These are not a screenshot from a post-apocalyptic film... it's Marinka, Ukraine after a year of shelling by russia.
666 notes
·
View notes
Residential buildings razed to the ground in Marinka (eastern Ukraine, 11th May, 2023).
85 notes
·
View notes
Been thinking of the role of witchcraft in contemporary fantasy lately. Female power has been a stand-in for villainy in a lot of witch stories. What's a better way to use the trope?
In our next adventure I'll cast Marinka as the grand dame of a traveling circus, a predatory con artist who uses her magic in ransom schemes as she moves from town to town. Like in the story, she will have the power to make people love her, and to turn them into animals when she is no longer pleased with them. I considered giving her a motivation - she had been manipulated through love in the past, she had been made to feel powerless before - but this veered too close to the stereotype of the bitter, wronged woman as magical villain. It's too easy to cast a feminine villain in this role, as an emotionally driven and reactive person who is lashing out instead of following her own ambition (and masculine villains tend more towards stark ambition than emotional reaction, though it's more of a mixed bag). The folkloric Marinka entranced the purported hero Dobrynya after he killed her dragon boyfriend, which honestly doesn't seem like a disproportionate response to me, but once again boils down to revenge.
So Marinka will be driven by simple greed. Someone whose sole focus is getting and keeping more power, by any means necessary. She'll be proud of her power, too, and want to toy with the adventuring party before luring them to their doom - presenting them with a few challenges based on the abilities of the folkloric Marinka. But this Marinka has the advantage over her literary counterpart of being surrounded by performers and animal handlers - all of them under her spell. It's the beginnings of a cult structure, another domain of villainy reserved for men (with thanks to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for their deconstruction of cult-as-masculinity-worship) that will be well-suited to our villain.
2 notes
·
View notes
670 War Days: Marinka falls. RFA gains more on Avdiivka, Bakhmut Fronts
0 notes
marinka, ukraine
the city looks apocalyptic thanks to "r*ssian peace"
source
1 note
·
View note
z drugo izdanje Samuraja šanka, TZ Sv. Ivan Zelina2023.
Haiku o zimi u kafiću
Sjetna je zima
spokojni kut kafića
grije nas piva
Može li haiku biti dovoljno rječit da nam dočara putopis? I što se dogodi kada se udruže Marijan Grakalić i Turistička zajednice, pita – dakako retorički – Marinka Zubčić Mubrin, direktorica turističke zajednice grada Sv. Ivan Zelina u predgovoru knjizi Samuraji šanka,…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Russia Is Launching Attacks All Along The Eastern Front Line. #kupyansk ...
0 notes