#being alive........is legitimately so agonizing........

[itsclydebitches]

Jonelias thought of the day is that Elias must come across as so stuffy and boring to those at the Institute - which, you know, very much helps hide his true nature - but as an avatar of the Eye and a man determined to avoid the End, Elias is someone whose entire being revolves around the interplay of knowledge and experiences. He's compelled to Know it all and his efforts to avoid death invite him to Experience it all too, a fascinating combination of passive observer and, by virtue of being a 200+ year-old in search of true immortality, an active participant too. This is a man whose longevity and thirst for knowledge invites an obsession with life that contradicts the 'Sits in his office doing nothing but spreadsheets all day' image he's learned to cultivate. (Though, to be clear, he does love the spreadsheets.) And I don't just mean "obsession with life" in the sense of him avoiding the finality of death, but actually loving the act of being alive.

I think a lot of what the fandom (rightly) jokes about in regards to his characterization is a reflection of that obsession. Elias has a relationship with Peter Lukas that goes far beyond the cold practicality of an alliance, hinting at a romance (if you steer towards a LonelyEyes reading), or just Elias' desire to still be able to place bets with someone while he's trying to end the world. Similarly, his powers ensure that he's never truly alone - if he dies, he takes the rest of the Archive with him - forever supplying him with a warped companionship that doesn't threaten him like he perceives he was threatened as Jonah Magnus, with his acquaintances working to complete their own rituals. In true Beholding style, he's got the heart of a fucked-up scientist who's endlessly curious about the world around him: 'Oooh what happens if I let my friend waste away in the Lonely?' He shows up at Jon's birthday party not just to secretly gloat and keep an eye on things (ha), but because he legitimately wants cake. Who wouldn't want cake? What's the point of living forever if you can't have cake?? Well, for an avatar the exquisite sweetness of fear is just as good, but my point stands. Beyond his fear of death, that enjoyment is at the heart of Elias' goal, with Jon describing his experience as the Pupil as a kind of agonized bliss and Elias confirming this by saying he was having the most wonderful dream. Morality aside, he likes interacting with the horror of the Entities, something we saw all the way back during the "[PLEASURED EXHALATION]" scene. Learning new things feels good. Experiencing news things is enjoyable. Learning and experiencing Bad Things is especially nice given his patron. Consistently, Elias' setbacks are met with interest, or a mild annoyance that then eventually settles into satisfaction because they are also new experiences for him and the Eye: going to jail, getting to psychologically torture Martin, having his own secrets exposed. There's a lot throughout the series to imply that Elias enjoys watching Jon become the Key, not just because it means he's succeeding in his goals, but because there's genuine interest and pride in seeing him "grow" by Elias' standards. The repetition of "our world," "our patron," etc. implies a connection; the intention to experience this new world with another, to enjoy it rather than simply exist in it for the mere sake of existence. Elias is a man whose entire essence boils down to, "I NEED TO KNOW ALL THE THINGS, EXPERIENCE EVERYTHING, AND LIVE FOREVER WHILE ACHIEVING THAT, TO UNDERSTAND IT ALL SO I CAN CONTROL IT ALL AND HAVE A DAMN GOOD TIME IN THE PROCESS, EVEN WHILE I SUCCUMB TO THE PRIMAL FEAR THAT DRIVES ME I WILL PARADOXICALLY EMBRACE IT, AND YEAH THAT'S LARGELY BECAUSE I SERVE THE LITERAL GOD OF JUDGY SURVEILLANCE BUT ALSO THAT'S JUST ME."

So anyway, I keep thinking about how this characterization could intersect with S1-2 Jon: prickly, awkward, semi-isolated, desperate to be recognized by someone whose authority he believes in. AKA the boss who, at an unprecedented young age, rose to the top of the Institute they both work at, perceived by those around him as far less interesting than he actually is. Parallels, anyone? Imagine Jon getting to really talk to Elias, realizing how much he has to offer after 200 years of life (though of course he doesn't know that), and just constantly being blindsided by not just the knowledge, but the enthusiasm for everything he's learned and been through - the good and the horrifyingly awful that, despite himself, Jon is equally drawn to. Elias recognizes every quote Jon drops into a conversation and has another witty line to pair it with. He doesn't just indulge his nerdy rambles, but participates in them. He's refined in all the ways that Jon expects - books, opera, music, etc. - and also casually drops in references to acid trips and fucking orgies. Imagine an early series Jon who forms a strong bond with Elias outside of the web (ha x2) he's been weaving, becoming dependent on his friendship and just a little bit completely in love. Elias is inherently fascinating, but he's also just Some Guy, and the combination of that is just perfect for a necrotic Archivist who simultaneously wants to be guided by his 'betters' and prove that he's an equal. Why Elias would be interested in turn barely needs stating: Jon is literally Elias' everything, in a horrifyingly tragic and like, Gothic Romance sense? What would that kind of relationship have changed? It would have likely made Elias' job even easier, but what about Jon?

...I'm not saying that Jon's drive to protect humanity would have been warped into something tragically dangerous if he'd first come to see his intelligent, complex, shockingly kind (from his nonexistent self-esteem POV), secretly-an-eldritch-monster boss as the epitome of humanity... but I'm also not saying it couldn't have!

#TMA #The Magnus Archives #Jonelias #this is so rambly I'm sorry #I'm just having a lot of feelings about these two #Jon deserves a corruption arc that he's convinced himself is a hero's journey #as a treat #also I keep thinking about Elias' refusal to define a human #and the Witcher line about Regis - a vampire - being the best of humanity #can a monster be human? #sure why not #especially when so many humans are already monstrous #I just want Jon to rule under a horrifically misguided idea of which humans are worth protecting #his wonderful desire to protect molded into not just the key that will end the world #but the thing that perpetuates its torment #as! a! treat!

[bigskydreaming]

Last reblog - I’ll never forget one of my first interactions when getting into Batfandom again online around 2018 or 2019 or whenever I started being active in Batfandom on this blog.....I was reading a very popular prompt-response fic on Ao3, where one chapter was the author responding to a prompt to do a more cathartic take on Dick reuniting with his brothers post-Spyral.

For whatever reason, this author’s idea of a better version of this still had Dick getting punched by Jason, just then immediately make up with him afterwards, so I guess a speedrun from punch to ‘glad you’re alive’ is better, as long as the important part is Dick still gets punched? LMAO. Yeah, no. I don’t know about the person who gave the initial prompt, but I sure as hell didn’t find anything cathartic about a writer doubling down on the idea that Dick still ‘deserved’ to be greeted with violence because he’d emotionally hurt his brothers and so physical and emotional payback is necessary to balance the scales.

And I didn’t even leave a comment on the fic where it might start something publicly, I VERY politely just private messaged asking them if they’d CONSIDER posting some kind of headsup on that chapter, that it still contained Dick getting punched out on his return from Spyral by one of his siblings....because that’s not something people interested in the specific prompt of ‘cathartic take on Dick reuniting more happily with his brothers post-Spyral’ are likely expecting y’know? 

And look, for as much as Batfandom - ESPECIALLY Jason stans, which I’m pretty sure this particular writer was, primarily a Jason and Tim fan even if they did write fic for the whole Batfam - likes to go on about the tragedy and trauma of physical abuse, there is VERY little consideration in this fandom for the fact that abuse....and in specific, mentalities ABOUT abuse - can be triggering as well! Its not just stuff like sexual assault that can trigger people who are abuse AND/OR rape survivors. So I very politely and civilly, without making insinuations, accusations, attacks, etc, tried to point out that for some fans who’re abuse survivors who are disturbed by how casual and even outright permissive DC canon tends to be about physical abuse between family members, reinforcing the idea that Dick was OWED physical harm by his family to make up for his perceived crimes against them in the Forever Evil/Spyral stuff could legitimately be triggering.....

b/c it feeds into and even validates a lot of the exact same bullshit we were fed by family members justifying their own acts of harm or violence against us ‘because we deserved it.’

And I fucking AGONIZED over this message before sending it, FYI. It was before any of my overly aggressive or antagonistic tumblr posts on these topics, with a lot of my ire in those posts born FROM how all this (and other similar events) played out, but I pored over it before sending it, making sure I was being as diplomatic as possible, because I don’t know this author other than her work, I don’t know her experiences, who she is as a person, nor did I particularly CARE....I wasn’t trying to say or presume ANYTHING about that person, I was strictly interested in just getting some kind of optimal outcome from messaging them, ie getting them to reconsider their viewpoint there or at least include some kind of tag or message clarifying what the author meant by cathartic with that chapter & that it might not be as different from canon as readers might assume or hope.

Because literally my only endgoal in sending that message was so hopefully other abuse survivors didnt stumble into the exact sort of fic they - like I - might be coming to because they were seeking catharsis to MAKE UP FOR the fucked up view canon expressed about how Dick’s first encounter with his brothers post-Forever Evil should play out. 

Instead of just getting more of the same, with FURTHER validation of how he deserved that.

Of course, no matter how much I tried to ensure my message was received in the spirit it was intended....that’s not the outcome I got.

No, instead this author UNLOADED on me in her response, putting me on blast for daring to call her an abuse apologist and being a toxic stan who would make insinuations and attacks and basically call her a bad person just because I didn’t like how she treated my fave. And she definitely shared this and vented about me to all her friends, despite me making a point to message her in private rather than leave this in the comments for everyone to see, because for WEEKS afterwards I was seeing vagueblogs that were very clearly about my message, even including references to specific phrases I’d included in my message, and I heard from others that there were similar jokes and shit made about me in discord servers, etc.

All because I’d dared ask a writer to give people a headsup that they were doubling down on what some fans felt there was reason to view as validating a potentially abusive instance - ie a character accepting physical violence as penance for how he made his brothers feel.

And this, like that last reblog also said in its own examples - is EXACTLY why don’t like don’t read and curating your own content is BULLSHIT. Because it presumes that people KNOW when they’re endorsing or validating or justifying stuff that other people have ABSOLUTELY JUSTIFIED REASONS for viewing as harmful or toxic....and that they tag or warn appropriately.

And it further presumes that when informed that they might even UNINTENTIONALLY be perpetuating harm with a specific viewpoint or depiction of something.....that there is ever any kind of guarantee that they will accept this information or perspective gracefully, instead of perceiving it as an attack on their PERSON and innate goodness or whatever.

No matter HOW someone goes about trying to convey this perspective, either aggressively or with the utmost attempt at civility and diplomacy.

And nine out of ten times this escalates. Again, no matter HOW a person went about asking for a specific tag or to consider a specific viewpoint - which, y’know, when politeness only earns you escalation from people who won’t let shit go because they feel PERSONALLY ATTACKED by you saying hey maybe you’re not actually unproblematic in every view you’ve ever had....MAYBE there’s a reason why after YEARS of trying politeness or civility, people stop bothering with it and just say hey fuck you for this shitty viewpoint or depiction.....

But from my experience, nine out of ten times even a completely conciliatory approach only earns you vitriol and escalation from people who will absolutely go on the attack, grab all their friends, and freaking dogpile even on self-acknowledged survivors just asking you to consider adding some freaking TAGS....

Because some of you would rather throw survivors under the bus WHILE exploiting the hell out of knowing one who agrees with you (despite our experiences not being monolithic, sure is funny how the ones you agree with have in YOUR eyes the universally acceptable stance on stuff)....

Rather than just....

Sit with the idea that maybe you at some point in your life have unintentionally perpetuated a toxic or harmful mindset that you inherited or learned from previous generations, the media, or other people in your life, and didn’t think to question it because you personally had never experienced a reason TO question it before now.

LOL its funny, and I say its funny when its really not but lol you laugh so you dont scream am I right? Iykyk. But its funny how years later even just THINKING about this one fucking message I sent and what it got me in return has my hands shaking so bad its taking me three times longer than it should to write this post. I’ve had to get up and walk around at least twice to get my thoughts in order so I could finish it.

And here’s the part so many smug assholes over the years just willfully refuse to understand. I’m not TRIGGERED thinking about this cuz I’m oh so fragile. And frankly, it’d be fine if I WAS, whatever that happens to mean in your eyes, I’m just clarifying, its not the case here. LMAO. I didn’t survive a childhood of physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse, I didn’t survive being gaybashed and assaulted in college, I didn’t survive years of shitty experiences as a sex worker, my fucking jaw collapsing because of longterm physical consequences of being attacked.....

By being nearly as fucking fragile as some people on this site like to convince themselves I am when I get worked up about stuff like this.

