her. Smell her. Taste her. The instincts were a running river -" "But even as shame washed through him, the words, the sense chanted, Mine. You are mine, and I am yours. Mate." (ACOWAR) There are also two references to him snarling at males in Elain's presence, which is the manifestation of the territorial/protective instinct.

Meanwhile, the other two accepted bonds involve males who ignored the bond, Kallias (to keep Vivianne safe when he was UTM) and Cassian (likely to have a fighting chance with Nesta). (It is also suspected that Thesan ignored the potential bond with his lover while he was UTM). We know basically nothing about Kallias and Thesan, but we are given some more information from Cassian's perspective.

We see Cassian's experience with the bond is different than Rhys and Lucien. He describes the bond as, "what [he] guessed from the moment [they] met, what [he] knew from the first time he kissed [Nesta], what became unbreakable between [them] on Solstice night." He, like Rhys, "guessed it well before the Cauldron had turned her." It's possible that the bond may have been less strong when she was human, and then gained strength and "locked into place permanently" when Nesta came out of the Cauldron, like it did with Rhys and Feyre (and ostensibly, Elain and Lucien), but there is no textual reference to that being the case.

What we know is that Cassian is both instinctively and consciously protective of Nesta from the moment she walks into the room in Hybern. The first time Cassian kisses Nesta is either when he visits her in Wings and Ember and he kisses her neck, or when he is about to die during the war, after he has literally laid down his life defending Nesta. But when this happens, we see no "shock" of realization, like we did with the other two pairings. We just know that Cassian has this realization, prior to ACOSF and ACOFAS, because Cassian's perspective shows him ignoring the bond, “Some small, quiet part of his brain whispered otherwise. He ignored it. Had ignored it for a long time now.” (ACOSF). Even after "what became unbreakable between [them] on Solstice night," Cassian says, "the only thing that frightened him was that she might reject it. Hate him for it. Chafe against it."

So I think it's possible that if Azriel does have a mating bond, he hasn't had the realization yet, but may have started to see the signs with either of his love interests. If he does have a bond, it seems that it would have "spoken" to him, making him realize it, unless there's some magical or psychological reason he misses it completely.

The Female Realization

In the ACOTAR universe, it seems that the female doesn't usually "realize" the bond is there on her own, or at least Vivianne, Nesta, Feyre, and Elain haven't. (Aelin did in TOG, but we are ignoring that here for aforementioned reasons).

Feyre has no clue about the bond until the Suriel tells her. That is not to say that Feyre doesn't feel a tug toward Rhys, she just doesn't recognize that tug as the mating bond, and she's surprised that she is an apparent equal to the most powerful high lord in history.

Nesta seems to have guessed the bond is there, but is repressing that, because she fears what it will mean for her and Cassian. "At [Cassian's] utter silence, she knew what he'd say. Halted again, bracing for it" and when Cassian finally says it, "She let the truth, voiced at last, wash over her." However, Nesta's delayed realization doesn't stop the "golden thread" moment from occurring, which I am interpreting as the acceptance of the bond.

We haven't seen Elain's perspective yet, but we do see that Elain knows Lucien is her mate, and she feels him "tug" on the bond during ACOWAR. Elain also steps toward Lucien when he leaves to find Vassa. We have no clue what any of this means, but we do know that Elain knows the bond is present with Lucien, and she hasn't reacted to him in any way because of it.

It may be possible the Gwyn or Elain are able to detect a bond with Azriel prior to him recognizing (like Aelin in TOG), if there is some foul play, or some other psychological reason for Azriel to have missed the recognition and manifestation of instincts. But more likely than not, if Azriel does have a bond, it hasn't manifested or "snapped" yet, or at least, we didn't see that manifestation in the bonus chapter.

The Bond Acceptance

We know the males feel the bond before the females do, but it seemed the "golden thread" moment we see with Feysand and Nessian is the bond being accepted.

