#but also where a woman who has vowed to remain a virgin can have sex with other women w/o breaking those vows | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

callistolivia · 3 years

Text

Asteroids Part 6; Sisterhood of Pallas Athena, Symbolism of the Asteroid Pallas Athene

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

The long overdue sixth part of my asteroid series is finally here.

The asteroid Pallas Athene is one of the more prominent asteroids covered in the astrological community thanks to Demetra George’s “Asteroids Goddesses; The Mythology, Psychology, and Astrology of the Re-emerging Feminine.” In this part, I will cover the asteroid’s symbolism and interpretation based on mythology, gathered research from authors such as Demetra George, and my own knowledge.

The ancient Greek goddess Athena may have been synonymous with the Egyptian goddess Neith and possibly other earlier known goddesses. Throughout this asteroid series ( and just in general for my astrological interpretations) I’ve tried to peel back further from Greek origins and more toward Kemetic or Sumerian origins for a pure and truly ancient understanding of asteroids named after Greek deities. However, I’ve accepted that for Pallas Athene, the Greek mythologies derive important symbolism that just isn’t clearly depicted from what we know of Neith or other earlier goddesses synonymous with Athena.

The Mythologies of Athena

Athena is the goddess of war and wisdom. She was revered by gods alike and those who worshipped her for her remarkable strength, courage, wit, and creativity. Her birth story begins with Zeus swallowing the titan Metis who was carrying the unborn Athena. After some time had passed, Zeus develops a headache that would only be cured by Hephaestus’ splitting open his skull. Out from Zeus’ skull Athena is born as a fully grown woman encompassing all of her remarkable traits. Athena was Zeus’ favourite child, for she was his creation; so purely in his image of goodness, power, and wisdom. Like Vesta (or Hestia), she is a virgin goddess, she serves herself and is whole with herself. Though, she had a friend who she quite possibly could have been in love with and she did love; Pallas.

Athena and Pallas Pallas was the daughter of Triton. She was equal to Athena in wisdom and the art of war. They were partners in battle and one day the gods were disputing which of the two goddesses were stronger. So the two goddesses sparred and Zeus interfered allowing Athena to have the upperhand. Unfortunately this ended up fatally wounding Pallas. Athena was so heartbroken that she added Pallas’ name to her own to honour her. While it is never mentioned in the myth between these two goddesses, I speculate the possibility that their relationship may have been more, possibly as lovers in war. In ancient Greek and Roman times, it was a known practice that soldiers would often become romantically involved with one of their peers, even if they had a partner back at home. This was because they believed you would fight better for someone you love, especially if it was to avenge the death of a lover.

Athena and Medusa While there are several interpretations of this particular myth, the one that I find significance with is the one that describes Athena aiding Medusa. Medusa was said to once be a very beautiful woman who made a vow for herself to remain virginal. However, her beauty drew on the male gaze and she was preyed upon against her will. The ocean god Poseidon tried to have his way with Medusa, but Athena stepped in and transformed Medusa into an ugly creature with snakes for a head of hair, and anyone who looked into Medusa’s eyes would turn stone. This myth often depicts Athena as jealous of Medusa’s beauty, but in truth, this would be extremely out of character for Athena who’s not concerned with how others perceive her, particularly men. Athena cloaks Medusa with ugliness as a defense– as a way to protect Medusa from unwanted attention. This myth parallels greatly with the internal struggle many people have, particularly women, with the threats and vulnerability that coincide with embracing beauty and femininity.

Helper to Heroes Athena often makes appearances in myths about a hero’s journey and aids the hero in some way. She often has some sort of valuable foresight or tool to give the hero. Mortals look to her for her strength, wit, and strategy. The story with Medusa continues as Athena actually aids Perseus upon hearing he needs to take Medusa’s head. She gives him a reflective shield so he can see Medusa without looking into her eyes and turning to stone. Many of the common interpretations of this myth state that Athena hated Medusa which is why she was so willing to help Perseus on this quest. However, following the interpretation I mentioned where Athena turned Medusa into a gorgon for her protection, Athena would have been the only one to understand the circumstances of Medusa. In addition to this, in the myth itself Medusa plays more-so as a symbolic prop instead of a character. Particularly because Medusa as a gorgon is described as having snakes for hair– snakes in myths can (but not exclusively) symbolize treachery and bad spirits needing to be expelled. We see this in stories like Inanna and the Huluppu tree where people often confuse “lilītu” with the actual archetype or character Lilith; there was no Lilith in that story, just spirits needing to be expelled from a tree.

The Seer Athena is often described by poets as being “grey-eyed” and there is symbolism behind this. According to Wikipedia the choice to describe her this way is quite deliberate; “In Homer's epic works, Athena's most common epithet is Glaukopis (γλαυκῶπις), which usually is translated as, "bright-eyed" or "with gleaming eyes". The word is a combination of glaukós (γλαυκός, meaning "gleaming, silvery", and later, "bluish-green" or "gray") and ṓps (ὤψ, "eye, face"). It is interesting to note that glaúx (γλαύξ, "little owl") is from the same root, presumably according to some, because of the bird's own distinctive eyes.” Athena is also often depicted as or with an owl which is all deliberate symbolism of her wisdom, keen perception, and foresight. There is a seer quality about Athena that is tuned into aiding justice and heroism.

Themes of the Asteroid Pallas Athene

Fear or repulsion of feminine expression in oneself

Deconstructing heteronormativity

Equality, democracy

Psychic vision, foresight

Companionship, sisterhood, brotherhood

Same-sex experiences, perceptions, and empathy

Creative vision

Justice

Intellectual power

Maternal absence

Pallas Athene being an asteroid, only with prominence in the birth chart will her themes and the complexes arising out of those themes be noticeable. Otherwise, Pallas Athene in one’s birth chart demonstrates where one tends to have strategic foresight/vision, where one meets Pallas Athene-like characters, and where one is called to serve justice.

Aspects to Pallas Athene

Sun-Pallas Athene In hard aspects, such as a square or opposition, this contact can be quite troublesome and makes for complexes the individual will have to fight to overcome. The difficult aspects signify negative experiences with the paternal figure in their life which translates over into adulthood as having distrust in and difficulty with men. As most societies are patriarchal, these aspects tend to be harder for feminine identifying individuals. These individuals are keenly aware of the violence that can coincide with objectification, particularly the objectification of feminine expression. When this type’s innate identity is objectified, defences are put up and they reject and conceal their expression. Being viewed in a sexual nature in an unwarranted way kills the confidence in these individuals; it conflicts with how they view themselves as an entire being and their purpose. Being comfortable with one’s sexuality can be an issue in the more difficult aspects with this contact as well; there may be shame, repulsion, or rejection of one’s sexuality. To aid these complexes, therapy as well as companionship and empathy from people who share the same experiences or trauma is beneficial. In positive aspects, such as a trine or sextile, we see the opposite of the crippling experiences in the negative ones. These individuals tend to be comfortable and even celebratory in either binary expression; they are often quite androgynous. They are also quite comfortable in their sexuality as well as they are firm believers in dismantling gender roles and heteronormativity. These individuals are fighters for people with Pallas Athene complexes and injustice in general. They have a tremendous amount of strength, empathy, and willingness to understand gendered, sexual, and political issues. These individuals can find their life’s purpose, fulfillment, and accomplishments through their intellectual creativity. The conjunction brings out Pallas Athenian archetype within one’s character. These individuals will be very Pallas Athenian in that they will see within themselves the complexes that arise from both the positive and negative aspects. They often have quite a strong presence, cunning intellect, and the foresight vision.

Moon-Pallas Athene In positive contacts, these aspects bring out the psychic nature of Pallas Athene– Pallas Athene’s foresight and the wisdom in part with that. These individuals are empaths and healers. In the positive aspects, this is Pallas Athene reconciled with the fact that she never knew her mother; in individuals, it is a deep connection with the maternal expression within them (through a Pallas Athenian lens) or a deep connection with the maternal figure in their life. The maternal figure in their life may have been very Pallas Athene-like or could have been a contributor to giving the individual the strength, wit, and wisdom that matches Pallas Athene’s archetype. Creative vision is evoked by emotional exploration In negative aspects, such as the square or opposition, there can be an absence of a maternal figure. Just like Pallas Athena herself, this individual may have been raised by their father with their father’s interests on the forefront. As a result, feminine expression is often null or even despised or feared. These individuals may repress their emotions surrounding their own gender or sexuality issues. They can be quite defensive and unless the Sun has prominence in the chart, they can also disguise their expression and true identity. These individuals can be quite masculine, over-functioning, and independent; they fear depending on others and self incompetence. To aid these complexes, they need to surround themselves with people that can bring out the softer nature hiding within them; they need to see that being nurtured and loved does not diminish their strength and ability. The conjunction brings out complexes that resemble both the positive and negative aspects, though the maternal figure is most often present like in the positive contacts. Psychic vision is very potent with the conjunction and there is an urge to serve justice with it.

Mercury-Pallas Athene In positive aspects and the conjunction, we see individuals with immense creative intellect. These people are often leaders in the fields of science, art, politics, and law. People look to these individuals for their ability to strategize and look at the whole picture. As Pallas Athene touches the planet of communication, these individuals will often have a powerful voice, especially for those who don’t and are in need of justice. They can make for great advocates for gender and sexuality issues. In the negative aspects, such as the square or opposition, we see individuals who struggles to have a voice on gender and sexuality issues, or just in general. These people can find their voice by making connections with others who share similar issues and by being part of a group setting.

Venus-Pallas Athene The Venus contacts to Pallas Athene can be quite similar to the Sun contacts in that the complexes surrounding feminine expression tend to be the same. In the negative aspects, such as the square or opposition, there is the same repulsion towards feminine expression in oneself. It stems from fears developed from observing a patriarchal society’s perception of women and sometimes trauma. There may even be internalized misogyny present as these individuals have a tendency to reject traits that could be perceived as feminine, as they equate femininity to weakness and incompetence. These individuals present themselves as tough, rigid, unlike the others, and often androgynous or hyper masculine. They fear being taken advantage of and avoid any sign of weakness at all costs. Their inability to let their guard down can hinder close relationships; these people often deny themselves of romantic connections and keep everyone at arm's length. To cope, these individuals will put all of their focus into creative outlets and put their accomplishments on a pedestal over relationships. To aid rigidity and to reconnect with feminine expression, these individuals need to surround themselves with strong figures who are very confident in their feminine expression; they need role models and will find strength in numbers (being part of a support system). Re-education may need to be involved in the healing process as well. Exploring further with where ever Venus is in the individual’s chart and honing in on Venusian activities can really benefit this individual’s self acceptance, inner beauty, and sexuality. In the positive aspects, such as the trine or sextile, there is radiating confidence, beauty, strength, creativity and merging of masculine and feminine energies. In these aspects is where Aphrodite and Athena meet eye to eye. These individuals are often very comfortable in their sexual expression; they tend to be drawn to feminine energies. As Pallas Athene aspects tend to make for, these individuals also tend to be express themselves androgynously, but are comfortable with feminine expression. They are very celebratory over it, similar to the Sun aspects. These individuals tend to be quite independent, but definitely not closed off. There is often an urge to utilize their strength and confidence in advocating for women’s right and issues, and it should be encouraged as these individuals are often the perfect candidate to advocate on these issues. These individuals possess some healing abilities as well and heal others through empathy. Empathy for same-sex experiences is a prominent theme for both the positive and negative aspects; the natural connectivity or alliance with one’s gender makes them feel protected and valid. With the conjunction, many of the themes found in the Venus-Pallas Athene aspects are intensified. Pallas Athene is somewhat personified in the individual and there is a much more radical need to demonstrate their autonomy over how they choose to express themselves. Expressing themselves through creative means is often very important and almost always contains a very Pallas Athenian message.

Mars-Pallas Athene In positive contacts, such as a trine or sextile, Mars emphasizes that accomplishments and success can be found through Pallas Athene. Individuals with these aspects make excellent leaders, people want to nominate this type of individual to be in control and make the decisions. These individuals have a lot of drive, strength, and prestige, as well as empathy and compassion that does not diminish those qualities. There’s a keen awareness for underdogs and an urge to aid those beneath them. In feminine identifying individuals, utilizing masculine traits yields success, and in masculine identifying individuals, utilizing feminine traits yields success. Strong, lifelong companionship with the opposite sex is a common theme with these aspects as well. With negative aspects, such as a square or opposition, there can be intense strife with the opposite sex. Additionally, strife with one’s own gendered expression; either hyper masculine or hyper feminine to conceal one side of the binary. Much of the repulsion towards one specific expression is due to societal conditioning as well as upbringing; it’s a defense mechanism to protect themselves from being perceived as either too weak or too harsh. There can be a lot of anger within the negative aspects as well; it would be best to redirect this anger towards a cause, such as advocating for women’s rights, men’s mental health support, protecting children (particularly if the 5th house is involved), environmentalism, sexual freedom, religious freedom, and so on. Therapy and support groups can aid self resentment and resentment towards the opposite sex. With the conjunction, Pallas Athene is personified in the individual when they are challenged or angry. They may be quite radical, independent, and domineering; they are always in charge. They despise being perceived as incompetent or submissive. Pallas Athene’s strategic and cunning qualities are apparent in the conjunction as well; these individuals are not people you can fool or surpass, especially when a goal is on the line.

Jupiter-Pallas Athene In all Jupiter contacts, Pallas Athene’s psychic foresight is present. Individuals with these aspects are blessed with intuition and wisdom. They hold valuable advice and counsel to others as well as themselves. They tend to be respected by many; their companionships and kinships are their armies. Particularly in the positive aspects and the conjunction, these individuals would do well in politics, law, and creative arts. Serving justice is particularly important to this asteroid when in contact with Jupiter. Symbolically Jupiter is Zeus, Athena’s father, who loved and praised Athena the most out of all of his children. This may translate as an individual who had a similar positive relationship with their father; a father who is particularly proud of the individual, who may also could have been quite Jupiter-like. It also signifies the urge to be the same type of parental figure to their own children.

Saturn-Pallas Athene With positive aspects, such as a trine or sextile, there is creative focus and prestige. The hard work from these individuals doesn’t go unnoticed. Saturn amps up Pallas Athene’s urge to serve justice; there’s often feelings of responsibility over something as big as society. These individuals would do well in law, politics, or any position of leadership. Reconstruction of societal values is a common theme with these aspects. These individuals seek change for how society perceives gender expression, sexuality, and politics. On a different side of the same coin, these individuals may have a bit of rigidity within themselves when it comes to true self expression, particularly with expressing femininity. Though, the negative aspects are considerably more stark than the positive. With negative aspects, such as the square or opposition, there is almost always issues with the paternal figure or one of the individual’s parental figures (particularly if one parent is a stern, overfunctioner). The individual may have had high expectations held against them at a young age or there may have been a preconceived notion from a parental figure that the individual is incompetent due to how the individual expresses themselves or based on the individual’s values. The individual will feel inadequate to their peers, especially to a specific sex. There is rigidity in their expression, as mentioned earlier. These individuals may overcompensate for gendered stereotypes inflicted upon them. These individuals need to redirect their purpose for themselves and not for others. Therapy may aid them in relearning that they are not put on this planet to meet someone else’s expectations. Once confidence is regained, they can reign the creative focus, prestige, and leadership qualities that the positive aspects signify. The conjunction can demonstrate qualities from both the positive and negative aspects and is much more potent and noticeable out of all of the Saturn aspects.

Uranus-Pallas Athene In all Uranus-Pallas Athene contacts, there is an urge to come together with people to make change. Here is where Athena builds her army and strategically conquers and destroys harmful constructs. The aspects with Uranus are all about world betterment, particularly with issues dealing with gender and sexuality. In positive aspects and the conjunction, Pallas Athene’s geniusness is very apparent. Individuals with these aspects often find success in sciences or anything that utilizes creative intellect.

Neptune-Pallas Athene In all Neptune-Pallas Athene contacts, individuals can find access to psychic power and strong intuition. These individuals have dreams of prophecy and can see far into the future. These individuals also tend to have a knack for arts that require a lot of technicalities and vision such as music and film. People with the conjunction may find their psychic powers to be particularly potent and these people are often very spiritually aligned. Their binary expression has special importance to their spirituality. Spiritual devotion is merged with their self expression; whether that be the type of spirituality they practice or perhaps a special relatability to specific deities or energies.

Pluto-Pallas Athene These aspects are most apparent when it’s the conjunction or accompanied with a personal planet. These aspects give an individual the urge to really explore the psychology behind Pallas Athene complexes. There is dedication to understanding difficult constructs, particularly gender, sexual, social, political constructs. This urge is accompanied with the desire to transform the world’s beliefs, similar to the Uranus aspects. In negative contacts, these aspects can signify this urge stemming from a place of trauma and wanting to heal and rebuild the self.

Pallas Athene conjunct or in the house of the Ascendant Athena is personified in the individual. These are people of strength, prestige, wit, and beauty. They possess the creative vision this world needs. These people break societal norms through their self expression and defy gender and sexual stereotypes.

Pallas Athene conjunct or in the house of the Imum Coeli Here the asteroid is quite concealed as it is furthest away from the spotlight (midheaven) and squares the ascendant. These people tend to not outwardly express Pallas Athenian qualities unless certain aspects demonstrate otherwise. Pallas Athene’s psychic qualities are more awoken here as the individual identifies Pallas Athene inwardly. There may be a very Pallas Athenian person in this individual’s family or they are somewhat of a Athena-archetype themselves to their family (most loved child, most outspoken, known for creative intellect, etc.)