My hands aren’t shaking because I can’t handle reminders of what I’ve been through or whatever people convince themselves of while telling each other in their discord server that I really should just stay away from content I can’t deal with.

I’m fucking vibrating like I’m Wally West because years after this stupid, should have been nothing message I tried so hard to make informative and personal instead of aggressive and accusatory......

I’m still PISSED.

At how STUPID all of this is. At how HYPOCRITICAL some of you are. At how I’ve made a point practically my entire time in fandom, to be open and forthcoming about my past and traumas because if I’m going to be in fandoms obsessed with male rape survivor characters and abuse I’d rather at least let my perspective be available as a RESOURCE if anyone wants it than just stew in how I feel every time I come across a post or fic I don’t think has the slightest awareness of how its coming across.....

And the sheer volume of times I’ve had people coo at me and ooh and aww about how sorry they are for what I’ve been through like that’s REMOTELY why I talk about these topics or what I’m looking for.....

Only to see those exact same people turn around and mock me behind my back, spread lies about me, attempt to gaslight me at every possible turn into thinking I’M the problem, if I would just quietly and passively accept that people are going to reinforce and validate the very mindsets that led people to do certain shit to me in the past, that some people are interested in GETTING OFF to these mindsets, well then everyone would just be so much happier....

And meanwhile, I’ve made post after post after post about my experiences or perspectives as a male survivor that I can’t even hit double digits on, note wise, even as the stupidest of my shitposts hit triple digits and more....

When the ONLY reason I post about those topics is not because I’m interested in being any kind of authority on male rape, childhood abuse, incest, etc, or think I ever possibly COULD be just because I’m one person these things happened to, but merely because if the conversations about them are going to CONSTANTLY be happening around me whether I want them to or not, I’d at least rather have my voice be INCLUDED and CONSIDERED in those conversations instead of just having to sit there LISTENING to people offer up uninformed opinions with complete certainty they know everything that’s ever been worth THINKING about in terms of that topic and if there’s anything else, well its obviously not important or else their enlightened asses would have already instinctively known it, wouldn’t they.....

My god. Its infuriating.

And hell, I’m KEENLY aware that even with all that, I’d still loaded to the brim with cis white male privilege, so trust me when I say I TRULY do not understand how some of my friends who have to deal with shithead hypocrisy on axes I don’t have any experience on, on a DAILY basis on this site and others, put up with some of you. And its why I will ALWAYS side with them no matter how ‘aggressive’ they’re being in the face of some faux-civil asshat crying fake tears about how they’ve been accused of being a heinous person which of course justifies anything and everything they say and do in response now.

But yeah. The hypocrisy of people. The fake ‘I care so much about survivors that I’m going to make this one a running joke on my blog because he dared make me THINK about the content I churn out every week to entertain myself and my friends, the GALL.’

That’s the shit that gets me. That keeps me from joining servers myself, that has me wary of even DMing with people I only know from their notifications on my posts, because I’ve got zero interest in having a fun headcanon chat session with someone who will two days later be faux-sympathetically vagueblogging with a friend how its so sad how I can’t move past certain things or let them go even though they’re part of the reason I’m constantly re-exposed to stuff even just in the tags people add TO MY OWN POSTS.

All because some people on here are so fucking TERRIFIED of what they might find if they ever tried a little serious self-examination, they’d rather reduce self-professed survivors to tragic victims while being fully prepared to vilify them the SECOND they say something a little too real or paint a picture someone doesn’t want to see themselves in.

Because god forbid some of you figure out how to just say....

”I’m sorry. What you brought up made me insecure and nervous when I thought about how many people I might have unintentionally hurt over the years while thinking I was just having fun with my friends, so I lashed out.”

Or “I didn’t know how to handle not being as thoughtful or informed as I like to think I am, so I made you the enemy instead.”

Or “I didn’t want you to be right so I made sure I believed you were wrong.”

Or “I was immature and not ready to tackle the work this might mean I needed to do on myself, so I pretended I couldn’t see it.”

I mean, after all, the ONLY thing I ever expected or hoped for - or hell, NEEDED - from that one writer I raised as an example, from years ago - was just a simple:

“I’m sorry, I literally just never thought about it that way before but I’ll add a note so people know that’ll be in the fic.”

That’s it. That’s all that was ever needed. I didn’t need or want their life story, their penance, them to fall over themselves making it about me or my trauma just because I brought it up, I didn’t expect them to shift their whole worldview from a single message.

Just a simple acknowledgment that I and my viewpoint were not unreasonable, and hey, maybe they’re not perfect and there’s still more work to be done on some mindsets or viewpoints they’ve always taken for granted.

The end.

(Or at least, it could’ve been).

#have a little rant. as a treat #or dont #my uncensored feelings. let me air them

[cypherpol]

#being alive........is legitimately so agonizing........ #why couldn’t i have been born a normal human.........WHY #why do the things i have to worry about have the potential to literally ruin my fucking life!!!!!!! #the fuck am i even supposed to DO ?????? #god i hate it here i rly truly do it takes all my self control not to fucking snap #surprise i am the problem!!!!!!!!! haha!!!!

[groovypalacewobblereagle]

Dany antis:

We have to understand that Mirri was devastated over her town and the abuse she suffered. To empathize. She’s a “hero” therefore, for killing a BABY.

We do NOT have to understand that Daenerys was devastated over the loss of her husband and child. She does not deserve empathy despite her losses. She’s “evil” for killing a grown woman who killed a baby.

We have to understand the culture of wealthy grown educated men who have subjected human beings to slavery for hundreds of years.

Oh, but they weren’t alive for hundreds of years! We can’t hold that against them!

But we also can’t deny them the benefit of the excuse that they’ve done this for hundreds of years.

We do NOT have to understand the culture of a teenage girl who is a Khaleesi of the Dothraki, who kills the wine seller for trying to kill her and her baby.

Because she killed him painfully. We don’t care that Varys suggested killing her with the tears of Lys, and remember that the victim dies an agonizing death. We don’t think about the morals of a painful death when the intended victim is Daenerys.

The same applies to when she crucified the slavers. We’re going to insist she did it indiscriminately, even though we know she didn’t kill a single woman who would have had less power, or child who would be entirely innocent, nor did she kill random civilians, they were all nobles. All slavers. But there are innocent slavers! Innocent slavers are definitely a thing.

The people who make laws that are not up to modern standards, like Daenerys, are evil.

But the people who follow those laws, like Ned beheading a man for running away from the dead, or Jon who beheaded a man for refusing to follow an order, or Robb who threatened to hang a man if he didn’t join the war against the Lannisters, aren’t.

Daenerys may have warned the slavers she would show no mercy if they didn’t free the slaves and pay them reparations, but she should have given them a trial even though they own the system.

It’s true they were all slavers, but if she was punishing them for being slavers, she should have killed all of them. The fact she didn’t kill all of them shows it wasn’t about justice, so she’s evil.

But she was also wrong for wanting to kill all of them, and Jorah talked her out of it. The fact he had to talk her out of it shows she’s evil.

And then when Daario tried to talk her into slaughtering them Red Wedding style, and she refused, that’s also proof she’s evil because Daario represents her evil nature.

We can empathize with the slavers! Because we might have done the same thing! We all like to think we’d stand against slavery, but if it’s our culture we might not. And we might stand by while our friends torture 163 children to death to spite an abolitionist.

We say we empathize with the slaves, too, but it’s more we sympathize with them. We understand that they are victims. We don’t see ourselves in their place. We don’t empathize with the anger the parents of those children felt. They follow Dany blindly. They don’t understand choice. That’s why they follow her.

What we CANNOT empathize with (because we know we would NEVER) is a teenage girl who walked along a road lined with the corpses of children who were tortured to death to spite her. We know a GOOD ruler would be stalwart in the face of such horror and hold a trial. Because even though the slavers own all the systems in existence in that city, there’s no way a trial could have caused the death of lesser evil instead of greater. Trials are foolproof!

She should have killed them all or tried to have every one of them examined by witnesses who are profoundly biased. We cannot empathize with that.

Dany’s attachment to the Dothraki shows her savagery. The Dothraki are rapists and slavers and she lusted after her husband when he made that speech and so it doesn’t matter how she tried to fight rapists later. They are all terrible. The Khals are monsters and she loved one, so that shows she’s a monster.

Also, she’s evil for killing the Khals.

She was wrong for sacking Astapor and Yunkai but not staying to rule them. She made it worse because poverty is as bad as slavery and the freed slaves are not able to build their own society, and she should have known that. She was wrong for not staying and ruling them.

She was also wrong for staying in Meereen and ruling it because that makes her a colonizer.

She agrees to allow adults to sell themselves into temporary slavery, and that’s wrong, because voluntary indentured servitude is as bad as generational chattel slavery-except when it’s in Westeros! The rulers in Westeros are rightful, but Daenerys was trying to enslave them by having them bend the knee! She was using the privilege of her father’s name, and it’s different when the Starks do it.

Dragons are evil. They serve no good purpose and she’s evil because she has dragons.

Also, Jon should have a dragon.

When Arya met the Lannister soldiers, and Ed Sheeran, that was to show how she realized that they are not all bad. This shows that sometimes enemies are good. This will show that we should empathize with enemies. That Dany is bad because she doesn’t even though she agrees to help the Starks, whose father supported the man who murdered her brother, and was not disturbed by the murder of her niece and nephew. Who would have killed a baby, had he known Jon was her nephew. Who would have killed her.

This does not apply to Daenerys and her armies, of course. The North was one hundred percent right to treat her with hostility.

Daenerys considered killing Tyrion when she met him! This shows that she is willing to kill people just because they are related to enemies! She’s evil!

Even though she named Tyrion her Hand. Even though she agreed to aid the North with no strings attached once she saw the army of the dead. Even though she accepted Varys into her service when he’d tried to have her murdered. Varys being part of the plan to sell a teenage girl into sexual slavery was not evil because she turned that to her advantage.

Dany was wrong for even considering killing Tyrion despite the fact that she didn’t and ultimately named him her Hand.

She was wrong for killing the Tarlys even though they were oathbreakers who killed their own friends and attacked their liege’s home. Even though the punishment for oath breaking is death. Even though they refused to bend the knee in exchange for keeping their lives, lands and titles, which is standard procedure in Westeros. Even though they refused the Wall, where Tarly sent his eldest son.

She didn’t kill them for oathbreaking or murdering her allies. She killed them for not bending the knee! Even though she only attacked them after they did that, and she did not harm Jon when he refused to bend the knee, she allowed him to mine her dragonglass, and offered to provide men and resources to help.

Sam was not wrong for hating Daenerys for killing his father, even though he was an oathbreaker, an abuser, and threatened to kill Sam. Even though he said that nothing would give him more pleasure than telling Sam’s mother that her son died. Even though Sam knew of Dany’s great deeds from Aemon. It’s understandable that he would still mourn his father. Even if his father was a monster, we have to empathize with his anger.

YET Daenerys is dead wrong for calling out Jaime for murdering her father. Her father was a monster! How dare she feel anything about his murder! She had no right to object to Jaime’s presence at Winterfell, even though he tried to kill her on the battlefield and said straight out said he wasn’t sorry for all he’d done and would do it again to protect his family.

She was wrong for restoring the family name of the man who killed her brother and cheered the brutal murders of her niece and nephew. Because she only legitimized Gendry for personal gain, even though he could have done the opposite of joining her, and tried to take the throne himself.

She is wrong if she is good to the family of her enemies because she is self serving, and she is wrong if she’s not good to them because it’s not their fault.

The Starks are not wrong for judging Daenerys by her father’s actions even though she came to help save them. Sansa is not wrong for wanting to evict children from their homes because their families were traitors.

When the Starks are suspicious of the family members of those who’ve harmed them, it’s fair. They are being smart.

When Daenerys is suspicious of the family members of those who’ve harmed her, it’s proof of her being paranoid like her father.

When Sansa told Jon that the free folk should join their fight against Ramsay, that they owed it to him because he’d saved their lives, that was smart!

When she told Arya “you should be on your knees, thanking me,” she had every right to assert her accomplishments.

YET, Daenerys was very entitled to want the North to fight Cersei with her in exchange for her helping them defeat the army of the dead, even though Cersei was their enemy too, and she sent them a letter saying “come bend the knee or face the fate of all traitors.”

It was not wrong of Jon to tell the North he bent the knee to save them, even though she said she’d help before he bent the knee.

It’s Dany’s fault the Night King got a dragon even though the wight hunt was Tyrion’s idea and Daenerys did not like it. Even though Jon told her, “I don’t need your permission. I am a king.”

