#ironclad justice

[bloomtoy]

jinx's new token!!! went for a total artstyle switch for the second half of the campaign

#art #dnd #5e #dungeons and dragons #furry #blooms art #dnd5e #tabaxi #blood hunter #jinx phakas #ironclad justice #ttrpg #cat #feline

[watch-joey-collect]

#Exiles #76 #Ironclad #Quiver #Thing #Spider-Man 2099 #Ghost Rider 2099 #Krystalin #Cerebra #Skullfire #Punisher 2099 #Sabertooth #Justice #Morph #Marvel #Jim Calafiore

[dustofthedailylife]

How to Steal the Duke's Heart 101

→ Masterlist || → Taglist -> Next Part

Pairing: Wriothesley x (gn!) Reader

Summary: The moment your verdict was decided as guilty you were brought to the Fortress of Meropide - despite being innocent. Little did you know that the trip to prison would make you meet the love of your life.

Tags: Fluff, kissing, you're in prison (but innocent), some violence (not graphic), swearing

A/N: Due to me being utterly normal about Wriothesley I had the idea for this fic - who am I kidding I would commit a crime for this man.

“According to the judgment of the Oratrice Mechanique d’Analyse Cardinale, the defendant is declared… guilty.”

The voice of Chief Justice Neuvillette was ringing in your ears as he read out the verdict. Your verdict.

You couldn’t believe it. You knew you hadn’t done what you had been accused of, that the eyewitnesses had lied the moment they had opened their mouths, that the evidence had been tampered with, that you had been framed for the crime – but you were innocent. And no one was ever going to believe you. 

After all, the device that had handed you the fateful false verdict was treated as infallible in Fontaine. You now at least had proof that its reputation was nothing but hollow words. But what use was the knowledge other than just a bittersweet confirmation for no one but yourself? 

And before you knew it, guards were escorting you out the back of the Opera Epiclese in handcuffs. Roughly dragging you along with them into a big elevator. Down – deeper and deeper into the depths of the ocean.

You had heard stories of the Fortress of Meropide before – the secluded place where all criminals and outcasts of Fontaine resided. The place no one had ever come back from to tell the tale. At least not in one piece.

You weren’t sure how you felt on the way down the elevator but you would describe it as something akin to hollowness.

The glances the guards threw your way out of the corner of their eyes literally screamed disgust. You were nothing more than a dirty criminal to them after all – someone who was to be shunned and banished from society for all eternity. And if you really had done what you were convicted for, you wouldn’t even blame them for their disdain.

When the elevator arrived at the bottom the doors opened with a mechanical hiss. The scent of machine oil, iron, and damp moldy cellars immediately pricked at your nose and it was the exact opposite of what you’d call homely. 

The guards turned you in at the reception, where a rather unpleasant woman took your mugshots before handing you over to yet another rather unfriendly man who led you even further down into the Fortress.

With every new step you took, you tried to come to terms with the fact that the sight of damp, stone, and ironclad walls as well as the lingering industrial smell was going to be your life from now on. 

And the dawning realization of that was painfully pulling a tight rope around your throat. You wanted to scream, you wanted to cry and most of all, you wanted to run away and pretend like all of this was a bad dream. But you couldn't.

Instead, you were trodding behind the man who was escorting you and silently began to cry as big beads of tears soon began rolling down your cheeks.

"Crying won't help you anymore, sweetheart." The man remarked almost mockingly as soon as he looked back over his shoulder at your defeated frame. "Should've thought about that before you did some shit."

No. You’re wrong. I'm innocent.

At least that was what you wanted to spit back at him. But it was as if any fierceness or strength to stand up for yourself had left you the moment you set foot into this prison. You simply had no strength left to fight.

You soon arrived in a gigantic circular room. The contraption in the middle almost looked like a giant engine, elevators were going up one level on one side and even further down on the other side of the room. The ceiling was so high up that you almost couldn't make it out at all. The light was dim and the only real light sources were yellow lanterns whose light was bouncing off of the copper-colored iron pipes, crates, and frames that lined the entire room. Gloomy would probably be the best way to describe it.

The pungent smell of oil and damp cellar was hanging in the air here as well and probably even more prominent than it had been before. Only now it was also mixed with what you thought was old sweat and… tea? The smell of the latter seemed oddly out of place and you couldn't make out where exactly it was coming from. All you knew was that it was probably the only pleasant smell you had encountered down here.

Taking the elevator up one level again the man you had been following this entire time led you into a side hallway that looked more like a vent pipe. The dimly lit room that was lying behind it was only furnished with a bunk bed and a barely functioning lantern. He unlocked your handcuffs before roughly shoving you into the room with a smug grin on his face.

"Make yourself at home." He chuckled mockingly before turning around on his heel and leaving while whistling a tune to himself that eerily echoed off the stone walls.

You lay down on the bed, exhaling in defeat. Your throat still felt like someone had painfully tied it shut and tears were dangerously pricking at the corners of your eyes. 

Now what?

You had no idea what to do here aside from sitting your time off. Where do you get food? Were you supposed to work and if yes, where do you have to and when?

You closed your eyes as a single tear escaped from the corner of your eyes, rolling down your cheek, dampening the pillow you lay on. 

All you heard around you were wet droplets falling from the ceiling onto the wet stone floor, distant voices from down below, and your own breathing. The only thing that drowned these sounds out were the thoughts in your head. 

Now that you had a quiet moment to yourself after everything that had gone down today, the realization about your situation was beginning to seep in for good. This bed, these walls, the oily smell… this was going to be the rest of your life now.

And that’s when you broke down and started crying once again.

Eventually, you must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing you knew was waking up to the smell of food wafting through the air vent in front of your room. 

You got up from the bed, took the elevator down, and followed the smell. Soon you found yourself standing in front of a Cafeteria, where fellow inmates were queuing for lunch. Or was it dinner? You’ve barely even been here a day, but the distinct lack of daylight already made you lose track of time.

You sighed and walked over, queuing for some food as well. You didn’t have any appetite but you knew you had to eat something and your grumbling stomach was screaming for food, appetite be damned. Much to your dismay, the food needed to be paid for, well, at least the stuff that looked digestible.

You ordered the only free option and sat down with the bowl of grayish, funky-looking liquid whose consistency was more akin to that of wallpaper paste. It didn’t look appetizing, but at least it was free and would prevent you from starving.

Just as you were about to lift the first spoon of gooey pap in your mouth, someone sat down at your table, making you halt your movement for a brief second. 

He placed his tray on the table with a loud bang before plopping down on the bench right in front of you. His food looked tremendously more high quality than yours. Your mouth began watering from just looking at it. Freshly made roast potatoes with rosemary, fluffy pieces of baguette with salted butter, a big juicy piece of meat – grilled to perfection, and a glass of mousse au chocolat.

He leaned forward, supporting himself on the table with his elbows, folded his hands and intensely looked at you with his piercing blue eyes. It seemed like he wasn’t in a hurry to start eating any time soon.

You pretended to ignore him and began eating. The soup, which could vaguely be identified as lentil soup, left a slimy feeling on your tongue and tasted completely bland. Every fiber of your body told you to spit it back out again but with enough willpower, you actually managed to swallow it. Not without pulling a grimace first though.

“You’re new here.” The stranger in front of you observed with curiosity.

You looked up at him, nodding slowly shoveling another spoonful of goo in your mouth before going back to ignoring him. You weren’t really interested in trying to make connections here. All you wanted was to get out of here again – even though you knew deep down that the likelihood of that was nearing zero.

“Adapting well?” He inquired, still not in a hurry to touch his food.

You suspiciously looked up at him. There was just something about this guy that was off. He didn’t quite fit in here at all. He was admittedly very handsome. He looked well groomed and his attire was way too pompous to be an inmate - or maybe he was some rich guy who got some sort of special treatment down here. Every other inmate was avoiding your table and people looked at him with an almost reverent look in their eyes. If it wasn’t for the scars that seemed to cover the majority of his body already, this just further confirmed your gut feeling to avoid this guy at all costs in the future.

“I’ll take that as a no.” He chuckled, eyeing you further with a smirk plastered on his lips.

“What do you want?” You asked, now slightly annoyed.

“Just trying to strike up some friendly conversation. You know, seeing how lost you were while ordering food, not knowing about tickets, and just dashing around like a scared blubberbeast, led me to believe that no one gave you a rundown of how this place works. So, allow me?” He remarked with that same smirk.

When you wordlessly motioned for him to continue, he began explaining the workings and rules down here in detail. Unspoken rules, general rules, what and who to avoid, how jobs worked, work times, payment and money, general daily schedule, and a lot more. There was simply so much you were beginning to feel lightheaded as soon as he had finished speaking and you could feel the lump in your throat grow in size with every minute that passed. You would never be able to live here.

“That should about cover the basics.” He finished explaining as you swallowed thickly.

You opened your mouth in order to speak but he swiftly lifted his finger to shut you up. 

“No need to say anything. I know it’s not easy to adapt to a new environment. Especially not one you feel trapped in. But that feeling will fade eventually. Trust me.” He threw you a genuine smile before lifting himself up from the bench and pushing his tray with the food in your direction, pointing at it with an offering gesture.

