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raayllum · 1 year

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Quick run down: 4 is the lowest typical score given, 10 the typical highest score given (although you can technically go up to 12). Making my post because I noticed Callum’s Justice ranking was at 6 (lower than I’d expected) and I always meant to do a lil more formal comparison between the trio so here it is I suppose.

Devotion: This is value is about duty, faith, and friendship. You’re motivated by the bonds of loyalty and your love for others.

Truth: This value is about fidelity, certainty, and authenticity. You’re motivated by finding strength in facts and by the principle and pursuit of knowledge

Glory: Have you ever wanted to be celebrated by history? This value is about legacy, fame, and fortune. You’re motivated by praise, acclaim, and your desire to be remembered.

Justice: Have you ever been compelled to fix what’s wrong? This value is about balance, virtue, and reward. You’re motivated by adherence to fairness and what you think is right.

Liberty: Have you ever resisted the control of others? This value is about freedom and autonomy. You’re motivated by a world without oppression or suppression.

Mastery: Have you ever needed to rise above your own limits? This value is about control, achievement, and skill. You’re motivated by power, growth, and progress.

Similarities:

Glory is a 4 for all of them. Utterly unsurprising I think - they’re all willing to do things regardless of recognition and aren’t motivated by any real self importance

Truth is a 6 for all of them. I find it interesting that Callum gets the “hide the truth to protect others” rather than Rayla, but we do see elements of that in TTM. For Ezran, it has less to do with a moral truth (Rayla) or how to handle the truth (Callum) but more to do with maturing to see the truth (“I ignored something that is true” —4x03)

For anything other than their Most Important Feature, everything else has roughly an 8. This makes sense as it is still a core value, i.e. Callum jumping off the mountain is very devotional, Rayla works very hard to find real justice, Ezran cares a great deal about placing autonomy in other people’s hands (S3), etc.

In Betweens:

Ezran and Rayla both have Mastery at a 6 with Callum having it at an 8; this makes sense as he is driven to look for knowledge and power (through magic) in ways they are not / are mostly settled and/or disinterested in

Ezran and Callum both have Devotion resting at 8 - high, but not their highest values. This makes sense as according to the game, Devotion is how obligated you feel to others. Ezran feels beholden to Katolis but that’s something he’s largely grown into, and he feels a wider responsibility to the world at large, moving in between them as he can. Callum is very devoted to his loved ones (mainly Ez and Rayla, but also Zym in a lot of ways) and his desire for freedom often interplays with a desire to have autonomy/capability to protect and/or provide for them in key ways.

Rayla and Ezran have Liberty at an 8, showing that they value freedom (Rayla’s bio includes her goal to free all people from terrible fates like the one she almost had with the binding ceremony, we’ve gone over Ez’s, etc) even if it’s not as high as Callum’s - but more on that later

Highest Values

Ezran’s is Justice at 10. This makes sense as he is the series’ embodiment of Justice thematically as well as the series’ Witness. This reflects his role as the peace maker for elves and humans and dragons, both politically and interpersonally with Callum and Rayla in S1 and S4 in particular. It is also embedded into the fact that his death itself would have been Justice and his survival is what allows true justice to actually continue, his decisions as king, and the fact he’s king at all, per Harrow’s words: “My father told me that about all, I must be a Just king.”

Callum’s is Liberty at 10. This foreshadows his arc in season four in terms of a complete loss of control/freedom and why it screws with him so royally. While many of the characters agonize over making the right choice (or a choice at all), not having a choice at all is what torments him the most: “I can’t do anything!” (2x07) particularly when it comes to protecting or helping his loved ones. We see this especially in his quote under Liberty in which despite being crown prince and heir to the throne, he states that he is beholden to his inner circle rather than a sense of duty. In S4 he is concerned about Aaravos hurting his loved ones, and that fear of doing awful things to other people is what has him so especially worried over the situation, reaffirming his statement that “I value those close to me more than anyone or anything” certainly.

Rayla is Devotion at 10. At first glance it’s easy to take her “My only allegiance is to my heart and those that know it” as a similar kind of sentiment to Callum’s “I value those close to me” statement, but we know what Rayla’s heart is aligned with: “My heart for Xadia.” Her heart is given to whatever she feels her duty is, to what feels right, hence why she risks everything for Phyrrah, someone she doesn’t know at all, simply because leaving the dragon there results in “every fibre in my body is telling me this is wrong.” Bloodmoon Huntress also expands on this further, drawing comparisons to her and Runaan’s sense of duty and love for the whole world, as well as precisely what led her to take on the assassination mission in the first place. In S1-S3 Rayla gets better at listening to her heart rather than shutting it down, although this has changed in S4. She’s learning to prioritize her loved ones more and more, but at the cost of her actual heart.

Misc Notes:

For Callum, it’s worth noting that Devotion and Mastery (magic) are of equal value to Callum and are definitely two cornerstones of his more hands on arc. Thus, we can likely deduce that as much as Callum undeniably values Liberty, the fact it’s his highest value is also because it’s the value that informs and guides his arc the most Thematically. This means that his desire to learn magic and be there for his loved ones is of equal measure in terms of his decision making, but we also see him clearly prioritize his loved ones in ways he does not do with his own pursuit of magic.

[ Side note: And just as a comparison, Claudia - Claudia’s - devotion is also an 8, but Mastery is her 10, even though so much of her arc is driven directly by devotion to her family (although her bio makes it clear it is supporting her family and her father, not merely her valuing them, as the distinctions are important too). ]

Following this “Two Pillars holstered by One Theme” logic, we can break Ezran and Rayla down into a similar manner.

Rayla is defined by her initial quest of Justice and a growing sense of Liberty (cue: being literally freed from her binding, other symbolic cycles, etc) but this is bound together and streamlined through her Devotion to a cause to people and her family. We can see S4 bring this together directly in her devotion to Callum and her family and how they are both either already literally or becoming entangled / entrapped in forces beyond their control with Rayla wanting to free / protect all of them.

For Ezran, this means he is defined by his place as Justice thematically first and foremost, with Devotion and Liberty as his two tether-hooks: re a child king being put in chains to try and give his people a choice > forced conscription, as well as the work he’s doing to try to create peace and a Narrative of Love (devotion) in S4.

Thus, the highest value for each of the Trio is what informs them at their core and subsequent thematically, with their two respective pillars as how those things are motivated and manifest throughout, with of course a good dose of overlap beyond all three. But either way, I just thought it was Neat™

Closing Note

One thing I found interesting when actually going each beat of their bios is that Rayla and Ezran are inverses of each other and very closely aligned. They share the exact same 3 values, all in similar amounts (either 8 or 10) and just rotate one out for their respective highest: for Rayla, Justice is at an 8, and for Ez, it gets bumped up to a 10 and his devotion down to an 8. This closeness between them, and how Callum diverges, lines up with how I’ve thought of and how I’ve written each of the trio for a while now, re: meta dated September 2021 about this exact difference, well before TOX came out.

Because Callum, strangely enough, does not have Justice™ as a particularly high value. It’s actually on the lower end of his scale, with other heroic characters like Amaya, Janai, and Aanya having it as a 10, an 8, and 8. The only none villain adjacent character (Soren, Viren, Claudia) with a Justice as low as Callum’s is Lujanne, and Callum’s justice ranking is the lowest of the trio’s. This is interesting particularly because Justice is defined by fixing what’s wrong/broken, a sense of fairness and balance. And while Callum wants to have positive impacts on the world and make things better, it shows that his big heart is also equally if not more so tethered to pragmatism, perhaps, compared to his family, even in decisions made like leaving with the egg in the first place being what was also safest for the egg and particularly Ezran during the attack on the castle.

And well, if you know, you know ;)

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 6 months

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By: Batya Ungar-Sargon

Published: Nov 8, 2023

About a week after the October 7 massacre, I passed a large group of people in an airport who were waiting to check in for a flight to Cairo. One of the women ostentatiously clocked the Jewish star I wear around my neck and started whispering with her compatriots. As I walked by, she shouted at me, “Palestine will be free!”

I chuckled as I walked to my gate, thinking, Not if Egypt has anything to say about it.

Before October 7, I would have considered this whole scene to be wildly offensive. A stranger shouting an anti-Israel slogan at me, holding me responsible for the actions of the Israeli government simply because I am a Jew.

But in the post–October 7 world, I had a different reaction: let her scream.

It’s uncomfortable to be barked at by strangers. It’s not pleasant to find out that your classmates will not condemn the murder of your people, or to hear thousands of them gleefully chanting the slogans of a genocidal death cult committed to your erasure from this planet. It’s unsettling to know that your peers have adopted a worldview that allows them to convince themselves that you are the bad guy, you are the privileged monster who wants babies to burn—even as they justify and celebrate the burning of Jewish babies.

It is scary to realize that the same administration that “protects” your fellow students from every perceived slight and insult will side with them against you as they literally call for your annihilation. It can be deeply isolating to open social media and see post after post calling your people the perpetrators of the exact forms of murderous violence that was done to them not three weeks earlier. And it is maddening to watch those who hate us and wish violence upon us fashion themselves as victims—even as heroes.

But that feeling you get when you are facing those things down, that quickening of your heart rate, the flush on your face, the chill down the spine—these unpleasant sensations are what courage feels like. They are the physical symptoms of a moral compass that works, the manifestations of pride in who you are, of the fact that despite millennia of calls for our murder, we’re still here. You’re still here.

Treasure those feelings. Do not cower. Do not tremble.

I’m not suggesting you put yourself in actual danger. The assaults on Jewish students at Harvard and UMass are crimes and should be prosecuted as such. On Sunday, 69-year-old Paul Kessler dared wave an Israeli flag on a Thousand Oaks street corner and died after being assaulted. His murderer should spend his life behind bars.

But the worst thing that could come out of this moment would be for Jews, especially Jews on campus, to embrace the victimhood narrative that their peers subscribe to—and that universities large and small have reified in sprawling DEI bureaucracies. That worldview is a large part of what has brought us to this moment.

So do not cast your lot as a competitor in the oppression Olympics. Instead, reject that entire way of looking at the world.

Here’s the thing: it’s good to be unpopular with a mob whose worldview has done away with the concept of right and wrong and decided, with a Nazi-like commitment to racial ideology, that you are Jewish and therefore you are white and therefore you are bad. It is good to be unpopular with people who spent the weeks after October 7 on the hunt for Jewish exaggeration, Jewish lies, Jewish crimes. It is good to be unpopular with people who cannot separate evil from power and virtue from skin color. (Unpopularity, for now, is your fate, unless you are willing to cosign your own humiliation and join the left’s token “good Jews” who advocate against Zionism from the comfort of the diaspora for plaudits from the Squad.) We don’t answer to them; we answer to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Rock of Israel and its Redeemer.