Pallas Athene conjunct or in the house of the Descendent These individuals encounter or even draw in many Pallas Athenian-like people. Either that because they are drawn to these types of people or their projection out into the world brings them about as a way of balancing the individual or teaching them something they don’t see within themselves. These individuals tend to have a particularly fondness (platonic, romantic, or sexual) to their own gender.

Pallas Athene conjunct or in the house of the Midheaven Here the asteroid is furthest away from home (Imum Coeli) and squares the ascendant. These individuals may possess some of the complexes Pallas Athene signifies on gender and sexual expression. There may be maternal absence and there is almost always a hyperfixation on career and success over relationships. These individuals are often the leaders in their workplace, if not, they still walk to the beat of their own drum and tend to be well respected. They may confuse the respect they earn by how they express themselves rather than their actual accomplishments. This can cause some difficulty around being true to oneself in terms of self expression. They need to seperate who they are being a factor in what they can accomplish and be known for.

#astrology #pallas athene #pallas athena #athena #asteroids #the signs

431 notes · View notes

hamliet · 3 years

Text

Ahhh well, I have written much on Romeo and Juliet before, because it's one of my favorite works of Shakespeare and of literature itself. It is criminally underrated and scorned because of sexist anti-romance sentiment. So uh, yeah, I'm more of your opinion.

To start with, I wrote this here, and highly recommend this old post by someone else as well. It's quite comprehensive.

But, because I love Romeo and Juliet and the more I learn about it, the more impressed I am with the absolute art of the story Shakespeare told, I have more to say. Essentially:

Juliet is one of the most astounding female characters in all of literature, and most of her brilliance has been lost with the loss of Shakespearean context. You see, Juliet was a deliberate deconstruction of the idealized, virginal, holy creature of Woman. Yes, that's how the medieval poets like Petrarch (the inventor of the sonnet, which Shakespeare adapted and wrote his own versions of in Romeo and Juliet and hundreds more on their own) and even Dante Alighieri (yes, that Dante, the Inferno guy) wrote their women. For Petrarch, Laura (whom he like, never talked to) was the object of all his love poetry. For Dante, Beatrice was written as his spiritual guide into Paradise in Paradiso.

Not to simplify their love for these women, but Shakespeare was essentially like "RIP but I'm different." He wrote Juliet as a human character with flaws (hardly a spiritual guide) who was not this virginal, holy creature. She starts off the play extremely obedient to her family and polite, almost like that ideal, but as the play goes on she begins to let her fire grow.

Romeo's poems for Rosaline are deliberately trite and parody Petrarch's sonnets, as well as other sonnets from the day (for example, Rosaline is literally sworn to chastity forever, which wasn’t even the case for Laura or Beatrice). While the fact that Romeo can switch loves from Rosaline to Juliet so quickly does indeed emphasize his flaw (impulsivity and deep passion), it also thereby emphasizes his humanity, because the unique imagery Romeo uses with Juliet show that he is really in love with her as she is--not as an idea like with Rosaline, but as a human being. As with many of Shakespeare's other renowned plays' characters, Romeo's flaws are also his strengths. He's complex--human.

So what am I going on about? Why did Shakespeare write Romeo and Juliet this way?

To emphasize their humanity. Which is interesting, because Romeo and Juliet's first meeting, the one where they both create a sonnet together, is all about idolatry:

Romeo If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. Juliet Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. Romeo Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? Juliet Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. Romeo O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou lest faith turn to despair. Juliet Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. Romeo Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. [He kisses her]

He describes her as a holy shrine and a saint, but the more their romance goes on, the more human she becomes. He kisses her right away. When they meet in the balcony scene, Juliet herself tells Romeo that the only thing she wants him to swear by--no gods or moons--is himself. In other words, Romeo and Juliet can be seen as a deeply humanistic play.

Also, the more their romance continues, the more human they become and yet the deeper their love becomes. As one of the posts I linked above states, Romeo loves Juliet more after they’ve had sex, not less. Juliet loves Romeo more despite the fact that she knows he killed her cousin--and she is not happy with him for that, either. The more they learn of each other, the more they love each other.

Oh, and about the extra gross modern take that "it's actually a story about a 13 year old and a much older man"--that is complete bogus, as the above post says. Romeo is almost certainly 15 or 16. While people can be squicked out by it (as it was designed to do with some Italian stereotypes), to say it shows anything creepy is basically literary blasphemy and betrays an utter lack of reading comprehension.

Juliet sets the parameters in their relationship: she tells him if he really loves her, he has to marry her before she will sleep with him, and Romeo does. She muses herself how much she wants to sleep with him in a way that clearly expresses Juliet’s very human desires. Juliet is going to assert who she is and go after what she wants.

So to go back to your question, it’s not just about their families, but about society as well, as Prince Escalus says in the final scene:

Capulet! Montague! See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love. And I for winking at your discords too Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d.

Everyone is punished for participating in the feud, which, keep in mind, we were introduced to via an intro fight scene between the servants of the respective families joking about raping the women in the opposing family. Yes, really. It’s almost like toxic masculinity was being called out before its time.

Society is extremely sexist, as we see when Juliet’s father essentially sells her to Paris for the sake of having political clout to win the feud (literally, as Paris is the Prince’s kinsman) and threatens to send her on the streets to prostitute herself if she wants to survive for asking him not to make her marry Paris. But the cat’s out of that bag: Juliet is not going back to being the docile, obedient idol. She’s decisive. She wants to write her own story, and if that makes her a sinner, well then, she’ll go to hell. In the end, when the Friar suggests that Juliet come with him so that he can hide her away in some convent (after Romeo’s death), Juliet refuses and kills herself. She is not going back to being a figure shrouded in some kind of ethereal, unknown glow. She is a person, and people die. But she shouldn’t have had to die for people to see her as a person.

There’s also another layer here: the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine. Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one. That’s the first thing Juliet declares to Romeo in the balcony scene: that she will always be loyal, and she shows this in every choice she makes in the story.

In other words, Shakespeare was deliberately playing with gender and its stereotypes in the play, which gains an even more interesting layer to it when you consider that Shakespeare was himself almost certainly bisexual (his sonnets are preeeetty explicit). It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society. And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later.

But, Romeo and Juliet’s story is also one of hope. Because instead of no one listening, finally, Montague and Capulet realize how wrong they’ve been. They grieve together, and Capulet vows to let Romeo remain in his family’s tomb, by Juliet’s side (also different, you know, that the husband stays in the wife’s tomb). Montague vows to build a statue for Juliet:

For I will raise her statue in pure gold, That whiles Verona by that name is known, There shall no figure at such rate be set As that of true and faithful Juliet.

Gold is associated with the masculine as well; silver with the feminine. She is remembered as someone “true and faithful,” aka for her loyalty and bravery.

But no statue can bring Juliet back. She was not an idol, and it’s tremendously unfair that that is all she can become now. Same for Romeo. Even so, the fact that their deaths have finally brought peace to the city means that there is life growing from their deaths. They will never be able to birth a family of their own, but the city will grow and live, because of them.

#ask hamliet #shakespeare #romeo and juliet #juliet capulet #romeo montague #romeo & juliet #sorry i accientally posted this before i was finished so had to delete it #and thus the ask is a screenshot

217 notes · View notes

redhoodieone · 3 years

Text

Welcome Home

A/N: Hi everyone! This is an old fic that I’m re-posting for those who want to read it. Enjoy!

WARNINGS: Language and Smut.

I knew my family was different the moment I found out my adoptive father was Batman. I was just a ten-year-old girl when I snuck down the stairs at midnight for a drink of water and spotted Batman leaving a trail of blood from his study and calling out for Alfred for help. The moment our eyes locked, Bruce instantly knew that I was clearly aware of his secret. He had also confessed it was him who saved me from a shootout that my parents were involved in and that it was him, as Batman. I felt I owed Bruce my own life for saving me, and I vowed to keep my father’s secret and pray that he would return home safely every night back to me.

It didn’t help that I soon discovered my adoptive older brother Dick Grayson was Robin. Not only did I have to keep his secret as well, but it made it more impossible to not have a crush on him. I mean, Dick has such a charming personality, beautiful baby blue eyes, and a devilish smile that can make any girl crawl on her hands and knees. And that ass…

I later found myself becoming the second Robin once Dick left to assume his own identity, Nightwing. Bruce trusted me, and he saw potential in me the second I told him I couldn’t see myself being a hero forever. Perhaps he never really wanted me to be his sidekick and figured if I got it out of my system that I could resume my life as a sixteen-year-old and do normal teenager activities. As if my life was normal anyways.

But things changed as soon as I was finally embracing myself as a hero. Bruce had taken in a new kid, Jason Todd. He was a troublemaker, a rebel, and a mysterious kid, who had never even spoken to me unless he had to. I don’t think my age helped the situation either; I was a couple of years older than him and he may not have seen me as an equal. But of course, the dark haired, icy blue eyed, bad attitude boy was given the Robin title, and I was removed because of a patrol-gone-wrong situation.

Stupid Harley Quinn and her baseball bat. Who knew one hit to my knee could bench me for two months (Alfred added an additional five months of rest).

Then the unthinkable happened. The second Robin was killed by the Joker. Jason Todd’s death put Bruce into a depression, and he swore he would never put another kid’s life in danger. Our father and daughter relationship broke apart before my very eyes. I spent my remaining teenage years in the mansion isolated, except for Alfred’s loving company.

I had graduated high school on time and I quickly decided to go to Gotham University to escape the Bat family. Before I moved out, I discovered Bruce had taken in another kid, Tim Drake, who was currently the new Robin. Was I hurt? Of course, I felt I was somehow replaced. Would I miss the Bat family? Maybe. Maybe not.

I did in fact wish the new younger Robin good luck. When Tim looked up at me, his light blue eyes were so innocent and frightened about me leaving him behind. I didn’t know why he would be so upset about me leaving; wouldn’t he want all of Bruce’s attention without me hanging around the mansion?

Now I’m twenty-one-years-old, and I’m still a student at Gotham University. Alfred had just called and informed me Bruce wants me back home.

As I sit in a taxi while anxiously waiting to pull up to Wayne Manor, I honestly don’t know why Bruce wants me back at home. Alfred has kept me up to date about the Bat family incidents and activities I have missed out those few years such as:

Dick Grayson becoming a womanizer (I saw it coming) and how he’s juggling working as a police officer and Nightwing. He’s still the favorite and golden child in Bruce’s eyes.

Jason Todd is back from the dead, and he’s currently operating his own team: Red Hood and the Outlaws (who knew he was leadership material underneath that thick skull of his?).

Tim Drake is Red Robin (does the fast food chain restaurant know about his superhero name?), and he’s currently assisting the Teen Titans when necessary while simultaneously aiding Bruce with detective work.

Damian Wayne is Bruce Wayne’s unknown biological child. I think he’s about fifteen-years-old now; from what I remember the last time I spoke to Alfred. I met Damian once, when Bruce asked me to meet him once Talia al Ghul practically dropped him off at Bruce’s doorstep. The boy was a little shit: bratty, stuck up, and insensitive. Even though he is the spitting image of Bruce, minus the different colored eyes (Bruce has blue and Damian’s are green), Damian claims he is set to take over the cowl when Bruce is either dead or done. God help us all…

But I still can’t figure out why I am needed back home. Is Alfred sick? Is Bruce dying after fighting all these years? Is it one of my brothers?

I jump in surprise once the taxi comes to a hard stop. After paying the man, I grab my duffel bag and I climb the front steps that I suddenly remember jumping off them as a kid. Alfred scolded me many times, and I still did it because being bad was fun.

I scoff loudly, and I jump down the five steps that would have given Alfred a heart attack. Maybe I haven’t changed as much as I thought.

I find the wooden front door unlocked, which is odd considering Alfred always makes sure to lock it. As a matter of fact, Alfred hasn’t greeted me like he always does when I come home. Where is Alfred?

After I unwrap my scarf, I pull my hoodie over my head to be more comfortable in the warm house. Sadly, I forgot to do laundry yesterday, so I came home in just my black yoga pants and red tank top. What would Alfred say?

I kick off my shoes and walk to the kitchen barefoot. Pulling my long hair into a ponytail, I notice a note on the counter that’s written for me. I unfold the note and stare at the nicest, well done cursive handwriting only one man can do here.

Dear Lady Y/N,

I sincerely apologize for not being there to greet you properly. Master Bruce had wanted me to take my holiday to London early, and Lord knows I can use a week to myself after stitching up countless wounds, tidying up bedrooms and Bat caves, and playing messenger between you and your father. I have a cooked roast with garlic mash potatoes in the refrigerator if you are hungry. Do heat it up and perhaps show your father and brothers how to use the microwave.

I dearly love you and the boys,

Love Alfred Pennyworth

P.S.

Look into the highest cabinet above the refrigerator, and you will discover a jar of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies just for you.

I grin widely, and before I can turn around and find the cookies, I’m stuck between the counter and a tall, hard body behind me. I freeze.

“Welcome home, Y/N. I missed you so much,” Bruce whispers in my ear. I can feel his hot breath above my shoulder and neck. The familiar smell of his expensive cologne fills my nostrils. His large hands rub my legs and grip onto my hips very hard. “Did you miss me?”

“H-hi dad. W-what are you doing?” I ask softly, but I know it came out like a whisper. One of his hands is holding my waist, while the other caresses my abdomen. It feels strange considering Bruce is supposed to be my father, and we shouldn’t be this close or even touching each other. But a part of me wants to keep feeling his hands on me and see what he does next.

“Holding you. Smelling you. Touching you,” he answers, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He breathes harder when I press my backside against his front by accident. “It appears you want this too. Am I correct, Y/N?”

His hand pulls down my yoga pants enough, so he can reach into my underwear. Bruce continues to breathe hard from his nose when his fingers find my core. His thumb rubs fast circles on my clit, while he pushes two fingers inside me. I bite my bottom lip to stop a loud moan from coming out of me, but he appears he’ll have none of that. He stops fingering me.

“You better be loud, or I won’t let you cum, Y/N.”

Before I can beg him to keep going, he turns my face, so I can look him in those cold, pale blue eyes. “Please tell me you’re…not a virgin.” Bruce’s face is twisted in pleasure from just fingering me, but I can tell his lips are trembling and there’s a soft but pleading look in his eyes. This must hurt him as much as it’s hurting me.

“I-I’m not,” I confess, and wonder if he would change his mind if I said I was.

“Who was it with?” Bruce demands. He kisses along my shoulder to my neck before he bites on my soft spot. I hiss in pain and I grind into him again.

“Josh Mitchell. I was sixteen,” I answer harshly.

“Was he any good?”

Before I can answer, Bruce shoves the front of my body onto the counter, while he pulls down my yoga pants. My adrenaline is rushing, and I can feel myself wetting the counter from just his roughness. I can feel him unzip his pants and I can already imagine this thick, hard cock fucking me into oblivion.

“No, no he wasn’t good at all!” I cry out.

“Good, I’m actually relieved to hear that,” Bruce says, as he starts to stroke himself. “Do you want me to fuck you, Y/N?”

I want to turn around and watch him jack off. Hearing him pleasure himself isn’t enough. Bruce then jams two fingers back into my pussy and I whimper loudly. It has been too long since I’ve been intimate with a man. I need his cock now!

“I asked you a question, Y/N. Do I need to remind you who you are supposed to answer to?” he says seriously before adding a third finger inside me. I grip the counter and I breathe harder. I find myself rubbing my pussy on the edge of the smooth countertop for more friction, but he grabs my hips and stops me. “Now, do you want me to fuck you, Y/N, or should I leave you here, so you can dry hump the countertop alone?”

I growl louder, while my nails scratch the counter top. “YES! Yes, I want you to fuck me, Dad!”

As soon as those words left my mouth, I immediately wonder if I killed the mood. Why would I call him ‘dad’ when we’re about to have hot, rough sex in the kitchen? I need to apologize. I push myself up on my elbows and I shift my head to the side to apologize. I open my mouth to speak but stop when Bruce’s eyes darkened, and he growls as he slams his thick cock inside me.

I moan louder than I have in my entire life. His cock fills me up so much that I fear I won’t be able to walk straight for the next week or two. Bruce lifts my legs up and continues to shove me against the counter with every hard thrust. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to fuck me. The man is practically drilling into me with no kindness at all.

“Oh fuck! You’re so fucking tight. So wet and so hot,” Bruce groans out. With each thrust, I can feel he wants to let go and fuck me like he owns me.

“Go ahead, Dad. Fuck me. Fuck me like I’m yours and only yours,” I tempt him playfully.

Bruce growls and rams his cock faster into me. He keeps knocking the air out from my lungs, and I can feel my body pulsating against his. I grip the countertop harder each time, and I know my knuckles are turning white and becoming numb every second. With one hand on my hips, Bruce moves his other hand up my tank top to hold my tits.

“No bra? You’re a bad girl,” Bruce says in between panting.

“I forgot to do laundry,” I choke out.

“Excuses,” he manages to say, as he holds me up more, so he can penetrate me deeper. His cock is hitting a deeper spot in me. It must be my g-spot, because I have read about it but never actually felt it to know. I can feel myself clenching his dick tightly, and I know I’m getting closer to release. “You wanted me and your brothers to see your tits, huh?”