Dany held Jon prisoner even though he had to stay to mine the dragonglass and he stated that he did not need her permission to leave. That’s what being a prisoner means, right?

Daenerys went mad because her family was fraught with incest. This does not imply that Jon will go mad, because his mother was not a Targaryen (even though his mother’s parents were related). Generations of inbreeding unequivocally mean madness, but the ramifications of those generations are undone if one guy at the end of the line produces a child with a woman whose parents were also related. That’s how genetics work, right?

Daenerys is a colonizer. Even though she didn’t have any goal other than destroying the slave trade in Essos. She only did that for selfish reasons even though Yunkai trains bed slaves and neither Meereen nor Yunkai added to her military might. Even though she never forced her religion or language on them. Even though she renounced power over the cities when she left, so that the people could choose their own leaders.

The Starks were never colonizers! Even though the earliest Starks were First Men, who committed genocide against the Children of the Forest. The First Men called themselves the First Men, they did not acknowledge the humanity of the Children. Therefore, the Children were not human.

The First Men destroyed the Children. The Starks built a Wall to separate the dead from the living, but left thousands of living and Children of the Forest at the other side of it. The Starks destroyed the other families, established power over the area, established their religion and language as the official religion and language. The Starks became the Kings of Winter by bringing to heel, and sometimes extinguishing, other families. That’s fine because the Starks are good. That’s not colonizing! The Starks were always good! They killed the warg king and his sons and beasts and then married his daughters. That’s not rape, that’s marriage!

The Targaryens who adapted the Westerosi religion and language and did not in any way repress other religions or languages, were the oppressors.

Dany hardly did anything in the Long Night. Her armies and dragons did not thin out the dead army, making it possible for Arya to kill the Night King. Two dragons can only do so much against an army of 100k. Even though Dany’s army also was over 100K.

YET, she burned MILLIONS in KL (even though the population of KL is under a million and even though I just said she could not have possibly taken out much of the dead army.)

When Daenerys didn’t weep and wring her hands over her abusive brother’s death that was evidence of her turning “mad.” Even though he abused her, sold her, and pressed a sword to her belly and threatened to cut her baby out of her body.

When Sansa smiled as Ramsay screamed, being torn apart by dogs, that was not a sign of anything bad. He abused her!

When Daenerys crucified the slavers even though a trial would have yielded nothing, because they had owned the entire system, that was a sign of her being a villain.

But Varys wasn’t wrong for trying to poison her before she did anything wrong because he sensed what she would do! Instinct > Trials. Unless the “instinct” is Daenerys’. Then it’s paranoia, even when the people she suspects of plotting against her are plotting against her.

When Arya killed two men, baked them into a pie, fed them to their father, slit his throat, smiled faintly as he died, cut off his face, then killed every one of his bannermen, with no knowledge of whether those men had been there at the Red Wedding, or whether they’d spoken against it, that was not a sign of her being a villain. Because if it’s a Stark, we understand complicity.

Besides, Arya is not a ruler. Only rulers do harm. Not explorers! Explorers who believe “I’ll never know her, she’s not one of us”, have never done anything bad in all history. Happy Columbus Day, btw.

#daenerys #daenerys targaryen #i stand by daenerys #daenerys defense squad

[cruelfeline]

It is... really kind of jarring to see the difference in characters’ reactions to finding out Entrapta is on Beast Island.

The members of the Alliance really quibble over what to do about it, don’t they? Adora and Scorpia seem to have the most compassionate intentions, both automatically defaulting to rescuing her.

Bow is clearly in favor of rescuing her... though he does have some moments of plainly associating doing so with requesting some sort of practical assistance from her. Which is... I don’t know... a little uncomfortable?

And Glimmer... appears to express interest in only the most shallow way. And is very amenable to delaying rescue in favor of dealing with the Horde first. Which is... I understand this in a certain way, because Entrapta did betray them (though one could argue certain things about that... ah, well; a different post, maybe), and the Horde is very menacing at this point in the story, but... this is Beast Island. Entrapta has been there for a year already. There is a very real danger that, if she is still alive, she may not be for long. There is a time limit to this. There is a very legitimate possibility that Entrapta could be dead or in severe danger; this is not something that should be delayed, if Beast Island is as perilous as suggested (it is). So...

It’s a little off-putting, to me, that there’s this argument about how quickly to attempt a rescue. Especially given the new information that Entrapta ended up on Beast Island by trying to stop the portal disaster. That should count for something. Particularly to Glimmer, who lost her mother in that disaster. But it doesn’t seem to. And the fact that the Best Friends Squad displays relatively little emotional concern for Entrapta herself, rather than what rescue might mean in terms of logistics, is just kind of... I don’t know. It makes me feel strange.

Compare this arguing and discussing and utilitarian consideration to Hordak’s reaction, and it’s extremely clear who actually has an emotional connection with Entrapta, and who doesn’t. Hordak does not sit and think and figure out the details. He does not ask for clarification, or try to work out the logistics of things.

Hordak finds out that Entrapta was sent to Beast Island approximately one year ago, and he promptly loses any and all composure, destroys his immediate surroundings in an agonizing emotional breakdown, and starts to cry.

There’s not much more to be said about it, I think: the difference in reaction is striking. And it’s strange for me to watch. It makes me feel odd, uncomfortable, that our heroes are so emotionally unaffected by what should have been their friend being sent to a literal death trap (even Scorpia sat on this information for a year before doing anything about it), while our designated villain just... instantly breaks down in tears.

Really makes me think, again, about the way the Alliance only seems interested in Entrapta for her usefulness. And about why Entrapta chooses to stay with Hordak, rather than trying to make amends with the princesses. And about whether her attempts to reconcile with and adapt to their demands in season five are something I really like or not. And while I know that there is nuance in this, that there is relationship damage due to Entrapta being with the Horde and what-have-you, I still... I don’t know. I feel oddly about it, when seeing the reactions side by side.

#entrapdak #hordak #entrapta

[soulmate-game]

It had been a trip to Metropolis. Why would Francois-Dupoint go to Gotham, a crime-ridden city crawling with danger and supervillains, vigilantes that toed the line of being bad influences, and a really high chance of lawsuit, when they could go to the city of Superman himself?

Exactly. No good reason.

At least, that was what they all thought. Marinette’s parents even volunteered to chaperone, deciding that they could survive shutting the bakery down for one week. Marinette had helped raise enough money for the trip that the school could compensate them a bit for their time, and their food, hotel, and plane were all paid for. It was supposed to be a great trip. One to remember. And yeah, Marinette would never forget that vacation.

Because she stood with the rest of her class, watching smoke and dust rise off of the pile of rubble that just dropped on top of her parents. The fight was over. Marinette couldn’t even remember who it was. But even with his son by his side, Superman and Superboy couldn’t save everyone. Nobody could. It was asking too much, to expect any one or two heroes to save everyone when an entire city was being attacked and buildings reduced to rubble.

But that wouldn’t soothe the sight of blood creeping out of the rocks.

That wouldn’t soothe the scrapes on Marinette’s knees when she dropped to the ground.

It wouldn’t smother the sound of her agonized cries.

It wouldn’t heal the burns and scrapes and bruises, the chipped fingernails and bleeding fingertips that Marinette gave herself as she tried desperately, sight blurry through tears, to lift each and every piece of still-hot concrete off, shove it to the side, in an attempt to unearth them. They could still be alive, right? Right?

The fact that she was shoveling what amounted to pebbles off of a hill of rubble argued with her. No. No, they weren’t.

It wasn’t until gentle, but unyieldingly strong hands clasped hers, making them still.

“You’re hurting yourself,” that soft, deep voice came from whoever owned the foreign hands, but she didn’t have the mental strength to look up and identify them. Instead, she resorted to kicking rubble away. The voice sighed. “Back up. I can help. Okay? Will you let me help?”

It had been so long, Marinette furrowed her eyebrows. When was the last time someone had actually asked her that question? When was the last time someone ever offered her help? Legitimate help, not just something superficial.

She couldn’t remember. How should she respond?

Marinette’s tongue darted out, wetting her dusty lips. Her deep breath came in with a disconcerting rattle. Somehow, she managed to nod. The foreign hands loosened slightly.

“Okay. Good—“

“I can’t stop,” Marinette finally managed to choke out. “I can’t— I need to—“

“I know,” the voice said again, endlessly patient. Endlessly understanding. “But you’re hurting yourself, so put these on first. Then you can keep digging.”

With his help—yes, him. She vaguely managed to pin down that the voice was male— she was able to slip on thick gloves. They were several sizes too big, probably belonged to one of the firefighters nearby, her mind numbly supplied. She didn’t care. As soon as they were on, she dropped down and began to dig again. The man who had offered to help did just that, moving just a foot or two away and lifting up impossibly large chunks of concrete before placing them down gently in an open area.

With his help, they were uncovered. They were carried away, under blankets, as best as they could be. Marinette saw none of it. Hands covered her eyes, younger than the voice-man’s hands but almost as strong. The only thing she saw was whatever was left once most of them was taken away. Later, she would thank him. But in the moment she was furious.

“I’m not a baby!” She growled at him, her voice lower and scratchier than usual because of all the smoke and dust clogging her throat. “I need to look at them! I need to remember!”

“Not like this,” the new voice said. When he removed his hands, Marinette saw Superboy. He was probably just about her age, but that offered little comfort for her. At least his eyes were understanding, calm, and empathetic. “You don’t need to see them like this. Remember them like they were, not how they ended,” the young hero advised gently, keeping a respectable distance between them now that he was no longer covering her eyes. He wasn’t even floating, staying on solid ground to stay closer to her eye level. “Today will be hard enough on your mind as it is. You don’t need to make this more painful than it is.”

Marinette could only bite her lip at that, her shoulders trembling. Is this what it took to have someone worry about her? To have people realize that she wasn’t superhuman, that she wasn’t infallible or mentally indestructible? Is this what it took, to finally have people try to help and care for her?

Because if it was, she would gladly deal with Lila Rossi and be held to far too high a standard for the rest of her life. She would rather suffer quietly for decades with that much more gentle pain than deal with this agony right now.

She finally let the tears fall, but they were mostly silent. Only hiccups and gasps for air added sound to her sobs. Superboy gently removed her hands from her arms before she could draw blood on herself, and when she lunged into the touch he drew her into the hug she clearly needed. When she pretty much collapsed into his hold, getting snot and tears over the symbol on his chest, he said nothing. He just held her and shared a glance over her shoulder with his father.

—*—*—*—*—*

Lois Lane was an investigative reporter. And when her husband and son asked her to make sure the girl they had sat with for hours after the latest attack on their city would be taken care of, she did not cut corners in her research. What she came up with was less than reassuring.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng. With her parents gone, she didn’t have much in the way of possible guardians. Her paternal grandfather was dead, just a few months earlier of old age. Her paternal grandmother Gina was consumed with wanderlust, not very responsible and not likely to be able to win custody. Even if she did, Lois doubted Marinette would do well in such an unstable, constantly moving lifestyle. Some people would, but Marinette was much like her son from what she gathered from her investigation. She would need stability before anything else. There was her Uncle from her mom’s side of the family, but he only spoke Mandarin so the language barrier was not promising either. The last thing Marinette needed was pressure to learn a new language. If she hyper focused on anything to deal with her grief, it should at least be something she chose on her own. Lastly there was her maternal grandmother, but she had gotten in an accident and passed away almost two years prior.

Luckily, Lois Lane was also a woman of extreme, if mostly secret, political power. She knew several billionaires with political sway, international superheroes, and politicians. Also, not that she would ever tell her husband, but she might have squared away some blackmail and favors that she might cash in with some folks in the legal system if it decided to fight her on her new personal mission.

Nobody got in the way of Lois Lane and lasted long.

But first, she ran her idea past her family. It wouldn’t do any good if they didn’t agree with her, after all. Luckily enough, her offer seemed to be exactly what they had hoped for. Apparently Marinette was the type that was easy to get attached to.

And that was how, after twelve hours of intense phone-call sessions and very, very many in depth discussions, arguments, debates, bargains, and subtle manipulation, Marinette Dupain-Cheng ended up in the temporary custody of the Kent family.

The process itself was extremely complicated and in normal circumstances would have taken anywhere from days to months to complete, but as mentioned before Lois Lane is a secret political superpower in and of herself.

