#it came directly from google images

[incorrectbatfam]

Types of obnoxious batfam stans

Written by an obnoxious batfam stan

Not really a rant but something I've noticed over the years interacting in different spaces and I've decided to make your problem now.

Please note that I'm not saying there's any "right" way to be a fan because we all suck by virtue of being comic nerds, but there are certain kinds of batfamily fans that stick out to be in particular.

Anywho, here are 12 kinds of annoying batfam stans that you've probably run into and you better get a laugh out of it *points gun to your head*.

1) The Newbies Who Never Heard of Google

There's no shame in being new to something. It's a phase that we're all guaranteed to go through, whether we're 11 or 101. However, in this day and age, so many things can be easily googled that you don't need to shout every question you have into the VVorld VVide VVoid. If you need comic recs or a reading list, google it. If you wanna know a character's origin story, google it. If you need to know the color of Batman's underpants in a particular issue in 1965... well that's probably too specific for Google but Reddit will definitely have an answer.

2) The Middle School Authors

Before the 13-year-olds get up in my notes, I'm not saying everyone that age writes like this. Middle school is a state of mind. These fanfic writers usually stand out in a few ways.

They're oftentimes first-person POV or reader-insert. Give Y/N a break, she's tired.

The grammar is stunningly atrocious. I get if you're inexperienced or if you're writing in a second language, but we are in the prime era of autocorrect. If you need help, it's right there. Also, fuck c*nsoring b*d w*rds and fuck "unalive."

The characters do things that are out-of-character because the author is projecting their own personality. Bruce Wayne is a lot of things but he does not listen to the fucking Mountain Goats.

There's a lack of experience or research when it comes to certain topics. That's not how physics works. He can't walk that injury off. And that's definitely NOT how you do the horizontal hokey pokey.

3) The Neckbeards

Unfortunately, these basement-dwelling mouth-breathers tainted the image of what a comic fan is, though that's been changing recently. Still, we've all seen them. They gatekeep via pop quizzes, 'cause obviously you're not a real fan unless you know what page 10 of Batman #138 smells like. They give unsolicited commentary on people's cosplays, nitpicking the guys and being gross toward women. And heaven forbid the comics add a little diversity.

4) The Moviegoers

Nothing inherently wrong with getting into the fandom via the movies, nor is there anything wrong with sticking to that. I just feel like we're two different species of Galapagos finches, you know?

5) The Christopher Nolans

Separate from casual fans of the Nolan movies. I'm calling them the Christopher Nolans because these people have a tendency to reach for the grimdarkest thing possible. It's like they cannot fathom Batman having any other emotions besides punching and gargoyle brooding.

6) The Canon Purists

Wanna share a fun headcanon? NO, because Stephanie Brown never used cherry lip balm in the comics so therefore that must be the absolute truth. These people are a stickler for comic accuracy to the point where it's like... why bother interacting with the fandom in the first place? The worst part is when they're adamant on following a single continuity and refuse to consider anything else. This is comics we're talking about. Everything either has been or will be canon at some point.

7) The Fanon Worshippers

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the people who base their entire perception of the characters on something either they pulled out of their ass or that their mutual with 16 followers came up with, despite evidence directly contradicting it. I love WFA, but I feel like that's partially responsible for further perpetuating certain popular myths. Also, these fans tend to focus solely on the batfam/their ships. It's one thing to have some people in the foreground vs. background, but put some respect to Bart Allen's name you goddamn cheesecakes.

8) The Golden Age Dads

These guys aren't really obnoxious. I actually find it kind of cute how they think Jason Todd is still dead.

9) The Chronically Online

I have a rule of thumb when it comes to discourse: if it's not something I'd hear about at a bar, it's not worth my mental energy. Some people haven't gotten the memo, though.

These are either the well-intentioned but misinformed teenagers or grown-ass adults beefing with children because they don't have a life. They have takes that are oversimplified, rage-inducing, TikTok algorithm attention-grabbers that no one cares about in real life.

Don't get me wrong, we've got a bunch of issues in comics and fandom that are worth discussing. However, there comes a point where you're splitting hairs and need to go the fuck outside. I'm not gonna link the post 'cause I don't wanna call them and their 7 notes out, but the other week I saw someone saying Stephcass was a racist ship because something something colonialism parallel. You gotta be Elastigirl to have that kind of reach.

10) The Corporate Simps

I love comics. I appreciate the writers and artists. However, you will find my carcass in a ditch before you catch me licking the boots of DC/Warner Bros. Basically, these fans, fewer as they are, can't seem to fathom that their favorite franchise can (and does) put out some steaming motherfucking garbage.

11) The Hot Cosplayers

Not actually annoyed, I'm just a little jealous. Stop being hotter than me, please and thank you.

12) The One With A Punchline For Everything

Wait–

#dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #duke thomas #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #barbara gordon #kate kane #alfred pennyworth #selina kyle #bruce wayne #batman #batfamily #batfam #batboys #batbros #batkids #batsiblings #batman family #dc comics #dc fandom #comics #comic books #fandom #fandom culture #discourse #personal #tw swearing #long post

[gaysindistress]

Van Helsing Retold - five

pairings: vamp hunter!reader x vamp!bucky

Summary: Under the cover of night, vampires and their hunters have been at war for centuries, never letting their bloodshed reach the light of day. That is until the wife of a powerful vampire leader, Steve Rogers is murdered and he demands revenge. Y/N Van Helsing is the target of his crusade and she comes face to face with his right hand man, Bucky Barnes.

Warnings: cursing, angst, this one is pretty mild

Word count: 2.5k

four | series masterlist

Tag list: @vonalyn @cakesandtom @nerdytif @teambarnes72

disclaimer: credits to original creator/poster of image/gif. found on Google/Pinterest.

“I think I know where they are.”

John’s eyes immediately pierce the shaking hunter and he narrows them when the hunter doesn’t elaborate.

“David didn’t tell you that Helmut was found with his heart ripped out,” the hunter stumbles over his words as John pushes to his feet, “neither of them could’ve done that. It had…”

“Another vamp,” John finishes his sentence, “who?”

“I’m waiting for confirmation but I think it was either Natasha Romanoff or James Barnes. I have scouts out looking for both as well as searching any known safehouses as we speak. I should know within the hour.”

John circles the man and hums along, “and why did you come to me now? Why didn’t you wait for confirmation?”

The hunter tenses as John comes to stand directly behind him, “I’ll need a team ready to go once I get word. I thought it would be better to get your approval.”

There’s a beat of silence and the hunter silently prays to every god known to man that he made the right decision.

“My team will be ready in 30 minutes.”

“Your team?”

John circles around to face the man, “I will be the one to get her back and put a bullet in the blood sucker that took her.”

There’s an odd look in Bucky’s eye when he looks at me but he always looks away too quickly when I catch him. I want to question him about it however the pressing reality of our situation keeps me from doing it.

When I awoke with a hoarse throat and aching eyes, Sam almost immediately came in to tell me that we would be going before Steve and his guard in two nights to plead my innocence. I tried to tell him that doing that was the worst plan possible considering my hand was still an issue. He gave me an empathic look before shaking it away and telling me that Bucky was going to fix it before we left.

The memory of last night and my conversation…maybe a dream… with Bucky last night came flooding back. All I could remember is that he’d told me that he was going to go through with giving me his blood but there’s a block after that. It’s frustrating not having full access to your own memories but then again, I don’t know what’s beyond this stone wall.

All I could remember is since we were mates, he would heal me.

He would die more than likely as a result of the bond between us being cut off but I would be healed.

I wouldn’t be a vampire.

I would be okay again.

My hand pulses and throbs as I tear my burning eyes from the wall. I must have been staring at it. I’ve been doing that a lot; staring at walls, staring at my hand, staring at Bucky.

Bucky.

Bucky.

There’s a knock on my door and the person waits for me to answer. I already know it’s him, having been able to feel our bond growing warmer when he’s near. I’m getting better at deciphering what it’s telling me, although it seems like it’s not going to matter much longer.

“Give a second,” I tell him as I clamber off the bed and throw on my coat and boots. He’s more than likely going to tell me that we need to leave so I might as well be ready.

I open the door and he nearly falls into me. He must have been leaning against it and he quickly catches himself on the frame.

“Are you re…” the words die on his tongue, “we’re leaving.”

“Sam said you were going to fix this,” I say as I wave my hand around, “before we left.”

He stares down at me for a moment before snapping at me, “before we get there, that’s what I said.”

“What crawled up your ass and died?” I scoff at him as I push past and march down the hallway.

He mumbles something and I know for damn sure he didn’t say what I think he just did, “come again?”

Harsh blue eyes pierce me as he prowls down the hall towards me. The bond pounds deep inside me, so loud that it drowns out the sound of my heart and for half a second, I forget that I even have one. I can’t hear his, he doesn’t have one but something tells me that the pounding bond is very much a surrogate for his still one.

His boots make solid hits to the floor and it everything is muffled expect for the bond. It all sounds like my head is being held under water as he comes to stand only a foot away from me. It’s not close enough.

He needs to be closer.

He needs to be touching me.

He needs to be against me.

“I said you’re my problem.”

My jaw drops but a gasp doesn’t fall out like it normally would. The air has been stolen from my lungs due to sheer shock.

“I’m the problem? Me? I’m the fucking problem?” I sneer at him, taking a step closer as he takes one step back, “You’re the one who gave me a massive concussion, killed Helmut, and then dragged me to some safehouse and for what? Because of some bullshit bond that connects us? Because you believe that fate has chosen us to be mates? Because you think that I have feelings for you? All I feel towards you is a the burden of our bond and I can’t wait to get rid of it the moment that you stop my turning and can fucking leave me alone.”

My chest is raising and falling rapidly as I seethe with anger but there’s something wet falling down my face. Tears, I realize are flowing from my eyes however once again, I don’t know why. I have no reason to cry. I have no reason to care that the connection that is thrashing around inside of me like a starving animal locked in a cage. I have no reason to care about him and whatever reason that I might find is locked away behind that stone wall inside my mind.

“If you’re so eager to get rid of me, here,” he shoves a vial filled with a dark liquid towards me, “don’t drink it until after I meet with Steve. It won’t be a good look for you if I drop dead while trying to convince him that you didn’t kill his mate.”

I turn the vial over in my hand while he deliberately avoids me as he stalks away. It’s his blood, I realize, the anti venom and the cure that would stop my turning. He gave it to me. He just gave it to me. In training, we’d been taught that there was an anti venom but the how was always a mystery. No one really gave an answer as to why we weren’t taught about how the process worked but it was implied that if we didn’t have a way out, then our only option was to not get infected. A part of me thought that the vampire needed to be present but if Helmut had a vial of Peggy’s blood, then clearly she didn’t need to even be alive.

Maybe beyond that mental block lies a girl that wants Bucky to be with me when I take the anti venom. She wants him to be there to guide her through the steps and hold her through the agony that will undoubtedly come. She wants him to be there so when he feels that breaking, that severing of their bond, she can provide him with the same comfort. She needs to be there when his body can’t handle the bone crushing effects of their disconnect, when his heart stills even more than it already has and it shatters. She needs to be there when the warmth that usually lives inside of them both dies out and it freezes him. She needs to be there when he takes his last breath.

But she won’t.

I won’t be there because I don’t care.

Seeing images of a target is completely different than when you see the subject in person. Steve is a truly menacing presence with his larger than human body and blood thirsty look to his pale eyes. They’re similar to Bucky’s in their coloring but they’re soulless. There is nothing beyond the need to consume all those who have a pulse in the room. Bucky’s hold a certain humanity that I hadn’t seen in a vampire before; there is warmth, kindness, sadness, admiration…love in his eyes.

Steve’s heavy stare is on me the second I walk into what appears to be his office. I’m placed between Sam and Bucky as we approach the lounging leader of vampires but he straightens when we stop a few yards from him. He’s dressed in a navy blue suit with only a simple white shirt under and a gold pendant decorates his neck. A short grey speckled beard has grown over his jaw, giving the impression that he’s aging. I know better than that though and I keep my eyes trained on him. He’s toying with a gold pinkie ring as he watches us.

Bucky steps ahead of us and my hand twitches to reach out for him. I shove both into my jacket pockets to stop myself. Sam is watching me from the corner of his eye and I glance at him, flashing a small smile to show him that I’m perfectly fine. The two vampires are speaking in hushed voices and the only indication that it might be a tense conversation are the looks that Steve is throwing at me over Bucky’s shoulder.

“John was the one who killed my mate?” his baritone voice rings out through the silence as he eyes me, “and you brought her here for what? To prove it?”

“She was with her mentor, Sam Wilson when the attack happened. Her Guild Master was unaccounted for,” Bucky offers.

Steve shoots a searing look to him before dragging his gaze back to me, “How many have access to your room?”

I scoff, “excuse me?”

The vampire rolls his eyes, “Whore or not, you should know better than give access to your room to anyone.”

Bucky tenses and so does our bond.

“No one,” I grind out between clenched teeth, “Not even Sam is allowed in without permission.”