The good news is: it may not feel like it, but this country is on your side. College students are in one of vanishingly few spaces in America that sides with Hamas. Your professors will live and die in irrelevance, signing their names to their silly little letters and coming up with new jargon with which to defend terrorism while nurturing their grandiose hero complexes. Most of your peers will grow up and abandon their radical chic commitments. The progressive movement has taken a big hit, having shown its true colors to a nation that knows what is good and what is right, that can separate barbarism from civilization.

But for now, remember this: to be a Jew is to refuse to kneel and refuse to bow. The stakes of standing upright have never been clearer than they are today, in this post–October 7 world. It’s good to have these people as your enemies, because the world will always have people who oppose what’s right and what’s good, and it is our destiny to fight them. Do it with pride.

"Sometimes it's better to be known for one's enemies."

#Batya Ungar Sargon #antisemitism #intersectionality #intersectional feminism #oppressor #oppressed #victimhood culture #victimhood #islamic terrorism #hamas #exterminate hamas #hamas terrorists

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autumnbrambleagain · 3 months

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So IF, say, a Marlfox ended up in Qud, this is why I think it would naturally form an army of snapjaws.

Consider. Marlfox the book literally has a part that goes:

This narrative has been edited by Florian Dugglewoof Wilffachop, Actor Manager Impresario. Who insists that the entire tale is a drama, which he will be later performing as a play, hence the three parts being named as acts rather than books. We crave your indulgence for this deviation.)

Like all Redwall books, they're post-edited propaganda made to make the landlord goodbeasts look good, and the oppressed "vermin hordes" look bad.

No, the marlfoxes weren't there to steal trinkets, they were there for medicine. Their mother was old and sick and dying, and they were sent out to get stuff to keep death away? It's a metaphor. Redwall chroniclers have twisted the truth.

No, the marlfoxes weren't constantly murdering one another. That's propaganda to make the Redwallers clean of conscience. If the books were up-rated in age I'm sure the marlfoxes would be like, committing incest with one another constantly just to hammer in how ~evil~ they are and how they don't have ~morals~ like ~us.~

The water rats celebrating the marlfoxes' deaths and becoming peaceful farmers? Really? In a series where rats are biologically impelled to be evil, selfish, nasty, mean, brutish? Aha. Tell me more about how the native populations celebrated the civilizing light of the British reaching them, Mr. Jacques.

So obviously the Marlfoxes were cool ninjas, yeah, sure, probably did some bad things, yeah! They, like all other "vermin" races, have spent their lives having the arable land owned by selfish, snobbish upper-crust goodbeasts. Of course everyone wants to conquer Redwall--they control all the good land, and refuse to allow the filthy, lower, base vermin races access to them.

Okay! Established. Marlfoxes are awesome, Redwallers are all entrenched oppressors. Let's say one gets sucked into a space-time vortex and ends up in Qud.

So, after some culture shock, there's some things they'll notice. Snapjaws will be nice to them, because the law of mimicry means they'll recognize the snout and the fur and be inclined towards it. The marlfox will see another people desperately scrabbling together a hard-fought life, and, ok, have you seen snapjaws.

They get killed by equimaxes.

They get killed by horned chameleons.

They get killed by salthoppers, dragonflies, and dromads!

Do snapjaws raid peaceful settlements? Sure. They have their forts and their castles, but they're rattle-skattle things shored up poorly against the salt around them. How else can they survive but in raiding? This isn't like the goats, who dominate the land. Snapjaws are forced to the edges, and everything is their match or more.

So I'm thinking a marlfox, being clever and having been in that situation most of their life, will experience a feeling between sympathy and opportunity.

While there are peaceful snapjaw settlements, how much land is there in Qud that can support a village? This is something that's finally going to come up in Proselytize soon enough--one of the big theses of the story! There isn't enough resources for everyone to live in peace. It's just a hardboned fact. The Brambled Fae is gonna have a lot to say about it!

So obviously the marlfox would accumulate snapjaws, build a castle, and history would repeat itself. But there are no Redwallers who own everything. Each village is a small center of power at best. Yd Freehold, Ezra, the Six Day Stilt, even these centers of power don't project force externally much.

And that's why it's ENTIRELY 100% CANON that my Redwall marlfox CoQ crossover OC donut steel is going to build a snapjaw empire, and bring prosperity to snapjaws everywhere. Probably at the expense of, oh, let's say, I don't know. I'll roll dice to determine who to destroy the homes from.

#caves of qud #redwall #autumn says things

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teamdilf · 2 months

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for the wip ask game i’d love to hear about your DA/BG3 Crossover!

Ooh, so the crossover takes place many years post Dragon Age: Inquisition, following my post-canon longfic. Iris Lavellan, Solas and Dorian are in the Deep Roads deactivating eluvians and blow up the eluvian that Petra and Astarion just so happened to wander through while they were exploring after dismantling a vampire coven. Trapped in the Deep Roads, Petra and Astarion reluctantly ally with Iris and Solas (and find Dorian to be absolutely delightful and perfect in every way), and spend a lot of time bickering with Solas. Iris, who is nearing a nervous breakdown, on account of all she's been through over the last decade, does not get along with Petra, often taking her frustration out on the woman, leading to further tension.

This was meant to be a comedy in my head, but it turns out Iris is dealing with a lot, and a heavier drama with some comic relief was more the speed of the story I was looking to tell!

A snippet:

“I have no expectations of being remembered with anything resembling fondness, and have grown used to the venom spewed my way," Solas says.

“How it must sting at your pride to be so thoroughly loathed by both the people of the world you broke and the people of the contemporary world that you broke again.”

Probably not a polite thing to say, but [Petra] is hardly going to treat this man with kid gloves, given all he’s accomplished.

Solas says nothing, turning his attention over to Astarion. “You are resilient, having spent lifetimes bathed in pain and blood. You break the chains of your kin, yet do so in search of wealth. For one who survived enslavement, you would think you would be more eager to help.”

She grits her teeth, but allows Astarion to take the lead in his own defence. “Haven’t spent much time around vampires, have you? Because if you had, you’d know not to turn your back on one - and that my generosity only extends so far.”

“You have an opportunity to make a difference.”

“And I do: by ruthlessly slaughtering vampire lords and knaves as a bounty hunter.”

“Killing should not be celebrated.”

Astarion laughs at this. “But it’s so much fun, darling.”

“Those you kill were real people, with lives and loves. Even if their deaths were well-deserved, they are unfortunate.”

“Funny, to be lectured about killing from a man who destroyed the world - twice,” she mumbles under her breath.

“You know, I do believe the position of ‘arrogant magic nerd’ has been filled in my life and truly, I do not care what you think of me,” Astarion retorts. “Also, all that,” he gestures up and down at Solas, “and all you do with it is brood and put up fancy magical curtains? What a waste of power.”

“You speak like an oppressor when you were the oppressed. If you had some compassion…”

Now, Astarion’s eyes grow cold and he turns, stepping towards the man, sneering at him. “Compassion is weakness. Compassion gets you and yours killed. I protect myself and I protect my family - everyone else can go hang as far as I’m concerned, unless they have something useful to offer me.”

#ask games #Thank you!#j's fics #astarion x tav #astarion x oc #Solavellan #solavellan fanfic #Astarion fanfic #astarion fic #astarion x female tav #BG3/Dragon Age Crossover

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mshexley · 6 months

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"from the river to the sea is calling for Jewish deaths"

No it's not. You wanna know why Zionist want you to think that?

Cause the same way racist white people see "black lives matter" as black people saying "ONLY black lives matter" is the same way that Zionists view "from the river to the sea".

Zionism is a white supremacist ideology and as such, the oppression of others is baked into the identity. If you think that's not true then ask what life is like for Jews of Color in Israel. [Here][Here]

I will always bring it up because it's a very important part of understanding the fickle nature of white supremacy but when Italian and Irish people immigrated to the United State, they weren't considered "proper" white people by American and English white people.

They were treated the same way PoC were. They were discriminated against being denied jobs, proper housing, and had propaganda spreading about them. In America, Italian people were depicted as rats "polluting the city" meanwhile the Irish were depicted as violent and dirty in comparison to the "proper and civilized" white people of America and England.

This did not shift until Italian immigrants and Irish immigrants performed whiteness properly and what that means was joining in on the oppression of PoC. For many Irish immigrants, the only job they were able to get was as cops and you can see how cops aid in white supremacy.

Granted, it was different circumstances for the anti-Italian sentiment stemmed from both WWII but primarily from the fact that Italian people were more known to be Catholics which went against what the U.S government wanted in creating a white country filled with protestants and Christians (literally the same goal Israel has but for the middle east). But also because many of these immigrants were from South Italy, they were considered the black people of Italy.

Whiteness as a concept REQUIRES that you hate PoC and you participate in their oppression. Zionism is the same way because there's a reason that white supremacists rock with folks like Ben Shapiro and Israel and that's because they perform whiteness "properly". White supremacy and Zionism says that you can Jewish in our world so long as you hate PoC too. This is why it's important to distinguish Judaism from Zionism.

Because the Israeli and the settler state as a whole is NOT an actual product of Jewish faith and teachings. Because if it was, why is questioning it a bad thing when Judaism is famous for letting people question higher powers????

With Zionism, the way to be a "proper" Jewish person is to participate in the oppression of PoC. Hated and bigotry are linked the identity.

Because "standing with Israel" means to allow the Israeli government to commit genocide, Zionists believe that Palestinian people and everyone who supports them are calling for the death of Jewish people. Because for Israel to exist, Palestianians must die so of course Zionist think that for Palestinians to survive, Jewish people must die.

White supremacists believe only their lives matter which is why when black people say "Black Lives Matter" they think black people are only referring to ourselves.

It's why they hate things like "Black Power", "Latin Pride", "Asian Pride" and all of that because those are the struggles of PoC being celebrated. It's being alive despite EVERYTHING.

Meanwhile, "White Pride" and "White Power" are linked to celebrating the oppression of marginalized groups. You can't celebrate Columbus without celebrating the Native Americans that were murdered, raped and tortured. You can't celebrate the British Royal family without celebration the country's legacy of colonization of the entire world and subsequent destabilization of so many cultures.

You cannot celebrate your heroes of whiteness without celebrating the millions of black and brown people dead at the base of their statues.

You cannot stand with Israel without standing for the torture and genocide of the Palestinian people.

Whiteness and Zionism cannot succeed if PoC aren't dying for it.

#free palestine #fuck israel #from the river to the sea palestine will be free

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gakriele-lvs-blog · 1 year

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My thoughts for the last episode [Spoilers]:

---The beginning(approximately 5 minutes) was paced quite decent, they manage to cramp the Collector's development in all of that and it kinda works because the guy was never bad, just innocent and unaware of the bad things they had done.

