#cw: racism (fictional)

[hyp3rfixation-h3ll]

not to get into discourse mode on here but the recent shit w/ ao3 being once again called out for being run by racists/genocide supporters and seeing so many fucking Absolute Gormless Shitheads blindly defend OTW and going " dOn'T bRiNg FiCtIoNaL PoLiTicS iNtO tHis!!!111!1 " as if they are not immune to propaganda is wild . my siblings in sin , ao3 is literally The Racism Fetish Fanfiction site , and propaganda via fictional work is exactly how racism perpetuates. ao3 and the otw are a part of the problem whether you choose to acknowledge it or not because they contribute to the cycle of violence , fetishisation and colonisation of marginalised groups via complacency (and sometimes even blatant PASSIVE ENCOURAGEMENT) , and then they cover it up by using soft cutesy buzzwords like " anti-censorship " and " free speech " and their dumb ass complex tagging system to appeal to white people , so when Actual Minorities and people affected by the shit they put on there speak up about it they're met with all kinds of bullcrap about "jUsT bLoCk ThE tAg If It'S a PrObLem1111!111" or "YoU'rE jUsT bEiNg a fAnDoM cOp!11!!"

You're a part of the problem if you support ao3 and actively continue to use it & donate to them , especially in the wake of the OTW being actively chockful of zionists who will , ironically , silence those who speak up and rally with Palestine for liberation . And If you decide to take this as me being hostile towards you or trying to " bring fiction into real world issues " , remember that at Any point in time you can go on ao3 for yourself and find thousands and thousands of raceplay fics and other various works that glorify and condone racism , and that the otw and their large userbase (primarily composed of white people!) has a track record of trying to shut up POC when this issue is brought to light .

Idgaf if ao3 is for " anti-censorship " , because there's a difference between anti-censorship and HIDING BEHIND the concept of free speech and the 1st amendment to do and say awful , horrendous things and believe you're above critique , punishment or consequences for it .

tl;dr: fuck ao3, fuck the otw, free palestine, and most importantly: you are NOT and will NEVER be immune to propaganda if you choose to ignore it because it benefits you.

#the captain's rambles #ao3 #archive of our own #racism cw #free palestine #🍉 #otw #ask to tag #also its dumb to request not bringing politics into the topic of ao3 #the concept of anti / pro-censorship Is a political statement #anyways. this isnt even touching on the nasty shit ao3 will let you put on their site about Real People (INCLUDING REAL CHILDREN) #mfs be like “you guys are so worried about fictional kids!11!!” yeah cuz if thats what youre willing to write about fictional kids #then how the Fuck am i supposed to trust Your bitch ass with writing about Real Children in a Normal manner #btw ao3 / otw bootlickers who try n come in here and go ERM ACKSHUALLY will be shot at on sight by my rocket launcher #fiction bleeds into reality and can and DOES influence it you dickless jabronies . that's Literally why The Jaws Effect is a phenomenon #and why racist propaganda (like what the IOF spreads) is so effective #you cannot rally against the oppressor and side with them at the same time because “muh fanfic site” #pick a side or get out you spineless fucks #oh and btw. if you try to equate this with just mindless discourse you're incorrect and undermining the larger issue here #which is Literally #otw and ao3 are built off of racist and arguably white supremacist values and THAT is why they fire people -- #-- for having the oh so heinous opinion of “hey. racism is Bad.” and allow fics that condone racism and fetishise it on their site. #and post. this has been your once in a lifetime tumblr rant from sonic t hedgehog about why white people in fandom more often than not #fucking suck Butt Ass & absolute Balls #im gonna go shower and get some tuna now

[ladondelphi]

As we approach Dracula season again, I want to go over the fact that something’s kinda culturally lost due to how old Dracula is.

Like, when we all think of Victorian England, we think of gothic horror. We think of vampires, spooky things in the night, and a less civilized past.

But the whole POINT of gothic horror was the terror of bringing these things to the modern day. To the Victorians, vampires, spooky things, and a less civilized past was all stuff they had gotten over, and boy wouldn’t it be scary if that stuff popped up in our age of science?

One of the big points of horror in Dracula is that Dracula himself goes undetected for so long because the Big Brain English™ all think vampires aren’t real, while the Romanians that said English perceive as backwards and less civilized actually DO understand what’s up with their good ol’ count.

#cw: victorian racism #yeah the way this book depicts eastern europeans isn't great #that's probably not lost on most modern audiences but honestly a lot of vampire fiction still does this #and don't even get me started on the romani #re: dracula #dracula #dracula daily

[lunarisdeus]

Honestly not surprised actual racism is popping up in loz rpc, again. You attack an extremely talented writer (she has better credentials than you ever will lmao), who is black and biracial, over a fucking headcanon for an interpretation of Twilight Princess Link being black and biracial as well?? Legit asking, are you fucking stupid? You have to be to not see how actually racist you're being. So actually fuck you, hope we find out who you are so we can systematically erase your ass off this rpc. Blackwashing doesn't exist. You sound like flat earthers.

I support writers and artists taking white characters and making them black / poc.

Whoever you are, you are a sad piece of shit. Hope you leave the rpc. Also I rp a dark skinned / poc Fierce Deity (Nihlkahn is dark skinned in canon). There is also another dark skinned Fierce Deity design in this fandom by a very popular artist, so go choke. Hope there's a nice surge of black / poc Links, Zeldas and every other white character in this fandom soon.

#( ooc ─ psa ) #loz rp #tloz rp #racism tw #drama cw #neg tw #Unfollow me if you think blackwashing exists #Unfollow me if you don't support people making their own representation in fictional media #Unfollow me if you're racist

[keicordelle]

The Daily Inconveniences of an Au Ra: Skin Color

Keshet had known, of course, that the people in Eorzea wouldn't look like him. But he'd expected a lack of horns and tails with fur rather than scales. He hadn't expected to find that even the parts of his body that could pass as 'normal' in Eorzea were still different.

Everyone in the West was so pale! He'd been startled enough to see his pale-scaled cousins in his brief sojourn in Kugane, as if the pigment had been bleached away from their horns and scales to leave nothing but a bone-like white in its place. He'd heard the stories about them, of course, the lost children of Azim who had left their homeland to become one with the foreign cultures outside the Steppe, and he couldn't help but wonder if the pale horns were perhaps a sign of their treason. Or maybe they were just a sign of Azim's favor, the sun cruelly blasting away the darkness that ought to be the purview of the Au Ra. (He liked that theory in particular, because it would serve as proof that Magnai and his louts were not, in fact, favored by the sun-god, and he would certainly take a vicious satisfaction in watching the Oronir mooks contend with that realization.)

But at least in Hingashi, there had been a familiarity underscoring that oddity. Pale scales layered onto dusky skin, and even among the Hyur and the Roegadyn, he stood out more for the color of his scales than his skin. In Eorzea, the overwhelming majority of people not only lacked scales and horns, but their skin was bleached as though they had never basked in the blessings of dusk. Hyur, Elezen, Roegadyn, Lalafell, every race seemed to tend towards light tones, and Dusk forbid he see someone with skin of deep red or the midnight blue that was so common amongst the Dotharl. Some of the Roegadyn tended towards green or grey tones, which was a relief even if he couldn't recall a single green-skinned Au Ra. At least they added some variety to the otherwise shockingly ubiquitous cream of the West.

Which was not, of course, to say that he was the only dark-skinned person in all of Eorzea. Meeting Raubahn was a relief - even if he wasn't auri, his skin was nearly the same shade as Keshet's, and that familiarity alone was enough to endear him to the general even before learning of his battle prowess. Carvellain, too, in Limsa, who had skin even darker than his own - and, he later learned, most of the Durendaire line in Ishgard and a handful of the Dzemael. Travelling to Ala Mhigo was like a homecoming, both for the return to the desert and for the people with their dusky brown skin (though the number of blonde haired, blue eyed, and pale skinned Ala Mhigans he knew seemed oddly high for a country with so many darker folks).

He was fairly certain, at least, that it was not the color of his skin that made people wary of him. The horns and scales accomplished that well enough on their own, but no one seemed to treat Carvellain or Raubahn as particularly exotic, or at least not because of their skin. He would almost have said that no one even remarked on such a thing, if not for the way the Gridanian's treated the Duskwight. He hadn't even known of their existence until he ran into one in the markets one day - rather literally. Keshet glanced down, apology already on his tongue, and blinked in surprise at the navy-skinned Elezen before him. "You're not a Wildwood, are you?" His lips moved without his mind directing them, and he could have kicked himself for what slipped past them. Now he was the one drawing too much attention to another's appearance. And judging by the look on the woman's face, she did not take kindly to that.

"What's it to you?" she demanded, glaring at him. A distant part of him was impressed by her nerve - so few strangers were willing to look him in the eyes without a hint of hesitation or caution - but given the whispers he could overhear from the nearby shop owners and the surreptitious looks he now realized were not directed at him but at the woman, he could guess that she was overly used to people reacting poorly to her mere presence.

"I'm sorry," he said, cramming as much earnesty into his tone as he could manage. "I thought you were one of my people at first. I'm not from around here; I've never seen an Elezen who looks like you before."

She seemed mollified by that, her irritation shifting from him to their onlookers as she cast a displeased glance around them. "Not surprising. Like as not, you won't see many more of us either. My kind aren't very welcome around here."

"Oh," he said, following her gaze to an uppity looking man behind him. "Is there anything I-" He turned back around to find she had vanished, lost in the crowds and probably returned to wherever her people came from.

But though she had disappeared like smoke on the wind, the encounter lingered in his mind, and he asked Urianger about it the next time he saw him. His scholarly friend told him all about the other subset of Elezen and the discrimination they faced, which was perhaps not entirely due to the color of their skin but was directly related to it in a way that chafed at Keshet's scales.

Ultimately, there was little enough even someone in his position could do to change the opinions of the people, but he took it upon himself to advocate for the Duskwight from then on in his dealings with Gridania and Ishgard. Of all the features that set him apart, the color his skin was hardly the most notable, but though he couldn't rightly say he could relate to the trials the subterranean Elezen faced, he knew all about people judging him based on his appearance. And maybe, if he was lucky, someone else would look at him and see his otherness amongst the group of pale, white-haired Sharlayans, and feel the slightest bit of comfort to know they weren't alone.

Read the rest of the series on Ao3!

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#ffxiv #au ra #xaela #wol #ffxiv fanfiction #cw racism #fictional racism #but still #I almost didn't post this chapter #but the lack of diversity in XIV really irritates me #I'm not trying to accurately portray what racism here just poking fun at the game for how many blindingly white characters there are #the lyse/minfilia thing in particular really bothers me #but alas #my writing #daily inconveniences #drabble #keshet dotharl #~K

[duskstarshit]

Prejudices.

Summary: Gory is an asshole and Skelita defend Jinafire.

(i dunno how to name this help-)

Ao3 link Here

Skelita was ecstatic, it had been a fantastic, beautiful week!

Last week she had finally confessed to Jinafire and she had accepted her, so now they were both ghoulfriends!

Every day with her, every moment, was fantastic, Skelita felt like they were perfect for each other.

And she was sure that this day would be just as fantastic as the others, that was what she thought while she was waiting for Jinafire in the Creepateria.

Jinafire finished her classes at the same time as her, so Skelita assumed her ghoulfriend was late for some reason, she wasn't worried about it.

If she was honest, what worried her now, was a certain vampire approaching with a dangerous vibe, her bones could feel it.

"Skelita!" Gory Fangtell spoke to her with a suspicious smile. "It's nice to see you here."

"¿Qué chingados... What do you want, Gory?" Skelita tried to camouflage her anger, she was not a fan of Gory, since the vampire bothered almost every monster at school, including her friends, but she was a peaceful ghoul, so she tried to chill out.

"Oh! Can't I celebrate the school's new couple? You and Jinafire are becoming quite popular." Gory sat down on the table, moving closer to the skeleton, who only walked away with a face that said 'I suspect your intentions.'

"... Thanks, I guess?"

"But-"

Si, ahi esta. Skelita thought annoyed. Mas te vale que tus pende- tonterias valgan la pena.

"—are you sure you want a dragon as a ghoulfriend? Would you really like to suffer like this?" Gory spoke with false sympathy.

Skelita just rolled her eyes and decided to go back to her lunch, waiting for the other girl to leave when she saw that Skelita was ignoring her.

"I heard that dragons are dangerous, possessive! That they only see their partners as objects to show off. I don't know about you, but I see that as a horrible relationship to be in." She made her horrible statements with a frightened false tone, Skelita having already learned how false the vampire was.

Minimo Toralei puede llegar a ser amable.

"Besides, their skin feels gross, do you really just want to touch scales?"

As her abuelita taught her, stay calm.

"And her breath, it must be horrible just smell smoke and ashes."

Her?

"You have terrible taste, girl, good luck dealing with a wild animal." She laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.

She apologized to her abuelita in her mind.

Skelita, again, was not a fan of violence, she preferred to talk things out or ignore them, but hearing the other monster talk like that about her ghoulfriend really made her bones shake with anger.

"¡Escuchame bien, pendeja!" Skelita stood up from the table, looking at the vampire with furious eyes. "Te me largas ahora con tus chingaderas racistas a otra parte, porque si te vuelvo a escuchar hablar de mi novia de esa manera, te juro por mis ancestros que me arrancare los huesos y te los metere por donde mas te duele, ¿¡Entendiste!?"

Gory didn't understand anything the skeleton told her, but she was smart enough to know that she should leave the table now.

Which she did, cowardly running to the table where other vampires, knowing who they were friends with, this would be just as cruel and false.