The offering of food seems to be the official ritual for acceptance, rather than a requirement or a trigger, since Nesta doesn't offer Cassian food until after ACOSF. Rather, it seems the bond acceptance is triggered by sex and a recognition of feelings. For Feyre, and Vivianne, the bond snaps the first time they have sex with their mates, but after feelings are clearly established, and for Nesta it manifests after the both admit to having feelings for one another on Solstice night.

Feyre and Nesta say the , "You're mine. I'm yours," refrain in these moments, which makes me think this is the bond's instincts manifesting for the females (although we see both sisters be jealous/ protective when other females are around their mates prior to the bond acceptance). This acceptance seems to be what strengthens the territorial instincts (Rhysand fighting Cassian in tensing around Azriel in ACOMAF) and what initiates the frenzy, which Cassian describes as, "I woke up the next morning and all I wanted to do was fuck [Nesta] for the a week straight. And I knew what that meant, what had happened, even though [Nesta] didn't".

So what does it mean for the bond to "snap"?

That's still really unclear! If the bond snapping means detection, it would be helpful to know when others detected Feysand and Nessian's bonds. We never see that happen, Amren "sniffs" Feyre, but she knows about the Bond prior to that moment, because she is the one who advises Rhys on using the bond as a way to free Feyre from Tamlin. No one reveals to Feyre or Nesta that a mating bond exists, but it is also possible that Nesta's glamour on Solstice was meant to hide more than just Cassian's scent on Nesta, and that Feyre and Rhys's mixed scents when Rhys is shot in ACOMAF is a result of the mating bond, not just the fact that the couples were sexually intimate, and physically close enough for their scents to transfer.

Meanwhile, Feyre and Tamlin (and Thesan and his lover) have sex and admit to having feelings for eachother, but are described as "waiting for the bond to snap". This would imply that the bond often "snaps" later, for established couples. Similarly, when Rhys and Feyre are discussing Mor and Azriel, Feyre asks, “Wouldn’t the mating bond have snapped into place for them if it exists?” Rhys responds: "I think that is a question Azriel has been asking himself every day since he met Mor.” With Moriel, we have neither recognition of feelings or sex, but Rhysand and Feyre seem to think the bond would "snap" regardless of Azriel's lack of love confession, and their lack of physical relationship.

So all of this leaves us with even more questions than we started with!

When does a mating bond "snap" and is this a different moment form when the bond is "accepted" or "realized?"

Has Elain and Lucien's bond "snapped?" And if so, what triggers "snapping?"

If it hasn't snapped, why can Azriel smell their bond? And why weren't Nesta or Feyre able to smell their own unaccepted bonds before they realized what was happening?

If Azriel is Elain's true mate or is Gwyn's mate, why hasn't he realized it yet? Would he be able to miss the bond completely absent foul play?

Is physical proximity what triggers the scent? or mental connection? or something else entirely?

Anyway, SJM hasn't given us any meaningful answers on these concepts, but there do seem to be some trends. It's Sarah's world, we're just reading it, but I really hope she clears up these concepts when she writes her next set of mates.

[nothorses]

Pepe Salvator

Someone asked me to elaborate on my tags on this post, so it’s time for an extremely niche art history lesson.

Salvator Mundi is a painting that may or may not be one of less than 20 surviving paintings by Leonardo DaVinci.

It was presumed destroyed after 1649, uncovered in 2005, and broke records in 2017 as the most expensive painting ever sold- for $450.3 million. It is the only DaVinci in private possession, and it is now considered lost again.

(If you didn’t read that in The Voice, please go back and read it again.)

So we have a couple of questions to ask.

1. Is this even DaVinci?

Attribution is tricky with works like these. If we don’t have a well-documented history of a work and its location, we have to rely on visual clues. To make things even harder, Salvator Mundi is one of DaVinci’s most copied works, and this painting was presumed to be a copy as well- after it's owner at the time was executed in 1649, and the painting was stolen from his home to be sold.