“Maybe,” I cry out louder than what I intended to. Fuck, what if one of my brothers hears me? They’ll really think I’m insane for fucking our father and for loving it every second. Bruce readjusts our position once more, so he can hit that spot continuously. “I-I think I’m going to cum!”

“Not yet, you better not!” Bruce growls, and drills into me harder and faster. With his powerful thrusts and the constant friction from the countertop on my clit, I know for a fact that I can’t last longer. His hands hold onto my hips while he fucks me harder than before.

I become a moaning mess. I can feel my mouth drop open because I feel liquid coming out from my core. Did I just squirt? What the hell is happening to me?

The sounds of skin on skin is louder because of my mess. I drop my head onto the counter while Bruce continues to fuck me. Before I can catch my breath, Bruce chuckles and lifts me up. “I just made you squirt. That has never happened before, has it?”

“No, that was my first time,” I answer breathlessly. He kisses my neck.

“You’re so wet,” Bruce grunts into my ear. Breathing heavily, he lifts my hips again, so he can rub my clit with his fingers. “You’re making a mess all over my cock. You’re such a bad girl.”

“I’m your bad girl,” I moan out, as I can feel another orgasm threatening to take over my body.

“Fuck yes, you are!” Bruce groans, and continues to shove his cock into my soaking wet pussy.

With every rough thrust, I know Bruce won’t last. I whimper once more when my pussy clenches his dick as he fucks me through my orgasm. A few more hard thrusts, Bruce pulls out and turns me over onto my back. He jacks himself off as I watch his cum spurt out all over my stomach.

Just seeing his hard, veiny thick cock before me turns me on once more. I lick my lips at how the tip of his dick glistens with his cum.

Bruce sighs heavily, and just when I think I should try to get up and clean myself, he pulls me up and kisses me. He shoves his tongue into my mouth, and we explore each other’s mouths as if this was our last chance to. He pulls away from me and rests his forehead against mine.

“You’re mine, Y/N. You belong to me, and the Batfamily. I don’t care who wants you, because you will never give them what you have given me. Do you understand?” Bruce asks, before giving me his famous bat glare.

“I understand, and I promise,” I swear before he kisses me once more.

“Good, now go wash up,” Bruce instructs before he helps me off the counter.

I grab a paper towel and wipe Bruce’s cum off my stomach before I pull up my yoga pants. As soon as I toss the damped paper towel into the trash, I immediately notice Dick Grayson is standing there at the entrance of the kitchen staring at me with fire in his eyes.

#dc comics #batman #bruce wayne #bruce wayne x reader #bruce wayne x y/n #bruce wayne x reader smut #bruce wayne x y/n smut #bruce wayne smut #batman smut

291 notes · View notes

melrosing · 3 years

Note

the funniest explanation for the "brienne is going to be pregnant with jaime's child" theory i've heard is that jaime has weak pull-out game lol. but it's a given that jb are going to bang and we have to rely on that. i know it happened on the show so people are convinced it's going to happen in the books, but what do you think? i know you're ??? about marriage and children, but don't you think brienne/jaime would want to be married if they ever decide to be intimate? won't it be dishonourable to bed a woman he hasn't married? And i refuse to accept any one night stand/fuckboy jaime theories. sorry lots of questions.

JB banging is telegraphed so blatantly in the books that literally whatever your endgame expectations are, I don’t know how you could deny it. like I’m always in two minds about marriage/kids/Jaime even surviving, but JB are going to fuck. I have litch rally no doubts.

like first off, they’re both aroused by the sight/thought of each other. there’s absolutely no need to include that unless you mean to go somewhere with that mutual attraction. like if GRRM wants them to be a chaste romance, all he has has to do is the standard pining but nooope they’re full on checking each other out and getting hot and sweaty about it. let them fuck!!!

second, both are kind of a chekhov’s gun in the sex department. Jaime states at the beginning of his arc that he’s only ever slept with one woman. and he’s recently broken up with said woman. so. wonder where that’s going. Brienne, meanwhile, is widely known as the Maid of Tarth, with her maidenhood coming up repeatedly: Brienne, despite having desires, likely assumes that she either won’t lose her maidenhood or that it’ll be taken by force at some point – she hasn’t been allowed to view it as something she has much agency in keeping or losing, but obviously she’s never had a safe and caring relationship that would afford her that agency. so, wonder where that’s going. i will tell you. jb bonetown

then there’s that swordfight they have in ASOS, and everyone and their dog has written about the sheer amount of innuendo that’s going on there but the fact remains: the whole point of the scene is to establish JB’s physical chemistry. it says, look how evenly matched they are, look at how they surprise and impress one another: and now imagine what this looks like in bed. the fact that we’ve already had Jaime's whole ‘only feels truly alive when fucking or fighting’ thing is also an undercurrent here, like Jaime's language of passion is in this kind of physicality, and the language of their sparring comprises both: it's Brienne speaking it back to him

and finally there’s just the fact that Brienne and Jaime are both kind of critiques of medieval purity culture embodied by Arthurian figures like Sir Galahad, who pointedly does not fuck and does no wrong. Brienne’s POV literally interrogates heroes like this through Ser Galladon: his story might sounds good on paper, but as the esteemed scholar Nimble Dick points out, it’s no good trying to be this Perfect Knight - we’re all mortal and we have to defend ourselves as such. so I don’t see JB's courtship being used to promote traditional notions of abstention and chastity purported by Galahad, or any kind of courtship that’s somehow ‘above’ ~mortal pleasures~

anyway they’re going to fuck. as for whether they’d wait for marriage, I don’t really think so. once they’ve realised mutual attraction, I don’t see any reason why they’d put off sleeping together: Brienne’s much less of a stickler for tradition than people say, given that she’s actively avoided the traditional route for a Westerosi lady, and in fact is just wandering the Riverlands following her own rules at the moment. she follows her heart and tries not to care too much about what other people think, so if she really wants to fuck Jaime, I don’t think she’s gonna be worrying all that much about what ceremonies ought to go first.

Jaime meanwhile has demonstrated that he doesn’t really care about oaths of celibacy when the desire is pressing enough: he manages to reject Cersei in the midst of a break-up, and he can ignore interest from Pia given there’s no deeper attraction there, but like given what we’ve established is going on between JB… can see his willpower being significantly depleted lol. and as we see with the Night’s Watch, celibacy is a pretty easy vow to break, marriage is a much bigger one, so the wedding is probably the one they’d have the lengthy conversation about, not fucking.

the only thing I could possibly see Jaime thinking twice about is the dishonour it might bring Brienne but lbr: if she says she doesn’t care (and I don’t think she will particularly), then honestly life’s too short. and what’s more, marrying the Kingslayer arguably brings more dishonour and strings attached, so can’t really see Jaime saying it’d be better if they waited till she was Brienne Lannister lol.

buuut they’re both medieval nobles so I imagine they are at least going to consider what marriage might look like. we see with Robb and Jeyne that as soon as a two nobles get together, marriage is gonna at least cross their minds as the next natural step. and there’s enough foreshadowing of that between JB to suggest that they’d both be interested in the prospect

anyway. the GOT one-night-stand stuff is just stupid, who knows what was going through D&D’s minds (if anything), but literally nothing exudes JB less than ‘hey I’m horny and you’re virgin shall we just get it out our systems :)'

#this is a lot of words about two fictional characters having sex lol #jaime x brienne #asoiaf #ask

48 notes · View notes

inevitably-johnlocked · 4 years

Note

do u have any fics with John being oblivious? I just ♡ that kind of stuff

Hi Nonny!

Yes! I do have a few that I properly tagged, so I know I’m missing a tonne more, so as always, I’ll give you what I have tagged, and I’ll request my lovelies to suggest their own fics!

CLUELESS / OBLIVIOUS JOHN

Dinner With John by Zang Bluetterfly (T, 505 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Romance) – "Let's have dinner, John." Sherlock secretly smiled. Irene had been right: he had rejected her dinner's invitation because he already had John by his side, even though the doctor was still clueless about Sherlock's true feelings for him.

Five Times John Watson Remained Oblivious (K+, 1,154 w., 1 Ch. || Five and Ones, Romance, Friendship, Asexual Sherlock, Queerplatonic Relationship) – ...And one time he didn't. asexual!Sherlock/John.

Untouchable by greengrapegaze (T, 1,368 w., 1 Ch. || Pre-S3, UST/URT, Oblivious John, Lonely Sherlock, Angst with Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Emotional Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock) – “He never would. Petty, childish, immature-bitter. Jealous. She had all that he wanted. All he could never have.” Part 1 of Steps to a Bittersweet Symphony

Five Times Sherlock gave John a Pebble and One Time John Returned the Gesture by grimmfairy (NR, 1,895 w., 1 Ch. || Love Confessions, Penguins and Pebbles, Nervous / Pining Sherlock, Oblivious John) – Sherlock isn't good with words, so he decides to tell John his feelings the way penguins do, by bringing him pebbles with different meanings. John catches on.

Love Hurts by Grac3 (T, 2,215 w., 1 Ch. || Magical Realism, Pining Sherlock, One-Sided Pining / URT, Sherlock / John Whump, Angst, Ambiguous Ending) – In a world where someone's physical injuries manifest themselves on the person who is in love with them, John didn't think that there would ever be anyone who was willing to risk falling in love with him - until he got shot on a case, and it didn't hurt. Unrequited Johnlock.

and stand there at the edge of my affection by coloredink (G, 2,683 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Letters, Clueless John) – "You've written love letters," Sherlock asserted.

Let Go by thisisforyou (G, 2,743 w., 1 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Fluff, Anxious / Worried Sherlock) – In the end, separating John's things from Sherlock's in the chaos of their sitting room is like pulling a limpet from a wet rock. Especially when the rock is clinging on for dear life, because Sherlock doesn't want to let go. Short, fluffy h/c Johnlock oneshot.

Until the End of the World by SarahCat1717 (G, 3,049 w., 1 Ch. || Angst, First Kiss, Pining Sherlock, Oblivious John, Drunkenness) – Taking place in Season 3, John listens to an old favourite song and sorts through his memories and feelings about Sherlock and Mary.

The Prize We Sought Is Won by deathfrisbees (E, 4,610 w., 1 Ch. || First Time, Mild D/S, Oral, Military Kink, Bottomlock) – Sherlock's in love, or in lust, or both--unfortunately, the object of his affections is not only his completely oblivious flatmate, but said flatmate would probably run screaming into the hills should he find out. John's been invited to a wedding--unfortunately, the groom used to serve under him back in Afghanistan, and requests that John wear a uniform he's honestly not sure he fits into. Unfortunately for both flatmates, Sherlock's got a military kink the size of Kandahar and John wants to know if he actually can fit into this uniform or if his eyes are deceiving him. It goes from there.

Given In Evidence by verityburns (M, 5,034 w., 19 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Angst, Drama, Case Fic, Romance, BAMF!John, Submissive Sherlock, First Kiss, Humour) – Coming back from the dead can be a complicated business. With a new case on the horizon, rebuilding a life is one thing... rebuilding a friendship quite another. For Sherlock and John, things may never be just the same...

Five Times John Noticed But Didn't Really by ScandalousMinds (T, 6,383 w., 1 Ch. || Domestics, Fluff/Angst, Bratty Sherlock, Idiots, Pre-Slash, Jealous Sherlock, Love Confessions) – 5 times John (thought) he noticed something peculiar about his and Sherlock's relationship but really missed the obvious.

In Which "John" Becomes a Synonym for "Help" by asignoftwo (T, 7,391 w., 1 Ch. || Injured John, Worried Sherlock, Fluff) – After the fall Sherlock returns to Baker Street and is reunited with John. When John is injured on a case Sherlock is faced with the reality that he could lose John again, and it tears him apart.

The Wrong Wagon by DancingGrimm (E, 35,663 w., 20 Ch. || Alternating POV, Molly/ John [Molly pines for John], Public Sex, Casual Sex, Obliviousness, BAMF!John, Awkwardness, Angst & Humour, First Time, Virgin Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock) – Molly sees John in a new light and realises that she may have hitched her horse to the wrong wagon...or something like that. John pines for Sherlock and worries what he will think if he ever finds out. And Sherlock doesn't know what Molly's up to...but he knows he doesn't like it.

Classified(s) by blueink3 (E, 36,153 w., 4 Ch. || Wedding Date AU || Fake Relationship, Jealous, PIning, H/C, Idiots in Love, Happy Ending, Mary is not Nice, Escort Service) – Clara's American father is the ambassador to some such territory that Great Britain probably used to own, but she (and Harry’s undying love for her) is the reason John is getting on a flight at 12:30pm, flying across the second largest ocean in the world, and pretending to be in a perfectly happy, healthy relationship with an undoubtedly perfectly coiffed stranger. See, Clara is not only American (and wealthy to boot), she's also best friends with John’s ex-fiancée. Whom she's placed in the wedding party. As Maid of Honor. And John just happens to be Best Man. Bloody brilliant.

A Promise Made to Be Broken by PlantsAreNeat (E, 37,018 w., 7 Ch. || Fake Relationship, Pining, Slow Burn, RST, Eventual Relationship, POV Sherlock) – A young John makes an ‘if we’re still single at 40, we’ll get together’ pledge to a woman who ends up all wrong for him. She keeps reminding him of the promise, and won’t let go of it. John asks Sherlock to pose as his boyfriend at a family wedding, so as to dash her hopes permanently. Sherlock, who has at last acknowledged his feelings for John, reluctantly agrees despite knowing how painful it will be to ‘have’ John, but not keep him.

Points by lifeonmars (E, 53,791 w., 42 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || HLV Rewrite / Canon Divergence, Married Life, Pregnancy / Baby Watson, Drinking to Cope, Boxing / Fisticuffs, Clueless John, Angst, Minor Medical Drama, Tattoos, Christmas, First Kiss/Time, Eventual Happy Ending, Love Confessions, Doctor John, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, Case Fic, Drugging, Blow/Hand Job, Emotional Love Making, Parenthood, Passage of Time) – What if His Last Vow never happened? This fic picks up a few months after John and Mary's wedding, in an alternate universe where Magnussen doesn't exist, but Mary is still pregnant. Life continues -- just in a different direction. And slowly, Sherlock and John find their way to each other.

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #oblivious john #clueless john #my fic recs #Anonymous #fic rec wednesday

99 notes · View notes

morepopcornplease · 4 years

Note

Can you please talk about the Catholic understanding of the "single" vocation? I'm ace and not drawn to religious life so I thought that's where I was heading, but lately I've been hearing it's not a "real" vocation, just a "transition" state

Not only would I argue that the single vocation exists, I’d argue it’s sorely needed today.

Actually you know what? I would argue there’s more evidence of the single lay vocation than a marital vocation within Church tradition, especially in the early Church days.

What do I mean by that?

*cracks knuckles* PREPARE YOURSELF.

(also sorry this wasn’t responded to earlier. people who ask me side b or faith questions should know that it takes me literal weeks to respond)

So, back in the founding days of the Church, there was ONE vocation: Priesthood. Not religious orders. Certainly not matrimony. Just: priesthood. See, the word vocation stems from the Latin “vocare” / “to call,” specifically referring to how Jesus “called” the apostles. Either men answered God’s call to the priesthood, or they did not.

Now, for marriage— in his first letter to the Corinthians, St Paul writes this:

“If you marry, however, you do not sin, nor does an unmarried woman sin if she marries; but such people will experience affliction in their earthly life, and I would like to spare you that. I tell you, brothers, the time is running out. From now on, let those having wives act as not having them…”

St Paul basically says here: “I mean, I ~guess~ getting married isn’t sinning, so it’s fine. It’s fine! It’s Fine.”

And really, Paul, what kind of half-assed encouragement to your married folk is this?!

He basically says things like: “listen up you horny kiddos, if you’re too damn horny, then go ahead! Get married! (See if I care!!) But if you’re like me *cough cough* then you WON’T!!”

Incidentally, I will absolutely be using this as the basis for my Best Woman speech at my sister’s wedding…

I think Paul goes overboard here, but in a sense he had to. In a time where followers of Christ were convincing fellow Jews that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah, they had an important differentiation (and I don’t mean just circumcision).

Rather, the early Christians was pushing to make disciples of all nations, not through birth (again, the Messiah had already come! The sign given to Ahaz [Isaiah 7:10-16] has already been fulfilled!!) but through baptism of the spirit. We are to become a new kind of community, according to Jesus.

Going back to the Gospels: “Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Matt 12:48-50, Luke 8:21)

Again, we get a sense that Jesus is establishing a new type of community to be His Church, a new definition of family. The kind of bond formed not by the water of the womb, but the blood of the new covenant. I mean, there’s a reason almost all of the epistles of the New Testament begin and end with addressing the faithful as “Brothers and Sisters,” a practice the Catholic priests keep today in their homilies.

Ok, so there’s a new kind of family. That doesn’t establish a “single vocation” any more than it disassembles a “married vocation.”

Well, let’s pull up the Early Patricians, shall we?

Here’s St Jerome on the subject in 393 AD in his treatise Against Jovinianus: “but while we honor marriage we prefer virginity which is the offspring of marriage. Will silver cease to be silver, if gold is more precious than silver?”