“Welcome to the Fortress of Meropide.” He said, before striding away.

“Wait-” You jumped up from the table causing him to halt in his tracks and turn around once more. “What’s your name?”

“Wriothesley.”

After this strange encounter with the mysterious and admittedly attractive man, you didn’t see him around for a long while. This came as a surprise because you’d assume someone with his looks and attire would stick out like a sore thumb wherever he went. But it was as if the ground itself had swallowed him.

You wanted to see him again, mostly because you thought you could learn from him for your life down here. And despite your gut telling you that he was a walking red flag you had developed a strange curiosity for him.

You had begun working at the ship dockyard where a big window was offering a view into the ocean. You could somewhat make out the sky and time of day from there and it was the only thing that kept you from going completely insane in here. All you had done was sleep, work, eat, and repeat since you came here. Some people had tried speaking to you and some asked what you were here for, but you didn’t have any interest in conversing with them – especially not after you had tried telling someone that you were innocent and they had just laughed at you. Needless to say, you had no desire to connect with people – although he was the only exception seeing as you were craving to talk to him again, as much as you tried to deny it.

Today you were working at the docks again and found yourself longingly staring out of the large window. Your mind drifted off and you wondered how it would feel to simply swim back up to the surface where your lost freedom lay.

“Beautiful view, isn’t it?” A familiar voice reached your ears from behind. 

“Wriothesley!”

The man in question walked up to you and came to a halt right next to you. He looked out through the window himself before looking at you from the corner of his eyes with a slight smirk.

“Still longing for the surface?” He inquired, crossing his arms over his chest. “It never fully goes away but once you get used to the Fortress you’ll find yourself unable to want to leave.”

“Is that so?” You ushered quietly, scoffing. You were simply unable to believe him, not when your freedom had been taken unjustifiably. 

“Thank you for the food the other day, by the way. I didn’t have a chance to thank you yet.” You attempted to divert the topic.

“Don’t mention it.” He waved dit off with an unwavering smile. “It is almost time for lunch, have you eaten yet? We could head to the Cafeteria together. My treat.”

“Oh, you absolutely don’t have to, I have enough credits for food now that–”

“Please. I insist.”

And so you found yourself sitting at the table with Wriothesley again, with the most exquisite meal that tickets could buy down here. 

You were surprised he was able to fork over nearly four thousand credits to buy the meals as if they were nothing. And especially since he treated you to such a meal as well, while everyone else down here held onto their credits as if their life depended on it. And of course, you also didn’t miss the stares of the others again when you sat down with your fancy meal.

You carefully eyed the food and then Wriothesley as if you didn’t deserve to be treated to something like this. He looked back at you with a genuine smile as he continued nibbling on his baguette.

“Anything wrong?” He asked with curiosity.

“No. It’s just… why–?”

“Why am I treating you to something?” He raised an eyebrow in amusement as if he had read your thoughts. You nodded slowly in reply.

“You’re interesting. That’s all there is to it.” He admitted with a smirk.

“I’m interesting? Me?” You raised your eyebrows in surprise. “You say that when you’re the one I could say that about. You don’t look like you fit in here at all, you have a truckload of credits to spend, and everyone here looks at you like you own the place.” 

You paused for a second, eyeing him suspiciously. “You’ve been here for a long time already, haven’t you?”

“You… could say that, yeah.” He replied with a chuckle, dipping his baguette into the rich sauce on his plate.

“Why are you here?” You continued prying.

“You’ll find out soon enough.” He replied with a smug grin before he continued eating.

You couldn’t quite decide if he was a red flag you should run as far away from as possible or if you wanted to get to know him closer. But either way, your first priority for now was not letting the food go to waste so you began eating the heavenly-tasting meal.

A silence settled between you two that was surprisingly pleasant as you both quietly ate with the occasional glace thrown at each other. 

Once you were both done he took your tray with him to put it into the tray cart before turning back around with a smile.

“Same time tomorrow?” He asked.

“U-uh… yeah, sure. I don’t see why not.” You stammered a bit taken aback, still confused as to why he wanted to hang out with you so much. You were a nobody with nothing to your name – not even a criminal record technically.

“Great. See you tomorrow then.”

And with that, a habit would slowly form. You would meet up for lunch each day and not long after, also for dinner. He often picked you up at the docks and bought a meal for you and only sometimes you were able to deter him from doing so and insisted that you bought your own since you were genuinely beginning to feel bad even if he seemed well off. 

You sometimes sat down for a long time talking even after you both had finished eating. You chatted just about anything and as it would turn out you two seemed to share similar interests. You found out he really loved tea and had extensive knowledge in that regard. And it just so happened that you too were a fellow tea aficionado. Not only that though, you two shared a similar taste in music, books, food, and more. After a couple of weeks had gone by it felt like you had already been friends for the longest time. And much to your surprise, not once had he attempted to ask you why you were here or pried into your private life.

On another such day, you were just heading out of the dormitories towards the Cafeteria to meet up with him. But before you could arrive there someone forcefully yanked you behind some iron crates. You crashed against them with the back of your head with a loud bang, momentarily losing consciousness as pain shot through your system.

"What kinda big shot are ya, huh? What're ya sitting for?" A man yelled at you aggressively. 

As soon as you got a grasp of your surroundings again, even though now extremely dizzy, you saw a big bulky guy with a missing front tooth who was pinning you against the boxes by your throat with an iron grip. He was accompanied by two other, less muscular guys who were staring at you in the same aggressive manner. His lackeys, you assumed.

"I have- I have no idea… what you're talking about." You struggled the words out due to the applied pressure on your vocal cords.

"What're ya here for, asshole?!" The man yelled at you even louder now, a few beads of spit flying right into your face through his tooth gap.

"I… I didn't do anything. I–" You gasped breathlessly as you clutched your hands around the hand around your throat, trying to alleviate some of the pressure being applied to it.

"Bullshit! You don't land here for twiddlin’ ya thumbs counterclockwise. And if the Duke's got the eye on ya already, ya've to be some VIP or some shit!" The toothless man spit on the ground between your feet.

“Duke?” You asked confusedly. 

“Tch, don’t fuck with me here, shut ya trap. Now, tell me. What’ve ya done? Be honest or I might’ve’ta polish your visage a lil’.” He viciously cackled in unison with his two lackeys who were cheering on him.

“I didn’t. Do. Anything.” You bit back through clenched teeth, putting a strong emphasis on each word. And before you were able to react, a stinging pain shot through your system as a fist connected with your face, sending your head flying back against the crate once again.

You immediately began to see stars and could feel your consciousness quickly fade away. The ringing in your ears and the accompanying dizziness from the impact was overbearing everything and all you could make out before you passed out was a flash of white light and pleas for mercy. Then everything faded to black.

The next thing you knew was waking up with a bandage around your head and an intense migraine. You felt like a horde of boars had trampled over you. The omnipresent pain got worse when you instinctively tried to sit up on the bed you found yourself on.

You hissed in pain and immediately felt a pair of big hands push you back into the fluffy bedding.

“Stay.” 

You recognized this voice. You had heard it so often in the past couple of weeks that, despite your delirious state, you had no issue placing it.

“Wriothesley.” You uttered weakly with your eyes still closed.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”

He took hold of your hand with a reassuring squeeze and the feeling of his warmth on your skin made you feel tingly all over and the all-present pain immediately felt like it was being alleviated ever so slightly. Out of all people you were glad it was him by your side.

“What? Where?” You rasped, attempting to slowly open your eyes.

“We’re in a separate room at the Fortress Infirmary. Someone roughed you up real good and you fell unconscious. I arrived just in time to prevent worse. You’ll probably have a nasty bruise on your face for a while and you’ve got quite the concussion as well as a cracked rib. But nothing some bed rest and a good cup of tea wouldn’t be able to fix, hm?” He tried to reassure, brushing a strand of hair out of your forehead.

"Your Grace, here is the medicine you asked for." A guard suddenly came rushing into the infirmary with a small satchel that he handed to Wriothesley before quickly leaving again after a courteous bow towards the man by your side.

You furrowed your brows in confusion at the display of submissiveness of the guard towards a fellow prisoner when you've been treated with nothing but disdain and… wait a minute.

Your Grace. The looks he got from the others during lunch and dinner time. The Duke. It's him?!

The memories suddenly came rushing back to you – how you had been slammed into the metal crates, how the toothless man had mentioned the Duke while threatening you and how his fist had then ultimately painfully kissed your face.

You didn't have all the puzzle pieces to connect everything into a clear image yet but it was enough to feel that there was an epiphany just mere millimeters out of your range.

You startled and sat up on the bed with wide-blown eyes once more as pain shot through you again from the abrupt movement. Pain so bad you thought you would have to throw up for a second.

"I-I… your Grace? The Duke? It's you! He meant you and– who? W-what?! I-I– he threatened me and I-I'm innocent. I don't belong here I–I'm innocent–" You incoherently stammered nonsense because your mouth couldn't match up with the speed at which your thoughts were racing.

Just who was he?

