#which like... we take our victories within our defeats in this house

[vexwerewolf]

To His Granite Lordship Ferdinand-Cannamos (@ktbofficial) of the House of Stone,

Cousin, I hope this missive finds you well.

I implore your forgiveness that I did not convey proper congratulations on your appointment to the position of official Karrakin representative to the omninet in person. I have been travelling to Throne Karrakis these past few months, and – as is usual – uncle Hyderad (Unshakeable Be His Foundation, Unyielding Be His Resolve, etc. etc. etc.) has made the entire thing difficult for me.

I must confess, cousin, that I feel your behaviour falls short of the lofty responsibilities such a grand and noble station entails. I must again beg your forgiveness for critiquing you in a public letter this way, but as uncle always told me – at length, with glee, and often (as you may recall) in front of hundreds of dinner guests – that a lesson attached to a public humiliation is a lesson that will be remembered the rest of a man’s life.

Remember, upon your shoulders rests the unenviable duty of presenting the face of the Karrakin to the greater galaxy, and it is by your words that all of us – from the proudest Knight Vitreous of Ispahsalar to the most desperate refugee of Bo – shall be judged. When the citizens of Union listen for the Baronies, they will hear your words. Against the honeyed words of Harrison’s Steward Council and the poison that hides beneath their sweetness, you are our bulwark. Yet you are stubborn, brusque, contemptuous, intolerant. You are quick to accuse and slow to admit fault.  Since you will brook no critique from outsiders, it must fall to a fellow noble of your House to deliver it.

I know that like many of our House, you are proud. You are unyielding, like the Stone from which we take our namesake. We of Stone have some right to be proud, no doubt, for who else in history could stand against Tyran of Delamar? Laugh in the face of his threats? Fight him to a standstill? So too are you proud of the Baronies in their totality. Again, there is no error in that, for who, truly, could look at what we have achieved and yet not feel some small satisfaction?

But stone is also inflexible, and beyond any other flaw that individual rulers or Houses have laboured under, inflexibility has been the creeping sickness that has doomed us time and again. Was it not inflexibility that led us to underestimate the Armory’s new technology? Was it not inflexibility that lost us Rosegift, Underthrone, Stone Harbor and Odeland? Was it not inflexibility that made us treat those of the Ludran Underground like slaves rather than siblings?

The Baronies are more than the Hagiographs, and the Hagiographs are not free from sin. Was it not the Hagiographs that destroyed the Pilgrim, throwing us into a war with Union for which we were totally unprepared? Was it not the Hagiographs that pushed us to war with Harrison Armory, then lost us a generation of nobles – and the Stonelord themself? And if we may share in the bounty of Ludra at its height, how can the House of Stone elude responsibility for the abuses that led to the uprising of the Ungratefuls? Yes, it was House Ludra that failed them, but they were House of Stone too, and reducing them did not erase our responsibility.

I shall leave you with a reminder of our culture’s classics. Do you remember the words of the playwright Montague-Adellian, in “The Witch of Magritte?”

Ennio-Altia: By what strange Virtue conjurest thou, that in thy family’s victories thou exalt, yet for their defeats shed not a single tear?

Yond-Cassius: Fie, slanderer, keep thy tongue still, lest I still it for thee.

Ennio-Altia: Wilt thou for plaudits beg when the sun shines, yet curse the Magus when it rains?

Strength in Stone,

Lord Atreyu-Cannamos of the House of Stone

P.S. (For those beyond the boundaries of our Baronies, or those within whom have not had the luxury of studying theatre, Adellian was a playwright of the House of Glass famed mostly for his critique of other Houses. The Witch of Magritte was a lampoon of the House of Stone, which he cleverly disguised by casting its heroes as scions of Stone and its villains as scions of Glass. His intent was that the House of Stone could not ban it without insulting themselves. Of course, we banned it anyway, which of course only made the play more popular, and proved his point about our House’s choleric temperament.)

[cienie-isengardu]

[MK1] Bi-Han & Kuai Liang. Good brother? Evil brother? Nah, just different reactions to trauma, part 5

<part 1 <> part 2 <> part 3 <> part 4 <>

POWER

This part will be mainly focused on POWER: Bi-Han’s character theme and - alongside gaining independence and freedom for Lin Kuei, the main goal he wanted to achieve according to Mortal Kombat 1’s storyline and tie-in material.

There are already many things said about Bi-Han’s thirst for power and from my experience, fandom identifies it as a serious character's flaw at best and a sign of evil nature at worst. However I do feel that fandom judges Bi-Han’s goal to gain power outside of proper context and this is why we first need to examine worldbuilding and what role the power - including personal might, plays within it.

To do so, let’s look at the Mortal Kombat Tournament. At the official meeting with Liu Kang and his champions, Sindel described it as a tournament founded to “foster peace among realms”:

Sindel: “Welcome, members of the royal house. Welcome, our esteemed Earthrealm guests. We gather once again to honor my late husband's legacy. To continue the tournament that he founded with Lord Liu Kang in hopes that it would foster peace among realms."

However, as we could see through the story, there is much deeper meaning to Tournament - this is a chance for each realm to demonstrate their strength, and in result, temper potential attempts at war.

Liu Kang said:

”The time draws near for the grand martial art tournament between Earthrealm and the realm of Outworld. Held once each century, it allows each realm to demonstrate its strength. While our realms are at peace, there are Outworlders who would prefer us to be at war. Our victory in the tournament will… temper their zeal.”

and

”Earthrealm and Outworld have long been evenly matched. But Outworld is gaining strength. Should it win, it’s more militant factions will be emboldened.”

and

”It is a place of great wealth and beauty. But our realms do not share goals or beliefs. We coexist peacefully because Outworld respects our strength. Should we show weakness, our rival will become our enemy.”

Thus Tournament is a way to intimidate Outworld (and presumably other realms) to keep it in check. Which works fine and works for a long time already, as Liu Kang mentioned that Earhrealm frequently is winning

"You presume them frail, General? Should you... given how frequently they win this tournament?"

And winning even at a great disadvantage, as Raiden fought against many rivals and understandably, the more opponents the more weakened he became with each duel. 

In one of the intro dialogues, we learn people of Sun Do still talk about Raiden despite how many other things happened, including betrayal of General Shao and death of Sindel. 

Li Mei: Your name is still on Sun Do's lips. Raiden: I can't believe I made such an impression.

This intro both highlights how modest and at the same naive Raiden is, because his victory won't be forgotten anytime soon there. Liu Kang’s Champion, a mere farmer who never took a part in war, came to their great and powerful realm, and beat down First Constable Li Mei, General Shao and his second-in-command Reiko, prominent fighters like Kotal, Motaro, Sheeva, princess Kitana and finally, the Empress Sindel. Of course Outworlders are intimidated by his victory, and in the grand scheme of things, Earthrealm’s power. 

Since Outworld and Earthrealm are separate realms, and their cultural contact is very limited, people of Sun Do have no idea how truly powerful are Liu Kang’s people, so of course they judge them through Raiden’s achievement. In the case of war, Raiden alone could defeat their military Champions AND Empress and he is just one of possible many other great Champions. Not to mention Lin Kuei lurking in the shadows, the warriors who do not take part in Tournament, but do fight on Earthrealm’s behalf in conflicts between realms (as seen with Vaeternians, a serious problem Outworlders themselves faced in the past).

As worldbuilding goes, Earthrealm safety relies directly on power, the personal’s might of Liu Kang’s Champions and his “secret army” of Lin Kuei. 

Bi-Han and his family was born in Earthrealm, but as Lin Kuei he was destined to be a warrior meant to defend Earthrealm from external threats, like mentioned before Vaeternians. Understandably then, his mindset about power and personal might won’t be the same as Raiden, Kung Lao or Johnny Cage because he was raised in a different environment than those three living and experiencing modern, normal life. For Sub-Zero, power is what guarantees peace and keeps him and his clan alive and safe. In that sense, “power” and “freedom” are inseparable terms, because without one, there won’t be the other.

This is best seen with Bi-Han’s ending 

"I had broken the Lin Kuei free of Liu Kang's enslavement. We were now masters of our destiny and could take our place among Earthrealm's greatest nations. But taking and holding territory would require a vast army. I needed more fighters to make our presence felt. Then I recalled Shang Tsung's dragon warriors. An army of them would be unstoppable. But trafficking in such strong magic would surely draw Liu Kang's attention. Sektor advised that we avoid detection by building our army using science, not sorcery. We've invested much time in this endeavor, and we are beginning to see results. Once again proving the depths of Sektor's genius. When we are done, all of Earthrealm will honor our desires and heed our demands. If not, they will face the Lin Kuei's wrath."

Sub-Zero understood that Lin Kuei’s independence relies on his and his men’s power. Lin Kuei needed it to secure their land and resources, to indimitate or if needed, to defeat those opposing. Ultimately, they used Shang Tsung’s concept and adapted it to their needs, but as intro dialogues imply, power was what Bi-Han showed an interest in: 

Johnny Cage: Why'd you go rogue? I could've made you a star. Sub-Zero: I want power, not fame.

and Liu Kang: You will not enter the Temple of the Elements. Sub-Zero: I will have the power you've locked away inside.

and

Sub-Zero: One should seize power by any means necessary. Rain: There must be limits, Sub-Zero.

and

Sub-Zero: You wield the power that I aspire to. Sindel: Too bad you're unfit for it, Sub-Zero. 

and

Scorpion: You defile the Lin Kuei! Sub-Zero: I seek only to make us stronger.

Though the intro dialogues do not give us the context for Sub-Zero’s fixation on power, there is plenty of source material to assume this is indeed a way to keep his clan’s freedom, especially with so few reliable allies around. 

There is however a different approach to Sub-Zero’s own battle might - it pleases him to fight and test himself against powerful opponents:

“We must find a less guarded section before attempting an ascent. Finally we face a worthy foe. Victory will bring us glory."

or

"After years of idleness, it pleases me to again face kombat."

or

"I had hoped for the chance to battle your dark magic."

or

Sub-Zero: I'm pleased to fight Outworld's foremost mage. Rain: Will it also please you to lose?

Bi-Han judges other characters through their combat power and battle experience. If his opponents do not live up to the high exceptions of his, Sub-Zero will express his disappointment, as happened in his match against Ermac

“Liu Kang was overly concerned. Your magic does not impress." 

or Shang Tsung

“I had hoped for a worthier enemy." 

At the same time, in case of Sub-Zero (player)’s losing a match, he would actually praise his opponents, 

Bi-Han to Nitara after losing a fight: “You are a superb adversary. More than worth the wait” 

and 

Bi-Han to Ermac after losing a fight: “You are as formidable as promised. Let’s continue.” 

So with no doubt we can say Bi-Han’s relationship with power is much more complex than him being just a power-hungry character. One one hand, he is confident in his abilities and Lin Kuei training, to the point he can come off as arrogant. He turned down Raiden and Kung Lao’s help by saying:

You are not Lin Kuei. You would only hinder the effort.

and in intro dialogues claimed Umgadi priestess warriors would not be able to defeat Lin Kuei

Sub-Zero: No one in your order can defeat a Lin Kuei. Tanya: A nescient boast which is easily disproven.

but at the same time, he would show an interest in Li Mei (a former leader of Umgadi) as he heard about her great skills

Sub-Zero: I hear your skills are formidable. Li Mei: As are those of all who have been Umgadi.

A similar thing may be seen with demons and Ashrah. Bi-Han is biased toward demons - as I assume, Lin Kuei's history influenced his idea of them the same way he was influenced by stories about Vaeternians - yet he will appreciate the power of a specific individual:

Sub-Zero: You will surely test my might. Ashrah: I will overwhelm it, Sub-Zero.

The contrast between power as a means to fulfill goals (securing clan’s independence and a way to expand its might) and power as a personal joy and source of respect for opponents highlight Bi-Han's complexity and influence of his upbringing. He is both ruthless and very eager to prove himself. Fighting is his way of life, and he takes great pleasure in it.

Surprisingly, despite Scorpion’s great loyalty to father’s teaching, Kuai Liang seems to not like fighting. All he wanted during the mission was to succeed

“I will be pleased when we complete our mission”

but there was no personal joy in the task

“Glory? We fight for duty”

In one of the intro dialogues, Scorpion would go so far as to even criticing (accusing?) Liu Kang for not abolishing combat

Scorpion: As Time’s Keeper, you could have abolished kombat. Liu Kang: Even a Titan’s power has limits.

 - what logically would erase the need for Lin Kuei and the duty Kuai Liang dedicated his whole life. Which is a total opposite to Bi-Han, who enjoys combat but also provides an interesting complexity of Kuai Liang and his relationship with fighting and power. 

At the same time, he took pride in being a Lin Kuei once

Raiden: Did you ever want to be an Earthrealm champion? Scorpion: I have only ever wanted to be Lin Kuei.

and has a similar to Bi-Han faith in his own abilities (former Lin Kuei training) that could be seen as arrogance.

Li Mei: Liu Kang has nothing but praise for you. Scorpion: Let me demonstrate why that's so.

or

Sindel: You performed well during the recent crisis. Scorpion: I did what I was trained to do.

or

Scorpion: Here to test the Shirai Ryu's might? General Shao: I will prove it worthless and weak.

or

Scorpion: Was it worth it, training with the Shaolin? Smoke: Let me show you what I learned.

The Lin Kuei training with no doubt shaped both brothers, but like with many other aspects of their past and personalities, they reacted differently to it. Kuai Liang is well aware of his combat skills to the point he barely pays attention to characters’ compliments. Yet he doesn’t seem to enjoy fighting and is there only to do his duty. He does not seek power or power-related support and rejects propositions of other characters - be it Shang Tsung (enemy)

Shang Tsung: Surely I can tempt you with something. Scorpion: Nothing you could offer would interest me.

&

Shang Tsung: I could teach you the secrets of shapeshifting. Scorpion: Stealth is the only tactic I need.

 or Kitana (ally)

Kitana: Weapons. Soldiers. Whatever you -- Scorpion: I have all that I need to defeat Bi-Han.