And St Jerome again, when facing controversy: “Someone may say: ‘And do you dare disparage marriage, which is blessed by the Lord?’ It is not disparaging marriage when virginity is preferred to it. No one compares evil with good. Let married women glory too, since they come second to virgins.”

St Augustine, also countering Jovinianus: "Marriage and fornication are not two evils, whereof the second is worse: but marriage and continence are two goods, whereof the second is better.”

In fact, marriage was not considered a sacrament until 1184, at the Council of Verona. That’s less than half a Church History ago!!

Notice, too, how these saints are not saying “religious life.” They are not saying “priesthood.” There is no mention of deaconship or stewardship that would imply religious orders and the vows accompanying them. And St Augustine’s use of the word “continence” dissolves the idea that this is just a fetishization of women’s virginity, inapplicable to men.

They are talking about those who choose continence. And while that includes religious orders, it was not limited to priests, deacons, etc. In fact, the obligation of clerical celibacy wasn’t made canon until The Second Lateral Council in 1139; where marriages with religious men had previously been regarded as “illicit but still valid,” now marriages with religious men was now, canonically, completely invalid.

Logically then, they must be talking about the vocation to single, celibate life.

In the Catholic Church, we have untold numbers of early Church saints who are noted as “virgin martyrs.” Think about that. What is that actually saying? That just by virtue of not getting married, out of devotion to Christ, you deserve to be recognized as a saint? No sacrament of holy orders required?

Actually, yes. Saying NO to a husband for Christ is enough for sanctification.

And I don’t think we realize how outstanding that is when we talk about the Single Vocation.

To wrap this up, I would like to posit my own theory about how virginity and marriage actually complement one another (and to some extent, religious orders as well)

In those days (and tbh throughout history) marriage was a financial decision. Money exchanged hands. The bride was “bought.”

And only 300 years before Jesus arrived, Aristotle argued that the best kind of love was between friends. Since marriage was a love of “utility” and “pleasure,” it could not possibly reach the love of friends; it was better to be unmarried.

(it’s also good to remember that Aristotle lived in the hellenistic culture, featuring plenty of pedophilia and ephebophilia. Aka, rape. So it’s good to remember that when he says “remain unmarried” he doesn’t really mean “stay celibate.” Several yikes.)

This is the Gentile worldview Jesus enters. And He establishes marriage as a good—and how could marriage be anything else, when He refers to Himself as a Bridegroom, and His bride the Church? “You are not your own; you were bought with a price.” 1Cor 6:19-20.

But then He says this: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Jesus didn’t elevate the good of friendship up to the status of marriage.

He elevated the relationship between husband and wife to the status of friendship.

Nowadays, while there is no money exchanging hands during a ceremony (well, except for the reception and honeymoon), I’d argue a new type of currency is being exchanged, within the Christian churches themselves.

It is the currency of sanctified sex. Pleasure with the stamp of God’s Approval. The ability to have sex without feeling guilty about it, or have your priest make you feel guilty about it, or having your conscience beat yourself silly about it.

Once again, spouses fall prey to treating each other as objects to satisfy their sexual desires, as well as every other desire.

And single vocations are the answer to that.

Marriage cannot be a good if it is reduced to “sanctified sex.” It is degrading to the sacrament and to the people within that union.

Religious Orders cannot be good if celibacy is treated as the ultimate punishment—that attitude leads to pitiful sexual entitlement by the members of those same religious orders.

It’s only if you have a true, Church-defended, celebrated, joyful, viable Vocation of Singleness that the fruit of the other two’s vocations—their real fruit of the gift of the sacraments and of new life—come into view, crystal clear and glorious.

And that is why the Single Vocation is not only a real vocation—it’s sorely needed today.

#Catholic #Side B #vocations #Christian #Church history #gay as the rainbow over noahs ark #Anonymous #hi nonnie!

58 notes · View notes

mimitxtghost · 5 years

Text

THE GUY WHO GREW HORNS:

I found a story similar to what TXT went with. It is one of a boy who grew horns. I read it and found it quite entertaining. So I think you might like it too.

“ In the aftermath of his girlfriend's mysterious death, a young man awakens to find strange horns sprouting from his temples.“ - Anonymous

Here is the synopsis:

Ignatius Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) was always seen by the people in town as an outsider. None of that mattered to him, because he was in love with Merrin Williams (Juno Temple). They are lying beneath a tree in the woods kissing. She asks him if he's horny. He says he's getting there. Ig promises to love Merrin for the rest of his life. She just wants him to love her for the rest of hers. Ig wakes up lying on the floor clutching a bottle of vodka. He groggily goes into the living room and puts on a David Bowie record to play "Heroes". He sees Merrin dancing for him. Outside his window is a news van and many angry protesters, holding signs that condemn Ig to hell. Merrin has been murdered, and everyone thinks he did it.

Ig calls his lawyer friend Lee Torneau (Max Minghella) for help. He then goes to his family's home for sanctuary from the press. Ig's brother Terry (Joe Anderson) wants to help Ig clear his name. Their father Derrick (James Remar) has sought a lawyer for Ig, but all the other lawyers want Ig to take a plea, while Lee knows he is innocent. Lee later comes over to join his friends. He tells Ig that any evidence found on Merrin's remains were burned in a forensics lab, thereby leaving Ig with nothing to prove his innocence. Ig vows to find the real killer and finish him off. Ig goes to a bar where the bartender refuses to serve him because the other patrons are afraid of him. Glenna (Kelli Garner), an old friend of Ig's, takes pity on him and pours him a drink. She offers to go have a drink with him, but he wants to be alone. A large gathering of townspeople come together for a vigil around the tree where Merrin's body was found. Her father Dale (David Morse) tearfully talks about his daughter and also accuses Ig of killing her. Ig watches from a treehouse above them. After everybody leaves, Ig stomps on a statue of the Virgin Mary and then pees all over the candles. Glenna catches him and tells him to calm down. Ig blames God for not caring about Merrin when she needed help. The next morning, Ig awakens after sleeping with Glenna to two horns protruding from his head ...

He gets dressed and asks Glenna if she notices the horns. She does, but doesn't react beyond a laugh. She sees a box of doughnuts on the coffee table and asks Ig if she can eat all of them. He says yes, and she stuffs one in her mouth. It makes her stomach feel bad, and she washes it down with Diet Coke. Yet she still wants to eat the whole box because, as she casually tells Ig, she wants to get fat because everybody thinks she is trash and that nobody would sleep with her unless they were drunk like Ig was. Ig goes to the doctor to get the horns checked out. A little girl is screaming in the waiting room while her mother sits and does nothing. The mother tells Ig that she wants to kick her daughter's ass, divorce her husband, and go have sex with her black golf instructor because she prefers "black cock". A disturbed Ig goes to the receptionist and gives back the form he had to fill out. The receptionist tells Ig that she just wants to tell the mother to shut her kid up. She asks Ig if he thinks it's okay and he says yes. The receptionist gets up and yells at the mother to take her "screeching pig" out. The mother angrily yells at the receptionist and goes up to her. Ig grabs her arm and gets a peek inside her mind. He sees the woman having sex with her golf instructor and dealing with the screaming daughter at home. The little girl also tells Ig that she hates her mother and wants to burn her in her bed with matches. Ig sees the nurse. She is checking his blood pressure but is fixated on his horns. She tells him that she knows her boyfriend is seeing another girl. The doctor comes in and sees the horns but doesn't bother dealing with them and instead tells Ig that he wants to have sex with his daughter's friend, and then offers to snort oxycontin with Ig. Ig just tells him to saw the horns off. The doctor puts Ig under anesthesia and he passes out. We see a flashback to when Ig was a child and he first saw Merrin in church. She shined the light reflecting off her cross necklace in Ig's direction. Derrick tells him it's morse code. After the service, he finds Merrin's necklace, broken. Later on, Ig would hang out with Terry, Lee, Glenna, and another kid named Eric by the docks. They lit off cherry bombs and talked about Merrin, to whom Ig is attracted, which upset Glenna because none of the other boys seemed to really notice her. After lighting off a number of cherry bombs, Eric tells Ig he'll give him his last one if he rides down a log rail in a cart naked. Ig takes the challenge and rides off into the lake, hitting his head on a log. The logs come together, trapping him underneath. Lee jumps in and rescues Ig. Eric is forced to hand Ig the cherry bomb. Lee fixes the cross necklace and gives it to Ig in exchange for the cherry bomb. Ig gives it back to Merrin and starts hanging out with her. Ig learns that Merrin's mother passed away from cancer. They go back to his house and listen to David Bowie. Terry runs in and tells Ig that the cherry bomb blew up in Lee's hand. They run to the hospital where the boy has lost two fingers. He does feel happy seeing Ig and Merrin together. Ig later confesses to Merrin that it was Lee who fixed the necklace, and he blames himself for what happened to him. Merrin assures him that she left the necklace for Ig to find. They have their first kiss. Ig wakes up to see that the doctor left the saw in the horn to have sex with the nurse right next to him. Disgusted, Ig leaves, only to see in the mirror that the horns have grown. Ig finds a priest and asks for his help. The priest coldly suggests that he can get a rope and hang Ig, or Ig can do the deed himself. The only person that doesn't notice the horns is Lee. This makes Ig think the horns don't work on good people. Ig goes to his parents' home and hears the truth from both of them - his mother thinks she would be happier if he wasn't her son, and Derrick always thought Ig was a difficult child, and that he hates Ig for supposedly killing Merrin, because she was the only thing that he loved about Ig. He also reveals that he had someone burn the evidence in the forensics lab. Ig calls Lee about this, who says it's probably a blessing in disguise. Ig goes to the bar but is harassed by a gaggle of reporters trying to get a hot scoop from him. Ig tells them to fight each other, and whoever wins gets to interview him. The reporters then get into an intense brawl while Ig walks into the bar. The bartender threatens to hit Ig, but Ig tells him he doesn't want to do that. The bartender admits he wants to burn the bar down and collect the insurance money. Ig demands anybody in the bar to tell him if they know anything about Merrin's murder. The other patrons just admit more sinful things, and one man takes his pants off and whips his penis out. Ig leaves as the bartender lights the place up, and he walks past the reporters, still fighting. As Ig sits in his car to have a smoke, he notices a small box in the glove compartment. In another flashback, we see that Ig was telling Lee and Terry that he was planning to propose to Merrin that night at the diner, and that the guys would join them to celebrate. Ig later goes to the diner to meet with Merrin, who looks melancholic. She tells Ig that she is moving to Los Angeles, which he thinks is a good chance for a fresh start. However, Merrin says they should break up and see other people to know if he really wants to spend the rest of his life with her. He thinks she is already seeing someone else. She starts to leave, and Ig gets up and loudly argues with her until the manager tells him to leave. Ig leaves without a fight, just as Terry starts to come in. The next morning, Eric (Michael Adamthwaite), now a cop, finds Ig sleeping in his car and asks him when he last saw Merrin. The fact that Ig asked if something happened to her only fuels Eric's suspicions. Ig returns to the diner to talk to the waitress, Veronica (Heather Graham), who has been feeding the police false information about Ig on the night Merrin was killed. Veronica told the cops that Ig dragged Merrin into his car and took her into the woods to kill her before having anal sex with her. All of this so that Veronica can be featured on the news as a key witness. Ig goes to the jazz club where Terry plays with his band. Glenna approaches him and admits that she was always in love with Ig, which he did already know. After the performance, Terry meets Ig outside and admits that he was with Merrin after Ig left the diner. Ig attacks his brother and, as he touches him, sees into Terry's mind to that night. Terry drove Merrin away from the diner, but she ran away into the woods in the pouring rain. The next morning, Terry woke up in his car with a bloody rock in his hand. He ran into the woods to find Merrin dead. He wrapped the rock in his shirt and threw it in the lake to avoid being implicated. After this, Eric and his partner come in and cuff Ig. The two cops then make crude jokes about beating Ig while they jerk off. The next day, Ig finds Lee in town wearing Merrin's cross necklace. Lee denies it at first but then says she gave it to him. Ig breaks down, thinking Lee was the one that Merrin was leaving him for. Ig then goes to Dale's home to try and see if he knew if Merrin was seeing anybody or mentioned leaving him, only to have Dale point a shotgun at him, ordering him to get off his property. Ig goes down an alley to forcibly remove the horns, to no avail. A group of snakes slither on over to him, but they do not harm him. They slither onto him, and he is okay with it. Ig walks past Eric and his partner in their car. They threaten to arrest him, but Ig says they would be happier sucking each other off. The two admit they're gay and that they love each other, and they proceed to make out and have sex. Ig then gathers the snakes and finds Veronica in her car. The snakes make their way into the car and bite Veronica all over her face and body, scarring her and ensuring that she can't enjoy a life of fame. Ig, wearing the snake around his neck, goes to find Terry doing a lot of drugs. Ig forces Terry to do an enormous amount to trip out and eventually torture him with the same feelings that Merrin felt the night she died. Terry experiences a horrible trip and collapses. Down by the docks the next day, Ig meets up with Lee. Ig removes the cross necklace from him, and Lee can finally see Ig's horns. And then he admits that it was HE who really killed Merrin. Ig chokes Lee and sees his memories. Previously, Merrin suspected that Ig was going to propose, and she asked Lee if it's true. He said maybe. Merrin recently learned some things about herself and didn't want Ig to be involved with it, so she confided this to Lee. On the night that Ig left the diner, Lee followed Terry and Merrin until they stopped by the woods. Lee found Merrin in there and tried to kiss her, but she pulled back. He thought she left Ig for him, but Merrin says she loves Ig more than anything in the world. Angry, Lee struck Merrin and raped her before cracking her head with a rock. He then planted the bloody rock in Terry's hand and fled the scene. Ig grabs a pitchfork and tells Lee to go turn himself in, but Lee grabs a chain and whips Ig in the back repeatedly. He pushes him in his car and douses it with kerosene, then sets it on fire. Unable to get out, Ig drives the car into the lake. Lee later tells the police that Ig confessed to killing Merrin before killing himself. Ig emerges from the lake, terribly burnt but alive. He returns to Dale's home. Dale now realizes that Ig really didn't kill Merrin. He invites Ig inside and gives him a key that Merrin wanted him to have. Ig hands Dale her necklace, but Dale lets him keep it. Ig puts it around his neck, and then his burns heal and the horns go away. Ig brings the key to the treehouse and opens a box with a note inside from Merrin. It's written in morse code, and it says that Merrin knew she was dying of cancer like her mother, and after seeing how it affected her father, she didn't want Ig to know about it since he would have only wanted to marry her more, and she didn't want him to live with her suffering. She does vow to find him again someday in the same treehouse. Ig cries. Ig visits Terry in the hospital, recovering from his drug episode. Ig is sorry for what he did, and he tells Terry that Lee is the real killer and that he's going after him. Ig goes to Lee's house and asks him to join him for a walk. They go into the woods to the spot where Lee killed Merrin. Eric appears with a shotgun aimed at Lee, followed closely by Terry, who told Eric about Lee. Lee appears to go quietly, but he trips Eric and grabs the shotgun and shoots Terry in the leg. Ig grabs the pitchfork and tries to pull the shotgun out of Lee's hand, only to aim it directly in Eric's face and blow his head off. Ig and Lee struggle, when Ig then takes off the cross necklace. He suddenly grows wings that lift him in the air, and then they catch fire. His whole body is consumed by fire until he morphs into a demonic creature with bigger horns. Lee shoots at Ig, who bleeds lava, but he charges at Lee and impales him with his horn and throws him against a tree. The snakes then come by and wrap themselves around Lee, and one snake slithers through the impalement wound and into Lee's mouth, gagging him to death. Ig, now having avenged Merrin, falls and begins turning to stone. Terry rushes to his brother's side. The film ends with the opening scene of Ig and Merrin under the tree, suggesting they have reunited in death.

| Source: imdb.com/title/tt1528071/plotsummary

#txt #tomorrow x together #tomorrowxtogether #soobin #beomgyu #hueningkai #yeonjun #taehyun #bighit #kpop #story #txt theory #txt theories #horns

173 notes · View notes

avicebro · 5 years

Text

Artemis: Where Fate May Have Gone Wrong

Okay, this might be stupid and fruitless, but, okay, here’s a meta post defending some (not all) of Artemis and Orion in Fate/Grand Order. This is mainly “where might have fate gone wrong”, really.

First off, let’s get the obvious out of the way:

Artemis and Orion’s relationship is horrible, non-consensual, and is overall not funny. Orion is not interested in Artemis at all, insults her, and he routinely talks about or hits on other women. In turn, she appears to be obsessed with him, in almost-yandere territory. Most of the jokes involve Orion trying to escape her and her making jokes about awn, he loves her so much! The art usually includes Orion escaping Artemis, or Artemis doing something harmful to him.

I’m not going to talk about this a lot because people have already discussed it a lot, and I think it’s the main reason why people dislike her. Maybe if she spooked you, too. Her writing in her own event and the Okeanos chapter leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, I think people have already spoken enough about why they dislike her.

Here’s why I think she’s not…as…bad….as I think people make her out to be.

Second point: let’s talk about Artemis and Orion in mythos.

Artemis is characterized in mythos as being a pretty fair goddess, associated with hunting, childbirth, her brother Apollo, and virginity. She asks her father Zeus to stand by her vow of chastity and kills a man, Acheron, for seeing her and her huntresses bathing.