But before you got to properly ask that question a pair of soft lips gently connected with yours, rendering you speechless and cutting off the words that were spilling from your mouth relentlessly like water from a leaky faucet. He squeezed your hand a little tighter while the other gently found comfort on your cheek. Cradling it so carefully as if you're the finest piece of porcelain in the world and could break any minute.

The gentleness of his touch, the warmness of his lips, and the smell of Earl Grey on his breath made your body explode into a sea of fireworks. It wasn't until this moment that you realized you had developed feelings for Wriothesley that went beyond the casual acquaintance you met up with after work for food in the prison cafeteria. It was just that you had been too occupied and lost in your own thoughts about your predicament to realize it.

Your curiosity and cravings to see him more and more often weren’t just born from a place of loneliness. Your heart had craved for him all this time.

Your hands found comfort in his hair as you leaned into the kiss more, prying a low chuckle out of him and you felt him smirk against your lips.

"I know you are." He whispered against your lips when he separated from you again.

"What?" You asked in confusion, already forgetting what he was replying to.

"That you're innocent."

"N-no I don't mean just in this case… I didn't commit any crimes I was sent here despite being innocent I-" 

You didn't even realize you had started crying until he gently wiped a tear from your cheek with the pad of his thumb. 

"I know." He reiterated firmly.

You looked up in his face and his eyes were filled with nothing but sincerity. He must be the first person you ever encountered who didn't see the sentence of the Oratrice Mechanique d’Analyse Cardinale as infallible and unquestionable.

"How?" You quietly breathed out in disbelief.

"I knew it on the first day I saw you. My beliefs were just further confirmed when I talked to you for the first time. I've been working behind the scenes to get you out of here again ever since." He admitted, wiping another stray tear from your cheek.

That's why he was gone for days after your first meeting and suddenly arrived again behind you at the docks.

"You went above ground?" You rasped, making the question of who he actually is even bigger.

He nodded, taking your hands in his and placing a gentle kiss on your knuckles.

Is that why he also said you would find out who he is soon enough that one day? But you still didn't know… who actually is he?

"How are you allowed to go out? Who are you?"

"You still didn't figure it out?" He smirked. "I'm Wriothesley. Warden of the Fortress of Meropide." 

And at that moment everything fell like scales from your eyes.

His attire, the looks of other prisoners, the abundance of tickets to spend, randomly disappearing for days, the Duke… the Cryo Vision dangling from his shoulder despite not being allowed to carry any in here.

He was the one who saved you earlier.

He must've noticed your glance because he squeezed your hands a little tighter and reassured you: "They won't ever bother you again. I took care of it."

You didn't dare ask what he meant by that and simply nodded in acceptance.

"I can also tell you that things are going well. I pulled some strings and you might be out of here by the end of the week again with no criminal record to your name."

But what if you actually didn't want to leave anymore? At least not without him.

"Will I be able to see you again?"

A question that spilled out of your mouth before you could properly think about it. But the deafening silence that followed told you everything you needed to know. He rarely left the underground and was occupied down here most of the time so the possibility of you and him seeing each other again was low.

"Certainly." He replied after a while avoiding looking into your eyes.

A white lie. He wanted you to return to your old life again, out of the confines of this prison you had unjustifiably been thrown in. He didn't want to keep you here only for the selfish desires of his heart that he had unplannedly given to you along the way. Maybe he would find a way to be with you once you returned, maybe he didn't – But that didn't mean he couldn't indulge in what you had for the remaining time you were here with him.

And that's when he pulled you closer once more, one hand resting on your waist, gently massaging your skin through the fabric of your shirt while reuniting your lips as if it was the last thing he would ever get to taste.

And maybe, if it was what it took to see him again, you wouldn't mind actually committing a crime.

Do not repost, copy, translate or edit - © dustofthedailylife || reblogs, comments, and asks about Genshin or my fics are always greatly appreciated and motivate me! Maple dividers are mine - do not copy.

#genshin impact #astronetwrk #genshin fanfic #genshin x reader #wriothesley x reader #wriothesley x y/n #genshin fluff #genshin wriothesley #genshin x y/n #genshin impact fanfic #genshin drabbles #genshin scenarios #genshin brainrot #genshin headcanons #🍁 dust writes #🍁彡 gi

[genshin-impact-updates]

He who looks down on all that are haughty

Someday, when they return, their true ordeal shall begin.

— Xbalanque, One Entombed With the Primal Fire

◆ Name: Neuvillette

◆ Title: Ordainer of Inexorable Judgment

◆ Iudex of Fontaine

◆ ???: Hydro

◆ Constellation: ???

"Given that our previous behind-the-scenes editorial on the Hydro Archon earned us the honorable epithet of 'tabloid journalism' from our dear Monsieur Neuvillette, this time we'll be focusing on the mysterious Iudex himself. We know little indeed of his true character, and sadly our multiple requests for an interview were all turned down. Instead, we have decided to reach out and draw upon the wisdom of the masses. In the pursuit of the truth, all anonymous submissions and attestations of manifestly questionable veracity have been filtered out. We were rather intrigued, however, by the following letter written in a particularly adorable script:

...

"If the Darknight Hero really does exist, he's probably just someone in disguise. When he gets up in the morning to brush his teeth, it's the real him. Only in the dead of night does he become the Darknight Hero. But not (Monsieur) Neuvillette. The Chief Justice IS the real him. For us Melusines, our ideal of the perfect father — that's also the real him. The only person that isn't really him is the one that goes by the name of Neuvillette."

From this, we can safely surmise... that Neuvillette must be the only male Melusine! Granted, the Melusines actually appeared much later than when Neuvillette took up his post. But in the face of such ironclad evidence, there's bound to be some way of explaining this!"

— Seven Nations Gazette, a notorious tabloid

#genshin impact #genshin impact updates #genshin impact news #official #neuvillette #ok so we agree that he's a dragon right

[lustkillers]

okok hear me out: rough sex in a loud party where any character you want is pounding into reader, forcing them to be quiet until he cums all over her and forces her back into the party, putting her on display for everyone. just a thought, love you're writing !!

LOOSEN UP THEIR FROWN, MAKE 'EM FEEL ALIVE!

⊹₊ ⋆ summary. - you're only his.

┃ tags/warnings. ࿐ ❪ nsfw freak shit here! hard dom!euro, sub!reader unprotected sex, rough sex, impact play, public sex/exhibitionism?? , voyeurism?, slight asphyxiation, degradation, spit, jealous!euro, toxic (?) couple tbh, FACIALLLL!!! ❫

⊹₊ ⋆ pairing - euronymous x fem!reader ❪ not the actual euronymous, only rory’s portrayal. ❫

⊹₊ ⋆ note - IM BACKKK from my dreadful writers block!! i'm also bombarded with school work, i'm so sorry for being inactive on terms of writing!! thank u for the request & hopefully i did this request justice... i'm literally sick as shit and seeing stars!! as always, not proofread! requests are open!!

HOW did you end up here? Standing in the middle of a house party, your face covered in his cum. Others knew, some didn't. But you knew... You knew it all too well.

Øystein had been pissing you off recently, so you decided to take a night out on the town with your friends to blow off some steam. Plus, you knew Øystein would be busy and wouldn't bother you tonight, as he had other plans.

He'd always be deep into his music, making him insufferable sometimes. You wanted a night without his judgment, so you went to the house party, not telling him that you were leaving. 'It's not like he cares...' You thought.

The party was raging with people inside, strobe lights scattered along the house and the intense thumping of bass. You felt your body come alive with every beat, and soon you were dancing among everyone else.

Your friends had left you to talk to other guys, get drinks, and possibly fuck. That alone made you want to leave, but something about this party didn't allow you to. Everything around you was a blur, and other men had hands on your waist... But they weren't him.

Suddenly, you felt a new pair of hands around your waist. You looked back and saw Øystein standing there, his eyes smoldering with desire… But also anger and passion. He looked at you with an intensity that made your body tremble.

Your stomach bubbled with many emotions, and your head was like a wheel; spinning with what you should say to him at this moment.

“What are you doing here? I thought I told you to stay away from parties like this, but now here you are!” Øystein said incredulously.

You wanted to say something along the lines of how it wasn't his decision to make, but you couldn't take your eyes off him; he was still holding you close. Something in your head felt unscrewed, not responding well to his response. You should've been defending yourself... Not standing there with your eyes searching his.

“I-I…” You stuttered, unable to put together any sort of coherent response.

He only grabbed you, leading you away from the suffocating crowd you didn't even know was bothering you until this point. He kept a tight grip on you as he dragged you upstairs.

As soon as you reached the top, there was a hallway with 3 doors; 2 adjacent to each other, and one parallel to the 2 doors. He opened the door parallel to the 2, loud moans ringing through both of your ears, the sight of your friend riding some random guy she just met.

A yelp emits from your mouth, your hand instantly closing the door. A deep sigh leaves Øystein's mouth, a chuckle soon to follow.

"This is why I told you to stay away from parties like this," he said shaking his head as he released you from his ironclad grip. You were about to speak up again, but the words caught in your throat when he grabbed your face and inched closer, a smirk slowly making its way across his face.