In contrast, Bi-Han is a much more ambitious man, yet his relationship with power is not one dimensional and there is a personal joy to face worthy opponents and to see how far he came in his training and combat experiences. Power is a means to fulfilling his goals, but also a reason to admire an opponent's skills, even if it's the enemy trying to either capture or murder him. 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Smith at The Guardian:

God’s army is on the march. And many of its foot soldiers are wearing “Make America great again” regalia, sensing that their unlikely standard-bearer, former US president Donald Trump, is once again close to the promised land. “I do not believe that America can survive another four years of Joe Biden,” Ralph Reed, founder and chair of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, told a gathering of the religious right in Washington on Friday. “I haven’t felt this way since Jimmy Carter was president.” The audience burst into knowing laughter. Reed promised they would knock on 10m doors of Christian and conservative voters in every battleground state, make 10m phone calls, send 25m text messages and put 30m voter guides in 113,000 churches, producing “the biggest turnout of Christian voters in American history”. The election result will be clear, he added. “This time there aren’t gonna need to be any lawsuits. We’re not going to have to go to court and we’re not going to have to wait until 2.30 in the morning for Donald Trump to declare victory. He’s going to do it at 9 o’clock at night!”

With Trump running ahead of Biden in many swing state polls, religious right voters scent a historic opportunity to impose a radical agenda that could ban abortion nationwide, curb LGBTQ+ rights and blur the separation of church and state. At Friday’s conference, speaker after speaker framed it as righteous crusade and the only way to resist a tide of liberal secularism sweeping America. Ben Carson, a former housing secretary in Trump’s first term, praised Republican-dominated Louisiana for becoming the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every government school classroom. “Aren’t you glad that yesterday the governor of Louisiana signed into law – put the Ten Commandments back in the schools?” he said to cheers and applause before warning of a 60-year communist project to change America by taking over schools, churches and Hollywood and removing God from the public square.

Josh Hawley, a Republican senator for Missouri, warned of a “radical anti-faith agenda” gripping the country. He said: “Who’s dividing America is the radical left and that’s why I say to you we don’t need less Christian influence in our society, we don’t need less Christian witness in our society; we need more in every part of government, in every part of society.” To approving roars from the audience, Hawley added: “We ought to take the Pride flag out of schools and put the Bible back in. You know what? We ought to take the trans flag down from all of our federal buildings and over every federal building in America write the words: ‘In God we trust.’ In God we trust. Amen.”

The couching of an Armageddon election, in which religious truth itself is at stake, with victory representing divine providence and defeat spelling total catastrophe, was crystallised by Monica Crowley, a rightwing political commentator and former assistant secretary of the treasury. She described the election as a “hinge moment” comparable to the American revolution, American civil war, second world war and September 11 terrorist attacks. She spoke of a “war” against “the enemy within” that has spent nearly half a century “infiltrating, undermining and destroying” America with “godless philosophies”. Crowley lamented that Hollywood no longer produces “patriotic films” like those of John Wayne and, extraordinarily, defended the communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. “Senator Joe McCarthy was right, and he was trying to ring the bell in the 1950s about communist infiltration in our government and the same deep state that is now going after Donald Trump,” he said.

[...] Religious conservatives’ pact with Trump appears to be holding. Some were sceptical about the thrice-married reality TV star when he first ran for president in 2016 but the concerns were assuaged by his running mate, born-again evangelical Christian Mike Pence, and by a first term that saw him shift the judiciary to the right. Not even Trump’s conviction in New York last month on 34 felony counts in a trial involving hush-money payments to an adult film star has shaken his grip on this constituency. Many who complain that their faith is under siege regard him as a blunt instrument with which to fight back against the radical left. They often rationalise their vote by saying they are choosing a president, not a pastor. Some evangelicals have likened him to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who, according to the Bible, enabled Jews to return to Israel from their exile in Babylon.

Why is the religious right sticking behind Donald Trump, who is not a sincere Christian and has been charged with 34 felonies? They view him as an useful instrument to push their wicked far-right agenda into law: eroding the separation of church and state, abortion bans, and anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

These same folks were all “character counts” when Bill Clinton was facing sex scandals, but jettisoned them when Trump has done the same and a lot more.

[yhwhrulz]

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional for October 14

Tozer in the Morning THE LONELY HUMAN

There is a strange contradiction in human nature all around us: the fact that a person can reek with pride, display a swollen ego and strut like a peacock-and yet be the loneliest and most miserable person in the world! We find these people everywhere-pretending and playing a game. Deep within their beings, they are almost overwhelmed by their great loneliness, by their sense of being orphans in the final scheme of things. The result of this strange, aching human sense of loneliness and cosmic orphanage is the inward, groping question: "What good is it to be a human being? No one cares about me!" In the garden, Eve believed Satan's lie-the lie that God was not concerned about her and that God had no emotional connection with her life and being. This is where the unregenerate person is in today's world. It is only sin and defeat that can bring this sense of orphanage, this sense of having been put out of the father's house, and the feeling that follows when the house is burned down and the father is dead.

Tozer in the Evening Wants or Wishes

The third class of blessing consists of spiritual treasures which are ours by blood atonement but which will not come to us unless we make a determined effort to possess them. To make things clearer let me set forth four propositions touching this heritage of joy which God has set before us; 3. You will have as little as you are satisfied with. God giveth to all men liberally, but it would be absurd to think that God's liberality will make a man more godly than he wants to be. The man, for instance, who is satisfied to live a defeated life will never be forced to take victory. The man who is content to follow Christ afar off will never know the radiant wonder of His nearness. The man who is willing to settle for a joyless, barren life will never experience the joy of the Holy Spirit or the deep satisfaction of fruitful living. It is disheartening to those who care, and surely a great grief to the Spirit, to see how many Christians are content to settle for less than the best. Personally I have for years carried a burden of sorrow as I have moved among evangelical Christians who somewhere in their past have managed to strike a base compromise with their heart's holier longings and have settled down to a lukewarm, mediocre kind of Christianity utterly unworthy of themselves and of the Lord they claim to serve. And such are found everywhere. 4. You now have as much as you really want. Every man is as close to God as he wants to be; he is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wills to be. Our Lord said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6). If there were but one man anywhere on earth who hungered and was not filled the word of Christ would fall to the ground. Yet we must distinguish wanting from wishing. By "want" I mean wholehearted desire. Certainly there are many who wish they were holy or victorious or joyful but are not willing to meet God's conditions to obtain. That God has placed before His redeemed children a vast world of spiritual treasures and that they refuse or neglect to claim it may easily turn out to be the second greatest tragedy in the history of the moral creation, the first and greatest being the fall of man.

Copyright Statement This material is considered in the public domain.

[wolint]

FRESH MANNA

THE DWELLERS

Psalm 91

Dwellers are those who abide permanently or for a time in a place. A dwelling place is where someone lives, in biblical times either a tent as seen in Genesis 25:27, a house in 2 Samuel 7:2, or the territory in which one lives like in Genesis 36:40,43.

The Old Testament repeatedly promises that those who keep the covenant of God will dwell in safety-these are the dwellers in God, not so much of a physical dwelling but more of a spiritual state, a spiritual abiding or hiding oneself in God.

Proverbs 18:10 calls the Lord a strong tower where the righteous take refuge and find security: this is an intentional action on the believer’s part to hide in the Lord.

The dwelling place of the Lord is a secret place where we hide under His shadow from every attack of the enemy. As we dwell in God, Psalm 27:5 says He will conceal us in His shelter in the day of adversity.

Where do you shelter from the storms of life? When fear arises, do you run out or run into the secret place of God? To take cover under His tent? Where do you seek protection?

A hiding place, a secret hiding place is where you take shelter and plan your defensive attack and defeat of the enemy, God is the hiding place according to Psalm 32:7, only within Him do we find protection in the day of adversity.

Sometimes, our nights are filled with terror and all kinds of arrows are shot at us in the day real or figuratively but when we dwell in God, they neither intimidate nor harm us.

Regardless of the dangers we face daily, and we can see through the passage that there is no shortage of dangers, even then, God covers His own, especially the dwellers with His faithfulness.

We will do well to study the word of God as prescribed in 2 Timothy 2:15 as Satan knows the Scriptures also. He quoted Psalm 91:11–12 when he tempted Jesus in the desert in Matthew 4:6, only misapplying it for his evil purposes.

This is not to say we should intentionally put ourselves in unnecessary danger because we “think” the Lord will deliver us, like Philip Bracey of Los Angeles who on February 27, 2017, jumped into the lion exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo because he was daring to be a Daniel, believing that God will shut the Lions’ mouth but was immediately mauled by the beasts. Jesus said, “Thou shall not tempt the Lord your God” in Matthew 4:7.

A dweller in God doesn’t go seeking and courting danger, they run into the Lord for protection, security and victory says verse 4.

God protects those who trust and dwell in Him from all harm. If you don’t yet trust God to dwell securely in Him, let me encourage you to do so now, so that no harm can befall you, especially in the unstable, unsafe and uncertain atmosphere of today’s society.

Call upon the name of the Lord, the shelter, strong tower and refuge encourage verse 15, and I will answer you, promises the Lord, even as He promises to satisfy all our needs including long life, that is eternal life by His salvation. Be a dweller in God, make Him your safe refuge and hide in Him.

PRAYER: Thank you, Father, for being my Refuge from pestilence, destruction, terror and plagues. Help me continue to dwell safely in you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Shalom

WOMEN OF LIGHT INT. PRAYER MIN.

[vaguely-concerned]

sometimes you will hear a small voice in your head that whispers '...but what if you did another playthrough of dragon age inquisition? like just to get those good good lore brain tingles going while we wait for the next game? it doesn't have to be a completionist playthrough or anything, we could get it done quick'. and I want you to know that is the devil speaking to you because he gets kickbacks on every moment spent farming power in the hinterlands

[2-cute-4-school]

𝓠𝓾𝓲𝓭𝓭𝓲𝓽𝓬𝓱 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓒𝓱𝓸𝓬𝓸𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮

Group : NCT

Pairing : Griffyndor! Mark Lee x gn! Reader 

Genre : hp au, rivals to lovers, light angst to absolute fluff

Word count : 4.4K words   |    M.list

Warnings : injury, swearing

Summary :  ‘He had nightmares of you slipping right past his fingers and him failing to catch you. He relives that moment.’

a/n: thank you for 1000 followers you absolute cuties!! sending lots of smooches and snuggles your way!!

“Aren’t you going to ask how the coolest champion is feeling about tomorrow’s match?”

You watched Donghyuck, your fellow housemate and best friend since you first stepped onto the Hogwarts train, expectantly. He spared you a quick glance as he plopped down beside you on the couch in your shared common room, too busy to munch on his chocolate frog to give you any further attention. 

“I’ve already asked Mark.”

You would like to be able to say you were surprised at his answer, but his teasing character has become an usual by now

It still baffled you how you managed to even tolerate each other, much less get to share a bond as deep as the one you developed along the years. You two had next to nothing in common other than your cunning wit. While Donghyuck delved deep into his love for astronomy, which you despised with a burning fervor, you dedicated your time to Quidditch entirely. 

You loved the sport dearly, it offered you that adrenaline rush you were born to chase, that quickened heartbeat as you rushed to catch the Golden Snitch. You spent every spare moment you could find in your hectic schedule on the pitch with the wind threading through strands of your hair and your hands clenched so tightly onto your broomstick your knuckles turn white. And you adored every second of that. But what you definitely didn’t adore was Mark Lee.

“And worst best friend award goes to surprise surprise Lee Donghyuck!”

He shrugged unimpressed by your weak attack and focuses back on his damned frog.

Mark Lee. Unfortunately for your sanity, you had to see him almost as often as you decided to practice on your own. If there was one thing you shared with him and you respected him for was his own commitment to Quidditch. More often that not, you’d have to share the pitch with him in your spare time, taunting each other for the entire period of time you spent practicing. He was the beloved Seeker of Gryffindor, their pride and joy and your rival ever since you were both accepted in your respective teams.

“So what’s your score against him?”

“It’s a draw.”

Yes, you were that petty. You and Mark kept the score on how many times you defeated each other in matches. It didn’t actually matter which team actually won, the only thing that mattered for your childish competition was who managed to catch the Golden Snitch.

“That’s why you’re so tense?”

“Bingo, smartpants.”

“What even is the big deal about your little game? It’s not like either of you actually gets something out of this.”

“I gain the right to stick my win in his face and vice versa.”

Teasing between you and Mark often stretched your patience to its maximum and ended up in one of you snapping like a chord under pressure. Donghyuck shivered as he remembered the final match of your fourth year when your house lost against Gryffindor due to Mark catching the Snitch before you. He could vividly remember the blood rushing through his veins in fear at the sight of you battling Mark shoulder to shoulder at a dangerous speed, arm stretched out so far he believed you’d topple over at any moment.

He doesn’t want a repeat of the miserable image of you he saw at the time, a defeated you, slumped on the bench in your changing room, head lowered in ultimate shame and disappointment as bitter tears rolled off your face, splashing against the floor as Donghyuck watched worriedly through the half opened door. Mark had really done a number on you that day.

“You have to win, Y/N.”

“Why the sudden change of heart, wasn’t our competition meaningless for your highness?”

“I don’t give a frog’s toe about your competition, but I want to spend time time with you this summer. And not just to watch you practice until you drop.”

You scoffed. You knew that he was referring to the summer after your horrifying defeat against Mark. Donghyuck could barely get a hold of you since you spent all day on your broom, tiring yourself out to your limit.

“Don’t worry, I don’t plan on losing.”

~

“Already wetting your pants, Y/L/N?”

You didn’t have to turn around to put a face to the taunting voice behind you.

“I don’t know, Lee, should I? You must know since you have more experience than me.”

Mark’s face scrunched up at the reminder of his first year when he lost control of his broom and he quite literally saw his life flash before his eyes. Not very Gryffindor from his part.