Steve cocks an eyebrow and turns ever so slightly to Bucky before speaking to me, “So only you have access to your stakes then?”

“Well yes…” I trail off for a moment, remembering what Bucky coached me to say, “but all Guild members are required to give the Guild master access to our rooms so it’s possible for someone to take some of my stakes.”

“But you don’t know for certain?”

“I’m not exactly back in my room, now am I?” I snap back before I can stop it and Steve lets out a monstrous laugh.

“So you want me to believe that the Guild master stole one of your stakes and killed my mate, the woman who murdered your mother? Did I get that right?”

Bucky goes to speak but Steve silences him with a hand, “I want to hear her.”

“There are a lot of vampires that claim to have killed my mom, I tend to not believe every one that I hear,” I shrug, not daring to look away from Steve, “as for John, he’s always been threatened by my Van Helsing name and has thrown me to the wolves too many times to count. I wouldn’t put it past him to try and frame me for this; it would definitely mean my death and get rid of me for good.”

Steve makes a low hum in his throat, “And if I were to ask your Guild master himself, what would he say?”

Sam and I both stiffen, a mistake that he catches and smiles at. He snaps and two vampires emerge through the door, dragging a bloody human behind them. The blonde man dropped unceremoniously on the ground and he does nothing to help himself as he falls flat onto the ground. The groan and following curses that fall from his busted lips are all too familiar.

Goddamnit.

John weakly pushes himself up onto his knees and falls back onto his haunches with his hands resting atop his thighs. The moment he lays his eyes on Sam and I, they fill with a stormy force that threatens to unleash itself onto us.

This isn’t going to be good for us.

“Asking him is useless,” I quickly say, taking a step forward, “someone could persuade him to say whatever they wanted.”

“Same could be said for you,” Steve shoots back, “maybe I should just kill the both of you and solve all of my problems. wouldn’t it?”

“Killing us both might satisfy you now but in the long run, the thought of never knowing who did it would gnaw at you. Wouldn’t you rather get justified revenge on the one that took your mate?” I know I’m pushing my luck as I try to manipulate him. He’s watching me intently as I slowly approach him and we’re both aware of what I’m doing but he lets me. Bucky is frozen at his side and refuses to look at me. He keeps his gaze on Steve and only lets it flicker to John if he makes a noise. We all learned just how observant Steve is seconds ago.

“Who are you to speak about mates?” Steve snarls.

Shit that was the wrong move, I’ve pissed him off now. I raise my hands in surrender, “I meant no harm. I only meant to show my understanding and empathy. Humans can’t have mates but it’s love all the same. While I can’t understand what it’s like to lose your mate, I can understand what it’s like to lose someone you love.”

Steve’s snarl turns into yet another smile while confusion whirls inside of me. There’s a knowing look in his eyes that wasn’t there before. What does he know that I don’t?

He can’t possibly know that my mom didn’t die that night.

Or that I do have a mate, right?

“Our bond is more than your fickle human love, Van Helsing. You of all people should know that your emotions are subject to change the moment the wind changes direction.”

The fuck does that mean?

The door pushes open again behind us and another human stumbles through. This time it’s a woman. She too is bloody and dropped as if she’s trash to the floor. She doesn’t push herself up as quickly as John did but I’m guessing it’s because she’s older. Grey hairs streak her dark hair that’s wild and unkept although it’s braided back. Barely lifting herself up, her face is swollen and covered in blood but there’s a familiarity beneath it all.

“Mom?” I hear myself gasp out as she locks eyes with me

#bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fic #van helsing retold bucky #van helsing retold bucky barnes #vampire!bucky x reader #vampire bucky barnes #vampire au #vampire #marvel imagine #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes reader insert #marvel

[hoeratius]

okay, asking this question is maybe the dumbest i've ever felt bc it feels like there should be a straightforward, obvious answer here, but every time i've tried to look it up, i've found nothing but pages upon pages of what feels like people talking in circles and only serving to make me more confused in the end. since you're the most knowledgable person i follow when it comes to the Classics, i figured this might be a good place to ask and maybe get an actual answer? (that being said, it's fine if you don't want to/don't have the time to answer this! obviously!!)

where can i read about the older greek myths? as in pre-trojan war. mostly, i'm interested in theseus but also just pre-trojan war stories in general. i know not everything got the iliad/odyssey treatment and there's probably not any surviving text to point at in a lot of cases, but there must've been something. every time i try to look up where to read about the history of theseus, i'm being directed to a bunch of modern retellings, but google has gotten so bad as a search engine, i literally cannot find anything about the origins of this thing everybody's retelling

from what i understand, theseus was sort of everywhere sticking his nose in everything at all times, so i'm not asking for a comprehensive timeline of his whackass life and everything he ever appeared in or anything, but if you could point me in the direction of anything about him--actual plays or academic texts, anything like that--that's more credible than, like, a self-published, self-described "bold new reimagining" with a stock image of a dude in party city roman cosplay as the cover, it would be MUCH appreciated 😭

(again, sorry about how... basic this question is i guess lol? i'm very new to classics in general and still pretty ignorant about everything, so it's EXTREMELY likely that this is a very dumb question with a very obvious answer, but thank you regardless!)

Hello! What an exciting ask (and apologies for my excited and maybe incoherent answer)!

Since you seem to be most interested in Theseus, I’ll use him as an example but much of this can be applied to other Greek heroes/myths/stories more generally.

As you noted, few get the Iliad/Odyssey treatment. In fact, even Achilles and Odysseus don’t, considering the Iliad spans only 7 weeks or so, and the Odyssey misses out on Odysseus’s actions before and during the Trojan War, and after he came home – and he did a lot after he came home. So where to go to find all the other stories that happened?

Some things to keep in mind:

Writers assumed their audience was familiar with the hero’s greatest deeds already

The big boys – Achilles, Odysseus, Theseus, Perseus, Heracles, Oedipus – had their stories shared in many formats. Think of the Parthenon metopes, which show Theseus’s key deeds in sculpture, or vases, hymns, public performances, bedtime stories, etc. People would encounter these often enough that the outlines of these heroes’ stories were known to them from a young age.

One of the Metopes of the Parthenon, showing (probably) Athena and Theseus.

As a result, ancient texts never show the entire story; they select the moment they want to tell and focus in on that. Hence the Iliad focuses on Achilles’s wrath, the Odyssey emphasises his homecoming, and the Argonautica tells the story of the Golden Fleece. Similarly, tragedies will choose a meaningful moment: not all of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s struggles, but his return home in the Agamemnon, or the events that lead directly to Pentheus’s dismemberment in the Bakchai.

So finding one text that will give you a useful overview will be hard!

These heroes are often also connected to so many other famous characters, that sometimes they show up as a side character in their stories, so it depends on which stories capture your interest most.

Pre-Homeric texts are few and far between

But this is not to say there aren’t pre-Trojan-War myths!

There are loads! Anything with Heracles or Theseus is pre-Iliadic, and others, like the house of Pelops, link more to the Trojan War but are also separate from it. Plus, there is Hesiod’s Theogony (roughly contemporary with Homer), which tells of the births of the gods and goes all the way back to the start of the universe.

The Ovid situation

Many Greek texts are lost, and we’ve only got allusions to this or that part of the myth in the existing fragments, etc. etc. So how do we still know so much about so many of these stories?

Enter my fave: Ovid.

Far later than Homer (1st century versus 8th century BC), but with access to all the Greek texts and them some, he wrote a lot of fairly comprehensive stories. These include the Heroides, letters written from the perspective of female characters trying to connect to their male lovers, with letter 10 coming from Ariadne to Theseus, and Metamorphoses 8 with parts of Theseus’s story.

If you’re looking for a high-level overview of what was what in ancient myth, starting with the Metamorphoses will give you all the big boys and many of the smaller ones.

Theseus specifically:

I must admit that Theseus is not my strong suit, but sources I’m familiar with that I would recommend:

Hippolytus, by Euripides and Phaedra by Seneca: these both tell of Theseus’s second wife Phaedra falling for his son Hippolytus and causing his death

Catullus 64: A lament from Ariadne after Theseus has abandoned her on Naxos

Metamorphoses 8, 12, by Ovid: Snippets of Theseus’s life, incl the Minotaur

Ones I’m not as familiar with but might be up your street:

Life of Theseus, Plutarch: a historian/scholar’s biography. He had them in pairs, where he compared the two; Theseus is linked to Romulus

The Argonautica, Apollonius Rhodus: Follows Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece; Theseus is one of his heroes

Oedipus at Colonnus, Sophocles: apparently Theseus is a major side character here but I don’t remember!

There is also The King must Die by Mary Renault, a modern retelling from the ‘80s that blew me away. The only book set in ancient Greece I’ve ever read that doesn’t shy away from how alien their culture and values are to us today and doesn’t try to sugarcoat things.

And if you’re looking for more heroes: Wikipedia is your friend!

The Classics-related pages are pretty reliable, and they often mention the main sources per character.  

I hope this gets you started but please do hit me up with more questions, I always love diving into these things!

#tagamemnon #classics #asks #theseus

[lgbt-cishet-movie-tournament]

Most LGBT cishet movie?

Movie Submissions!

Sometimes a cishet movie is a hit in this community even without any stories or characters reflecting us (or at least not explicitly or intentionally or... tastefully). Either because of its campiness and witty banter, its drama, its weirdness, amazing soundtrack and costumes or its diva-like personality taking center stage. Please don't take this poll seriously.

Examples of movies that follow the rules below:

The Wizard of Oz (1939), Clue (1985), The Exorcist (1973), The Servant (1963), The Sound of Music (1965), Heathers (1988), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), All About Eve (1950), Jawbreaker (1999), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), 9 to 5 (1980).

Rules for Submissions:

Please don't fight we're literally just ranking the straightest gay movies and transest cis people. The most conforming and queer paradox.

Because of the tendency of this site to call something "gay" just because 2 conventionally attractive men stand next to each other for 5 seconds, I'm not counting shipping possibilities that much. The level of drama, camp and the number drag parodies it has is way more important than possible romantic relationships or sexual tension in submitted films. Also there's ace and aro people voting. Keep them in mind!

It has to be cishet but somehow still queer. Can be the camp, general weirdness, gnc clothes, sassiness, the inclusion of a diva, accidental coding, or some other secret option. Honestly if you find a way to reason so hard it works, you could even try to submit The Godfather (... it is very quotable...)

Submit movies that aren't just American!

Submit movies that are cult classic masterpieces or movies that objectively suck!

I love Mamma Mia but it does have gay characters. This poll came about because I found that a lot of older movies had queer fans that were able to connect to others through these movies while creating their own spaces. This was despite the movie being "straight and gender conforming". I love that there's more rep now, but I'm aiming for this to poll contain more vintage movies for a reason. and I want to expand my watchlist. I'm aware that there are movies from the 70s, 1920s, and other older eras with explicitly gay themes and characters like Victim 1961 or Salome 1920 (and I encourage you to widen your scope of historically significant films) but this isn't that poll.

Old movies with very stealth trans or gay coding with its side characters and unintentional lgbt+ coding is allowed, but you know these things can be hit or miss. Besides, I put Heathers on here even though it's homophobic. Fun but homophobic. You can submit movies with homophobia or conformist themes to a degree.

You can submit propaganda videos, text, and images! If you know any drag parodies of the movies, send them my way!

If you don't want to submit directly, you can @ me

Posts with polls will be tagged as #mlcm poll. Movies posts with #user submitted or #user submission means it was submitted through the google forms and will enter the tournament

Given that not a lot of people watch older movies, the battling polls will be paired by decade until it gets whittled down to the finals where old and young will both compete.

Competition will start May 1 in honor of The Wicker Man 1973, which i wish counted as a poll entry, but I limited myself to one movie I'd slip into the tournament despite the fact that there's not a lot of lgbt fans of the movie. And this was my runner up because I really liked The Exorcist's Regan and Karras. Unless someone else submits him, Wicker Man's not gonna be there. Rest in Peace Christopher Lee and his ugly blonde wig.

#mlcm tournament #xanadu #the wicker man 1973 #horror #lsoh #dolly parton #lgbt #movies #polls #tournament poll #all about eve #whatever happened to baby jane? #q slur

[birindale]

Hi I just wanted to double check something I am pretty sure I read on this blog. Is the origin of C'yra of D'riluth iii from the original cannon or was it a later addition? Also what does "of D'riluth iii" actually mean? I remember there being some vagueness to what it means

Okay there's a long version and a short version of this story.

Short version: It was a later addition. In 2008 Mattel launched a toy line called Masters of the Universe Classics, which could only be ordered through their website and was aimed at the collector market. One of the things they did was include "character bios" in a sort of homage to the G.I. Joe toys of the 80s, which featured 'personnel files' that gave specializations and a brief character history, including their real names (e.g. Duke was actually named Conrad S. Hauser).