The couple hastily moved away from each other, a stern look suddenly present in Øystein's face. He motioned you to come inside the room while they quickly ran out of it, leaving you two alone.

The atmosphere was tense as Øystein pointed his finger at you, the silence filling the room. He finally opened his mouth to speak. "You were about to do something stupid," He said accusingly, his intense gaze never leaving your face.

You gulped, suddenly intimidated by him. "I-I was just curious," you stuttered. You instantly regretted your words.

He clenched his jaw, looking at you with disdain before letting out a deep breath and relaxing his stance a bit.

"Curiosity is not always your friend," he tilted his head, his gaze still boring into yours as he grabbed your hands in his own. "I think… You’re just acting like a slut to get my attention."

You felt your heart racing as you stared back at him, unable to find words. Øystein smiled devilishly before swooping in for a kiss without warning, spinning you around and pushing you against the wall. He then kissed every inch of your body until his lips were back on yours. You could feel electricity coursing through both of your bodies and it felt amazing. You knew then that you were in way too deep.

His grip on you was tight, almost bruising your waist. As you both kissed, his body collided with yours, and soon you found yourself laid on the bed with him on top of you.

Your pussy pooled with wetness, his veiny, pale hands traveling to your core. He started to move his fingers inside you, pushing and pulling in a deep rhythm. His subtle and gentle movements were filling your body up with pleasure like nothing else before. With each thrust of his hand, you felt yourself coming closer and closer to the brink of orgasm.

Before you even came, his hands retracted from your core and his lips trailed down your neck. He worked his way to your nipples, pulling up your top, and teasing them with his tongue as he moved further down past the small of your back, kissing each inch of skin as if it were precious.

However the passion ended there. Øystein suddenly flipped you over on all fours, his hand colliding with your ass; a stinging sensation traveling through you.

A moan escaped your lips, as you felt empty without him inside. In order to fill that void, your fingers found its way to your clit, rubbing it as strained whimpers escaped your mouth.

He smacked your hand away, placing his hand in front of your mouth. "Spit." He demanded.

A pool of your saliva bubbled on his hand, as he retracted it and rubbed it on his aching cock.

And before you knew it, he was spearing into you. His thrusts hurried and intense, as if it were his last time, each increasing in pressure until he was shaking with the feeling of pure pleasure.

"S-Slow down, Øystein... Fuck!" You cried out, sobs bubbling out of your mouth, and as soon as you know it, tears spilled out from pleasure.

Your moans rung in his ears as he noticed the music downstairs died down a bit, but he didn't care. He was too focused on the blissful pleasure that your body gave him, as your muscles clenched onto his cock with each thrust, sending spasms of ecstasy through his body.

His hand grabbed a handful of your hair, roughly stuffing your face into the pillows, suppressing your moans.

"Be fucking quiet, whore." He seethed, as his thrusts quickened and the air filled with your muffled moans.

It was hard to breathe with your face in the pillows, and the fact that he kept smacking your ass didn't help much. You felt your insides warming up as he hit just the right spot, and it wasn't long before a wave of heat spread over your body.

Just before you knew it, you came on his hard cock, moaning into the pillow as your wet pussy clenched tightly onto his cock. Your fluids seeped down your thighs, as your body shook in recovering pleasure.

Øystein was about to fall apart, his thrusts going erratic. His hands grabbed your shoulders and he started pounding into you wildly. It wasn't long before he let out a deep guttural grunt, "Let me paint that pretty face of yours." He pulled your head out the pillows, whispering in your ear.

The searing pain of the grip on his hair flowed through you, but you were still at a high.

He made you drop to your knees, pumping his cock right in front of your face. You opened your mouth, closing your eyes and letting Øystein shoot his cum over your tongue and face.

It was then that you felt the last contractions of his orgasm, and Øystein finally released his grip from your hair. You stayed on your knees for a moment, taking in everything that just happened.

As you looked up to him with glazed eyes, his smile devilishly looking down upon you. "Let's go," His voice raspy.

You stood up, nodding, and your knees slightly went weak. "Let me just wipe my face–"

"No." Øystein's voice was stern. "Leave it." He said with a smirk.

As you both descended down the stairs, the party still going on as a few eyes stared at you. Silence was shared between them, while others raised an eyebrow.

Shit, some of them even had a hard-on.

Øystein didn't care though,

he wanted everyone to know you were his.

#rory culkin x reader #rory culkin #rory culkin smut #rory culkin x y/n #smut #euronymous x reader #euronymous smut #rory culkin lords of chaos #lords of chaos #going fucking insane

[posttexasstressdisorder]

GOP has gone rancid—and it isn't fair decent people have to keep cleaning up after them

D. Earl Stephens

April 23, 2024 5:27AM ET

People await the arrival of former U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) at the Miami-Dade Country Fair and Exposition on November 6, 2022 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

I’ve heard more than enough from people identifying as Republicans to last for whatever is left of my life.

By words and actions, Republicans have proven they are not serious people, and most definitely do not love or care for our country. We have learned without any doubt during the past decade that there is no line they won’t cross, rule they won’t break, or lie they won’t tell to further their dirty causes, which have absolutely nothing to do with making America great.

They are incapable of good governance, and have settled into mob rule. The Republican-led House of Representatives is a complete and nasty joke, where members literally elbow and hiss at each other, and that is both true and terribly, terribly sad.

With help from our inept Justice Department and a bought-off Conservative Supreme Court, Republicans are making a mockery of the notion that our nation is protected by the rule of law. They know better than anybody, that this simply is not true.

They have exploited a system they have learned to eagerly spit on by refusing to allow nominations for Supreme Court Justices in some cases, while rocketing other Conservative nominees through the Senate in record time.

READ: Breaking our democracy is all part of the GOP plan

They call violent terrorists who attack our country hostages, and expect the press to keep swallowing it whole, because that’s what they do.

Cheating and underhandedness is in their DNA.

They are long past the point of no return, and will either pay for their felonious behavior, or will somehow be rewarded for it at the polls this November, in which case we are done with our Democratic experiment after 248 years.

It is now up to Democrats to once again save this nation from the sick arsonists eagerly trying to burn it to the ground, and that is helluva lot to ask, and isn’t remotely fair.

Here’s a damn truth we don’t hear near enough about: If the Democratic candidate for president was facing 91 felony counts, had been convicted of fraud, was a serial abuser of women, told a documented 30,573 lies in four years, spread a big, toxic lie about an election he lost, and praised dictators, the party and the people who support it, would drop him/her like a rock.

He or she wouldn’t stand a chance. They’d be banished to the nearest dumpster. No decent person would want to be associated with such obvious scum.

The people who vote on the Left and the Right in this country are not remotely the same, and I am way past sick and tired of hearing that they are.

Something as despicable and odious as Donald J. Trump could NEVER happen in the Democratic Party. We simply would not allow it.

That right there is an ironclad fact.

Democrats and left-leaning people are not perfect, because no person is, but we still believe in truth, decency and manners. ALL children are important in our world, which is why we believe feeding them and getting them the healthcare and the childcare they need is vital, and far more important than paying the taxes of filthy-rich, bloated billionaires. We still believe that how the United States projects itself to rest of the world and our children means something.

We love our country, warts and all.

We still believe that when we’ve made mistakes, or said stupid, hurtful things we should apologize for them, not recklessly double down like ill-bred maniacs.

We have not, and will not, surrender to the lowest form of life like Trump. It is simply not in us.

As of this writing, I am officially DONE listening to the unmitigated gall that “both sides do it” or “both parties are the same” because that’s a complete load of bullshit. It is brutally insulting to the tens of millions of people in this country who play by the rules, believe all people are created equal, and still know a damn lie, or attack on our country when they hear it and see it.

The people who populate the Left and Right in our country are wired differently, and it’s time this was said out loud, and repeatedly. It is also long past time our media reported this. Especially because they know it to be true.

In the newsrooms where I used to work, if something so obviously bad and as evil as Trump and his enablers had burst on the scene, we would have been sounding alarms and reporting on it 24/7. The man means us and our country harm. We know this because he is SHOWING US AND TELLING US THIS.

There is seldom a day that goes by without him saying or doing something revolting and egregious. The media doesn’t even bother asking his Republican followers in Congress to account for his larceny anymore. They just accept it as somehow normal when it most certainly is not and never can be.

There are two sides to the story that should be told in America right now. One is called, good, the other is called, evil.

The only reason our national press does not report on this legitimately and accurately is simply because they are pathetic cowards, plain and simple. They know they are failing, but are carrying on despicably, anyway.

I’ll always have ammo to burn addressing their egregious behavior these days, but for now, I want to continue unwinding this thread of how the Left and Right are completely different and how unfair it is that we have to deal with the never-ending recklessness on the Right.

Back in 2015, when Trump laughably announced he’d be seeking the Republican nomination for president, many prominent Republicans rightfully scoffed at the possibility. You’ll get no better example than Lindsey Graham’s evergreen tweet: “If we nominate Trump we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.” Graham went on to call Trump, “a jackass.”