“Whatever, we both know how this is about to end. Save your cheap defense until after this final. My team will win this year’s tournament and I’ll beat you individually too.”

The reminder of the stakes of this match weren’t soothing your nerves at all, especially mere hours before you were facing Mark on the pitch. You curled your fists and kept a straight face, not daring to show him any weakness from your side.

“Shove that pointless confidence up your ass until you prove you’re worthy of it, Lee.”

“Oh so fourth year isn’t enough proof?”

The corner of your lips twitched and your eyes narrowed. zeroing on his tense featured in a chilling glare.

“You said matches don’t count, didn’t you? You were the one insisting that you didn’t consider anything a victory other than catching the Snitch before me. And in that aspect, last I verified, we’re equals.”

His lips moved soundlessly, trying to come up with a retort, but you didn’t spare him enough time to come up with anything, turning on your heels and marching away to meet Donghyuck.

“You’ll see, Y/L/N, you’ll never be my equal.”

His voice followed you tauntingly through the busy corridors, your rushed footsteps taking you anywhere but close to the only person who could make your blood boil.

~

It took three pep talks and four ‘friendly’ attacks of your personal space from Donghyuck to make you gather your spirits and stop the tremors shaking up your entire body. He walked you to the changing room’s door, patting you roughly on the back one last time

“Give your best, I’ll be watching from the stands. I trust that you won’t let me get bored. Also, remember that if you lose you’re sleeping on the mat in front of the entrance in our common room.”

And with that he skipped away, hurried to find a good spot in the stands that were already starting to fill up with students. You sigh, used to his weird way of encouraging you and stepped inside the room, greeting Jungwoo, your captain and your fellow teammates, starting to change into your Quidditch uniform.

As soon as you set foot on the familiar pitch, your eyes met Mark’s who stood straight and proud side by side with his own captain sporting his Gryffindor red cape and holding his broom, the newest Nimbus model.

You Keeper was talking your ear off about the ‘amazingly efficient’ polish he found, but you couldn’t seem to rip your gaze away from Mark who in turn seemed to burn through you with his gaze. He threw you a smirk as if provoking you to lose your cool. But you decided you wouldn’t allow him the satisfaction.

The stands were already roaring to life. Any match between you and Mark was very sought after by everyone in your school due to the intensity it held each time. Despite the already loudness surrounding the pitch, one high pitched screech couldn’t help but catch your attention.

“KICK SOME ASS, Y/N! Or the mat is waiting for you!”

Count on Donghyuck to be the embarrassing mom rooting for you at her child’s every sport event. You shoot him a warning look to which he only responded with an over dramatic wink and an even louder ’whoop’. You could only sigh, appreciating his support despite your lack of reaction to it.

“I’ll kick your ass, Lee Donghyuck.”

You muttered, trying to stop the smile forming on your lips. A snort came from the side, making your head snap in its direction.

“Try your best, Y/LN, too bad you’ll still disappoint lover boy over there.”

“Jealous, Lee?”

“You wish.”

Madam Hooch interrupted your banter with a shrill whistle, stepping in between the two teams while holding the Quaffle.

“Alright, boys and girls, mount your brooms.”

Within seconds all players were high in the air, adrenaline pumping through your veins, your heated gaze locked with Mark’s. It became kind of a tradition between the two of you, intense stare downs before the official start of the game. Madam Hooch’s voice which carried the same words every time sounded far away as she bent down, ready to throw the Quaffle.

“Alright, I want a clean and fair game, hear me? Good luck and may the best win.”

The long deafening whistle signified the start of the match and Chasers whizzed past you, speeding towards the Quaffle. You and Mark broke eye contact, each of you getting immersed in the game, your sole focus being on catching sight of the Golden Snitch.

The weather worsened as the game progressed, the unpredictable May weather acting up. The clouds darkened, completely shutting out any ray of sunshine trying to sneak past them, a thickening fog suffocating the school grounds. Slowly but surely, what started as a few scattered rain drops soon turned into a full blown storm, a cold shower falling atop of you, the harsh wind whipping your capes back and forth. The stands were barely visible, the cheers from below inaudible over the wind and the players’ yells.

If it wasn’t hard enough already to spot the small, golden ball, now it seemed close to impossible. You could make out Mark’s silhouette flying around, but you didn’t linger any longer on him, focused on catching sight of the Snitch. Bludgers were flying everywhere, the Beaters’ efficiency decreasing because of the lack of visibility, another worry to add to the list.

Gryffindor was in the lead with 20 points, the score remaining tight as the match dragged on and on. You had already been playing for a while, your uniforms were already soaked and your skin paling from the biting cold of the unforgiving rain, but the conditions only spurred you further. You had to catch the Snitch.

Just as your patience was running thin, you caught sight of a fast-moving golden spot, hovering on the sidelines. Without a second thought, you sped towards it, your surroundings blurring as your eyes focused solely on the already moving Snitch. Mark noticed your forceful actions immediately, whizzing past the others players and nearing you.

“And Y/L/N seems to have finally spotted the Golden Snitch! Both Seekers are bolting after it, I can barely keep track of them!”

The crowd exploded, cheering louder than ever, but you couldn’t hear anything, pushing yourself to the limit as Mark caught up to you and you battled side by side once again. The Snitch seemed to be angrier than ever, jerking furiously at every corner, but you didn’t let yourself be caught by surprise, keeping up with it.

Until it started speeding in a straight line, stopping its irregular twists and turns and you knew that was your chance. You flew at top speed, stretching your hand in front of you so much that your muscles almost protested and Mark followed suit. You were shoulder to shoulder with him, subtly knocking into each other in an attempt to make the other lose their balance.

“Move! It’s mine!”

His hoarse voice yelled right by your year, only making you grit your teeth harder.

“Fuck off, Lee!”

Your fingertips were a breath away from the Snitch, Mark’s arm pressing into yours, the cold wind biting at your cheeks. Desperately, you shifted your weight from your bottom to the hand clutching your broomstick, leaning forward on your arm and before Mark could react, you lurched forward slightly, encasing the running object in the palm of your hand, clutching it so tightly it left marks into the skin, but you didn’t care. 

You did it. You caught the Golden Snitch.

“Y/N!”

Before you could regain your stance, a Bludger knocked into your broom forcefully. With your already unsteady grip on the broomstick, you toppled over in an instant, the broom slipping from under you, but you didn’t dare unclench the fingers trapping the Snitch in your hand.

Mark’s desperate yell seemed to be the only sound echoing in your ears as you plummeted. The last thing you saw before you knocked loudly into the ground with a sickening crack were Mark’s distressed features, a hand stretched to its full extent in front of him as he rushed to get a hold of you, your own outstretched fingers slipping right past his.

~

Surprisingly, as soon as you managed to crack your eyes open you weren’t hit with a blinding light. It still seemed to take a great effort to keep them open for longer than a second, your hand twitching in an attempt to bring it to cover your sensitive eyes, but being stopped by a weight forcing it down. 

“Y/N?”

You groaned, scrunching up your face as soreness hit your body full force at your attempt to move.

“Merlin, Y/N, can you open your eyes?”

You could recognize Donghyuck’s voice anywhere, but the almost desperate tone he used was quite foreign to you.

“Come on, babe, open your eyes. Madam Pomfrey! ”

You realized the weight on your hand were actually his fingers which now squeezed yours encouragingly as his other hand came up to smooth strands of your hair away from your face. You clenched your teeth, forcing an eye open.

“Stop fucking yelling, punk.”

At your annoyed retort, he let out a relieved sigh, wrapping his arms gently around you while trying not to jostle you too much.

“Thank Merlin, you’re back.”

After Madam Pomfrey checked on you and updated you on your injuries which were a bit more serious than you expected, she left you with Donghyuck once again. He leaned back in his chair, a lot more relaxed than in the past days he’s had to spend by your bedside. You furrowed your eyebrows.

“The match. We won the match right?”

Donghyuck snorted as your first question was about Quidditch instead of your own health, but it didn’t even surprise him anymore.

“Yes, you crazy hag, you won.”

“Yes! We did it! We won!”

You’ve never felt more relieved in your entire life. You finally proved to yourself that all the time and work you’ve put into Quidditch wasn’t for nothing. And if this was the elevation you’d feel after winning cups, you were ready to spend the rest of your youth chasing the Snitch.

“You should eat some chocolate, gain your energy back.”

Now that he mentioned it, you finally focused on your nightstand that overflowed with sweets. You grabbed the closest one, a chocolate frog, not hesitating to stuff it all in your mouth and collect the card inside. Another Nicolas Flamel, you already had two of those. 

“Those are a lot.”

“Tell me about it. Don’t worry, I’ll help you finish them.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“Hyuck, tell me, did Jungwoo cry?”

“Should’ve seen him, like a baby. I’m pretty sure he filled half of that cup with snot-”

“Ewww, I didn’t need all the gross details. Ah, I’m sorry for missing that. And Lee’s face, I bet I’d sleep like a baby for the next 10 years if I had the chance to see that.“

Donghyuck’s lips were suddenly pulled into a smirk, eyes glinting with a dangerous mischief.

“You should see one of your beaters, damn nice nose Mark delivered.”

Your munching slowed down, gulping down the sweetness loudly.

“What do you mean? Did that petty git start a fight?”

“Wouldn’t say it was out of pettiness actually.”

Mark was the first to land beside your crumpled figure, dismounting his broom faster than ever and crouching hurriedly before you. His hand ghosted over your cold cheek, too scared to touch you in case he did more harm than good. His shaking pupils fixated on you, running a hundred miles per hour over your face, hoping, praying that you’d open your eyes and celebrate in his face.

“Hey, wake up, don’t play games on the pitch, you already won! Y/L/N!”

Mark knew deep inside that you had no games left to play after a fall like that, but it was his first time seeing you so small, so hurt, so defeated despite the shining Golden Snitch still clutched loosely in your limp hand. It scared him.

“Bloody hell, wake up! Madam Hooch! Help! Anyone, help!”

His head snapped around trying to catch sight of anyone coming to your aid, eyes scanning through the fog crazily. The rain seemed to fall faster and faster, the chill settling deep into your bones. Exhausted, Mark lowered his head in defeat, his forehead gently leaning on yours, his nose nudging against yours. One of his hands still touched your cheek, lightly caressing it, thumb running over the apple of your cheek as his other hand curled into a fist against the ground.

Jungwoo landed next, almost tripping over his broom as he rushed over to you and knelt next to you, opting to ignore the position Mark was in and focus on your well being. Mark’s head didn’t even turn as he spoke lowly.

“Do something for Merlin’s sake. Get Madam Hooch, or Pomfrey! Anyone dammit, just to something!”

Mark raised himself at the lack of response from Jungwoo who seemed rotten to his spot, freezing at the sight of you.

“Are you deaf?! Fucking help!”

That seemed to snap Jungwoo out of his frozen state as he jumped to his feet, sprinting towards the stand where teachers usually stayed during matches. One by one, your teams landed and gathered near you as Mark’s yells of help guided them to you.

“Merlin, that doesn’t look good.”

Mark’s burning gaze settled on your beater who stood a few meters away, leaning on his broom.

“It would have looked better if you did your part right.”

The beater rolled his eyes at Mark’s harsh remark.

“Relax, man, I just wasn’t playing attention for a moment.”

“And you think that’s a proper excuse?!”

Mark was fired up by now, lifting himself to his feet as one of your Chasers, a year younger than you crouched by your side, gripping your hand. He sauntered over, coming face to face with the beater who didn’t seem that interested.

“I’m just saying it’s not my fault their own incompetence landed themselves in the hospital wing, I’m not pulling anyone’s wight al-”

He didn’t get to finish his mocking words as Mark’s fist met his nose with a loud crunch, Mark’s powerful swing sending him to the ground as blood started dripping from his nose steadily.

“Don’t you ever talk about Y/N like that. Not ever again. If I hear one bad word about them coming out of your worthless mouth, I’ll hex you into next year. You’ll never be half of the player Y/N already is, remember your place, asshole.”

Madam Hooch was already tending to you by the time Mark turned back to you, deeming it safe enough for you to be moved to the hospital wing. Donghyuck, who sprinted out of the stand as soon as he heard your name coming out of Jungwoo’s mouth, held your head in his lap, smoothed down your hair, pushing away wet strands that covered your eyes.

Mark strode over to you, taking off his cap and laying it over your body as he slotted an arm under your legs, his other coming around your back. He lifted your body, cradling you against his chest as Donghyuck also stood up to fix your position in Mark’s arms into a more comfortable one.

“Off to the hospital wing,now. Quick, quick, quick!”

Mark didn’t waste another moment before he hurried inside the castle with you in his hold and Donghyuck quick on his heels.

“Mark Lee stood up for me? The same Mark Lee who hates my guts since we first got in our Quidditch teams?”

“Do you know another Mark Lee? Maybe he didn’t hate you that much after all, or…not at all. After all, all these chocolate frogs are from him, said something about seeing you exchange some cards with his Griffyndor friend in class or something.”

“He visited?”

“We wouldn’t be able to get rid of him sometimes. He opened up to me once when we met outside the door trying to sneak in one night.”

“Why were you even sneaking in?”

“I was bored, okay? I had no one to tire me out during the day.”

“Hey!”

“Anyway, he said he had nightmares of you slipping right past his fingers and him failing to catch you. He relives that moment.”

“Did it really affect him that much? Accidents happen all the time.”

“Not to you, Y/N.”

“Maybe, but I’m just another player from the opposite team., right? …Do you think he…?”

Donghyuck brought a hand up to his head, massaging his temples as he sighed with annoyance.

“You’re too dense.”

“How could I have known? ”

“Look, just talk to him as soon as you can. That boy needs to finally sleep properly, even my grandma’s bag has a lighter color than his eye bags.”

You just nodded, a bit skeptic.

You were discharged on that same day. Jungwoo almost cried again when you met in the common room, hugging you tightly, praising and scolding you at the same time with a brotherly smile.