This painting in particular was heavily restored; a process that involves chemical cleanings which strip layers of paint away, physically scraping the surface of the paint, and overpainting.

In 2005, the painting looked like this:

It was auctioned for only $10k, and accurately described as "a wreck", but the current owners believed it could be the lost original. They had it restored.

After cleaning and removing the (frankly hideous) overpainting, it looked like this. The thing was in seven pieces, and restoration from this point was going to involve a lot of glue, wood, and painting, to fill in the gaps. But this is where they made an important discovery:

There’s two fucking thumbs on his right hand.

One thumb is the final, seen in the restored version and every other copy, and one thumb is more upright- and painted over. Discovered in an infrared photograph of the piece, the more upright thumb indicates that there was an earlier draft of the piece.

See, the thing about the thumbs is that when people make copies of a painting, there’s not a lot of guesswork. They may tweak some details here and there, but not something so significant as the pose itself, and not so late in the final execution.

It helps that DaVinci is known for being sort of a neurotic perfectionist. It also helps that the soft, blurred edges around the figure (called sfumato) is a technique created by DaVinci, and based in his research of optics. Most experts agree that the the painting is stylistically “very DaVinci”, and have described it as “having a DaVinci vibe about it” (paraphrasing).

Some other experts have said it isn’t DaVinci because the crystal ball doesn’t warp the image behind it.

DaVinci was meticulous about how accurately he depicted things, and he went to great lengths to make his artwork look realistic. The fact that the ball doesn’t warp the light in any way is extremely sus, given DaVinci had journals full of studies on that exact thing.

The answering theories are that he may have done it out of religiosity; not warping an image of Christ. Or maybe it’s a miracle. The more scientific theory is that he’s actually depicting a hollow sphere- which would explain the very slight “double line” refraction on the back of Christ’s left hand.

2. Where’d it fucking go?

A few things have happened with this painting that are uh... wild, to say the least.

The piece was originally commissioned for Louis XII of France, and then... about 150 years happened, I guess.

In 1649 the piece is in London, for some reason, and the owner- the First Duke of Hamilton- is executed after the English Civil War. The painting is presumed to be destroyed at this point, and everything from this point on until 2005 is guesswork and intense detective bullshit.

Salvator Mundi shows up in the private art collection of Charles I’s wife. Charles I is executed, prompting the 11-year existence of the English Commonwealth. The painting is sold off for £30 to a creditor 1651, who then hands it back to Charles II after he comes back from exile, and then the English Commonwealth stops existing again in 1660.

James II inherits Salvator Mundi. He thinks it’d be a cool gift for his mistress, and the mistress thinks it’d be a cool gift for the illegitimate daughter they had together, and then that daughter becomes the third wife of the Duke of Buckingham.

George III buys the Duke’s house in 1763, and the Duke’s illegitimate son auctions the painting off to god knows who. It floats around for a while, gets a sweet as hell gilded frame in the 1800′s, and is bought by an art collector in 1900.

That art collector’s great-grandson auctions this literal original Leonardo DaVinci painting off in 1958 for £45. which is about £884 today- or $1.2k. Imagine.

It floats around until the sale in 2005, and isn’t attributed to DaVinci until 2011.

3. Where is it??

The painting was sold at auction for $450.3 million in 2017, the most expensive art sale- period. The buyer remained anonymous at the time, but was later revealed to be a Saudi Prince, with his friend the crown prince, who promised it would be displayed in The Louvre Abu Dabhi. They cancelled.

In 2019, it was reported to be stored in the crown prince’s private yacht, then maybe in storage in Switzerland. Reports are uncertain, though, and as a private sale, there’s no way to track it.

For all intents and purposes, the painting is just... lost. Again.

4. Broadway

This wasn’t a question, really, but there’s gonna be a Broadway musical about this painting. Look forward to that.