---Belos as a whole was spectacular. The bastard really lives up to his expectations. And as a villain, he is one of my favorite characters by far. Possessing the Titan? We saw it coming, and they execute quite well for my perspective.

---They pull out an Anne Bounchoy in reverse here. They killed Luz to bring her back in an overpowering form. Not sure how to feel about that one. On one hand, it was a beautiful and climatic final confrontation. On the other, It undermines Luz's own achievements by giving her what she needs instead of finding it herself. Yet, I can see why they choose to do this, is just cool and considerating what she was against what else was she supposed to do?

---They really give Raine a protagonistic role on this, not unwelcome but feels a little out of the blue. Still their inclusion and relevance feels organic enough as to not to feel oppressive.

---The Hexsquad and Camila really get sideline in this one! Like, they weren't even relevant through the whole episode! Truth be told, they got more than enough development from the last episodes so I can understand why that was the case. Eda and King deserved and needed a lot of screen time to compensate for their lack of relevance through the third season. Still... Something like Hunter being present for Belos's death or Camila's reaction to Luz's "death" would have been a welcome addition

---The Collector leaving was to some extent unexpected and personally unnecessary. They kist learn a lot in a couple hours and them just leaving instead of staying and learning more feels kinda anticlimactic, let Eda be the mother's figure they need!

---The conclusion was just as expected, reunions after reunions, what else was meant to happen? It worked perfectly and it was quite a peaceful and hopeful resolution. And Luz losing glyphs magic was the perfect bittersweet closure to it. With the true death of the Titan, it makes sense that she would lose said magic, a noble sacrifice.

---Time Skips... Honestly, I hate those for a lot of reasons. Especially if they take place through multiple years. Luz's quinciallera a couple days/weeks should have been the ending, allow everyone's family to gather to celebrate together, give us as many small interactions as possible

-Vee hugging Camila and Luz upon their return and for the former to call them mom and sister

-Eda and Camila's proper introduction to one another (and the latter's reaction to harpy Eda)

-Have Lilith just randomly getting harpy form just for the giggles (the owl beast is just that happy)

-Have Hunter together with Vee, and King during the final parts of the Quinciañera giving Luz a tearful speech about how much she changed their lives for the better (They are siblings!)

-Willow and Hunter could ask at the same time to become partners (Maybe the same with Matt and Gus?)

-Have more and more people coming through the portal to see Luz (She changed a lot of lives after all)

---Basically, let the audience materialize their own far-away future. Time skips have the drawback of leaving too much development in between. Using one for Thanks to Them was understandable. But here it feels unnecessary. Instead of Luz's incoming stay on college, let's us see a open ending focus on showing us the many adventures and mysteries left unresolved, letting your audience's imagination go rampant with everything that was left to cover and wish for more!

Still, just because I have my own opinion and vision doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the episode. Although the shortening will forever taint my joy for the show, eternally wishing to see the missing potential we never got to see... I love it and nothing will change that.

#the owl house finale #toh watching and dreaming #toh season 3 #toh criticism #luz noceda #eda clawthorne #king clawthorne #toh collector #the noceda siblings #toh spoilers

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magnetothemagnificent · 11 months

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14, 15, 33?

[id in alt]

(8 and 24 already answered)

7. Are you the "token" queer person in your family?

Nope, my first cousin once-removed was out as a lesbian and dating a woman while I was still a baby gay haha

14. How do you think other factors like neurodivergency or upbringing have impacted your identity?

Oh they've affected them a lot. More in the sense of how I express my gender. I don't do things like binding because of the discomfort from my fibrocystic breast tissue and autism. I express my gender through Jewish gender expression, and not so much the Western American expression of masculinity.

15. How has your identity changed over time?

Well, I went from cis bi to cis lesbian to cis butch to nonbinary lesbian to straight trans man and now to bi trans man, where I feel most at home :)

18. How old were you when you got to attend your first Pride? Who did you go with?

Hm, probably like...13? I attended a Pride event by accident, I was with my homophobic grandfather and his sister and our car got stuck in traffic because of the Pride festival, so my grandfather and his sister were like "ooh haha let's get out and look at the homosexuals haha" and bought me a rainbow flag as a joke. Little did they know I was a little closeted queer kid and was having the time of my life lmao. I still have that flag somewhere.

25. What queer discourse frustrates you the most?

The discourse of whether trans men face a unique form of oppression or not. There's people saying trans men can't face a unique form of oppression because men don't face a unique form of oppression, and yeah, sure, cishet able-bodied white men don't, but oppression doesn't act on a single axis. The misogyny a white woman faces is very different from the misogyny a black woman faces, for example. Men and boys of colour are treated very differently and face unique forms of violence by virtue of their gender. Jewish men and boys face unique forms of oppression by virtue of their gender, etc etc. I've talked about the stigma and vitriol towards circumcision a lot on this blog, and that's actually an example of the specific oppression Jewish and Muslim men face. It's a gender-based prejudice. And it's got nothing to do with women. It's not "misplaced misogyny". I don't know what word you want to use for it, but it's a specific gender-based axis of oppression. Quite frankly telling trans men that the specific gender-based violence and discrimination we face is just "misplaced transmisogyny" or "plain old transphobia" or "just misogyny" is abhorrant. I don't care what you want to call it, discoursing over "oh but so and so invented this word so we can't use it", etc, is a waste of time. We're wasting time discoursing about which words to use and not use. I don't care what you call it, call it "gobbledeegoop" for all I care, but acknowledge that it's real and let trans men speak on their own oppression. And also for the love of god stop sending death threats to anyone on either side of the field, trans men are allowed to have complex feelings and don't deserve hate just because they use or don't use certain words.

33. What about your LGBT identity do you feel proud of/ want to recognize/celebrate?

All of it? But honestly shout out to woefully single bi guys :/ Let's normalize having no one to kiss at Pride haha

Thanks for the asks!

#pride asks

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ko-fanatic · 3 months

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Oh My Savage Empire: Chapter one

Rating: Mature Pairing: Rome x Wales Characters: Wales, Rome, England Content warnings: Grooming, Ephebophilia, Blood and Gore, Violent Intrusive Thoughts, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Strained Family Dynamics Summary: Wales throughout the millennia learns one thing: He is beautiful. Over, and over, and over again. It starts with Rome, and gets volleyed from country to country until it all fizzles out once again. He just wants peace. AO3 link (inc. authors note, with explanation of historical references)

It was cold.

Obviously, Rhydian thought to himself, the rain beating down on his face as he looked up at the black and grey sky. The ground beneath him was reduced to mud, staining the bright hue of his trousers and smearing onto his many bracelets and torc, hiding the shine of that brilliant gold in the washed out colours. The only brightness left on him was the woad, swirling in beautiful patterns around his torso and face, but the darkness obscured even that.

His hand gripped the hilt of his sword tightly, strength gone, but he valiantly scrounged whatever he could to just keep holding on. Those bastards could be back any moment, and he couldn’t allow himself to be captured. Not like this. The heavy rise and fall of his chest barely bothered him, compared to the reason why he was laying alone in the mud in the first place.

Gingerly, he pressed his dirty hand to his abdomen, feeling the silky guts that splayed haphazardly from the deep slash through his body. If they weren’t attached to him, he wouldn’t be able to discern them from the pig intestines he’d removed from a carcass just this morning.

They’d eaten well, preparing to fight that man once more, washing their hair and adorning themselves as they would. They’d prayed and danced the night before, fires roaring and the blood of the sheep on the altar. He’d never see the Dryad of Death with his own eyes, being what he was, but he still celebrated with his fellow tribesmen.

Where were they now? The slice through him had been clean and deep, and he’d been very literally floored since then. All he could hear was the yelling and clashing of swords, unable to discern victor or vanquished. He couldn’t even sit up to see how the din had silenced.

He lay there for what might have been minutes, or what might have been hours. All he knew was the sun didn’t shine and the rain didn’t stop, but the rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning came eventually. Great flashes streaked through the oppressive, black clouds; almost as if a warning.

Footsteps approached at the apex of the storm, and Rhydian couldn’t do anything but still himself further. He didn’t dare draw breath, he kept his eyes open and skyward, the only thing he allowed himself to do was grip his sword tightly.

Playing dead. How noble.

Those footsteps were not those of a man, however. They were too light. He wouldn’t call them hesitant by any means, but it wasn’t the resilient marching he’d come to know. All of this, preparing him for something unexpected.

A pudgy hand upon his still youth-bare cheek, turning his head to the side to spy a child. Rhydian’s hair was fair but held a strawberry tint to it, whereas this child’s was nearly yellow as straw. Held the same texture, by the looks of things, as it stuck out and spiked in all directions. The child’s eyes were a dark green and his thick brows pinched, lips drawn in a line far too weathered for someone of his age.

Rhydian could understand. Despite seeing many, many harvests, he looked barely older than fourteen, still unable to even grow stubble and holding a petite frame. He wasn’t a God by any means, and his tribesmen knew, but he also wasn’t mortal. He made up for this in leaps and bounds, using his unusual strength and resilience for the benefit of those around him - hunting, gathering, holding everything he could together.

How many harvests had this child seen?

“You alright?” The little thing asked plainly, “I know you’re alive.”

Shit.

“‘M fine…” He breathed out, so softly, “But… must be quiet… Or he’ll come back…”

“Who?” The child frowned, head tilted to the side like a young wolf pup. He wondered if the other had seen the beast before, whether he’d been hurt by him too, whether this tiny creature had known death for a mere moment before starting once more, like waking from a nightmare.

He hoped he hadn’t. That boy was too young to know the staccato of a heart that stilled then was unnaturally compelled to beat once more.

“The monster… dressed in shining silver…” He ground out, “The one… with the golden sword…”

“The only sword I see is yours,” The boy shrugged, eyes drifting to the glowing runes of his sword - his Caledfwlch, “It’s very pretty.”

Rhydian decided to drop it there, he was simply too exhausted to continue that line of questioning. He felt his sword slip back into the small area of the spirit world it went to when he no longer could hold it, and had no ability to pull it back. The child was the only one there now, and he doubted he’d be able to sit up in this state - much less swing and slice and stab as he needed to.

“What is your name, bach?” He asked the boy, forcing his eyelids to stop their fluttering. To keep his mind rooted. After all, why was there a small child in the wake of a battlefield?

“Albion, but people call me Arthur sometimes,” The child stated plainly, “What’s yours?”

“My people call me Rhydian,” He smiled frailly, the cold of his skin seeming to warm at the memory of fires and laughter, “I have no other name than that.”

Albion hummed, deciding to flop down onto his bottom rather than stay where he was on his hands and knees. Strangely, Rhydian didn’t even feel the cold anymore, his hands, feet and even his nose numb.