Catra's figure was released in 2011 for about $65 USD. Her bio (which I've lifted from a Poe Ghostal review) is as follows:

We (I, and my friends whom I've pestered for opinions) are pretty sure D'Riluth III is the name of her planet, even though another planet in the same solar system (from the New Adventures of He-Man in the 90s) has the Arabic numeral 7, so including Roman numerals is a strange choice.

Long version: There was a fellow working for Mattel at the time named Scott "Toyguru" Neitlich, and he was (and remains to this day) exceptionally bad at things like 'writing' and 'creativity'. He was never very interested in She-Ra, though he loves to tell the story of stealing his sister's doll one year, so to him Catra is simply an agent of the Horde... which, in order to adhere to the 2002-2003 tv show, was now 5,000 years old. This bio directly contradicts the Filmation canon of Catra's mask having belonged to the Magicat queen, for instance, and introduces a number of confusing details.

One of the least popular was Adora being Hordak's "step-daughter" instead of his "adopted daughter", which was already kind of a gray area since he didn't exactly raise her. Scott digging in his heels on the matter was actually how I learned he'd written the thing in the first place:

Now you may be wondering, jeez, it's pretty confusing and the writing isn't great but aren't you being kind of harsh? Surely the push-back from the He-Fans was bad enough. Well give me a minute, dang. This is the long version!

I reached out to him about a year and half ago to ask 1. How it's pronounced, 2. If he could confirm that D'Riluth III is the planet, and 3. If he remembered how he came up with it. He told me the following:

Some backstory here--Scott runs a bit of a one-man content farm, in an effort to avoid paying hosting fees for advertisements or actually engaging in SEO. He is a marketing consultant.

He used to upload a 5-10 minute video every day, but shortly after I contacted him that dropped to only five a week, and his weekly "Director's Commentary" videos about MOTUC figures that he worked on (largely just explaining who the character even is in an unedited stream of consciousness, as his videos became slideshows of google images) moved to bi-weekly.

I was like, okay, he left Mattel in 2014 right? So surely once he's through that year he'll get to this new series.

Nope! He's doing 2015 too! So I reached out again in January, just to like. See if he was still intending to cover the 'real names', which imo should have been part of his commentary to begin with, but...

He had forgotten <3 I explained no, I was asking about these specific questions that I had outlined in my first email (I had replied to his last message in the chain for simplicity's sake), and he just said he'd be doing it soon. So I was like oh, cool, do you know if you'll be doing one a week still? since that would put a Catra video about 4 years out as he does them in release order, and he then promised he'd get to it soon and didn't answer the question.

Annoying, certainly, but whatever. Unless one of us dies horribly I can wait it out, right?

WRONG.

Scott, being an idiot, has not credited a single one of the images he lifted from google over his four years of mostly-daily slideshows. And recently, somebody fucking noticed!

So this guy--Ethan Wilson, a very talented toy photographer and reviewer--was informed that Scott (in his capacity as Spector Creative, the name of his YouTube channel/consulting business) had been using his pictures in videos. Actually, let me use Ethan's own words here:

I decided to dig a little deeper into Spector’s channel, and found 81 instances of my photos being used in 68 of the channels videos.  None of these featured credit to me for use of the photos, and 48 of the 81 instances removed or obstructed my watermarks.

-About This Spector Creative Thing

I very strongly encourage you to read through this linked post, as it gets worse! Somehow!!

Scott, not noticing these as they came in over the course of 10 days, logged in to discover his channel had been taken down. He emailed Ethan in something of a panic to ask that Ethan reverse the claims as a 'professional favor', as Scott got all his clients through his channel's "advertising".

Now you're never gonna believe this... but when he and Ethan came to an understanding, suddenly Scott didn't give a shit.

He released a libelous video claiming Ethan had no rights to the images (he does) and that Scott could use them all he wanted because of Fair Use (he can't) and emailed Ethan the following.

First of all: this is bullshit. Copyright is automatic in the US, trademark wouldn't apply regardless, and as Scott should fucking know by now Ethan doesn't have a 'channel', he has a blog.

Second, he shot himself in the foot with the Fair Use defense by outright stating that his channel is his exclusive advertisement for his business and that he depends on his content to make a living. He said in his first video that it was "educational" 🙄

So Ethan realized Scott was a Fucking Liar and decided he should just copyright claim the rest of Scott's shit, in order to protect his images and rights thereto. YouTube can't take the channel down again unless Ethan is willing to pursue legal action--which he isn't, because he has a full time job and two kids and even though he'd probably win, it's a lot of time and energy.

I and a few others were trying to convince him that it would be worth it anyway, and looking into identifying and contacting the other artists Scott's stolen from over the years, when... Scott released a book. His first-ever graphic novel [looks into the camera like i'm on the office]

drawn entirely by AI.

So we have a frankenstein's monster of copyright infringement masquerading as illustrations (with all the uncanny valley that implies), Scott's technically and practically terrible writing, and the plot is Greek mythology. There are four and a half typos just in the free sample, and that's not including the words in images like his map or logo. He claims the title is a registered trademark but it certainly isn't registered in his state, or federally, and it's already in use by several other brands, so I wouldn't believe him even if he hadn't demonstrated a lack of understanding of copyright & trademark as recently as last week.

So I'm kinda fucking done waiting for answers! I can't trust a thing out of this guy's mouth! And he's pretty stupid, so do I even care what he thinks? I have decided that no. No I do not. I'll check back in 2028 and if he's survived + actually followed through then maybe I'll give his video a watch but until then it is simply pissing me off to remember this guy exists.

Sorry this turned into a rant I'm just really starting to loathe the guy. It's been an infuriating week or two. But uh... No, it's only canon to this one action figure line that ran for a little over a decade. We're certainly not beholden to it, it's more of a fun little in-joke for the fandom these days. You see someone use C'yra and you're like haha I know her! It's fun :3 Regardless of Scott's bullshit I enjoy seeing it around, and it's not like he owns or benefits from it in any way when maybe 1% of the people using it know where it comes from (and the people who know it was him specifically may be limited to the followers that have watched me complain about it).

Thank you for asking, I really do love asks even if the answer isn't what I want it to be lol. I'm happy to verify or explain anything I can!

#answers #gluttonforgay #catra #motu #motuc #c'yra of d'riluth iii

[completeoveranalysis]

[1]

Chapitre 194 - The Tone That Calls The Princess

Ohoho look, we have the matching pair of [redacted]s!

How perfect that they were exactly identical outfits, and yet (like Fujitaka and Nadeshiko in the previous chapter) are Together but Separate.

They’re here together, near each other, but visually separated, and with physical distance between them - Lava Lamp stands in front and to the left, Watanuki sits behind and above, on the right. You could cleanly cut the image in half and they wouldn’t cross over at all (except the TINIEST bit in the middle). They also both stand facing different directions; Watanuki looking to the right (to the past? It’s what he can’t remember), while Lava Lamp faces the left (to the future? It’s his entire mission, and has been for a very long time). Except Watanuki actually LOOKS in his direction (he’s not aware of the greater plot) but Lava Lamp is looking directly at the camera, like he tends to (he IS aware, and still knows far more than us). Above them both is the moon (A sign for Yuuko? A sign for their mother? A sign for where they came from? A sign for the mysterious darkness they live their lives in?)

Meanwhile they sit on a GIANT AMMONITE FOSSIL. Which. Is the strangest thing to me and I love it dearly. It might have some symbolism I’m not aware of but even just on the surface level we have a lot. It’s a fossil, like the Clow ruins, like the archaeology that ties Syaoran to Fujitaka, like a clear link to an unknowable past. But it’s also a spiral - a sign of things going in circles and spirals and repeating themselves, like time loops, and Lava Lamp’s life in general, and whatever else is happening in the timeline. 

Maybe also a sign of things starting at a central point and spiralling further and further away from where it all started, like the plot we’re trying to make sense of?

Or maybe it’s a sign for what’s inside it? A shell that contained a creature within, like the ruins might contain Evil Wolverine?

I’m also googling it now to find out that they can be a symbol of “change and positive motion”, which is very much what Lava Lamp and Watanuki are collectively trying to achieve, so it all fits one way or the other!

Strangely my files don't reveal if this one had any splash text across the image though, which is a mystery all on its own.

#See also: Museum trip! #Lava Lamp and Watanuki posing with their favourite exhibit #While their parents and/or guardians take a photo #They’re very serious so they haven’t quite got the posing down yet #But they’re learning! #Lava Lamp surely has the basics down #Liveblogging the reservoir chronicle #Vol 194 #Tsubasa #Lava Lamp Guy #Watanuki #[redacted] bonding time! #Does Lava Lamp share Syaoran’s passion for archaeology? #Could they form their own hobby group about it?! #Oh no I have to see it happen

[stopscammingartists]

Is there a pinned section for the specifics on what Eevee did? I know there's a google doc; I just wanted to ask about pins. Thanks

Eevee is probably one of the main members of the group I talked about the least comparatively, because her main deal is that whenever someone talks up about being abused by Glip, or back in the day Marl, Eevee is right there front and center with a snarky, ill-thought out, long-winded defense of them.

In other words, she's an accomplice.

So there isn't anything more that isn't already in my pinned post. So, I guess I'll make this my main post on why Eevee is likely an accomplice to sex crimes against both children and animals.

Compared to both Glip, Marl, and even other people in the group like Iz: Eevee has significantly less people who have been directly abused by her that we are aware of. Cordy Fox is the only person who has publicly decided to speak about being abused by Eevee, and even though she hasn't gone into much detail, I'm generally inclined to believe her. Especially because I know of at least one other individual who was abused by Eevee who has decided to not speak on it publicly.

That said, the chances that Eevee wasn't aware that Marl was at least sexually abusing the family dog are practically zero.

For starters, given Eevee's tendency of having a pro-pedophilia and pro-zoophilia sentiment, I question the idea that Marl would feel the need to hide his zoophilic and pedophilic tendencies from his then roommate.

Even if Marl did try to hide his habits from his roommate (Eevee) and his then-spouse (Glip) - Eevee herself has pointed out that Marl wouldn't have been able to film child porn / zoo porn without her and Glip knowing.

....And, yeah, she's right. Glip has always worked from home and so did Marl. I'm unsure if Eevee was at the time work from home, and despite what Glip is saying here in these very same tweets, they later admitted to being aware that Marl was filming porn of the family dog Apollo since Marl cheated on them with Exty.

Marl cheated on Glip with Exty in early 2013 or late 2012 by the way.

So that means Glip was aware that Marl was sexually abusing the dog when Lain first came forward in later 2013 about Marl sending her photos of dog dicks.

A lot of people have in one way or another spoken about how Marl brought up his love of dogs to them or was creepy with them after the log leak. We got Big Fluff and Lain obviously, but there's also Exty, Rootie, Pengo, an anon who spoke to Pengo, and Junglekawa.

The implication here being, Marl did this often to a lot of different people.

We know from Lain, specifically, that Marl felt comfortable enough predating on children by sending them photos of dog genitalia on Eevee's IRC network.

To those that don't know, Eevee, being the admin of the IRC network, had access to chat logs that happen within her IRC, including, likely, direct messages.

And Marl was comfortable enough to send a then 13 year old photos of dog genitalia on this network. Knowing his roommate, Eevee, would have access.

And frankly, why wouldn't he be comfortable with his friend who questions if child porn should be illegal having access to these logs of him sexually harassing a child with zoophilic images? When Lain came forward and talked about what Marl did to her, and even asked Eevee specifically to give her logs.

Eevee would turn around and only provide selected snippets of the logs while slandering the character of the 14 year old girl, claiming to not have anything else.

Even though Eevee could have easily proven Lain a liar easily by just sharing unedited DM's between Lain and Marl....She didn't. There are no DM's between the two shared by Eevee at all, actually!

I wonder why Eevee didn't share the DM's between Marl and Lain. Sure is a mystery why she didn't share the logs that would have proven Marl innocent immediately if she was right and Lain was lying. Weird she didn't do that! I guess platforming the words of the fourteen year old's other abusers is more important though.

Lain was one of the first people to come forward about Marl being a zoophile, and was the first to come forward about Marl being a pedophile. Chatlogs would later be leaked of Marl doing the same thing to a different child (that thankfully: Occurred on a platform besides Eevee's IRC.) would definitively prove Lain's claims from years ago to be true.

Even if Eevee somehow didn't have admin access to Marl and Lain's direct messages - they lived together. The fact Glip and Eevee both didn't go to Marl physically and say "Show me your direct messages with this 14 year old girl who says you're sexually harassing her with images of dog genitalia" WHEN GLIP WAS FULLY AWARE THAT MARL WAS FILMING ZOO PORN OF APOLLO JUST EARLIER THAT YEAR TELLS THE ENTIRE STORY.

So if Lain was telling the truth, why didn't Eevee or Glip have the logs? Was it incompetency? Or were they both only sharing select snippets of the logs to protect their then roommate/partner?

And remember, Marl did this to a lot of people. If he was comfortable enough to do this to Lain in a place where Eevee had log access, how many others did he do this too in Eevee's IRC? While knowing Eevee when push came shove, would protect him?