The Bushes, Rubios, and other red-blooded Republicans all saw Trump for what he was: completely disgusting and ridiculous. That was before the big-mouth, lifetime loser started blasting them off the debate stage by imitating a slobbering, belligerent drunk at the end of the bar.

Instead of bouncing him from the party, they allowed him to play to the delight of the silent minority in America, who had watched him bravely fire people on his TV show, and lick his toilet seat by degrading President Obama with his putrid, racist, noxious birther blather.

These were the fine people whose tongues bled from self-censoring the bile that flowed from their broken brains, into their big, fat mouths, and had taken centuries to finally go out of taste in this country. It killed them that there were actually awful, hurtful things they could not say out loud anymore.

Now they were free to be themselves again, and let the sludge flow freely from their chapped lips.

Their freedoms had nothing to do with breaking free from any chains, or breaking glass ceilings. No, their freedoms meant having the permission from the very top to be just as disgusting and appalling as they wanted to be. It meant belittling the disabled, and dragging women into the gutter. It meant coddling Nazis and calling cities that terrified them with their sophistication, “s--t holes.”

Before we knew it Nazis and white suprematists were coming out of their caves everywhere and lighting their tiki torches. They were finally on the march to the point of no return, where their disgusting leader was waiting to tell them that he loved them.

Once you have coddled a racist, a traitor, a two-timer, a friend of our enemies, an environmental terrorist, a serial liar, and a sociopath, you are completely lost and broken. Done.

Now the mob rules the Republican Party, which makes it fitting they are represented by this two-bit thug, who is currently sitting in a court room for hiding campaign money he paid to an adult movie star he slept with named Stormy, while his wife was at home caring for a newborn.

Yeah, that’s good and wholesome and normal right there.

A few have broken free of the madman’s grip in the Republican Party, while others have tried, and have crumpled into a heap and back into the mud and slime.

In February, Trump’s very own attorney general, the morally corrupt, Bill Barr, stumbled into bravery and truth when he said that voting for Trump would be “playing Russian roulette with the country.”

By this past Wednesday he had once again devolved and said, but “I’ll support the Republican ticket” if Trump leads it.

Also in February, New Hampshire Republican Governor Chris Sununu said of Trump: “A--holes come and go. But America is here to stay.”

On Sunday, he admitted he had changed his tune and said: “Look, nobody should be shocked that the Republican governor is supporting the Republican president.”

That’s exactly right, governor: A--holes come and go, and apparently you will do everything you can to hang around for a while. You are a revolting person, sport.

Nobody should be surprised by these things anymore, because the Republican Party is irredeemable and incapable of surprises. They can ALWAYS go lower, and prove it literally every day.

This is what happens when you are morally busted and are not bound by any rules or self-control that guides the rest of us.

This is what happens when you surrender to depravity.

This is what happens when you rubber stamp abuse of women, lies, insurrection and support for dictators as anything in the vicinity of normal.

So what happens when standing by the truth and playing by the rules gets you nowhere as a political party and as a country? What happens when millions discover there is no justice and a depraved mad man once again has the keys to the kingdom?

Thanks to the Barrs and the Sununus, and the tens of millions of below-average, broken-down Republicans littering our country, we are terrifyingly close to finding out.

It is up to the Left to take out the garbage once again in America, because the Right has lost its damn mind, as well as its sense of taste and smell.

At what point can all this FINALLY be delivered as fact and shouted on Page 1?

At what point can we quit pretending that both sides are even remotely the same?

NOW READ: What most assuredly happens when Trump sits down with the New York Times

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.

[celticcrossanon]

Celta, my apologies if I’m overstepping “Tumblr protocol,” but here’s an excellent anon submission from another Tumblr blog that addresses the issue of who has authority (the Crown or Parliament?) to issue/remove UK royal and peerage titles. This was submitted to cat-with-the-emerald-tiara tumblr. (I don’t have an active tumblr…hope it’s ok to submit this to you this way…)

Anon Submission

A rebuttal to defence of Charles. 

The matter of titles has been a very curious one to investigate. Parliament has repeatedly rejected all attempts to discuss the titles, nevermind doing anything about them whether at public request via petitions or private members bills. At the height of title stripping fervour by petitions, parliament famously requested legal council and paperwork on the matter. 

Each time, they send out the same response: Royal titles are a matter for the monarch NOT parliament. 

This goes against the accepted understanding that titles are the purview of parliament so what gives?

Constitutional / legal experts have began to discuss the matter. The most recent published opinion from such a scholar was illuminating.

Here is link to read for yourself:

https://middletemplar.org.uk/to-strip-or-not-to-strip-prince-harrys-titles/

To summarise his opinion:

ALL titles held by members of the royal family are the gift of the monarch and given by royal perogative without oversight of parliament, privy council, Prime Minister or UK government. 

This includes birthright titles. 

To be clear: HRH, Prince, Duke, Earl, Baron, Knight. 

Since they are given without parliament, privy council, Prime Minister or UK government oversight, they are are NOT in the purview  of parliament, privy council, Prime Minister or UK government and therefore can’t be removed by those bodies. This explains parliament’s repeated response to all those petitions and private members’ bills. 

The Scholar goes on to explain that ALL titles held by members of the royal family are granted by LP. Whether this is the famous 1917 LP or a more recent LP eg the one written to grant William and Edward their titles of Wales and Edinburgh. 

Any title granted by LP can be removed by LP. No need to check with parliament. 

He doesn’t mention it, but we have a historic example of HRH Princess Patricia of Connaught ( Queen Victoria’s granddaughter from one of her sons) who was stripped by LP in 1919. 

Scholar explains removal by LP point by explaining a fundamental misunderstanding of the 1917 LP. 

It famously sets out the criteria of who can hold the HRH/ Prince titles, but in doing so it also stripped many, many Princes of both UK and Germany of HRH/ HSH/ HH Princes titles that they already had. 

If Queen Mary wasn’t already Queen and married to George V, she would have been stripped because her maiden title was HSH Princess Mary of Teck. Her claim to the UK throne came via her mother who was a first cousin to Queen Victoria. Under the new 1917 LP rules, Queen Mary had no right to Prince of the UK or any Highness style and would be stripped of it by the 1917 LP. 

However, the scholar reiterates that the only thing Charles has no power to effect is the Line of Succession and the Counsellors of State because these have parliament, privy council, Prime Minister or UK government oversight. He can make suggestions as he fid to add Anne and Edward, but it is not in his purview to remove or block anyone from these 2 bodies. Only Parliament can do that. 

Finally, anon mentions that Harold sued or threatened to sue Charles to get Prince titles for the Sussex children. 

Without researching this, i can tell you categorically that this did not happen. Charles as Monarch is literally above the law. His royal perogative is both un-justiceable and un-reviewable as the scholar reminds us. In regular language that means Charles can not be sued. Nor can he be arrested. No subjected to the law of the land. There is no lawyer who would attempt to try because of this ironclad law. And no judge or court will take the case. 

All lawyers and courts act on behalf of the Monarch and justice is carried out in his name so how can he sue himself?!

What is more likely to have happened is that the Sussexes grabbed the titles, and Charles allowed it to keep the peace which is a frequent excuse given by the Palace for their inaction when the Sussexes step over the line. 

Notice that unlike William and Edward, there was no acknowledgement, BP announcement or publication in the London Gazette which are 3 required formal processes for new titles. Instead BP just updated website. 

With their ingrained victimhood, it’s curious that the Sussexes didn’t dare grab or complain about their kids’ HRH styles. No one is at war with the kids so if they are Prince then they are also HRH, but the Sussexes only grabbed Prince. 

In conclusion, Charles as monarch absolutely had the power to strip Harold completely to become plain Mr Henry Mountbatten-Windsor, but he chooses not to do it. Just like he allowed the Sussexes to grab Prince titles for their kids without objection when he knows that they can’t sue him if he withheld said titles. 

*

Hi Nonny,

Thank you for sending this in.

This is the link to the post: https://the-cat-with-the-emerald-tiara-1.tumblr.com/post/749747114107600897/anon-submission

Cat’s blog is discussing the topic right now and there have been various posts on it, all of which are illuminating.

My understanding is that parliament can not remove royal titles. I believe they have said this when they rejected a petition to remove Harry’s titles.

I also think that parliament can remove normal peerage titles, but only for cases where it is specified in the law.

Harry’s Duke title is, I think, classed as a royal title and as such can only be removed by the King. 

I appreciate the link to the scholar in the post above. I like to see what other people who know more than I do think about this.

The hard thing for me is to remember that there are two tiers of titles in the UK, the peerage (normal duke, earl, baron etc) and the royals (HRH, Prince, Princess but also royal Duke, royal Earl, royal Baron etc - titles with the normal names but which are held by royals.).

#submission

[thebreakfastgenie]

Rooting for a president to be assassinated is fascinating to me because in most cases it won't have any tangible policy difference (besides probably increasing paranoia and support for draconian security measures) because the United States has an ironclad line of succession and presidents are replaced by the vice-presidents they chose. Hoping for an assassination is an entirely personal fantasy based in spite and the desire to see the person who holds the office of president suffer.