The silence was awkward for a few moments, breaths were hard for him to draw in now, and he couldn’t even think of the first thing to say. Perhaps, he should tell the child to go, to not allow such a young thing to see the (albeit temporary) death of a soldier. Although, in the same line of thought, he’d already seen his exposed intestines strewn over his thighs like an odd dress of sorts. Perhaps he was young enough to think he was merely sleeping.

“I like your trousers,” Albion stated plainly, after the silence had stretched further and he’d obviously tired of it, “I’ve never seen linen so bright. I like yellow, too.”

What an odd thing to choose to talk about, really. He was fading fast, and here this child was, talking about the apparently exquisite colour of his trousers. He could laugh, if he could catch his breath.

“Thank… you, bach…”

Valiantly fought or no, his eyes slipped shut, unable to be propped open once again. His vision was blurred and dark around the edges, anyway, but he knew it was close to finished now.

Finished? No, not really. Just this small chapter. This one fight. This one breath.

Then, as always, he’d startle into life once more, and it would all begin again.

He was so, so tired.

“Mr Rome! Mr Rome!” Albion screamed, footsteps scampering off, and didn’t he feel the fool?

Of course, that monster sent a small thing like that to disarm him. He hoped that he’d rot for all the things he’d done to him. Him and his countrymen. His…

“C… Combrogi…” He barely whispered on his last breath.

Then all faded to black.

***

He startled awake during sunset.

The rain had left, the thunder and lightning too, leaving a few scant, fluffy clouds about the pink hued sky. It was cold still, but he was no longer soaked to the skin and caked in mud.

His gaze flew to his torso, meeting corded, cat-gut stitching holding his writhing entrails in place once more. He swore he could still feel them squirming, like maggots under a sheepskin, but even that painful discomfort was overshadowed by his dream.

Rhydian had dreamed of fire, fast and all consuming, igniting the ground beneath him before the flames licked onto his clothes. The soot and ash clouded the sky, and nothing could be seen beyond the thick smog - no sunlight, no birds, nothing. Trees stood as charcoaled corpses in the distance, bare and black, and there he was. Albion. In the thick of it all with a smile much cruller than any mortal child could ever possess.

He’d screamed, then he was awake.

He drew a deep breath, taking a moment to observe his surroundings and generally take stock of himself.

He was still on the floor, though he could raise his head. His hands were bound behind his back - by ropes, not the metal he’d seen these men carry before - arms feeling crushed beneath him from the hours he’d spent in the same position. His fingers tingled as he moved them, blood unable to find its way to the tips, and everything just felt sore.

Not even a few hours of mortal death could give him the respite he needed.

He’d been set next to the campfire to dry off, the mud and woad seemingly wiped from his skin and hair; not to mention he was no longer in his brightly coloured trousers. A plain tunic covered his lap, although it seemed to have slipped from his shoulders during his “sleep”. He wasn’t too concerned by this. His tribesmen mostly fought shirtless with trousers, but barely ten harvests before he would’ve been fighting completely bare, bar his jewellery, of course -

His jewellery.

Beyond the centurions going about their business, beyond horses and whatever else being either pulled or led around the camp, was him. Albion. Those pudgy hands that turned his face to see him fiddled with one of his bracelets, his torc sitting in the trickster’s lap as he turned the gold over and over.

Those horrifically wide eyes almost reflected the gleam of the metal, even at their distance, and he couldn’t keep calm another minute.

“GIVE THAT BACK, YOU VIPER!” He yelled, the other men surrounding him seemed to jump out of their skins as he pulled himself to sitting, guts screaming at the tension put on them, “YOU’D ROB THE DEAD?!”

Albion stilled, bracelet slipping from his grasp as he ran his gaze over Rhydian’s snarl, and the dangerous narrowness of his eyes. A few soldiers ran from it, breaking ranks in the unexpected interruption of their evening downtime, but Albion was caught in the epicentre of the former corpse’s menacing glare.

One of his tribesmen once said it felt like burning alive, to be caught in his fury. He’d made an effort to circumvent his anger since then - around them.

“But… But you weren’t…” The child stuttered, lip wobbling, obviously taken off-guard by the seemingly sudden change in Rhydian’s temperament, but he had little sympathy. Prophetic dreams he can overlook for the moment, but that thing had to steal from the dead to top it all.

“Give them back,” He growled lowly, chest bowed towards the ground, sharp canines bared as if daring Albion to refuse him. He’d gotten a foot underneath himself, telling the boy that he could launch at him anytime he wished - bound or not.

Not a word was uttered by those around them, but Rhydian didn’t dare break eye contact. In the back of his mind, he could perhaps recognise that he was acting more wolf than human, but this… This had gotten every hair at the nape of his neck to stay on end. Every hackle to raise. His heart beat in his ears, and everything was at a standstill.

That is, until a quiet voice on the breeze became louder with the approaching march of footsteps.

“... Golden hair and garb, and such resplendent colours on their cloaks and trousers! Their women are very beautiful, I hear…”

“That’s all, Virgil!” That familiar, grating voice chirped, and Rhydian had his sights on that creature once more.

Broad, muscular shoulders were accentuated by shining armour. Thick thighs and calves had the eye drawn to them by crimson fabric and leather. Tanned skin and dark curls likened the creature to some of his own tribesmen, but it set off sparks of rabid hatred within his newly sewn together guts.

A creature so like him, but who used that same strength for death and conquer. For war. Rhydian was no stranger to war, in-fighting came and went with the seasons, but this was an entirely different beast.

“But you’re definitely right about pretty!”

Rhydian didn’t expect the behemoth to smile so guilelessly, his large hand gripping his face in a strong, vice-like grip and turning it to and fro. With his hands bound, he simply glowered at the man through his eyelashes, teeth bared and a feral growl running through his throat. A warning.

Their eyes lock, his heart skips a beat, and there’s a scream. The monster released his grip, blood pouring from his wrist. The bite is stark and deep, and everyone rushes around like that thing had been savaged by an animal.

He grins wild and red.

***

There was no daring escape, calling his countrymen to action and throwing the glimmering bastard out of their lands themselves. He didn’t even break his bonds. While his thoughts flew with the birds, iron on his tongue, the beast simply wrapped his wound and sat by him once more.

In later years, Rhydian would take the fact that the man kept more distance between them after that as a very small victory. And in the years that came after that point, he’d come to think of that as a very sad minor victory. But, in that present moment, he simply glared at the thing that had killed his kinsmen with every hint of hatred in his heart.

Silently, though. His anger had never been loud. Still, it seemed that silence was all too often mistaken for reluctant compliance.

The man had taken it upon himself to ignore the burning gaze and ramble on and on about things Rhydian will admit he didn’t particularly understand. Duties and procedure and conquerings. He could honestly say that he’d never been particularly interested in the lands that lay beyond his people’s. Perhaps it was the guileless way the other spoke, as if it wasn’t a burden to kill. As if it didn’t affect him.

“It’s my job as a nation, after all!”

“... Nation?” Rhydian questioned, head tilted to the side in thought and his scowl losing some of its intensity, “What do you mean by that?”

A shift in tone. It was like the wind changed directions, turning him with it as the man’s eyes widened, looked him up and down, and grinned.

“What we are. I’m the personification of the mighty empire of Rome, and you the untamed western parts of Brittania,” The man - Rome, he assumed - proclaimed.

Golden hair, long and braided and curly in the midday sun. Murmured words from lips pressed into the short, downy hair of a newborn babe. Weaving and singing and arrows sharpened to deadly points.

A woman screaming.

The vision had hit him quickly and brutally, blanking out his sight. It seemed Rome had gotten impatient, now snapping his fingers in front of his face and an unreadable look on his features. It was jarring, snapping in and out so suddenly, but he had to remain stoic to his enemy. To crack and fall was to lose in this incredibly one-sided battle he was fighting.

“So, are we to fight ourselves and leave innocents out of it?” He challenged, sneering, “I grant you that I’m not mortal, that much is obvious. If you wish to conquer us, kill me and leave them alone; and if I kill you, then your men should return to Rome.”

The laugh Rome let out was hearty and insulting, and all too long. As if Rhydian - West Britannia, perhaps? - were a fool.

“No, no. Who said we were going to kill you?”

The bisection was his first hint.

“No, I can think of something better,” Rome smiled, “Something that will benefit us both.”

***

“Have you never seen yourself?”

There was humour in Rome’s voice as Rhydian observed himself in the polished silver he’d been handed, turning his face to and fro as the older man had that day. He ran a critical eye over his nose, his eyes, his jawline and cheekbones. The way his hair had grown out from his tribesmen’s old style had left him blinking pale strands from his lashes, and had gotten yet another compliment from the man.

Rhydian fucking hated him.

“In still waters, yes,” He answered, tone completely civil, “Not like this, however. You were right, I am quite pretty.”

Rome laughed, then, running a hand through Rhydian’s hair and leaning the boy back to rest on his chest. The younger closed his eyes, swallowing hard, but let Rome do as he wished; he didn’t have much energy to spit and hiss as he’d done when the older man first saw fit to see him settle into the “new home” he’d “so graciously” provided.

The house was beautiful, he couldn’t fault it for that, but it just felt so… unnecessary. Merely decorative. Rome had laughed before about his “mud huts” and Rhydian hadn’t appreciated it at all, throwing the cup of wine the other had given him in his face - staining the brilliant white of his toga - before the young nation marched out of the dining hall and to bed.

“It’s a personal quirk,” He continued, shrugging, “We have mirrors, too. Made of bronze rather than silver, though.”

“You can see the truer colours with silver,” Rome hummed, “See how lovely your eyes are. The rosiness of your cheeks. Your pretty hair.”

The last utterance was punctuated by a kiss, right on the crown of Rhydian’s head, and the mirror clattered to the floor.

At once, he was on his feet, chair falling away as he pushed out of Rome’s admittedly soft hold, eyes wild and heart hammering. He called Caledfwlch to his side in an instant, poised and ready to defend, and Rome only met his aggression with more laughter.

Rhydian dreamed of cutting his throat, letting the blood bubble up every time the older man tried to snicker in that infuriating manner, but he never did. It was better to settle, live alongside the Romans and share their cultures. To just calmly accept it all and roll with the punches. He wasn’t conquered like Albion apparently was. It wasn’t perfect, but an uneasy truce was a truce nonetheless.

And the figs Rome had bought him were sweet.

His shoulders slowly lowered, breathing out the tension, but his sword was still in hand. Just in case. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Has anyone ever told you that you should relax?” The older man asked, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, and Rhydian swallowed against glass shards, “Not every touch is mean spirited, or an attack.”

No, but they could be.

“You’re right,” He falsely acknowledged, the flesh of his cheek between his molars as Caledfwlch was sent away once more, “I’ve never been good with uncertainty.”

“You really don’t know where you stand with me, do you?”

The words were spoken in the closest thing to sadness that Rhydian had heard from Rome in the past months, nearly year long they’d been going through this back and forth. It made his shoulders slump further, a faint metal taste in his mouth at the kicked-dog expression the other was wearing.