I say she’s pretty fair because for the most part she isn’t a very vengeful goddess? Acheron did see her bathing. She sends down plagues and arrows against the Greeks because one, she supports Troy, and two, because they defiled Apollo’s priestesses. Similarly, she hurts Niobe because Niobe boasted that she was a better mother than Artemis and Apollo’s mother.

Depending on the version of the myths surrounding Agamemnon you read, she refused the Greeks leaving for Troy because Agamemnon boasted that he was a better hunter than her. She makes less sense if you use the Aeschylus reasoning, where she basically makes up an excuse. Something could be said for making Iphigenia be sacrificed, but then again, some variants of the myth have Artemis saving Iphigenia. The matter of whether or not gods are fair, or should be fair, is a whole matter of debate that I have no time to get into, but if we compare her to Athena, for example, then I would say that she’s fair.

If we discuss Orion, he’s characterized as a typical son of Poseidon (we’re going to ignore the version with Poseidon, Zeus, Hermes and a bull hide. If you’re curious, it’s on Wikipedia). He has a large, commanding presence, a giant who could walk on water. He is blinded after attacking a princess, and after being healed by Helios, he meets Artemis and Leto. He’s a very skilled hunter, and boasts that he will kill every beast on Earth. Gaia, mother Earth and more famously the mother of these beasts, sends a scorpion to kill him. After his death, Artemis asks Zeus to place him up in the stars, which he does.

In many ways his characterization echoes similar Greek heroes, primarily other sons of Poseidon, Theseus and Bellerophon, and of course, as this is Greek myth: Heracles.

Orion is the only man Artemis exhibits feelings for, having a strong bond from hunting together. Whether or not this is romantic is really up to you. If anything, they're close, enough that when he is killed by his own hubris, she asks for him to be put into the stars. I’ve seen this used as an example of why she’s demiromantic asexual, or sometimes her relationship with Orion is shoved under the rug. I don’t think this relationship is a la Athena, like her and Odysseus, for example, and it isn’t on the Aphrodite side. While it is fun to try and look at god’s sexualities, I would say that in the Greek Pantheon canon, her relationship with Orion should be viewed as romantic. Or, for any a-spec people, a QPP.

This is all to say that I think that Artemis being summoned with Orion, for me, makes sense. She was one of the first goddesses to appear in fate/grand order. I think that their subversion of expectation by making her actually be Artemis, and not just a cis-swapped Orion, was actually kind of smart for fate? It’s still…not good…because Orion is a teddy bear… but I mean… part of it was smart, I guess.

Artemis being summoned with Orion makes sense because Orion was the only hero Artemis cared for. She mourned for his death. If you wish to summon a goddess, having one that is perhaps with the hero that they cared most for, makes sense to me. If Hera comes with Jason, or Athena with Odysseus, or if Aeneas gets summoned with his mom Aphrodite.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain a) why Orion hates Artemis or b) why Artemis acts like that.

Anyways, now we gotta talk more about Greek Mythology and why it’s complicated.

Greek Mythology likes to push gods together. Dionysus is probably a whole bunch of gods squished together which is why his characterization makes no sense. Aphrodite is probably much older than Ancient Greece and probably comes from somewhere else, which is why her backstory is confusing. Poseidon and Zeus are likely the same Indo-European god, just split in two. Some gods are the literal beings of things: Gaia, the Earth, with her son/husband Uranus, the sky. The mountains, the sea, the ocean, the darkness, the night, the underworld and the eternal chaos, are all gods, too.

This makes a lot of gods are not…necessary? Okay that’s rude. But a lot of gods have similar roles. This sometimes results in gods being squished together, like with Dionysus. The most common variant of this is with Apollo and Helios, and Artemis and Selene.

Helios and Selene, and their sister Eos, the dawn, continue the days with their chariots by drawing the sun, the night, or the dawn, behind them. Sometimes they’re also the personification of the sun or the moon, which is why Helios can see all. Apollo taking over the role of drawing the chariot of the sun wasn’t hard, because Helios isn’t really known for too many myths and ultimately Apollo’s characterization is pretty simple, but Artemis and Selene were a little bit more difficult, because of one myth, about a man named Endymion.

Endymion is a beautiful man, and Selene falls head over heels in love with him. Unfortunately, because she is either the moon or can only come out at night, she only sees him when he’s sleeping. But that’s okay! Some variants of the myth have it so that she prefers when he’s sleeping! Anyways, she goes to Zeus, and asks for him to be immortal. Depending on the variant of the myth, he either needs to keep him asleep so he remains immortal, or she asks for him to remain asleep. Either way, she marries him, and has 50 children with him. While he’s asleep. Selene, please. That’s… that’s not consensual Selene.

So, when Selene’s myths were going to be combined with Selene’s, this one has never really fit. Diana, the Roman equivalent, does have the Endymion myth attached to her as well, but again, it doesn’t really work with the rest of Artemis’ (or Diana’s) myths. This one sticks out as basically Selene’s myth, which was awkwardly tacked onto Artemis.

Now I hope you can see where I’m trying to go with this in terms of fate/grand order.

I feel like FGO wanted to incorporate Orion, because he’s a famous Greek archer. And perhaps they didn’t know how they wanted to design him, or maybe originally, he was going to be a cis-swap, with more moon aesthetic because he is in the stars. It’s difficult to really say. Either way, when the twist that it’s actually Artemis with Orion as a tiny bear was decided upon, and the question of how to characterize Artemis, and Orion, came up. For some reason they were at the ‘we can’t have heterosexual couples in fgo’ part of FGO (thanks Cleopatra and Caesar), so instead of having them be either two good friends who help and have a strong bond with each other, or having them be romantic partners, they decided to have them be the stock ‘husband hates wife who loves him’ trope.

(side note but thank you lost belt for writing good heterosexual couples I love Sigurd/Brynhildr).

This may have come from Artemis’ “myth” with Endymion. Endymion, while probably well known in Japan because of Sailor Moon, probably isn’t strong enough as a hero. So, they took “Artemis’” characterization with Endymion and used it with Orion. Instead of telling the real story.

This is still really shitty on so many levels. The terrible writing. The fact that they took a bond formed on hunting talent and turned it into…that. Artemis’ ‘useless goddess’ personality, because for some reason goddesses can’t be talented and strong in their own rights, and have to be clumsy and ‘useless’. The continued problem with fate where a female character can’t be a little more complex. The fact that even if Artemis, in this interpretation, loves Orion, if you ask, male master, she will totally leave him and will love you. This continues to be a reoccurring problem, even with newer female characters.

Her design. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget the design.

When you picture Artemis, you imagine a muscled, sporty woman, probably around early twenties, with a bow, arrows, and a deer. Her hair is pulled back and her clothes don’t exhibit her from the hunt. She’s not commonly sexualized, partly because of the vow of chastity, but she isn’t in the sense that Athena wasn’t sexualized, for example, or Hestia, another virgin goddess.

The design for Artemis is more similar to Aphrodite with some moon aspects thrown in.

I’m not saying the design is…. bad…I’m just saying it’s bad for her. This is not what you imagine an Artemis, or a Diana, for example. It feels too sexual for someone who, based on the myths, doesn’t exhibit a desire for sex. I do enjoy the bow and the moon aspects, and I think if it was Selene, it would probably work pretty well. But it doesn’t work for an Artemis.

(Also, her skillset doesn’t really work with Artemis either. I digress. This is too long anyways.)

So, what we get is a tacked-on myth and characterization that fits Selene on top of Artemis, for a hero that Selene doesn’t even interact with, Orion. This culminates in Artemis being a ditsy, love-obsessed, useless goddess that keeps Orion in an abusive relationship. However, fgo has given itself, and is slowly working on, a way to fix this.

This is when we put our thinking caps on.

This is mainly from Beast’s Lair from what I gather, so props to them for this. Mainly the idea is that Artemis isn’t a goddess, but a robot. There are a couple of pieces to support this idea. Ishtar, when discussing Orion, says, “I hear that person is a deity of Greece? I guess she is a robot?”

During the most recent summer event, Artemis gets upset when Orion doesn’t want to buy doujins related to robots. Finally, there’s her final art, which includes her pulling a reactor-like device from her hip/thigh.

Whether or not this is true I don’t know and why fate is doing this but anyways.

The second thing is that Orion might be showing up in Lost Belt, and probably Lost Belt 5, which is going to be centered around Greek servants. Spoilers but it’s probably going to include Poseidon, who is Orion’s father, so there could be something to that that they could explore. Furthermore, Lost Belt has done a good job at creating healthy, heterosexual relationships. If this Artemis is a robot, then maybe Orion is the real Orion. Maybe Orion likes this version of Artemis, like how Sigurd likes Brynhildr, despite her strong personality. Maybe it will be revealed that Artemis is really Selene, and the teddy bear is Endymion, trapped. Maybe she acts like this because those who created her didn’t understand her myths.

Anyways. I try to end these by possible improvements but we just have to wait until Lost Belt 5 is released, I guess.

I guess what I’m saying is that FGO has a lot that they can do to make Artemis work. And they don’t want her to be shoved under the rug. So, they should do the good things with her. Continue the trend with healthy heterosexual relationships (and some non-fetishistic homosexual ones, please, too) in Lost Belt, please.

And finally, Artemis deserves better.

#oh and also artemis is a demiromantic asexual #pollux writes #artemis #orion #fate/grand order #fgo #pollyux writes

56 notes · View notes

savedfromsalvation · 5 years

Link

Compiled by Jim Walker

The Biblical view of women

The God of the Bible decrees that woman must submit to the dominance of man.

"The social and legal position of an Israelite wife was inferior to the position a wife occupied in the great countries round about... all the texts show that Israelites wanted mainly sons to perpetuate the family line and fortune, and to preserve the ancestral inheritance... A husband could divorce his wife; women on the other hand could not ask for divorce... the wife called her husband Ba'al or master; she also called him adon or lord; she addressed him, in fact, as a slave addressed his master or subject, his king. The Decalogue includes a man's wife among his possessions... all her life she remains a minor. The wife does not inherit from her husband, nor daughters from their father, except when there is no male heir. A vow made by a girl or married woman needs, to be valid, the consent of the father or husband and if this consent is withheld, the vow is null and void. A man had a right to sell his daughter. Women were excluded from the succession."

-Roland de Vaux, archaeologist and priest

Blue words represent Bible quotes

Burn The Daughter!

"And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." (Leviticus 21:9)

Comment

A priest's daughter, if found to have lost her virginity without marriage, can receive the death penalty, but in the form of incineration.

How many fundamentalist priests who so easily condemn others would carry out the burning of their daughters if they found them "whoring"?

(See also Genesis 38:24)

Cut Off Her Hand!

"When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her." (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)

Comment

A wife would naturally wish to come to the aid of her husband in any way she could if he desperately struggled with an opponent, but the Hebrew law specifically forbade a wife to help her husband in distress if that support consisted of her grabbing the enemy's genitals in an effort to stifle his onslaught. The penalty? Amputation of the hand that fondled the genitals!

Only in an overly obsessive male dominated culture could men create such atrocious laws. As such, the penis ranked sacrosanct in the minds of men (as it still stands today). If a male lost his penis for any reason, he would lose the right to enter a congregation of God. (See Deuteronomy 23:1)

Female Births Get Penalty

"Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean." (Leviticus 12:2)

"But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days." (Leviticus 12:5)

Comment

A woman who gives birth to a child must undergo a purification ritual lest her "uncleanness" contaminate others. This not only entails her isolation, but also payments to priests for the ritual acts. Thus the male dominators had even made birth dirty.

Notice here that if a woman bears a female child, her isolation must last twice as long as that if she gives birth to a male child!

(See also Psalms 51:3-5)

"The Bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of woman's emancipation."

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Female Inferiority

"But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God." (I Corinthians 11:3)

"For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." (I Corinthians 11:8-9)

Comment

The Bible's decree of male supremacy has kept woman inferior to men for centuries. For the religious, it comes as a sad fact that a human must have a penis to receive any respect or power within the Church.

All woman should realize that such phrases in the Bible has justified for many Christian men, not only their supremacy but a reason to sexually abuse women.

(See also I Cor. 14:34-36, I Timothy 2:8-15, I Peter 3:1-7, Ephesians 5:22-24, Col. 3:18-19)

Jesus Will Kill Children

"Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works." (Revelation 2:22-23)

Comment

If anyone thinks Jesus represents only a peaceful loving soul, then think again. For an act of adultery, Jesus would kill innocent children for the adultery of others; hardly fair justice, love, or the concern for human beings.

Some apologists claim that "children" refers to the followers of a cult of Jezebel and not to children birthed from Jezebel. However, if this proved the case, the situation would appear even more horrific, for a cult of believers could number in the dozens, hundreds, thousands, or more. The deaths of these multitude of cult believers (which would include children within its membership) would only make the moralistic problem far more atrocious.

"It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses."

--Flo Kennedy

Kill The Witches!

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Whoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death. He that sacrificeth unto any god, save to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed." (Exodus 22:18-20)

Comment

These verses attest to the power of belief as they led to the slaughter of thousands of defenseless people throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Understand that these verses not only authorize the executions but they explicitly command them.

Verse 18 justified the burning of women in Europe judged as witches. In early America, the Salem witch trials resulted in the deaths of women and men.

Verse 19 refers to bestiality, a sin considered worthy of death. Christians used verse 20 to justify religious wars, Crusades and the slaughter of unbelievers throughout Europe. And the condemnation of heretics still goes on.

Rape My Daughter

"Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go." (Judges 19:24-25)

Comment

Judges 19 describe a father who offers his virgin daughter to a drunken mob. When the father says "unto this man do not so vile a thing," he makes clear that sexual abuse should never befall a man (meaning him), yet a woman, even his own flesh and blood, or a concubine belonging to a perfect stranger, can receive punishment from men to do what they wish. This attitude against women still persists to this day and we have the Bible, in large part, to thank for this attitude against women.

Verse 25 describes the hours long gang rape of the poor concubine. The Bible gives not one hint of compassion or concern for the raped girl. Considering that many people believe that every word in the Bible comes from God, it should not surprise anyone why people still use these verses to justify such atrocities.

Silence The Woman!

"Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (I Timothy 2:11-14)

Comment

Another case where the Bible makes it quite clear that women live for man and must submit to them.

"Man enjoys the great advantage of having a god endorse the code he writes; and since man exercises a sovereign authority over women it is especially fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being. For the Jews, Mohammedans and Christians among others, man is master by divine right; the fear of God will therefore repress any impulse towards revolt in the downtrodden female."

--Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex 1949

(See also I Cor. 11:3-12, I Cor. 14:34-36, I Peter 3:1-7, Ephesians 5:22-24, Col. 3:18-19.)

Stone The Woman!

"If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;" (Deuteronomy 22:22)

"Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 22:24)

Comment

(Read also Deuteronomy 22:13-21)

The discovery of a bride lying with another man can yield disastrous results.

If the wife's parents can produce tokens of the damsel's virginity and spread the cloth before the elders of the city, the husband has to pay the bride's father one hundred silver shekels and he may not send his wife back to her parents as long as she lives. But if the bride's virginity does not satisfy the requirements, the husband can get rid of her by letting the men of the city stone her to death.

From a practical level, these designed laws regulating women's virginity protected economic transactions between men rather than for the sake of morality. (See Virgin's Worth below)

"Virgin" Mistranslation

"Therefore the LORD himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14)

Comment

Perhaps the most famous mistranslation of the Bible, the word virgin here comes from a mistranslated Greek word for virgin.

The original Hebrew version uses the word "almah" which means "young woman" which may or may not refer to a virgin. Of course the context of the original Hebrew Isaiah does not refer to a virgin at all, as scholars the world over agree, but only refers to a young woman.

Later, the author of Matthew 1:22-23, quoted from the mistranslated Isaiah version, and thus the error turned into a world-wide belief.

Today a few of the modern bibles such as the Revised Standard Version, have corrected this mistranslation and have replaced the word virgin with "young woman." (Isaiah 7:14, RSV)

Apparently either God makes errors or the Bible does not come from god, but rather from fallible men.

Virgin's Worth

"If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silvers, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days." (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)

Comment

The belief some get about the Biblical law leads them to think that it represented a great advancement in morality. However, if we look at this law in the social and economic context, it becomes evident that it did not come from any moral ground, but rather to protect men's property rights of their wives and daughters.

This law says that since an unmarried girl, a non-virgin, no longer serves as an economically valuable asset, her father must receive compensation. As for the legal requirement of the man that caused the economic problem, his marriage in that society gave him practically unlimited power over their wives. Such forced marriage can hardly serve as a concern for the poor girl's welfare.

Wives, Submit Yourselves!

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." (Ephesians 5:22-24)

Comment

These words of Paul describe another instance for the calling of the submission of women to their husbands. Note that the all inclusive "everything" could allow husbands to submit their wives to anything, including rape, beatings, slavery, etc.

(See also I Cor. 11:3-12, I Cor. 14:34-36, I Timothy 2:8-15, I Peter 3:1-7, Col. 3:18-19.)

Women Shall Not Speak

"Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." (I Corinthians 14:34-35)

Comment

If one ever wishes to find an explanation of woman's inferiority to men, one only has to look in the Bible. Paul makes clear and delineates the importance of woman recognizing her place, "ad nauseam."

(See also I Cor. 11:3-12, I Timothy 2:8-15, I Peter 3:1-7, Ephesians 5:22-24, Col. 3:18-19.)