Rooting for a Supreme Court Justice to be assassinated on the other hand, depending on who is in office at the time...

#like yeah you could knock out the pres and vp at the same time and maybe hand power to the other party #but they don't make that easy #also no one includes this detail in their fantasies

[bestworstcase]

Just found your post about gillian x jaune and I enjoyed it very much! Could you elaborate gillian being anti-theme ozma? Is it like, she’s committed not to GoL and his religion war but the people she loves and she acts in ozma’s manner on this issue? Thank you <3

when i say a character is anti-theme what i mean is they either don’t know or don’t believe the narrative themes. this is a broad / high-level way of thinking about character arcs in terms of a character’s relation to theme. for example, a lot of fantasy protagonists have character arcs about learning and embracing the story’s themes; think “hero discovers the true power of friendship” type of stories. 

one of the characteristics that makes rwby so interesting is that this theme/anti-theme paradigm is decoupled from narrative role, most notably in the case of salem and ozpin. 

salem understands the narrative themes. in fact, she articulates them at the beginning of the story with such precision that fans regularly describe what rwby is thematically about by quoting or paraphrasing her: “even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change,”  “there will be no victory in strength,” and “your faith in mankind was not misplaced: when banded together, unified by a common enemy, they are a noticeable threat.” salem also describes mankind as “strong, wise, and resourceful” and praises humanity’s “passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity.” these are ideas that salem truly believes. 

meanwhile ozpin professes to have faith in mankind, but in reality he is beholden to a god who explicitly views modern humans as inferior shadows of their predecessors and has commanded ozma to “redeem” them before the gods lest they be found unworthy of existence and destroyed. ozpin himself is also paranoid, deceitful, manipulative, and distrustful, because he has no real faith in people. 

and, if you listen to what salem actually says to and about him (including in ‘sacrifice’ and ‘divide’) it’s obvious that most of her fury is motivated by this: salem believes that humanity is worthy and that the divine mandate should be refused, and ozma’s dedication to his task of “redeeming” humanity enrages her. she’s angry both for herself and on humanity’s behalf.

her belief in the themes is also evident in her strategy and the scope of her war: she is very narrowly focused on the huntsmen academies and seems to be making an effort to minimize collateral damage, i.e. pulling grimm out of vale quickly while holding beacon, the surgical strike planned on haven, not attacking mantle (and having the hound send wild grimm out of the city), leaving menagerie in peace. salem is both desperate and ruthless, but her faith in remnant’s ability to survive and rebuild after she knocks the academies down is ironclad.

so, with that laid out, before discussing gillian i want to first elaborate on jaune being anti-theme salem. 

salem’s own story is defined by striving for freedom and justice: she escapes her tyrannical father’s tower; challenges the brothers, who are unjust; leads a rebellion; possibly brings humankind back and may have created the faunus through her transformation in the pool of grimm; rejects the divine mandate; and now she seeks to topple the huntsmen academies and create a ‘new world’ free from the divine threat of annihilation. 

connected to that, one of the central thematic conceits of her character is the power that storytellers wield over their audiences: ozpin explicitly uses fairytales as propaganda to control the narrative about her, framing her as an inhuman monster who cannot be trusted and desires only annihilation. fairytalesare not real, and the truth is hard to come by. salem is well aware of this and remarks upon it in her V1 soliloquy (“legends, stories scattered through time” that obscure “the forgotten past”). she does not, particularly, seem to like fairytales. 

as with hope and faith in mankind, this is another case of salem knowing the theme versus ozma believing the anti-theme. rwby values fairytales because they can express emotional truths, but the whole truth—the reality—is always more complex, and fairytales can also be weaponized as propaganda or tools of condemnation. it is important to understand that fairytales aren’t real, and treating real life like a fairytale only leads to pain. 

yes? okay.

jaune and pyrrha reflect salem and ozma; she’s the renowned celebrity athlete with a heart of gold, he’s the self-described “damsel in distress” and “lovable idiot stuck in the tree.” she helps him down from the tree and trains him to a level of competence, and like the original ozma, she dies tragically young. simple. 

but,

unlike salem, jaune is not motivated by a longing for freedom or anger at injustice. he comes from a line of soldiers and he wants to prove to his doubtful family that he’s good enough to uphold that legacy. he doesn’t want to be the damsel in distress; he wants to be the hero. he doesn’t want to be saved; he wants to be the one saving others. so he fraudulently enrolls in beacon academy and pretends to be something he isn’t. the tree is his tower—“i’m tired of being the lovable idiot stuck in the tree while his friends fight for their lives,” he says, pointing wildly at beacon tower—but the thing is, he put himself there. during his character arc in V1, jaune is trapped in a cage of his own making, one he built out of childish fantasies about being the fairytale hero. 

further, if we compare jaune’s reason for wanting to be a huntsman against the rest of the kids:

ruby wants to help people and feel closer to her mother by being like the heroes in the stories summer read to her when she was small

weiss wants to atone for what her father has done in her family’s name and make things right

blake wants to make a stand against corruption and inequality for her people, even though she’s not sure how to fix it

yang craves adventure and self-discovery, and she wants to pursue it in a manner that will make the world a better place

pyrrha believes it’s her destiny to be a huntress in order to protect the world

nora doesn’t have a clear idea of what she wants, but she’s an intensely compassionate person who, like blake, stands up to injustice and advocates for people in need. 

ren wants to become the huntsman his village needed, someone who could have saved his parents and his home, and he’s following his father’s final advice to take action

jaune wants to prove to his family that he is good enough to become a warrior like his forefathers. 

jaune is the odd one out. he’s fiercely loyal to and protective of his friends, but he’s the only one who came to beacon for purely self-centered reasons. his arc in V1 is about jaune learning not to be craven and self-serving, to shelve his pride, let go of his cowardice, and do the right thing. 

all of this is anti-theme—or at least, the absence of belief in the themes. 

and that comes to a head when he’s stranded in the ever after in V9. see, salem’s belief in the themes—in the power of hope, the worth of mankind, and the importance of truth—is not just an abstraction. these beliefs are what drives her. for salem, emotionally, hope and righteous anger are one and the same. when she loses her hope, she remembers her anger; anger motivates her to act, and so reignites her hope. she has never given up because she has taken every horrific hope-shattering experience as a reason to get back up and keep fighting. every cruelty the gods inflicted upon her strengthened her conviction that resistance to their design was worthwhile. 

so

what happens if salem lacks that conviction?

salem believes heart and soul that change is possible and that these humans—this world—are better off without the brothers. in the present, she is hopeless and wrathful, and her desperation drives her to catastrophic extremes, but she is not stagnating: she’s fighting to change the world, freeing herself from exile and everyone else from the threat of annihilation. 

in contrast, jaune does not really believe in anything. not in the way salem does—he believes in his friends and he believes in doing his job as a huntsmen, sure. but where is his faith? where, after he’s stranded in the ever after, is his reason to act? after the moonfall, salem curses the gods and wanders the face of remnant alone until she reaches the pool of grimm, then throws herself into the darkness with the hope that it will change something; rather than fall into despair, she holds onto her conviction and searches for a way to keep moving forward. 

jaune… sits on a beach for years, passively waiting for something to happen. when alyx and lewis find him, he tries to be the storybook hero and his obsession with making sure that the story happens as it’s “supposed” to freaks alyx out so much that she poisons him. then he lives with the paper pleasers for years, playing pretend as their hero while he runs in circles. he’s trapped. he has no real purpose or direction. the tree is, once again, his tower—that tree is death! it erases you!—and just as before, it’s a tower of his own making. 

tellingly, his stagnation in the ever after transforms him into a resemblance of ozpin: paranoid, distrustful, manipulative, controlling of the very people to whom he has appointed himself a guardian. he finds himself in a world completely unfamiliar to him, convinces himself that it’s cursed and bad because it isn’t like the world he remembers, and rots. 

so, he’s anti-theme salem: a fractal repetition of her unmoored from her unshakable belief in the themes, who stagnates and is corrupted like ozpin because of his lack of faith. 

the natural converse of anti-theme salem is an ozma who does believe in the themes, because that’s the reversal of ozma’s relation to the theme.

presuming that i am generally anticipating gillian’s presence and role in the vacuo arc correctly, there are a few solid reasons to think that her thematic ties to ozma will mirror jaune’s to salem.

first, as the summer maiden—the maiden of destruction—her “moral” (per the fairytale) is “don’t view the world at a distance; take an active part in it,” and destruction itself has been consistently portrayed as a catalyst and agent of change. ozpin fears destruction and views it as the enemy of life itself—anti-theme. being the summer maiden, gillian would embody the thematic refutation to that idea.

second, the crown repeats the ozlem kingdom: both authoritarian cults founded and led by a pair of leaders claiming divine right to rule (ozlem on the strength of their magic, the asturias twins through their claim of royal blood), and both collapse when ozma / gillian are forced to choose between love and their cause. but they choose in opposite directions; ozma sacrifices salem and their daughters for the sake of the divine mandate, but gillian turns against jax at the last minute to save  his life (and her own) once it’s clear that he intends to go down fighting. unlike ozma, when the chips were down, gillian sacrificed her cause to save her brother.