You first saw Mark Lee in the halfway, after your Potions class. He was sitting on the ledge of a large window, staring seemingly into space. Donghyuck’s words echo in your mind as you decide to approach him and hop onto the space beside him, settling comfortable against the window behind you.

“Woah, Lee, Donghyuck was right, you could really use some concealer.”

Mark jostled as if he only noticed you now. His wide doe eyes racked over your smiling face and he seemed to panic internally.

“Whe-When did you get here? Why are you out of bed?”

“Because I was discharged?”

“What? Since when?”

“Earlier today.”

“Oh…”

He cleared his throat awkwardly, eyes running wild everywhere but in your direction. You chuckled.

“It’s okay, I already know how much the almighty Mark Lee worried over poor little me.”

Mark scoffed, his embarrassed behavior vanishing. 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I see that hit to your head didn’t help with your sharp tongue, disappointingly.”

He swiftly moved away, starting to walk away from you until your hand clasped around his wrist, stopping him mid step.

“Wait, I just… I wanted to thank you.”

Mark seemed confused now, turning back to you with furrowed eyebrows.

“Thank me? What for?”

“Standing up for me and uh, you know, taking care of me.”

Mark’s face darkened at the memory of your beater.

“That git was just asking for it and I barely did anything.”

“Then at least let me repay you for the chocolate frogs you brought me.”

Now he seemed to choke on a confused ‘huh?’ with a bewildered expression that just melted your otherwise cocky demeanor.

“W-what? How-”

Mark’s words died in his throat as you slotted your lips against his in a teasing kiss, your hand holding the nape of his next affectionately and pulling him closer you. Mark took a few moments to realize it was actually happening in reality, not just an illusion from the lack of sleep. His hands came up to your waist, wrapping you in his embrace and pulling you against him impossibly closer. Years of pushed down passion and longing were exchanged in that moment, dizzying both of you.

As you pulled away from each other for air, Mark could taste the faint sweetness of chocolate on his lips. He smiled and his whole rival image turned into a lovesick teenage boy with a smile brighter than the sun. He laughed quietly, thumbs caressing your sides gently.

“I see you enjoyed your chocolate.”

You leaned more into him, pulling his face so close to yours that your noses brushed against each other’s, your ravished breath fanning across his lips as you whispered.

“I did. I’m glad I’m so interesting to you that you observe me in class enough to know that I collect chocolate frogs cards.”

You expected a blush to paint his cheeks red, an elbow in your side or at least an annoyed huff but you got none of that. Instead, one of Mark’s hands came up to cradle your cheek as he stared deep into your eyes with an unreadable look.

“Excuse me but it’s hard not to look when I have the prettiest person I’ve ever seen who also happens to be my crush since 3rd year.”

Your eyes widened, searching his for any hint that he may be just lying or teasing you. But all you could find was pure, unadulterated fondness, a withheld fire burning low in his eyes. He leaned down, lips brushing against the shell of your ear and sending goosebumps across the expanse of your skin.

“It’s been so hard not to just pull you aside and snog you senseless, especially in your Quidditch uniform.”

You decided to play along. You brought your fingers to his heated neck, running them faintly over his skin and you smirked seeing him shiver at your touch.

“Having a kink for uniforms, Lee?”

Mark screeched lowly, pulling away from you as if burned. He smoothed down his robes, fixating you with a glare that made you laugh.

“Y/N, I’m serious, though. I like you, I really really lo-….like you.”

You noticed his stutter, but it only made your smile widen as you stretched out a hand to intertwine his fingers with yours and pull him along down the corridor.

“Hm, I’ll need some more proof of that.”

Mark squeezed your hand in response, chuckling at you sweetly. He leaned over, pressing a feather like kiss to your temple.

“Don’t worry, you’re nowhere done with your payment back to me. And I only accept it in the form of kisses and cuddles.”

You smiled at each other, your hearts finally settling satisfied in your chests after years of internal turmoil that finally burned out.

“That can be arranged easily.”

[lovetenya]

𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: 𝐨𝐫��𝐧𝐠𝐞

pairing: tamaki amajiki x gender neutral reader

warnings: one swear word and some emotional language, but it ends in comfort. no tamaki amajiki angst or slander allowed in my house. just fluff.

word count: about 1.5k

author’s note: i love you, tamaki amajiki. that’s why you get the honor of being dedicated my favorite color. mwwwwah.

being in love with tamaki amajiki is orange.

it’s warm, it’s passionate, it’s soft, it’s gentle.

it’s pure, genuine, and it feels like home.

it’s the light that comes through the window on the weekend, shining perfectly into your eyes.

 on a normal morning, there isn’t time to waste. he has to leave early, so he pulls on his underclothes, puts his coat on, and then leaves, since his suit and quirk-enhancing food is stored at the agency. mornings together don’t normally last longer than it takes him to lightly shake you awake and say “bye, honey. i hope you have a good day.” and give you a quick kiss.

orange is the juice he pours as soon as he wakes up, the one you taste when he kisses you, saying it’s “better than tasting my morning breath.” you’re not one to complain, especially not about getting kisses from tamaki. they usually make him flustered, so you’ll take as many as you can get.

today is different. though. it’s ten on a saturday morning and tamaki is right next to you, sound asleep. his tired eyes are closed and his expression is one lacking all tension, and full of peace.

he deserves it, you think, considering the night before. you had a meal ready for him when he got home late, but he barely even made it through that. his eyes drooped and his shoulders sagged while he ate, and he looked more pale than usual.

you suggested, “tama, do you wanna shower and then head to bed? we don’t have to stay up late just because it’s friday.” 

“sure, honey. that sounds nice,” he yawned, holding his head in his hands.

“i’ll clean up dinner and meet’cha in our room, okay?”

“okay...” he hopped off of his chair at the counter and made his way to your room to get undressed. within ten minutes, the dishes were done, but you didn’t hear tamaki start the shower. what’s he doing in there? you wondered.

you made your way toward the bedroom, not wanting to startle him or walk in on him changing. you knocked lightly on the door before asking “tamaki? are you okay?” 

when there was no response, you turned the doorknob and quietly opened the door to see your dear tamaki laying on the bed, fast asleep and fully dressed. he must’ve sat down to take off his bottoms and fell asleep. 

poor baby, you thought. i didnt realize he was that tired.

lightly, you walked to the side of the bed where he was lying on his back with his legs hanging off the edge. you moved his bangs away from his face and kissed his forehead sweetly. he looked so peaceful, but he couldn’t sleep in his work clothes. there’s no way that’s sanitary or comfortable. 

“tama, baby. sit up for me so we can take your clothes off and go to bed.”

“mm..” he whimpered, eyes still closed. he didn’t move.

“come on, bub. sit up, please. let’s get some pajamas on, okay?” a pair of pajama pants and an old t-shirt never sounded better to tamaki, even though he was still half-asleep.

“okay...” he sat up and sleepily hugged your torso, putting his cheek to your chest. you stood in front of where he was sitting, and he slowly raised his arms to let you peel off his underclothes and finish getting him undressed. you put the t-shirt over his arms, and he slowly pulled it down over his head and back. next, the bottoms. you grabbed a pair of boxers from his drawer and held them out to him.

“here, tama, put on some clean underwear. yours probably stink.”

“nuh-uh. m’not stinky. m’ just sleepy...”

“i’m just kidding, bub. change quick so we can go to sleep.”

he pulled on his boxers and pair of pajama pants, then got under the soft, smooth covers. you got your pajamas on (a peach-colored t-shirt and some shorts) then flicked off the light and layed down next to him.

his eyes were already shut and he was breathing lightly, so you assumed he was asleep. even though you really missed him this week, you didn’t want to bother him by grabbing his hand or trying to hold him.

“mmph.” he grunted, stirring softly. you didn’t reply, figuring he was just making noises in his sleep. he did the same thing one of the first times you shared a bed, but he was really embarrassed upon hearing about it, so you didn’t bring it up again.

again, he asserted, “mmm!!” but more displeased this time.

“what’s wrong, tama?” you asked. he rolled toward you.

“are you.. are you mad at me?” he asked weakly, desperately hoping that you’d say no. there were sleepy, fearful tears welling in his eyes, but he wasn’t conscious enough to care to hide them.

“not at all, baby, why would i be mad at you?”

“well.. you didn’t.. you didn’t even try to.. you’re not even..” he paused, trying to compose himself. you didn’t interrupt, knowing he’d make his point at his own pace. he always said what he meant eventually.

he continued, “you’re not even holding my hand.. and i just.. really missed you.. and.. i didn’t mean to.. make you upset by being gone this week but i just.. there were so many guys out there.. and i had to help ‘em.. and i’m sorry i didn’t come home until late but--” he couldn’t hold back his tears any longer, his long hours at work rendering him overtired and sensitive. the tears flowed down his face, and you quickly, but softly, reached out to him, bringing him closer.

“oh baby, i’m so sorry. i’m not mad at you.”

“y-you promise?”

“yeah, honey, i promise. c’mere. let me cuddle you.”

you moved over to him, pulling him close. with all the strength he could muster, he wrapped his arms around you, snuggling his head into your neck. you pet his hair gently, soothing him to sleep and reassuring him through soft kisses to his head. his anxiety-fueled cries turned to sniffles, which eventually turned to light snores.

he just really didn’t want to lose you. he didn’t think he could bear to go without you, and you felt the same way. you worried about him terribly while he was out, but never wanted to show him you were afraid for him. you knew he’d take on your emotions and then there’d be two crying lovers. 

you bottled up your emotions until you couldn’t handle it anymore, bursting into tears at the slightest change of tamaki’s tone of voice. these moments of emotional intensity often did end in both of you crying, and nights much like this, where you held each other impossibly close. letting go was out of the question.

—

tamaki was so tired this week because he had what can only be described as, well, a super shitty week, so fatgum gave him the weekend off. their conversation went like this:

“i don’t.. mean to be rude by disagreeing, but i just can’t take the whole weekend off. i need to be out there.. helping you.”

“no way, amajiki. what ya’ need is to rest. you can’t do your best work next week if ya’ don’t take a break this week, so go home and rest and then come back on monday ready to go.”

“but--”

“don’t make me call y/n! they’ll make you stay home!” fatgum warned, knowing you’d do exactly that.

tamaki sighed in defeat, “fiiiiiiine.” you’re the only person he’d willingly lose to, time and time again. if his defeat meant your victory, he was okay with losing.

—

orange is is the color of the terra-cotta pots that hold the herbs you planted on your balcony.

“they’re gonna taste so good once they grow! aren’t you excited?” you asked him, hands covered in dirt.

“yeah, if i don’t forget to water them and kill them first,” he deadpanned, tilting the watering can a bit too far and spilling it all over your shoes.

“tamaki!!” 

“sorry!!!”

—

orange is your perfect creation. it’s the bleeding together of your crimson red tenderness and his frail yellow anxiety. while you’re there to reassure him, and he’s always there to ground you, noticing the details you missed. you compliment each other in a way that creates something so much stronger, and can never be separated.

orange is the feeling in your heart when he says your name, whether he’s reminding you about that event he has coming up, or when he just wants to hear it breathlessly between kisses. he’ll never get enough of them. he’ll never get enough of you. 

orange is the always-growing warmth of his love, and it’s the glowing sparks of fire that fly between you. loving him is easy.

orange is the fluttering of eyelashes as you fall asleep together for the first time, it’s the wholehearted comfort cultivated over time, and it’s the countless pinky promises sealed with kisses. when his heavy heart needs uplifting, you promise to be there. orange is a promise you intend to keep.

—

thanks for reading!

love, tj. 🧋

—

link to my masterlist

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Florida has just become the first state in the Union to mandate that high school students learn about the crimes of communism.  The subject is indeed very important, and too little known. The problem is that the new legislation, like other recent Florida measures, itself recalls certain evils of communism.

As of this coming school year, high school students who wish to graduate from a Florida school must pass a class in U.S. government that includes "comparative discussion of political ideologies, such as communism and totalitarianism, that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy essential to the founding principles of the United States."  

Any high school teacher is going to sigh at the awkward circularity of the "principles essential to the principles" formulation.  As Orwell tried to remind us in "Politics and the English Language," though, vague formulations demand our critical attention.  This weird phrasing serves a sinister purpose, one that becomes clear later in the law.  The point is that the United States is to be defined as free and democratic, regardless of what Americans or their legislators actually do.  American is free and democratic because of a miraculous investiture from the past.  Complacency is therefore patriotic, and criticism is not.

The law presents "totalitarianism" as an ideology.  Totalitarianism is not an ideology, so Florida teachers are henceforth legally required to teach nonsense.  To be sure, one can find historical figures who referred to themselves as "totalitarian" in a positive sense, but in general the term has been used as analysis and critique.  In use for about a century now, "totalitarianism" has generally been used as a category that brings together regimes with very different ideologies, drawing attention to underlying similarities.

As such, totalitarianism can also be a tool for self-critique, since it draws attention to political temptations that make different systems possible.  The most important book about totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt, presents Nazism and Stalinism as possibilities within modern politics.  When in Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt wrote about conspiracy theories, she was writing not only about Nazi and Soviet practices, but also about a human failing.  When she wrote about narratives where we are always right and they are always wrong, where we are always innocent and they are always guilty, she was describing a universal risk.  When she wrote of people who were simultaneously gullible and cynical, for whom “everything was possible and nothing was true,” she got uncomfortably close to contemporary American reality.

By defining totalitarianism as a foreign ideology to be contrasted with American principles, Florida legislators have denied students not just the knowledge of what the term actually means, but also the possibility to appeal to a rich body of thought that might help them to avoid risks to freedom and democracy.

Unlike totalitarianism, communism is an ideology.  Its ideological character is visible in its approach to the past: communists transformed history, an open search for fact and endless discussion of interpretation, into History, an official story in which one's own country was the center of world liberation regardless of what its leaders did.  The party was always right, even if what the party said and did was unpredictable and self-contradictory.  The most important communist party still in power, the Chinese, takes this line today.  To question the revolution or the inevitability of the system is to fall prey to "historical nihilism."  In April 2018, a Chinese memory law accordingly made it a crime to question the heroism of past leaders.  What we have is good and right because we inherited it from glorious dead revolutionaries, and we must not question what the government tells us about our glorious dead revolutionaries.