Additionally, I'm inclined to believe Marl abused Apollo in that house often. Zoophiles often make the dogs wear mittens on their front paws so they don't get scratched when the dog mounts someone. Front paw mittens don't really serve any other practical purpose.

Eevee uploaded a video of Twigs and Apollo playing with Apollo wearing these mittens, and based on how she responded, when confronted about this, Apollo probably wore these mittens all the time, meaning he was abused often.

And now consider this in 2006:

A lot of people glaze over these because of the date, but it's important to understand that Eevee's not just playing the role of an edgy devil's advocate here as she would later claim. She's knowledgeable on how animal sexual abuse works and is excited about it.

She is specifically aware that beastiality is legal in some places.

She is specifically aware that when it comes to sexually abusing a dog, it involves the dog being on top. Which is how Marl abused Apollo and why Apollo needed those front mittens specifically.

She specifically claims to know people who are attracted to certain animals more then people.

She specifically claims that zoophila is safe, that it rarely damages the genitals of humans or animals.

She specifically claims that horse vagina is tight enough to pleasure a human male.

She specifically claims that very few diseases can cross between species boundaries while engaging in Zoophilia.

She specifically claims that she enjoys 'doggysex', the same type of Zoophilia Marl trained the future family dog to engage in.

This isn't the words of an edgy devil's advocate. This is someone who knows what they're talking about. This is someone who would be able to recognize why the family dog wears mittens on the front paws.

I, personally, am not willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was ignorant of the true reason Marl had Apollo wear those front mittens.

#floraverse #fox flux #foxflux #forbiddenflora #glip #glitchedpuppet #forbidden flora #pengosolvent

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

What's Kosma's relationship with Kevin? I couldn't find much other than he once looked up to him and after Ato's and Dystopia's death he left and rejoined cause of Griseo. Before that he was chatty and talked about him alot but what about after the rejoin? Also, is there a youtube channel having the videos on this arc? All i find is "mei asking/etc"..

Mm, I’ll just tell the whole story in order. This is taken from Kosma dialogues and recollections.

Kosma looked up to Kevin a lot. They first met during the fight against the 4th Herrscher (Wind), when Kosma was still young enough for Kevin to call him a child (teenager really, their age gap isn’t that big) and Kevin sent him away, telling him to stay alive.

He tried to be a vigilante, but it rarely ended well, as playing hero was a shallow solution to the problems around him (for example he thanklessly saved a woman by stabbing the man attacking her, but then the man’s young daughter tried to stab Kosma in revenge for killing her father).

Kevin and Kosma later met again in the MOTHs, which Kosma joined because of Kevin. Kosma also looked up to a senior soldier, Ato (Griseo’s father and another of the first MANTIS). Griseo notes to Mei that Kosma used be a real Kevin fanboy.

However, their relationship became Complicated around the time of the 9th Herrscher (Earth)’s defeat. Kosma had already lost his friend Dystopia to the 8th Herrscher, and his life wasn’t getting any easier.

We don’t directly see it happen, only the aftermath (Kosma’s recollection Daybreak Transformation) but what seems to have happened is that Kevin made the choice to let Ato die to ensure he could kill the 9th Herrscher, calling it the lesser of two evils.

The Herrscher was lying down on the ground, finally dead, but there wasn’t even a body left of Ato.

Kosma was enraged to the point of undergoing an Active Honkai Reaction (turning into a Honkai Beast) for the first time. He attacked Kevin in his anger, left his MOTH badge behind and then fled, only being found by Mobius months later. Aponia and Mobius teamed up to bring him back to human form.

Kevin welcomed Kosma back to the MOTHs, but Kosma didn’t join his unit again.

Kosma had become a silent boy by the time he left his Sim behind, taking care of the orphaned Griseo for Ato as her big brother. He still admired Kevin as a hero but couldn’t bear being close to him again— saying “I respect him, but our views differ.” He also came to have a very negative self-image, refusing to call himself a hero at all.

His mannerisms remained very similar to Kevin’s though, and in ER conversations he often thinks of what Kevin would do when he doesn’t know how to continue a conversation.

Don’t know of any youtube channel for this, but we have transcripts:

#honkai impact #hi3 #hi3 lore #kosma

[goodluckclove]

Do you have any tips for writing horror/suspense/dread/I don't know how to describe it in one word.

Basically that feeling of tension when you have no clue what could await around every corner, or what lurks in the dark just out of sight. That feeling that something is off or wrong.

See, this is something else that I'm going to have to talk to you about and find your personal take. Because I've written dread and horror, build-up and all that suspense.

The only thing I could really say in terms of universal structure is that it requires playing with timing and detail. Things happen too quickly or they happen very. Very. Slowly. You know every inch of the subject of attention or you don't know anything. Both ends of the spectrum can be very effective in terms of unease.

Here's the part where I don't think any writing guide that isn't a person directly speaking to your face will be able to tell you: horror depends on what you personally find horrifying. I have crippling trypophobia. To the point where my spell check says I spelled it wrong but I refuse to look it up because if I see a trigger image it will potentially cause a psychotic episode. My wife is terrified of crabs. Specifically Horseshoe crabs - which, like, honestly? Google the underside of a Horseshoe crab and tell me that they're wrong.

What triggers our fears might not trigger yours. Here's the cool thing though, and what I consider to be the most interesting challenge of horror - with the right take, you could make a person at least unnerved by anything.

It helps, frankly, if you have a small underlying thread of paranoia in your day to day life. Lord knows I do. Show me a baby's shoe left on the side of the road and I'm thinking about it for at least two hours. The first time I went to Trader Joe's I ditched my cart midway through and left because I had the feeling it was a little evil.

Something about the brightness of the lights, just slightly off from fluorescent. The faces of the other shoppers were slightly fleshier than they should be. All the items on the shelves had the impression of something unfamiliar pretending to be a thing I could comprehend. A baby looked at me and started crying. At one point, just as I was picking up a thing of cream cheese, the theme to The Exorcist came on the loudspeakers. At that point I felt that shift of dread in my stomach and I just walked out of the store.

Yes it was almost Halloween. Trader Joe's is anti-Union, I stand by my initial impression.

Anyway, my only universal advice is write what creeps you out, even if it's something you know isn't that scary. Because maybe you can make something new scary. I mean look at old pictures of clowns people used to accept as fun and nice. Jesus Christ.

I'm definitely going to message you now to talk more.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing #on writing #writing community #actually writing #queer writers #writing tips #writing resources #writing support

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

My whole renewed dive into trying to save all the John Oliver files I can get my hands on, which within a week escalated to me buying a new 1TB hard drive just to see how big a John Oliver folder I can make, started when it was noticed that this video was taken off YouTube:

I was glad I’d saved a copy of it, because I don’t trust anything to stay anywhere on the internet, if there’s something I like I immediately put it on my hard drive so it can’t disappear. I'm making this post mainly for anyone else who might not have saved this before YouTube took it down, here's where you can download it. Because no one should be denied the really fucking weird 25 minutes with baby comedians from 1997.

A few years ago I read this quote from Richard Ayoade, which I annoyingly can't find now, where he said he doesn't like this documentary, that they were just students and obviously didn't know what they were doing and some film people came in and said they wouldn't look bad in it but of course they do look bad. It was something like that, I can't find the exact quote. But I remember finding it odd, because surely no one is judging these people's actual comedic skill based on a few clips from a 25-minute video of when they were students. People just share it because it's funny to adorable little baby versions of the comedians who are famous now. Obviously they weren't doing high-quality comedy, they were like 19, no one cares.

Since then, I have learned that this is not quite true, and Richard Ayoade did, in fact, have reason to object to his weird student sketches being out there. Because apparently, some people are judging their comedic skill based on the time in 1997 when he and John Oliver did a weird sketch on a fence. My deep rabbit hole dives of about 18 months ago led me through a lot of old comedy message board threads, including one from 2006 of people absolutely ripping that video apart as a sign that comedy is well past its peak and this newfangled crop of comedians are all shit and the once-great institution of Cambridge Footlights has fallen. By 2006.

I normally don't link to things things directly from a message board on here, seems too close to that horrible thing where you take screenshots from one social media and post it on a different social media to make fun of it (so instead, I just occasionally see something I disagree with on a message board, and then write a post on here refuting it without posting the original context, to people who don't know what I'm talking about), but it feels more acceptable if it was from 2006, I think. It's not like the person who posted that in 2006 is likely to still be hanging around Britcom social media seeing who's quoting them. So I think... I think I need to quote just a little bit of it, because there was this one really long aggressive rant from this one 2006 post that was the funniest fucking thing (I won't like but it's not hard to find on Google):

I mean, I can't really communicate how bad it was, to be honest. But it was just the fact that you saw the two cunts writing the thing, sitting in a daylight-filled bar, giggling into their lager. You got the picture? Ugh. And John Oliver, who is the spitting image of David Baddiel (intentionally of course), is there with his pencil and notepad suggesting the lines with a grandiose smugness that made me really ill, and his mate (the blandest man ever) is there, with his jumper and his shoes, salivating over the comic genius he sees before him. Cunt, cunt, CUNT! They also have three girl-ones with them, all of whom have no talent whatsoever. You see one of them auditioning, where she has to do some improv, and she's shit... but the president (who looks like a fifteen year-old John Lloyd) can be heard wheezily guffawing at everything she says. And this serves only to make her improv even worse. And John Oliver is the worst. Or the one that got to me the most. With his hair.

That is, in case anyone's wondering, why my current Tumblr bio ends with the line: "John Oliver is the worst. Or the one that got to me the most. With his hair." It's a quote from a guy in 2006 who was really really mad about a 25-minute Footlights documentary.

So I would like to state, for the record, that by sharing this video, I am not endorsing the actual quality of the comedy in the few little sketches we see. I am also not endorsing the class system, the hold that a few elite institutions have over entire industries, Richard Ayoade's views on transgender people, or trivia in pubs. I just think they're adorable baby comedians as well as an interesting snapshot of comedy history. I'm pretty sure that's all it's supposed to be.

I am also not endorsing the class-based dominance of elite institutions when I say I still want that sitcom between two student comedians, Kim Tey and Wark Atson, who have to band together to get through their year-long university comedy play while hiding from everyone but each other their respective secrets of not really being a student there, and not really being Welsh. Madcap farcical hi-jinks ensue. People would watch it. I do not endorse the class-based dominance of elite institutions but I do quite enjoy Footlights stories, so I'm glad they made a really weird documentary with some of them. Also when I go to the UK this summer I've booked off one entire day to take the train to Cambridge and run around feeling like I'm in Harry Potter (Disclaimer: I also do not endorse JK Rowling's views on trans people, or at this point, on most things. Why can't we have nice things?).

I do not endorse the class-based dominance of elite institutions, but also,

And that probably the only time you'll hear someone compare John Oliver to John Robins (very different comedians, really), especially on a post that started out just being a way to share a video that's been taken off YouTube. Download the Google Drive link if you want to keep it, everyone. That was supposed to be the point of this post. It's a good video. It features Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness and either that woman from Peep Show or her sister, I get them mixed up. And also it features John Oliver with, to be fair for one moment to that guy in 2006, quite Baddiel-like hair.

[annetictac]

Like I used to watch you sleep - Chapter 9

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 9

“Her social media has been blacked out, but it doesn’t mean her social life has been one bit boring,” the first commentator replies as the screen is parted with a continuous series of screen shots, simple photos, paparazzi photos, videos Anna dancing, singing (karaoke?).

“The squad has been summoned, for sure,” the second commentator adds up as different model-looking girls show in different clips. Max recognizes some of the faces from perfume adds and perhaps a movie. There are little notes indicating cities the clips are from. So far Max has read Paris, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Tokio. “It seems new year’s was only the beginning,” Again her photo exiting the new year’s party, long legs exposed. He has been trying to pay attention to his meal as everyone had already finished, moved up to the sofa and turned on the tv – gossip column first thing that came on, and so far there’s no taking it off without angering the group on his sofa. His food is cold, making him admit that he’s as absorbed in the morning gossip.

“ ‘Where are Anna Pearson’s stockings’ stopped being the most sought question in Google after news flashed of Roberto Maño’s possible interview deal with Oprah,” the commentator does a dramatic pause, looking straight to the camera. “And little after, Ms. Pearson can be seen in Tokio singing best friend’s new hit Vampire…” the voice of the commentator fades to a capture of a tiktok clip of Anna singing to the camera of probably one of her friends. They are giggling stumbling upon the Japanese streets, onlookers to their sides.

“The way you sold me for parts, you sunk your teeth into me,” she sings with another one out of frame eyes looking elsewhere, Max suspects a little bit drunk. She giggles to the camera staring directly her big hypnotizing honey eyes. “Bloodsucker, famefucker!” She sings louder, laughs, takes a gulp of something before finishing in a softer more sober tone. “Bleeding me dry like a goddamn vampire!” The camera leaves her to show the rest of her friends laughing continuing the song.