Officially, Marinette’s grandmother Gina assumed custody. Unofficially, her grandmother had plans to enroll her in school abroad in, you guessed it, Metropolis, so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the melancholy memories that Paris would supply her. In doing so, she contacted the Kent’s who were apparently old family friends and asked them to take her granddaughter in for the time being. She was oh so busy traveling the world, after all. And that’s no life for a teenager recovering from grief.

After two weeks to allow Marinette to go back to Paris for the funeral, pack up her things and say goodbye to her friends, she ended up on the Kents’ doorstep with her grandmother by her side. Any attempts to get more information out of the old woman were futile, she refused to say a word on why nobody had mentioned these “family friends” before.

(Lois figured out fairly quickly that Gina Dupain was not somebody to take lightly. The fact that Gina answered the phone thinking that Red Hood was calling was a giant tip off. Lois was pretty sure that Gina knew damn well who her son and husband were, but wasn’t saying anything about it. It really was a shame that she wasn’t exactly prime parenting material at the moment.)

Lois and Clark opened the door together, having been double and triple checking that everything was set up and ready for their new addition. Sure, Marinette wasn’t being adopted or even officially fostered by them, but they would still treat her like a Kent.

“Marinette, hi,” Clark greeted, smiling warmly down at the short girl. “I’m Clark, and this is my wife Lois. If you need absolutely anything, don’t be afraid to ask. Okay?”

The small girl nodded, her hair flopping behind her a bit. Normally she would have it held back in pigtails, but she just didn’t have the energy for that anymore. Maybe she would regain it one day. With that, Gina and Marinette said their goodbyes and she started her life with the Kents.

—*—*—*—*—*

It took a while. Luckily the trip to metropolis had already been in the early summer, so Marinette could be excused for the last few weeks of the school term and relax over summer before being forced back into society. Her grades at Francois-Dupoint were finalized, Marinette doing all the extra work during her two weeks in France for the funeral. She had been told it wasn’t necessary and that she could take her time with it but, as the Kents soon learned, Marinette hated being idle.

But even though Marinette was nowhere near healed, it only took a week for her to warm up to the youngest Kent. Jon was a very much welcome presence in her new life. Just about her age, he was always patient with her and never pried for information or asked about why she occasionally couldn’t bring herself to talk. Words just failed her sometimes, she couldn’t get her throat to work. Something would remind her of her parents, or that day, and she would just feel the dust in her throat again and the blisters on her palms and she just couldn’t say a word.

All three of the Kents helped her through these episodes as best as they could, but Jon always stayed close by so she could tug him into a hug when she was ready. As a very tactile person, she really appreciated that.

And somehow he and Clark, despite being very awkward and physically unsure of themselves on the surface, gave the best hugs.

But, even though Jon and Clark had resigned themselves to being slightly more on-guard about their identities than they usually would be at home, they hadn’t quite anticipated just how hard it would be to keep a secret identity. Not necessarily from Marinette, since the girl spent most of her time out in their backyard or in her room, or occasionally going out for short visits to the city with Jon. No, it was the other way around.

Because of course Marinette couldn’t just give up being Ladybug and the Grand Guardian. Fu wasn’t there to take over for her anymore, so she took it upon herself to watch over Paris twice as vigorously. Mostly through keeping an eye on news channels and texts with her friends, general media stuff. She didn’t want to tire Kaalki out.

And this was how, two months after Marinette started living with the Kents, she walked through a portal into her room and was met with Clark and Jon staring right at her. The elder Kent had his arms crossed, posture oddly confident for the man she had come to know, and one eyebrow raised. Jon looked like his smile was about to rip his face in half, and he was bouncing a bit on his heels. Even then, though, Marinette could pick out the slight worry in his blue eyes. In both of theirs.

She immediately jumped backwards and closed the portal. Trapping herself back in Paris.

And instantly crumpling down to moan in despair on top of a random Parisian rooftop.

She was sitting on the very top of the Eiffel Tower when Superman and Superboy found her, and it didn’t take much for her to guess that they had flown straight over from metropolis. Stupid super-speed flight. She drew her legs to her chest, resting her chin on her knees as they floated to her side of her patiently. She had long since separated Kaalki, and sat in just her Ladybug costume.

“I knew Lois could contact you guys, but this is a bit too quick even for you don’t you think?” Ladybug drawled monotonously, looking over at both of the heroes dryly. Now that she was mostly of sound mind and not in the middle of a traumatic situation, she was able to make connections she couldn’t before. She was able to actually observe their faces, whereas before she hadn’t really been in the right mind frame to really commit anything about them to memory. But now?

Ohhh, she knew those faces.

Marinette’s eyebrow twitched as she did a double-take, followed closely by a deep breath. Maybe the glasses and, for Jon, baseball cap, would be a good enough disguise for most people. Especially when combined with the frankly impressive body acting they both pulled off on an apparently daily basis, they felt like totally different people in and out of the suits even if they looked the same.

But Marinette was not a normal person. She was a designer, she had a very critical eye, and she had just spent the better part of the last two months living in the same house as these two. And now she realized that they severely toned down the body acting and general “disguise” of their civilian selves when they were at home rather than outside. She had shrugged it off as them simply relaxing at home and, while she was right, it wasn’t until this moment that she put everything together.

“No masks, seriously? Some day, someone with eyes as good as mine is gonna figure you guys out,” she told them blandly, earning shocked blinks followed quickly by soft grins.

“I would normally sit down next to you at this point, but you haven’t exactly left us any space,” Superman— Clark, Marinette reminded herself— joked lightly. Marinette looked down to the small tip of the Eiffel Tower and back up to him, pointedly raising both eyebrows. Jon giggled.

Rolling her eyes and fighting a smile, Ladybug stood up without any apparently care about her footing. Somehow, balance seemed to just come naturally to her. It was so different from the usual Marinette that Clark and Jon had seen literally walk into a wall on multiple occasions that they had to grin. Seems like she fit right in on their acts-clumsy-and-awkward-but-isn’t trope.

(No, they later realized, that was completely Marinette. Ladybug just brought out a different side of her, but the awkwardness was still there. Just better hidden.)

“I was kinda trying to stay somewhere that nobody else could join me on purpose. You know, I was a little busy catastrophizing about you guys wanting to get rid of me now.”

“What?!” Jon asked, horrified. “No way! Even if we were normal, we wouldn’t just toss you away because we found out you’re a hero. That just— do you honestly think we would do that?”

“No,” she admitted softly, crossing her arms and sighing as she looked down over Paris. Over her city. It was a bittersweet view nowadays. “No, but I always freak out over things like that pretty easily. I’ve had people leave me over less. Sometimes it’s hard to convince myself that anyone else will be different.”

“Marinette—“

“Ladybug, actually,” she corrected with a small smile. “Don’t wanna slip up here. You never know who’s listening.”

Clark blinked, needing a moment to let that sink in before forcing himself to continue. “Ladybug, then,” he paused to gently lay a hand on her shoulder, forcing her to meet his gaze. As always it was soft. Patient. Just like his voice had been that fateful day. And, oh, there were the memories. They had both been there, helped her, and they stuck with her. Even though it hadn’t been their fault, even though they could have easily stepped back and let her deal with own problems and who had her custody on her own, they didn’t. She would have blamed them if they did, who was she to expect heroes to care about her like she was their child? That would be horrendously selfish of her. They saved hundreds of people every week.

And yet here they were, treating her like family.

And there was the phantom dust, clogging her throat. Strangling her words. She opened and closed her mouth, but nothing came out. Clark understood, he always understood, and his grip just tightened slightly. It tethered her.

“Ladybug,” he repeated even more softly. “We are not going to toss you out. Not for something like this, not for anything. You’re family now. You might not have the Kent name, you might not be kryptonian, but you’re one of us. Lois understands. Heaven knows she’s put up with both of us long enough, one more hero in the family is probably not that surprising. I just hope that… that you knowing doesn’t—“

“I don’t blame you,” there we go, her voice finally decided to work again. It came out a little hoarse, so she cleared her throat and started again. “I don’t blame you. I never did. It’s stupid, blaming a hero for things that never would have happened if the villain hadn’t attacked in the first place,” she told them, ripping her gaze away from his to trace over Paris again. “Maybe it’s because I understand that not everyone can be saved. I get it. But I never blamed you. I was actually grateful from the very beginning. You helped me dig them out even though you very well could have just carried me to the sidelines and stopped me from digging at all. And you, Jon, you didn’t complain once when I pretty much tackled you in a hug. You both sat with me as the paramedics looked me over. You didn’t leave until you were sure I was back in my hotel and in good hands. You never got impatient with me. That’s more than I could have asked for,” suddenly her mask was wet, and she roughly swiped away the tears that had leaked from her eyes. “You guys being Superman and Superboy isn’t going to make me treat you differently. It’s… actually nice. Not having to hide anymore, I mean.”

Jon grinned and flew over, enveloping her in a tight hug. Ladybug only chuckled and returned it, never once faltering in her balance. “I know exactly what you mean!” He said happily, making Ladybug laugh even more. It quickly devolved into Jon having to compensate for Ladybug’s balance, since she was suddenly leaning all her weight on him as she laughed her little heart out and no longer seemed to care about her balance at all. Not that it mattered much, Jon was more than capable of keeping her safe at close range like this, but it was cute to see. And for Clark? It was really relieving to see the girl he had come to think of as a daughter laughing so genuinely for the first time. Not a chuckle, or a soft huff of amusement, a full blown belly laugh.

It was amazing.

“Come on. I think you have some explaining to do, if you are comfortable with it anyway. Do you want to fly back, or portal back?” He asked, tilting his head slightly. He wouldn’t force Marinette to use her powers, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about them. Marinette straightened up, easily regaining her balance on the pointed tip of the tower beneath her, and slipping on a pair of glasses that she pulled… out of her yo-yo?

Wait, why was a yo-yo on her hip her only weapon? Maybe Clark should look into the Paris situation a bit more in-depth. He was clearly missing a lot, and none of what he was seeing was necessarily filling him with joy and confidence. Maybe Marinette could help soothe his worries later, if she decided to explain her abilities to them.

One transformation and a portal later, and all three of them stepped back into Marinette’s room. And when the portal closed and Marinette let down all her transformations, she took a deep breath and looked around. At both men in the room with her. At her bed and all her belongings. At the way this space has become her own. It felt nice. Warm. Welcoming, familiar.

Home.

It felt like home.

And Marinette’s smile hadn’t been quite so wide since before that infamous Metropolis trip.

Part 2

Yes, Lois kept her last name when she married Clark. I just like alliteration, okay? Besides, my story my rules lol :P

#maribat #mlb x dc #ml x dc #platonic jonette #jon kent and marinette #Marinette joins the Kent family #Marinette Kent

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 145 - Infectious Doubts

Gertrude: Look, Arthur, I need you to understand that this isn’t simple posturing. I don’t see a way we can meaningfully progress this conversation while you’re under the impression that your threats mean anything to me.

Gertrude's intimidation tactics have a very pragmatic tone to them, don't they?

Gertrude: Ah. ... I assume you haven’t checked on, uh, Eugene, then?

Creepy threatening Gertrude is creepy and threatening.

Gertrude: You know, thinking about it, the amount of pain and loss and legitimate devastation I’ve caused among your little cult over the last, what, forty years? I think the Desolation is probably very fond of me.

Oh, that is rather fitting given what a BURN that comment is.

Gertrude: Murder, kidnap, torture, oh, something to impress the church group.

... pffft. "The church group" - the image I'm getting right now is delightful, a bunch of Desolation worshippers discussing horrifying deeds over cake and tea out of pastel porcelain cups.

Arthur Nolan: Agnes was always quiet, but even if you spend all day, every day throwing out commandments and laying down parables… at the end of it, you’re always just the point of someone else’s story, everyone clamoring to say what you were, what you meant, and your thoughts on it all don’t mean nothing.

That sums it up, doesn't it? Poor Agnes, never her own story.

Arthur Nolan: The one thing it never does is just… tell us what to do. It seeds us with this… aching, impossible desire to change the world, to bring it to us. Then it leaves us to guess and bicker and fight over how the hell you can actually do it. If it’s possible.

You know, given my own spiritual crises (none of which involve a cruel god of devastation, fortunately) ... I get it. On some level this quote is downright fucking relatable!

Arthur Nolan: Figure if you’re gonna pull this stuff out of me, might as well get some of it off my chest anyway.

Makes sense, might as well find something good in it!