"I've never seen you this angry, you look great but it also worries me." Skelita changed her angry expression to a smile when she heard the voice behind her.

"Jina!" She exclaimed happily, she sat next to her ghoulfriend. "What took you so long?" Now she looked like a completely different monster!

"Ah, you know how Mr. Hackington is like, irritating and terrifying as always." The Chinese dragon smiled, sitting next to her ghoulfriend and kissing where her nose should be.

Skelita smiled in an adorable way at the kiss her ghoulfriend gave her.

"What interests me now, love, is why you were yelling at Gory, I know she is normally a bother, but I've never seen you like this." Jina said, now with a more serious expression.

Skelita shook her head, leaning against Jinafire's chest. "Just racist nonsense, aggressive, possessive dragons, blah."

"Oh." Jinafire sounded worried. "Yes, t-that's... Common, dragons are not exactly the most beloved monsters. Even when Europe and Chinese dragons are so differents, monster still think we are the same, and they say false things about both of us and those that have a grain of truth, other monsters take them out of context to make us look bad."

"Pendejos." Skelita exclaimed.

"It's okay, I'm used to it."

"You shouldn't get used to people who hurt you just for... Existing! That's horrible."

"It's okay, really." Jina laughed, kissing her girlfriend's skull. "Now I have you, and we're at Monster High, monsters being horrible to me is nothing more than Gory and Heath not understanding that I have a ghoulfriend, but i think he's more stupid than evil."

"Besides, I'm used to dealing with aggressive monsters." The Chinese dragon growled, as if she was remembering something.

Skelita noticed it. "Do you want to talk about it? It seems like it's something that distresses you." She spoke with sympathy.

"No, leave it like that, let's start eating... Hey, I haven't told you what happened in Mad Science class today!" With a smile, the Chinese dragon began to eat... Whatever they were given in the Creepateria, Skelita really hoped it was edible.

"Toralei changed the chemicals again, right?" Skelita guessed with a playful tone.

"Yes! Can you believe it?" She gave a big smile. "And it wasn't just that, she also —."

And little by little, the couple delved into a nice conversation, before they were interrupted by the bell, indicating that they had to return to their classes.

"I'll see you after class, I love you." Jinafire kissed Skelita on her skeletal cheek.

"I love you too." She answered her before they both returned to class.

#mh #monster high #monster high gen 1 #skelita calaveras #jinafire long #fiction #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #it was funny to write the mexican insult #i normally dont write that in my fanfiction #cw racism

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

I'm not here to tell you your business, but I think that your instinct that the Truro story needs delicate handling is a good one, and I would encourage you to think about it a bit more before deciding if that's where you want to go with it. I think you want Duck to confront his feelings about diesels, and that's a story worth telling. I'm just not sure Truro is the best vector. I get the sense that you're unsure about the idea and need someone to tell you "you can do better". You can do better!

Mmm, I appreciate the well-intentioned action. But I was not all that specific either about my idea or why I'm hesitating. And therefore I don't know what you mean by "do better."

Right now I only wishing that I had not aired the idea in public so long before I can bring it to completion and polish coz—yeah. The different forms prejudice and complicity can take, and the difficulty in confronting prejudice that's not directed at you in a way that doesn't make it about you... that all makes for a heavy, complicated theme.

That heavy, complicated stuff is exactly the sort of thing storytelling is good for, though.

So, while putting it down is going to be a struggle, and although at some point I'll probably bring on some betas specifically to try their hand at sensitivity and anti-bias reading, I'm not inclined to nix an idea that has so much potential (both in-universe and thematically) just because it's difficult.

#it will also have appropriate tags on it if i get it down in fic form #which maybe i'm gonna need now and in any further mentions of the project blogside #prejudice cw #racism tw #i was *also* hesitant because i'm not eager to spark weird discourse about whether it's Morally Wrong to... characterize real-life vehicles #with serious flaws #but honestly that's been done already #and i am much less concerned about defaming an inanimate object to a couple hundred readers #than i am about getting the finer points of prejudice and anti-prejudice down properly #so yeah i've already put that concern to rest the fictional character can act like many a human does #if i were to demonize CoT as a caricature villain just for drama that's one thing but i want to explore a conflict that i think resonates #with anyone who has been disillusioned by a hero figure irl

[your-good-pal-chevy]

Blood

“The sad truth of my journeys is that I have often had to witness the worst of mankind. War, violence, the very worst kind of bloodshed. I cannot lie, the things that I have seen haunt me even to this day. Despite that, I have also seen some of the best of man. I have seen kindness and love in such a quantity that it soothes even my troubled soul. I only hope that others will experience the same relief, though I know that for many it is only a distant dream.”

Nicolo Ziani, The Journeys of a Wild Youth

Lionel’s lips chafed. It had been two days now without water. His captors had deprived him of the basic necessities - As much, it seemed, as they could manage without depriving him of life itself.

Memories stirred within him. Throughout the two sleepless nights of his capture, he recalled his treatment at his father’s hands. He remembered the many hungry nights when he had been sent to his room without supper, punishment for whatever infraction he had committed during the day.

The ache in his belly was no stranger to him. Lionel greeted it with scornful familiarity.

The Greencloaks often came by the pit they had him in, mocking him with jeers and insults. He didn’t care what they said, but he cared enough to make the effort to avoid whatever they threw at him.

It was growing tiring. He’d hardly been able to get a wink in without someone coming along to lob something at him.

From what the Westerner he’d met in the pit had described, evidently they intended to keep him far longer than a mere two days. They wanted him exhausted and half-dead for some sort of exhibition duel against their leader.

Lionel wondered if Lei had found help after his escape, or whether he’d simply leave Lionel to die. He was surprised to find himself hoping for rescue.

Suddenly, a clamor rose up. Many pairs of feet could be heard approaching the pit. Men were arguing with one another. Lionel prepared himself for the worst.

Men in rags and leather, wearing their distinctive green cloaks, encircled the pit. They had fallen silent, but they stared down at Lionel with hatred in their eyes. For a moment, none of them seemed to move except to palm the hilts of swords and knives.

Eventually, one spoke. He was a burly man with a thick, untamed beard. “You’re in luck, salt-lick.” The venom in his tone was clear. “Seein’ as your friend escaped, you’re next up for the arena.”

His companions began to chuckle at that. The implication was obvious.

“Sir Cobb says it’s no fun if y’can’t even stand up without swayin’ about, so before the evenin’ show we’ll let y’get back on yer feet.”

Sir Michael Cobb. Lionel had heard the name. The villagers back in town had spat after even mentioning the man, as though it were a curse. Leader of the Greencloaks, he had been doing much to terrorize foreign merchants. It was strangling the local commerce. People were getting tired of finding mutilated bodies in the woods.

Apparently, he styled himself a knight. Believed he was doing Vallis a service, accosting random travelers and butchering them into carrion.

Lionel didn’t think he much cared for this Cobb fellow.

With a few more jeers, the Greencloaks finally tossed down a skin of water and half a loaf of bread. The skin was not stoppered and the bread was not wrapped, leaving Lionel to scramble to pick both up from the dirt.

“You have until the evenin’ to get ready, then we’re pullin’ you out of the hole. Best make yer peace with the Goddess, boy.” With a laugh, the lead Greencloak gave a motion and the group began filing away from the pit. Lionel was left alone with his thoughts.

Lionel stared bitterly at the bread and the waterskin. There was scarcely enough present to sate a man who hadn’t been left exposed to the elements without food or water for two days, let alone one who had. And on top of that, Lionel was still bruised and bloody from his capture.

Astonishingly, he found himself calm. He had read about situations like this before. Some medical journal in his father’s library had mentioned what to do in case of starving, and he assumed thirst might be a similar issue.

He ate and drank slowly, fighting himself not to gobble down the dirty bread or chug the water. He wondered briefly if he might get sick later, but he pushed those thoughts from his mind. As soon as he finished, he had to get himself to sleep.

If the Greencloaks held their word, which he doubted they would, he would need every second of rest he could get.

... Hours passed before Lionel was awoken roughly. A ladder had been dropped into the pit and two burly men had pulled him to his feet. His vision swirled as he was directed up the ladder (at knifepoint) and toward what he could only assume was the arena (at swordpoint this time) for the sake of the evening’s entertainment.

Before he left, Lei had told him about Cobb’s practice. Every so often, when the Greencloaks bothered taking prisoners, Cobb would make a show of challenging his captives to duels for his men to watch. Always after they had been starved for several days, always with them armed only with wooden swords. Other prisoners would be made to watch.

Lei had seen two men be killed in this manner, both of them Sylladan merchants. He assumed he would be next, as at the time, there were no other prisoners left to his knowledge. Then Lionel helped him escape.

Now, Lionel found himself pushed into the arena. It was little more than a country fighting pit, a shallow depression in the dirt, surrounded by raised mounds with benches placed around it. The ground was discolored in places, long stained by some substance.

Lionel could guess what had stained it.

Sir Michael Cobb stood at the center, addressing his men. He was ranting some nonsense. He made frequent references to Salters - A less than charitable term for Sylladans. He also made references to how the next challenger, Lionel assumed that meant himself, was a traitor who was working with the Sylladans to undermine Vallite society.

Cobb was a heavyset man, though he had the look of one who had worked for a living. He was clearly aging, his thin brown hair growing white in places. His nose and cheeks were red, though Lionel could not tell if it was from liquor or the sun. His eyes were set deep in his face, forcing him to squint over his cheeks, and they had a wild look in them. Where it seemed many Greencloaks were lean like wild hounds, Cobb had more the appearance of a well-fed bulldog.

Cobb gestured toward Lionel as the young man was forced forward. Lionel held only a waster, a wooden training sword. He saw that in Cobb’s grip was a familiar blade.

It was the Sword of Stars.

“And lo, this man does bear the colors of the great House Durandine! Upon his chest lies the black field and white moon! To think, that even in such a venerable house there lies corruption!” Cobb gestured around to his men, eliciting a chorus of jeers and boos.

“Well,” he cried, “No longer! We humble Bretheren of the Green Cloak shall show this treasonous swine what we think of him!” Once again, Lionel’s sword was leveled at him. “Cur! I challenge thee!”

Lionel scowled. “I don’t suppose we can skip to the formalities?” His voice was hoarse, but he forced the words out. “I’d rather like to get this ‘killing each other’ business over with quickly.”

“Bah!” Cobb once again turned to his men. “And lo, he does not make even the slightest effort to hide his honorless nature! Very well then!”

At Cobb’s word, the Greencloaks behind Lionel pushed him forward sharply. He was nearly knocked off balance, and Cobb immediately made to take advantage of the situation.

His strikes were slow and clumsy. He was a poor swordsman. Lionel thought that perhaps Cobb was even worse than himself. Alas, he realized, his body was stiff and sluggish from his mistreatment.

Lionel struggled to keep his weapon between himself and his enemy. The wooden blade was heavy. Wasters were traditionally heavier than real blades, but that weight could prove beneficial here.

Cobb brought the Sword of Stars down in a heavy overhead swing, and Lionel braced his waster against both hands. Edge caught edge, and the Sword of Stars bit deep into the wood where it stuck fast.

“What the-” Cobb began, interrupted when Lionel lashed out with a sudden kick to his stomach. Cobb reeled and, unfortunately, pulled his weapon free in the process. Lionel made to follow, but the swimming in his head grew worse and he could only stagger forward after Cobb.

“Blasted- Truly no honor!” Cobb spat the words, the spray visible in the evening air. “I’ll kill you!”

“Have I less honor than the man who starved me?” Lionel cocked his head to one side, letting his waster drop down until the point nearly touched the ground.

Another ploy, another bait taken. Cobb charged forward, swinging the Sword of Stars horizontally. Lionel’s waster came up to meet it, knocking the blade up and over Lionel’s head. Stepping forward as Cobb’s inertia carried him closer, Lionel brought the waster down onto the Greencloak’s red nose.

It was a shallow, weak blow. A skilled fighter would have been hardly inconvenienced by it. Michael Cobb was not a skilled fighter, and he reeled again, swinging the Sword of Stars wildly to fend off his opponent.

Lionel backed away and called out. “It’s different, isn’t it?” He presented his waster, taking a more offensive posture, beginning to step toward the retreating Cobb. “It’s different when you’re fighting someone who can fight back, isn’t it?!” His voice began to raise of its own accord. “You couldn’t have known this, but I’ve done most of my fighting with a waster like this. I bet you’ve never even touched a sword as fine as the one in your hands!”

Lionel charged, the heat of combat overtaking him. Greencloaks yelled out in anger as he approached Cobb, the wild look in the old bandit’s eyes replaced with one of panic.

Lionel barely felt it as, in a panicked swing, the tip of the Sword of Stars grazed his face. Scarlet blossomed out from Lionel’s lip and cheek, and in that instant, the world fell away.

Lionel was no longer himself, no longer in that time and place. He was someone else, somewhere else, somewhen else. He was staring at a ledger. The numbers weren’t adding up. He had a wife and children to feed. His vision swirled and this Not-Lionel was somewhere else, grinding his teeth as some foreigner made profits that should have been his. That foreigner had to be responsible, he knew it in his bones, for his own failures. Scenes like this flashed through the Not-Lionel’s mind until, eventually, it all settled on one. Not-Lionel was staring down at a crumpled form. The tan skin of the Sylladan merchant was stained with blood. His eyes looked up at Not-Lionel, unseeing and empty. The merchant’s face was frozen in shock, never to move again.

The Not-Lionel smiled, and the Lionel recoiled. Lionel felt that satisfaction, he felt the relief. And he also knew the truth.