“The thing is… Anna can introduce me to her friends, right?” Lando asks, from his seat on the coach. “I mean, I did get you to that party, didn’t I?” The British driver has taken off his shoes laying his for sure sweaty feet over the coffee table. Unnoticed by the rest who are caught into the gossip talk show. Max rolls his eyes ignoring his friend, Danny chuckling besides him. The aussie driver is the only who has remained sitting, as he’s distracted typing rapidly on his phone.  

“The social medial black out we are still not sure if it’s a publicity stun after her contract with F1 has been made public, if there might be a surprise album coming or if it has to do with Roberto’s Oprah interview,” the first commentator continues, cutting to the image of the well looking actor in a red carpet. Tall, thick hair perfectly coiffed as the actor walks a red carpet with confidence, moving his perfectly tailored jacket to pose for the cameras, big perfected smile.

“He’s an asshole,” Victoria chips whispering from her place in the sofa as she balances Luka near her chest sleeping. “I mean, she’s always been notoriously quiet about well…” Victoria glances back at her brother who stares at her deadpanned.

“What it’s for sure is that vampire has flown to the top of the lists, and many are speculating the second mystery writer of the song might as well be Anna Pearson…” There’s a video of another girl, vaguely familiar to Max signing the same lyrics Anna was before.

It’s been a couple of weeks since they last saw each other and their texting has certainly quiet down from the first day’s frenzy. Max hasn’t dared to ask anything about her plans after she asked if he could stay in London for a few more days. Which he couldn’t. He had felt the tension of the unmentioned toppings in their conversation increasing as the days passed.

He had refused to let conversation dry completely sending her anything silly that passed through his social media, comforted that her humour remained untouched but the closing of her social media – which she told him beforehand, though gave little to no explanation -  had crippled his efforts. She was barely on her phone, as it was, usually answering in different hours. He did know they had a big show coming and she would be mostly practicing. And partying apparently.  

 “In two weeks, we will be seeing Anna Pearson performing in the European MTV Awards, in Italy, to receive her ten-year commemoration,” the commentators continue in the background. “We are expecting a 15 minute show, or at least that’s what we could get from-”

“It’s two days after the Oprah interview goes live, no?”

“Yeah, but in Pearson’s favour, she had confirmed her presence in the EMAs long before Roberto made the break up statement-”.

“What a ****,”

“I know I’m team Anna for sure,”

 “And are we going to talk about the hair?”

“I think she looks gorgeous with her hair short,” Heidi says to Victoria.

“Me too, right Maxie?” Victoria agrees, glancing cheekily and knowingly to her brother.

“I’ll tell when I see her,” Max mutters his back to the TV trying to block the gossip shows Heidi, Victoria and Lando insisted on playing on his TV. Daniel laughs near him.

“Ohhh so now it’s when you see her?” Victoria continues, turning slowly, careful not to wait her sleeping child. In spite of him not confirming to his sibling or Lando that anything had happened, Lando has been constantly repeating whatever he thought he saw at the New Year’s party, even Max’s mother is aware something happened. And what Lando knows wasn’t much but it didn’t take much for the british driver to dramatize it. Victoria has happily joined the teasing.

It’s Heidi he worries might know something and pass it along, but Daniel has insisted he hasn’t said anything to her. Max doubts it, because he knows how pillow talk sometimes works. Kelly and Heidi weren’t bests of friends but they did hang out. Enough for Heidi not to confirm anything from Kelly’s side. And this thing with Anna was still not something he knew what it was but he didn’t want to hurt Kelly in spite of not knowing anything about her since October.

“That’s something,” Lando agrees by Max’s side.

“Do you get tickets for the EMAs brother dear?” Victoria asks her voice a bit higher than before, making Luka whine.

“Dunno,” Max says shrugging.

“It’s in Milan,” she adds, he shrugs again non-committal.

“Danny got tickets,” Heidi intervenes and the bell of Max’s phone interrupts his little focus on the conversation.

AnnieP: hi!

Maxie: hi

He feels the nerves in his stomach. Daniel has taken over the conversation, a knowing glance from his teammate lets Max know something shows in his face when he sees Anna’s name. Fuck it all. He takes advantage of the aussie as distraction, slipping to the balcony for the little privacy he can manage.

Annie P: can I call you?

His throat runs dry because since New Year’s texting is all they’ve ever done. And just texting. Memes, links of silly news, a song – or the beginnings of one if he understood her correctly. He glances back to the living room where everyone seems distracted with conversation, perhaps Danny has been successful changing subjects. There’s a part of him that wants to tell her no, make her wait a bit, but at the end wanting to hear her wins with great margin.

Max: sure.

She must have been waiting for his answer because less than ten seconds later he has her face on his screen. He’d forgotten he had her saved with an old photo of them. Before trying to remember when they took that particular photo he accepts and it’s then he realizes it’s a videocall.

Her face shows and her lips draw a happy grin. He brushes clumsily his hair as quickly as he can before she starts chuckling perceptively.

“Hi!” She repeats cheerful, nothing but joy in her face.

 “You said call, not videocall,” he snaps embarrassed. He had never been a vain person but he still was conscious he was still in his sweated padel clothes, he hadn’t even seen himself in the mirror since they arrived.

“Sorry,” she laughs, clearly not sorry at all. “You look gorgeous, anyways,” she adds fondly, is she blushing? Is he blushing? She’s in a dark room as far as he can see, probably recording studio.  Her hair is indeed shorter but it still is dark chocolate.

She then shows him her free hand, her casted hand.

“What happened?” he frowns worried, his hair forgotten.

“That’s why I’m calling, texting takes too long,” she whines lowering her casted hand.

“And videocalling?”

“I might miss your face as well as your voice,” she answers a sly grin stretching on her face, flirtatiously.

“In which time zone are you?” he asks when her laughter begins to quiet down.

“Uff returned to London yesterday, it’s been a bit hectic,” she murmurs, brushing her hair away from her face. “We are recording ‘til 15h, then choreo, hopefully tonight I get to stay home… and you?”

“Mom left yesterday. Vic’s still here with the kids,” he says awkwardly.

“Uncle Maxie,” she coos, big smile not leaving her face. He shakes his head in fake disapproval.

“I hear you might be coming to Italy soon?” he drops, changing subject and she bites her lip.

“Yup, next week I’ll be there for practice, and two weeks after it’s the show,” she answers a hesitant half smile on her face.

He can’t say it’s been hard or easy getting back in contact with her. There’s something between them that hasn’t changed, conversation is usually. But at the same time, he’s not blind to how different things are. In spite of her cheery complexion, her flirtatious tone, he knows there’s a barrier there that wasn’t there before, something that wasn’t there before. She’s more guarded. Something he knows he’s to blame for.  

“Italy is not far from Monaco,” he continues nervously not looking away from the video. “I could... or you could…” he shrugs feeling absolutely pathetic in his attempt to be smooth. Fuck it. “Can we meet?”

She laughs and nods emphatically, her grin impossibly wide.

“Thought you’d never ask!”

It was as if awkwardness faded suddenly and all was left was them.

She explains how they were working on a much more physical presentation than she’s used to and she fell badly on her wrist. It hadn’t been too serious, she should be alright for the show, but depending on how she recovered she might not be able to play the guitar how they had planned for the first half of the show, the choreography had already been changed to avoid anything worse.

Then she had dramatically described her clumsy accident. A slip with a cord as her dancing partner was twirling her around. He laughed merrily, knowing at the end she was fine.

“I’d like to see you try Verstappen!” she mocked.

“After you give a spin with one of our cars,” he had retorted quickly remembering how she had almost crashed one of his first cars, when he let her drive it.

“I’m a much better driver now, thank you very much,” she snapped back but her tone held no real grudge behind.

“Wanna bet?” he challenged wiggling his eyebrows.

“Name the prize,” she agrees wiggling her own, cheeks heated a quick remembrance of an old bet of them that had ended with a broken table. He feels flushed as he remembers all too well.  

Someone calls for her, breaking the moment and allowing them to reign themselves. She asks for ten more minutes. Once the person outside of the image is out, she rolls her eyes as she grins to the camera and asks him again what’s new with him.

He told her about his new found love of paddle, and perhaps he exaggerated his prowess, which he suspected she had noticed as she snorts when he tries bragging of winning Lando – forgetting to mention Danny had done most of the job. He told her Lando had been bugging him for her to present her friends to him. That had gained a contagious laugh from her.

“Bring him with you,” Anna encourages, delicately taking a lock of rebel hair, behind her ear. She adds they could meet in group in case a paparazzi got word of where she was. Just in case. The unsaid words boost him to be bold. It’s then he notices how insecure he feels with their whole ordeal. Max offers he could go back with her to London because he had to drop in Milton Keys in the next few weeks. Her face parts into a big grin that warms him deeply. He’s debating himself to ask what she would like to do lodging wise when Lando opens loudly the sliding crystal door keeping him inside.

“Annaaaaa,” he greets sitting next to Max, taking the phone from his hands. Danny appears by the window frame apologetically.

“Hi Mr. Lando!” She returns warmly. “I hear today wasn’t a good the at the paddle court for you?”

“I couldn’t keep him any longer,” Daniel tells Max sighing dramatically. “And also, I wanted to say hi!” he squeezes himself at Max’s other side. Max could hear her laughing. He sighs in resignation, knowing it will be difficult to have his phone and his privacy back.

“Assholes,” he mutters.

“Mr. Ricciardo!” she greets, merrily, ignoring Max’s comment. “Long time no see!”

“Ditto!” the Australian mirrored her grin and excitement. “Are you-”

“Is Rachel there?” Lando interrupts. She laughs and shakes her head.

“I’m afraid if she were I wouldn’t be allowed to use my phone,” she confides but there are no bad feelings in her voice. “She’s been forced to take a two week break by her employer”.

“Meaning you,” Max adds deadpanned.

“Yup!” she answers grinning proudly.

In less than ten minutes Lando and Daniel have agreed to join him to see Anna in Milan, ffor the EMA’s and then they will all return together to London. She leaves him to continue recording. Lando tries to ask her if it’s a new album but she escapes answering laughing when she hangs up.

#f1 2023 #max verstappen #max verstappen fic #max verstappen x oc #daniel ricciardo #break ups #exlovers #taylorswift #lando norris #lando the wingman

[osakafromazumangadaioh]

Important note: basically all of the works I talk about here have some element of flashing or strobing images so if you are photosensitive please take care if you watch any of the shorts I talk about here.

One of the things I've done on my stream that I'm most proud of is marigovision where we take a little break to watch something together. I've taken this as an opportunity to show off things that people might not have seen. We've watched a lot of experimental stuff from the 40s like Norm McLaren and Len Lye, former Soviet Block animation, early computer explainers from the 70s, videos of people cooking that kind of thing. (recently I've been getting big into 8mm experimental shorts so look forward to that when i come back from my streaming break)

One of the first things we watched was an experimental short film called Shift by Toshio Matsumoto.

"One of Matsumoto’s last shorts, Shift is also among his most impressive works. Through the use of what was at the time state-of-the-art video technology, Matsumoto decomposes a residential building in horizontal stripes, thus tearing down its balance and symmetry."

If you haven't watched it, it is here. It's weird and crunchy and digital and eerie and above all else, playful. It's funhaver media, it's one of my favourite things I came across as part of screening for marigovision. I did notice something fun about it, something that I don't think I've noticed anyone has spotted. At the very least, no one in the English speaking web.

So a little while ago, I've gotten into the films of Takashi Ito. Takashi Ito is another experimental Japanese film maker from this cohort. The first short of his I saw was Spacy which knocked my damn socks off (if you look up this one, please do take care if you are photosensitive, there is a lot of strobing). Ito uses a lot of my favourite filmic techniques like stop motion and light trails to create this really otherwordly space where it feels like a haunting is taking place. The next one I saw is called Box (again if you are photosensitive, please take care with this).

The film shows a rotating box with frame-by-frame landscape photographs on each face of the cube. The box looks as if it's revolving 360 degrees, but it only revolves 90 degrees. Ito explains that he was "aiming at disturbing our awareness of space in the movement from the three-dimensional to a plane and back again."

Here's a frame from it.

Here's another.

As I was watching it for the first time I almost jumped out of my seat. That's the same damn building from Shift! Has no one else noticed this? At least on the English speaking web at least, I haven't seen anyone notice this. It's possible there's an interview with either Matsumoto or Ito where they discuss this.

So a quick biographic detail, Ito studied at the same university that Toshio Matsumoto taught at. In fact his film making style is directly influenced by Matsumoto.

He attended an exhibition showcasing works by filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto; upon viewing Matsumoto's 1975 experimental short Ātman at the exhibition, Ito thought, "I want to make a movie like this."[7] When he learned that Matsumoto was coming to work at the university, Ito abandoned plans to get an immediate job and decided to stay enrolled in the school.[7]

So a little while ago before I watched Box I was kind of curious what building this was, where and when it was shot. Because it's so strange and interesting looking, someone probably knew but I wasn't able to find anything anywhere, no one even talking about it (again, i can't speak japanese which limits me to discussion on the english speaking web, I'm sure someone has talked about this on a japanese film blog or something like that).