"The bible teaches that women brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire... Here is the Bible position of woman briefly summed up."

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women's Sorrow

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Genesis 3:16)

Comment

Not only does the Woman get blamed for the Fall, but God decides to multiply her sorrow, plus, she must submit to her husband like a slave.

Religionists have used this verse as justification and "reason" for the pain and punishment (sin) of childbirth and the sin of mankind. And to this day many Christians, Jews and Islamics place women lower then men in the ranking of Godly order. If ever there existed a more cruel justification against women, it could not have done as much damage as from belief in Genesis 3:16. Because of the belief in the Fall, countless Christians have branded the entire human race as depraved.

Before the advent of male dominated religions, cultures around the world respected women and worshipped goddesses. The Old Testament records the brutal slaughter of surrounding cultures and slowly throughout the centuries, the goddess religions faded away in place of the belief-system of a jealous, scatological, male war god.

"Christianity teaches that the human race is depraved, fallen, and sinful." --D. James Kennedy (Why I Believe, World Publishing, 1980)

Rip Up Pregnant Women

"Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up." (Hosea 13:16)

Comment

Throughout the Bible, God smites those who do not believe in him or those who do not follow his commands. Here we have the grotesque description of infants dashed to pieces and pregnant women ripped up. Whatever rebellious nature an infant's father or mother may have had, it bears no justice to an innocent child or to an unborn fetus who could not possibly have rebelled against God, much less understood him.

Anyone who claims to love such a God, must accept infanticide as one of God's ugly revenges.

(See also Psalms 137:9)

The Wicked Woman

"Give me any plague, but the plague of the heart: and any wickedness, but the wickedness of a woman." (Eccles. 25:13)

"Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die." (Eccles. 25:22)

"If she go not as thou wouldest have her, cut her off from thy flesh, and give her a bill of divorce, and let her go." (Eccles. 25: 26)

"The whoredom of a woman may be known in her haughty looks and eyelids. If thy daughter be shameless, keep her in straitly, lest she abuse herself through overmuch liberty." (Eccles. 26:9-10)

"A silent and loving woman is a gift of the Lord: and there is nothing so much worth as a mind well instructed. A shamefaced and faithful woman is a double grace, and her continent mind cannot be valued." (Eccles. 26:14-15)

"A shameless woman shall be counted as a dog; but she that is shamefaced will fear the Lord." (Eccles.26:25)

"For from garments cometh a moth, and from women wickedness. Better is the churlishness of a man than a courteous woman, a woman, I say, which bringeth shame and reproach." (Eccles. 42:13-14)

Comment

Ecclesiasticus of the Apocrypha does not appear in most Bibles. However, in Catholic Bibles, the inferiority of woman still appears in the verses of Ecclesiasticus. These verses give only a sampling from this book that lowers the status of women.

5 notes · View notes

phati-sari · 6 years

Note

Why do you think Arnav wasn't a virgin before Kushi He was really uncomfortable with touching Lavanya & when he was in USA he was with an indian introvert girl Can you message me the answer in private since you said that you don't like how people react to it

PSA (Phati Sari Announcement): I am not interested in a debate over this issue. These are my views and everyone is entitled to disagree or agree as they wish. This is a deeply personal topic because many people have qualities they want in an ideal partner and virginity is sometimes one of them. My saying that I believe Arnav was not a virgin, then, will seem like a personal attack to some. But this is my space and I’m allowed to hold whatever views I wish. If you respect my opinions and arguments, then that respect should be afforded when you agree with me, and when you disagree. I am free to believe Arnav was not a virgin and free to believe that he was an alien, and whether you agree or disagree is up to you. I’m not pushing a particular view on anyone, and would appreciate it if people didn’t decide to “correct” or “educate” me. All it’s going to do is upset both of us.

A huge huge thank you to @puranijeans for helping me out and keeping me sane today! I love you and appreciate you and I do not deserve you.

Hello @dodo8585 :)

I’ve decided to answer this in public because I think it’s important.

The first thing you need to understand is why I am uncomfortable with answering this question. Most people already know what they believe about Arnav’s virginity. He either was a virgin or he wasn’t. There’s an element of confirmation bias around any conversation we have on this topic – people accept only the evidence that supports their view and ignore evidence that goes against it.

I’m not against having a discussion, but often people expect me to defend my views with no intention of changing their own or even defending their position. I honestly don’t care what others think, I have my opinion and I’m happy with it, but I’ve noted that I’m not afforded the same courtesy by others. Even your question frames the situation as “Why do you hold this view when I noticed this and this?”

The short and simple answer is that I view the serial differently from you. And that’s okay.

The (super) long answer is:

Lavanya’s behaviour

When Lavanya moved into Shantivan she expected to be staying in Arnav’s room with him. He expected the same, and it was only Nani’s insistence that she stay in the guestroom that resulted in the situation we saw. Arnav even objected to it in the first instance.

I understand that people excuse this by saying that Arnav was going for the shock value of the arrangement, but I don’t think there was anything in his demeanor to suggest that. He wanted to have a live-in relationship with his girlfriend and an essential part of live-in is the sharing of private space, which in Shantivan is his bedroom.

Lavanya was confident that she could visit Arnav at night dressed in a nightgown. I realise that a lot of people code this confidence as “slutty”, but that feels very slut-shamy to me. There are very few types of women who invite themselves to a man’s bedroom without being confident that she will be received positively. And Lavanya, some six months into her relationship with ASR, doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who would risk his ire. She keeps a list of everything that annoys him, and late night visits in nightgowns apparently don’t appear on it.

Her immediate assumption that it was Arnav tickling her (when it was really Lakshmi) in the very same episode also indicates a level of intimacy that goes beyond what they’re allowed to show in desi serials. And this is an important for me because many people argue that they never explicitly shown being intimate!

Neither were Shyam and Anjali, and yet no one is arguing that her conception was immaculate.

Lavanya made a habit of touching Arnav. She touched him often, with haq, and so casually that it implied a deeper intimacy. For example, there is a scene where Lavanya places her hand on Arnav’s upper thigh while speaking to him. She does it without fanfare, and neither of them has any reaction to it, which spoke volumes to me. That’s an area of a man’s body one generally doesn’t touch unless there is a high level of familiarity and intimacy.

A lot of these points are ignored by those who believe Arnav was a virgin. These people genuinely seem to believe that Lavanya behaved like this because she was immoral or wanted sex regardless of Arnav’s wishes, and while they are welcome to their views, I don’t agree.

Arnav’s behaviour

You pointed out that he was really uncomfortable with touching Lavanya. I agree that he was, but only after Khushi became a permanent fixture in his life. When she was first introduced, Arnav had absolutely no issue with Lavanya feeding him cake, kissing his cheek, and even went as far as to tell her that she was one of the few people who could waste his time. I think he stopped being comfortable with physical intimacy with Lavanya when he knew he was sexually attracted to Khushi.

As tempting as it is to shunt Lavanya off and decide that Arnav never cared about her, my interpretation is that she meant a great deal to him. He wasn’t in love with her, but he wasn’t in love with anyone and didn’t think he would ever fall in love. By all accounts, he was a dedicated and honest partner. If she wanted more and he couldn’t give it to her, it was because he was incapable of giving more at the time, not because he was purposefully holding back a part of himself for his True Love.

After all, he claimed not to believe in marriage or love when we met him. If he wasn’t waiting for his future wife, and if he wasn’t waiting for his True Love, then why would be remain celibate? I’m not saying that men are sex-hungry monsters or anything, but Arnav has none of the drivers most people have for remaining celibate. He isn’t religious, and so didn’t believe in repercussions around sex before marriage, and he wasn’t “saving himself” for a wife or True Love.

He was twenty-six when we met him, and I just can’t see why he would remain a virgin when he doesn’t seem to have a reason to.

Breaking the bed

One of the most important things that happened before the remarriage is that Arnav’s bed was replaced. The bed they broke was a symbolic and visual negation of any sexual relationships in Arnav’s past. Even if he had slept with anyone else in that bed, it was replaced before he and Khushi were intimate. In a way, it ensured that their marital bed was solely theirs, a bed they broke in made their own after marriage.

Sheetal

I guess the main reason people believe Arnav was a virgin before Khushi is because he was absolutely sure that he hadn’t slept with Sheetal in college and told Khushi as much. I agree that he said he didn’t sleep with Sheetal, but I have a different interpretation of what he meant when he followed it up with the declaration that he wasn’t “that type of guy”.

On one hand, I think that the writers tried to back away from the narrative that Arnav had clearly slept with women before Khushi. Perhaps it was a way to get the conservative audience on board, perhaps it was because they forgot, but I think they established Arnav one way and then tried to fudge it over in the Sheetal track.

On the other hand, I think there is a difference between having sex before marriage and being promiscuous, and that Arnav could have easily meant that he wasn’t the type of guy who slept with any and every girl. He had previously given Khushi a very long list of past flames as a joke, and she seemingly followed it up with the assertion that he’d fathered Aarav. I think Arnav linked the two and tried to reassure her that he wasn’t the kind of guy who had casual hookups.

Values and commitment

The typical audience for the serial is an Indian woman. And for cultural and religious reasons, this audience equates “commitment” with “marriage”. The idea that Arnav could’ve been committed and dedicated to the point of needing a level of emotional intimacy before engaging in physical intimacy seems to be completely alien to a majority of this audience.

He is either seen as someone who was too busy for sexual relationships, someone who went through the motions of a relationship without wanting or needing any aspects of it. Someone who was completely disinterested in women but let them hang around him for Reasons. But his behaviour with Lavanya never suggested this, in my opinion, so I don’t agree with it.

Or he is seen as a man-whore, someone who banged everything in a skirt (including and not limited to prostitutes), because a lack of belief in love and marriage must equate to a lack of respect for women and an inability to commit.

This is the sort of thinking that Khushi fell prey to. Maybe some part of the audience agreed with her when she argued for the merits of marriage to Lavanya but I think Khushi was laughably ignorant there. Because if the only thing preventing a man from trading a woman in for a younger model (or two!) is his marriage vows then there is something fundamentally wrong in that relationship, whether it is called marriage or not. And this serial is full of men to whom it did not matter any way.

I believe Arnav was a dedicated and committed partner, but that his definition of commitment did not include marriage. I believe he didn’t need the label of Husband, didn’t require his partner to be labelled a Wife, and I think it makes sense given his history.

If not love or marriage, what then was the point of Arnav’s relationships with Lavanya and Sheetal (and Lisa of the fur coat)? I’m not suggesting that every relationship needs to be sexual – many of them aren’t and that’s perfectly understandable – but it still defies logic, in my opinion, to assume that Arnav spent the entirety of his adult life engaged in relationships that weren’t satisfying to him in the ways he needed.

Are we suggesting that he was so starved of people fawning over him that he sought out a special person who’d fawn over him in private and at command?

#ipkknd #iss pyaar ko kya naam doon #arshi #khushi kumari gupta #arnav singh raizada #dodo8585 #answered #about: arnav's virginity #analysis #i haz opinions #greatest hits

75 notes · View notes

lastsonlost · 7 years

Link

Feminist male-bashing has come to sound like a cliche — a misogynist caricature. Feminism, its loudest proponents vow, is about fighting for equality. The man-hating label is either a smear or a misunderstanding.

Yet a lot of feminist rhetoric today does cross the line from attacks on sexism into attacks on men, with a strong focus on personal behavior: the way they talk, the way they approach relationships, even the way they sit on public transit. Male faults are stated as sweeping condemnations; objecting to such generalizations is taken as a sign of complicity. Meanwhile, similar indictments of women would be considered grossly misogynistic.

This gender antagonism does nothing to advance the unfinished business of equality. If anything, the fixation on men behaving badly is a distraction from more fundamental issues, such as changes in the workplace to promote work-life balance. What’s more, male-bashing not only sours many men — and quite a few women — on feminism. It often drives them into Internet subcultures where critiques of feminism mix with hostility toward women.

* * *

To some extent, the challenge to men and male power has always been inherent in feminism, from the time the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments catalogued the grievances of “woman” against “man.” However, these grievances were directed more at institutions than at individuals. In “The Feminine Mystique,” which sparked the great feminist revival of the 1960s, Betty Friedan saw men not as villains but as fellow victims burdened by societal pressures and by the expectations of their wives, who depended on them for both livelihood and identity.

That began to change in the 1970s with the rise of radical feminism. This movement, with its slogan, “The personal is political,” brought a wave of female anger at men’s collective and individual transgressions. Authors like Andrea Dworkin and Marilyn French depicted ordinary men as patriarchy’s brutal foot soldiers.

This tendency has reached a troubling new peak, as radical feminist theories that view modern Western civilization as a patriarchy have migrated from academic and activist fringes into mainstream conversation. One reason for this trend is social media, with its instant amplification of personal narratives and its addiction to outrage. We live in a time when jerky male attempts at cyber-flirting can be collected on a blog called Straight White Boys Texting (which carries a disclaimer that prejudice against white males is not racist or sexist, since it is not directed at the oppressed) and then deplored in an article titled “Dear Men: This Is Why Women Have Every Right To Be Disgusted With Us.”

Whatever the reasons for the current cycle of misandry — yes, that’s a word, derided but also adopted for ironic use by many feminists — its existence is quite real. Consider, for example, the number of neologisms that use “man” as a derogatory prefix and that have entered everyday media language: “mansplaining,” “manspreading” and “manterrupting.” Are these primarily male behaviors that justify the gender-specific terms? Not necessarily: The study that is cited as evidence of excessive male interruption of women actually found that the most frequent interrupting is female-on-female (“femterrupting”?).

Sitting with legs apart may be a guy thing, but there is plenty of visualdocumentation of women hogging extra space on public transit with purses, shopping bags and feet on seats. As for “mansplaining,” these days it seems to mean little more than a man making an argument a woman dislikes. Slate correspondent Dahlia Lithwick has admitted using the term to “dismiss anything said by men” in debates about Hillary Clinton. And the day after Clinton claimed the Democratic presidential nomination, political analyst David Axelrod was slammed as a “mansplainer” on Twitter for his observation that it’s a measure of our country’s “great progress” that “many younger women find the nomination of a woman unremarkable.”

Men who gripe about their ex-girlfriends and advise other men to avoid relationships with women are generally relegated to the seedy underbelly of the Internet — various forums and websites in the “manosphere,” recently chronicled by Stephen Marche in the Guardian. Yet a leading voice of the new feminist generation, British writer Laurie Penny, can use her column in the New Statesman to decry ex-boyfriends who “turned mean or walked away” and to urge straight young women to stay single instead of “wasting years in succession on lacklustre, unappreciative, boring child-men.”

Feminist commentary routinely puts the nastiest possible spin on male behavior and motives. Consider the backlash against the concept of the “friend zone,” or being relegated to “friends-only” status when seeking a romantic relationship — usually, though not exclusively, in reference to men being “friend zoned” by women. Since the term has a clear negative connotation, feminist critics say it reflects the assumption that a man is owed sex as a reward for treating a woman well. Yet it’s at least as likely that, as feminist writer Rachel Hills argued in a rare dissent in the Atlantic, the lament of the “friend zoned” is about “loneliness and romantic frustration,” not sexual entitlement.

Things have gotten to a point where casual low-level male-bashing is a constant white noise in the hip progressive online media. Take a recent pieceon Broadly, the women’s section of Vice, titled, “Men Are Creepy, New Study Confirms” — promoted with a Vice Facebook post that said: “Are you a man? You’re probably a creep.” The actual study found something very different: that both men and women overwhelmingly think someone described as “creepy” is more likely to be male. If a study had found that a negative trait was widely associated with women (or gays or Muslims), surely this would have been reported as deplorable stereotyping, not confirmation of reality.

Meanwhile, men can get raked over the (virtual) coals for voicing even the mildest unpopular opinion on something feminism-related. Just recently, YouTube film reviewer James Rolfe, who goes by “Angry Video Game Nerd,” was roundly vilified as a misogynistic “man-baby” in social media and the online press after announcing that he would not watch the female-led “Ghostbusters” remake because of what he felt was its failure to acknowledge the original franchise.

* * *

This matters, and not just because it can make men less sympathetic to the problems women face. At a time when we constantly hear that womanpower is triumphant and “the end of men” — or at least of traditional manhood — is nigh, men face some real problems of their own. Women are now earning about 60 percent of college degrees; male college enrollment after high school has stalled at 61 percent since 1994, even as female enrollment has risen from 63 percent to 71 percent. Predominantly male blue-collar jobs are on the decline, and the rise of single motherhood has left many men disconnected from family life. The old model of marriage and fatherhood has been declared obsolete, but new ideals remain elusive.

Perhaps mocking and berating men is not the way to show that the feminist revolution is about equality and that they have a stake in the new game. The message that feminism can help men, too — by placing equal value on their role as parents or by encouraging better mental health care and reducing male suicide —

is undercut by gender warriors like Australian pundit Clementine Ford, whose “ironic misandry”

often seems entirely non-ironic and who has angrily insisted that feminism stands only for women. Gibes about “male tears” — for instance, on a T-shirt sported by writer Jessica Valenti in a phototaunting her detractors — seem particularly unfortunate if feminists are serious about challenging the stereotype of the stoic, pain-suppressing male. Dismissing concerns about wrongful accusations of rape with a snarky “What about the menz” is not a great way to show that women’s liberation does not infringe on men’s civil rights. And telling men that their proper role in the movement for gender equality is to listen to women and patiently endure anti-male slams is not the best way to win support.