We have our own official story of revolution. The Florida board of education has recently forbidden teachers from defining American history "as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence."  That narrow formulation rules out most of reality but crams in a good dose of mysticism.  Nothing is ever entirely new, and nations arise from many sources aside from principles.  The board of education’s claim is political rather than historical: Everything good comes from the past, and we must not question what the government tells us about its righteousness.  If there is only one story, and you have to tell it, that is not history but History.  The point is not that the American Revolution is the same thing as the Chinese Revolution. The point is that we are treating it the same way, describing it in dogmatic terms that we enforce in memory law. And that is deeply worrying.

The same spirit is in evidence in that Florida communist law.  Deep in the past, it instructs us, is where we find freedom and democracy.  Freedom is not something to be struggled for by individuals now, but magically "inherited from prior generations."  That phrase should give pause to anyone who cares about freedom.  If you seriously think that freedom is something that you can inherit, like a sofa or a stamp collection, you are not going to be free for long.

In the law's logic, democracy is not actually allowing people to vote, but some silent tradition that somehow exists whether or not real Americans can vote in reality.  Despite what actually happened between the eighteenth century and now (slavery, let's say, or voter suppression), we must close our minds to everything but those mythical "principles essential to the principles."  The facts give way to an underlying logic, impossible to articulate, that demonstrates that my country is better.

The Florida communism law requires that someone (it is hard, given the awkward phrasing, to say who) must "curate oral history resources."  The curation will involve the selection "first-person accounts of victims of other nations' governing philosophies who can compare those philosophies with those of the United States."  There is something humiliating about turning real people into poster children for American exceptionalism.  Refugees from other countries past and present have individual and complex stories, which cannot usually be reduced to tales of American superiority.  Edith P., a Holocaust survivor, speaks of waiting for hours every day in front of the American embassy, which denied her family a visa.  American schoolchildren read about Anne Frank, but no one tells them that her father applied for an American visa.  Leon Bass was an African American soldier who saw a German concentration camp.  He had something comparative to say about "governing philosophies," but it would not survive curation.

America today is not an especially free country.  Our own non-governmental organization Freedom House, relying on our own preferred notions of freedom (civil and political rights) ranks us in fifty-eighth place.  In other words, it would theoretically be possible (and it would certainly be valuable) for the Florida board of education to solicit testimonies from people from fifty-seven other countries where people live more freely than here, who could explain why they have not moved to the United States.  They could compare their countries' "governing philosophies" with that of the United States (favorably, unfavorably, who knows: they are free people).  But we know that this will not happen.  Such an application of the Florida communism law is unthinkable, because the Florida communism law is not about freedom.  It is about repeating that America is the best country in the world.

Self-absorption is not anti-communism.  Anti-communism would entail listening to history rather than History, and educating individuals who can make up their own minds.  You don't get freedom from the flock.

Another familiar communist trick can be found in a recent directive by the Florida board of education.  The trick has to do with leveraging victory in the Second World War.  Beginning in the late 1960s, a certain version of the Second World War became an important part of communist ideology.  In the Soviet Union, and also in today's Russia, any wrong done by the system was explained away by the fact that the Red Army had defeated the Germans.  The fact that Nazis were evil made the Soviets good.  The fact of having resisted the Nazis made one's own system unassailable.  This communist technique has now, uncannily, resurfaced in official Florida pedagogy.

In the recent school board directive, we learn that "examples of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with State Board approved standards include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons." This repeats the Soviet (and Russian) logic.  We don't deny German crimes, and therefore we are innocent of any crimes ourselves.  Indeed, anyone who suggests that we look at our own history: well, they are like Holocaust deniers!

Another sad resemblance concerns voting. Freedom involves educating people about the past as it was so that they can make up their own minds about what the future should be.  Democracy involves giving people the vote in the meantime.  The Soviet Union held elections, but they were ritualistic and fake.  When Soviet power extended across eastern Europe after the Second World War, local communist parties rigged elections.  Thus authentic anti-communists would make sure that their own elections were not rigged, and that all citizens could take part.  But the Florida communism law was passed in circumstances that suggest a lively interest in making voting more difficult.  In 2019, the Florida legislature enacted pay-to-vote legislation that effectively disenfranchised people that Floridians, in a referendum, had voted to enfranchise the year before.  The Florida communism law came into effect this 1 July, hard on the heels of a new Florida voter suppression law.

I have spent decades teaching and writing about communism, and I certainly think that young people should know about communist systems and their policies of mass killing.  But declarations of superiority do not amount to a pedagogy, nor to an anti-communism worthy of the name.  The content of the Florida communism law, and the Florida voter suppression law, and the board of education directive on race, do not suggest that Florida lawmakers and administrators have learned much about what was wrong with communism.  

These measures reveal American weaknesses that make American tyranny more likely.

* * * * *

When I went to High School in Florida [many decades ago] all Seniors had to take a class called “Americanism vs Communism.” As I recall, most students slept through the class. I thought that it was insulting propaganda - using an inadequate text that was filled with poorly written boilerplate and boring poorly made films.  If the right wing wants to inflict propaganda on teenagers it should invest in decent writers and film makers.  They are very poor in the literacy department.  I was 16 at the time and unsophisticated but I could still tell that what i was being taught was a waste of my time.

[diariesofaplutonian]

Pluto: Where is your power lost? Where can it be won back?

Let’s talk about Pluto! Pluto, to me, represents everything it has been mythologically and culturally assigned to—the underworld, the shadow side, the darkest parts of ourselves, the selves we wish to hide or keep contained from others, death, taboo, mystery, power struggles, and so on, but above all else, to me, where the planet falls in a house demonstrates the arena in which we feel the most powerless. The house where Pluto falls in shows us the themes we will grapple with and indicates the obstacles and struggles that may arise. Gratefully, Pluto also represents in the chart the area where we can most empower ourselves and elevate our lives and our dignity if we find a way to turn what disempowers us into our strength and make it part of our story, our story of victory, instead of a lesson of our defeat, our story of failure. Pluto shows us where we can triumph if we find a way to revolutionize or otherwise radically transform/change ourselves internally, despite our external challenges. Most importantly, Pluto is about recovering our power. For example, if Pluto falls in the 4th house/IC, it may indicate that a person feels most powerless or defeated in situations involving family. One may be estranged from one’s family or have a difficult relationship with one’s mother or stepfather, for instance, but due to financial, emotional, or other reasons, such person is unable to liberate himself from his family and be free of a toxic home life. He thus feels resentful not only by the fact that his environment limits him, but by the fact that he cannot escape or change his environment. His transformation may come through the act of juggling multiple endeavors to support himself until he is physically and emotionally able to remove himself from his unfit guardians and cultivate his own family through his individual selection of trusted people he names “adopted family.”

Someone with Pluto in the 8th house may feel powerless over death. Such person may undergo countless tragedy in the form of losing people close to him. He may lose his mother, aunt, younger brother, cousin, close friend, mentor, etc. through the course of his life, and so on. He may feel like he has no control over the lives of people he meets, and be plagued by the thought of forming attachments with other people, due to the fear that they, too, will die if he develops a closeness with them. His fear of death (not even necessarily his own) may evolve into a fear of connection and intimacy, another 8th house theme. He can overcome this fear or feeling of powerlessness through re-examining his basic safety, comfort, and survival needs, so when he reevaluates or reassesses his proximity to death, he sees not the history of all those who have passed before him, but the potential to live as though he is dying, not wasting a single minute, relating to himself and others with a newfound depth and urgency. He can form fierce, meaningful, powerful connections that allow him to interact and engage with people without being held back by the immediacy of crisis or the threat of future death. His knowledge that the future is uncertain can give him resistance to the notion of being extinguished, causing him to live relentlessly and with vulnerability, in search for deeper truth. Death may ignite a fury or appreciation for living within him. He may, as the familiar poem goes, “not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Knowledge of the impermanence of life makes him full of the desire to build something stable, solid, and long-term, seemingly permanent connections. He finds longevity in essence and via the impact he leaves on others and the impact they in turn impress on him. This gives him life and intense pleasure. Life becomes about energy, constancy in spite of inconstancy, and active transformation (self-transformation). He cultivates resilience and strength/temerity of character through this commitment to continuity of self-change.

Someone with Pluto in the 9th house may feel disempowered in light of others’ ideology/belief systems or in the field of higher faith or science or education. These people are some of the most likely to be successful high school or college dropouts. They have their own unique mission in life, and discovering it is their source of power. This person may also feel constantly tested or undermined by religious notions or organizations and possibly even the notion of God or higher power. This person may, alternatively, derive immense inner strength and fortitude by believing in God or higher power or the Spirit. This person may also form his own introspective, unique thoughts about life and produce philosophies or inquiries about the nature of existence. He could derive great fame or fortune or success or influence from disseminating his views, albeit controversial, whether positive or negative. In fact, he is sure to be polarizing. Nonetheless, his ideas will generate significant outreach due to the distinctiveness of his voice or message. His spirituality may be called into question, abandoned, or adopted. This person may struggle at school/in formal education, not necessarily academically or intellectually, but in terms of curriculum. This student may not agree with what he is being taught or feel like he cannot learn via compulsory schooling. The native may thrive in more organic settings where, opposed to sitting in a lecture or taking notes off a PowerPoint, for instance, he may be asked to design a project implementing his ideas or approach to something or invent a novel way to problem-solve an application. This, to him, may be a better use of his time, energy, and creativity. He may also flourish in home-schooling or alternative schooling, trade schools, or special schools. This person may feel restricted in environments where he is subject to other people’s beliefs or so-called knowledge, such as when someone insists fascism is the right way to live, for instance, and he argues socialism is the right way. He has to learn to contend with other people’s viewpoints, however challenging to hear he believes them to be, without feeling the urge to change or compel them, despite whether he believes himself to be right and they wrong. Other people don’t have to believe what he believes and he shouldn’t feel obligated or righteous enough to attempt to sway or influence them. He will find his personal power when he is able to separate the actions and beliefs and opinions of others without feeling the need to compete with, attack, or obliterate them. There isn’t always a “winner.” Not everything needs to be contested or debated, and sometimes, it really is best to say nothing at all.

Pluto in the 3rd house may feel intimidated, pressured, limited, or controlled in situations involving siblings, local spaces or regional transportation, or informal school as opposed to higher education. For instance, one may be significantly older than her sister and may be forced to help her parents raise her due to her family being large and having significant age gaps between children, or, her sister may have been made an orphan after their parents died in a tragic car accident, and the native thus may have been forced to intervene and take custody of her sibling to avoid the younger girl ending up in the foster system. She may resent having to take care of someone else as an adult when she is not even fully able to provide for herself and her own needs, or she may have difficulty relating to her younger sibling because of their large age gap, and may thus find herself in the mother role instead of the big-sister role. She can see this as an unfair constraint upon her own resources, time, and happiness. Or, in a different scenario, the Pluto in the 3rd house person may have parents who divorced when she was a child and one of her parents, say her father, remarried and her stepmother brought in 3 children of her own. This person may feel abandoned by her own father, especially if her mother remained her primary caregiver and her father acted as a birth parent to his stepchildren, treating her as an adopted or stepchild. She may resent her step-siblings for being closer to her father and in her eyes, ‘stealing’ her dad away from her. Tension between her siblings and herself could cause her to feel troubled or indignant and unable to change this deeply unsettling feeling of being replaced that dwells inside her and eats her up from the inside. Rather than letting this jealousy or envy consume her and ravage her insides, she can overcome this tribulation by fostering an intense self-love within herself and finding stimulating mental activities and hobbies (as Mercury traditionally rules the 3rd house) that make her feel powerful.

For example, let’s say she begins to read and write exceptionally well, eventually crafting a memoir about her experiences, and it turns into a bestseller. Or, perhaps, though, this is petty, she joins the chess or debate team at her school along with her siblings and constantly crushes them at debates or chess. She will have thus found a way to transcend those setbacks that made her feel defeated and less important, by becoming the best in a field or championing her story or becoming victorious in publishing or some type of Mercury-related field. She will have attained some sort of dominance or recognition and will no longer see herself as second-best in terms of her parents’ eyes/her father’s treatment of her. And who wouldn’t like to be the most successful sibling? The one who introduced the world to the family name? Sibling rivalry/competition can be healthy.

Pluto often brings the potential for struggle and demise and defeat, but it also rules comebacks and success stories and champions the role of the underdog. There is no ‘failure’ or setback that cannot be overcome with Pluto, so long as one constantly and consistently transforms and generates a second skin, so to speak. Pluto is a test, and you can’t ace every test, but you can’t flunk them all either.

[robertreich]

SIX RESPONSES TO BERNIE SKEPTICS

After decisive victories in New Hampshire and Nevada, and a second place finish in South Carolina, Senator Bernie Sanders has emerged as the clear front runner. Right on cue, the establishment on both sides of the aisle has raised a four-alarm fire about Bernie’s electability and his chances against Trump. Here are 6 responses to these Bernie skeptics.

1. “America would never elect a socialist.”

P-l-e-a-s-e. America’s most successful and beloved government programs are social insurance – Social Security and Medicare. A highway is a shared social expenditure, as is the military and public parks and schools. The truth is we have already have socialism... for the rich (bailouts of Wall Street, subsidies for Big Ag and Big Pharma, monopolization by cable companies and giant health insurers, giant tax-deductible CEO bonuses) – all of which Bernie wants to end or prevent. And Bernie is not a socialist, he’s a Democratic Socialist, which is very different and very American. FDR was a democratic socialist, just not in name. Democratic socialism, as practiced in Europe, hinges on the same three core principles that used to be practiced in America, before big corporations undermined them -- strong safety nets; public investment in healthcare, childcare, and education; and tough regulation of Big Business.

2. “He’d never beat Trump in the general election.”