Arthur Nolan: Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is. Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls the Lightless Flame Asag, like he was when he was first researching it. I just really wanna tell him to get over it; I mean Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church we very much settled on burning in terms of the – face we worship, and some fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it? Plus there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is way too close to Filth for my taste, but no, he read it in some ancient tome, so that’s that –

I may have mentioned it before but I absolutely adore the way the Church of the Lightless Flame squabbles over what is considered its orthodoxy, it's so realistic. And so hilarious.

Gertrude: Well, I can’t say I –

Ah, the moment when Gertrude starts regretting her attempt to compel Arthur Nolan. "I can make him talk, alright, but how the HELL do I get him to shut up?"

Arthur: Always respected you for that. Takes a strong stomach to not give a shit. Gertrude: You’ll forgive me if I’m not overjoyed at the compliment.

... you fully deserve it, though. The shoe fits, so the least you can do is put the damn thing on!

Arthur: Had an elderly tenant last year, oh, she was in a terrible state. I had her trapped, too poor and immobile to do anything but – sit there. Then I broke her boiler, so the cold started to get her.

The way this perfectly maps onto real life tragedies that weren't so much the result of sadistic action as careless negligence is ... well, I don't know what it is but it's notable.

Arthur: All your burning questions answered?

Pfffft.

Jon: I wish I didn’t know how painful it must be to be alive while your entire being is infused with… agonizing grit. But, as I was investigating, it… came to me.

Jon needs a hug and industrial-strength brain bleach.

Jon: I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh, rest up a bit. Take it easy. Georgie: Really? ‘Cause – I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now.

Well, Georgie is nothing if not forthright. I guess not having fear includes not having the sort of social anxiety that underlies many social niceties?

My impression of this episode

Gertrude is utterly terrifying, especially given the way we know her to usually act (the little old lady mask, so to speak) compared with ... THIS. And terrifying is what I'm here for so I enjoyed this conversation immensely. The fact that Arthur Nolan is somehow grimly hilarious doesn't hurt either. And I do so enjoy the Agnes plotline (even if trying to think about the timelines of anything related to Hilltop Road, including this, gives me a headache).

#tma relisten #the magnus archives

[athenagrantnash]

Who is gonna right the fic about Athena waiting for Bobby to wake up and be ok after being shot?! I need to know what happened between the “I’ve got you” and the “Always” 😫

I mean I sooorrrrttaaa wrote one ('twas one of my least favorite works ever but Eh)

But I legitimately need like... a deep look into everything going through Athena's head during those hours, or even days.

I'm 100% positive that Bobby lost consciousness just after the forehead touch, definitely before the team got there. Did Athena think she'd lost him in that moment, when he went limp in her arms?

What about the ride over to the hospital? Did they have to fly him over because of how bad his injury was? Did she watch them lift him away wondering if she had just seen him alive for the last time?

And then the hours in the hospital, pacing identical sterile hallway after identical sterile hallway, hoping against hope that he'll make it through the surgery - hoping that she's not about to lose him. Begging God to let her keep him.

When he finally is out of surgery, how long do they keep him unconscious for? What comfort did she get out of the constant beep of the machines - promising her that his heart was still beating, promising her that hers wasn't about to shatter.

And finally when they move him into a normal room and allow him to wake up naturally, whenever that ends up being. How long did she pray over him before he finally opened his eyes? How much did she beg God that he would be okay, that the pain wouldn't be too much for him, that he would come back to her?

And then when he finally does wake up, the pure relief that is coursing through her. She knows he has a long road ahead of him, and right now that's something she's grateful for - because his road was so close to ending forever that night.

And even when he's home... how often does she still have nightmares about that night, those agonizing hours or even days of worry? How many times does she wake up in the middle of the night just to make sure he is still there beside her; warm, real, and alive.

#bathena #bobby nash #athena grant #911 #911 fox #911 on fox #ask me a question

[thebluestbluewords]

I haven't watched D2 in almost a year please forgive me

This is 1800 words of NONSENSE about PIRATES except there's actually no named pirates appearing in this section yet.

*

He’d been taking a walk.

The isle isn’t safe, obviously. It’s a prison colony, full of the worst of the worst, shaken up and left to stew in their own anger and his family’s incompetence for twenty years. Of course it’s not going to be a safe place for little Auradon boys to linger.

He’d gone less than a block. Hadn’t been planning on going any further. It’s an emotional whiplash, going from being upset because his girlfriend is secretly using magic to cope with Auradon life instead of just talking to him about it, to breaking up because she’s decided she can’t cope with life outside of the place she grew up.

It’s oversimplifying. There’s a lot more to it than just not being able to cope, but it’s hard to see that through the sheer hurt that’s stuck in Ben’s chest. They’d been doing well, until all of sudden they weren’t, and there was no time in between to try and fix things. Always jumping to the most extreme solution, that’s Mal. And it’s something he likes about her, usually! She’s got wild solutions for things, and she’s able to come up with the most outrageous ideas and play them off like they’re absolutely nothing, and she--

Doesn’t want to live in the same country as him anymore.

Yeah.

So that sucks.

Bringing Mal back home is more important than whatever concerns he’s got about their romantic future together.. No matter what’s going on emotionally, it’s still not right to leave her alone back on the island that they just brought her over from. There’s garbage burning in the streets here! The food stalls all have signs about limited supplies and taking what you can get, and the amount of knives and weapons on the average person walking down the street here isn’t exactly unexpected, but it’s just… it’s a lot. It’s not like he’s completely unaware of his surroundings! On the isle of villains, it’s important to stay alert. He gets that. It’s just that emotional turmoil, combined with the little fact that he’s all of sixteen and he’s pretty sure his heart is breaking, might be distracting him. Just a little bit.

Nobody ever expects to be grabbed by a giant guy and yanked into an alley, okay?

“Urg?” Ben manages to say, around the hand that’s being clamped over his mouth. “Eahhh?”

“Don't talk,” the mystery voice behind him directs. It’s not the person who’s holding him, so that’s bad. Being outnumbered is bad. “We’re taking you to see our captain, and if you run we have instructions to make that...significantly more difficult for you.”

Ben nods. There’s something tapping threateningly at his kneecaps, and he’s pretty sure he knows what the voice means by making it harder to run. He’s broken a bone once, when he was a kid and tried to climb the tree in his mom’s favorite glade, and fell out. If riding back to the castle with a broken arm had hurt, he doesn’t even want to imagine what being dragged along by a villain with a broken leg might feel like.

“Good,” the voice says, like it’s funny. Oh. They don’t use that word here, so it’s a joke about him. “We’d like to bring you back in one piece, your highness, so just keep cooperating and maybe this won’t go so bad for you after all.”

“Mmh” Ben agrees. He’s sort of afraid to nod, in case the arm around his throat tries to squeeze any harder, but it feels like a good move to go along with whatever this pair wants. Oh god. Hopefully it’s just the two of them, and then whatever captain they’re bringing him to.

There’s definitely more than just the two of them.

Oh no.

The big guy, or maybe a girl, actually, it’s sort of impossible to tell with the way he’s just being held against some very large and solid person, starts to tie his hands behind his back.

Okay, there’s the panic now.

Ben wants out, he wants his hands, he wants to breathe, he’s-- okay, hyperventilating doesn’t help anything. He’s been taught how to break out of hand ties, but it’s not going to help if there’s another person right there, and they’ve already said to cooperate, so--

Breathe.

“Should we just drug him?” someone is saying. “Might be faster than all of this tying and blindfolding business.”

“I dunno if I can carry this much deadweight, bro.” another voice says. Still not the person holding him still. So there’s at least three of them, great. “He’s pretty big for a prince charming.”

“I can carry ‘im” says a new voice, and oh, this is the person holding him, finally. There might be just the three of them. Not that it makes much of a difference, but it’s some sort of knowledge that Ben can cling to here. “Get his hands and feet, and I can do it.”

“‘on’t enfg.” Ben manages, around the hand that’s still clamped over his mouth. “omise.”

“Gil, just let him talk,” the first voice says again. “He’s obviously not going to stop trying, so just, give him a little air.”

“‘Kay,” the holding-person (Gil, the big one is Gil) says agreeably. “Hey, I wasn’t holding you too tight, was I? You can still breathe, and stuff?”

“I can breathe,” Ben says, once he’s gotten in a good lungful of air that doesn’t taste like stale sweat. “I won’t try anything, I swear.”

“Ooh, he swore,” says the bro voice, clearly delighted with this turn of events. “I think we might need a little insurance for that, little prince.”

There’s some sort of motion, and then a noise that sounds an awful lot like a knife being sharpened, and then a bright, sharp pain in Ben’s side.

“Hey!” the first voice says, clearly annoyed at this turn of events. “You didn’t have to stab him! Uma wanted him brought back in one piece!”

“He won’t be able to run this way,” the bro says, sounding annoyed. “It’s not gonna hurt him, just make it harder to run. It’s barely a scratch.”

“He’s bleeding. You’re gonna leave evidence.” the first one, who seems to be the brains of the operation, says. “Hey, no, don’t make that noise. Shut up. Look when you did!”

Ben doesn’t want to be making this noise either. He’s just as unhappy as the ringleader is about this, really. He didn’t want to get stabbed.

“Oh my evil, just pick him up, Gil.” the first person says. “Hey, prince charming. We’ll get you stitched up once you’re down at the ship, okay? Just like, shut up about it. You’ll be in worse shape if we drop you here for someone else to find, and they won’t be so nice about keeping you alive either.”

It hurts. Jesus fucking christ, it hurts. “You stabbed me?” Ben somehow warbles, between the fucking agonized breathing he’s doing to try and get the involuntary pain noises under control. “You fucking- stabbed me?”

He’s being lifted off his feet now, and cradled up like a baby against somebody’s broad chest.

“Just a little bit.” the bro-voice says as they start moving. “Insurance, bro. Can’t have you getting away from us now, ya know?”

“I just said I wouldn’t run.” Ben points out, gritting his teeth against another jolt as the person carrying him picks up speed. “I wouldn’t’ve lied about that if I knew you were going to stab me.”

“Get over it.” the brains of the kidnapping says. “Drop him in the cart Gil, we can just wheel him down the rest of the way.”

*

They tie him to the mast.

“Can I take my phone out of my pocket first?” Ben asks, as they’re pinning him down to tie him up again, more efficiently this time. “It’s going to leave a bruise if I keep it there, and I don’t care if you want to break it or sell it or anything.”

The pirates find this absolutely hysterical.

*

They do let him take his phone out of his pocket first, so that’s something.

*

Being kidnapped is sort of boring, when it comes down to it. The pirates are clealty waiting for something, but it’s not entirely clear what. True to their word from earlier, they do let someone (a girl with messy black hair and a bright red bandanna, who doesn’t seem especially fazed by the situation as a whole) slap a bandage on him. It’s not quite as good as not being stabbed in the first place would have been, but the girl had poked around for a while and announced that he didn’t need stitches, and then done what seems on the whole to be a very tidy job of cleaning and wrapping the cut.

It still hurts, because some lunatic with a knife did in fact stab him, but after the morning Ben’s had so far, things are honestly looking up.

One of the pirates sits down next to him.

“Want some water?” they ask, holding out a battered plastic cup.

Huh. “Um, sure?” Ben says.

The pirate tips it up to his mouth, and lets him get in a good three or four swallows before pulling the cup back and throwing the rest over his head.

“Uma’s still out.” they inform him. “But we’ve sent a runner down to the chip shop, so she should be coming up any minute now.”

“Uh. Okay.” Ben says. “Is that your captain?”

The pirate looks at him. “Yeah,” they say. “She is.”

There’s some sort of challenge there, but Ben is so far out of his depth right now that he can’t even make out what the shape of it might be. “Does she have demands, or something?” he asks. “I can’t guarantee that they’ll be met, but if you send a message out to my father he’ll probably give you something in exchange.”

The pirates stares up at him, shaking their head slowly. “Unbelievable,” the pirate says, “Fuckin’ Auradon kids. Do they really keep you stupid on purpose over there?”

“No?” Ben tries. “I can try to bargain for whatever you want. There’s some privateering work off the southern isles right now, and I don’t know that they’ll take kids on their own, but we’ve been working towards isle reform policies and there’s a pretty good chance they’ll go through in a few years and--” Shut up, the lunatics who kidnapped (kingnapped?) you don’t care about legitimate privateering work and the slow, torturous process that’s been trying to push isle reforms through the council while still only controlling about 40% of the vote. “Um, that is, we can meet your demands.” Ben finishes. “If you have them.”

The kid shakes their head again. “Unbelievable.” they say again, and leave.

Okay, then.