Michael Cobb was little more than a failed merchant whose empire crumbled from his own mismanagement. Rather than face reality, rather than accept the blame of his own mistakes, he had blamed the Other. He hadn’t hated the Sylladan back then, it was merely convenient.

But now, in the now, in the instant where the sword met Lionel’s skin and spilt his blood, Lionel had felt true hatred. Cobb hated Sylladans for crimes that he had imagined. Cobb hated Lionel for what he saw as betraying their nation, betraying Vallis. He had bought so much into the lies that he told himself that he no longer remembered they were even false.

Lionel felt hate, and then, Lionel felt a rage swell within him. The cruelty that he and Goddess knows how many others had been subjected to was born from this simple convenient lie. “Someone else is responsible for my failings.”

Lionel rammed his shoulder into Michael’s chest as hard as he could, sending the bandit sprawling to the ground.

Cobb brought the Sword of Stars up to defend himself when the sword seemed to flash. There was a sound like sizzling meat and Cob began screaming, tossing the blade aside like he’d been bitten.

Looking down, Lionel could see that the flesh of Cobb’s hand had been burned badly somehow. And then he looked to the sword.

He chucked the waster at Cobb, eliciting a satisfying yelp from the injured bandit, and dove for the sword. For his Sword. Greencloaks began to stand up in droves, and Lionel began calculating how many he might cut down before his own death.

And then there was a cry from the main camp. Smoke billowed into the air in thick columns. Lionel realized it then; the forest was ablaze.

And then panic overtook the Greencloaks as the thunder of hooves made itself known.

Lionel smiled. Rescue had arrived.

#creative writing #delonis #cw violence #cw death #cw murder #cw blood #cw torture #cw child abuse mention #cw racism #this is probably a heavy one to read depending on what you consider heavy in internet fiction #this is also a very long one #and probably something im going to rewrite a lot #anyway i dont know if im getting better at fight scenes #this is a very important early fight so i want to make sure i get this right

[firein-thesky]

Why is it that dc such as r@pe, sa, and incest is totally okay to write about and romanticize but y’all draw the line at racism, fat phobia, and homophobia *talking about the writings creators make, not personal beliefs*? Whats the difference between these things? All of them are hurtful and affect people in real life, so why is everybody on here choosing and picking one and not the other? Do writers on here think that they are not comparable or that one is okay to romanticize and the other is going way too far?

Im just genuinely curious as I have seen this topic be brought up again and again, which has made me realize this and Id like to see it from someone else's pov.

hi! there is a lot to answer and unpack here and i have every intention of doing so underneath the cut. forgive me if this gets long, but you’ve asked me 4 very massive questions that i think warrant detail, nuance, and thought. there is a lot i’d like to say here.

that being said, mind the content warnings and protect yourself.

cw: mentions of rape, incest, racism, homophobia, fat phobia, discourse in general

firstly, i am going to choose to give you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you are actually curious in hearing another side and you are not simply looking to stir a pot or pick a fight with beliefs you have no intention of changing or having an open discussion on. your accusatory tone in the first half indicates otherwise and kindly, i am not an idiot. but i want to earnestly talk to you about this and again, will think better of you than you perhaps have indicated you think of me.

secondly, you do not have to censor words like rape in my inbox. that sort of censorship has become wildly popular because of tik tok and other money-hungry social media that also desperately want to silence people. do you know why you have to censor words like that on tik tok? or words like genocide? suicide? racism? 1. so that they can make money and market and push their squeaky clean algorithms but 2. and perhaps worse, so they can silence victims. if social media platforms and capitalism and the systems of powers had it their way, you would never utter these words again—whether to call someone out for justice or to have an open discussion like this one. i encourage you greatly to think critically about this and how you choose to use censorship and why.

now, to your questions.

to preface, i am interpreting this ask as being anti-dark content in fiction as you state that ALL these subjects harm people in real life. or at least, you are being critical of all dark content in fiction and the way writers engage with them, effectively ‘picking and choosing’ which are deemed acceptable and which aren’t, when they are all hurtful. i apologize if that wasn’t your intention/what you believe, but regardless, i’ll endeavor to answer you.

i personally have drawn no lines about dark content nor spoken about any of these topics specifically really, which indicates to me you have a different narrative and/or are coming from more inflammatory arguments that are always circling fandom lately. in the post i most recently reblogged, i spoke mostly of violence. which, of course, all of those things can be. but i didn’t name one of those topics in particular.

regardless, i don’t believe in the censorship of any dark content in art, but rather advocate strongly for critical analysis on a case-by-case basis. in general, i encourage thinking critically about every aspect of the world around you.

i do not believe that rape, incest, and sa are okay to write about or create art about but racism, homophobia, and fat phobia are not. i believe all of those topics are ones that can, should, and will be explored in the safety of art. all to varying degrees of success, earnestness, impact, and intent. you’re right that these are real things, that can hurt people, and the fictional work about them can have impact on our society that is tangible but the actual art or fiction created is not real. and again, this is all to varying degrees on a case-by-case basis.

art and fiction also historically and massively do discuss these dark content topics and have actively swayed the public’s opinion on matters, whether for better or for worse. throwing away all dark content in art and fiction because it is ‘harmful’ is deeply, deeply dangerous and reductive. a lot of art that engages with dark content actually makes very succinct points about it—i think of vladimir nabokov’s lolita or octavia butler’s bloodchild or speak by laurie halse anderson.

this is where we must exorcise critical thinking. some pieces of work will handle dark content poorly—white saviors making art on racism. men making art about a woman’s experiences that (as you are so interested in) romanticize her pain. etc. etc. and some art will handle it’s dark content incredibly and be transformative, perhaps even revolutionary in how we talk, perceive, or acknowledge systems of oppression, violence, and dark content in this world. some dark content in fiction will have damaging beliefs and effects on society, some will not—we must also look at scope for this, at the writer perhaps, the historical moment, their audience etc.

(for example, there is a significant difference in a main stream male writer, writing of a woman’s experience with rape in a published book in a way that makes it sound romanticized, sold to thousands and thousands of general public vs. a woman using fanfic to explore rape, take control of it, or whatever in a fanfic for a small online community where there are warnings on it. indicating she is aware of its potential damage in a way her male counterpart is not…)

but i still believe in dark contents’ existence in art. of course there is differences between all of these topics you brought up, but i don’t think their differences matter in this answer. i believe in their right to be explored in art. i am talking broadly of media/art here, which i think is the more relevant conversation, but i think you are actually more interested in a much smaller scale of people. ie. fandom. ie. mostly marginalized people in small communities online writing and creating dark content.

people will choose and pick which ones they’d like to create art over and which ones they don’t, which ones they read and which ones they don’t. there’s no ‘hard line’ drawn anywhere. and i can’t control it and neither can you. perhaps you think violence is okay to be explored in fanfic, but racism isn’t. someone else will have different preferences. i do not believe in its censorship.

now, let’s move onto your interest in romanticization and what i think you are more pointing to, which is fandom. you are specifically referring to people in fandom who write about rape, incest, etc. and ‘romanticize’ it—ie. they write about it in a way that is a fantasy. it is perhaps supposed to be horny or sexy. so let’s talk about it.

i must remind you that these topics you’ve brought up (rape, incest, sa) being written are fiction and it is (most often) done by someone marginalized who has either experienced this or is in threat of experiencing this under a patriarchy. i assure you, they are aware of its harm. hence the copious warnings in fandom spaces.

if i can be candid, sometimes i think that people forget how systems of oppression work when discussing fandom and whether dark content being created should be allowed or not.

for example, i sometimes think people who are anti-dark content in fandom believe that a woman or afab person writing a fictional fanfic about rape or sexual violence then influences people to go out and rape people or that women actually like it. when the reality, in fandom spaces, is that rape and sexual violence happen frequently under the patriarchy and then these women in fandom write fictional fanfic in response to cope, explore, take control of, etc. etc.

to insinuate that women or afab people (which fandom mostly is) exploring dark content safely in fiction then causes their own oppression and harm or trauma is rather victim-blame-y to me. fandom exploring dark content does not cause these things to happen in our society….these actions (rape, incest, sa) happen in our society or systems of power and fandom reacts to them in their art by exploring it in dark content. do you understand what i’m trying to say?

it’s not a matter of what is ‘okay’ to romanticize and what isn’t. i do not think the romanticization that fandom does with dark content (ie. my kidnapper actually loves me! or this sexual act that i did not consent to…maybe feels good) is not actually romanticizing but coping because of the systems of power that i described above. and this can be coping with anything—shame of sexuality, shame of fantasies, trauma, fear, etc. etc.

as i said in my tags in that post i reblogged and as plato said, dark content in art is a safe place to explore what would otherwise be harmful and dangerous in real life. it is cathartic. potentially even, a purging.

and even if it isn’t all that—maybe it just is trashy fantasy. it is still playing pretend. it is still fiction and in fandom spaces, it is still most likely being created by a marginalized person. and again, even if it isn’t, we don’t get to censor it. we can be critical of it or wary or whatever, but to censor it, is a slippery, slippery slope. do deem some topics as “acceptable” and others as “unacceptable” is dangerous.

just like kids play pretend where they ‘fight’ or ‘kill’ or ‘kidnap’ or ‘shoot’ each other in games of cops and robbers or heroes and villains, they are safely exploring adventure, dark content, fantasy, tragedy, and higher emotions. adults can do the same in fiction and with adult topics like sex.

and at the end of the day, we don’t get to demand the credentials to do so either. we don’t get to censor them or control them and nor should we be allowed to. i cannot stress enough that i encourage you to be critical of censorship or the absolute disgust in dark content and at those (again—often marginalized people) who engage with it in fandom. i believe it is deeply puritanical, conservative, and dangerous.

you don’t have to like dark content or consume it at all and fandom makes it easy not to with all the warnings and tags, but you cannot control others or police them. nor should you want to.

and at the end of the day, i have some questions for you. you don’t have to respond to this, perhaps they’re just things to think about. what is the end goal here? what is the point in harassing, shaming, attacking, criticizing, or interrogating people in fandom spaces who create or support dark content? do you believe that if it is purged from fandom, it will be purged from our society? if you want it purged from society—shouldn’t you start there rather than in the inbox of marginalized writers in fandom? people in fandom did not create rape, incest, and sa nor do they in their exploration of fiction…they are merely reacting to a world that did create it.

i hope at no point i came off as rude to you, as was not my intention. i intended to stand up for myself and respectfully state my opinions and thoughts on this matter. i’m sorry it got long, but also i don’t believe in being brief on such complex matters. i am a writer who engages critically with the world around me and sometimes, things cannot be made into short, snappy answers. sometimes, we must unpack.

genuinely wishing you well.

#i cannot guarantee that i’ll have the time patience or energy to answer every ask like the one above in such detail #going forward #but i do support open discussions and i wanted to be kind to this anon #these are just my 2 cents on all of this #cw: rape #cw: incest #cw: racism #cw: fat phobia #cw: homophobia #discourse

[licncourt]

Is there a specific way to read the vampire chronicles or some books you should skip (I’ve just heard that some aren’t that good but like I’m up for anything)? And what books are focused on Louis and Lestat?

Okay I hope you weren't looking for a short answer to this because there isn't one 😭 Rather than just give my uncontextualized opinion, I'm going to try to explain what makes some (most) of VC so unbelievably terrible in so many people's eyes. There are going to be spoilers for pretty much all the books, but most of it is either incredibly stupid or information that you might want relating to content warnings. I'll list what applies to each book as I go.

I'm assuming you're here from my VC primer post, but if not, I'll link it right here! It gives a bit more detail on my short answer to your main question which is: if you value your sanity, only read the first three. Also a note to read the post I linked at the bottom of it about Anne Rice for context. It will help with understanding the tone this post takes re: the author.

To quickly answer your second question, I am sad to report that Interview with the Vampire is the only book focused on Loustat because after that Anne Rice decided that she hated Louis. Their relationship is on and off in the (very, VERY distant) background until they finally get together permanently towards the end of the series, but it's never the focal point again. She just kept us all on the hook by having one absolutely brain chemistry altering ship moment in a majority of the books (my compilation of those moments here).

Okay, on to specifics:

Interview with the Vampire: a literary classic with incredible character building. I'm assuming we can all agree that IWTV is fantastic and anyone who is reading this because of the show is probably already sold on it. If that's where you're coming from, you might be a bit disappointed by how unsympathetic Lestat can be, but that'll be remedied(ish) later. Lestat is the main character in the series going forward. Enjoy this Louis content because this is pretty much the end of it.

CW: keep in mind that the beginning of the book takes place on a plantation with all that entails; there are some occasional pedophilic and incestuous undertones, but nothing out of place with Gothic horror (it gets so much worse); domestic violence

The Vampire Lestat: this is widely considered to be excellent popular fiction rather than something as elevated as IWTV, but it's a 5-star read according to most fans. Lestat is such a vibrant, exciting character and so much more than the charismatic villain he was in IWTV (the AMC show incorporates a lot of his characterization from this book, as IWTV was originally a stand-alone novel without any real idea of what Lestat would become).

Aside from a (delightful) cameo at the end of the book, Louis is now in Anne Rice Jail and will not be allowed to do anything for the next nine books except be tortured once like a bug for no reason.

CW: a non-consensual turning that is directly analogous to sexual assault; descriptions of child abuse; Lestat, unfortunately, tongue kisses his mom

Queen of the Damned: this is the last book that most fans like. I personally consider it a step down from the first two, but I strongly prefer intimate, character driven stories and QotD is very plotty. It's a fun book, but some cracks start to show in AR's writing that will become a big problem later. Still, it's enjoyable and the ending is very satisfying for the story arc and for the characters. It also contains a fan favorite chapter that follows Daniel, the interviewer, and his insane romance with the vampire Armand.