third, the whole backstory between gillian and jax—as i’ve pointed out before—revolves around gillian’s absolute rejection of the idea that her brother’s frailty made him inferior. everyone else, even jax himself, sees jax as a parasitic weakling, pitiable at best and repellant at worst, but gillian is glad to share her aura with him and not only treats him like her equal but comfortably follows his lead. 

gillian’s semblance makes her terrifically powerful, with or without the maiden powers, and she was raised in a culture that worships power and abhors “weakness”—and yet. she mainly uses her power to support her brother and at one point during the climactic battle she even reflects that the power she grants her forces also leads them to be overconfident and reckless, to their detriment. her attitude toward power is very reminiscent of salem’s—and quite unlike ozma, who seeks out the relics in the hope of using them to overpower salem and goes to extreme lengths to try to keep the maidens and their power under his control. 

so while she clearly repeats ozma, gillian does not put her faith in power and chooses to follow her heart rather than let herself and her brother die for a doomed cause, and she might be the maiden who embodies destruction as a force of active change. all of this puts her thematically opposite to ozma in much the same way that jaune is thematically opposite to salem. 

and,

if she and jaune do wind up being narratively intertwined (romantically or otherwise), there is a lot of compelling reverse-ozlem ore here. a heroic anti-theme salem in juxtaposition with a villainous ozma who knows (some of) the themes. when jaune is at his best, he’s a healer; gillian loves her medically fragile brother. there’s an obvious narrative opening to bring these characters into orbit with each other and helping jax is an obvious step to healing what’s rotten in the state of vacuo. in the broader thematic sense, gillian as an ozma repetition being motivated to complete a villain->hero arc because they’re helping her brother (and because she’s been given a reason to question whether there’s any real truth or value in her “royal bloodline”) would also elegantly precipitates ozma’s apostasy arc. and then you have the possible ozlem reversal of jaune finding something to believe in through gillian just as ozma found something to live for in salem. 

#theme vs anti-theme is rly central to #why ozlem imploded #and in theory (sighs heavily) crochi amour would explore and resolve that conflict #as a prelude to the ozlem reconciliation

[nyarlathotep-thecrawlingchaos]

Once I get enough into One Piece I wanna create Oc based of this Legend of Runeterra character.

Wait

I just did a brief Googling and I can't help myself I'm sorry

Lariette grew up in Demacia, where she first developed her ironclad sense of justice. No criminal too tough, no crime too great to take on. She grew tired of the prospects Demacia had to offer, setting sight toward the hotbed of criminal activity in Bilgewater.[1]

In lawless Bilgewater, she’s become a vigilante whose work rounding up scum from the Bounty Board is never done. She’s taken on the daunting task of cleaning up Bilgewater and making a name for herself—or at least, die trying.[2]

You have absolutely no obligation to accept my interpretation, I know nothing more about her than what is quoted above, I just love her character design and wanted to give an interpretation.

Just thinking/typing out loud now.

Replacing Bilgewater with Loguetown, the town at the entrance to the Grand Line. The town of beginnings and ends, where Gol D. Roger was both born and executed.

Bounty hunter. Takes pride in bringing pirates to justice before they can enter the Grand Line and expand their enterprise.

Her methods aren't always within the confines of legality, but she's efficient and clean in her methods, and ensures that no innocents are harmed; andshe's also fierce enough that the local Marines don't bother (or honestly even dare) to interfere with her activities, so long as she keeps taking care of bounties without disturbing the peace.

Main question is why she's so bent on justice.

Maybe some deep-seated trauma involving pirates?

Maybe raised into bounty hunting.

Going with the latter, her main caregiver in her youth was a bounty hunter.

Mixing it up a bit, her parent(s)/guardian(s) were killed by pirates when she was young, maybe even her whole town was raided and left in ruin, and she was taken in by the bounty hunter that was tracking them, out of sympathy. Said bounty hunter raised her and trained her to be able to fend for herself in a world wrought with violence and injustice.

So she was raised into the trade, raised to detest pirates, hates them eternally because they took her home and family, and became a force to be reckoned with as a result.

Patrols the streets of Loguetown on horseback daily, watching and waiting.

Knows all the locals, and they know her—as a woman of few words, a woman of strength and peace, with the sole intention of ensuring that peace is kept.

The so-called "Golden Age of Piracy" to her is the dawn of the end of the world. It's an excuse for outlaws to run amock, to disturb the peace, to raid and pillage and destroy towns and nations and families much like her own was destroyed, and she will do anything in her power to see it muted.

Pirates from all across the East Blue seeking the One Piece have come to know her name, to fear her as one of the greatest obstacles between themselves and the Grand Line.

Lariette the Scourge, Lariette the Ruthless.

Lariette, the Reaper.

[lorekeeper-backset]

List of Alternate Universe Mares because I have too many:

Mare (Pkmn Irl): The most well known and modern incarnation of Mare, runner of the blog @aura-acolyte. Rayquaza's Chosen and the Hero of Hoenn. Most of Mare's core traits come from this incarnation.

Mare (Auraverse): The other most modern incarnation of Mare, differentiated from main Pokemon IRL Mare in that she's not chronically online. Other than that they're pretty similar. She's the main protagonist of An Account of Rayquaza's Chosen

Emerald: The only evil Mare. Renounced her name and vowed to burn the world to the ground. Trapped in the Distortion World by Zinnia.

Marewolf: Mare but she's a Werewolf raised by Harpies in the same world as @darlingvirus's Victoria, Byrd, and Dr. Abyssid. Has a lot less emotional baggage and responsibility weighing her down, is generally more carefree, and has a lot more self-confidence and self-worth. Still keeps her ironclad sense of Justice, though. Instead of protecting all of Hoenn she protects the small town of Lakewood, Oregon from monsters and beasties of all sorts. Not Pokemon, though. By far the oldest incarnation of the character at 23. Also she's a massive slut and maybe has a drinking problem.

Coffee Shop AU Mare: A Mare who is reluctantly assisting Brendan on his quest to create the world's best Coffee Shop by beating the Coffee League. Don't question it.

Demigod Mare: Mare but she's a daughter of Ares at Camp Half-Blood.

Morre: Hero of Orre and defeater of Team Snagem and Team Cipher, Orre's a much brighter place with her around. Still a desert wasteland but its better than usual. Locked in conflict with Leviathan, Hundred Year Gyarados and President of Orre by virtue of eating the last president (Leviathan created by @the-koiking-pond).

(Sorry about the pings, guys)

#backset blabbers #mare birch #auraverse #an account of rayquaza's chosen

[monaluisa]

Man-Made God

Man-made God, Word-made flesh, Light cast into darkness,

You idol of this rotten world, You wretch who made us heartless:

If I bow my head and clap my hands, or kneel and weep before You,

Do You think You will listen to a man who once adored You?

Your New World is in ashes, and Your vision is long-dead.

We watched You as You shuttered, as You thrashed and screamed and bled.

Your enemies rejoiced, and all Your worshippers went mad,

And some of us just stood there, souls and hearts both ironclad.

It’s me who bears the blame; I have Your blood upon my hands;

I aimed the gun and fired blind in spite of my commands.

Am I then Pontius Pilate, to have killed a God on Earth?

Or am I only Judas, preordained to Hell since birth?

Was that why You created me? Was that my only use?

To smile while You watched me put my head inside the noose?

L was made for justice, and Aizawa for doubt;

Your father to keep faith in You when many were without.

Ide to survive, and good Ukita to be burned,

Near to triumph over You, and Mello to be spurned.

But I was just a puppet formed from flesh and blood and bone.

A man who did not know yet that his fate was not his own.

It was You who wrote my story; I who brought Yours to an end.

And all the time in all the world cannot such crimes amend.

You never heard the prayers we cried that tore our throats apart,

You, with Your human countenance and Shinigami’s heart.

You never were a God, then; you were nothing but a man.

And I was but a passerby to all that you had planned.

#death note #touta matsuda #my writing #poetry #fanfic

[beardedmrbean]

MILAN (AP) — Amanda Knox faces another trial for slander this week in Italy in a case that could remove the last legal stain against her, nine years after Italy’s highest court threw out her conviction for the murder of her 21-year-old British roommate.

Knox, who was a 20-year-old student when she was accused along with her then-boyfriend of murdering Meredith Kercher in 2007, has built a life back in the United States as an advocate, writer, podcaster and producer — with much of her work drawing on her experience.

Now 36 and the mother of two small children, Knox campaigns for criminal justice reform and to raise awareness about forced confessions. She has recorded a series on resilience for a meditation app and has a podcast with her husband, Christopher Robinson, and an upcoming limited series on her struggles within the Italian legal system for Hulu that has Monica Lewinsky as an executive producer.

Despite a definitive ruling by Italy’s Cassation Court in 2015 that Knox and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito did not commit the crime, and the conviction of another man whose DNA was at the scene, doubts persist about Knox’s role with the victim’s family and the man she wrongly accused.