#my fic #descendants fanfiction #descendants fandom #I set out this morning to try and write some confusingly sexy kidnapping fic and I don't think this is quite what I was aiming for

[juncottonluvbot]

Just hold me tight

Chanyeol x reader

very fluffy

A/N: Sooo, you guys remember that I also write sometimes? Well here is another one, once again sorry for the awful titles I just can’t come up with good ones ever. Anyways enjoy the fic!!

Park Chanyeol is the single most beautiful person you’ve ever laid eyes on, just looking at him is enough to make your stomach do backflips and to see his smile made your day, not to talk about his laugh. The way the man seems to feel such intense joy with his whole body while laughing was what kept you going, just the thought of seeing that image again was enough for you.

There is no way you could ever give that up, no matter how in love you are with him, how much you crave for the touch of his soft-looking lips to yours, how much you wish you could hug him tightly every night. If there is even a possibility that the knowledge of your crush on him could cause your friendship to end or be awkward you’d simply not tell him, it’s not worth it.

Your friends would always just tell you to tell him, that even if he didn’t feel the same he’s Park Chanyeol, the nicest human being alive and your best friend, he’d never hurt you in any way. This is true, Chanyeol never hurts others if he can help it, instead, he hurts himself.

They don't know him the way you do, you and Chanyeol had met when you were both still children, in kindergarten and ended up remaining friends due to him living across the street from you. He had always been sweet at heart, though loud and annoying at times, but he wasn't always that popular with the ladies.

At some point during high school the world started noticing how good looking Chanyeol is and with that came the confessions, the love letters that he feels so bad in denying that he’d end up putting himself into first dates and even relationships just to not do so. To hear your kind-hearted best friend cry because he didn’t know how to say no, to hear him agonize over how he feels like a bad person for having feelings, you couldn't do that to him.

And so all throughout high school, you didn’t confess to him, to be his friend is enough, to see him laugh, to have him confide in you, it’s more than enough for you.

Then college started, both of you have chosen the same college and so you decided to rent the same apartment, which at first wasn’t so bad but is now sure to drive you mad.

It isn’t about your feelings for him anymore, though you can’t deny your feelings for him have only been accentuated by the way he seemed to mature during the past few years, not only in appearance but also in personality, long gone is the Chanyeol who had you ask the teachers questions he had because he was too shy to raise his hand and ask on his own, now he was confident almost to the point of being cocky at times, there came your problem.

Chanyeol keeps making “moves” on you, full-blown cliche drama like moves and it’s driving you mad.

You move to pick up something from a higher shelf, where he is picking it up for you, oh so close to touching his chest to your back, you watch movies, there he goes yawning and placing his arm across your shoulders, you’re in a busy street and sure enough, you feel his hand reach out for yours.

And it’s great, it feels so natural and you would be so happy, that is if he had just said something about it letting you know what is happening in his head so perhaps you wouldn’t have to overthink his actions so much.

Your whole issue would also be gone if you just asked him, but you couldn’t, you can’t afford to and so you continued your slow descent into insanity.

Until one fateful evening that is.

As you open your door to the small apartment you and Chanyeol shared you found yourself mildly amused by the sight you found just as you opened the door.

The man who is definitely way too tall to be throwing himself at people, did just that as you opened the door, he seemingly has just been sitting on the ground by the door waiting for you according to his drunken blabbering.

“Thank god you’re home, I was waiting for so long…do you know how hard our floor is? We should have carpeting everywhere when we buy a house so my butt can be more comfy, ok?”

You had no choice but to hug the giant boy while slowly pacing towards the living room couch, not being able to hold in a soft laugh at his cute ramblings.

“What about the kitchen and bathroom, huh Channie? We can’t carpet those”

The testament to your love was in the way you practically cued at him as you played along in hopes he’d remain awake for long enough to make it to the couch, in spite of his smelly bear breath so close to your face every time he spoke.

Chanyeol, however, didn’t seem to notice your endearment with him as he let out a big “eeeew” and responded to you with an annoyed expression.

“Of course we won’t carpet those, why do you always ruin my attempts at romance, huh?”

He lets out a big “humph” as you drop him to the couch to be immediately pulled into his arms as he wraps his legs around you in a way too strong cuddle, only to continue rambling.

“You need to start accepting my romantic ways if we're gonna start dating or else I’m gonna start thinking you don’t like to be back, ok? You know I’m sensitive about this stuff”

Now that was enough to make you turn in his arms to face him, desperate to leave his embrace, face as red as a tomato, completely scandalized by his bold statements.

“W-what are you.. do you know who you’re talking to right now Chanyeol?”

Despite your completely legitimate question given his drunken state, the man child rolled his eyes as he turned his face towards you, way to close to be safe and starts letting out ramblings as if they were obvious.

“You’re my best friend, who likes me since god knows when, that for some reason, I’ll never know for sure, I didn’t start liking until this year, which you have to know I’m very sorry for, and who I want to date, is that enough clarification for you?”

His big eyes now bore into your soul as he told you his feeling with not a single ounce of doubt, which was broken when he looked down and said in a much smaller voice.

“Unless I waited too long and you don’t like me anymore..”

Upon hearing his sweet words and seeing his feelings well up in his eyes from so close you can’t help but feel your eyes get a little wet as you giggle a little bit at his cuteness.

“Of course I still like you Channie,” he sighs in relief blowing some air softly in your face “ No need to feel so insecure now, huh? You were being so manly before helping me pick things up from the top shelf huh?”

At your soft joke like praise, Chanyeols eyes flutter closed and a dazed smile graced his face.

“You liked that, didn’t you? You were always complaining about having to use a stool…” then you almost thought he’d fallen asleep and began thinking of a way to escape his grip and go to your bed but he held you in tighter and softly whispered “Now that I’m your boyfriend you won’t have to complain about anything, ok (y/n)? You just have to hold me tight all right..”

And so you no longer had thought of leaving the couch, even if you woke up with a hurting back all you had to do was hold Chanyeol tight now and if he allows you, that’s all you’ll do forever.

#exo fic #chanyeol x reader #chanyeol scenario #chanyeol x you #exo fluff #fic #fanfiction #chanyeol imagine

[penninstitute]

Case #0190518

Statement of Agatha Courtenay, regarding an abandoned strip mall. Original statement given May 18th, 2019.

So I know you’re not really s’pposed to go into abandoned buildings, since there’s all sorts of dangers, like asbestos and whatever else, but in my defense, I had been dared.

My mates and I were hanging out in the parking lot of the abandoned strip mall in town. We live in this little fuck-all nowhere town in northern Connecticut, and this strip mall’s been closed down for years. The last thing to be open at the location was a little Chinese restaurant that went out of business quickly. The only thing worth going to before stores began to leave was the froyo place, and once that place called it quits, everything else followed pretty quickly.

We’d been hanging out in the parking lot, since nobody used it anymore, and it was just the five of us under some flickering streetlights and my friend Derek’s parents’ truck. We weren’t drinking or anything, because we’re responsible 18-year-olds that would like to graduate in a few weeks, but, y’know, a little breaking and entering wasn’t off the table.

We were playing truth or dare. As you do. When left to our own devices, we will do some properly weird shit, and the truths were beginning to get uncomfortable while the dares just got downright gross, until my friend Tara dared me to go into the strip mall.

I agreed. I’m not a pussy.

Besides, it’s just an abandoned building, I’m still not that scared of it. I thought the worst that would be in there was rats, and while what happened was… weird, and creepy, it wasn’t actually the worst thing in the world.

The place used to be an arcade, back in the 80’s, according to my mom. It was the place to hang out back in the day, but looking at the building now, you never really would have guessed. It’s bare-bones at this point, just a hollow little building back behind a chiropractor’s office and an intersection and the Dunks. It’s an impressive stretch of what could be stores, but they still aren’t doing anything with ‘em.

It’s honestly kinda sad. There’s a lot of potential there. The town’s just not notable enough to attract that sort of business.

I still think, maybe if that sort of business moved in, the town would become more notable, but since there’s nothing there now, it isn’t, and it’s just a loop that feeds into itself and ultimately will grind the town into the dirt.

That’s not really related to what happened. I’ve just been thinking about that for a while.

Anyways, the building. After about fifteen minutes of fucking with the door and fiddling with windows and the like, my friend Brian finally just kicked the door in for me. I didn’t have an excuse to get out of it, though now that I was staring down the dark interior of the building, I wasn’t nervous about getting caught. I wasn’t even afraid of running into anything. I was mostly just curious.

Honestly, my biggest concern was running into some homeless guy or something, getting murdered and whatnot. The place was empty. Legitimately empty. As soon as I stepped in, there was an absence of everything--no furniture, no windows save for the ones in the front. There were markings along the floor where shelves may have been at one point, and I could see two doorways in the back. One doorway still had a door in it, but the other was empty.

I'd begun poking around, nosing at the spaces where shelves should've been and whatnot, and it was a good maybe… five or six minutes before I realized the front door had disappeared.

I mean. That made me nervous, reasonably. Okay, it even scared me a bit. I mean, doors don't just fucking disappear, right? That's weird, properly weird in the way that makes you think something unnatural is going on.

Like, once something like that happens, that means literally anything is possible.

I headed towards the doors in the back, since that seemed like the only real course of action I could take, and started with the one that still had the door in the doorframe.

Behind the door was nothing. Not an empty room or a parking lot, just nothing. A pitch black void. There wasn't anything, no light, no sound came from it, it was completely and utterly empty of everything. So that was a no-go.

The other, empty doorframe led to a small dressing room. Nothing notable. The mirror was heavily cracked. Made it impossible to properly see my reflection.

I backtracked, only to find that the previous room I'd been in was filled with fog, now.

The disappearing door was strange, but randomly appearing fog was--that was pretty odd, and part of me was afraid it might be poisonous or something. It ultimately wasn't, I don't think, but in the moment it made me pretty fucking anxious.

I couldn't see shit. I decided to just start walking, and if I ran into something, I ran into something.

I'd taken about three steps when I started to feel the hands.

They crept all along my arms. My neck. My back. My legs. Soft, gentle touches that dragged, slow and agonizing in their familiarity. It didn't hurt, but my skin crawled with the feeling. I didn't see anyone, but I still felt those awful hands, petting my face and hair with faux kindness.

They were… cold, and clammy, and they didn’t… feel right, I guess. I mean, invisible, disembodied hands don’t seem right in general, but beyond that initial weirdness, the hands didn’t feel… human, I guess? They were human hands, but they didn’t feel human enough. The way they crept along any spot of bare skin was unnatural. They trailed along, dragging the nails gently across my arms and face and wherever else.

I couldn't find an exit. I was alone, save for those hands, and even those didn't seem to actually exist. I was utterly, entirely alone, with only my own fear for company as hands that weren't there continued to run over my cheeks and jaw and neck and shoulders. I wanted to scream.

I was all by myself in that foggy hellscape. Cold, afraid, alone, being touched by things that didn’t exist. It felt--it felt humiliating, almost, it drove me to tears, the way the hands apathetically passed over me. It was uncomfortable and upsetting and just--it was horrible, I hated every second of it.

I thought I’d be stuck there, since I couldn’t find a way out. I got pretty distraught about that, wondering what the fuck my family and my friends would do, but I didn’t have to worry for long. I ended up stumbling out the front door and onto the pavement of the parking lot.

There were… handprints all over any bit of exposed skin. My arms were covered with them. The skin was red and irritated, and was the only proof I had of the encounter. My mates thought maybe I’d had a reaction to something, or had scratched my arms up. I didn’t tell them what I’d experienced. I didn’t think they’d believe me.

I thought that would be the end of it. I thought I’d just had that one weird experience, and that I could repress it and move on with my life.

I was wrong! I think, at least, I was wrong.

People are… ignoring me, now. Not in the sense that they’re just not listening to me, it’s like--people have been acting like I straight-up don’t exist.

Not only that, but since I got out of the store, it’s been really hard to properly… focus on people, and to feel like part of a group when I’m hanging out with my mates. I always feel like I’m intruding, now, even though I’ve been friends with them since preschool.

And I don’t want to feel that way. Usually I don’t feel that way. I don’t know what’s making me feel that way, but I don’t think it’s normal, because I’m finding it harder to focus on myself. I keep forgetting basic details about my life and the people around me. It’s like I don’t exist, sometimes.

It feels weird. It doesn’t feel right. It feels like my existence is being unraveled, like hands are tearing me apart until there’s nothing left.