If you want to be a happy person, turn back now.

CW: non-con blood drinking/vampiric SA; casual racism and pro-imperialism

***CATEGORY 5 EVENT: ANNE RICE FIRES HER EDITOR PERMANENTLY***

The Tale of the Body Thief: this is considered by most fans (obligatory not ALL) to be the worst book in the series simply for how the subject matter is handled. This is the beginning of AR transforming Lestat into something very existentially disturbing without even meaning to. The sympathetic, charming, evil-but-not-really theater kid Lestat is gone without a trace in a way that could be a very insightful look at the aftermath of trauma but is instead deeply insensitive and really upsetting.

Lestat from here on out becomes a hypermasculine caricature that can do no wrong according to the narrative and this has some pretty awful results. There are a few funny moments (like Lestat describing the sensation of peeing for two full pages) and a very cute arc where he adopts a dog, but he also commits two explicit rapes and emotionally abuses/threatens Louis on several occasions with the authorial justification that "men can't help themselves", abuse victims have it coming for setting boundaries, and people who have suffered abuse become abusers. This will be a recurring theme going forward.

Not related to Lestat, but also an Indian man is killed and has his body stolen and inhabited by a white British man in what would be a great metaphor for colonialism if the author thought that was a bad thing.

I am on the last chapter of a 140,000 word fic that I wrote just because I hate TotBT so much and wanted to create a world where it doesn't have to exist. It's one of the most popular VC fics on ao3, and that's not a testament to my writing ability, but rather to how much people hate this book.

CW: graphic SA; domestic violence; insensitivity to the point of racism; the author thinking these things are okay

Memnoch the Devil: not much to say about this. It's AR's ripoff of Dante's Inferno. Lestat meets the devil, goes to hell, drinks the blood of Jesus Christ, loses an eye, vacuum sucks period blood out of a woman's uterus and pad, and then falls into a five year semi-coma on a church floor. Somehow it's still boring. Best I can say is that the Lestat characterization is a bit less heinous than it is in the previous book.

CW: not much here unless you have an issue with period blood guzzling

The Vampire Armand: truly a notorious book in the series, beloved by some, hated by many. There's some good backstory for the character Armand (he first appears in IWTV, likely in season two of the show) and some fun historical fiction, however. Armand begins his story as a twelve year old human child who is rescued from sex slavery by an ancient vampire, Marius (he was namedropped in AMC ep 2).

Over the course of the book, he's physically, mentally, sexually abused by Marius, his teacher and father figure who is, like David, presented as a wise and moral authorit figure. In addition, Armand carries on a sexual relationship with an adult man as a minor. The sex is graphic (it's erotica) and it's really the peak of the pedophilia in VC. Keep in mind that this is coming from an author who publicly defended a child predator and thought that 14 year old kids could consent and should be allowed to have sex with adults.

Of all the later books, this one is the most widely enjoyed because Marius/Armand is a fairly popular ship.

CW: CSA/grooming; statutory rape; explicit adult/minor content; child abuse; cult abuse

Merrick: evil, evil book. AR's giant fuck you to Louis and anyone who likes his character. Lestat is in his devil coma for most of this book, so it's narrated by his newest fledgling and rape victim, David (who I and most others despise. This is the white guy who has an Indian body now). By this point, AR had openly admitted that she didn't like Louis, and she kind of spends this book tormenting and mocking him for no reason.

The titular Merrick (a mixed-race witch drowned in awful racial connotations) mind controls Louis with magic, then forces him to turn her (again, AR has confirmed that this is vampire rape) and be in a relationship. After this, she conjures a "ghost" that may or may not be Louis and Lestat’s dead daughter who tells Louis she always hated him and blamed him for her death. Completely overcome by grief, without Lestat (coma), and having been raped, Louis attempts suicide.

This event and all his mental health issues up to this point are framed by David as being stupid and weak, the sign of a lesser person who should just go and die because they deserve it. It is worth mentioning yet again that David is framed as being in the right and AR had expressed these opinions herself in the past (ie that mental illness is just weakness and you should be able to get over it).

Another fun thing is that Merrick was groomed by David as a child and he spends most of the book wanting her back and also admitting to other acts of pedophilia. So that's fun and great for a character who's supposed to be a voice of reason and moral center.

0/10, despise this book.

CW: sexual assault; grooming; attempted suicide

Blood & Gold: this is Marius' backstory. It is a completely pointless book because we've already heard it twice by this point in the series (and if you read the companion book Pandora, you'll hear it again). The whole thing reads like a Wikipedia page about ancient Rome. Read it if you want I guess.

CW: Marius

Blackwood Farm: this book had...potential? None of that was ever achieved, but I'll at least say that the concept could be worse. Lestat acquires his FIFTH brunette sadboi love interest of the series in this book, so that's kind of funny. Overall though, any positive qualities are overshadowed by weird prose, a really transphobic caricature, and the fact that the main character has shower sex with the ghost of his dead twin brother

CW: transphobia; sibling incest

Blood Canticle: Miss Rice decided to. Get creative with this book. It is a fandom joke. It is the worst prose in existence. It is a literary manic episode. It is truly indescribable. I'm just going to leave this excerpt from ch 1 here and let you imagine an entire book of this

Yes, chapter one is Anne Rice using Lestat as a proxy to berate her readers for not liking Memnoch the Devil. It's also important to me that you know Lestat calls himself "omnisensual" in this book, tries to become a saint, and tells a woman to put some clothes on because men can't control themselves. The word "chuckle" is also written out in the prose in italics like this is ff.net in 2010. The best thing that came of this book is the famous AR Amazon reviews rant (now a beloved VC fandom copypasta). Please read it. It's transcendent.

CW: psychologically devastating prose

Prince Lestat: this is AR's comeback book, published 12 years after Blood Canticle. It's an improvement, but it's still terrible and very, VERY dumb. Lestat has completed his transformation into a macho man male power fantasy for AR and we end with the establishment of a vampire monarchy with Lestat in charge because he slurped and then puked up the brains of the vampire who had the Special Vampire Essence.

Mostly this was an excuse for AR to kill off a bunch of her weird NPCs that she didn't know what to do with. The good news is we get a very cute, official Loustat love confession and for the first time since the first book in the entire series, we get a chapter that's Louis' POV!! It's like 7 pages long but it's the best we're ever going to get.

Other fun thing that happens: Lestat is hooked up to a hormone IV that allows him to fuck (book vampires can't) and the resident scientist vampire steals his cum and creates a petri dish clone of Lestat that is raised in secret for 18 years before being given to Lestat as his son. No, I'm not joking.

CW: uh, brain eating? Insanely unethical human experimentation?

Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis: batshit crazy book. Truly bonkers. There are aliens, Atlantis is real, Lestat has a sentient brain parasite that controls all vampires and talks to him in his mind like the PS5, vampire brain surgery occurs, a choir of child vampires is there, an alien named Derek breastfeeds a disembodied hand until it grows into his clone named Derek Two, and so much more.

The one positive is that after decades of harassment, AR finally lets Louis be a main character again. By this point he has been completely stripped of his personality (I call it the Louis Lobotomy) and exists solely as Lestat's sexy lamp, but whatever. He's there and they're cute together. How they managed to become a healthy, functional couple overnight after two hundred years of drama is never explained.

Lestat makes out with his rapist and talks about how he was asking for it in a particularly nauseating scene, but otherwise it's pretty tame trigger-wise

CW: rape apologia/victim blaming

Blood Communion: we are finally being put out of our misery. The end of the series. This is such a boring book and Lestat’s characterization is completely nonsensical by now. Several main characters are presumed dead for a while and by this point you don't even care. Not even the other characters in the book seem to care. Its only use is to get that sweet sweet Loustat happy ending.

CW: temporary character death

-

Alright, that was a lot of shit-talking a book series I literally run a fandom blog and write hundreds of thousands of words of fic for, but the truth is, fans are here for the characters as they were originally created. The first three books are wonderful, the first two completely masterful and case studies in how character building should be done. There's a reason they've been read and analyzed and fawned over for forty years. What happened to the series is heartbreaking, but it doesn't negate the impact of how it started.

AR may have started spelling her own characters' names wrong and writing a baffling combination of disgusting hot takes and total absurdity, but she created something special in the beginning and I'll always love it and be grateful for what it once was.

I hope that was helpful!

#i'm sorry i didn't proofread this it's 4am #answered #vc #the vampire chronicles #iwtv #loustat #louis de pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt #interview with the vampire

[cavalorn]

Eye of newt and toe of frog: what was really in the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth? (CW: torture, death, historical racism, historical antisemitism, animal and human body parts) Ever since Scott Cunningham first made the following claim in the 1980s, there has been an increasingly widely circulated belief that the ingredients of the Macbeth potion were not grisly animal parts at all but merely herbs and plants, concealed under code names:

“every ingredient (Shakespeare) lists as being in the witches' pot refers to a plant and not the gruesome substance popularly thought”

This proposal had not appeared at all in analyses of Shakespeare prior to Cunningham’s Magical Herbalism: The Secret Craft of the Wise but is now extremely popular, especially the often-cited proposal that ‘eye of newt really meant mustard seed’. Lists of ‘herbal codes’ circulate online, purporting to explain all the different ingredients of the Macbeth potion away as plants. Witches, according to these lists, were grossly misrepresented. Their grisly concoctions were nothing but herbal mixtures.

Code-names and substitutions have certainly played a part in magic in history. Cunningham was familiar with, and makes reference to, the Greek Magical Papyri in which a famous list of secret substitutions is given. For example, ‘the tears of a Hamadryas baboon’ are to be taken to mean ‘dill juice’. The concept of a secret herbal code in which grisly-seeming or mythical ingredients are in fact plants – and only the enlightened few are aware of this - was therefore not a new one.

Was Cunningham correct?

First let’s look at the historical context.

Shakespeare wrote Macbeth under the patronage of James VI of Scotland / I of England. The King was paranoid about witches, was personally present at the interrogation of at least one, and wrote a book called Daemonologie all about them. The depiction of witches in Macbeth would have needed to flatter and support the King’s personal convictions. These fictional witches are therefore evil through and through, and we should be suspicious of any interpretation that seeks to lessen their horror.

Other plays were written around the same time that feature witches in similar roles, such as Jonson’s Masque of Queens and Middleton’s The Witch. We will come to those in due time.

Let��s examine the evidence for Cunningham’s claim, line by line. Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison’d entrails throw.

Right from the start, we have a reference to ‘poison’d entrails’. This immediately tells us that the ingredients are characterised both by being poisonous or venomous in nature and by coming from living creatures. Herbs and plants do not have entrails.

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights hast thirty one

Swelter’d venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

The first ingredient is, quite plainly, a living toad. Specifically, it is a toad that has been secreting venom over a period of time.

The choice of a venom-secreting toad as the very first ingredient cannot have been a coincidence, seeing as the King had himself interrogated an accused witch who had been put to torture, and who had ‘confessed’ to collecting toad’s venom in order to use it in a sorcerous attempt against the King’s life.

The alleged witch’s name was Agnis Thompson, and the King interrogated her in 1591. His account of this is written up in his book, Daemonologie. Agnis Thompson 'confessed' to having taken a black toad, hung it up and collected the venom that dripped from it over three days in an oyster shell. This venom was supposedly intended to be used in a spell that would bewitch the King to death, 'and put him to such extraordinary paines, as if he had beene lying vpon sharp thornes and endes of Needles.'

It is worth noting at this point that the King also recorded his belief that the Devil causes witches to "joint dead corpses, & to make powders thereof" which are then used in spells. This belief can also be found in Daemonologie.

So in the very first ingredient that goes into the cauldron, the live toad steeped in its own venom, we have an immediate disproof of Cunningham’s claim that ‘every ingredient refers to a plant’, along with a clear reference to the King’s own personal lived experience and profound beliefs concerning witches.

It ought to go without saying that King James VI/I was a deluded bigot who had innocent women tortured and put to death in service to his twisted agenda, but let’s say it anyway.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

As with ‘entrails’, the use of the term ‘fillet’ leaves in no doubt that we are dealing with a dismembered living creature. A fenny snake is simply a snake from the fens.

Convoluted attempts have been made to identify ‘fillet of a fenny snake’ as a plant of some kind, but given that Cunningham’s claim has already been disproved, there seems no point in not taking Shakespeare at face value.

Eye of newt

Let’s get this out of the way: there is zero historical evidence that ‘eye of newt’ ever meant ‘mustard seed’. There are no herbals that give this as a name – not that were written prior to the 1980s, at any rate. The obvious conclusion is that it is modern lore created in sympathy with Cunningham’s claim. The ‘mustard seed’ interpretation is all over the Internet, of course, because sites typically copy one another without bothering to look for original sources.

(I would like to say, for the record, that if I assert here that ‘no historical source says X was ever used to mean Y’ and anyone later provides a historical source that unambiguously DOES say X was used to mean Y, I will print this article out and eat it. With mustard.)

Assertions that eye of newt meant mustard seed usually also assert that it was a popular component of witches’ spells. In fact, Macbeth is the one and only historical instance of ‘eye of newt’ appearing as a spell component. It is famous because the play is famous, not because it was in widespread use. The idea that it was a codename for some other ingredient thus appears even less credible.

Other attempts to interpret Shakespeare according to the Cunningham agenda include the rival claim, sometimes seen, that ‘eye of newt’ actually meant a type of daisy. Just as with mustard seed, there is no historical evidence at all to support this.