That is largely due to the slander conviction for wrongly accusing a Congolese bar owner in the killing, which was confirmed by the highest court in 2015. That conviction was only thrown out last November, based on a European Court of Human Rights ruling that found Knox’s rights had been violated in a long night of questioning without a lawyer and official translator.

Even now, Knox isn’t sure that a not guilty verdict in the new trial, which opens Wednesday in Florence, will persuade her detractors.

“On the one hand, I am glad I have this chance to clear my name, and hopefully that will take away the stigma that I have been living with,’’ Knox, who did not respond to an interview request, said on her podcast Labyrinths in December.

“On the other hand, I don’t know if it ever will, in the way I am still traumatized by it,” she said. “I am sure people will still hold it against me because they don’t want to understand what happened, and they don’t want to accept that an innocent person can be gaslit and coerced into what I went through.”

Knox said on her podcast that she expects to testify, but her lawyer said she is not expected in court for opening day.

The Kercher family lawyer, Francesco Maresca, said the high court’s exoneration did little in his mind to dispel doubts following Knox’s conviction by a trial court and two appeals courts, the first confirming her sentence of 26 years and the second raising it to 28 ½ years.

“This trial never ends,’’ Maresca told The Associated Press, obscuring “the memory of poor Meredith, who is always remembered for these procedural aspects and not as a student and young woman.”

Among his doubts, Maresca cited Knox’s confused retraction of her accusation against Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the bar where she worked part-time, and the verdict in Rudy Guede’s conviction for killing Kercher that maintains that the Ivorian man did not act alone.

Now 36, Guede was released from prison in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year term handed down in a fast-track trial. Guede was recently ordered to wear a monitoring bracelet and not leave his home at night after an ex-girlfriend accused him of physical and sexual abuse. An investigation is ongoing.

Knox’s new trial will admit just one piece of evidence: her four-page handwritten statement that the court will examine to see if it contains elements to support slander against Lumumba. Despite having an ironclad alibi, he was held in jail for some two weeks before police released him. Lumumba has since left Italy.

Two earlier statements typed up by police that Knox signed in the early hours of Nov. 6, 2007 that contained the accusation, and were considered the most incriminating, have been ruled inadmissible by Italy’s highest court.

The four-page letter, which she wrote in the same 53-hour span of questioning over four days starting Nov. 5, reflects someone in a state of confusion, trying to reconcile what police have told her with her own recollections.

“In regards to this ‘confession’ that I made last night, I want to make clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion,’’ Knox wrote.

She referred to police statements that she would be arrested and jailed for 30 years and that Sollecito was turning against her.

Lauria Baldassare, an Italian lawyer who founded the Innocents Project, said the topic of wrongful convictions in Italy is starting to “create social alarm as it assumes important dimensions.”

He cited 10 cases of defendants being paid damages for wrongful convictions over the last decade, but said they faced difficulty in escaping the stigma of their initial guilty verdict — much like Knox.

“There is still part of the public opinion that does not accept the Court of Cassation’s decision, and these debates become a sport,’' said Baldassare, whose organization is independent from the Innocence Project that Knox works with. ”Italy does not have the maturity to accept an exoneration, because social prejudices are stronger than the finding.”

#nunyas news

[greatwyrmgold]

The Trial of Kaede Hanagata

(Spoilers for the Kemono Jihen manga up to chapter 58 or so follow.)

Kaede's trial in is kind of odd, because...I don't want to say what it's trying to do, but it feels like it's combining two potentially interesting philosophical questions in a way that invalidates both.

Dual Dilemmas

Kaede participated in an attempt to wipe the tanuki village of Yashima and its inhabitants off the map. By the end of that arc, though, both the mastermind of the attack and Yashima's chief are dead, and Kaede has been imprisoned in a magic wicker thingy that negates his powers.

On one hand, you have a classic ethical question that dates back at least to Aristotle: Do we judge those who do evil without understanding it as evil the same as we would someone who understands what they did? If not, do we judge them as better or worse?

And Kaede works pretty well for this. He has been characterized as being hedonistic, short-sighted, and above all, dim. He doesn't think about the consequences of his actions, his critical thinking skills would make it hard to recognize those skills if he did, and there are clearly a lot of things he doesn't know.

This aspect of Kaede was emphasized pretty clearly already, both through the arc where he attacked Yashima and in basically every prior appearance, but it's emphasized further in the trial. He doesn't understand what's going on, or why everyone is bummed about the old dude, or that his mastermind buddy also died.

(The buddy's name is Akagi, by the way.)

Also: The argument is directly addressed. Kabane makes an argument in Kaede's defense based around his lack of understanding, saying he can teach Kaede to be better, and Shiki responds with "Being ignorant doesn't excuse him of his crimes! He has to die!"

On the other hand, you have an even stronger conundrum: Is it right to spare a murderer's life, even if he shows no remorse for his sins? Is punishment alone enough reason to execute someone, to end a life?

And Kaede's case is a pretty ironclad case study for that question. Well, wicker-clad. Kaede would normally be dangerous, but he's trapped in a box...basket...thing made of plants whose poison negate the magic powers of people trapped inside. As long as Kaede's in the box, he can't shapeshift, escape, or set anything on fire.

(I know that being trapped in a small box made of poisonous plants sounds uncomfortable enough to bring up questions about how miserable you can make a prison before execution is more merciful, but later chapters show that Kaede is comfy in the box. The worst parts for him are that he can't eat anything that isn't right next to his head and having to pretend he's a normal dog when humans are around.) (He's fine. It's fine. He's fine.)

And Kaede doesn't show any remorse about the destruction he wrought with his own two hands. (Um, paws.) He's callous about the feelings of loss the tanuki are experiencing. Plus, Iyohime, the tanuki acting as judge, explicitly frames the trial as a matter of mercy versus vengeance. She doesn't see executing Kaede when he's no threat as "justice," and nobody really articulates a reason why it would be.

Problems

I see three problems with this setup. First, the trial takes place across about half a chapter, meaning that there isn't any time to resolve the juxtaposition of "vengeance or mercy" and "being ignorant doesn't excuse him of his crimes". And it really is just juxtaposition, rather than synthesis or even tension; the ideas just kinda lie there.

Second, the two ideas are incompatible in some key ways. For instance: Kaede might not recognize that trying to cook and eat tanuki children is evil, but he is aware enough to understand that tanuki are also people, and that being eaten isn't pleasant. The ways that Kaede is ignorant are inconsequential in the face of how remorseless he is.

At the same time, spending multiple pages questioning whether Kaede is competent to stand trial weakens the "vengeance or mercy" theme, and not just by wasting much of the trial's limited page-space. Asking whether Kaede should be considered guilty distracts from the question of how he should be treated if he is.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Iyohime is nine, which brings a whole separate dimension to this: Whatever Kaede deserves, whatever might be just, is it ethical to make a small child complicit in someone's death?

NO! Fuck no! It's good that she was consulted, Kaede would be super dead otherwise, but that decision should never have been placed on her shoulders! She might be the beloved granddaughter of the late chief, and Yashima still has hereditary leadership like some aristocratic backwater, but she's not ready for the responsibility of leadership, especially not for executions! Even if the chief didn't have any living children (at the very least, Iyohime's dad is alive), someone else should have been appointed as acting chief!

Ultimately, this is what sways the tanuki. Not arguments about whether someone so ignorant can be considered responsible, not Iyohime flat-out calling the execution an act of vengeance, but the realization that they just asked a nine-year-old to order someone's death. That's not even subtext.

Not only are the two interesting ideas underdeveloped, not only do they conflict with each other, but they're ultimately rendered redundant by a third, much less interesting idea.

#kemono jihen #kaede hanagata #crime and punishment #themes #narrative #manga

[hashtagloveloses]

wei wuxian has the most ironclad sense of justice autistic swag of them all

#mdzs #WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!! #original post

[dandelion-wings]

"If the Darknight Hero really does exist, he's probably just someone in disguise. When he gets up in the morning to brush his teeth, it's the real him. Only in the dead of night does he become the Darknight Hero. But not (Monsieur) Neuvillette. The Chief Justice IS the real him. For us Melusines, our ideal of the perfect father — that's also the real him. The only person that isn't really him is the one that goes by the name of Neuvillette." From this, we can safely surmise... that Neuvillette must be the only male Melusine! Granted, the Melusines actually appeared much later than when Neuvillette took up his post. But in the face of such ironclad evidence, there's bound to be some way of explaining this!"

— Seven Nations Gazette, a notorious tabloid

From his drip marketing

Thanks! :> I don't look at marketing so I would've entirely missed that.

Also the comparison to the Darknight Hero is hilarious because I was just telling @theabysscomeshome that Neuvillette sounds almost exactly, to me, like Diluc does in my head. I constantly have to make myself listen to Diluc's voicelines because his actual voice doesn't feel Right to me, it slips right out of my head, and my confusion over Neuvillette's voice sounding familiar started with me going "do he and Diluc have the same voice actor? no? huh. I should look up his other roles...." But it just comes down to, Neuvillette's voice is a near-exact match to the voice that my brain gives Diluc when I'm not paying enough attention. XD

#asked and answered #fontaine spoilers #diluc is literally a night owl