But the fact that the same area is also featured in Takashi Ito's Box kind of gave me a big clue as to where this was shot. I found the college that Toshio Matsumoto taught and where Takashi Ito studied and popped it into google maps, had a lil click around on streetview and, sure enough.

There it is! It's the Kyushu University Ohashi Campus. Specifically the most famous image of shift with those two circular windows above the doorway seems to be the "Acoustic Research Center Building" according to Google Maps. You can click around in here to give an eerie approximation of Shifts camera movements. It's very surreal.

Here's another wide view, it's a really quite striking campus with these very geometric shapes. I can totally see why two separate experimental film makers were both able to make something so radically different using the same space as inspiration.

Both of these were released in 1982, I'm so curious to know of the genesis of this project. Was it the younger Ito that suggested this or was it the elder Matsumoto. If anyone speaks Japanese and is familiar with experimental film during this time period I would be so curious to know.

Thanks so much for reading and watch things that make you excited to make things!

#toshio matsumoto #takashi ito #shift #box #experimental film #experimental short

[mings]

We've seen far more water on our land this past two years. Despite efforts and considerable expense, we've been unable to beat it. Now we know why.

This is a screenshot of the latest Google Earth image taken in July. Our so considerate neighbour, who (you may recall) chose to build a cabin between us & the forest, has deviated significantly from the approved plans.

Far from a small settlement pond, lined with an impermeable membrane, that should be connected to an existing drainage ditch, she's created a 300m2 lake containing a conservatively estimated 250,000 litres of water. There's no evidence of a membrane, and it's held back by a bund that was thrown up by dumping soil from the excavation on the downhill side.

That means the water, which includes allegedly treated grey water from her site, is percolating through the soil into the ground water course that runs directly down to us.

Our home is built on a site that was dug into the terrain, so we're surrounded by an embankment that's now beginning to slump. We're in the process of constructing new poultry pens on the highest part of our ground because their existing location is now underwater when it rains.

Not only that, but our drainage contractor discovered the source of the water that was washing out our drive. You guessed it. She had a field drain installed to drain the site before her build started. That pumps out water directly to another groundwater course that empties onto our land by the main gate. No wonder we had 6" thick ice there last winter.

Whilst I'm all in favour of sustainable farming, I won't support her activities when they render our land effectively unusable.

There's no relationship to damage after we had the audacity to object to her plans. She just submitted them to the authority without discussing them or giving us a chance to have any input. She even twisted the narrative to portray herself as the victim and posted that all over social media. Now she's moved in, we find her presence more & more intrusive. She runs farm tours right along our boundary several times a week. We've found our access track blocked by a coach whose surly driver almost came to blows with my son.

So now this goes back to the authorities with a detailed summary of how it doesn't comply with the approved plans, of the damage she's doing to our property, and to our mental and financial health. I don't care how much it costs to put right, nor whether it means she has to raise finance to do it. She either fixes it, or I'll sue her into the ground even if it means remortgaging to do it.

#sorry for the rant #this is breathtaking stupidity #and beyond inconsiderate #never trust a farmer #yes im mad #now i get even #shell regret the day she ever thought of building here

[arlechinav-blog]

The Cult of the Winds

An adaptive or reconstructive overview from a Hellenic Polytheist perspective.

The Cult of the Winds: An Overview

There are a lot of variations to the Cult of the Winds, and I may be the only person who refers to them collectively as the Cult of the Winds so keep that in mind before you try to google this stuff. I will mark commonly used keyword terms in bold italics so you can better identify which terms are more likely to yield search results. I have my own jargon so it can get a little confusing. Usually people refer to each individual cult by its proper name, if it has one that marks it as something distinct from another. Zar & Gnawa are examples of living Cult of the Winds traditions while the ancient cults of the Kouretes & Koryvantes were also a part of that family tree in the past.  For example, the Zar cult has a few different named variations like: Zar-Hadra, Zar-Bori, Zar-Tumbra. But the vast majority of variations to Zar do not have special terms demarcating them as variations. They are all perfectly equal and valid. The named spirits and their personalities change from region to region and there are some color variations used to represent the courts, and threads (spirit songs) used to call the spirits can also be different from place to place. 

All variations in the wider scope of the Cult of the Winds form what I like to call the spectrum of normal. There is never just one right way to do something. Regional variations are all perfectly valid and help complete the picture of what this cult is all about and what it was designed to do. Having multiple variations of this cult to compare provides stable ground for establishing patterns. 

Background Information

Before I get too far ahead of myself, a little background on what the Cult of the Winds is and what the general associated classical Hellenic micro-pantheon is…

The Cult of the Winds spun out of the likely Bronze Age or even Neolithic ecstatic cave-based practices of a goddess that I usually refer to as the Mountain Mother. She has a lot of names and regional variations but the ones you would probably be most familiar with are Kybele, Ida, Rhea, or Magna Mater.

A while back I created this little image to show the relationships and divisions between the 5 major ecstatic cults of the classical Hellenic world–as they appear to my eyes. The Cult of the Mountain Mother is the starting point for both the Cult of the Winds & the Cult of Divine Madness. And there is a very good reason for that. Both have features and ideological technologies that came directly from her cult practices. Features like using cymbals and clackers to control spirits. It is from the Cult of the Mountain Mother that we get the idea that spirits can be controlled by ringing metal against metal. This is still a major underlying principle in many ecstatic and even shape shifting traditions today and it is the reason that Christian churches ring bells and at least partially forms the underlying belief that fey or other types of nature spirits are repelled by cold iron.

In the Bronze Age, the spirit weapon of choice for her cult would have been either clay or Bronze, depending on exactly where and when we are talking about. With the Bronze Age Collapse came some very serious changes to the spiritual landscape of the pre-Hellenic world. The Mountain Mother had always had sons and daughters. One of those sons was an Eagle god who ruled over the sky and specifically the Winds. With the rise of iron technology, and the spiritual properties associated with iron, that god rose to prominence above the others. This would one day be Zeus.

The Storm God's father was a lightning god, associated with snakes in iconography. Snakes being code for so-so-so many spiritual concepts but in this context, largely the patterns that lightning and static make. That serpentine electrical arc. Eagle Storm God Son overthrew Storm God Snake-Dragon Dad and took his place in both sacred legend and in life. This granted him a very specific spiritual authority over pretty much everything--at least in the minds of his sorcerer priests. Ringing metal against metal was the method for establishing that spiritual dominance. Instead of using a sistrum or hand cymbals to do it, his early cult made the adaptation of using what we would recognize as gongs or shields.

This is where the cults of the Kouretes of Crete and the Koryvantes of Samothrace, Phrygia, and Euboea come into the story. The very early micro-pantheon of the god that would one day be popularly known as Zeus, was largely sky based. He ruled over the Winds as his own domain first and then eventually his priests used the same techniques to extend that influence and control over the other gods. The only deity he never really outranked, as far as these early cults were concerned, was that of his mother, the Mountain Mother.

The early Kouretes and Koryvantes practiced what would eventually come to be seen as sorcery and are pretty much the fathers of many, many later magical traditions. They were metallurgists, blacksmiths, who closely guarded the recipes and techniques used to smelt iron and various other metals and create alloys. At first these secrets were kept in the family, which allowed this to be an extremely exclusive closed practice. Eventually the technology did spread around and when they no longer had the monopoly on it, their practices lost some prestige.

They were an ecstatic cult that compelled Wind spirits but they also provided spiritual services to the public to diagnose which god was cheesed-off at a human being whenever someone felt spiritually tormented. They beat shields together to create a rhythm and danced wildly with swords and knives. Often taking injuries--a feature pulled directly from the practices of the Cult of the Mountain Mother. They chanted hymns to the gods in a special order of strict hierarchy, the same as they would have done for the Winds. Everything was about strict hierarchy with this cult. Everything in order, while the entranced dancers themselves whirled around in chaotic patterns.

By the classical Hellenic period, this wild cult had largely died down but was still held in very high esteem--same with the cult of the Mountain Mother. The ecstatic techniques and ideological technologies that it planted in the population also splintered off in different directions, working their way into the many cults of Dionysos. These cults of Dionysos existed from at least the Bronze Age onward so, to be clear, it was not the cult itself that came later but some of the adapted ecstatic practices that were brought in. The Cult of Dionysos shares a lot of features with the Cult of the Winds, including musical diagnosis and wild dancing to relieve spiritual torment, the use of cymbals--though some branches of Dionysos’ cult used metal while others used wooden clackers. Just an honorable mention for the Cult of Divine Madness before getting back to the Cult of the Winds.

Winds are demons. And I am not talking like the general daimon that could refer to nearly any kind of spirit. I mean a very specific type of bodiless spirit that is generally not the most helpful thing to humanity, yet they absolutely love to mess with humans. Like can't get enough. The idea is that since Winds have no bodies of their own, they like to inhabit the bodies of mortals that they take a liking to--usually someone that they think could give them the experiences and physical sensations that they crave. These mortals are referred to as Brides.

Bride is a genderless term. The closest word I could compare it to in modern English would probably be "bottom." Another code word that was fairly popular for this relationship in the classical Hellenic period would be translated as "horse." Horse is still used today in that same context in various languages where the Cult of the Winds can be found. So, when you go on Theoi in a minute and start looking up the Wind Kings and you see them mentioning horses, they're being very clever and whoever did the translating maybe did not understand that this was a code word for something. Double and even triple meanings to various terms were pretty popular in the classical Hellenic period. The stinkers.

When covertly speaking about the Winds, because talking about them directly is kind of seen as bad luck or an invitation for them to visit, they are usually described as being "above" and their mortal Bride as being "under" them. Which is why horse works so well. And you can see how this cult has influenced so many other spirit traditions in and adjacent to the Med by really exploring this concept. You see these key words used in spirit threads a lot. References to going underground, to diving down below, to being under water, to falling from somewhere. The act of trance itself is described this way, same with hypnosis and anesthesia. You are being "put under."

Not everybody who trances is automatically a Bride. A Bride is someone who has been through a ceremony that formalizes the relationship between mortal and possessing spirit. Those who are taken by a spirit are said to have been bitten, pricked, or pinched. The Bite is the vector of possession. It is how we go from happily lil mortal doodle-dooing through life to BAM!--married to a Wind (or to Dionysos. Similar concept but different cult).

In the Cult of the Winds, this relationship is largely not considered sexual or even romantic in any way. Winds just want to play with human bodies and have adventures while pretending to be human. A lot of them are not super smart and they don't fake being human very well. (You didn't hear that from me.) It would be cute if it wasn't also sometimes very dangerous. A Wind cannot be other than they are. Their nature is a set thing, it never changes. They may not be mean-spirited but they just do not comprehend the limitations of a human body. So the spirit-marriage ceremony is a way of keeping the wind from destroying their Bride. In between the Bite and the marriage ceremony there is a period of drama referred to as spirit sickness or possession illness. This represents the time frame when the possession has been introduced but there are not yet any restraints placed on the Wind so the mortal host's body suffers.

Possession illness is not just any ol’ thing. It is not a disability or a neurodivergence. It is a very specific thing and it is tightly regulated to prevent people who need medical and mental health care from being misdiagnosed. The very first thing a spirit master is going to ask when someone comes to them with their symptoms is, "Have you been to the doctor? Have you been to several?"

There is a chain of operations here. This cult is all about hierarchy and doctors are always at the top tier. A potential Bride should do everything in their power to get licensed medical help first. Then licensed psychological help. If both of those fail to yield a solution, the next step is to go to your official religious authority and see if they can help. Spiritwork is always a last resort. It is a lifelong commitment and a very big deal. Doing this also helps to provide proof of state through a process of elimination. If nobody else can figure out a solution to your ailment, then it improves the likelihood that the cause is a Wind.

No spirit master of any repute is ever going to sit down with a person, listen to their story, and tell them, "Yes, you have a spirit and this is their name!" That curdles my blood just thinking about it. That violates the heart of how these rituals function. Even the Kouretes & Koryvantes would never say such a thing right off the cuff. The afflicted must go through the diagnostic musical ritual. The afflicted is expected to lie completely still in a catatonic state until they hear the music of their possessing Wind (it is the same in Tarantella, which is a part of the greater cult of Dionysos, btw).

The living traditions surrounding the Cult of the Winds tend to be a little more old fashioned and stodgy than their Dionysian cousin traditions. They have their spirit threads (chants) and each one is tied to a named spirit. Tarantella is more of a musical free-for-all. There are no spirit names, just an ever-growing repertoire of spirit songs. Any new song that enters the Tarantella repertoire is fair game. So, there is so much more music to learn for Tarantella than for any of the Cults of the Winds.