Am I really the bad guy here?

“I don’t,” He concurred, voice quiet, “Why capture me to release me? Why flounce between Italy and Albion, only to come back here and spend the whole time feeding me strange food and calling me pretty.”

There was that silence again, but it didn’t stretch as long. Perhaps it was the tentative understanding that starts to build from this sort of time together. Not the same as tribesmen, nothing near, but familiarity. Like how he knows Rome will indulge in red wine until he’s sick several times over, and how Rome knows he likes leek with his rabbit and will nibble on cherries for dessert.

“You’re more valuable to me as an ally, I think,” Rome admitted, “Your metal work - both weapons-wise and jewellery - is extremely impressive. You make so many small details look so effortless, and craft some truly delicate pieces. You’re also willing to bite and claw and scratch to keep your freedom, no matter how much it costs you. It’s almost inspiring. Besides…”

Rhydian swallowed once again, that sharpness increasing tenfold, blinking back a sting in his eyes at the praise. At the admittance of how talented and tenacious his people were. Feeling proud and yet so, so small all at once, in a way only Rome could accomplish.

“You have a face that makes me want to dote on you, show you the ways of the world.”

A step towards him, and another, and another until those big hands encircled his own wrists. Looking up at that soft, guileless smile, he felt his stomach swoop in something dread-adjacent. He wasn’t scared, but was certainly apprehensive of what expectation was held in each gentle touch. Body language exchanged in the silence of the newly built villa and filled the empty space with tension.

Rome’s face whispered go on without uttering a single word. He let himself be led to the bed - metal and precious and expertly crafted, topped with a soft down mattress - and Rome took a seat first. A guiding hand pulled him onto the man’s lap, and he put up little resistance, but didn’t meet his eyes.

The older’s hand dipped into the little box on the bedside table, offering its spoils as he was delicately perched. Like he had to be treated gently, like the wind and rain didn’t mould him, like he was soft and sweet. He felt like he was absent from his own body, somewhere to the side of himself, floating in that same space that Caledfwlch disappeared to when he no longer needed it.

Like he no longer needed his mind. Like he could simply float in the ether.

Rome offered his hand, pressed his fingertips to his lips, and Rhydian took a bite.

The pomegranate was sickly sweet.

***

“I’ve thought about what you’ve said. I want to call myself Cymru.”

Rome looked up from the rabbit he’d laid on the kitchen table, seemingly startled by Cymru’s sudden presence. He’d always had quiet footsteps, barefoot on heated tile not producing much noise to begin with.

Cymru had shed his old tunic, yellow and red plaid, to don a bright white tunic and toga, thinly bordered by rich purple. No trousers either, as he had before, and the way Rome looked at him made him want to be swallowed by the floor. His lips were wine-stained from lunch and the rosiness of his cheeks were flushed.

It wasn’t that he was completely drunk, but his younger body certainly had trouble keeping up with the older man. Rome was more pliant when he acquiesced to his whims, and he’d felt unnecessarily wary about revealing his choice of name.

“Who says you need a name?” Rome inquired, going back to skinning the animal in front of him, barely sparing a glance upwards once he did so. It threw Cymru through a loop, really, after what had been said to him that day in the Roman camp.

“If I am a nation, I should have a name. It means… means ‘compatriots’. Like Combrogi. Felt fitting,” He explained, feeling as if this should all be obvious, “You have one, and we’re equals -”

“What?”

Hands stilled once more, placing the knife he’d been using aside. Cymru hadn’t realised before that he hadn’t been staring at Rome’s face, but his large hands as he separated pelt from flesh, soft rabbit fur sodden in the creature’s own blood. Suddenly, the tension was back with the silence, like it had never left, and it was like that night had never happened.

Perhaps it hadn’t. Perhaps he was dreaming strange things again. Perhaps he was sorely mistaken about where they really stood.

For two men to do what they did, they had to both be free, and by extension be equals. Rome and Cymru were locked in an uneasy truce, but they weren’t truly on the same level. Rome came over, pressing new foods to his lips, providing him with new building techniques and other advancements, and Cymru… Let him?

Well, that wasn’t wholly true. There was gold, and zinc, and bronze, and fertile farmland. But it was always a hassle, his land rocky and uneven and imperfect. He was a hassle, really.

“Nevermind,” He waved away, “A passing fancy of mine. You know what I’m like.”

He took a seat by the table, balancing his cheek on his hand and looking up at Rome as the skinning started once more. The concentration on the man’s face, his steady hands, his brunette curls highlighted by the setting sun.

He was going to throw up.

Was this Rome’s attempt at fatherly, like those children in those sundrenched lands far away? Was this Cymru wanting what he shouldn’t, taking more than he needed? Was this selfishness, and if it was, which one of them was guilty?

The rabbit’s pelt on the table didn’t even look grey anymore, instead dyed a hundred hues of crimson.

“... I’ll call you Cambria.”

Cymru startled at the interruption of the uneasy silence, looking up once more.

“Why not Cym -”

“It’s easier to say,” Rome explained, hoisting the pink, bloody remains of the rabbit by its hind legs, “Cambria. It sounds pretty, which suits you better.”

Cymru hiccuped, suddenly bending double before retching painfully, wine and acid-bitten fruits splashing to the floor as Rome leapt towards him, hand on his back and rubbing between his shoulders.

“Should’ve known that’d be a bit much for you,” He murmured, and Cymru, with the echo of it suits you better in his ears, couldn’t help but agree.

***

Cymru got into the habit of wearing tunics and togas in front of Rome.

He hadn’t meant to, really. He just wanted the man to stay sweet on him, to stay a little longer and spoil him a little more. Sickening behaviour, really. He shows off the tender flesh of his calves and thighs, feels the appreciative hum in the older man’s throat with the touches, squeezes, pinches.

He should’ve known.

He pinches the flesh of his stomach between his fingers, hard enough to bruise. There was softness there, made of figs and cherries and rabbit and whatever else Rome felt apt to feed him. Gifts he didn’t turn down, that he showed himself off for, and here he is.

He remembers his tribesmen - how long since he’s seen them? How long has he isolated himself? How long has he assimilated? - had rules. The circumference of a man’s waist was not to exceed a certain figure, or he’d be fined. Men were to be strong, hunt and protect and all that. Excessive softness didn’t lend itself to that.

He didn’t remember the number - how long is a piece of string? - but it made something uncomfortable lodge in his chest. What would they think of him? Their proud Cymru who fought and clawed and bit… Allowing himself to be soft?

He scoffed aloud, turning back to his parchment. Rows of latin stared back at him, the reed he’d used to write them inkstained and abandoned by its side. What a joke. Someone gives him figs and he starts learning to write latin, dresses up in their clothes, and gets soft.

A glob of ink drops from the tip of the reed to the table, and his guts churn.

Maybe they were never sewn up properly - writhing and inflaming into this small swell he found himself with. The wound had long since stitched together with silver scar tissue, but the reminder would always be in him, feeling like he was stuffed with mud and leaves slowly left to rot.

He wasn’t - he was stuffed with cherries and meats.

***

“What the hell brought this on?!”

Rome doesn’t swear often, doesn’t yell often, isn’t angry often. It’s enough for Cymru to spiral smaller and smaller yet again. He’s not wearing his tunic and toga, but not wearing his favourite Celtic trousers and tunic, either. They don’t fit him right anymore. He made these himself and, while he’s never been the best at making his own clothes, they aren’t overly poorly crafted. They don’t pinch his soft stomach, and they cover the new swell of his hips and thighs. Sure, the old stuff would close, but not comfortably.

These are a nice blue colour, and he can pretend he still feels so very pretty in it.

Rome is in front of him, brows drawn and teeth grit, and Cymru really thinks he should be paying attention, given how furious he’s made the man with the mention of a single word.

VOMITORIUM.

“So… I take it that you don’t do that…” Cymru swallows hard, heart stuttering, and the disappointment is palpable in his voice, “I didn’t mean to… imply anything, Rome.”

It’s the truth, he really didn’t. Not about Rome, at least. He’d been intrigued, hearing of the method; feather in, food out. If Rome was so insistent about him sharing all these foods, then he could share in this, also. Then the softness would go and he’d be fit to be seen as Cymru once again.

A nation for barely five years, and he’s messed it all up already.

“No… No, I know you didn’t…” Rome pinches his brow as he says it, like he has a bad migraine, and Cymru swallows spit, sour from the few days of fasting he did before the other man’s return from visiting his home country.

If Cymru was cuter, like his boys, would he stay?

“They’re just rumours. Something, something, look how gluttonous and wasteful Rome is, something…” Rome gesticulates vaguely to punctuate his point, but Cymru feels like a stone is tied to him, dragging him down into the dark waters.

The first time he died, he drowned.

“Cambria,” Rome begins, and Cymru wants to scream at him for no good reason.

There’s more awkward silence, in which he pictures Rome dying in various, violent ways to pass the time, and then all’s forgotten.

“I brought more cherries.”

Of course he did.

***

Cymru is a quick study.

His handwriting is flawlessly beautiful. His jewellery is pretty enough to make Rome coo. He can drive a chariot so well it rivals the drivers in the ludi circenses.

He can purge his meal in five minutes, and he can make Rome cum in two.

Though, not at the same time. He feels like the sentiments couple together beautifully, however. Rome will sit him on his lap and feed him, once the box is empty he’ll flip him over and the night will reach its inevitable conclusion. Once the bute’s asleep, Cymru will sneak outside, stick his fingers down his throat, and be done with it.

He doesn’t need the extravagance of a peacock feather. He’s always liked simple and practical.

He’s back to wearing the toga. It’s impractical for daily wear, but it’s not like he does much when Rome is visiting. He just has to sit there and be pretty. Occasionally bend over on the bed and pant and moan, but he tells himself he enjoys it.

Why else would he be back to wearing the toga? He knows where that leads him.

The issue, however, is that with every new thing he shows off, Rome gets more and more distant. His dainty hands, the other leaves for Albion for a week. His pretty collar bones, he leaves for Caledonia for a month.

When he presented his thigh gap, another phenomenon happened. Albion is all but dumped on him the next day, Rome gives some half-hearted explanation of brotherly bonding, and back to Italy he goes. They don’t fuck goodbye, as they had, and he hates that it makes him feel sicker than ever.

When Albion looks up at him, older than before but still as wide-eyed, he pictured kicking the little fucker across the room.

“Why aren’t you wearing your colourful trousers?” Albion asked, innocent as a child could be, and Cymru could only taste blood.

“I don’t like them anymore.”

“But they were pretty!”

“They were old.”

Cymru turned his back on Albion, his long strides carrying him to the kitchen, where he proceeded to put away what had been set out for Rome’s visit. A visit where Rome and he would eat and drink, Rhydian would leave to vomit, and then they would fuck until the older man climaxed. That was supposed to be what happened.

