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#pillager general
sm-baby · 7 months
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When will we see any of the characters stuck in a 2x2x2 hole
Now.
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Erma and Lawrence in baby jail
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anemonator · 1 year
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I’ve been reading some theories on the status of Grulovia twenty years after the deluge, and speculation seems to range from “it no longer exists” to “it got invaded again” but sometimes I think about the idea of the Grulovia that lived. The Grulovia that survived. The Grulovia that clung on by the skin of its teeth, took every bit of stolen wealth that the Maliks couldn’t take with them, and used it to rebuild. The Grulovia that beat the odds.
I can only imagine what kind of country it would be like. A country of those who stayed behind, of those who wouldn’t - or couldn’t - leave for greener pastures. A country equal parts traumatized, hopeful, and vindicitve. A country with a fear and distrust of psychics that is both deeply unfair and deeply understandable. A country trying to reinvent itself even as it’s still digging itself out of the ice, half trapped in the past and half desperately running from it.
This is all just speculation on my part, of course, but I personally think that, in a hypothetical “Return to Grulovia” storyline, a place like that makes for a much more interesting setting than an uninhabited frozen wasteland. It becomes a lot harder to confront the ghosts of your mistakes when it turns out those ghosts never actually died.
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randomnameless · 9 months
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With houses devs saying that the writers drew Claude's inspiration from both Rajendra from The Heroic Legend of Arslan, and Yang Wen-li from Legend of the Galactic Heroes, I can say they succeeded, as I can see all sides of two characters in him. However, in Nopes, the writers seem to have omitted Yang Wen-li's side of Claude and made him more like Rajendra. But he's a bad version of Rajendra, made foolish and ignorant who only makes excuses that are in stark contrast to the lore of the game itself.
Claude's goal of ending racism is a good traditional heroic one, not a selfish one like Rajendra's. Rajendra's goal is presented quite simply that he wants to become the king of his kingdom, and even when he does, he will try to betray Arslan to expand his kingdom's territory.
hm,
Claude's goal of "ending racism" cannot work in Fodlan if the game completely avoids the entire "crust = nabatean blood" issue and its consequences - which VW gives a "surprised pikachu face" at and ultimately ignores in the end.
(a crestless world is a world without nabatean blood - and yet possession of nabatean blood creates prejudice because superpowers are sought after - even if the games try their hardest to ignore this fact)
And cherry on top, the main character who could tell him that "hmm yes we must fight against racism, but how are we supposed to do so when one party wants to coexist and the other wants to dissect me ? Trust me I tried for 1k years to help humans, and the second my ears were revealed to be pointy they called for my head" conveniently dies off-screen at the end of the route.
It also cannot work if prejudice exists on both sides and only one side gets the "you must change your mentalities" discussion, when the other side supposedly gets one, but off-screen (again!).
And so, I wondered what was Claude's story arc in FE16 ? Is it all about Claude learning and moving past his preconceptions to make a better world? Is it all about Claude, just like Supreme Leader, working hard to get a good PR while moving his pawns to fulfil his "ambition" - having Almyra and Fodlan be sort of united? Both?
I haven't watched LOGH but from what I remember Rajendra tries to pull his bullshit/crap moves on Arslan and is always rekted, Narsus plays him like a fiddle. Rajendra works because there are characters in his world who react to his nonsense, tell him to stop (or stop him) - it's not like Clout going all "let's use the Almyran navy to attack Faerghus by bringing Sreng to the battlefield" and the GD being all "criket noises" or the BL peeps shitting on him, but being rewarded with Claude's best Caellach's impression.
(or worse, the Zahras fuckery where Dimitri, instead of smashing his head in for everything that happened in Golden Shower, suddenly buys his "but didyaknow church bad" nonsense)
Is Claude like Rajendra, using "end racism" as a PR motivation to further his more selfish goal? And discovers, during FE16, that there are more important things around that his initial goals, so he becomes a heroic character? And in Nopes he never discovers the "more important things" so he becomes the Clout we all know and love?
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themcphotographer · 7 months
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there were so many pillagers I just had to take a screenshot
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ko-neko-san · 2 years
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Does anyone want to be a ragtag crew for a pirating vessel in the year of our lord 2022 with me? I don't even wanna be like captain or anything, I'll be 2nd mate or smth.