If you are a lead musician for a variation of either tradition, you are in for a lengthy period of study. Say a prayer for your poor hands and voice. I'm kidding. It is actually a lot of fun to learn. Not everything serious in life is serious all the time. Well, I think it is fun. If you give it a shot and you feel your body fighting against it, it may be a sign to try a different role. It takes a whole team of people to effectively pull off these rituals. This is definitely not solo trance time…

Onward to the Winds!

Time to introduce these guys. As I have already said, the Winds have a strict hierarchy. The cardinal directions (N, S, E, W) are considered the royals or kings of their respective directions. Just about every language has their own names for these beings. The kings do not take Brides very often and are sometimes barely involved in the rituals directly. This image here also provides 4 more names for the Winds who rule the directions in between (NE, NW, SE, SW). These are also nobles but they rank underneath the 4 kings.

Some traditions include nobles and some don't. Some have just the 4 kings. Some have 4 kings and 4 nobles. Some have 4 kings and 8 nobles. Something you may notice pretty quickly is the symbol that emerges from them. The compass. This compass will change design depending on which version of the cult we are looking at. It will have either 4, 8, or 12 spokes to the wheel. Later nautical traditions got really carried away with naming the Winds and you can find maps with all kinds of names. Way more than 12. All are valid but not all are part of a known ecstatic Cult of the Winds. But if you were to reconstruct something like this on your own, whatever traditional names you would want to put in there should be within the spectrum of normal. At least from my perspective. Each cardinal direction is associated with a greater court and a color. This is where it starts to get tricky. Different traditions use different colors. 

Speaking of confusion, the Winds who take Brides should not be thought of as directions. The directions are what rule, govern, and inspire them. The directions are their Lords--who they have to listen to and obey. Winds don't listen to just anyone. They only listen to their direct superior in the hierarchy. So, when you are reading a sacred legend about a Wind and the author describes them listening attentively and doing what they are told, whoever gave them an order is higher ranking than they are. (In classical Hellenic texts this is usually Iris and the author is displaying her rank in the spiritual hierarchy by describing how the 4 kings respond to her.)  

Instead of directions–which are the nobles–think of the average Winds as a collection of passions taken to an extreme. Each cardinal direction has their own type of extreme passion. It is a bit more nuanced than what I am presenting here but this is a good starting guide for building some understanding.

For the North it is Fear. 

For the East it is Distraction. 

For the South it is Obsession. 

For the West it is Lust.

There can be any number of Winds in each court. They do not have to be evenly matched with each other. Since they do not represent directions and instead represent extreme passions, there can be quite a lot of them. In more modern traditions like Zar and Gnawa, Winds are born, live, and die just like people do. I don't know if that was the case in antiquity. Basically if it is a passion that exists and someone created a name for it, there is probably a corresponding Wind. 

As I stated in the very beginning of this, Winds are just largely incompatible with human bodies. So, when I'm describing the worst of what they are and what they do, understand that this is what they would be like in their natural state before a Bridal ceremony. This is how they make their Brides sick and it is why these ceremonies exist to begin with. The ecstatic rituals are designed to bring harmony and peace to all involved. Once a potential Bride has gone through the Bridal ceremony, their Wind will be at peace within them. Each will have rules to follow in life to keep the other safe and content.

These rituals come from a time before Christianity took hold anywhere. And some aspects of Christianity evolved as a direct response to them. When early Christian writers talk about people trafficking with demons, this is at least a good chunk of what they are talking about. They viewed the propitiation of these types of spirits as evil and wrong and they presented an alternative to spending your life in a spirit marriage. That alternative was and still is exorcism. 

THE WINDS/ ANEMOI/ AETAI

The Winds are the living spirits of the wind itself. They represent pure thought, ideas, and whisperings of the mind as much as they represent the directions, gusts, and seasons they are tied to. The Winds are assembled into a strict hierarchy of Courts with each Court ruled by a King of that direction. The Four Wind Kings are the sons and subjects of Eos (Dawn) and Astraios/Aeolus (Prophecy/Astrology). Beneath them are the High Nobles and under those are the Low Nobles. 

The Kings: Boreas= North, Notos= South, Apeliotes= East, Zephyrus= West

High Nobles: Kaikas= North East, Eurus= South East, Skiron= North West, Lips= South West

Low Nobles: Meses=NNE, Euronotus= SSE, Libonotus= SSW, Thrasias= NNW

In each of the cardinal directions there are varying named and unnamed lesser winds who constitute the Court of that direction. Winds are closely associated with horses. Horses are often code for gods and spirits who take Brides (possess mortals). 

Each tier in the hierarchy of the Winds must answer to the tier above it. The Wind Kings themselves will answer to their parents, Eos & Astraios, as well as Iris on behalf of Hera, Zeus, & Zeus’ Mother (Rhea, Ida, Kybele–traditional names vary). In this they are compelled by the crashing of metal against metal, such as used in ritual music composed of metal bells, cymbals, sistrum, and shields.   

BOREAS is the King of the Northern Winds. As the North Wind, Boreas is associated with the Winter season and chill, icy winds that blow down from the Thracian mountains. Boreas is also associated with knowledge, fear, contemplation, leadership, and authority. 

OFFERINGS AND ASSOCIATIONS

Symbols: Conch shell. 

Colors: Purple or White. 

Animals: Horses. Winged Horses. 

Plants/Herbs: Root vegetables, purple winter flowers. 

Food/Drink: Mountain tea (Τσάι του βουνού). 

Offerings: Frankincense/ Livani. 

NOTUS is the King of the Southern Winds. As the South Wind, Notus is associated with the Autumn drenching rain and cruel storms that blow towards the Aegean from Ethiopia. Notus is associated with darkness, obsessions, deeply rooted passions and is closely tied to the traditions of Rhea/ Ida/ Kybele. 

OFFERINGS AND ASSOCIATIONS

Symbols: Knives, metal spade. 

Colors: Black or Dark Brown

Animals: Horses. Winged Horses.

Plants/Herbs: Rosemary, dark colored flowers, fragrant herbs.  

Food/Drink: Blood or wine. 

Offerings: Frankincense/ Livani

APELIOTES is the King of the Eastern Winds. Sometimes the name Eurus is used. The name of this Wind King is not as firmly fixed as the others because the Eastern Wind was added later. Originally there were only 3 Kings and the East was ruled by the Dawn or the Sun. As such, the Eastern Wind King is still associated with fire, warmth, and the plenty of the summer months. Apeliotes is also associated with mischief, distractions, pranks, daydreams, and leisure time. 

OFFERINGS AND ASSOCIATIONS

Symbols: Cornucopia. 

Colors: Orange-Red. 

Animals: Horses. 

Plants/Herbs: Harvest fruits and grains. 

Food/Drink: Spicy foods, hot drinks, beer, cider. 

Offerings: Frankincense/ Livani. 

ZEPHYRUS is the King of the Western Winds. As the West Wind, Zephyrus is associated with the thaw of spring, youth, love, and the first flowers of the season. Zephyrus is also associated with love, lust, jealousy, romance, music, and pleasant things. 

OFFERINGS AND ASSOCIATIONS

Symbols: Spring Flowers. 

Colors: Warm Blues. 

Animals: Horses, scorpions.  

Plants/Herbs: Crocus, Hyacinth, Daffodils, and other spring flowers. 

Food/Drink: Sweet beverages, occasionally alcohol. 

Offerings: Frankincense/ Livani. 

*Winds are an integral part of spirit possession traditions of the pan-Mediterranean. Associated with disquieting passions that cannot be ignored. Surviving traditional practices relating to the Winds involve complex rituals of musical propitiation and spirit marriage wherein the Winds and their Courts take mortal Brides. 

Arlechina Special Notes:

The offerings and associations provided are just for the Wind Kings. The High and Low Nobles were not included in this write up because so much of the material available on them comes from living traditions and those really vary a lot from region to region, as we went over a bit previously. Some traditions include them and some do not. Offerings, associations, and names were also not provided for the spirits of each Court for similar reasons. Those will be similar to the Kings of their respective Courts BUT not identical. Each spirit has something very particular that they like and that literally can vary from Spirit House to Spirit House. 

A Spirit House is an individual group of humans who gather together to perform musical rituals of propitiation for the Winds and their Brides. For example, if we were to get together and go through these rituals, our individual group would be a Spirit House and we would have our own variations on these traditions for spirit names, threads (spirit chants), offerings, and associations based on how the spirits interact with their Brides in our specific house. Variation is normal but it does follow a spectrum of things that make sense and form unity with other Spirit Houses. This is why, even in antiquity, there would be many different names for the individual lesser Winds as spirits from place to place.

General Info on Spirit Possession

For those who are not familiar with what spirit possession traditions look like or how they function, it is a pretty consistent thing all over the world so there is a method/ series of techniques to doing it well. These same techniques are found in all of the Mystery Religions of the wider ancient Mediterranean as well as living traditions of that same region today. This makes it easier to understand the methods because there is consistency and continuity involved.

Firstly, these rituals are musical. There is a thread (spirit song) for every spirit that compels them to rise up in their mortal Bride and dance/ move. They go from dormant to suddenly very active when they hear their thread. Through their dancing they will portray who they are and what they desire. The Bride will wear the colors of their Wind groom (still a term linked to horses), and partake of the offerings the spirit has requested. So, while their music plays, they will eat and drink, use the tools associated with their Wind, and move in such a way as that Wind is known to move.

Spirit possession is not considered rare at all. It is in fact quite contagious and all gods and spirits who take Brides can and will take many at once. This includes the Cults of the Winds as well as the Cults of Dionysos and any other that follows this sort of format. Multiple spirits may even claim the same mortal Bride. Every single spirit marriage requires a separate contract/ agreement made between the Bride & the Wind. So, if you have three separate Winds over your head, you are going to have a very busy night during the course of the ritual.

These rituals are usually done at night in the living traditions that I am familiar with. And I seem to recall it was a complaint raised by detractors of spirit possession traditions in antiquity because, at least in a few hoity-toity minds, proper people don't get up to wild dancing shenanigans under cover of darkness. If it is truly good, then it should be done in the daylight! Eff that. The night time is the right time. 

This means that participants stay awake all night doing this. If you are a musician, gods help your poor hands and voice. This is partly why the living traditions are most active in the summer months--shorter nights! There is a practical reason for everything. It is also meant as a sort of catharsis--to journey into the darkness, confront spirits, and emerge in the dawn whole, healed, changed. This concept is reinforced in the classical Hellenic Cult of the Winds with Eos (Dawn) as their mother who compels them to step back and surrender their mortal Brides to their own lives, until the time comes to dance all night again. We dance under the stars of Astraios until the Dawn brings spiritual clarity and unity.

#hellenic polytheism #spiritwork #trance work

[lazar-codes]

12/10/2023 || Day 96

I spent 4 hours today building a small program that's essentially a set of flashcards for the words I'm learning in my ASL class. I wanted to simply create a set of flashcards with Quizlet, but apparently the ability to add an image to a card is behind a paywall and I don't want to pay for that, so I decided I'll just create my own little flashcard system. The teacher writes words on the board during the class, and after class we're allowed to take pictures. The thing is, I'm remembering the sign for the corresponding word mostly by where it's written on the board and what other words it's grouped with, rather than remembering the sign for the word directly.

So, I built a little program that'll let me input words into an array, and I can ask the program to give me a random word in that array, and it worked! But then came the harder part; where do I store the data? I learned that you cannot write to a file from the frontend, so having a frontend json file will be no good, and I didn't want to store it in local storage because what if I accidentally delete my local storage? It would be a huge pain to write 100+ words and links to their signs over and over, so after some googling I learned that I'd need a backend so I can write to and append to a json file using Node js. Honestly, that's a little annoying because now I have to have a server running, but that's the only way I can think of to store data. I'm also planning on adding a feature where I can search for a specific word in my little database and it will give me the link to a video or gif of someone signing that word. But first, I gotta find those gifs/videos/pages and add them to the database.

This is also a really private project, and will only be used for personal use to remember ASL, so this won't be posted or hosted anywhere other than my local computer. The most obvious reason is because there are resources made by Deaf people that should be sought out for first. I'm personally just using this program so I don't have to google "ASL sign for XYZ" every time I forget how to sign something

#studyblr #codeblr #100 days of code #programming #coding #lazar blogs

[magravenwrites]

The One Where Ethy Finds Out:

Part 3:

Click on the moodboard for better quality! Pictures sourced off Google images and Pinterest, but the moodboard is of my own creation.

Finally here's part 3 to @emilyhufflepufftlk 300 follower challenge. I got there eventually, sorry its so late! 🙈

A massive thank you to @axe-does-writing for beta reading this for me, you're amazing! 💕

Warnings: angst, fluff, spoilers for Finan's past, Finan's undeserving complex.

Part 1 Part 2

---------------------------------------------------

The sun was setting by the time Finan, with the help of a few cups of ale, had gathered enough courage to even contemplate approaching Ethy that evening.

The two bonfires had been blazing away for the past hour or so, the livestock had already been driven between the two fires and put back in their pens, allowing for feasting, drinking and dancing to take place for the rest of the night.  No doubt there would be a few sore heads in the morning, his own included.