[alittlewhump]

Unbidden - Act 4, chapter 4

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Content warnings: fantasy violence

It was the sound that gave the first clue to Izual's location. The howling, to be precise. It cut like a finely honed blade through the faraway sounds of demons going about their business. Those noises were babbling, sometimes raucous, natural expressions of creatures in their home element. This was something different. It was hard, and cold, and achingly lonely somehow. Morgan shivered as he followed Blaise in the direction of its source.

She paused at the corner of a ruin, the two rough walls all that remained of an ancient building. "You said he'd be alone, right? That has to be who we're after." Morgan nodded, already reaching out to feed some magic into the ground beneath the lone figure at the centre of what might have been a plaza at one time.

The figure howled again, and its clawed hands wrenched and tore violently at... something on its back. Something that had once been wings, Morgan realized as it spread what remained of them, reduced to little more than bloodied bone and tendon. Shreds of leathery membrane quivered with the force of its baying. These ruined appendages were nothing like the tendrils of light that made up an angel's wings. Perhaps that was why it wanted to be rid of them so badly, Morgan thought.

There was no sense in further prolonging its suffering. With a push of will, the earth reached up to hold the creature in place. It did not struggle. Instead it froze for a second, then fell silent and tipped its head back to bare its throat in an implicit surrender.

Blaise dispatched it efficiently. But as the body fell, something remained standing. It peeled back out of the lifeless form, amorphous and nearly transparent. After a moment it resolved into the shape of an angel. It seemed to be staring down at the fallen husk. Morgan could still see right through it. The angel began to speak in a voice that sounded like an echo.

"Tyrael was a fool to have trusted me. I told Diablo and his brothers about the soulstones. About how they could be corrupted. I helped them mastermind their own exile to your world. The plan we set in motion so long ago cannot be stopped. Hell itself will spill into your world like a tidal wave of blood and nightmares."

"What exactly is this plan?" Blaise lowered her bow but kept it drawn.

"To corrupt the stones, allowing their influence to spread across your world unnoticed by the angelic host. Their claws are already hooked into the fabric of your world, and they are eager to shred the veil separating it from Hell."

"And what's stopping them? If they're so eager, why haven't they done it yet?"

"Their long imprisonment has diminished their power. They must restore themselves here, in their home, before unleashing Hell on earth. Even now Diablo and Baal seek the rejuvenation of the Chaos sanctuary. They know they are pursued."

"Sounds like it's a good time to strike. We can take them down before they get back to full strength." There was a certain glint in Blaise's eyes. She was undoubtedly already imagining their victory over the remaining demon lords.

"Impossible. Mere mortals cannot hope to stand against the power of the Prime Evils."

"Well, we already killed Mephisto, so you're wrong there."

"Impossible," Izual repeated. Blaise was squaring up for an argument, which wasn't likely to get them any additional information. This would be an opportune moment to interject, Morgan decided.

"You are free now, Izual. The form that bound you has been destroyed. You can return to the High Heavens. To your home."

Izual's spectral hood turned toward Morgan. "My prison is felled, but I cannot return to the Host. Not after what I have done. I am beyond redemption."

"There's no harm in trying," Blaise chimed in. "What's the worst that could happen? Seems to me they can't do much worse than what you've already been through."

"Heaven knows the depths of my betrayal. I cannot return after the treason I have committed."

"It was Tyrael who bade us free you," Morgan said. "Surely if the avatar of Justice feels your penance has been sufficient, the-"

"Tyrael is a fool," Izual repeated. "He has no power over me, not any more." He looked back down at the body that had once imprisoned him. "You have granted me a brief reprieve from the torment I have earned. I thank you for this kindness. But in time, this vessel will be born anew from the Black Abyss and I will be drawn back into it. There can be no other fate for me."

"Perhaps not." Morgan approached the body, drawing a vial of oil out of his pack.

"What are you doing, mortal?" Izual reached out as if to stop him, but the only resistance his arm provided was an uncomfortable chill. Goosebumps prickled across his skin where the angel's form passed through it.