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transmorolians · 2 years
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i need to share my arle design headcanons. i need
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The last Blood Libel trial, by a European state authority, was 1913, and blood libel is more than a trial in a fucking court room.
20th and 21st centuries
Further information: Religious antisemitism, Antisemitism in Christianity, Antisemitism in Islam, Antisemitism in Europe, Antisemitism in Russia, Antisemitism in the Arab world, and Antisemitism in the United States
The 1903 Kishinev pogrom, an anti-Jewish revolt, started when an anti-Semitic newspaper wrote that a Christian Russian boy, Mikhail Rybachenko, was found murdered in the town of Dubossary, alleging that the Jews killed him in order to use the blood in preparation of matzo. Around 49 Jews were killed and hundreds were wounded, with over 700 houses being looted and destroyed.
In the 1910 Shiraz blood libel, the Jews of Shiraz, Iran, were falsely accused of murdering a Muslim girl. The entire Jewish quarter was pillaged; the pogrom left 12 Jews dead and about 50 injured.[69]
In Kyiv, a Jewish factory manager, Menahem Mendel Beilis, was accused of murdering 13-year-old Andriy Yushchinskyi, a Christian child, and using his blood to make matzos. He was acquitted by an all-Christian jury after a sensational trial in 1913.[70]
In 1928, the Jews of Massena, New York were falsely accused of kidnapping and killing a Christian girl in the Massena blood libel.
Jews were frequently accused of the ritual murder of Christians for their blood in Der Stürmer, an antisemitic newspaper which was published in Nazi Germany. The infamous May 1934 issue of the paper was later banned by the Nazi authorities, because it went so far as to compare alleged Jewish ritual murder with the Christian rite of communion.[71]
In 1938 the British fascist politician and veterinarian Arnold Leese published an antisemitic booklet in defense of the Blood Libel which he titled My Irrelevant Defence: Meditations inside Gaol and Out on Jewish Ritual Murder.
The 1944–1946 Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, which according to some estimates killed as many as 1000–2000 Jews (237 documented cases),[72] involved, among other elements, accusations of blood libel, especially in the case of the 1946 Kielce pogrom.
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (r. 1964–1975) made accusations against Parisian Jews that took the form of a blood libel.[73]
The Matzah of Zion was written by the Syrian Defense Minister, Mustafa Tlass in 1986. The book concentrates on two issues: renewed ritual murder accusations against the Jews in the Damascus affair of 1840, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[74] The book was cited at a United Nations conference in 1991 by a Syrian delegate. On 21 October 2002, the London-based Arabic paper Al-Hayat reported that the book The Matzah of Zion was undergoing its eighth reprinting and it was also being translated into English, French and Italian.[citation needed] Egyptian filmmaker Munir Radhi has announced plans to adapt the book into a film.[75]
In 2003, a private Syrian film company created a 29-part television series Ash-Shatat ("The Diaspora"). This series originally aired in Lebanon in late 2003 and it was subsequently broadcast by Al-Manar, a satellite television network owned by Hezbollah. This TV series, based on the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, shows the Jewish people engaging in a conspiracy to rule the world, and it also presents Jews as people who murder the children of Christians, drain their blood and use it to bake matzah.[76]
In early January 2005, some 20 members of the Russian State Duma publicly made a blood libel accusation against the Jewish people. They approached the Prosecutor General's Office and demanded that Russia "ban all Jewish organizations." They accused all Jewish groups of being extremist, "anti-Christian and inhumane, and even accused them of practices that include ritual murders." Alluding to previous antisemitic Russian court decrees that accused the Jews of ritual murder, they wrote that "Many facts of such religious extremism were proven in courts." The accusation included traditional antisemitic canards, such as the claim that "the whole democratic world today is under the financial and political control of international Jewry. And we do not want our Russia to be among such unfree countries". This demand was published as an open letter to the prosecutor general, in Rus Pravoslavnaya (Русь православная, "Orthodox Russia"), a national-conservative newspaper. This group consisted of members of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democrats, the Communist faction, and the nationalist Motherland party, with some 500 supporters. The mentioned document is known as "The Letter of Five Hundred" ("Письмо пятисот").[77][78] Their supporters included editors of nationalist newspapers as well as journalists. By the end of the month, this group was strongly criticized, and it retracted its demand in response.