We should perhaps expect to encounter multiple claims as to the ‘real meaning’ of the potion ingredients, because the point of these claims is not to provide a definitive substitution code that was actually used by practitioners of the past, but simply to repeat the insistence that Shakespeare’s words do not mean what they say.

It is, of course, possible to assert that the enlightened ‘mustard seed’ interpretation has simply been handed down secretly through the years from witch to witch, never once appearing in print until the 1980s when such things could at last be shared openly within the hallowed pages of Llewellyn books. Claims of this sort are unanswerable.

Incidentally, the typical construction for plant names is not ‘B of A’, but ‘A’s B’ or simply ‘AB’, as we find with names like day’s eye (daisy), baby’s breath, coltsfoot and foxglove. If Shakespeare’s spell had run ‘breath of babe and eye of ox / foot of colt and glove of fox’ then we would be having a very different conversation.

Tongue of dog

This ingredient is the first one where the Cunningham agenda might seem credible, if it had not already been disproven by the very first of the ingredients. There is a herb called ‘houndstongue’, Cynoglossum officinale, which is also known as houndstooth and dog’s tongue.

Was Shakespeare referring to a herb here, then, rather than the tongue of a literal dog? Given the anatomical specificity of some of the later ingredients, there is no reason to think so. Animal tongues have played a part in magic for centuries. The Epistula Vulteris (800 CE), for example, proposes putting a vulture’s tongue in your shoe to make enemies adore you. The 16th century Tree of Knowledge instructs the reader to take the tongue of a hoopoe and hang it on the right side of the body, close to the heart, in order to defeat anyone in court.

Wool of bat

Despite this ingredient being relatively innocuous – ‘wool’ could theoretically be harvested from a bat without harming it – attempts have been made to identify this as moss, or even as holly leaves, via a convoluted train of association that links the shape of bat’s wings with the shape of holly. No historical sources give ‘wool of bat’ or ‘bat’s wool’ as a term for a plant.

Toe of frog

Some modern sources assert that ‘toe of frog’ refers to the buttercup, possibly because the Latin name Ranunculus means ‘little frog’. One is left to wonder what part of a buttercup the ‘toe’ might refer to.

Unfortunately, no historical sources give ‘toe of frog’ or ‘frog’s toe’ as a term for a plant.

Adder’s fork

At first sight this looks like another possible point for Cunningham. Adders have forked tongues, and there are several plants that bear the name ‘adder’s tongue’. However, there is no evidence of the use of the specific term ‘adder’s fork’ to refer to a plant.

We would also have to explain why, given that these ingredients are demonstrably not being presented in an overall context of plant symbolism, any of the plants known as adder’s tongue would be intended here over the surface meaning.

Blindworm’s sting

The ‘sting’ (fang) of a venomous snake, or possibly a slow-worm, which are ironically not venomous. This ingredient is probably intended to pair with the last one: they are both from the mouths of reptiles.

No historical sources give ‘blindworm’s sting’ as a term for a plant.

Lizard’s leg

The leg of a lizard.

No historical sources give ‘lizard’s leg’ as a term for a plant.

Owlet’s wing

The wing of an owlet, or baby owl.

No historical sources give ‘owlet’s wing’ as a term for a plant. (I am getting as tired of typing this as you probably are of reading it.)

Scale of dragon

An ingredient that at first glance appears to buttress Cunningham’s claim, because unlike the others it cannot possibly mean what it says. Dragons don’t exist. However, ingredients that use the term ‘dragon’ in their naming do exist, such as ‘dragon’s blood’.

Excitingly, there is a plant known as the dragon’s scale fern, Pyrrosia piloselloides. Should we concede a point to Cunningham here?

Unfortunately, I do not think we can. The dragon’s scale fern is native to Singapore and was first catalogued by Carl Linnaeus in 1763. There seems no way that Shakespeare could possibly have heard of it. Moreover, ‘dragon’s scale’ is merely an English translation of the term ‘sisek naga’. I’ve been unable to find any use of the name ‘dragon’s scale fern’ in English prior to the 20th century.

Did Shakespeare mean a literal dragon, then? Considering his plays involve literal ghosts (e.g. Caesar, Banquo, Hamlet’s father), literal monsters (Caliban) and literal witches with the power to ‘hover through the fog’ and summon storms at sea, we needn’t worry about Shakespeare depicting things which we now know to be impossible. So yes, literal dragon’s scale. Tooth of wolf

It is tempting to identify this ingredient as the herb houndstooth, but the problem there is that houndstooth is the same as houndstongue, for which see ‘tongue of dog’ above.

No historical sources give ‘wolf’s tooth’ as a term for a plant. Witches’ mummy

Either ‘the mummified flesh of dead witches’ or ‘mummified human flesh, as used by witches’. Bizarre though it may sound, mummified human flesh was used for medical purposes before and after Shakespeare’s time. See Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, 1658: ‘The Egyptian mummies which Cambyses spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandize, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.’

No historical sources give ‘witches’ mummy’ as a term for a plant.

Maw and gulf

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark

The mouth and stomach of a shark.

No historical sources give ‘shark’s maw’, ‘shark’s gulf’ or ‘shark’s stomach’ as a term for a plant. There is a succulent called Shark's Mouth Mesemb that is native to South Africa, but given the additional description lavished on the shark – ‘ravin’d, salt-sea’ – it seems pretty obviously a literal shark.

Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark

Here we come to our first actual plant ingredient, which is named as such. Do please note the significance of ‘digg’d i’ the dark’. It’s not just hemlock, it’s hemlock that has been gathered in the ‘proper’ way. Where literal plants are concerned, the time and method of harvesting is magically significant. This suggests that far from everything in the spell being a plant as Cunningham proposed, the actual plants involved are special and treated with particular care.

Liver of blaspheming Jew

Exactly what it appears to be, disgusting historical antisemitism and all.

Gall of goat

The gall (bile) of a goat. (Goat’s gall and honey were used as a treatment for cancer in Saxon times. Who knew?)

No historical sources give ‘goat’s gall’ or ‘goat’s bile’ as a term for a plant.

Slips of yew

Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse

Another actual plant ingredient, named as such. Just as we saw with the hemlock root, when the spell calls for actual plants, the witch is careful to specify the method of gathering. ‘Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse’ means that the yew was peeled off in slivers during an eclipse of the moon.

Nose of Turk

The literal nose of a literal Turkish person. My suspicion is that this mocking of foreign people and their religions was deliberate pandering to the King, almost to the point of pantomime.

Tartar’s lips

See above.

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver’d by a drab

The severed finger of a baby strangled at birth, having been born in a ditch to a sex worker.

There is a Korean succulent called ‘baby’s finger’ but there is no hope whatsoever that Shakespeare could have meant something so innocent.

Tiger’s chaudron

A tiger’s entrails. Derives from the exact same source as ‘cauldron’, so Shakespeare was frankly cheating a bit to use it as a rhyme here.

No historical sources give ‘tiger’s chaudron’ or ‘tiger’s entrails’ as a term for a plant.

A baboon’s blood

Curiously, ‘the blood of a Hamadryas baboon’ is one of the ingredients in the Greek Magical Papyri which is deemed to be a code name. Unfortunately for Cunningham, the ingredient it is a code name for is the blood of a spotted gecko, bringing us all the way back to lizard’s legs and newts’ eyes.

It’s worth noting in passing that Shakespeare wouldn’t have been familiar with the Papyri Graecae Magicae, given that they weren’t rediscovered and republished until the 19th century.

In any case, no historical sources give ‘baboon’s blood’ as a term for a plant.

In summary, of the twenty-three ingredients that go into the witches’ cauldron:

two – yew and hemlock - are unambiguously plants and named as such, with the method of gathering described

two – tongue of dog and adder’s fork – resemble extant folk names for plants, i.e. houndstongue and adder’s tongue

the remaining nineteen are all animal or human body parts, or in the case of the toad, the entire animal

Cunningham does not seem to have considered that disguising innocent herbs with grisly sounding names would have invited trouble rather than deflecting it. For example, even if ‘wool of bat’ had been a codename for moss, no practitioner with an ounce of sense would have referred to it as such when they could just call it moss. Gathering moss might be eccentric; gathering wool of bat could be seen as diabolic.

Some commentators have taken the view that Shakespeare might have been using ironic humour, by listing ingredients that were grisly sounding but also folk names for ordinary plants, intending the audience to pick up on his clever references. The audience would, so the theory claims, have recognised the wordplay because the folk names would have been in common use at the time. This theory falls apart, however, simply because the vast majority of the ingredients were not folk names for plants, and only two can possibly be considered such. Even in their case it is necessary to use some creative interpretation.

There is an additional problem with the ‘secret herbal code’ hypothesis. Cunningham’s core argument is that ‘witches, magicians and occultists wished to keep secret the most powerful of the old magics’, hence the use of codes. And yet, the arguments advanced for which ingredient represents which plant are based on common folk names, not secret lore unavailable to the masses. One cannot draw a link between ‘tongue of dog’ and the herb houndstongue, insist that the parallel is obvious, and then claim that this was a secret code.

To use the Papyri Graecae Magicae as an example of a genuine secret substitution system, ‘a physician’s bone’ is code for ‘sandstone’. There is no conceivable way a person could have inferred the real ingredient from its code name. And yet, the supposed herbal codenames in Macbeth are all based on inference, such as ‘finger of birth-strangled babe’ being taken to mean ‘bloody finger’ and thus ‘foxglove’.

Media magica in other Jacobean dramas

As mentioned above, it was not only Shakespeare who wrote plays in which witches prepared concoctions that contained human or animal body parts. However, only Shakespeare seems to have been singled out for his alleged use of secret herbal code names (which, as we have seen, does not bear scrutiny).

Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Queens was written for King James VI/I and was first performed in February 1609 (three years after Macbeth) in honour of the King’s eldest son, Prince Henry. Like Macbeth, it flatters the King’s obsession with witches by featuring a gathering of them. They discuss the ingredients they have gathered, such as:

I have been all day, looking after

A raven, feeding upon a quarter;

And, soon, as she turn'd her beak to the south,

I snatch'd this morsel out of her mouth.

This hag has snatched a morsel of human corpse that had been cut into four pieces (as in ‘hung, drawn and quartered’) out of the beak of a raven.

Just as in ‘Macbeth’, we then hear of a miscellany of gruesome ingredients, such as the bitten-off sinews of a hanged murderer, the fat of an infant, the brains of a cat, frog’s blood and backbone, owl’s eyes, viper’s skin and basilisk’s blood, none of which can possibly be taken to be codenames for plants. Moreover, we are fortunate to have Jonson’s own notes on his work, in which he laboriously details the sources he used and the practices he intends to depict:

But we apply this examination of ours to the particular use; whereby, also, we take occasion, not only to express the things (as vapours, liquors, herbs, bones, flesh, blood, fat, and such like,

which are called Media magica) but the rites of gathering them, and from what places, reconciling as near as we can, the practice of antiquity to the Neoterick and making it familiar with our popular witchcraft.

Jonson’s representation of plants is of particular interest here. He has one hag declare: And I have been plucking, plants among,

Hemlock, henbane, adder's-tongue,

Night-shade, moon-wort, libbard's-bane;

And twice, by the dogs, was like to be ta'en.

And offers the following explanatory text: Cicuta, hyoscyarnus, ophioglosson, solanum, martagon, doronicum, aconitum are the common venefical ingredients remembered by Paracelsus, Porta, Agrippa, and others; which I make her

to have gathered, as about a castle, church, or some vast building (kept by dogs) among ruins and wild heaps.

Just as with Shakespeare’s mention of hemlock and yew, there is no suggestion of code names.

‘The Witch’ by Thomas Middleton was also performed by the King’s Men. It, too, depicts witches in exactly the way the King expected to see them depicted. For example, Hecate says to Stadlin: [Giving her a dead child's body] Here, take this unbaptised brat.

Boil it well, preserve the fat

The subject of herbs comes up in this graphic exchange: STADLIN

Where be the magic herbs?

HECATE

They're down his throat:

His mouth cramm'd full, his ears and nostrils stuff'd.

I thrust in eleoselinum lately

Aconitum, frondes populeas, and soot-

You may see that, he looks so b[l]ack i' th' mouth-

Then sium, acorum vulgare too,

[Pentaphyllon], the blood of a flitter-mouse,

Solanum somnificum et oleum.

Middleton even brings a comic touch to the loathsomeness of the witches’ concoctions. Almachildes (who has brought the witches toads in marzipan as a gift) is invited to dine with them, and responds

How? Sup with thee? Dost think I'll eat fried rats

And pickled spiders?

Conclusions

The witches depicted by Shakespeare, Jonson and Middleton for the entertainment of King James VI/I are shown employing animal and human body parts as well as plants in their spells, in accordance with the King’s personal beliefs and with the playwrights’ understanding of magic as depicted in such texts as Cornelius Agrippa’sDe Occulta Philosophia.

There is no evidence to support the suggestion that any of the ingredients named are meant to be taken other than literally. They are not codenames for plants. Eye of newt in particular is not a folk name for mustard seed and never has been.

Scott Cunningham’s assertion that “every ingredient (Shakespeare) lists as being in the witches' pot refers to a plant and not the gruesome substance popularly thought” is simply wrong.

Although Cunningham was wrong, and may well have known it, his motivation is understandable. Modern witches are revolted by the idea of body parts being used in spells and wish to distance themselves from it. The ‘herbal code’ interpretation provided a means to recast the horrific Jacobean witch (who did not exist outside of the popular and kingly imagination) as an enlightened and humane herbalist.