"It is not my place to judge whether or not you deserve to return," Morgan explained as he anointed the forehead and claws of the demonic form. "But I did give my word that I would try my utmost to free you." It was a bit of guesswork, but it tracked with what he knew of angels and demons. Consecrating the demonic body should, in theory, cause it to be destroyed in a way that would prevent it from reforming. Demons' spirits could return to the Black Abyss to await a new body, just as angels were given form through the Crystal Arch. But Izual was not truly a demon, despite the corruption he had endured. There was no reason a completely new body should be created for him without additional intervention. That was beyond the scope of Morgan's control, unfortunately, but this seemed like the most likely way to ensure the angel's freedom.

"Do not interfere," Izual growled. Morgan flinched as the angel lunged at him. It was colder this time, but there was still no physical resistance as the angel's form passed through him.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing? He's trying to help you," Blaise called. An arrow flew harmlessly through the angel's ghostly body. It got his attention briefly, long enough for Morgan to draw a sigil in oil on the chest of the remains. He used the oldest symbol he knew. It began to glow faintly as he hovered his hand over it, starting the consecration by empowering the anointment.

"No," Izual hissed. The icy tendrils of his wings wrapped around Morgan's throat as he began reciting the prayer that accompanied the sigil. Although the touch wasn't tangible, the chill was. It drained his breath and made the muscles in his throat tighten with the shock of the sudden cold. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the intent he was feeding into the prayer and the oil. As long as he could manage at least a whisper, it should suffice. It was only a few phrases he had to get through.

Freezing chill assaulted Morgan, targeting his face, his throat. The cold ached in his teeth and stole the sensation away from his lips. He treated each word carefully, slowly. If he wanted to have any chance at success, he couldn't let Izual interrupt him. It was unlikely he'd be able to complete the prayer a second time if he had to start over.

At one point it felt like glacial fingers were reaching through his chest to squeeze around his heart. That made him gasp, opening his eyes to see Blaise trying ineffectually to grapple Izual away from him. Morgan staggered back a step but the angel followed effortlessly. The cold grew impossibly deeper as he reached his other hand in to join the first, bringing Morgan to his knees. It was so cold it burned, too cold to even shiver.

"Morgan, stop! I can't touch him, he's going to - you have to get out of there!" Blaise's words turned to steam as they left her mouth, little clouds hanging in the shimmering cold that surrounded Izual. Morgan shook his head minutely. No matching steam accompanied the words he continued to force past his teeth. The air from his lungs wasn't warm enough for that. But he was so close. I believe you capable, Tyrael's voice echoed in his mind. If Tyrael believed that, surely it was true. It had to be. He could finish this.

Morgan rasped out the final syllables and slumped forward, no longer trying to resist the darkness pulsing around the edges of his vision. His immediate task was complete and he could rest a little in this enveloping cold. Izual jerked back as the anointed body was consumed by light. It glowed at first like a firefly, then a torch, then a bonfire, then a sun, replacing the creeping darkness with brilliant white. Izual howled a wordless protest, growing in volume as the light shone brighter and brighter. Even when Morgan angled his face away from it, echoes danced across his eyelids. Then, suddenly, it stopped. No light, no sound. Izual was gone.

A ragged gasp broke the silence as Morgan finally drew a fresh breath unhindered by Izual's chill. It stuck in his throat, warm air warring with cold. The rough stone of the plaza scraped against his forehead as he fell into a helpless fit of coughing, his body finally reacting to the temperature shock with violent, rattling tremors. Blaise was saying something but the coughing drowned her out. A heavy hand thumped on his back, which was uncomfortable and did nothing to stop either the hacking coughs or the tremors. He waved her away weakly as he tried to steady his breathing, encouraging the stone to prop him up into a more upright position. This was no time to rest after all. Tyrael's task was complete but his own work was still in progress.

"Akarat's bane, Morgan, that was close. I thought I was going to have to drag you out of there." Blaise paused. "Would that even work?"