It feels like nobody’s going to look at me properly again.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

- Ms. Courtenay refused a follow-up interview. For that matter, she refused to speak to Institute staff at all, so a few curt emails are really all we have to go off of regarding her current state.

- At the very least, she’s alive and well. Managing just fine, I hope. She did give Blair the address of the abandoned strip mall. Felix and Blair are going to go check it out this upcoming Friday. Hopefully we’ll have more information for this case soon.

- Not particularly related to this statement, but not notable enough to be given its own file--Hazel has agreed to send over the case file the hunting department has put together for the creature known as Natasha. We should be seeing that in the coming days.

#statement #0190518 #tma #the magnus archives

[owletstarlet]

Tanuma!

[Message me a character and I’ll tell you five headcanons I have about them]

1. Tanuma’s decent at caring for different types house plants. His dad liked to keep them in the house and temple buildings, and it’s probably always been one of his daily chores to water them and check up on their condition. He enjoys it, though, and finds it calming, and while far from being an expert, he owns a few books on house plants and has a knack for keeping finicky plants and flowers alive. I think he keeps a few succulents in his room because he likes the way they look and they’re lower day-to-day maintenance (he’s got it in the back of his head that if he’s fully responsible for looking after his own plants it would be better to not choose ones that might die easily because their tiny lives depend on him and he can’t be a bad plant dad to his own plants.) Natsume gave him at least one of the succulents, and he will take it to the grave just how long he spent in the shop with Touko agonizing over which one to buy while she tried not to giggle over it…and meanwhile Tanuma’s just standing there with the little thing cupped gently in his hands, having distressing heart palpitations over how freaking thoughtful of a gift this is, and kind of blurting “I promise I won’t let it die” before he even manages the “thank you.”

I’m also all over the idea of Tanuma ending up giving Touko houseplant tips, which I imagine would begin when she offhand mentions having some difficulty with an orchid or something equally finicky that had been a gift to her from a friend. And Tanuma, who’s there for dinner, says without really thinking about it, “Oh, have you tried [insert plant advice here]?” And he’d be immediately be lowkey embarrassed for having been presumptuous with unsolicited advice or whatever, but Touko is absolutely delighted, because she’s sensed that it’s difficult for him to talk about himself (a trait she’s familiar with in Natsume), and virtually everything she does know about him has come from Natsume. She furthermore knows that he’s very, very important to Natsume and wants him to be able to feel comfortable around her and Shigeru. She figures it’s a pretty harmless topic to press him about, and in the end, the orchid is saved, Touko ends up with several solid suggestions for indoor flowering plants that are less temperamental to brighten up the kitchen (one of which he’d later go with Natsume to pick out to surprise her on her birthday), and Crucial Bonding Time has occurred.    

2.       Tanuma wears reading glasses sometimes, almost never outside his own house, but one day Natsume drops by while he’d forgotten he was wearing them…naturally Tanuma gets shy about it, and takes them off so fast they end up on the floor, but Natsume’s reaction pretty much amounts to “……………..💓.” Depending how long they’ve known each other he may or may not fumble his way through telling Tanuma that they look nice on him, and wanting to sink through the floor himself by the end of it. Speaking of which, I am all for that popular headcanon that Tanuma wears glasses when he’s a bit older, even if it’s implied that it’s for exorcist-type reasons, because it’s also typically accepted that Natsume Really Appreciates said glasses.

3. Tanuma’s surprisingly good at climbing trees. There was ample opportunity for him growing up in and around the grounds of rural temples. And on the days when he was feeling just fine and was excited to be outside, his dad had the concern in the back of his mind for awhile that he’d fall and break half his bones, and would sometimes go and discretely recite some prayers out by the trees in question. But he never had any bad falls, and found being up surrounded by leaves and birds and soft breezes to be soothing, especially if he was having an anxious day. The only time he did get pretty banged up falling out of a tree was because he literally fell asleep up there…and once it was clear he wasn’t seriously injured, his dad was torn between sympathy and amusement.

4. Tanuma’s Aunt Satomi has tried to take him shopping a few times, in part to be able to spend time with him, and in part because he’ll often wear stuff until it’s a little shabby looking. She knows his dad doesn’t really have much money to spare, and she wants to treat him to some decent quality clothes that will hopefully last him awhile. But clothes shopping with her nephew turns out to be a bit of a vexing experience for Satomi. Not because she wants to control what he chooses; she’d assumed he’d be drawn to plain clothing in subdued colors like everything he already owns, and that he’d be uncomfortable if she tried to spend a lot of money. But the first time they go out, with the intention of finding a handful of shirts, she is not expecting him to come back to her after just five minutes when she’d shooed him along to go choose what he likes in the very first store they visit, with three plain dark t-shirts in his hands obviously all selected from the same display, like “I’ve got them, where do we go to check out?” And he is legitimately confused when she tells them to at least try them on if those are what he wants, and his thought process is more or less but…they’re mediums, and that’s the same as all my shirts at home…and the colors are good and if I tried them she’d have to sit and wait for me…I Fail To Recognize The Problem Here... Additionally, he gets overwhelmed in crowded public spaces like malls much more easily than Satomi had anticipated, which she might not comprehend but is compassionate about, so she’ll call it a day when he starts to look nauseous. So all in all she figures it’d be kinder to just send him money for clothes on his birthday and take him to a park or shrine next time she wants to see him. However, she gives his dad the gentle advice to make sure that he actually tries clothing on his body before leaving a shop with it.

5. For Tanuma’s birthday one year, Taki and Natsume collaborate on a surprise, to help him see the koi in his back garden pond. It was Taki’s idea initially, and as it obviously involved her circles, Natsume was reticent at first, but with the understanding that it would be small, only active for a short period of time, and would make him so goddamned happy if they could actually get it to work, he agrees. They don’t really get much chance to test it out in advance, because Tanuma’s house is the only place that Natsume knows of that has a visible amount of water spirits confined in a small area. However, the basic idea’s pretty simple, just sink a larger flat stone with the symbol painted on it (maybe even a patio tile or something similar) into the pond’s bottom, and see if any of the koi brush against it as they pass by, or if they could become visible merely by passing through the water above it. Sensei’s doubtful that it will work, because even if it did work he thinks they’d intentionally swim around it, but when Natsume is able to distract Tanuma long enough for Taki to go out to the pond and test it, she comes back in with the biggest smile on her face and tells them to come outside. And it does take a few minutes, the three of them crouched down over still surface of the water with bated breath. But then there’s a glint of sunlight off a vermillion-colored scale, just at the circle’s edge… And Tanuma’s just sitting there with his hand smushed against his mouth making a valiant but futile effort not to cry. Because of course the fish are incredible and he’d stare at them all day if he could but there’s a healthy dose of You Guys Are The Best in the mix too…it’s dizzying for him to have gone from being virtually friendless for years to having friends who care about him so intensely they’d do something like this for him. Anyhow, he keeps the rock wrapped up tight in a few old towels and t shirts, and if his dad ever comes across it, he just lets it be.

#just when i think i couldn't possibly come up with more tanuma headcanons #here we go #thanks for the ask :) #natsume yuujinchou #tanuma kaname #taki tooru #natsume takashi #fujiwara touko #natsume's book of friends #natsuyuu #aceteling #tanunatsu #owlet's headcanons #ask meme

[historytaker]

King Versus King

Within the first quarter of the 14th century, it would be forgivable to let the king of England seem profoundly on top of the world. The setbacks of his father, Edward II, were crudely mended by his mother, Isabella.  England was swelling with military, political, and thereby economic success; So much so that the population had inflated to 4 million. Equally important to the crown, Edward II had a legitimate claim to the French crown. The Capetian dynasty was a long standing rival in European politics with the Plantagenets. The Plantagenets  out-bred and out-wed the Capetians, ultimately.  What’s more, the long time enemy of the English, the Scottish, had little affinity for their king, David II. To add to the seemingly charmed hand of state, when David II was struck in the head with an arrow and duly kidnapped by the English, the Scottish refused to pay a king’s ransom and had all but formally announced fealty to Edward II. This Plantagenet wore the crown of three kingdoms and ushered in an era of chivalry, fantasy, success, opulence and unrequited love for the dynasty overseeing an economic power that had heretofore been unprecedented in Christendom, save only for the early successes of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. The king was experiencing the apogee of an age in which the old order was in solid control of the comings and goings of the world. Bishops preached in Latin. Indulgences could be paid. Wealth buffered concerns on Earth and evidently in Heaven. For, one could compel a monastery to pray for your soul with such fervency and continuity that one’s stay in purgatory would be short, and Heaven’s bliss obtained in short order. Wealth could be and was hoarded. The lord of the manor had no reason to ever assume a change in the order.

               So sustained was the monarchy in England, Edward II felt it not at all unreasonable to fashion himself a modern Arthur at Camelot. His was a kingdom of gentlemen, of knights, of righteous conviction and marshal prowess. He started the Order of the Garter and created a round table to emulate the notion that the king was first among equals. Indeed, the top of the mountain granted a glorious view. Surprisingly, the view did not grant observation of a great encroacher, indeed a devastator of many kingdoms.  In fact, this was a king in a hurry; one that intended on conquering more than England, but the world. His march may have started in the steppes of central Asia, but by 1348, some 20 years after taking the throne, Edward II England was besieged by a rival king, King Death.

               The army deployed by King Death was, of course, the plague. It is generally believed that it was transmitted by rodents carrying bubonic infested fleas.  The Mongols took their dead infested and lunged them into the city walls of the Black Sea city Caffa. From Caffa and the Genoese merchants who ported there, the disease spread. The contagion was swift. At first, and with devastating swiftness, the cities were eviscerated. The fecal matter of the fleas could be inhaled or the bites from the bugs were death sentences. If the diseases spread to the lungs, the death would take 4 agonizing days of fitful coughs. The blood-laced sputum surely spread to those near, and in its turn spread to whomever inhaled it.

               What could Edward III do in the face of such rumors of malady in his realm? At first, not much. There were murmurs of a pestilence in the world by sea-fairing traders. Their contacts in Italy described the condition, its velocity of transmission, and naturally assumptions on what devil-worshiping cult had summoned it.  There were even numbers suggesting the dead of Venice reached 100,000. Even so, it would not be until the king’s daughter succumbed to the illness in her turn.  The Infante Pedro of Castile was to marry Edward’s daughter, Joan. But by September 2, news had reached him that she was dead from the plague. And in keeping with the stoic nature of the king, he is reported to take the news by first saying, “It is as it is.” Naturally, in a rare moment of looking behind the curtain, we can prize from his correspondence with Alfonso XI a father in morning. He laments with a piety mixed with a familiar grief that Joan had “been sent ahead to heaven to reign among the choirs of virgins where she can intercede for our own offences before God himself.” He is quick to remark that Joan had been his dearest daughter and whom “we loved best of all for all her virtues demanded.”  To underscore the pang sorrow the king was enduring and to put a point to how bereft he was of a solution he states “No fellow human being could be surprised if we were inwardly desolated by the sting of this bitter grief for are human too.” Among kings, it is incredibly rare to hear such claims to human emotions.

               So what does a king do when wrecked from the inside over a new foe as this? He reaches out to the only people who can have answers for pestilence. Naturally this meant the Archbishop of Canterbury. He needed prayers especially in the southern regions of the kingdom where this seem to be emanating from.  Alas, the plague caught him too. There was no Archbishop of Canterbury to pray for the people of Kent.  And what a perturbation it must have been when men on horseback would come into the city or village speaking of apocalyptic devastations only to then find themselves one of the dozens, or hundreds, or thousands destined for the mass graves.

               Perhaps most jarring to the people, rich and poor, man and woman, young and old, was the remarkable speed at which it worked. People pieced together the transmission method soon enough that heart wrenching moments of furtive relationships occurred. Parents abandoning children, husbands abandoning wives, all watching from a distance the quick death but slow agony of those they loved.  A welsh poet Jeuan Gerthin explained what we would have noticed among those struck down with the disease, “ Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit; seething terrible wherever it may come, a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry, a burden carried beneath the arms, a painful angry knob, a white lump. It is of the form of an apple, like the head of an onion; a small boil which spares no one. Great is its seething like a burning cinder, a grievous thing of ashy colour…an ugly eruption. They are similar to the seeds of the black peas, broken fragments of brittle sea coal…a grievous ornament…the peelings of the cockle-weed, a black plague like halfpence, like berries.”