Valenti and others argue that man-hating cannot do any real damage because men have the power and privilege. Few would deny the historical reality of male dominance. But today, when men can lose their jobs because of sexist missteps and be expelled from college over allegations of sexual misconduct, that’s a blinkered view, particularly since the war on male sins can often target individuals’ trivial transgressions. Take the media shaming of former “Harry Potter” podcaster Benjamin Schoen, pilloried for some mildly obnoxious tweets (and then an insufficiently gracious email apology) to a woman who had blocked him on Facebook after an attempt at flirting. While sexist verbal abuse toward women online is widely deplored, there is little sympathy for men who are attacked as misogynists, mocked as “man-babies” or “angry virgins,” or even smeared as sexual predators in Internet disputes.

We are headed into an election with what is likely to be a nearly unprecedented gender gap among voters. To some extent, these numbers reflect policy differences. Yet it is not too far-fetched to see the pro-Donald Trump sentiment as fueled, at least in part, by a backlash against feminism. And while some of this backlash may be of the old-fashioned “put women in their place” variety, there is little doubt that for the younger generation, the perception of feminism as extremist and anti-male plays a role, too.

This theme emerged in Conor Friedersdorf’s recent interview in the Atlanticwith a Trump supporter, a college-educated, 22-year-old resident of San Francisco who considers himself a feminist and expects his career to take a back seat to that of his higher-earning fiancee — but who also complains about being “shamed” as a white man and voices concern about false accusations of rape.

As this campaign shows, our fractured culture is badly in need of healing — from the gender wars as well as other divisions. To be a part of this healing, feminism must include men, not just as supportive allies but as partners, with an equal voice and equal humanity.

Cathy Young is the author of two books, and a frequent contributor to Reason, Newsday, and RealClearPolitics.com. Follow @cathyyoung63

#feminism

451 notes · View notes

of-faunsandyellowflowers · 7 years

Text

One of my biggest issues with organized religion (concerning Christians, Catholics, and Mormons, Jehovah's witnesses mostly) is the idea that in order to be a good person of faith, you must warn people about the devil, or convert people by going to other countries or door to door. It's always bugged me. (Please, if this doesn't obtain to you, then don't read it.) That being said I know I'll get hate from this.

When Christianity and Catholic religions started, they slaughtered the people who fought against them due to those people not wanting to be in said religion. It was mainly pagans, to which, btw, Christianity has stolen the majority of their beliefs and ideas from pagans, only to demonize said gods such as Pan, and using him as the face of the devil. Another interpreted image they used is of basphomet, the three horned god...so forth.

Pan is a god of wilderness is Greek mythology and paganism. He also is a god of beasts, fertility, ext.

Basphomet is both male and female, and from what I have studied, is a representation of fertility as well (but I cannot remember all he stands for).

In the eyes of old Christians, anything that is seen as deformed, dark, perverted, sexual in nature or part animal is depicted to be evil. Because "Jesus" is a human, and the son of their god, which is supposedly the ruler of the world. You must abide to his rule, never question, or you go to Hell.

Hell is viewed as a place where heathens go, fiery depth, torture, and is ruled by the devil. Anyone who commits a sin must be asked upon god to be forgiven, stay faithful and never question. The seven deadly sins in fact are all emotion or actions many humans do today. Such as envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. We ALL do those, so does that mean every single time we do this we MUST ask for forgiveness? Don't you all see something wrong here?

Gays, people who have sex before marriage, the whole nine yards that we all know about.

But to get on with what I wanted to say,

It is completely wrong to tear down another civilization and wipe out people or their faith due to the idea that YOURS is the true word. And this has happened for many many years. The crusades long ago, even the Vietnam war Americans tried to convert Buddhists to a Catholic faith, in which many people DIED.

I don't know many Christians or Catholics that have read their bible, front to cover. I've come accrossed many who claim that if the bible says something that it must be true, yet do not know certain passages.

I'm going to list passages about certain horrendous things, to which many of you may not know IS in the bible.

Rape:

Judges 21:10-24 NLT So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin.” Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan. The Israelite assembly sent a peace delegation to the little remnant of Benjamin who were living at the rock of Rimmon. Then the men of Benjamin returned to their homes, and the four hundred women of Jabesh-gilead who were spared were given to them as wives. But there were not enough women for all of them. The people felt sorry for Benjamin because the LORD had left this gap in the tribes of Israel. So the Israelite leaders asked, “How can we find wives for the few who remain, since all the women of the tribe of Benjamin are dead? There must be heirs for the survivors so that an entire tribe of Israel will not be lost forever. But we cannot give them our own daughters in marriage because we have sworn with a solemn oath that anyone who does this will fall under God’s curse.” Then they thought of the annual festival of the LORD held in Shiloh, between Lebonah and Bethel, along the east side of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem. They told the men of Benjamin who still needed wives, “Go and hide in the vineyards. When the women of Shiloh come out for their dances, rush out from the vineyards, and each of you can take one of them home to be your wife! And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, ‘Please be understanding. Let them have your daughters, for we didn’t find enough wives for them when we dest60royed Jabesh-gilead. And you are not guilty of breaking the vow since you did not give your daughters in marriage to them.'” So the men of Benjamin did as they were told. They kidnapped the women who took part in the celebration and carried them off to the land of their own inheritance. Then they rebuilt their towns and lived in them. So the assembly of Israel departed by tribes and families, and they returned to their own homes.

(Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NAB) If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT) When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.

That's only a few verses and passages about rape, to which are many more. You're bible condones rape. You don't get to pick and choose.

Slavery:

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB) Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT) Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)

Once again, only a few. Slavery is condoned in the bible. And yes, I understand this book is very very old, but you do not get to pick and choose phrases from your bible and yet claim it to be true. You claim it to be true, you claim the whole thing. Why are we following a book that is over a 1000 years old?

Women:

Timothy 2:11-15 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. 1 Corinthians 11:5 (this ones funny since you all love to claim hijabs are bad.) But every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. Ephesians 5:22-33 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, Women are viewed as objects, wives, slaves and servants in the bible. They are below men in EVERY aspect.

Homosexuality:

Leviticus 18:22, "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination."

1Leviticus 20:13, "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltness is upon them."

1 Corinthians 6:9-10, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

Romans 1:26-28, "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. 28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper."

Menstration:

Leviticus 18:19-23 “You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife and so make yourself unclean with her. You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion. These are just some verses to be known. There are plenty of "good"things in the bible,

But overall it is manipulative, vindictive, and downright AWFUL. I know this was a different time, but once again....if you choose to love the bible, but not all the bible, and follow the faith of this, you are not following it's true purpose, which is to blindly follow a very vengeful god.

THIS IS why I reject all bible teachings. Because you shouldn't need the bible to tell you not to commit murder, not to be racist, and to welcome thy neighbor. It's common sense to be a god damn decent human.

So I'll say it again, why are you following a vengeful god, why are you saying that gay, sex, or human emotion is wrong? Why is it a sin to live your life how YOU see fit?

The devil isn't the cause of plagues, hurricanes, illness, death and torment. That's just being a human. There is no good versus evil. We are all good and evil. Things happen to us so we can learn and grow.

To get into how Satan is so very misrepresented in your bible is a whole nother post. Your god is not loving. He is vengeful, jealous, and downright fucking idiotic.

#religion #bible #holy bible

2 notes · View notes

andotherstoriespublishing · 7 years

Text

Spotlight on LGBT+ writers and writing

Following on from our guest post from Claire Browne of Serpent’s Tail on being LGBT+ in publishing, we’re highlighting a few of our favourite recent and forthcoming books written by LGBT+ writers or about LGBT+ themes - some published by us, some from other indie publishers, all necessary.

Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones, tr. Clarissa Botsford (And Other Stories)

When Hana’s dying uncle calls her back from the city to the family home in the Albanian mountains, he tries to marry her to a local man who could run the household. Unable to accept the arranged marriage and determined to remain independent, Hana’s only option is to follow tradition and vow to live the rest of her life in chastity as a man – and so Hana becomes Mark. For a sworn virgin, there is no way back.

Years later, Mark – now a raki-drinking, chain-smoking shepherd – receives an invitation to join a cousin in the US. This may be Mark’s only chance to escape his vow. But what does he know about being an American woman?

Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde (Silver Press - out Oct 2017)

An intense and furious collection of essays and poems by this brilliantly articulate 20th century feminist writer and activist, who used her words and her actions to make visible a black, lesbian feminist identity. As well as the activism, there’s real beauty and clarity here, for instance in the essay ‘Uses of the Erotic’, where she talks about the power of bringing the erotic into everything we do:

‘In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.’

This are true, angry and, most of all, inspiring words we can all take something from in troubling times.

Black Wave by Michelle Tea (And Other Stories)

Grungy and queer, Michelle is a grrrl hung up on a city in riot. It’s San Francisco and it’s 1999. Determined to quell her addictions to heroin, catastrophic romance, and the city itself, she heads south for LA, just as the news hits: in one year the world is Officially Over. The suicides have begun. And it’s here that Black Wave breaks itself open, splitting into every possible story, questioning who has the right to write about whom. People begin to dream the lovers they will never have, while Michelle takes haven in a bookshop, where she contemplates writing about her past (sort of), dating Matt Dillon (kind of), and riding out the end of the world (maybe).

New from Michelle Tea, novelist, essayist, and queer counter-culture icon, Black Wave is a punk feminist masterpiece and a raucously funny read for everyone … except, perhaps, for Scientologists.

Chelsea Girls - Eileen Myles (Serpent’s Tail)

In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms her life into a work of art. Suffused with alcohol, drugs, and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of a young queer artist's life; with raw, flickering stories of awkward love, laughter, and discovery, Chelsea Girls is a funny, cool, and intimate account of how one young female writer managed to shrug off the imposition of a rigid cultural identity.Told in her audacious and singular voice made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls weaves together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s and 80s New York.

The Proof - César Aira tr. Nick Caistor (And Other Stories)

Marcia is sixteen, overweight and unhappy. One day, as she’s walking down a Buenos Aires street, she hears a shout: ‘Wannafuck?’ Startled, she turns around and is confronted by two punk girls Lenin and Mao. She’s soon beguiled by them and the possibilities they open up. But the two have little time for a philosophical discussion of love: they need proof of it, and with their own savage logic the duo, calling themselves the Love Commando, hold up a supermarket as the novel climaxes in an unforgettable splatter-fest finale.

Sergio Y. by Alexandre Vidal Porto tr. Alex Ladd (Europa Editions)

Armando is one of the most renowned therapists in São Paulo. One of his patients, a 17-year-old boy by the name of Sergio, abruptly interrupts his course of therapy after a trip to New York. Sergio’s cursory explanation to Armando is that he has finally found his own path to happiness and must pursue it.

For years, without any further news of Sergio, Armando wonders what happened to his patient. He subsequently learns that Sergio is living a happy life in New York and that he is now a woman, Sandra. Not long after this startling discovery, however, Armando is shocked to read about Sandra’s unexpected death. In an attempt to discover the truth about Sergio and Sandra’s life, Armando starts investigating on his own.

Sergio Y. is a unique and moving story about gender, identity, and the search for happiness.

Open Door by Iosi Havilio tr. Beth Fowler (And Other Stories)

When her partner disappears, a young veterinary assistant drifts from the city towards Open Door, a small town in the Pampas named after its psychiatric hospital. Embarking on a new life in the country, she finds herself living with an ageing ranch-hand and courted by an official investigating her partner’s disappearance. She might settle down, although a local girl is also irresistible . . .

This evocative, atmospheric book makes a quiet case for the possibility of finding contentment in unexpected places – and tells it in unexpected ways.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Melville House)

A timely and genre-bending memoir that offers fresh and fierce reflections on motherhood, desire, identity and feminism.

At the centre of The Argonauts is the love story between Maggie Nelson and the artist Harry Dodge, who is fluidly gendered. As Nelson undergoes the transformations of pregnancy, she explores the challenges and complexities of mothering and queer family making.

Writing in the tradition of public intellectuals like Susan Sontag, Nelson uses arresting prose even as she questions the limits of language. The Argonauts is an intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of love, language, and family.

The Alphabet of Birds by SJ Naudé tr. by the author (And Other Stories)

If death comes to a loved one, can we grieve alone? When all around is in ruins, can we confine our lives to one beautiful room constructed out of art, or love, or family ties? And when the words we know prove inadequate, can we turn to the language of birds?

In an arty mansion in Milan’s industrial zone, two men are shown one of the last remaining Futurist noise machines – an Intonarumore – and a painful old truth surfaces. A musician travels to three continents to see her siblings before returning to Johannesburg; her home is plundered every night around her as she composes a requiem. A man follows his male lover from London to Berlin’s clubbing scene and on to a ruined castle in which the lover’s family lives. He is looking for an antidote.

The protagonists in SJ Naudé’s collection are listening out for answers that cannot be expressed. Offering fresh perspectives on gay, expat and artistic subcultures and tackling the pain of loss head on, Naudé’s stories go fearlessly and tenderly to the heart of our experiences of desire, love and death.

London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp (Myriad Editions)

Jack Rose begins his apprenticeship as a rent boy with Alfred Taylor in the 1890s, and finds a life of pleasure and excess leads him to new friendships — most notably with the soon-to-be infamous Oscar Wilde. A century later, David tells his own tale of unashamed decadence while waiting to be released from prison, addressing his story to the lover who betrayed him. Where their paths cross, in the politically sensitive 1950s, the artist Colin Read tentatively explores his sexuality as he draws in preparation for his most ambitious painting yet — ‘London Triptych’.

Rent boys, aristocrats, artists and felons populate this bold debut as Jonathan Kemp skilfully interweaves the lives and loves of three very different men across the decades.

#lgbt lit #reading recommendations #books that made me #pride2017 #indie publishers #audre lorde #eileen myles #maggie nelson #michelle tea

2 notes · View notes

christianlivingtoday-blog · 5 years

Text

Signs of Lingering Unforgiveness

Sometimes unforgiveness lingers on and on, even long after the offence has been committed. People even bear grudges against dead relatives and enemies. It is a dangerous condition!! What are the signs of lingering unforgiveness?

1. Malice

According to Ephesians 4: 31, one of the signs of unforgiveness is malice.

...and evil speaking, be put away from you with all malice.

“Malice” according to the dictionary means, “a desire to harm others”.

When Brother “A” does something against you, and you have the desire to harm or hurt him, that is malice. The desire to harm others shows you that you haven’t forgiven the offender.When you have truly forgiven, you won’t desire to harm the person. Do you think God desires to harm you? Can you imagine what would happen to you if ever God should decide to harm you?

If you are a wife and you have a secret desire to harm or punish your husband, then that is malice. Sometimes wives punish their husbands by denying them sex. Some women cannot “commit” love with their husbands because of something they did. I have heard some women complain, “I can’t bring myself to take off my clothes and do this with him. I’ll go crazy if I have to sleep with him again.”

Once you feel this way, you have not forgiven.

One way you can tell that you have not forgiven, is when you feel uncomfortable at the mention of the offender’s name.At the point when you can say, “Lord, I let him go,” or “God will take care of it,” then malice is gone. When you curse the offender, wish him ill or plan how to hurt him, then malice is still lingering.

You might complain and wonder why people hurt you so often. That is not the point! God expects us to forgive. Malice must go away!

2. Anger

The dictionary defines “anger”as “a strong feeling ofhostility and displeasure”.

I remember one lady came with her husband to the church office. The husband said something which was not exactly complimentary about his wife. She exploded. The hostility was so glaring, and her behaviour was so bad that her husband rebuked her, “Is this the way to talk? Don’t you respect the pastor?” he asked her.

Then I sensed that the strong feelings of hostility between the husband and the wife were because of unforgiveness.

If you have this strong feeling of hostility whenever you see someone who once offended you, then there is some unforgiveness lingering in your heart.

3. Wrath

“Wrath” can also be defined as “extreme anger”.

One sign of the presence of extreme anger is that the person begins to act “wild”.

Once, a man was so angry that he threw all the lunch that had been set before him on the wall. Afterwards, when tempers had cooled down, he had to struggle to clean the stained wall (anger really makes you do some foolish things)!

Extreme anger or wrath is a sign of lingering unforgiveness.

4. Clamour

The dictionary defines “clamour” as “loud abusive language, and loud demands or protests”.

How can you come to church so nicely dressed, looking so sweet and holy, and then go home and quarrel everyday with everyone?

If your next-door neighbour decides to record the string of loud abuses, your pastors would be surprised at your behaviour. I believe that a Christian should not be loud and abusive in any circumstance. Clamour or loud abusive language is a sign of lingering unforgiveness.I know of a Christian church where there was so much disharmony that the pastors fought openly in church. They shouted at each other, and even used tear gas on each other. What a disgrace!

5. Evil speaking or slander

To “slander” is “to say bad things about someone, or to backbite”.

When someone slanders another person, usually what is said about that person is false. Those who slander, often have the intention of destroying another person.People who slander their spouses must be watched very carefully. Slanderous people are often full of bitterness. There may be genuine complaints. But when it is continuous, then such a spouse has a deep-seated problem of unforgiveness.

A husband once complained to me, “Pastor, my wife is very wicked. In fact, she is a witch! If you have ever seen a witch before, you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

I told him, “Then you must have been a wizard to have married her!” I take particular notice of people who say negative things to bring others down.