“And the toga’s new?”

“Yes. Yes, the toga is new.”

Instead, if he had no one worth pretending for, then he’d simply put it all away and fast for longer. He didn’t need to be fucked to feel good. He was finally feeling better in himself with a new pair of visible ribs.

“Oh. I don’t really like them.”

“Good for you.”

So what if he was cold, irritable, and hadn’t left the villa in a good month. Perhaps longer. He was useless and unimportant and ruined everything. His countrymen were better for him staying out of their lives. At least he used to be able to distract Rome with fleeting things - wine, foods, jewellery, his body - so everything could be normal!

“If I knew how to make such a nice yellow -”

“Albion -”

“Oh, that’s not my name anymore!” The boy said brightly, a smile that seemed like a distant memory on his own features painted across the boy’s lips, “It’s Britannia now.”

“My precious child. My dearest -”

A crash. Blood dripped from Cymru’s hands, a swear spat from his lips. Shards of terracotta on the floor were streaked with the same red, and Cymru could only stare, eyes wild. One of the cups Rome had gifted him, amongst a speech about craftsmanship and care. Broken amongst his blood.

You didn’t need to be a bard to see the cruel poetry in that. It was even planer as he fisted the brilliant white wool of his toga to staunch the bleeding.

He turned slowly, the child white as a sheet as he stared at the blood on the floor, and Cymru will admit the tug of guilt in his chest, until a simple utterance of:

“Cambria -”

“Get out.”

It was barked between gritted teeth, all but growled. Feral and wolfish and unfair. Still, Cymru just… couldn’t. Rejection had burned, and now there was this insult. The name he’d reluctantly allowed his somewhat-lover to call him uttered by the omen that ended his peace. The trees of their apparent family - if Rome were to be believed - as barren and blackened as his vision.

He felt no affection for this thing that could soften the blow.

“But -”

“I said: out!”

The boy ran from the room, the scream that tore itself from Cymru’s throat seeming to echo across tile and marble. It made him sick. It made him rabid. A snarling animal trapped in his chest, clawing until his insides were ribbons and his ribs shards.

Like the terracotta on the floor.

Still, he was pushed. He was chained and beaten and goaded. It was only a matter of time before it hit breaking point and he savaged again.

Horrible little viper.

#hetalia #historical hetalia #wales x rome #aph wales #aph rome #aph england #hws wales #hws rome #hws england #my fanfiction

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knives-in-the-dishwater · 7 months

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Hey it looks like you didn’t post in outrage while Israel murdered and routed the palestinians who are now at war, back when they were being routed and murdered. Should the Jewish people be allowed violent conquest against their victims ad nauseam? Radicalization is an act of government oppression.

a lot to unpack here:

if I posted in outrage at every atrocity committed by a government in the world today, I would spend my entire life screaming in anger and never actually accomplish anything. what an exhausting way to live; I refuse.

"your government committed atrocities, therefore you must die" is not justice. even if you wholly accept the premise that the citizens of a nation bear the guilt for the decisions of their leaders (a premise I take issue with), I do not accept punitive justice as valid. the correct response to you stabbing me isn't to stab you back; it's to take your knife away, get you to a therapist, and get me to the ER.

your conflation of the state of Israel and the Jewish people as a whole is, at best, reductive and uninformed. Not every jew is an Israeli, or even a Zionist; and not every Israeli is a jew: there are Arab Israelis, Christian Israelis, the Druze, and Bedouins walking the Negev, just to name a few.

now for clarity's sake, allow me to restate my position:

If you are currently celebrating the indiscriminate death of Israeli citizens because you believe they bear the guilt of their government by virtue of living in its borders, but you will not also celebrate a mass shooting in the United States for basically the same reasons, then that is a double standard.

the best-case explanation for this double standard is a lack of critical thinking; the worst-case (and unfortunately more likely) explanation is a belief that all Israelis are Jews, and that Jewish lives are less valuable then the lives of others.

so are the people cheering right now bloodthirsty fools, or are they antisemites? or is there a secret third option that you'd like to present?

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thessalian · 2 years

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Thess vs Transphobic Bullshit

JK Rowling continues on with her TERF bullshit.

Basically the situation is this: Graham Norton, a very well-known and reasonably well-respected TV host, happened to say to a journalist that, if people have questions about trans issues, they should talk to trans people, trans experts, and the parents of trans children. (I assume that last is either to help them understand how to be supportive of trans people below the age of majority, or to understand just how shitty a transphobe can make a trans person’s life.) Basically it was, “I’m not the one to ask this stuff; ask the people who are actually affected by it”. Which is a good thing. Owning your privilege feels like it should automatically include handing the people who are being oppressed the microphone and just standing back.

This was her response. Basically she was saying that because Norton said, “Hey, how about hearing from the people who are affected by this instead of getting your takes on things from a cis celebrity”, what he actually meant was, “I am defining what a woman is and am also totally cool with the death threats and rape threats that TERFs get for disagreeing”.

Apparently, this took off with her various followers to the point where Graham Norton got hounded off Twitter. His account is now shut down. General consensus is that he took it down himself. I gather there’s only so much people are willing to take in these sorts of situations.

I got this from Reddit, from a subreddit I follow that talks about what’s going on in this fucking country. The flare used for this post, and posts like it, is “TERF Island”. And honestly, the responses in that self-same forum just highlight the problem that is, unfortunately, a national thing. A small but incredibly vocal minority saying shit like, “I don’t want men using women’s bathrooms no matter how successfully they’ve convinced themselves they’re not men, or how much like women they look”. Which ... we have been over this countless times. A trans woman is not going to get her dick out in front of people in a woman’s bathroom, because there are cubicles. Also consider that trans women may well be straight trans women and have no interest in men that way, so why the hell would they bother? And finally, no one, cis or trans, with sexual assault on their minds is going to stop because of the sign on a fucking door. Not to mention the fact that this obsession with people’s genitals is just creepy and weird. And yet, this country is changing its laws to allow trans women to be banned from women-only spaces “if it seems justified”. Which ... I mean, this country’s government ‘justifies’ the most egregious shit, so...

I am tired of it. I am tired of people being entirely defined by their birth genitalia - and I don’t just mean in terms of their gender expression. I mean that no one talks about trans men sexually assaulting cis men and boys in the men’s room. Because apparently, according to these so-called “feminists”, you can only sexually assault someone if you have a penis. The implication is, in fact, that it’s the penis that makes you want to sexually assault people. Which is just a gross way to look at men. I’m tired of the “men are defined and ruled entirely by their genitalia” bullshit. I mean, we’ve all seen the news stories of women who have committed sexual assault on men, often minors, when in positions of authority (like a teacher to her student, for instance), and it honestly disgusts me that so many people are just like, “Well, I bet he enjoyed it. He’s a guy; what guy wouldn’t?” Sexual assault is a shitty thing and it has nothing to do with what’s in their pants. Sometimes, some people are monumental shitlords. That’s not their genitalia; that’s just them.

So, yeah, JK Rowling does not deserve anyone’s money or praise. Harry Potter wasn’t good enough to absolve her of this. Nothing she has ever written or will ever write could possibly be good enough to absolve her of this.

#Thess vs TERFS #tw: rape #(sort of)

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mogai-sunflowers · 2 years

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I guess a vent?

Maybe it makes me a "bad activist" but im kinda happy that one dreamsmp guy died. Like i get that im not supposed to celebrate someone dieing and im certainly not but he contributed to alot of people's oppression, especially mine as a nd lgbt uterus-owning native, and im glad thats one less strong and supported voice in the sphere. He contributed to racism, rape culture through roofie jokes, ableism and never even tried to stop the other cis (and mostly het) white abled guys around him. He was fully privileged and perfectly happy to shout disabled slurs cause his one nd friend said it was ok.

Cancer sucks and ive lost treasured family members to it but honestly? Good riddence. The only good racist is a dead one. I know its macabre but apparently us poc are only "allowed" to be happy that a racist dies if their a politician and not a youtube celebrity.

i don't fully know how to respond to this, but i don't think it's wrong to be happy that a bigot died, i just think it's best not to celebrate the cause. i've seen many people saying rlly ableist shit about ppl with terminal illnesses like cancer, so as long as you're not doing that then i don't see there being any need for you to feel guilty. he hurt you and many people, being happy to see him gone is a normal reaction. i don't really love the idea of celebrating death, but i'm not going to tell you how to respond to your own oppression so i'm just going to wish you good health and happiness!

#🌌written in the stars ; asks 🌌#tw death #death tw #tw racism #tw ableism

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kikizoshi · 1 year

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[Jan. 2023] My Current Fyodor Timeline (Subject to Change)

This is sort of a time-capsule for Fyodor. I'm sure I'll change things as I go, probably drastically, and so I wanted to keep record of where I'm at with him so far. I'd also like to share my current timeline of his life with others. So, here it is:

2000

[November 11] born

2015

[August] mother dies

2017

[September] the tragedy; church daycare to orphanage

[October] Alyosha taken into Church

2019

[January] started first year as architecture student

2020

[May] birth of niece

[August] niece’s seizures and first hospitalisation

2021

[April] meets Nikolai

[December] father’s death; moves in with Nikolai due to financial trouble (can’t get by without father’s support) [this is oppressively bleak for both of them, though Fyodor finds himself more comfortable with Nikolai in a one-room than with strangers in a kommunalka]

Fyodor’s first seizure in Nikolai’s presence

2022

[January] still money issues but getting stabilised somewhat; Nikolai starts to develop some hypomania

[February] Mikhail and Margarita come to Petersburg

[April] Nikolai’s spiral into depression

[May] Mikhail fully recovers

[July] Nikolai attends his sister’s wedding, they keep in touch through letters [they should have a novel or two they’re discussing throughout the story, with it ofc showing the theme] [Fyodor will write about money issues, that just has to be]

[September] Nikolai hears about Misha’s wedding and begins to make vyshyvanka for Fyodor (still in Mirgorod, where he bought the materials and pattern from the local tailor)

[October] Nikolai finally back home

2023

[May 14] Misha and Margarita’s wedding

[May 18] Vyshyvanka Day (celebration with Misha and Margarita during honeymoon)

[May 19] Nikolai's Curse revealed

2024

Fyodor finds out about his Curse; Fyodor kills Sonya (and this somehow cements his “need to kill people” thing that started with his father?... only it’s a bit more nuanced than I first thought, because he pitied his father like Marmeladov pitied Ekaterina Ivanovna. So his father should’ve also died by Fyodor’s own hand for his father’s sake, as well as his siblings’.)

2026-2027

Goes to Japan, sets things up for 3 months, carries out plans for next 3 months, later incarcerated for 3 months in Meursault

Since rn I've pretty much concluded that the only way their backstory can be told is through a series of different genres and different stories, rather than one continuous one, there're some notes about the stories I'm currently working out. Also, not everything is entirely literal, i.e. Fyodor's church didn't turn into a literal orphanage.