Finan had been in a sombre mood since Uhtred had talked to him that afternoon, and all he had managed to do in the time since then, was work himself into a state of constant anxiety. He was halfway down his fourth, or was it his fifth? cup of ale already, and had been watching Ethy as she laughed and danced about the flames.  His breath had caught in his throat when he had first caught sight of her that evening.  She had chosen to wear one of her best dresses. It was one of his favourites on her, the light blue of the fabric perfectly matched her eyes.  A flower crown rested upon her head, and the way the oranges of the setting sun and the dancing flames shone off her hair made it look like she was glowing.  She looked stunning; he was content to watch her having her fun for a time, with a content smile on his lips, despite the guilt and nerves that were tugging at his heart.  He couldn't bring himself to ruin her good mood just yet.

But as the evening wore on, and the further down his ale he got, he realised the more he needed to talk to her, and that ever-present feeling of anxiety came clawing back, turning his stomach.

As the next dance came to its end and Ethy moved away to retrieve a drink, Finan decided that it was now or never.

Downing what remained of his own drink and casting the cup aside, he started making his way over to her. He swore he couldn't remember being this nervous before, even before marching off into battle.

She must have sensed his movement out of the corner of her eye; he was only a few paces away from her when she turned to look directly at him. He could only watch as the beaming smile that had occupied her face only moments before fell, replaced by what he could only hope was just a look of nerves. He absolutely hated it.

He wanted to be the one who made her smile, he wanted to be the reason she laughed until her eyes watered and her cheeks ached, and the reason her eyes lit up whenever he was close.  He wanted to be the one she turned to when she needed comfort, to be there for her and celebrate their triumphs together, to simply wake up and fall asleep next to her.  He wanted to be by her side through it all.  

He wanted everything with her.  

No matter how selfish he knew that was, especially given what he was about to tell her.  He had no right to wish for anything beyond forgiveness at this point.

Either way, he knew he still had to tell her, it wasn’t for him to decide what she deserved.  That was up to her now.

She offered him a small smile as he came to a stop a couple of paces from her.  He returned the smile, both of them knowing what was coming next wouldn't be easy.

"Can I talk to ya?  In private?"  He added, eyeing the group of elderly women who stood not far behind Ethy's left shoulder, not-so-subtly eavesdropping on their conversation.

She turned to follow his gaze, seeing the problem, before she faced him once more. 

"Sure." She nodded, walking away to the far end of the field where there were fewer people, not looking back to see if he followed.

They stopped about halfway down the field, the blazing fires still in view, the noise of the festivities echoed faintly down to them, but they were far enough away not to be interrupted.

Ethy turned to him, a faint blush on her cheeks, avoiding his eye.

"Ethy, I…"

"Wait", She interrupted.  "I just wanted to say I'm sorry.  I asked you to talk about something you were not ready to talk of, and I shouldn't have pushed you to.  It was insensitive of me.  Heaven knows you were patient enough with me!  I am sorry - truly I am.  You do not have to tell me anything you do not want to, but I will be here to listen when and if you are ever ready to do so…"

Shaking his head at her, he gently took her by her shoulders to steady her.  How could she believe she was at fault for any of this?  It was his own behaviour that was out of line for the way he reacted, and yet she was the one who felt the need to apologise to him.

"None of this is your fault, ya don't need to apologise for anythin'."  He told her vehemently, his eyes boring into hers.

She merely blinked back at him, not expecting such a strong reaction.  Whatever had been bothering him, it had him tense, coiled like a spring.  She could sense the anxiety rolling off him in waves.

Realising he had been staring at her for a little longer than was probably appropriate, and noticing his grip on her shoulders had become a little too tight, Finan let her go, took a step back and cleared his throat.

"What can I do to help?"  She asked, her eyes rounded with concern.

He ran a hand through his beard as he recentered himself.

"Just listen to what I have to tell ya' and don't ask questions until I'm done.  And know that whatever you decide after this… I'll completely understand."

"Ok…" She agreed hesitantly.

With a final nod of his head, Finan steeled himself, his eyes darting from her toward the festivities at the far end of the field, not sure he could look her in the eye as he laid his secrets out for her.

"My past - my life in Ireland was not a pretty one, and I have done some stupid and unforgivable things."  He paused, trying to collect himself.  He looked down when he felt something brush against his hand to find Ethy had taken it in her own, giving it a soft squeeze.  His gaze rose to her face, where a soft encouraging smile pulled at her lips. He could do this.  He had to do this.  For her.  He squeezed her hand in return.

"I was a Prince in one of the kingdoms, I was set to inherit the throne.  I did no' want any of it.  My whole life had already been planned out for me.  I had an arranged marriage, to a lass named Riona, we were both young and neither of us loved each other, but we had our duty to fulfill and she was a kind woman…" his heart dropped when he felt Ethy's hand pull from his own.

"You were married?"  She gasped.

"Aye", He huffed, his heart constricted knowing that what he was to tell her next would only hurt her more.  "Married with two sons."  Tears rose unbidden to his eyes at the thought of the two young boys he had left behind, forced to grow up fatherless, if his brother had allowed them to survive.  All because of his stupid mistakes.  His own selfish heart.  He gritted his teeth to stop the tears from falling, swallowing the lump he could feel starting to form in his throat.  He had more of his story to tell yet.

He watched as Ethy's breathing picked up slightly, her eyes fixed on a patch of grass at her feet.  She dragged her bottom lip through her teeth, as she was often prone to do when in deep thought.  Eventually, she looked at him, opening her mouth as if to ask something before seeming to think better of it, letting out a sigh.  Her arms folded across her middle, and after a minuscule nod of her head, her gaze settled somewhere over his left shoulder, not quite looking directly at him, but it was enough that he took it as his sign to continue.

"Like I said, neither of us loved each other… she did no' deserve what I put her through.  None of 'em did."  His accent grew thicker, regret dripping from every word.

"A few years down the line, my brother, Conall, introduced us to his new wife; A dairy maid from one of the local towns.  Her name was Aine.  I fell so hard and fast for her.  We were so convinced we loved each other.  But I was young, and I was a fool.  A stupid, stupid fool.  We knew we could no' be happy together in the castle.  So we made plans to run away together.  We headed south, we lasted three days before they caught us and dragged us back in chains."  His expression turned dark in that moment, the demons that had been torturing him for so long showing themselves in his face.

"I abandoned everythin' - my duty, my wife, my sons.  And for what? A selfish, hopeless dream of a life I knew would not last."  Bitterness laced his words.

"What happened?  After you were caught?"  Ethy asked shyly, almost dreading the answer.  

"We were imprisoned for a time."  He started flatly.  Watching his memories play back behind his eyes, it was almost as if it had happened to someone else.  But the feelings were still raw, even now.  He clenched his eyes shut, wanting to banish the images from his mind. 

"We were eventually dragged into the court, where I was made to watch as she was flogged.  They would not stop, no matter how much I begged them to, they did not stop.  They eventually slit her throat.  My brother called it mercy - an execution for treason.  Her screams will forever haunt me.  I did that to her.  It was my actions that resulted in her death.  He took the crown and my wife as his own.  I don't know if he kept my sons alive or not - they would have a rightful claim to the throne, with luck they might have been put in a monastery somewhere.  You already know how he saw fit to punish me."  The tears were freely running down his face now, a cynical smile curling at the corner of his lips.

A look of realisation swept over Ethy's features.  "The slave ship."

He nodded.  "Aye.  Three Winters pulling at the oar, spending every minute regretting and paying for what I did.  It didn't feel like enough.  It will never be enough."

A silence fell between the two of them, even the noise from the festivities seemed dimmed.

Ethy sighed through her nose, and turned to face him fully, her arms still crossed protectively across her chest.  The shock that had filled her eyes had mostly drained away, leaving behind a sadness that Finan didn't know how to respond to. He looked away.

"Finan, look at me."  She asked gently.

"Look at me."  She repeated, firmer this time when he refused.

As soon as his eyes connected with hers, he saw a fire ignite behind her irises he had not expected.  She took a step closer to him.

"This is why you ran from me, wasn't it?  Not because you did not wish to tell me, but because you are still carrying the guilt of what happened on your shoulders.  Because you think that you do not deserve happiness, even when it is standing right in front of you, just waiting for you to take it."

It would never cease to amaze him how effortlessly she could get straight to the heart of the matter.  How it was that she could cut through all the information he had loaded her with, for her to shove aside her own feelings and opinions and hit the nail on the head so accurately.

He did not know what to say to her, after letting the floodgates open, it was as if all his words had finally run dry.  Any words he had thought to say only got stuck in his throat.  So he remained silent, his jaw clenching so tight it was almost painful.

Ethy finally took that final step closer to him, so close that he had to look down to see her face properly.  Her arms unfolded and she placed both hands on his cheeks, her thumbs wiping away the tears that had settled there.  He could not help but lean into her touch.

"The man I know deserves more happiness than I can ever express.  The man who is so brave, so loyal.  The man who loves with such a big heart and so wholly that he would sacrifice everything to protect his friends and family.  That man does not deserve punishment or to spend the rest of his days alone.  He deserves every ounce of respect, adoration and love.  And I give that to you unreservedly and in abundance."

Finan could hardly believe what he was hearing, his heart racing hardly daring to hope that after everything… his breath stuttered at the thought. He gently grabbed her wrists, leaning his face away from her grasp.

"I abandoned my family - that is no small thing."  He reminded her.  Fresh tears welled in his eyes, and yet he could not help the small spark of hope he could feel arising in his chest.

Ethy only calmly held his gaze, no trace of bitterness, hatred, or blame to be found.

"And would you abandon us?  My family and I?  Your friends?"  She let him hold her wrists between his hands, his grip turning as hard as his gaze at her question. 

"There is no force on heaven or earth that could get me to leave your side." 

That was a vow she believed.

She nodded with a smile. "I know." She whispered. "Finan - I will not hold you to a mistake you made in your youth, especially one made in the name of love.  We both know what it is like to be held captive to our fates, to do our duty.  Now we are free to go where we please, to do as we please."  She shifted her hands so that she held his between her own, squeezing them tight. "To love where we please."

His heart was fit to burst, tears falling freely down his face as disbelief drowned him.  He held nothing but love for this unbelievable, incredible, beautiful woman before him.

"Thank God for you."  He breathed.

Ethy laughed, a few tears of her own burning in her eyes.  He looked as if the world had been taken off his shoulders, his relief palpable.  

Finan bent his head forward, resting his forehead against hers, eyes falling closed, as they both took in the moment.

"I love you", He heard her whisper.  He opened his eyes, finding her already watching him, at this distance, he was able to find every shade of blue in her eyes.

"And God only knows how much I love you, mo grá."

And he could no longer contain himself.  He leant in, crashing his lips to hers in a fierce kiss, pouring every emotion he could not put into words into the action. One of his hands moved to cradle the back of her head, his fingers tangled in her hair and her flower crown became askew at the movement.

She responded to the kiss with equal passion, her now free hand gripping his shoulder to steady herself.  She could taste the remainder of sweet ale on his lips, mixed with the salt of his dried tears, but it was perfect nonetheless.  Neither of them wanted to be the first to part.

Eventually, the need to breathe started burning their lungs, forcing them to part.  They remained close, he nuzzled his nose against hers, their laboured breathing mingling in the space between them and a grin spread across his lips as he observed the pretty shade of pink she had turned.  He stole another peck from her.  And another, and another.  Absorbed in the taste of her sweet lips.

As he was about to steal another kiss from her, he felt Ethy’s fingers press against his lips, preventing him from going any further.

She giggled as he proceeded to pout against her fingers.

"I believe you still owe me a dance."  She raised an eyebrow at him.

He hummed, pulling up to his full height and moving to straighten the crown of flowers that still lay crooked on her golden locks.

"I suppose I do."  He smirked, his tone low, and rich as velvet. With exaggerated movements he stepped backwards, immediately missing her warmth, he bowed low and offered his hand.

"Would you do me the honour?"

Ethy failed miserably at containing her smile at his antics.  With a laugh she curtsied, delicately placing her hand in his own.  "I would love to."

She turned, pulling him by the hand to walk back up the field toward where the two fires were still blazing, the flames reaching toward the inky sky now filled with stars.  She stopped abruptly when he did not move, and instead, he pulled her backwards, causing her to trip lightly into his chest.

"Should we not go back to the festival?"  She asked in confusion.

He shook his head lightly.  "I have everythin' I need righ' here." 

He lifted their joined hands, and turned her so that she spun under his arm, before coming to rest in front of him, his other arm coming to rest comfortably around her waist.  They shared a soft smile.  

He held her close as he began to rock them back and forth, dancing together to music only they could hear.

---------------------------------------------------

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!

Tags:

@emilyhufflepufftlk @morosemagick @solinarimoon @axe-does-writing @aconundrumofthings @calicoevening72 @lauwrite1225

#ems300 #The One Where Ethy Finds Out #the last kingdom #tlk #tlk season 5 #finan #finan the agile #finan x oc