But if we allow ourselves to misrepresent Shakespeare in this way, we risk erasing the memory of the real victims: Agnis Thompson, the accused witch who was tortured into ‘confessing’ her use of a toad, and her fellows. Squeamishness must not be allowed to prevent us from confronting the uncomfortable facts of history.

#scott cunningham #witchcraft #shakespeare #macbeth #eye of newt #herbalism #plants and herbs #witch

[johannwolfgangvongoethe]

Some Personal Thoughts on Disability in Enstars

disclaimer: disability is a very broad term that covers many different experiences. i will be talking about physical disabilities since i feel most comfortable doing so/have experience with them. obviously that ignores a Huge part of what disability and chronical illness is and can be. but i think it is beyond my capabilities to talk about experiences i don't know much about.

alt caption: i think ritsu is a good character and im trying to explain to myself why

this is sort of a long post, sorry.

content warnings: i talk about ableism and touch on related topics such as dehumanization and objectification and such below. individual parts of this post have their own cw's.

Enstars Writing, Beloathed

to get this out of the way; it is bad sometimes. this is discussed very often. it doesnt depend on the authors either, in my opinion, some writers will hit you with something really troublesome only to (seemingly accidentally) invent human emotion and compassion in a different story. i dont want to repeat what others have said eloquently but there is a fair amount of imperialist worldviews, xenophobia, just racism really, transphobia, ableism, and copaganda to be found in enstars. this isnt about x character being x thing, but about how it is very noticable when the author of a story holds these worldviews and they bleed into their stories.

so that is not the greatest foundation if youre looking for well-written disabilities. but i wouldnt be reading enstars if i didnt think it genuinely is really really good sometimes. in my opinion, the way disabilities are portrayed is a mixed bag overall but there are some extremely worthwhile bits that touched me quite a lot.

What I personally understand as Well-Written Disability

the way disabled people suffer often goes unnoticed, and disabled people dont have a platform to talk about oppression. a lot of life-changing issues can go unnoticed to those unnaffected by them, even if they are in broad daylight: underfounded or entirely lacking healthcare, the way many healthcare systems are marketbased and ethics are prone to suffer bc of this (even under 'welfare' capitalism), a lack of equal marriage, the inaccessibility of the most basic and necessary facilities, financing care and the dependency on family/loved ones (both a logistical and psychological problem), the huge stigma against disabled people, etc, etc, you get me....

we need to write about people who need care, to keep them in mind at all times. disabled people are not a minority in a mathematical sense but in a hierarchical sense. it is naive to think of them as "a substancial percentage" of populations. as we age, we inevitably all enter the stage of needing care at some point. SO to an extend, i want to claim its a topic that affects every single person. yet disabled people are rarely a central topic anywhere. it is not enough to acknowledge them, we need to plan and think with them in mind. and Write with them in mind, i guess.

SO when i see fiction grapple the topic, i am usually really happy, even if the portrayal isnt ideal. (critical, maybe, but generally speaking very happy) pointing out "badly" written disabled characters is obviously not as easy as calling someone out for uncritically saying "i think eugenics are a good idea!!!" through fiction. people with that sort of facist mindset exist of course but ableism does not end there.

if i were to single out things i see often: i think the most disappointing thing a story can do is to - mention a disability without it ever having an impact on people in the story (-> the disability is basically nonexistent, has no impact or relevance, outside of a theoretical mention) OR - uncritically use a disabled character as a mere plot devise, without granting them the ability to speak (-> dehumanization, a lack of understanding that disabled people are, well, People. they do shit.)

and then of course there is fetishization, both in a literal sense and in an inspiration porn sense and the problem of turning disability into a caricature for jokes (either to other disabled people for their behaviour/body or to create a sense of satisfying superiority by laughing at them) but i feel like those problems explain themselves.

to apply these to very basic examples: i think often something like a robotic sci-fi prosthetic is not a good way to represent a disability because it fails to represent what people go through irl and provides a "magic fix" without repercussions. here is a really good post about it. about the plot device issue... i think it is similar to what people often criticise as "manpain". a disabled person will never appear or speak, they are demoted to being the reason an able-bodied character acts a certain way, like a lifeless accessory. this doesnt always have to be bad, esp if its just a sideplot! but it can get tiring if the audience never gets to learn about other aspects of the unseen character in question and we are only introduced to their suffering.

all of this to talk about gacha idol boys. it is how it is. anyway, this is roughly my mental state when i tackle enstars.

disclaimer 2: i am really just a kogaP. this influences which characters i encounter when reading. there are tons of stories i just never looked at and there is SO MUCh lore i just dont know about. please lemme know if you have additions to stuff i say/understand a character better/have related story recommendations! tl;dr the sakuma bit will be long.

disclaimer 3: i genuinely adore every single character mentioned below and am always excited to learn smth new about them. if i criticize writing, that has nothing to do with that character or their fans. it is about the writers.

the most obvious example. Eichi (content warning for brief mentions of self harm and suicidal ideation)

everything eichi does, he does with the knowledge he will most likely die young. that is a truly dramatic setup.

but before i get back to that thought. it always felt to me like eichis illness(/es) lack a certain sense of conciseness? i do not think you need to put a name and diagnosis on it for it to be relatable and real to readers, tbh!! though to achieve believability, there needs to be a good amount of consistency. what i can recall off the top of my head is the following:

he breaks down/straight up blacks out frequently due to weakness and dizzyness

measures were taken to secure his safety in those situations (the infamous Eichi-kun Gauge as seen in Element)

his stamina is seriously low

he coughs a lot

we saw him cough up blood (Daydream)

he relies on long hospital stays because his health needs to be monitored and/or supported this closely

he stays inside a lot (hinting towards problems with his immune system?)

being healthy enough to eat unhealthy food is a big deal to him, so there are dietary restrictions/it was necessary to precisely control what he eats

his grandfather, who died recently, is considered an outlier for how long he lived (so it IS hereditary)

which..... could be a lot of things...? or, more likely: a culmination of many things at once. if you have headcanons on eichis health, please lemme know!

but in addition to eichis terminal illness, there is a second quality to him that seperates him from most disabled people: he is extremely wealthy. and his wealth is fundamentally important to stories. usually illness and poverty go hand in hand, since incame is tied to the ability to work, which worsens an already bad situation. no matter how limited eichis actions are because of his body, the possibilties offered by his wealth make him a central figure in every overarching plot. in addition to this, his family is well aware of his consitution and he is a patriarchal leading figure to them, the head to their coporate hierachy. eichi is free of the things that usually rid the chronically ill of their safety and power: society (he is an idol and popular) and money (he is the richest boy in japan). if youd ask me, i think that while being chronically ill is of course physically taxing, the worse problem is the economic state it puts you in. eichi simply overcomes this? yes, he is terminally ill, his situation is terrifying. but he has an extraordinary amount of control while he lives. more than a poor yet able-bodied person may have.

his unique circumstances enable him to be incredibly active. this is so fun to read about in my opinion. its a fascinating setup to me. without casting any sort of moral judgement on his actions and the antagonistic role he plays; he is, excuse me for my phrasing here, a disabled power fantasy. (at least to me)

this is a double-edged sword to him. because of who he is as a person (ambitious, cunning, ruthless, diligent)

he lives in relative safety but his strong ambition and financial ability to fulfill his dreams tempt him to go past his limits. because his remaining lifetime is uncertain, the need to preserve the body he is given seems uneconomical (a mindset his upbringing and education as an heir to his family would have enforced imo) he is bound to break down sooner or later anyway. i think he begins to see himself and his body as a tool to achieve his goals and neglects spending time on anything BUT working towards them. so the moment he runs out of goals (like at the end of Element), his reason to "remain" becomes futile.

it really struck with me how he appears in Blackbird - emaciated, pathetic, purposefully neglected because he chose to be neglected and weak in an act of self harm bc denying medical attention (something that couldnt have happened otherwise) wataru has to remind him that no one died and the obvious connection to make is that the eccentrics are physically unharmed and starting over, that they should not be a source of guilt to eichi. but i think this is just as much about eichi himself. he might have expected to die since he left the hospital and overexhausted himself at school and as an idol. he didnt die though. it was a real possibility and seemed likely but he didnt. the neglect and indirect self harm here point out, to me, that he saw the "role" he gave himself as fulfilled at that point and waited to die.

eichi stands over economic or social factors that could ostracize and dehumanize him but funnily enough he manages to do so himself by treating his body as a tool and his happiness as an option that got overshadowed by a need to succeed.

this vulnerability makes him, despite how vague the descriptions of his illness are and despite how unrelatable his wealth is, a very satisfying character imo. it is engaging to me. certain limits are removed for him but he created new ones, specifically because he did not see himself as something worth sustaining once he becomes useless. imo, eichi applied the idea that a lifes worth can be measured in its ability to function in an industry to himself. and spiralled over it, entirely inverting his uncanny amount of bodily autonomy. it is clear how the situation he is in worsens his mental health like that. and how his mental health in turn worsens his physical health. it is inseperable.

i cant really get into !! era eichi because i genuinely just dont... know enough. the fine tradition of having a weekly H-Day stands out, though. after all, eichi has new bigger ambitions and is, once again, inviting his own ruin through overexhaustion. so his friends (the new addition of having friends is essential) had to forcefully make him stop for at least one day a week. that is pretty big. i think.

this is true for many marginalized existences so it of course applies to disabled people: if neither your surroundings nor yourself permit you to feel human and therefore assign your person an inherent worth and lovability... sometimes you need a friend to do so!!! social circles are the best support structure for your health.

The Sakuma Family

(i will get into ritsu and rei seperately later on. there are just a few concepts i want to get out of the way that apply to both of them.)

so... to get a little theoretical; the concept of "disability" relies on the concept of a "normative" human existence. "disability" is an otherness and can therefore easily be seen as a "monstrocity" in the eyes of ignorant people, something that instils fear. (there is a reason why a lot of horror exploits disabled bodies as a source of terror and uses mental hospitals as settings) from an able-bodied point of view it seems "desirable" to be a "normative human", yet the disabled person knows that is not a possibility and knows their worth and place as a human in human spaces. at least ideally. able-bodied people sometimes lack this understanding. there is nothing to be desired about an able body or fixed about a disabled body, beyond what medical care can do for ones quality of life.

if you have read operetta, this is all very familiar;

operetta, chapter 17 and, well, here we are. vampires. a very basic truth about the sakuma family that i hate to see denied is that they are human. there is nothing supernatural about them. they are just disabled. or, to turn the idea around, if one was to assign them vampiristic traits and such... is vampirism not a disability and should be taken seriously as such? if you consider the limits a vampire has while coordinating through their life, is that not... strangely just a disabled experience? (MINUS THE KILLING PEOPLE OBVIOUSLY but much modern fiction is sympathetic towards vampires instead and does not display them as violent)

anyway, to hear it from the horses mouth (the horse is rei):

operetta, chapter 19 the sakuma family is a curious case. their condition is hereditary though the severity varies from person to person. it comes up in many stories but for the most part i am thinking about operetta, resurrection sunday, and devils right now. how did this all start? what made an entire family turn to live as vampires, with blood ceremonies and all that? what bizarre kind of generational trauma is this?

(and, while it does not play a role as important as it did for eichi, they are rich. this is important to mention. many normal experiences just dont apply to them because wealth makes them immune. ... how did the sakumas become this influential anyway.)

for an unspecified but long time, an entire family managed to mentally entirely seperate themselves from the rest of humanity because of their chronical illness. personally, i have no doubt this is the result of a world that othered them first. whether the main motivator at play here is a defensiveness towards a society that cannot understand you or an internal need to turn hardships into an identity that can be carried with pride. it takes a considerable amount of emotional strength and planning for the "hey we are human actually" declaration in operetta to occur.

they are, weirdly, what people mean when they talk about a "toxic anti-recovery mindset". (an expression i struggle with because this sort of rhetoric is often used to discriminate against disabled people who speak up for themselves or ask for accomodations. but that aside) it is an amount of pride that leads to internal self destruction.

of course, as is the case with every single character i write about in this post, a lot of it has to do with aesthetics and being chuuni to sell gacha cards. so we know the reason behind the reason. but it makes for some bizarre in-universe implications.

but in any case, the fact that their identity as false vampires is something they have always carried, that modern society sees as "mystical and sexy" has a hilarious side effect: their disability becomes marketable under the guise of vampirism. it is hard to recover from that.

so again, we have a double-edged sword: to present ones medical condition as a "persona" declares it as a performative act, something that is done to bring joy to an audience. personal detriment is not considered here, since it stops being a part of ones being and starts to become "work". the time and place of ones symptoms has to overlap with the time and place of ones performances. or people will hate you for your uncontrollable illness. however, rei and ritsu are both also able to carry their condition with a sort of playfulness. it is almost something like the act of "reclaiming" when they purposefully choose to larp a little for fun. usually, when a scene mentions their disability in the context of comic relief, they have control over the situation that unfolds and even initiate it and invite others to laugh alongside them. this can be a slippery slope to getting harrassed of course.... but i am rather baffled by the amount of dominance they have in social interactions. so it just reads as a healthy amount of dark humour to me.

this, and the consistent writing of their symptoms, and the ability to easily compare it to real existing illnesses, easly make them my favourite instance of written disabled people in the series. their illness has an impact on their behaviour and it is detrimental! and they are both very human in the way they attempt to cope. there is a certain realism to it. idek.

many people seem to headcanon them with myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is a really good explanation, and i personally want to suggest narcolepsy. the point being, there is room to accurately assign them a realistic relatable and understandable condition, even if nothing is ever named in canon. and of course they are mentioned to have an iron deficiency.

bear with this slightly "out there" theory for a moment: have you or a friend ever tried to get a compensation for your disadvantage at school or uni? it can be really hard to do, if it is possible at all, even if it is something very simple (more time, a slightly different enviroment, the ability to drink or sit, etc) yumenosaki is a school for performance arts, mainly idols. bold statement: it might genuinely be easier to get/explain an accommondation for your "idol quirk" (something that would be actively fostered), than for your disability. not that yumenosaki is very strict or asks for a lot anyway, its just something that has been on my mind.

here is another funny thing i have been thinking about: both of them crave juice, soda, and fruit - sugary yet fresh stuff. i feel like this is not uncommon for people who suffer from excessive tiredness and fatigue, the body subconsciously wishes for some sugar intake to "wake up".