Because Tumblr likes to make formatting a living hell, this is much messier than my Google Doc, which didn't translate over well at all (for some reason, Tumblr only allows sub-indentations in the editor, and erases them in the actual post).

#Jan. 2023 #hopefully this'll be interesting to come back to someday #as well as useful in case I change something and don't like how it turned out #and who knows maybe this'll interest someone too :)#BSD Fyodor #BSD Dostoyevsky #BSD Dostoevsky #BSD Fyodor Dostoyevsky #BSD Fyodor Dostoevsky #BSD Dostoyevsky Fyodor #BSD Dostoevsky Fyodor #reference

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fuckenvampirism · 2 years

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people are like im 37 years old and assumedly have a whole life with a job and friends but i spend sooo much energy thinking about how the biggest problem in the world is that pedophilic content is censored and not easily available and i make infographics about it and how awesome it is to be attracted to children and how it is ABUSIVE BEHAVIOUR to tell someone online that it’s disgusting, and actually i think it’s just like homophobia (i’m allowed to say that because i’m queer) and we need to celebrate our FREEDOM to do anything we want (be attracted to children) and if you point out my age YOU’RE BEING AGEIST and we cherish our precious incest ships because there’s nothing better than a story about forbidden love (and if someone is trying to CENSOR a specific kind of story, that means it should be celebrated so much more [i hate oppression sooo much... btw i hate most Black characters, for mysterious reasons]) and also i have a huge over-reliance on tropes because there’s absolutely no substance to what i write and everything i read has to be the same story over and over again and i have mental breakdowns over people telling me every day that im a bad person? that i am dangerous to kids (again, i’m queer so this kind of statement sounds very suspicious and familiar. ignore the fact that i enjoy sexual content about children)? that i should touch grass? that i should stop pretending criticism of people like me spawns from puritanical beliefs? that i should stop pretending this is meaningful commentary on fandom culture? that i should stop reminiscing about the good ol’ days (REMEMBER FANDOM HISTORY!!! THIS IS FOR SOME REASON SO INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT!!!!! REMEMBER WHERE YOU CAME FROM!!! WHY ARE WE ACTING LIKE THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT CULTURAL THING!!) when apparently everyone in fandom loved pedophilia, before you pesky KIDS came along and ruined it.......... oh.............. that i should stop pretending my ideology is against bullying and harassment (ignore how i sic my badass pedophile friend group onto people to make clumsy insults about them if someone DARES to try to say anything critical about me flaunting my attraction to children)? that i am repulsive and my life has no value and i add nothing to this world and i should die HEY WAIT that sounds exactly like fascism, don’t those guys try to eradicate certain types of people? you seriously want to do a pedophile genocide? oh, you’re just saying it on an individual basis and you don’t think there should be a systemic ability to kill people for any reason? i can’t believe you openly hurl DEATH THREATS at people... isn’t that morally reprehensible? what if i said i think people are born this way? i can’t change this about me, so why should it be condemned (ignore how it’s very much a choice to seek out pedophilic media and constantly engage with it and spends hours upon hours drawing or writing that shit and posting about it and making it my entire personality and life)? am i supposed to just NOT reply obsessively to each and every comment that rightfully upset fourteen year olds leave on my posts and act like i deserve a reminder every second of the day that my choices are fucking terrible and i make a very dangerous environment for everyone, but especially young people who simply want to talk about their cartoons in peace? am i just not supposed to post my explicitly sexual art of the characters while using the main tags and putting no kind of warning (ignore how i love to tell people to curate their online experience and say that we ALWAYS make it easy to avoid seeing this shit) hey also, this time, the art wasn’t even depicting characters who are minors so i don’t know what you people are getting so upset about! i can’t believe every single one of you folx who are AGAINST people like me definitely all know each other and all communicate in a giant group chat and talk about how to conspire against us innocents! i can’t believe that you would say such things to VICTIMS OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE (nobody else except us has ever actually experienced this btw and differing views are just wrong, but i am totally a reasonable normal person) or say that our background means nothing regarding our choices and actually makes it worse because we use our victimhood as a way to groom people into our cult or try to soften what we really get up to or that we encourage abuse victims to read triggering content because no no it’s soooo healing and normal and healthy - ONE therapist i heard of said it was okay - or if you have intrusive thoughts because of ocd, you should also totally engage with pedophilic content- have you ever heard of immersion therapy? it’s the exact same thing and it won’t do anything weird to your brain at ALL and you’ll have really regular, healthy perceptions of the world and people, and be able to interact with others in a really Usual and Not odd way. if you have a problem with my online presence then uhhhh i think you’re a big whiny snowflake, you’re probably like TWELVE years old (i evidently really hate kids, they’re ALWAYS pestering me and snivelling so uh KIDS DNI, but also i just read smut involving a kid this same age) and you wouldn’t survive anywhere in the REAL world... but anyway yeah, fiction has no affect on reality and that’s why i have such a tight grip on all this fiction i enjoy and spend every waking moment of my day thinking about.

also please tag any criticism about media i like. it will ruin my day if i see a worldview that differs from mine, or anything that adds complexity or nuance to my interests. thank you.

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wickwrites · 3 years

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Wonder Egg Priority Episode 4: Boys’ and Girls’ Suicides Do Mean Different Things (But Not in the Way the Mannequins Want You to Think!)

So, let’s talk about this for a second. After I got over my initial knee-jerk reaction, I realized I wasn’t sure how to make sense of exactly what the mannequins were arguing for here. So let me rephrase their statements to make the argumentative structure more explicit: Because men are goal-oriented and women are not, because women are emotion-oriented and men are not, and because women are impulsive and easily influenced by others’ voices and men are not, boys’ and girls’ suicides mean different things – girls are more easily “tempted” by death, and therefore, more likely to require saving when they inevitably regret their suicide. While Wonder Egg Priority, so far, seems to agree with the vague version of the mannequins’ conclusion, namely that boys’ and girl’s suicides mean different things, it refutes the gender-essentialist logic through which that conclusion was derived.

The mannequins choose a decidedly gender essentialist approach in explaining the difference between girls’ and boy’s suicides; they argue that the suicides are different because of some immutable characteristic of their mental hard wiring (in this case, impulsivity, emotionality, and influenceability). Obviously, this is a load of bull, and Wonder Egg Priority knows it. The mannequins are not exactly characters we’re supposed to trust, seeing that they’re running a business that is literally based on letting these kids put themselves in mortal danger. As faceless adult men, they parrot and possibly represent the systems that force these girls to continue to be subjected to physical and emotional trauma (it’s probably more complicated than this, but four episodes in, it’s hard to say more). So, we’re probably supposed to take what they say with great skepticism. Also, the director, Shin Wakabayashi, has recently said that in response to these lines, Neiru was originally going to object, “When it comes to their brains, boys and girls are also the same,” (which unfortunately is not exactly true and is somewhat of an oversimplification, but the sentiment is there). While that line ultimately did not make it in, Neiru does reply with a confused and somewhat indignant, “What?!”, a reaction that gets the message across. Neiru is not a fan of gender essentialism, and as a (more) sympathetic character, we’re supposed to agree with her.

That is, the differences between boys and girls is not something inherent to their biology or character, but something constructed by culture and experience. This rejection of gender-essentialism is apparent in Wonder Egg Priority’s narrative, which takes a more sociocultural perspective on the difference between boys’ and girls’ suicides. It says, well of course boys’ and and girl’s suicides don’t mean the same thing, that’s the whole reason why we’re delving into the experiences specific to being a girl (cis or trans) or AFAB in this world – to show you how girls’ suicides are influenced by systems of oppression perpetuated by those in power (ie. the adult, in this specific anime).

And all the suicides we’ve seen up until now tie into that somehow. For instance, Koito is bullied by her female classmates who think that Sawaki is giving her special treatment. This is a narrative that comes up over and over again, in real life as well: that if a young girl is being given attention from an older man, then it’s her fault – that she must want it, or at least enjoy it somehow, and that it signifies a virtue (eg. maturity or beauty) on her part. And if Koito is actually being given such treatment by Sawaki, an adult man in a position of power over her, that is incredibly predatory.

And we all know that child sexual abuse is something that overwhelmingly affects girls, with one out of nine experiencing it before the age of 18, as opposed to one out of 53 boys (Finkelhor et al., 2014). Regardless of whether Sawaki was actually abusing Koito or if the students only thought that he was, Koito’s trauma is ultimately the result of this romanticized “love between a young girl and adult man, but not because the man is predatory, but because the girl has some enviable virtue that makes her desirable” narrative. Similarly, in episode 2, Minami’s suicide is driven by ideas related to discipline and body image in sports, which while not necessarily specific to female and AFAB athletes, is framed in an AFAB-specific way. For instance, take the pressure on Minami to “maintain her figure”. Certainly, male athletes also face a similar pressure, but we know that AFAB and (cis and trans) female bodies are subject to closer scrutiny and criticism. We know that young girls are more likely to suffer from eating disorders. And Wonder Egg Priority situates Minami’s experience as decidedly “about” AFAB experience when her coach accuses her change of figure due to her period as a character failing on her part.

Likewise, episode 3 delves into suicides related to “stan” culture, this fervent dedication to celebrities that is overwhelmingly associated to teenage girls. And Miwa’s story, in episode 4, explicitly shows how society responds to sexual assault. When Miwa does have the courage to speak up about her assault, she’s instantly reprimanded by basically everyone around her. Her father is fired because her abuser was an executive of his company. Her mother asks her why she couldn’t just bear with it, telling her that her abuser chose her because she was cute, as if that’s supposed to make her feel better about it. Wonder Egg Priority shows that this sort of abuse is a systemic problem, a set of rules and norms deeply engrained in a society and upheld by all adults, regardless of gender, social status, or closeness (to the victim). Wonder Egg Priority says that, yes, girls’ and boys’ suicides have different meanings, but it’s not due to some inherent difference between the two, but the hostile environment in which these girls grow up. Girls are not more easily “tempted” by death, they just have more societal bullshit to deal with.