Wrong. The best way for Democrats to defeat Trump’s fake anti-establishment populism is with the real thing, coupled with an agenda of systemic reform. This is what Bernie Sanders offers, and it’s what the polls are reflecting. All of the pundits proclaiming that Bernie has no chance against Trump are using a political framework that may have been correct decades ago when America still had a growing middle class, but it’s obsolete today, as more and more Americans feel politically disempowered and economically insecure. The real political divide today isn’t left versus right. It’s democracy versus oligarchy.

In the latest polling average from RealClearPolitics, Bernie beats Trump by the widest margin of all candidates. After his decisive victory in Nevada, a Morning Consult survey found that Democratic voters view Bernie as the best candidate to take on Trump. And recent polls show Bernie beating Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two crucial battleground states Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016. If you’re a moderate Democrat whose chief concern is beating Trump, Bernie is the clear choice.

3. “But how would he pay for it?”

Nearly every time the media discusses Bernie’s transformative plans, they ask the same tired question: How will he pay for it? Funny that they never ask how we’ll pay for endless wars or bailouts, tax cuts, and subsidies for the top 1 percent.

Nonetheless, Bernie’s campaign just released a detailed memo outlining how they plan to pay for his policy ideas. Take college for all and canceling student debt. Sanders will fund the $2.2 trillion proposals with a modest tax on the very Wall Street speculation that crashed our economy in 2008. 40 countries throughout the world have imposed a similar tax, including Britain, South Korea, Hong Kong, Brazil, Germany, France, Switzerland and China. Sanders’s wealth tax would also go a long way toward paying for his other ambitious plans, like Medicare for All. Speaking of Medicare for All, it will leave us spending less over time. Single-payer systems in other rich nations have proven cheaper than private for-profit health insurers because they don’t spend huge sums on advertising, marketing, executive pay, and billing. Multiple studies have found that Medicare for All will save us billions in the long run, including a recent study which found that Bernie’s plan would save $458 billion annually and more than 68,500 lives every year. The nation already pays more for healthcare per person and has worse health outcomes than any other advanced country. Leaving our cruel, for-profit system in place will eventually become more expensive than implementing Medicare for All. At the end of the day, the question shouldn’t be how will we pay for it. As long as proposed spending will be less than the future costs of insufficient public investment in education, climate change, and inadequate healthcare, it makes logical sense to enact these plans. 4. “He couldn’t get any of his ideas implemented because Congress would reject them.”

First of all, Bernie has served on Capitol Hill for nearly 30 years -- working across the aisle to advance a host of legislative priorities. He worked alongside Republican Senator John McCain to reform the veterans’ health care system, and has co-sponsored bills with Senator Mike Lee of Utah, one of the most conservatives members of Congress, to restrict executive war powers in Yemen and Iran.

He’s stood staunchly behind his bold ideas while still delivering Democrats key legislative victories when his vote was sorely needed, like when he voted to pass the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank. And here’s the most important reality of all: If Republicans maintain their majority in the Senate, no Democratic president will be able to get much legislation through Congress, and will have to rely instead on executive orders and regulations. But we have a better chance of flipping the Senate if Bernie’s political revolution continues to surge around America, bringing with it millions of young people and other first-time voters, and keeping them politically engaged.

5. “He’s too old.”

Untrue. Have you seen how agile and forceful he is as he campaigns around the country? He bounced back with ten times the energy after he had a minor heart attack. These days, 70s are the new 60s.

(Just look at me.)

In any event, the issue isn't age; it's having the right values. FDR was paralyzed and JFK had Crohn's disease, but they were great presidents because they fought adamantly for social and economic justice.

6. “He can’t unite the Democratic Party.”

Wrong. The establishment keeps mistakenly assuming that moderates appeal to a broader swath of the electorate. Their analysis is woefully out-of-touch, and they’re operating within an echo chamber with an outdated mental framework of how politics is supposed to work.

As shown by his dominant win in Nevada, Bernie’s brand of populist politics unites people from all walks of life. He won with 29 percent of whites, 51 percent of Hispanics, and 27 percent of blacks, according to entrance polls of Democratic caucus-goers. He won a staggering 65 percent of caucus-goers under 30 years old, and he carried every other age group except for caucus-goers over 65. This is precisely the kind of multiracial, multi-generational coalition that is needed to defeat Trump in November. And as I mentioned, Bernie beats Trump in multiple polls by the widest margin of any of the candidates, including in key swing states. No other candidate has this kind of data to back up their electability case.  

The Democratic establishment is wrong to think Sanders is too liberal to win a general election. To the contrary, he’s the Democrats’ best shot at taking back the White House.

[yhwhrulz]

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional: October 14th

Tozer in the Morning THE LONELY HUMAN

There is a strange contradiction in human nature all around us: the fact that a person can reek with pride, display a swollen ego and strut like a peacock-and yet be the loneliest and most miserable person in the world! We find these people everywhere-pretending and playing a game. Deep within their beings, they are almost overwhelmed by their great loneliness, by their sense of being orphans in the final scheme of things. The result of this strange, aching human sense of loneliness and cosmic orphanage is the inward, groping question: "What good is it to be a human being? No one cares about me!" In the garden, Eve believed Satan's lie-the lie that God was not concerned about her and that God had no emotional connection with her life and being. This is where the unregenerate person is in today's world. It is only sin and defeat that can bring this sense of orphanage, this sense of having been put out of the father's house, and the feeling that follows when the house is burned down and the father is dead.

Tozer in the Evening Wants or Wishes

The third class of blessing consists of spiritual treasures which are ours by blood atonement but which will not come to us unless we make a determined effort to possess them. To make things clearer let me set forth four propositions touching this heritage of joy which God has set before us; 3. You will have as little as you are satisfied with. God giveth to all men liberally, but it would be absurd to think that God's liberality will make a man more godly than he wants to be. The man, for instance, who is satisfied to live a defeated life will never be forced to take victory. The man who is content to follow Christ afar off will never know the radiant wonder of His nearness. The man who is willing to settle for a joyless, barren life will never experience the joy of the Holy Spirit or the deep satisfaction of fruitful living. It is disheartening to those who care, and surely a great grief to the Spirit, to see how many Christians are content to settle for less than the best. Personally I have for years carried a burden of sorrow as I have moved among evangelical Christians who somewhere in their past have managed to strike a base compromise with their heart's holier longings and have settled down to a lukewarm, mediocre kind of Christianity utterly unworthy of themselves and of the Lord they claim to serve. And such are found everywhere. 4. You now have as much as you really want. Every man is as close to God as he wants to be; he is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wills to be. Our Lord said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6). If there were but one man anywhere on earth who hungered and was not filled the word of Christ would fall to the ground. Yet we must distinguish wanting from wishing. By "want" I mean wholehearted desire. Certainly there are many who wish they were holy or victorious or joyful but are not willing to meet God's conditions to obtain. That God has placed before His redeemed children a vast world of spiritual treasures and that they refuse or neglect to claim it may easily turn out to be the second greatest tragedy in the history of the moral creation, the first and greatest being the fall of man.

Copyright Statement This material is considered in the public domain.

[warsofasoiaf]

Uh. I checked the character count, and this is going to end up long. My friend sent me something, and while I'm sure it's wrong, I don't know enough about medieval battles to dispute it. Can you help? Part one of many

He held storms end against a siege. From what information there is he seems to have done this well. I don’t know if he employed a scorched earth strategy before the siege began (if he didn’t then a rescind my compliment). The siege showed little in terms of tactical or strategic prowess on the part of Stannis but his will power was commendable and eating last was (part 1)

The siege showed little in terms of tactical or strategic prowess on the part of Stannis but his will power was commendable and eating last was a good morale booster (though he likely didn’t do this for the moral). Still, if the Tyrells had decided to storm the castle he would have lost. The battle shows more incompetence on the part of Mace than prowess on the part of Stannis (part 2)

He captured Dragonstone. There is very little mentioned about the specifics of the engagement. It is highly unlikely that there was a contested landing as the defenders lacked the numbers and morale for such a move and there is very little precedent for a contested landing in the historical time period that ASoIaF is based on. He likely arrived at the castle to find an open gate. Part 3

The best mark on Stannis’s record, and the only truly impressive thing he’s done was his destruction of the Ironborn fleet. He managed to split his fleet in two and flank the Ironborn without them knowing. Though this is still impressive it must be mentioned that Stannis likely had a great advantage due to technological superior ships (the ships described in the books are absurdly large and in an age where gaming and boarding was the main instrument of naval warfare that is a great advantage).

During the war of the five kings Stannis refuses to ally himself to anyone. This is a great black mark agains his record. And shows either an abysmal understanding of basic strategy or an incredibly diluted ego. Stannis’s choice to march on Storms end similarly shows either incompetence or delusion, only saved by an entirely unpredictable magical trump card on the part of Melisandre. Combined with the luck of the Stormlander lords agreeing to side with Stannis.

His attack of Kings Landing similarly shows a lack of understanding of basic strategy. This time he seemingly fails to scout ahead before initiating a contested river crossing. Failure to do this is an incredible oversight that cost him the battle. Part five sorry forgot the last one

After Stannis’s previous blunders lead to the annihilation of most of his army he gambles and sails north to try and win over the Northern lords. This is probably his first truly good idea in the war of the five kings. With Robb dead and the Lannister involvement in what seems to be one of the greatest war crimes in Westerosi history the Northern lords are ripe for realignment. Part 6

He crushes a numerical superior Wildling army though his force is made up of mounted knights and the Wildlings too don’t seem to utilize scouts. I would chalk this up to apparent wildling incompetence. Stannis then determines to march on the dread fort. Which is rightly pointed out by Jon Snow to be a stupid idea. Stannis then receives advice that determines his next moves. Part eight

Sorry, had to wait to submit more. Stannis then determines to march on the dread fort. Which is rightly pointed out by Jon Snow to be a stupid idea. Stannis then receives advice that determines his next moves. Stannis also seemingly wins the battle on the ice. His strategy seems to be fairly sound though he likely will receive no small amount of help from the Manderlys. Part nine

Part 10: Ultimately Stannis does not deserve his reputation. He isn’t completely incompetent. But He does not stand up the the likes of Tywin Lannister, Randyl Tarly, or Robb Stark In skill. Most of his victories are largely attributable to events that he had no control over and could not have forseen, from Melisandre’s magic to Jon’s council.

I wouldn’t worry. Whoever wrote that doesn’t really understand warfare either.

Defending against the Siege of Storm’s End was a remarkable feat of leadership. Stannis is young, and this is likely his first real test of major leadership. That he is able to handle it with only one instance of defection is no small accomplishment. A general needs to have this sense of leadership, in order to inspire his men and to get them to follow his orders. This is something we see time and again with Stannis; his troops truly do feel inspired by him, and are not simply fearing punishment for non-compliance. His men cross the burning bridge of ships during the Battle of the Blackwater, they follow him to the very edge of the world (bit of dramatic hyperbole here, but the Wall is remote and he would need to unite his men after the disastrous defeat). 

Capturing Dragonstone. I fail to see your friend’s point. Naval landings are difficult in premodern times. Stannis had to organize a fleet and land, and he had built ships to take on the Targaryen fleet. Again, that’s another part of leadership, particularly since medieval naval combat frequently had ships that would be commissioned for a purpose and then mothballed.

What we see of the Battle of Fair Isle shows instead Stannis using the terrain features and the advantages of his equipment to his full advantage. This is something I often see with amateur military analysts is this idea that good equipment is used as an excuse to dismiss battlefield accomplishment in favor of a preferred conclusion. In real battle, this isn’t the case, it’s a chaotic mess and tools and techniques still have to be used appropriately.

Now I agree that the early moves that Stannis makes in the War of the Five Kings does show that he needs his character development to grow into a better king. The need to secure alliances, and the way his poor interpersonal skills don’t make much headway with Catelyn despite her being tailor-made to support Stannis (save for that pesky Northern independence thing) do show that his problems front and center. 

I’ll be frank, your friend’s interpretation of Storm’s End suggests that he or she did no analysis the battle. I’ve seen a bunch of folks argue that on the r/asoiaf subreddit before. The facts of the matter are that Stannis forces Renly to move and nearly exhaust himself. He prepares his position and ground, he takes key advantage of Renly’s mistakes, and overall shows himself capable of winning the fight. Melisandre is often dismissed by people in our own world, but we have to remember that Planetos is a world where magic actually does stuff. I’d agree that a general in our own time who prepares for a magic bolt of lightning or something to strike down an enemy general is an idiot, but Planetos operates by different rules, and we have to make at least some sort of concession to that.

Now, we do see Stannis making a lot of mistakes in the battle, but we also see Imry Florent making most of the mistakes against tactical sense. Part of that is on Stannis, he is the senior commander, but part of that is also the problems of incompetent feudal leaders. Imry is an idiot, and he only got that position by nepotism. 

Dismissing the wildlings losses as failure to employ scouts simply doesn’t match the text. We don’t hear about the wildlings not employing scouts, what we hear instead is that Stannis joined with the Eastwatch rangers and set out. We also see that the wildlings do employ some of their forces well, particularly their mammoths, which requires Stannis to secure a breakthrough against one of the other wildling contingents to flank the mammoths and bring them down, which is good tactical maneuver to eliminate an enemy advantage.

Stannis relying on Jon for counsel being marked as a disadvantage is a completely foolish argument. Securing local intelligence to better plan and execute a military campaign is one of intelligence’s primary purposes! That’s one of the most prevalent reasons to secure friendly local sources, so that you can adequately plan with better knowledge. Stannis makes a plan, finds local sourcing which gives him better intelligence, so he changes it. That being held against him is just a bad argument, start to finish.

I noticed your friend completely omitted the capture of Deepwood Motte, and I’m guessing because it really tears a hole in their arguments. Stannis using classic military deception techniques, camouflage to hide his troops, and captures Asha as she’s trying to evacuate, all of which showcase Stannis’s intelligence and effectiveness within the military sphere.