Inventing a Guy to Cope. Rei

funny title aside... he... did that... ? rei is a curious example of how different mostly unrelated traumas can overlap. he had no childhood, thanks to his family that considered him "mature" at a very young age and his early status as a child star. and his bad health is a miserable addition to this. it is quite scary to image how pressured to do right he felt growing up and how that resulted in the fragmented distanced way he views himself; reinventable, and ultimately unknowable. (to others AND himself)

despite his bad health he has always been working and performing "well". he was praised for his remarkable talents but rarely had the chance to stop and patch himself up. whether this was a result of a pushy enviroment or his personality as a people pleaser who cannot show weakness and imperfection is hard to tell. maybe both.

the state he is in in Crossroad is fascinating to me. he all but directly lists the criteria of depression to keito when he attempts to explain his sorrows. he is restless, rowdy, mentions later on that he enrolled in yumenosaki against his familys wishes. he is very much searching for joy and his own identity in the middle of a health emergency. this has to do with the way he was raised, only knowing how to exist for and serve others, how he was made to sell a made-up version of himself, but i also believe it has to do with the fact he has started to exclude himself from his familys traditions and values. he started to cast away the uncertain "monstrosity" existence of his family (as well as the false idolhood others assigned him) and instead embraces humanity as a chronically ill person.

crossroad, i forgor which chapters

this of course marks a starting point of change that later results in him making up the wagahai pronouns persona - something he specifically created with the intention of looking vulnerable and weak. because he yearned to do less, to recover from years of exhaustion.

in a way, i want to say both, the ore pronouns persona and the wagahai pronouns persona, are attempts to cope with expectations he cannot handle physically or mentally. one relies on masking, on appearing stronger than he actually is and therefore invulnerable, and the other relies on exaggerating his weakness, in an attempt to finally let others recognize it. i think as a disabled person, both are performances one has to learn in order to "function" in everyday life, while remaining safe from serious harm (doing badly at ones job or classes, angering others that hold power over your life). since ones circumstances are often hard to grasp for someone who does not share the same illness, there is no choice but to simplify and exaggerate until symptoms become tangible concepts or to just brave through it, at the cost of ones health and future time.

rei in particular, for better or for worse, is incredibly capable when he needs to be and unfortunately that means others will often not take his health seriously because they saw him function just fine the other day. this is a general problem but an obvious offender in that regard is koga, who comments on reis fatigue constantly and loves to create a bit of a high expectations toxic work enviroment (and, to be fair, rei terrorizes him too. kogas hostility towards rei is sometimes ableist but not really rooted in ableism. after all koga is highly aware how performative the wagahai persona can be and is a huge motivational and inspirational factor in reis life. its a whole complex)

!! era holds some positive changes. his mental need to please other people remains a persistent source of trouble for him (and others) but he seems to really let his body recover and lives a more nocturnal life. both kuro and kaoru mention that he looks more healthy (in succession match???? i think??) since he finally stopped enforcing a normal day/night cycle on his body just to comply with social norms. you can indeed be very human even if you break human-made rules.

(additional comment: "becoming human" is of course a theme for each of the eccentrics and not uniquely tied to disability, it very much has to do with the objectification one goes through as a public figure. but this is a post about disability and it really fits in well. so here we go)

Literally Just a Realistic Teenager. Ritsu

ritsu, while not really being among my favourite characters, is my favourite instance of a disabled character in enstars. partly because of his writing and partly because my personal experiences overlap with his so much it sometimes is painful - but always extremely satisfying. just had to get that out.

ritsu is perhaps the most visibly ill. he blacks out and sleeps where he stands, everywhere, without control and often requires other peoples (well, mostly maos) assistance in order to remain safe when this happens. he also repeated a year of school, specifically because of his disability.

he is painfully aware of this. that he looks ill, that he behaves ill, that he is an underachiever compared to others of the same age, even to people younger than him.

ritsu developed unique behaviours to deal with this: he is very dependent and clingy and often asks others to do things for him, unapologetically. that does not mean asking for help doesnt hurt his pride, just that it is the most viable strategy for everyday survival that he ended up with. other than that, he clings more to the vampire identity than rei does. either to defy his older brother or, and this is important imo, because it is the one safety net he has to fall back on that makes him feel "normal" and like he is a regular being. albeit not human. no matter how much others might blame him for his shortcomings or how much he is a failure in the eyes of society, he is very regular for a "vampire". under the logic developed by his family, he is just a child, and the world at large is to blame. it is an easier truth to accept than facing systematic injustice and prejudice in a human world.

the stories i mentioned in another part above aside, i really love what ensemble band does for him; ritsu gets extremely irritated with mao in the prologue, seemingly out of nowhere. his character is allowed to express this sort of anger and to take it out on others, even if it is unjust and misguided. it is not pretty and it isnt good behaviour but it is a very heartfelt emotion to me.

its obvious that he cannot compete with others and that this will always been seen as his personal fault instead of a circumstance he cannot influence. and more than that: no one appreciates the real efforts he makes. for instance, getting himself out of bed in time for classes is difficult for regular teenagers and straight up hellish for ritsu. but he manages to do so a lot later on. instead of acknowledging that this is a real accomplishment on his part and possibly really exhausting and bad for his comfort in the long run, this is seen as doing the bare minimum.

while it is not correct, the malice ritsu sometimes treats others with comes from an comprehensible place. able-bodied ignorance can appear as purposeful slights made by those more privileged than him.

yet he learns to conform. his friends are important to him. knights success is important to him. (thought mental health probably played a role here too and made things even harder prior to his third year of high school) and yet;

seven bridge, chapter 24, but its really just an example i had at hand

the remarks stay the same. his peers still cannot help but brand him as "just lazy", even if they are kind and understanding otherwise and habour no ill intent. so i would like to ask: how long can he keep this up? how hard is this on him?

i dont think i need to explain just how common and hurtful it is to be accused of "laziness". probably the single most irritating comment someone with fatigue will hear every single day.

however, on the flipside, ritsu has perhaps the most people who care for him in comparison with other characters, though they sometimes complain (communication is hard, care is hard, everyone in enstars is very young and i cannot bring myself to see those comments as malice. its a mixture of ignorance and ones own burdens) there is mao, obviously. tsumugi is a very funny example. knights, of course, in particular naru. (at least based on my humble knights readings)

quite interesting how he just decided mao is his caretaker, now and in the future. i shared a few of my thoughts on caretaking here. this is.... a huge responsibility to just put on someones shoulders, to say the least. he shouldnt be doing this but i think it speaks for itself that this is a problem that is on his mind. ITS IS A REALLY IMPORTANT TOPIC TO BRING UP, especially since, the younger you are, the harder it is to get insurance to pay for your care. yes, he is often just teasing mao, but ritsu is looking for ways to get through life. by learning to be as independent as possible, whenever possible. though often you really just find yourself at the mercy of friends and family.

Inter-Sibling Violence

apologies, i will be done with the sakumas soon. i didnt know how to fit this in at the start.

the relationship between rei and ritsu, as people with the same disability who experiences different symptoms and challenges, is worth thinking about. infighting within people of the same disability is very common since experiences can be so different, there are no universal truths or opinions. with different lifestyles come different expectations for what is "normal" and sometimes pressure and social norms can cause someone to shift blame onto others who have no achieved the same things in life.

rei and ritsu are said to have been very close as small children and likely depended on each other a lot. i can see how reis fostering nature and ritsus needy nature developed alongside each other and enforced each other.

time and time again, rei says that he is a "less severe" case, that ritsu has it worse. he jets around the world because he feels forced to do so, when ritsu just wanted emotional support from him to begin with. ritsu stayed alone at home, sheltered and likely caged by their families convictions. but! i want to suggest the following: as much as it hurt him, it was important for reis health to be away from his family, too. i dont think staying there would have been good for him. his absence and the experiences he made away from home were an important catalyst for the positive family development we see in operetta.

of course, rei means well. he cares. he is trying to have a positive impact. yet from ritsus point of view, all of this must feel terribly condescending, especially with how much rei babies him. there is just one year between them. this is barely anything when it comes to sibling inferiority complexes the brain can make up. rei, who is successful and famous and beloved and, most importantly, proclaims to have it "easier than him", is trying to find a cure for him. from ritsus point of view this must be unbearable. their lives are so different when they basically started at the very same point of origin.

more than that, rei shoulders the sketchy blood rituals himself, out of love of course, but if one was more jaded, one could assume he doesnt think ritsu would be able to stomach the responsibility.

you will always compare yourself to your siblings in unhealthy ways but ritsu is just doing this on hard mode, i fear.

HHHRAGAHHHH GHHH ghgghrhgh. Niki

nikis writing is... driving me up a wall sometimes, to say the least. dont get me wrong, i love him. to an extend i understand that his single-mindedness and shallowless has purpose to it. in fact, i adore these character traits. he really seems to be behind four mental barriers at all times, unable to let deeper thoughts touch him, lest they make him succumb to despair. (yet nikis specific flavour of menhera cannot quite shine since... well, he has to stand next to himeru all the time)

the descriptions we get of nikis illness are nonsensical, at least to my knowledge. you could imagine he has something like hyperthyroidism. this never really gets explored though. at some point ENGstars mentions he has "gastroptosis or whatever" (the "or whatever" is part of his dialogue - niki really doesnt give a fuck), which makes no sense at all. weirdly enough, it would even be strangely in character if this was just a misconception.

so, can anyone take niki to a doctor? has this happened and i just wasnt there for it? there is no excuse why no one is considering medical care when it comes to him. except that he often is the butt monkey of jokes the writers want to make and has to stay available for it. more than that; his parents just left him alone like this? as a child? did he get an allowance at least? this cannot be legal, right? i wait for the day this comes up as a topic but i fear it is in vain. (please tell me if it actually did. i dont follow niki that closely) this is an unbelievable thing to do to a healthy child, yet alone one with a severe illness. we are basically looking at denial of assistance.

so many things surrounding nikis story are designed to make him as miserable as possible. i cannot help but feel that he exists purely as comic relief, for funny bickering, and superficial drama. i dont really like that at all, his misery just gets exploited.

EVEN SO... his self-image is actually really fascinating. as rinne likes to point out again and again, niki has no self-worth. he works two jobs, one of which he hates, he constantly gets into dangerous situations, and he will do anything just for some crumbs, and quickly forgets when others treat him badly. and of course, the worst bit:

es!! main story, please dont make me go find it

to some degree, he just accepts this as something he deserves. there is no consideration for his own quality of life, somewhere along the lines it seems like he got conviced just surviving is all he gets. he internalized self-degredation to a dangerous degree and i never see anyone mention this mental affliction specifically as a comorbidity of his disability. to me, there is without a doubt a relation here. sure, maybe he would still fight with this otherwise, just because he had to witness his fathers fall from grace as a child and knows there is a stigma attached to his name now. but i think you can tell it is more than that, from the way he is ashamed to beg (even in a life or death scenario, as seen in hot limit), as if his condition was his own fault.

this circles back to the point i made earlier for eichi; how much nikis life is worth, is measured in his economical value.

of the characters i have spoken of so far, nikis is financially the most accurate to real life. there is no safety net for him, no convenient family wealth.

(at this point it feels important to mention that somehow rinne manages to be the only person entirely aware of the danger and desires to change nikis mindset, YET he is a huge strain on nikis health. i dont know how those two function.)

Just a Lamb. Tatsumi

tatsumis specific trauma is a unique one: while most other characters struggle with conditions they were born with or developed as they grew up, tatsumis injury is the result of strain and violence. those are two different pairs of shoes, though the outcome may be similar. whether it is worse to be born into circumstances you cannot escape or to have to live with having something thrust upon you unfairly is up to personal judgement. pain is not really quantifiable. its just important to keep in mind, i think. under the circumstances tatsumi grew up in, he has his own burdens. it is very easy in many ways to compare and contrast him with eichi. of course this applies to how they used their bodies too: as an expandable resource. they had ideals for their school life (and beyond) that just seemed far more important and they both ended up in hospital because of this. (+ we know tatsumis surroundings were purposefully manipulated to destroy him)

and, of course, tatsumi got attacked later on. he never really talks about it directly but his legs seem to talk for him, in ways.

the story does not quite make it clear whether his occasional weakness and pain are the result of old injuries or entirely psychosomantic, and i dont think there is a real need to know, as a reader. in fact, in a certain light, i think it can be considered good that we dont know for certain: it would be relevant for tatsumi himself, sure, since it would influence which kinds of treatments and help he can seek out. however, i think the ambiguity may foster a certain level of sympathy in readers.

often psychosomatic problems are not taken seriously enough in real life: they cannot be proven physically and they dont fit into the neat little boxes that the ICD wants you to believe exist, so they cannot be defined on paper or easily explained to doctors or insurance providers.

to foster empathy with his situation requires his character to be lovable and for the narrative to treat him with care as well. which is thankfully the case. alkaloid are dear with him and, despite the fact he cannot perform in his work enviroment all the time, he is very respected for his other skills. he is a well-rounded person.

all that aside. it is absolutely worth to mention tatsumi pre-injury, too. he came up with a form of small-scale universal income among a semi-union at school. without getting too much into all that. (obbligato really seems like required lecture in the realm of enstars stories) the entire concept strives for social equality and is extremely anti-discrimination. it fundamentally goes against the idea that someone needs to "deserve" care, and is the opposite of the mindset i described with eichi and niki above. he never had to make first-hand experiences with disability to be extremely compassionate. this seems really rare among people in real life, even those who preach altruism.