               All told, by the end of the plague, nearly half of England would be dead and buried hastily in graves. Recent excavations from the 1990’s shown just how fast and chaotic the scene must have been. Traditionally the buried were oriented toward Jerusalem to rise from their graves upon the return of Christ triumphant. The graves revealed a final statement among the buried, jaws slacked open, limbs pointed jaggedly, a frozen protestation of the inhumanity.  As the plague meandered through the realm, it upended more than health of very much alive people from just 4 days prior, it upended the conventions and structures of society.  A Franciscan monk in Ireland, John Clynn noted with a sobering view to his own reality: “ Seeing these many ills and that the whole world is encompassed by evil, waiting among the dead for death to come, I have committed to writing what I have truly heard …and so that the writing does not perish with the writer or the work fail with the workman I leave parchment for continuing it in case anyone should be alive in the future.” With the all too familiar tone of understatement in British writing, it followed with a new hand, “Here, it seems, the author died.”

Who do the people go to if the king cannot save them? Who do they direct their frustration and hate to if the benevolent God in heaven is not manifesting through the sermons of the priest? How do people receive Christ for that matter now that there are no more priest to speak on their behalf to God? There were no bakers to bake bread, no physics to make med, no priest to receive the dead. Out of the uncertainty of the moment, truly inspired homespun remedies made the rounds. Whether by trial and error or willing a remedy, one potion is passed down to us by a herbalist; giving us a glimpse at the heavy ask but thoughtful response to what was by then considered a disease due to miasma or noxious air. It logically implies then that good smelling things were a kind of remedy. “If it be a man take five cups of rue, and if it be a woman leave out the rue, five little blades of columbine, a great quantity of marigold flowers, an egg, fresh laid, and make a hole in one end and blow out all that is within, and lay it to the fire and roast it till ground to powder but do not burn it, and take a good quantity of treacle and brew all these herbs with good ale but do not strain them – and make the sick drink it for three evenings and mornings. If they hold it in their stomach, they shall have life.”

               The booming 4 million population at the outset of the plague were still 90% agrarian. Among those who worked the land, few actually owned their parcel. And increasingly the population was fighting for a smaller and smaller share of land to fashion subsistence for themselves and their families. The plague, in some respects served as a pressure valve. But the correction was too sudden to accommodate the economic structure of England.

               The homes of the people, largely field laborers, lived in modest lime-washed structures made of wood felled from the local forest, with dirt floors. To add to the ambiance of the abode, the owners would have strewn loose straw on the ground mostly to collect the refuse of the fields and manure on their feet. The toiling masses did not have much to begin with. The world around them was hard enough before the plague, but with the plague came a psychological and physical damage that could scarcely be comprehended. Whole villages died. Naturally, the economy collapsed. Out of this collapse came the evolution of manorial economics to cash economics.  It would no longer due for the workers to simply work for a subsistence and get whatever graces the lord granted. Work needed to be done, the obligations of the lord still needed to be met, but he now had a shortage in labor. His laborers were demanding, with a level of self awareness scarcely granted to them, that the new economic reality was on the worker’s side now.

               Out of the plague did spur an opportunity for toiling folk to rise out of poverties oblivion. It was not fast, nor necessarily in one life-time. Sometimes it took generations, but generations as opposed to never at all, the working poor did have a chance. And it was this seeming conspiracy of the cosmos to upend all the structures that held the people together, their faith in the government, their financial inability to resist the rules or rulers, the unquestioning certainty on matters of God, death, hell and heaven by the priesthood, all went out the window. From the necessity of laypeople having to fill roles that were utterly foreign to their station came a new sense of capability to people who never otherwise would have ventured to change. Unwritten rules governing the village went to the wayside as power was exercised often by those who were in a position to exploit it. Meanwhile, Edward III was aging and his son and heir apparent, Edward the Black Prince, died leaving the succession in untenable uncertainty.

               Inevitably the old king died and that left government in the hands of a 10 year old, Richard II. Grant it, everyone that was anyone knew that power ultimately laid in the hands of John of Gaunt, Richard’s uncle and protector.  In fact, you might compare John of Gaunt to any of our modern day monopolist or business giants like Jeff Bezos. His wealth and holdings and influence could rival a king’s and in many cases did. Even so, the Lancaster stayed behind the scenes and guided the young Plantagenet through his early years.  Richard took to the role of king rather quickly, it seemed. His vows and all the mystique surrounding the trappings of monarchy went to his head. In the early years of his boyhood, perhaps with the structure of fixers behind the scenes, it proved useful and life saving. In time it would be his undoing. Nonetheless, the boy regent was pitted against one of the biggest moments in his career when, at last, a popular uprising threatened to upend government.

               If, as John Wycliffe supposed, people could find Christ in their own way free from the needs of the priesthood, this supposition unfettered the people from strict forms of social control or engineering. For as it was, finding Christ and following him meant a steady hand towards an egalitarian model. What concessions were made in the in-between years of the start of the plague and Richard’s reign were in-part at risk by the policies enacted by John of Gaunt. The toiling folk had definitively climbed the social ladder into the ranks of yeomen. They were solidly middle class, to borrow a later colloquialism.  By their estimation the government was keeping them suppressed and squeezing them for revenues they earned no thanks to the laxed reactions of government.  So it was no surprise that what began first as tax dodging by the villagers by shrinking into the forest soon bloomed into open hostility at the tax collectors or strongmen the king or lord would send. The usual deferential English country yokels were becoming intransigent. Dodging taxes soon became the least of it. The village leaders started violent reactions in the form of collecting the heads of those attempting to collect dues. The so-called Peasants revolt began this way. Not with a written manifesto, but with the gumption of survivors, social climbers, and increasingly self-indoctrinated Christians who took for themselves what bits they could of the point of Christ.

               The leaders, in part self ascribed and in others acclaimed to, were primarily Watt Tyler and John Ball. Who was Watt Tyler? Tyler was a charismatic man who was imprisoned for not having the money to buy his manumission. In the New Jerusalem being created in real-time, who could be a better general for this lot of revolters in the service of God and King Richard? The imprisoned Watt Tyler. John Ball for his part understood the egalitarian nature of Christ message. Our riches were not for this world but for our home in heaven. It followed then that the ostentatious life of the bishops was something to disdain and use as proof that these were not shepherds of men for Christ, but shepherds of evil and wickedness for earthly possessions. John Ball was the only bishop the people would need. He was one of them and would remain so. The movement was not to overthrow the king. Instead, with a fatal sense of deference for power and monarchy, the movement sought to save the king from his uncle and all bad advisors surrounding him. They, naturally, would save the king and advise him.

               The conflagration congregation indeed set fire to Gaunt’s holdings.  Richard beheld a terrible site. The skyline of London was ember red in the evening the group made it to the city gates. The leverage was on the side of the “peasants,” but they fully went the whole way. To his credit, Richard agrees at the age of 14 to ride out to meet them. Tyler asks and evidently receives in word the concessions of ostensibly a new kingdom with a Magna Carta written and affirmed for the common people. The overreaching by such low born and the ability to get a king to capitulate was evidently enough to drive one of the king’s retainers mad. Watt Tyler was sliced down and murdered on the spot.

               In a glorious sense of theatrics and prudent wherewithal, to allay the fears and ire of the crowd Richard rides out to them in a life-saving vague claim, “You shall have no captain but me.” It did the trick and bought the king and the other frightened aristocrats time to cut down the people one by one. The devastation was total. Upon retrieving the upperhand, when asked again by impertinent lowborn to be received as a king for them, Richard remarks with Plantagenet fury “You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. However we will spare your lives in you remain faithful. Choose now which course you want to follow.”

               Evidently it worked. Richard was able to stymie the ferocity of a new social order ready to explode. Regardless if the upstarts were successful or unsuccessful, things had changed. While the plague took a century to run its course, and the slow death rattles of a dying dynasty took 100 years to finalize, and while it took 100 years for a modern sense of Englishness to take hold geographically as well as politically, the plague did bookend an epoch in the organization of labor, ideas, currency, and governance. And as with all moments of crisis and collapse, a germ of creativity can sprout into the first tree within a mighty forest of new possibilities. King Death then was the equalizer. Ultimately, it was that equality and need for it that had been festering for years before Edward’s reign even. It just took a different king to make the way and speed up the process, in this case, by necessity.

[blueluneacy]

Personal Update

If you've been following me for a while, then you're probably used to this blog going through… Phases. I tend to have periods of high activity and low activity. It's a combination of both my mood and my schedule, but Recently, I discovered something that horrified me, my worst nightmare realized.

After staring at a page for over an hour, I realized I had burnout. I looked for other causes. Maybe I was tired, or sick, or just had writers block. I looked for legitimately any other cause, because the idea of not being able to write absolutely horrifies me. I've always been writing, always been a writer. It was a massive blow to me. I've always heard about burnout, but I thought, never me! Besides, I don't have the time to be lazy, all of you are waiting for my next post. If I don't post soon, people aren't going to care anymore. In a funny twist, I, the person who constantly preaches on how you need to write for yourself, was not doing that.

And it's not to say that I don't enjoy the requests I'm getting! Some of them can be very same, but I have the power to delete something already done! If I don't like it, I don't have to do it, right? Well, sorta. I've been forcing myself to do something… Weird. I've been making myself write requests in order of when I get them, as some sort of act of fairness. Which on the one hand, sounds fair, but on the other, has honestly made me hate some of my own ideas. I hate writing TA Jotaro now, because I'm constantly doing it, and I don't know why. I used to love the concept, hell, I came up with it! Is there something wrong with me? I don't know.

I started looking into cures for burnout, to try and get something, some pill so I could keep working. But, it doesn't work like that, unfortunately. The only way to cure burnout is… To change. To stop, take a break. But I took a short break before, and I'm still here, burnt out. Well, I never really solved the problem of before, I only prolonged the time it would take me to get here. I honestly don't know what to do other than wait. Even writing this feels agonizing to me for some reason. And it's not just jojo, either. I tried writing so much, from stuff with my ocs, other fandoms, even poetry, but nothing came out. I don't know what to do at this point other than wait it out, but that idea scares the heck out of me, if I'm not writing, what do I do?

For those who don't know, I work at a Bath and Body Works as well as go to school. My job isn't my passion, but it helps fund college and it's decent work. The people are weird, but that's not the point of my little anecdote. At work, part of what I do is sell candles. Massive, three wick scented candles, meant to last for over forty hours of continuous burning. But, I also do returns. About once a week, someone comes in and returns an empty candle container,all used up. While I think it's the stupidest thing, our return policy states that we have to take them, so take them I do, looking over the empty container, with metal prongs and char all along the sides. And God, I feel like those empty candle containers right now! And the problem is, at work, we throw them out. You get rid of them and get a new candle. But I can't just throw out my brain and get a new one. And writing is my outlet, my coping mechanism. I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not attempting to write.

A friend of mine told me to look at things from a different angle. To turn what I'm thinking on its head and work from there. So… I'm gonna try. I'm closing requests now, and I'm still going to attempt to work on them, but well… They'll get done eventually, I just don't know when. As for me working on my burn out… I'm going to try and work on something new. I want to finish Wrong with the Reaper, I want to write more Diavolo, I have so many ideas that I feel like could be interesting and outside my normal realm of what I do, and thinking about them does make me excited in this time where I honestly feel so… Dull.

They say burn out can manifest physically, in extreme exhaustion. I've been sleeping almost all the time when I'm not working, to the point where my dad asked if I needed to have a sleep study. In a way, this realization has made a lot of pieces in my head click.

The raffle is still gonna end at the same time. I'm gonna draw tomorrow still and make a post, and the raffle winnings are gonna take precedent over the requests, just because they're a prize and all. I'm hoping maybe these longer flics will help too, maybe I'll work more on prose or something.

If you want to interact with me, talk to me, or maybe see my wips (always lookin for proof readers lmao), join my discord server at https://discord.gg/gQEEVMf. While I'm still gonna check my inbox here, it's a much easier way to reach me and talk to me.

Thanks for reading. You guys mean so much more to mean than you could ever possibly know. In a way, my burnout has stemmed from my constant race of being up to my own standards, as well as trying to be something that uplifts your day in my writing. I don't know anymore. What I'm trying to say is, thank you all. I'm writing is at almost four a.m. when I couldn't sleep, and I'll probably post it when I wake up. I never thought anyone would like my writing, but people who I have considered fucking idols in the jojo writing section of tumblr have even complimented my work, and it just makes me so happy that people I adore like my work, but also terrified, horrified that I will sooner or later disappoint. But, I'm still alive, I'm still living, still going. And I know that if I keep going, eventually, I think I'll get through this.

#personal update #personal #not writing #requests closed