But Wonder Egg Priority goes further than just showcasing how girls’ (and AFAB) experiences are shaped by sociocultural factors. The story also disproves the supposedly dichotomous characteristics that the mannequins use to differentiate girls and boys (i.e. influenceability/independence, impulsivity/deliberation, emotion-orientation/goal-orientation). If the mannequins are indeed correct, and that girls are just influenceable, impulsive, and emotional, you’d expect the girls in the story to be to be like such too. Except, they aren’t. Rather, they’re a mix of both/all characteristics. This show says that, certainly, girls can be suggestible, but they’re also capable of thinking for themselves. For instance, when Momoe asserts her own identity as a girl at the end of episode four, she rejects the words of those around her who insisted that she isn’t a girl. If she were as suggestible as the mannequins believe her to be, that would never have happened – she would have just continued believing that she wasn’t girl “enough”. But, she doesn’t because she is equally capable of making her own judgements. Likewise, Wonder Egg Priority shows that girls can be impulsive, but they can also be deliberate and pre-mediating. When Miwa tricks her Wonder Killer into groping her to create an opening for Momoe to defeat it, she’s not doing it out of impulse – it’s a pre-mediated and deliberate choice unto a goal. And Wonder Egg Priority continues, girls can be equally emotion oriented and goal oriented. Sure, the main girls are fighting because they have the goal of bringing their loved ones back to life, but those goals are motivated by a large range of emotions, from guilt to anger, grief, compassion, and love.

Being emotion-driven doesn’t mean you’re not goal-driven, and vice versa. In fact, in this case, being emotional drives these girls toward their goals. In other words, none of these traits that the mannequins listed are either “girl traits” or “boy traits”. Being one does not mean you can’t be the other, even if they seem dichotomous at first. Wonder Egg Priority’s diverse cast of multi-dimensional female characters allows it to undermine the mannequins’ conceptualization of gendered roles, refuting the idea that these (or any) character traits should be consider gendered at all.

As an underdeveloped side thought, I think Wonder Egg Priority’s blurring of gendered roles is also well-reflected in its style. There’s been a lot of talk about whether Wonder Egg Priority constitutes a magical girl series, and I think that’s an interesting question deserving of its own essay. Certainly, it does follow the basic formula of the magical girl story: a teenage heroine ensemble wielding magical weapons saves the day. But it also throws out a lot of the conventions you’d expect of a magical girl story – both aesthetically and narratively. Aesthetically, it’s probably missing the component that most would consider the thing that makes an anime a magical girl anime: the full body transformation sequence, complete with the sparkles and the costume and all that. Narratively, the girls are also not really magical girl protagonist material – they’ve got a fair share of flaws, have done some pretty awful things (looking at Kawai in particular; I still love you though), and aren’t exactly the endlessly self-sacrificing heroines you’d expect from a typical magical girl story. On the other hand, the anime also borrows a lot from shonen battle anime. We get these dynamic, well choreographed action sequences full of horror and gore, the focus on the importance of camaraderie between allies (or “nakama”, as shonen anime would call it) exemplified through all the bonding between the main girls during their downtime, and in the necessary co-operation to bring down the Wonder Killers. That said, this anime is not a shonen; the characters, types of conflicts, and themes are quite different from those that you’d find in a typical shonen. The bleeding together of the shonen genre and the magical girl genre, at the very least (and I say this because I think it does way more than just that), reflects Wonder Egg Priority’s interest in rebelling against conventional narratives about girlhood and gender.

#wonder egg priority #wonder egg priority analysis #wep #w.writing #my writing #anime analysis #analysis #anime #w.analysis

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from-the-dark-past · 3 years

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Interview with Anders Ohlin in The Black Metal Murders: English translation

Translator’s note: Black metal-morden (English: The Black Metal Murders) is a radio documentary from 2017 produced by Radio Sweden (download). It’s about Mayhem and the Norwegian black metal scene in the ‘90s and contains interviews with Jørn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud, Kjetil Manheim, Eirik “Messiah” Norheim and Anders Ohlin (Pelle Ohlin’s younger brother).

Here, I’ve translated the parts where Anders Ohlin speaks into English (from Swedish). I’ve added time-stamps and short descriptions for the different sections of the interview.

I am working on translating the interviews with Necrobutcher, Manheim and Messiah and will post them soon.

1:51 - 6:35 [Talking about him and Pelle getting into extreme metal]

Anders: We’d started listening to hard rock and it was… We’d, like, worked through all of those… Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

Narrator: It’s the mid-1980s in Västerhaninge, a suburb of Stockholm. Pelle Ohlin lives here. He plays in the extreme metal band Morbid and his stage name is Dead. Pelle has introduced his five-years-younger brother to hard rock. Together, they’ve worked through all of the main bands.

Anders: And you, like, hungered for this… This Other.

Narrator: The ‘Other’ that younger brother Anders is talking about is extreme metal; music that is faster, darker and harder. A progression of hard rock. Music that isn’t easy to get your hands on at this time. Anders is in his early teens and has gotten his first girlfriend.

Anders: It was my first relationship and it was super-exciting, and I was at her house, she lived in Jordbro, which is, like, the neighbouring suburb.

Narrator: Anders’ girlfriend’s older sister has an LP that Anders simply must show his older brother Pelle.

Anders: It was, like, you knew it was good music, and it was that Destruction record.

Narrator: Anders sees the German death metal band Destruction’s cover and it’s enough for him to understand that this must be good music. [...]

Anders: This. This here isn’t Judas Priest and it isn’t Iron Maiden; it’s something else. I’ve got show this fucking record to Pelle.

Narrator: Anders nags [his girlfriend’s older sister] to borrow the LP. He’s allowed to, but only for the day, so he bikes home in the rain from Jordbro to Västerhaninge as quickly as he can.

Anders: And it was like [excited noise], like a cartoon; the evil wolf, their eyes bulge out and we both ran -- because we hadn’t heard the LP, only seen the cover -- ran to the record player och then Mom walks up and is like: ‘Stop! You’re forbidden from using the gramophone.’ And it was like, fucking hell, is it going to die here and then we explained to Mom -- ‘This is an extreme record and we’ve borrowed it for the day and it’s going back tomorrow,’ -- and Mom was super-harsh and was like: ‘It doesn’t matter. [...]’ And then we started negotiating and agreed that we could record the LP onto cassette [because you don’t need volume for that]. So, it was on full-blast the entire night and we recorded it and stood bent over the record scratches and were like,‘Shit, this is good stuff’.

Narrator: Pelles hard rock style stands out against the usual sweatpant-Bagheera-jacket [style], not least the music.

Anders: The ideals that existed at that time were that you were supposed to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, which neither he nor I did [laughs]. You were supposed to be handsome and cool and have some fucking helipad on your head.

Translator’s note: Anders is talking about a flat-top haircut commonly referred to as a ‘helikopterplattafrisyr’ -- helipad haircut -- in Sweden. Think H.R. Haldeman. I’m not sure what the English term for this haircut is.

Narrator: Anders and Pelle are apart of a small subculture; extreme metal, with subgenres such as trash metal, death metal and black metal, which provokes with its satanic and morbid symbols. Pelle’s band Morbid pushes the limits of what music can sound like. With his stage-name Dead, Pelle sings on the demo December Moon. The new subculture is not embraced by the adult world.

Anders: Like, we faced this fucking cultural oppression as hardrockers. It was that time-period… And especially if you wanted to do something that was worse than hard rock; it was completely judged.

14:52 - 15:53 [Talking about Pelle being bullied]

Anders: He was beaten at school and to such an extent that he actually died for a while, or however you put it.

Narrator: There’s an explanation to Pelle’s obsession with death. At 13, he was bullied at school and once, he was beaten so badly that his spleen burst. Pelle’s brother Anders Ohlin tells the story.

Anders: He was beaten to death and had some near-death experience as he was laying in the hospital and he kept coming back to that all the time, and I think you can see that as some sort of theme in his songs too. Like, it’s always about the fact that he was actually there and touched something that he doesn’t know what it is, and that was the engine in all that. He was definitely [at the bottom of the pecking order] at school, precisely because he was a bit… He had his special... his special style and was, like, uncompromising, and that was what singled him out, I’d say, markedly from other teenagers.

18:07 - 18:30 [Talking about Pelle’s depression]

Anders: He would neglect to eat, just to get a cassette tape out or arrange a gig somewhere.

Narrator: Anders Ohlin, Pelle’s brother.

Anders: To be a bit harsh, I think that the others gave up at some point. And that’s my personal interpretation. That he suddenly turns around and notices that he hasn’t got the gang with him. And I think that destroyed him.

21:50 - 22:30 [Talking about Pelle’s suicide]

Anders: At first, I was actually really pissed at him… Or, like, angry, enraged. I thought that he’d abandoned us -- which he has. That it was so shitty of him; to just take off and leave this big fucking abscess to the rest of us that just kept growing and growing as the years passed.

Narrator: Christmases become especially painful for the Ohlin family, because that was the time Pelle usually came home.

Anders: No one felt good on Christmas Eve. It was like a fucking ghost all Christmas. Brutal. So, I remember that I couldn’t celebrate Christmas at all for a very long time.

1:06:39 - 1:09:31 [Talking about how he and Pelle’s Swedish friends remember him and his life today]

Anders: All of his Swedish friends see him as this exuberantly happy guy that spews ideas and is funny and has a sense of humor and stuff. Then, it’s like a line is drawn when he goes to Norway and they see him as introverted and mysterious and, like, difficult. And that’s two opposite images.

Narrator: The Pelle Myth is associated with a lot of darkness and death but that’s not how his brother Anders and Pelle’s Swedish friends remember him.

Anders: I think that’s been the devastating part, but it, like, helped him build… strengthen that myth. It’s hard being that funny dude and saying that you’re, like, Satan. It’s hard, it becomes, like, silly.

Narrator: Anders is often reminded of Pelle. Usually because of happy memories but also because of that image that he is fighting to remove; the image that Øystein took of Pelle’s corpse which spread because it became the album cover of a Mayhem bootleg, Dawn of the Black Hearts. The image lives its own life on the internet.

Anders: It’s difficult. It’s very difficult.

Narrator: Pelle’s fans often want to become Facebook friends with Anders; he receives 3-5 friend requests per day. Sometimes, the people sending the friend requests have themselves shared the image on their social channels.

Anders: You say you want to be my friend yet you have an image of my brother from when he’s just killed himself and like… body parts all over the wall. Would you think it was okay if I had an image of your brother like that? ‘What,’ they excuse themselves. ‘Oh, fuck, I’d forgotten that I had that image, that’s… Of course, I’ll remove it and I’m ashamed.’

Narrator: When Anders asks people to remove the image, most do.

Anders: I’m terrified for when my children will start to Google those images… Øystein’s parents inherited the rights after Øystein died and [Øystein’s dad] has destroyed the images and I’ve received the rights, gotten to take over the rights from Øystein’s dad, so if anyone uses them in any form is printed media, I can sue the shit out of them.

Narrator: It’s a small comfort every time one of Pelle’s fans tells Anders how much Pelle means.

Anders: Most often, they have some story. They tell me how they’ve had a tough period in life and how they’ve, like, really been at a crossroads or something and feel that they received guidance from Pelle’s music. That warms -- That makes you happy. That really warms your heart.

Narrator: Pelle’s grave is well-visited and every now and then, there’s a handwritten letter or a box of snus by it.

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