The Battle of the Ice we see Stannis again making preparations to take advantage of local conditions. While we don’t see what it is, because we’re still waiting on the book, all of the chapters that we see of him in the fifth novel regarding this show him preparing, show him leading his men. 

Holding up Tywin Lannister as an example of a military genius is laughable, since Tywin gets beaten pillar to post by Robb Stark. His efforts to win the War of the Five Kings completely doom his house, since he violates every social taboo and engenders significant resentment to his family while doing so. I think it is possible to criticize Stannis’s mistakes in the Blackwater, without needing to minimize the actual accomplishments.

Thanks for the question, Anon. Here’s hoping you can correct your friend’s bad arguments.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[mary-tudor]

~HENRY TUDOR: A SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION.~

Today, I'll be discussing a character who left his mark in History, fathering a dynasty whose most proeminent members were his (second) son Henry VIII and his granddaughter Elizabeth I. Often overshadowed by his descendants, Henry's own deeds as a king and as an individual of his own days have been neglected until recently, when efforts from British historians have been working hard to change that. 

The reason why I decided to bring him here was not only due to personal affections, though they certainly helped it, but because there are aspects overlapped in social structures that shaped him. In other words: what's Henry Tudor as a sociological individual? Can we point him out as a constant foreigner or someone whose socialization process were strongly marked by the addition of two different societies? 

Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke, located in Wales, in January 28th 1457. His mother was Margaret Beaufort, a proeminent lady whose grandfather John Beaufort was the son of John of Gaunt, son in turn of King Edward III of England. The duke of Lancaster fathered four ilegitimated children (who were legitimated in posterity) by his (third marriage to his then) lover Katheryn Swynford, amongst whom John Beaufort was the oldest. Therefore, Henry was  3x grandson. to the duke and, despite what some might argue when Henry IV became king, in great deal to inherite the throne. Well, it's not my intention to deepen the discussion as to Henry's legitimacy or the Beauforts. 

Though his father's ancestry, Henry's blood led him to the royal house of Valois. His paternal grandmother, Katherine de Valois, was the sister of Isabella, who had been the second wife of the ill-fated king Richard II. She was also descended of Louis IX and his spanish wife, Blanche de Castille. Henry was also a royal man from the Welsh lands, as Owain Tudor, his grandfather, was related to several princes of Wales. By all these I said, the first thing one might think (considering 15th century and it’s nobility) Henry would receive a proper education due to his status. However, this would not happen in the strict sense of the word. Let us not forget that England was collapsing by the time of Henry Tudor's birth and his childhood. Why am I using the word 'collapse' to qualify the civil war we know named as wars of the roses?

Émile Durkheim, a french sociologist, would write several centuries later, about how a society is formed: he compared it to the working of a human body. If the head, the brain of our body does not work well, what happens? The body will not work well, certainly. Neither would the head work well if other parts hurt somehow. Although if you did break a leg, you could still make use of your brain, but as a whole how limited wouldn't you be? He'd also say that when the human body, or as he called, the society was sick, it was because of the social structures which imposed the human being to the point where there would be no individuality, no matter of choice. 

Such created social facts that were completely external (althoug well internalized through means of a process we call socialization) but coercitive. If they are not working, what does this mean? That soon another social facts will be replacing the former one. But between one and another, we have a "very sickly" society. Taking this understanding back to England's 15th century, it is not difficult to see what Durkheim was talking about. 

The king was the head of the English body. If we have here two kings fighting over one crown, fighting over the rule of an entire body... Well, then? We have the collapse, a civil war that lasted for the next 30 years. Here, it's less about discussing who started what but why they did what they did, and the explanation for it. Power is power. It's crystal clear, and a statement that, however simple might it sound, points to the obvious. Factions that fought for power intended to dominate others, using the concept very well developed by sociologists as Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias. This domination is a large field, a concept that embrace all sorts of it. Looking back to England's latter half of the century, domination was peril. The head was about to explode. The society was ill... and dominated by it.

What were the values? What was the racionalization proccess of social action led by individuals that were not only individuals but a group? How would all of this affect Henry Tudor? It was not about merely blaming the capitalism, because such coercitive system wasn't present yet. But Henry was, directly or not, linked to the royal house of Plantagenets, whose eagerness for dominating one another and by extension the rest of the country would include him in the game. 

"Game." For Durkheim, this would imply an agitation, like a wave of sea, from which no one could escape from. Let's not forget that Institutions created ideas, renewed them, shaped them to the practice whether to dominate the weaker or to defeat the stronger. Whatever the purpose, we here have the Church, not the religiosity, but the precursor of ideas would subdue individuals to share (or manipulate to their own goals anyways) values in order to keep determined mentality to it. But also, monarchy was too an institution which held control over the lives and deaths of thousands of people. A monarch, as we know, is never alone regardless of how "absolut" they could be in different times and contexts. They were not above the law, either. At least where the socialization process is concerned. For the monarch embodied the content which was the law back then. He was literally the law. 

Furthermore, Henry's education would foresee this fighting, which I'm not merely referring to custody going from his mother to another, before finally staying under his uncle's responsibilities, as well as the civil war itself. (Anyone remembers Warwick executing Herbert before the boy?) 

See, we all know and comprehend today what trauma are capable of doing to someone. Such experience is the main responsible for shaping ideas, values and even costumes. Now, a society which is very much sick by it's own values and moral costumes (a point here must be made: the public consciousness always preached for a warrior, strong king, but has no one thought how this "common sense", validated by a general expectation towards the head of society, was what led it to... well, for the lack of better word, suicide itself? 

For it's widely accepted that weak kings do not last long. But that is when we deal with a good deal of expectations that, when turned to frustrations, bring awful results. If England's society was ill in it's very extreme sense of the word, was because the values they created turned against themselves and that would leave it's mark in a boy as Henry. And until the age of 14, he was still absorbing these concepts, these morals, values, costumes from institutions (let's not forget that a monarch shares such with the nobility that surrounds him, as was the case of House Lancaster,f.e) before he was casted out to Bretagne and, in posteriority, to France. Now, I believe you all know what was done whether in England or with our king during these 14 years spent outside his own country before he became king upon the victory settled on the battle of Bosworth field.

I am not interested in discussing historical facts. At least not now, as we are finally dealing with Henry Tudor as a social actor

----/-HENRY TUDOR: A FOREIGNER? AN EXILED? OR AN OUTCAST?--

These questions mobilized me as I came to read a text written by 19th century sociologist named Georg Simmel. He wrote an essay (pardon by any mistakes in translations done from here on) entitled "The Foreigner", in which he brings a sociological question at why  foreigners are seen as strangers who are never entirely immersed in the society they attempt to be part in. 

Here's an excerpt translated by me in which he explains it:

"Fixed within a determined social space, where it's constancy cross-border could be considered similar to the space, their position [the foreigner's] in it is largely determined by the fact of not belonging entirely to it, and their qualities cannot originate from it or come from it, nor even going in it." (SIMMEL, 2005: 1.)    

Furthermore, he adds:

“The foreigner, however, is also an element of the group, no more different than the others and, at the same time, distincted from what we consider as the 'internal enemy'. They are an element in whose position imanent and of member comprehend, at the same time, one outsider and the other insider." (SIMMEL, 2005: 1).

Here's why Henry, as Earl of Richmond, was not well seen by the Britons and the French, in spite of being "accepted" by them. Never forget that he would still be seen as an outsider by his own fellows. As Richard III would call Henry a bastard, one could understand this accusation with sociological  implications. English back then detested these foreigners and by the concept brought here by me from Simmel we can understand why. But we could also see being called a bastard as a way to point out Henry's localization. Where can the Earl of Richmond & soon-to-be king be located?

I have pointed this far the structures which were raised and caused a collapsed society to live broken in many, many ways and how this affected Henry this far. Seeing how foreigner he was, nonetheless, he did not belong neither to England (at first) nor to the Continent.

On that sense of word, says Simmel (2005: 3): 

"A foreigner is seen and felt, then, from one side, as someone absolutely mobiled, a wanderer. As a subject who comes up every now and then through specific contacts and yet, singularly, does not find vinculated organically to  anything or anyone, nominally, in regards to the established family, locals and profissionals”

Even though we find a dominant group of foreigners in France, as we are talking about of nobles displeased with the Yorkist cause and supporters of the Lancastrian House, they were not majority. Where can we locate Henry, then? We don't, because he was not a French and however well he could speak the language, it was not his birth language. The French culture was not passed nor naturalized by him through the teachings of a family or the church by the institutions: monarchy, church, family, parliament, etc; he would have been defeated a long time. But that he did manage to, using this popular expression, put things together and become the first king to die peacefully since Henry V, it tells us a lot. Not rarely an immigrant is accepted by a society whose demands are forced upon him, most of the times in aggressive ways. But it's not often either that we see a king occupying such place in society. 

Indeed, one might say that kings as Henry II and the conquerors before him were too foreigners, but not in the sociological way I'm explaining. Because the social structures were different. Henry's government were settled in a more centralized ruling, far more just and peaceful, more economic and less concerned with waging wars than his antecessors. The need to migrate was not 'forced', neither 'imposed' and even back to the 11th and 12th centuries were motivated by different reasons. That's to accentuate how English society evolved throughout the centuries. And I used again and again Georg Simmel to prove my point about casting a sociological light towards Henry VII not as a historical character so distant of us and who remains an object of controversial discussions, but a man of his times who was forced to deal with expectations that placed him in social positions nearly opposed to one another to fulfill each role whether as king or as a man. For some reason, the broken society shaped Henry as an immigrant, but as history shows us, it was this immigrant who helped shape medieval society, directing it towards the age of Renaissance and in posteriority to Modern Age.

Finally, to close this thread I leave here another quote (translated to English by me) found in the text written by Simmel: 

"The foreigner, strange to the group [he is in], is considered and seen as a non-belonging being, even if this individual is an organic member of the group whose uniform life comprehends every particular conditioning of this social [mean]. (...) [the foreigner] earns in certain groups of masses a proximity and distance that distinguishes quantities in each relationship, even in smaller portions. Where each marked relationship nduced to a mutual tension in specific relationships, strenghtening more formal relations out of respect to what's considered 'foreigner' of which are resulted." (SIMMEL, p 7). 

Bibliography: 

AMIN, Nathen. https://henrytudorsociety.com/

DURKHEIM, Émile. "The Division of Labor in Society”.

KANTOROWICZ, Ernst H.”The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieavel Political Theology.”

PENN, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England.

SIMMEL, Georg. The Foreigner. In: Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Berlin. 1908.

[merelliahallewell]

The Drust in Battle for Azeroth

This is the second of four? posts looking at the Drust using the in-game and developer information we have available to us. I find the Drust incredibly interesting villains who manage to have some understandable motivations (at least in BfA) and also a neat aesthetic. The Drust and their history and influence are what elevate the questing zone to being more than just a Witcher ripoff and gives it its own cool identity. 

You can find Part 1 here. Anyway, here we go with BfA lore. This one is a bit of a doozy, be warned.

Part 3 - The Drust in Ardenweald

Part 4 - The Drust in the Night Fae Campaign (1)

Part 5 - The Drust in the Night Fae Campaign (2)

Before BfA

It isn’t known how long it took for the Drust to be defeated- we’re only given very rough timeframes. The dungeon journal suggests that they were defeated two thousand years ago, but that leaves 700 years between human settlement and the final end to the Drust, which seems a touch long. Ultimately, the timeline doesn’t matter so much as the impression that the Drust have been there for a long time. 

Most Drustvari have a healthy superstition of witchcraft that comes from even before the Heartsbane rose, and it does not necessarily seem to be tied to Thros in their minds. As shown by Emma Mayfield and the Witch in the Woods, one also does not need to be a Heartsbane witch to utilize the power of Thros. It is possible that many generations of Kul Tiran witches could have been communing with Thros in various ways, just as they are implied to have made pacts with demons. 

Drust Incursion

The Heartsbane Coven was formed at Gorak Tul’s command, after a dark bargain was struck between him and Meredith Waycrest. Tul promised her that her ailing husband would be safe from death, and it seems as if his price was that she would follow his commands and free him from the prison of Thros.

The Heartsbane Coven has a neat history that can be read through the eyes of the citizens of Corlain. I love the Coven and I think they’re really interesting- but since this post is focused on the Drust, we’re going to try to stick to viewing them through that context. 

It seems as if the Heartsbane are portryaed as the successors in inheritors of the Drust’s legacy. They wield not only their power, but utilize the same sorts of horrific rituals and strategies that can be seen in Ardenweald.

The most potent weapon the Coven wields is the Heartsbane Curse. This curse allowed them to mentally enslave hundreds of residents of Corlain and most members of the Waycrest Guard. This curse, likely created by the Drust, is eerily similar to something we will see later on. On top of that, they used the curse to great effect on the local fauna, turning the birds and beasts of Drustvar into servants.

As the war with the humans turned against them, the Drust crafted many constructs in order to house the spirits of the fallen, allowing them a second chance to battle against the humans. The constructs were made of incredible materials such as Revlis and Hailstone. Though they could not craft the powerful constructs the Drust had once created, they mimicked them with wood, bone, and wicker. They made a number of various wicker monsters as well, the majority crafted deep within the Crimson Forest, though others were made across the mountains in Barrowknoll. They stitched monstrosities together from pig and human flesh, animated with dark magic. 

“There is more to worry about in this land than simple beasts. Our enemy employs constructs of wicker and bone that can rip a man apart…”

These armies of flesh abominations and “wooden demons” were more than enough to to match whatever forces in Drustvar had not been enslaved by the Heartsbane already. The constructs were enough to defeat even the Lord-Admirals elite guards. The Coven took Drustvar by storm after taking Corlain with ease. Some witches were sent to infiltrate towns such as Arom’s Stand and Fallhaven, while they used their forces to directly attack Falconhurst, take control of the Crimson Forest, and attack Fletcher’s Hollow after they discovered a powerful artifact. Glenbrook not only lost much of its population to the Coven or the monsters in the woods, but also had the very land around it darkened by their magic. 