"I don't know," Morgan croaked, hugging his arms around himself. It was ineffective; his armour prevented any heat transfer. "People are... tethered to their bodies when they die, if they linger. But I don't know about angels. That wasn't even his true body." The uncontrollable shivering was beginning to slow slightly, the warmth of the environment chasing away the chill.

"Well, I'm glad I didn't have to try it. Anyway, let's get back to the fortress. Everyone's going to want to hear about that thing with the soulstones, and I don't really want to stick around to see what that light display might have attracted." Blaise raised one arm to loop briefly around Morgan's shoulders. The gesture warmed him better than the ambient heat of Hell, but he refrained from chasing it as she released him to open a portal. There was more work to be done, and he was fit enough to do it. Comfort was an unnecessary luxury.

Tyrael and Cain were conversing quietly when they returned to the fortress. Blaise set off to talk to Halbu while Morgan waited his turn to speak with Tyrael. He didn't have to wait long.

"You found Izual," the angel observed. "I can feel the echo of his resonance within you. Tell me of what happened."

"He was not eager to be freed," Morgan said. "Once the form imprisoning him was defeated, he spoke of his cooperation with the Prime Evils. Their exile to our world was planned. They have corrupted the soulstones somehow, to spread their influence across the world unnoticed by the forces of the Light. That was all he said on the matter. I consecrated the body," he added.

"In doing so, you have assured his freedom. You have my thanks for this." Morgan wrestled briefly with the awe and elation that lit up like a pyre in his chest. To receive the gratitude of an archangel was nearly unthinkable. "But if what you tell me is true," Tyrael continued, "we have been played for fools all along. With the powers of the soulstones under their control, the Prime Evils will be able to turn the mortal world into an outpost of Hell, and all mankind may be doomed." That certainly helped to dampen his emotions back down to where they ought to be.

"I feared as much," Cain said grimly. "What you described of the Zakarum high council pointed to that conclusion. If the soulstones have all been corrupted, there are dire implications."

"But we defeated Mephisto already," Blaise interjected, striding over to join the conversation. "We have his stone. And we're going to get the other ones too. Can't we just smash them?"

"When Mephisto's soulstone was split into pieces, those shards each served as a focus for his power," Tyrael said. "They are impossible to destroy by conventional methods."

"Well, what unconventional methods are there? There has to be something."

"There is the Hellforge," Halbu called from where he was working. "There is a hammer that can annihilate anything placed on that accursed pedestal. I've wanted to get my hands on that hammer for ages. It ought to be somewhere near the forge, but without any scouts I don't know for sure."

"Yes," Tyrael said, "that could work. The Hellforge could destroy the stones completely. We will lose any advantage the soulstones ever gave us, but shattering the stones is more important."

"Their advantage was lost the moment they were corrupted," Cain added.

"Is this hammer enchanted?" Morgan asked.

"Naturally," Halbu replied.

"Excellent," Cain exclaimed. "That ought to make it much easier for you to find, my friend!"

"Yes. If you suspect it's near a landmark, I ought to be able to find it easily enough." It would be good to put his skills to use again so soon, to make more progress toward their ultimate goal.

"I think I might have spotted the forge from up on one of those spires," Blaise said. "And now we know the big boys are holed up in the Chaos sanctuary, so we can head there right after."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Halbu said. "No offense. But I've been after that hammer for years."

"I guess this is your lucky year, then," Blaise returned cheerfully. "And it's my lucky day if there's any more of that pork thing you made earlier. We have to eat before we head back out."

Morgan cast a glance at the space the portal had occupied, but it was empty. She must have closed it already. And since she was the one with a clear idea of where they were going, he would have to wait.

"You coming?"

"No, thank you. I require a brief meditation." The last traces of chill had fled in the face of Tyrael's presence, but that in itself was something to be treated with caution. Although their goals aligned at the moment, that was no reason to allow his neutrality to be compromised. His duty was to his Order, and not anything else.