While we are Here. K.... Kaname

as mentioned, i spoke a little about kaname before. so i wont get into the complex of caregiving.

it is extremely satisfying we got to meet kaname, if only for one event story. he does not have to remain a faceless motivation behind himeru and tatsumis lives, he thankfully became humanized.

the entire conflict around kaname at the moment is a matter of bodily autonomy. how much of your person can be in anothers hand, ethically? there is no excuse for the theft of his (idol) identity through himeru but the damage is done now. ideally, you dont want any part of yourself to depend on others but the disabled reality is that this is very often impossible. especially for kaname. there simply is no one else who could be responsible for him right now and, to be fair, at least when it comes to medical care, himeru seems to behave very responsibly.

repeating what has been said in the other post but i am worried for kanames seemingly inevitable reintroduction to the story. he has been in a comatose state for a year. if he wakes (since this is fiction, it is possible to exchange 'if' for 'when', realistically it really would be an 'if' though) he would most likely be confronted with permanent neurological and physical damage and years of rehabilitation. at least logically. (not to mention the psychological shock) would this be written with compassion and a sense of realism? it makes for a compelling source of conflict and emotional hardships that could be extremely worthwhile to explore. i just cant entirely bring myself to trust the writers with this one but i would love to be convinced otherwise.

that is, of course, if they dont somehow just skip rehabilitation entirely and declare it a miracle healing.....

imo, the in-game discourse between characters is just as important as his future development. i just really hope autonomy and recovery will be large topics.

He doesnt go here, but. Adonis

so bringing him up just really feels necessary within the context of this post because of his interests. one of adonis hobbies is sign language and accessibility.

this is, i think, maybe the best thing they ever did with his "protector" persona. it just fits so well, it is a direct conversion of ideals to actions. knowing undead songs have been translated for a deaf audience in canon is extremely wholesome and uplifting, even if it is entirely inconsequential for the story and just something that gets mentioned.

(now that sandstorm is out on engstars, you can check that out too for further mentions of this! if i could wish for one thing, it would be for the stories to acknowledge that there are tons of independent sign languages and i would love to know which one adonis and rei speak... you ever think about how adonis speaks like four languages fluently. at least.)

nightless city live, chapter 3

everyone in undead loved that and supported the vision. to see koga, who is usually against anything but musical performances and wishes to express art freely, praise the idea really puts deaf identity and accessibility in a great light. it is a very positively radical forwardthinking idea.

so, i just wanted to mention that. adonis is treated horribly by the narrative a lot, it entirely fails to grasp his identity and is insensitive towards foreign cultures, but i would die for him i think.

finishing thoughts

like mentioned, please absolutely let me know if you have different related ideas or recommendations. or corrections, or worries over something i wrote!!! learning and improving is always great. i am sorry i could not get into so many other characters, the ones i wrote about are those that i feel confident enough to comment on. in the future i would love to meet maguro!! i just havent really read any mama stories at all :'''3

i feel like i barely said anything at all and barely engaged with text enough since i didnt get into any character specifically. i would love to write another post about ritsu or rei or both. a draft for it has been sitting around for ages (as did the draft for this post, lol) but i hope someone will find an interesting thought in here somewhere.

all in all, enstars is actually... surprisingly nice to read for the disability in there??? even if it is disappointing in handling many other things. of course, the writings not always ideal (i read hidden beast just the other day and the ableism in there took years off my life) but often its really nice. nothing hits quite like seeing real emotions and experiences through some metaphorical stylized anime lense, you feel.

anyway thank you for listening. i am actually for real done now.

#enstars #ensemble stars #enstarsposting #did i overreact and write too much..... ah... nay......

[liesmyth]

Happy end of January! here are all the books I read this month

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot.

Exactly what it says on the tin! Very good pop history book, tremendously well researched; actually very funny. I HIGHKEY recommend the audiobook if you can get it. Favourite book of 2024 so far.

Benjamin January mysteries by Barbara Hambly. I've read three of them this month because they're excellent. (A Free Man of Color, Fever Season, Graveyard Dust.)

Historical fiction + murder mystery set in 1830s New Orleans, and I love the atmosphere as much as I do the characters. You know those books where the city is its own character? THAT. Excellent vibes, very thoughtfully researched, and the character dynamics are excellent. (CW for period typical racism all over the place as the main character is a dark-skinned Black man in 1830s New Orleans; no gratuitous edginess)

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

THIS BOOK HAS SPIDERS IN IT. Just putting it out there because I very much missed it, and the spiders are a big deal. Scific, space opera. 10/10 would rec unless you're violently arachnophobic, then proceed with caution.

Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

Second book of the Indian Lake Witch trilogy. Unfortunately not as cool as the first but I'm hype for the third book coming out! If you like poetically described gore, and badass horror ladies, read the first book first. This one isn't quite on that level but there IS death and destruction <3

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

I can't believe I 1) finished a self-help book and 2) I'm really out here recommending it to people, but I really found it useful. Will wonders ever cease?

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica

Horror short stories collection. A couple were bangers, a few were absolute duds.

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Do yourself a favour and don't read this. Allegedly historical fiction; in practice, the "fiction" part is extremely dull and the book doesn't have anything going for it except the ripped-from-the-headline case of the Relf sister. The cover is pretty, I guess.

Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn

Tremendous read. Medical misogyny through the ages, with an eye to intersectionality; I have some nitpicks about the tone of the writing but I'm still going to recommend it to everyone. (link goes to my GR & we should be friends)

Vendetta ai Mondiali by Paolo Foschi

This is a prize for a few elects (Italian speakers). Italian sports-themed detective novel except the grizzly detective is gay... I feel like this was written for ME personally.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Unfortunately, I'm running out of new-to-me Discworld novels! This made me very happy but also very emo.

#book talk

[caspers-delusions]

Psych Whump Masterlist

💉💉💉

This is going to be my go-to list every time I find something with medical or psych whump in it that I want to remember. I'll reblog it frequently and try to keep it updated but it's going to start small because good psych whump is so hard to find. (This in no way endorses medical abuse, I'm a mentally ill individual but I love consuming psych whump in media. Just about everything in these movies, books, etc are at the very least morally gray so consume at your own risk. Also, I only enjoy these things in fiction. Irl it makes me sick to my stomach, I know bc I've experienced some of this.) I'll try to add trigger warnings for each one but I might miss some so I apologize in advance. If you have any recommendations please message me! I'm scouring the internet for good psych whump but medical/sickfic whump is also wanted.

Movies:

A Cure For Wellness: Guy gets tricked into becoming a patient at a "resort" that's really a mental hospital in disguise that uses its patients for nefarious means. CW: incest, medical abuse, teeth falling out, sexual assault, some weird eel shit ^^There's probably more but I haven't watched the film in a while.

TV Shows:

Moon Knight: Whole season of psych whump, the main character has DID and loads of past trauma. Has a huge ancient Egypt theme and the MC gets (kind of) forced to accept psychiatric care. CW: lots of ableism, mental break, psychotic episodes, forced institutionalisation, child abuse, restraints

Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten: German soap that's been running since 1992. The specific episodes that have good psych whump are from 26.5.2017 to 01.06.2017. Extremely hard to find online, only some clips/gifs exist as of now that are easily viewable.

Perception: Schizophrenic professor who teaches at a university spirals and gets put in a mental hospital. He has a caretaker friend who helps him and the professor also sees hallucinations of an ex-girlfriend who helps him solves mysteries. CW: extremely inaccurate portrayal of schizophrenia, delusions, paranoia, and really any mental illness for that matter; lots of ableism, I think I remember one character calling the professor a freak, people treat him really badly

Books:

House of Leaves: This book is a fever trip but the MC (kind of?? The book has multiple authors, it's honestly very confusing but it's great) suffers from declining mental health and spirals hard. CW: child abuse, lots of sexual content, mentions of a caretaker beating a child, mentions/delusions of sexual assault, death of a dog (it was brutal, huge warning), mentions/descriptions of suicide and attempted murder

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: This is chock-full of psych and medical whump, it all takes place in a psychiatric hospital (I've actually been to the one in the film! -Not as a patient) CW: huge amounts of abuse from staff, doctors, nurses, there's also a scene where SA is implied on a patient, the MC is there after being convicted of SA'ing a minor and he's pretty unremorseful (the MC is a dick though anyways), racism, ableism

OG Works (not mine):

Redwood Psychiatric Insitute: Forced institutionalization, great read and it has just about every trope I look for in fics all packed into one series. Please give it a read, it's fantastic. Source - https://www.tumblr.com/only-shadows-dwell-where-we-are/706656298337435648/redwood-psychiatric-institute-masterlist?source=share by @only-shadows-dwell-where-we-are

Fanfiction:

Into Your Arms: This is a Star Trek fanfic that follows a girl who has a severe eating disorder and mental illness. It's not the normal kind of sickfic or psych whump I go for but the aftercare in this is topnotch. Source - https://archiveofourown.org/works/15185897 by moose-misses-sweets on ao3 CW: suicide attempt, severe eating disorder, abusive partner, cutting/self harm

Summarized List

Movies: 1. A Cure For Wellness TV Shows: 1. Moon Knight 2. Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten 3. Perception Books: 1. House of Leaves 2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest OG Works (not mine): 1. Redwood Psychiatric Institute Fanfics: 1. Into Your Arms

Note: If something you made is on this list and you want me to remove it, please message me and I will. I don't check messages very often but it doesn't mean I'm ignoring you, I just forget I have a tumblr sometimes.) *Extra note: this was originally posted on my side blog @ennead-of-whump but I'm slowly integrating that blog into this one. I'm now only going to be using my main blog @caspers-delusions which means I'm only going to update this masterlist post from now on.

#whump #psych whump #medical whump #psychiatric whump #recs #mental illness #masterlist #list #recommendations #moon knight #perception #into your arms #redwood psychiatric hospital #one flew over the cuckoos nest #house of leaves #a cure for wellness #new blog same person #gute zeiten schlechte zeiten

[sofiiel]

There & Back Again : xreader addition (fem/afab)

Monster!McKinney!Reader x Eddie Munson

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒: 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 9 -> 10 -> 11

Moodboards: Angel | Amy | Doris | Reader | Rick | Pat | Gail | Eddie | Sam

Reader Discretion is Advised: This story may be unsuitable for readers who struggle with trauma. Read the cw's below carefully, and please avoid this fic if it sounds like too much for you ❤

𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰: (adapted from my x oc fic)

Love is timeless, it is interdimensional, unbiased, deadly, and healing, it is the most powerful force any one of us has. You will learn this unspoken lesson through a misfit who saved your life.

You are ____ McKinney, an orphan, who was adopted into the McKinney family. A household dominated by an abusive father, alongside your brother Patrick. Spending the majority of your time to yourself or in fear, you will find confidence and bravery with the help of a kindred soul as they are drawn together by forces that go beyond the world they know, and even time itself.

You and Eddie are sucked into a disturbing mystery involving missing persons and strange beasts as the lines between fact, fiction, truth, and lies become blurred.

Warnings: Domestic Violence. Violence. Gore. Major Character Death. Eventual Smut (very far off in the chapters). Sexual themes. Abuse. Substance Abuse. Use of Drugs & Alcohol. Descriptions of self-harm. Many possible triggers. EDs. Mentions of Prejudice/racism. P in V protected. Oral. Pregnancy. Mentions of Stalking. Mentions of abduction & Trafficking. Mentions of BDSM. Monster girl. This story is a bit off the rails. Your character will piss you off and frustrate you ~ it's part of the character growth.

Authors Note: (important)

Please be aware for the story's sake some things about Reader may ruin "immersion" because it might not fit you specifically.

Such as reader's dance background, biological & adoptive family, and a specific birthmark.

Warning, there are scenes where the reader has to be lifted, and (as a plus-size girlie myself) I am sorry if that is off-putting. Other triggering factors might be the reader sharing Eddie's clothing (pants/jackets). I am *not* trying to make anyone feel isolated, it's just how the original version went.

This is adapted from my OC-based fic, but I am trying to write out ultra specifics that went with the oc Myrtle. And will try to completely rewrite some scenes if I can find a way to make it work with the original plot for chapters.

I am asking for a little patience while working this out, and any advice is more than welcome if anyone has gone through this process before.

~Thank you ❤

#hurt/comfort #010 #corroded coffin #monster girl #mild smut #semi slow burn #eddie munson fanfic #semi-dark fic #eddie munson angst #fluff #angst #time travel #Chapters Masterlist #There & Back Again ( xreader edition ) Chapter List #not suitable for minors #eventual smut #critique welcome #Emotional Hurt/Comfort #the Reader's personality gets stronger over time #Spiders #This story is not Arachnophobia friendly #longfic #EpicLength #eddie munson x shy!reader #eddie munson x moster!reader #eddie munson x mckinney!reader