If they had not been stopped by the hunch Lucille Waycrest had regarding their magic, it is entirely likely the Heartsbane would have overwhelmed Kul Tiras, which was entering a three-sided civil war at that point in time. The Drust would most certainly have been released from Thros at that point, with the Heartsbane as their eager servants. Drustvar was near-completely under their control by the time the Adventurer showed up. 

It is an important point to mention that the Drust had direct involvement with the armies the Heartsbane raised. The wicker constructs were inhabited by either souls that were tormented and broken into serving the Heartsbane or Drust spirits called from Thros. Generally the ones in the Crimson Forest appear to house Drust, while the Soulbound Goliath and wicker men in Barrowknoll held enslaved souls. The Heartsbane also adopted the standard of the Drust, painted in blood (right). On the left is what is used in Ardenweald. It appears that the strength of an enslaved soul (or combination of numerous souls) directly corresponded to the power of a wicker construct.

Even as they fought for control of Drustvar, the Heartsbane worked feverishly to bring their master back to the world via a magical ritual held deep underneath Gol Inath. This ritual was called the Grand Rite, and required a massive effort held across the whole Crimson Forest. It appears the Grand Rite was meant to rip open a hole in reality to allow Thros’ minions in. While this rite was somewhat weakened by the activity of the Adventurer, Gorak Tul was still able to cross over briefly before retreating back into Thros. It is possible the Grand Rite was later completed fully within Waycrest Manor so that the events of the dungeon could occur.

Gorak Tul arrives in Azeroth for real this time via a set of ruins buried far beneath Waycrest Manor. He’s hugely threatening here, and summons additional Drust to aid him in battle. Tul still bears his vrykul frame, though he’s changed greatly, acquiring a strange amount of growth on his body like a tree almost, and his skin looks like bark. He even has a third eye. Seriously, this guy is menacing. These other Drust can also be seen being summoned by Heartsbane ritualists within Corlain, and it’s very unusual just how twisted and blighted they look compared to Tul. They seem absolutely malformed, more like Gollum than a vrykul. Could this be some effect of Thros after their long imprisonment?

A small aside: Drust undead were stirred from their long slumber by the Heartsbane magic. It seems as if it is capable of waking the dead in some fashion, though it almost seems to be from ambient magic rather than directed necromancy. Kinda neat. 

Into Thros

Just a few things to wrap up with BfA and the Drust. There are minor bits of their lore I didn’t mention that are doable in Archaeology, which is worth it if you want to fly around pretty zones and dig up relics. 

The isle of Fate’s End is located some distance from Stormsong Valley, and features Drust ruins upon it. Apparently, nobody returns from Fate’s End if they’re sent there. It’s here that Jaina appears to have been taken into Thros. Is it some sort of a natural gateway to the place that’s one way only? Maybe a place where people were unknowingly sacrificed to Gorak Tul? Whatever it is, it’s wild. You can fly there in-game, but in the story only a Tidesage can take you out there. It’s interesting that the Tidesages have developed a special rite in order to reach it, and I’m curious if that implies that the Tidesages dealt with Drust magic in the past or know how to negate it with their own power. It’s food for thought, for sure. 

Thros itself is nothing special, alas. It’s just a color-swapped Drustvar with some more of those weird Drust and Gorak Tul hanging out. Honestly it’s a bit disappointing, but there is some interesting lore that comes from Ulfar during these quests. Ulfar also says some pathways are best left closed- lest those on the other side use them instead. Up until then, he was unaware of Tul’s return.

The entrance to Thros lies within the great tree, Gol Inath, but crossing the threshold will not be as simple as walking through. To open the path, you will need an effigy of great strength. Not one of the trinkets of the coven, mind you, but one of old, Drust magic. The path to Thros will be treacherous, but that is merely a fraction of what awaits you inside the Blighted Lands. Prepare yourself, <class>, for the minions of Thros will use your deepest fears and regrets as a weapon against you.

Once you have collected the necessary reagents to build an effigy and enter Thros, he says this:

I wish you luck on your journey, mainlander. Tread carefully, for Gorak Tul's eyes will be upon you.

He is vulnerable within his own realm, and he will go to great lengths to prevent you from entering it.

Katherine Proudmoore, the then-ruler of Kul Tiras, remarked that most people believed Thros only to be something of rumor and legend, not an actual place one could travel to. 

The Blighted Lands...

If the legends are true then inside we will witness suffering and torment the likes of which we have never known...

The whole journey through Thros is interesting, as Gorak Tul clearly considers Jaina his most valuable prisoner. Eventually you catch up, have a neat cinematic, and battle him to the death. Gorak Tul’s death speech offers a hint of what is to come for Ardenweald in Shadowlands. 

Your hollow victory... means nothing...

The Drust... will never... relent...

Dying with his last breath, Tul's corpse fades away. 

One final mystery

The Waycrest manor dungeon is pretty neat, but hardly contains anything Drust-related save for the ruins deep underneath. It is especially disappointing that Gorak Tul’s boss fight room is the same one you fight him in beneath Gol Inath- apparently the Drust really liked that design, or maybe it’s best-suited for portals to Thros.

However, there is one bit of unique architecture. Created by artist Fanny Vergne, there is some sort of a design etched into the ground beneath the organ the Waycrests are playing. It looks like a worm, or a serpent with runes carved into it? I wonder if it is supposed to be some sort of horrific Thros monster or something else. In the files of the game, it is apparently labeled as “Jormungandr“ which is a Norse mythological being. Interestingly, the runes do not match any known Vrykul or Drust runes used in the game’s environmental art. I wonder if the artist would be able to shed more light on it or if it’s just a neat design.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The months leading up to Nov. 3, 2020 were, for Donald Trump, almost a carbon copy of what he did in advance of the presidential election four years previously: He thumbed tweets, whined at his rallies and complained to anyone who would listen that the election had been “rigged” by Democrats. Of course, after election eve 2016, we never heard another peep out of him about the dastardly Democrats and the wily ways they had rigged the election against him, because he won.

But from the moment that his network of pet poodles at Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden in November of 2020, causing a series of eruptions in the private quarters at the White House, culminated in a call to Fox executives to demand that the network reverse its Arizona projection, Trump understood that this time it would be different. He would lose.

Trump turned immediately to the courts, filing more than 60 federal lawsuits in the battleground states he lost claiming that the election had been “stolen” from him. But as one case after another went down to defeat or outright dismissal, he turned to loyalist loons like former general Michael Flynn, online conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, My Pillow guy Mike Lindell and — wait for it — the Proud Boys to push his obsession that he hadn’t lost, and that the election had been rigged by nefarious forces.

See if this doesn’t sound familiar. On Dec. 12, several thousand pro-Trump demonstrators showed up in Washington for at least two rallies, one on the Mall and the other on the steps of the Supreme Court, to protest its decision the previous day to throw out a lawsuit filed by the attorney general of Texas seeking to bar the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania from casting their electoral ballots for Biden. The court issued a brief unsigned order on Dec. 11 saying that Texas had no “interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections” and dismissed the lawsuit. A few days earlier, the court had dismissed another suit filed by Pennsylvania Republicans seeking to throw out that state’s Biden electors, thus disenfranchising millions of voters.

Trump was watching closely. With Proud Boys marching through downtown Washington in mock-military formations shouting “Move out!” and “1776!” Trump tweeted "Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA." A bit later, he tweeted, “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!"

He must have liked what he saw on the streets of the nation’s capital that Saturday, because seven days later, on Dec. 19, Trump was tweeting “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" The next week, on Dec. 26, he tweeted "The ‘Justice’ Department and the FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history, despite overwhelming evidence. They should be ashamed. History will remember. Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th."

After seven hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Saturday by former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and five hours of testimony before the same committee on Friday by Rosen’s former acting deputy, Richard Donoghue, we now know that behind the scenes, Trump was very busy.

On Dec. 15, the day after Bill Barr announced that he would be leaving his post as attorney general, Trump summoned Rosen to the Oval Office and told him he wanted the DOJ to file legal briefs supporting the lawsuits he had not yet lost challenging election results in battleground states. He demanded that Rosen appoint special counsels to investigate Dominion Voting Systems, which had provided voting machines in multiple states. Rosen demurred, citing what Barr had already reported to Trump, which was that the DOJ had investigated his charges and had found no evidence of widespread or significant voter fraud.

Rosen told the Judiciary Committee that Trump called him almost daily trying to get him to have the Department of Justice declare that the presidential election was “corrupt” and announce that the department was initiating investigations of “election irregularities” in multiple states, including Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — all states Trump had lost narrowly to Biden.

Rosen continued to defer and delay on the phone, and Trump started talking with the acting head of the DOJ’s civil division, Jeffrey Clark, who was more amenable to Trump’s conspiracies. Rosen described to the Judiciary Committee five separate “encounters” with Clark over his plotting behind Rosen’s back with Trump, all of which took place between Dec. 23 and Jan. 3.

Trump became fixated on his narrow defeat in Georgia, placed a now-famous phone call to Gov. Brian Kemp on Dec. 5, trying to get him to pressure the state legislature to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. Kemp deflected, telling him that he had no power to call for investigations into signatures on absentee ballots or any of the other things Trump was urging him to do.

On Dec. 27, at Trump’s urging, Clark produced a letter dated the following day he wanted Rosen and Donoghue to sign. Aware that the governor of Georgia had rejected Trump’s entreaties, Clark’s letter amounted to a DOJ legal analysis that the state legislature could call itself into session without the governor’s authority, reject the electors pledged to Joe Biden and appoint its own slate of Trump electors. “Time is of the essence,” the Clark letter pleaded, because Congress would convene in joint session to certify the election on Jan. 6.

Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign the letter, telling Clark “this is not even within the realm of possibility.”

That didn’t end it. Clark apparently demanded a meeting with Rosen and Donohue, which took place at the DOJ on New Year’s Eve. Clark told them Trump was planning on firing Rosen and replacing him with Clark so he could carry out his plan to manipulate the Georgia legislature into appointing a new slate of Trump electors. Clark told his two bosses that he was meeting with Trump the next week to carry this out.

Instead, Clark met with Trump a day later and showed him the letter, discussing their plan for a Trumpian “Saturday Night Massacre.” Rosen and Donoghue demanded a meeting with Trump, at which they planned on telling him that the entire senior leadership of the Justice Department would resign en masse if Trump appointed Clark as acting attorney general.

Before that meeting took place, news emerged that Trump had placed a lengthy call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, demanding that the latter “find” enough votes to overturn the election results in his state. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said, according to a tape of the call obtained by the Washington Post.

The Oval Office meeting between Trump, Rosen, Donoghue and Clark went on the next evening, attended by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who advised the president not to fire Rosen because such a move would trigger congressional investigations and distract from Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. After three hours, the meeting broke up, with Rosen and Donoghue still in their jobs.

Rosen and Donoghue told the Senate Judiciary Committee that with only 17 days remaining until the presidential inauguration, they believed they had avoided a constitutional crisis. But we all know what happened three days later, on Jan. 6, when a violent mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol building and delayed for several hours the certification of the electoral ballots which made Joe Biden president.

Between the early hours of Nov. 4, when Trump first realized he had lost the election, and Jan. 6, when the assault on the Capitol dominated every news cycle until the inauguration (and beyond), Trump was all over the place in his attempts to overturn the election. He was consumed with the lawsuits being filed around the country on his behalf — but was losing them, one after another. He was obsessed with following conspiracy theories about Biden ballots being carried by Special Forces soldiers from Germany and stuffed into ballot boxes in battleground states, about mysterious computers and satellites controlled by Italy switching Biden votes for Trump votes in battleground states, and multiple other outlandish conspiracies.

But beginning on Dec. 12, with the Proud Boys march through Washington and the demonstrations on the Mall and at the Supreme Court, Trump became fixated on holding a rally on Jan. 6 that he believed could prevent the certification of electoral ballots taking place that day. Two days later, he began his campaign to get the Department of Justice to join his plan to pressure state legislatures in a handful of states he had lost to throw out Biden electors and appoint their own slates of Trump electors.

He tweeted on Dec. 19, 26, 27 and 30, all dates coinciding with his pressure on Rosen and Donoghue to use the Department of Justice to help him overturn the election. On Jan. 1, the day he met with Jeffrey Clark to discuss firing Rosen, he tweeted “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C. will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!” On Jan. 4, Trump traveled to Georgia to hold a rally, nominally in support of the two Republican candidates in the U.S. Senate runoff election, but really to put pressure on Georgia legislators to overturn the election.

Practically every move Trump made in December and January in advance of Jan. 6 was a crime. Pressuring Jeffrey Rosen to misuse the Department of Justice to support his private lawsuits was a crime. Conspiring with Jeffrey Clark to fire Rosen so Clark could send the letter to the Georgia legislature was a crime. Calling Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp and pressuring them to “find” votes and use the legislature to overturn the election was a crime. Meeting with his own White House staff and outside advisers to plan the rally on the Ellipse at which he would incite the assault on the Capitol was a crime.

Trump’s problem, to put it frankly, was that he didn’t start committing crimes early enough. The crimes he committed in December and January were largely impulsive, not carefully planned or focused. He exploded with tweets and phone calls and meetings and rallies.

In short, Trump was Trump, as incompetent a criminal conspirator as he was a president. The only question left to be answered at this point is whether Merrick Garland and the Biden Department of Justice will have the courage to charge him and his co-conspirators with the felonies they committed: defrauding the United States by attempting to illegally influence the outcome of the 2020 election.

If that crime sounds familiar, that is because it is the same one special counsel Robert Mueller charged 24 Russian nationals with committing in 2016, when they illegally hacked into Democratic National Committee servers, stole campaign emails and set up fake accounts to influence voters on American social media platforms. With Donald Trump, nothing is ever new. Just watch him. He’s out there right now raising $100 million to do it all over again in 2024. And the entire Republican Party is right there with him.

[This is my special Wednesday Salon column. It is open to all subscribers.]

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