I have heard pastors speak carelessly and negatively about other ministers. Sometimes these are people with whom they claim to have a good relationship. I take particular notice of such ministers.

From my own experience, I have come to know that, “He who talks to you about others will talk to others about you.”

6. Bitterness

“Bitterness” can be defined as “degenerated unforgiveness”. I define bitterness as a “long-standing degenerated unforgiveness”.

The word “degenerate” is defined as “to pass into a worse state than one which is considered normal or desirable”. Thus, when a situation passes from one stage to a worse state, it can be described as degeneration. Unforgiveness which stays in your heart for a long period of time, degenerates into bitterness. The cardinal sign of bitterness is that it begins to poison other people.The Bible cautions that when bitterness is permitted, it will spill over and defile others.

...lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;

Hebrews 12:15

I know some people who are so filled with hatred for their wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, or other relatives.

A good example of a bitter person is a woman who has been hurt by a man.

The story line is often similar: The man approached you and told you, “I love you honey. You are the sweetest lady I’ve ever known, and I want to love you. When I saw you, my heart moved from the left to the right. I want you to know that if you were on the other side of the Mediterranean, I would swim across just to bring you some ice cream!”

Perhaps he also said, “There is only one pebble I see whenever I walk on the beach and THAT IS YOU!”

You believed it when he told you he had seen many ladies, but that you were different. What you didn’t know was that he had other pebbles on the beach, and that he had told other ladies these same stories.

You were a virgin and wanted to remain so until you got married, but he convinced you to give in to him, with the promise that he would marry you anyway. So he began sleeping with you. You did things you never dreamt of doing with your body. In fact, you also had to commit several abortions because you were not ready for babies.

Then, one day, he lets out the bomb that he cannot marry you after all. So many suitors wanted to marry you at the prime of your youth, but you refused them because of this “sweet talker”. After you turned thirty-eight, most men shied away from you.

Now, you bear this man a grudge. You begin to hate him. Soon, you begin to hate him with a passion. With time, you have come to hate all men.

You could not forgive that man, so you have lumped all men into this category. Your hurt has become a long-standing degenerated type of unforgiveness bitterness.

Sometimes, such people begin to champion women’s causes out of bitterness.They may remain unmarried for the rest of their lives. It can even develop and degenerate further into lesbianism. Lesbians are often bitter women; bitter against men who perhaps hurt them sometime in their lives.

Men can also be bitter against women.I remember a London taxi driver told me of his experience. Because of this experience he had vowed never to marry.

He once had a live-in girlfriend whom he looked after. He took her to school, paid her fees, fed her and gave her everything she wanted for years. If she wanted anything, all she needed to do was to ask. She was almost like a wife. Then at a point, he began to suspect her of infidelity.

So one day, he told her that he was going on a business trip and would return after a week. To be certain that she would believe his story, he asked her to see him off. He went to the Kings Cross Station with her, got on a train and waved goodbye to her. However, at the next stop he got down, took another train and returned into town.

He did not go straight back home, but went to a drinking pub to while away the time till two a.m. Then he went home. When he climbed upstairs and entered the bedroom, here was his “girlfriend-wife”, in his bed with another man. Both of them were stark naked in hisbed. So he threw her out of his flat, naked, and called the police.

After this experience he decided never to get married or to trust any woman. He could not forgive that girl, and he had now extended it to all other women. When such hurt degenerates into hatred, it is bitterness! Beware of becoming bitter after bad experiences! When a bitter person speaks, it affects, influences and poisons others.

Dear friend, as you read this, ask yourself: Am I bitter?

by Dag Heward-Mills

0 notes

thewebofslime · 5 years

Link

A young woman who says financier Jeffrey Epstein and socialite Ghislaine Maxwell kept her as a sex slave also accused a host of high-powered men of being involved in Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring, according to court records unsealed Friday. Virginia Giuffre, who says that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to powerful people for erotic massages and sex, claimed in depositions in 2016 that Maxwell directed her to have sex with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Britain’s Prince Andrew (whom she has accused before), wealthy financier Glenn Dubin, former senator George Mitchell, now-deceased MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, and modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, as well as “another prince,” a "foreign president," a well-known prime minsiter" and the owner of a “large hotel chain” in France. None of the men named in the deposition have been charged with a crime or even sued in civil court in connection with the Epstein case. The deposition represents accuser Giuffre’s allegations, and the court documents unsealed on Friday did not contain any corroboration or further details, though many documents remain sealed. Brunel’s attorney Joe Titone declined to comment. Prince Andrew and Buckingham Palace have previously and vehemently denied Giuffre’s allegations. “Glenn and Eva Dubin are outraged by the allegations in the unsealed court records, which are demonstrably false and defamatory. The Dubins have flight records and other evidence that definitively disprove that any such events occurred," a spokesperson for the Dubin family told The Daily Beast on Friday. KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL Power Couple’s Butler: Teen Told Me of Epstein Island Horror Kate Briquelet, Michael Daly A spokesperson for former Gov. Bill Richardson, Madeleine Mahony, told The Daily Beast on Friday,“These allegations and inferences are completely false. Governor Richardson has never even been contacted by any party regarding this lawsuit. To be clear, in Governor Richardson’s limited interactions with Mr. Epstein, he never saw him in the presence of young or underage girls. Governor Richardson has never been to Mr. Epstein’s residence in the Virgin Islands. Governor Richardson has never met Ms. Giuffre." Mitchell said in a statement to The Daily Beast: “The allegation contained in the released documents is false ... I have never met, spoken with or had any contact with Ms. Giuffre.” He added: “In my contacts with Mr. Epstein I never observed or suspected any inappropriate conduct with underage girls. I only learned of his actions when they were reported in the media related to his prosecution in Florida. We have had no further contact.” The revelation comes after a federal appeals court ordered the release of the sealed documents in a lawsuit that Giuffre filed against Maxwell, the British publishing heiress whom Giuffre says was Epstein’s madam. Maxwell has rejected allegations that she has acted as a procurer for Epstein and denied she facilitated Prince Andrew's acts of sexual abuse and was Epstein’s madam. 1422912 Socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and model Naomi Campbell in 2002. Mark Mainz/Getty Giuffre has long claimed that Epstein kept her as his underage “sex slave” and loaned her out to his famous friends, including Prince Andrew and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. (Dershowitz has repeatedly denied her accusations.) She says Maxwell recruited her into Epstein’s sordid world after spotting her at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach and offering her a chance to learn massage. At the time, Giuffre was only 16 years old. Maxwell hit back at Giuffre and denied the allegations, prompting Giuffre to sue her for defamation. The suit was settled in 2017 on confidential terms. On July 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the summary judgment materials in Giuffre’s 2015 lawsuit to be unsealed—with the first documents released to the public today. HELP US Send The Daily Beast a Tip The Daily Beast In several depositions—excerpts of which were included in the documents unsealed Friday—Giuffre said that Maxwell would send her to have erotic “massages” and sexual encounters with various powerful men—from a hotel owner in France (an incident she places “around the same time that Naomi Campbell had a birthday party”) to politician Richardson to Dubin, a financier who is married to Epstein’s former girlfriend Eva Andersson-Dubin. RELATED IN U.S. NEWS Biggest Bombshells in New Epstein Documents Power Couple’s Butler: Teen Told Me of Epstein Island Horror Dershowitz Claims Unsealed Email Clears Him in Epstein Case In the court documents, Giuffre claims she was sent by Maxwell to have sex with the owner of a large hotel chain, “one time in France … I believe it was around the same time that Naomi Campbell had a birthday party.” She says they had sex “in his own cabana, townhouse thing. It was part of a hotel. Jeffrey was staying there. Ghislaine was staying there.” “I was instructed by Ghislaine to go and give him an erotic massage,” she testified. “She used the words erotic massage?” Maxwell’s lawyer Laura Menninger asks. “No, that’s my word,” Giuffre replies. “The word ‘massage’ is what they would use. That’s their code word.” “Where were you and where was Ms. Maxwell when she directed you to go have sex with Marvin Minsky?” Menninger asks. “I believe it was the U.S. Virgin Islands, Jeff’s—sorry, Jeffrey—Epstein’s island in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” Giuffre says, admitting she can’t remember the year or how old she was at the time. Later, Menninger asks, “Other than Glenn Dubin…Prince Andrew, Jean-Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, another prince, the large hotel chain owner, and Marvin Minsky, is there anyone else that Ghislaine Maxwell directed you to go have sex with?” “I am definitely sure there is,” Giuffre replies. “But can I remember everybody’s name? No…look I’ve given you what I know right now. I’m sorry. This is very hard for me and very frustrating to have to go over this. I don’t—I don’t recall all of the people. There was a large amount of people that I was sent to.” In a separate exchange, Giuffre testifies, “"They instructed me to go to George Mitchell, Jean Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, another prince that I don't know his name. A guy that owns a hotel, a really large hotel chain, I can't remember which hotel it was. Marvin Minksy." “There was, you know, another foreign president, I can’t remember his name. He was Spanish. There's a whole bunch of them that I just—it’s hard for me to remember all of them. you know, I was told to do something by these people constantly, told to—my whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy. Their whole entire lives revolved around sex.” And in a deposition of Giuffre from 2016—in a case brought by Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, lawyers for Epstien's alleged victims, against Alan Dershowitz—Giuffre says she was sexually trafficked to a well-known prime minister, to Prince Andrew, to George Mitchell, and to a man who was introduced as a foreign "prince" on a visit to the south of France. The men named by Virginia Giuffre are all friends or acquaintances of Epstein who moved within his world of power and influence. Dubin and Andersson-Dubin were two of Epstein’s closest friends. Eva, a former Miss Sweden who married Glenn in 1994, was a critical factor in Epstein’s reintroduction to New York high society after the financier’s Florida conviction. The Dubins are fantastically wealthy—Forbes puts their fortune around $2 billion—and Glenn Dubin is a founder of Highbridge Capital, as well as the charitable Robin Hood Foundation (JFK Jr. had a seat on its board). They live in a Fifth Avenue apartment once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and are regulars on the Palm Beach circuit that Epstein once dominated. The accusation against Glenn Dubin is even more disturbing considering that Eva vowed to a probation officer that she was “100% comfortable” with Epstein around her own children, while noting she was aware of his conviction of sex with a minor. Epstein gave money to Eva’s breast cancer charity, and to two organizations linked to one of the Dubin daughters—Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club (the Dubins are also donors) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. Epstein was also an investor in Highbridge in 1998, according to New York Magazine. The Dubins sought to quickly distance themselves from Epstein after his arrest in New York in early July. Through a spokesperson, the couple said that they were “horrified by the new allegations against Jeffrey Epstein” and “had they been aware of the vile and unspeakable conduct described in these new allegations, they would have cut off all ties and certainly never have allowed their children to be in his presence.” (The new allegations against Epstein are almost identical to the Florida allegations, which made major national news in 2006-2009.) Epstein also had longstanding ties with Richardson. The former governor, DNC chairman, and presidential candidate—who also served as President Clinton’s Energy Secretary and UN Ambassador in the late ’90s—was reportedly a guest of honor at Jeffrey Epstein’s secluded Zorro Ranch outside of Stanley, New Mexico, and appears in Epstein’s “little black book” of contacts. Giuffre has previously claimed that Epstein transported her to New Mexico as his underage “sex slave.” Richardson returned $50,000 in campaign donations from Epstein after the financier’s 2007 plea deal in Florida. The former governor has been hit by scandal before. In 2011, he was under investigation by a federal grand jury for possible campaign finance violations for allegedly giving a woman $250,000 in hush money after she threatened him with a sexual harassment suit. (The investigation was closed without any charges.) And in 2009, Richardson withdrew from a Cabinet appointment as President Obama’s Commerce Secretary over allegations of a pay-to-play donor scandal, though he was never charged. Another politician accused by Giuffre is George Mitchell, the former Democratic leader of the Senate and Bill Clinton’s Special Envoy for Northern Ireland (and later President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East). Mitchell built a renowned legacy as a statesman. In a 2003 profile of Epstein for Vanity Fair, the former Senator and Army counterintelligence officer praised Epstein: “He has supported some philanthropic projects of mine and organized a fund-raiser for me once. I would certainly call him a friend and a supporter.” The feeling was mutual, with Epstein regarding Mitchell as “the world’s greatest negotiator.” Dershowitz also claimed in a deposition that Mitchell was Epstein’s Palm Beach house guest. In addition to his political connections, Epstein’s ties to scientists have also been under intense scrutiny since his arrest on sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. The late MIT cognitive scientist and “father of AI” Marvin Minsky was part of a glittering set of academics that Epstein collected as friends. In 2012, as Epstein was trying to rehabilitate his image, he touted his foundation’s sponsorship of an academic conference organized by Minsky. Dershowitz singled out Minsky as someone who had allegedly seen young ladies around Epstein. As he told The Daily Beast, “These people [the young women] were seen not only by me. They were seen by Larry Summers, they were seen by [genetics professor George] Church, they were seen by Marvin Minsky, they were seen by some of the most eminent academics and scholars in the world. There was no hint or suggestion of anything sexual or improper in the presence of these people.” (Minsky died in 2016.) Marvin Minsky is named by a Jeffrey Epstein accuser in newly unsealed court documents. Steamtalks/WikiCommons Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Brunel, whose MC2 agency reps Naomi Campbell and other models, has previously been accused of supplying underage girls to Epstein, which he has denied. The French modeling scout has also long faced accusations that girls were drugged and raped in his employ. He was particularly close to Epstein, according to court records in civil suits against the financier. The subject of a famous 60 Minutes expose on sexual abuse in the modeling industry, Brunel has been linked to the apartments on Manhattan’s East 66th Street where Epstein allegedly housed models; he flew on Epstein’s plane frequently; and he liked to make himself at home at the financier’s Palm Beach mansion, according to testimony from Epstein’s former employees. Epstein allegedly invested $1 million in Brunel’s agency MC2, which victims’ lawyers say was used to import young girls from around the world for Epstein and his pals. (Brunel has denied that Epstein invested in his company.) THE PRINCE AND THE PERV Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Creepy Parties With Prince Andrew Tom Sykes The most high-profile man to be accused by Giuffre is, of course, Britain's Prince Andrew. Andrew—who flew on Epstein’s plane and vacationed with him in Thailand—met the financer through Maxwell. The royal has been fighting allegations for years that he caroused with Giuffre when she was underage. The Duke of York and the palace have vehemently denied Giuffre’s claims. Several years ago, Giuffre told the Mail on Sunday that Epstein loaned her out to the prince and other famous friends for sex, and claimed that she had to report back with potential blackmail material for Epstein. (She said Andrew liked to suck her toes). During her first alleged rendezvous with the prince, Giuffre claimed that Maxwell “asked Andrew how old he thought I was and he guessed 17 and they all kind of laughed about it and Ghislaine made a joke that I was getting too old for Jeffrey. She said, ‘He’ll soon have to trade her in.’” Giuffre also said Andrew participated in an orgy with underage girls on Epstein’s so-called “pedophile island.” (Andrew and Buckingham palace deny these claims.) A 2001 picture of Andrew, with his arm around Giuffre’s waist, surfaced alongside her bombshell story a few years ago. In 2007, another young woman named Johanna Sjoberg told The Daily Mail that Andrew had groped her at a party at Epstein’s mansion. Sjoberg repeated those claims in a videotaped deposition included in the just-unsealed court documents. She said that she sat on Prince Andrew's lap at Epstein's East 71st Street palace, and that Andrew touched her breast after using a puppet to show what he would do on Giuffre's body (with the puppet touching Giuffre's breast). Andrew, known as “Randy Andy” in the British press for his penchant for partying, has previously denied Sjoberg’s claims. “He needed to have three orgasms a day. It was biological, like eating.” In the deposition, Sjoberg said that Maxwell approached her in the winter of 2001 on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic College, offering a job of answering phones, which she did on her first visit to Epstein’s Palm Beach residence. On the second visit, she met a young woman (whom The Daily Beast is not naming), who took Sjoberg up to Epstein’s bedroom. They both massaged Epstein. When he got up from table, she says, the other young woman got on the table naked and showed Sjoberg “moves that he [Epstein] liked.” Sjoberg says she was then massaged by Epstein and the young woman, nude. Sjoberg says Maxwell referred to the young woman as her slave. Maxwell’s job, Sjoberg said, was “to find other girls that would perform massages for him and herself.” Epstein also allegedly told Sjoberg “he needed to have three orgasms a day. It was biological, like eating.” In another deposition included in the unsealed documents, Tony Figueroa, Epstein's former bodyguard, testified that Giuffre told him about threesomes with herself, Maxwell, and Epstein involving “strap-ons,” and claimed that Epstein wanted Giuffre to have sex with Prince Andrew, Maxwell, and “all the other girls.” Maxwell's lawyers hit back hard at Giuffre's claims in the unsealed documents, painting her as a troubled young woman with a history of substance abuse. They attacked her on being mistaken on the date she started working at Mar-a-Lago, and called on former boyfriends who said they didn't remember Giuffre mentioning Maxwell to them (although at least one did say she talking about giving massages to “Jeff”). Maxwell's team also noted that Giuffre received money for her stories that appeared in the British press, and accused her of trying to embellish her claims. Epstein is currently facing sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges in New York. He pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court and is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

#TheWebOfSlime

0 notes