At the end of April 2005, five boys, ages 9 to 12, in Krasnoyarsk (Russia) disappeared. In May 2005, their burnt bodies were found in the city sewage. The crime was not disclosed, and in August 2007 the investigation was extended until 18 November 2007.[79] Some Russian nationalist groups claimed that the children were murdered by a Jewish sect with a ritual purpose.[80][81] Nationalist M. Nazarov, one of the authors of "The Letter of Five Hundred" alleges "the existence of a 'Hasidic sect', whose members kill children before Passover to collect their blood", using the Beilis case mentioned above as evidence. M.Nazarov also alleges that "the ritual murder requires throwing the body away rather than its concealing". "The Union of the Russian People" demanded officials thoroughly investigate the Jews, not stopping at the search in synagogues, Matzah bakeries and their offices.[82]
During a speech in 2007, Raed Salah, the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, referred to Jews in Europe having in the past used children's blood to bake holy bread. "We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children's blood", he said. "Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread."[83]
In the 2000s, a team of Polish anthropologists and sociologists investigated the currency of the blood libel myth in Sandomierz where a painting depicting the blood libel adorns the Cathedral, and Orthodox faithful in villages near Bialystok, and they discovered that these beliefs persist among some Catholic and Orthodox Christians.[84][85][86] The fact that local Jews were saved by orders from the bishop, who saw them hide in the very same cathedral during the Holocaust, gave rise to hopes of transforming Sandomierz into a symbol of hope for the checkered historical Polish-Jewish relations.[58]
In an address that aired on Al-Aqsa TV, a Hamas run TV station in Gaza, on 31 March 2010, Salah Eldeen Sultan (Arabic: صلاح الدين سلطان), founder of the American Center for Islamic Research in Columbus, Ohio, the Islamic American University in Southfield, Michigan, and the Sultan Publishing Co.[87] and described in 2005 as "one of America's most noted Muslim scholars", alleged that Jews kidnap Christians and others in order to slaughter them and use their blood for making matzos. Sultan, who is currently a lecturer on Muslim jurisprudence at Cairo University stated that: "The Zionists kidnap several non-Muslims [sic] – Christians and others... this happened in a Jewish neighborhood in Damascus. They killed the French doctor, Toma, who used to treat the Jews and others for free, in order to spread Christianity. Even though he was their friend and they benefited from him the most, they took him on one of these holidays and slaughtered him, along with the nurse. Then they kneaded the matzos with the blood of Dr. Toma and his nurse. They do this every year. The world must know these facts about the Zionist entity and its terrible corrupt creed. The world should know this." (Translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute)[88][89][90][91][92]
During an interview which aired on Rotana Khalijiya TV on 13 August 2012, Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh stated (as translated by MEMRI) that "It is well known that the Jews celebrate several holidays, one of which is the Passover, or the Matzos Holiday. I read once about a doctor who was working in a laboratory. This doctor lived with a Jewish family. One day, they said to him: 'We want blood. Get us some human blood.' He was confused. He didn't know what this was all about. Of course, he couldn't betray his work ethics in such a way, but he began inquiring, and he found that they were making matzos with human blood." Al-Odeh also stated that "[Jews] eat it, believing that this brings them close to their false god, Yahweh" and that "They would lure a child in order to sacrifice him in the religious rite that they perform during that holiday."[93][94]
In April 2013, the Palestinian non-profit organization MIFTAH, founded by Hanan Ashrawi apologized for publishing an article which criticized US President Barack Obama for holding a Passover Seder in the White House by saying "Does Obama, in fact, know the relationship, for example, between 'Passover' and 'Christian blood'...?! Or 'Passover' and 'Jewish blood rituals?!' Much of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe is real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover." MIFTAH's apology expressed its "sincerest regret".[95]
In an interview which aired on Al-Hafez TV on 12 May 2013, Khaled Al-Zaafrani of the Egyptian Justice and Progress Party, stated (as translated by MEMRI): "It's well known that during the Passover, they [the Jews] make matzos called the 'Blood of Zion.' They take a Christian child, slit his throat and slaughter him. Then they take his blood and make their [matzos]. This is a very important rite for the Jews, which they never forgo... They slice it and fight over who gets to eat Christian blood." In the same interview, Al-Zaafrani stated that "The French kings and the Russian czars discovered this in the Jewish quarters. All the massacring of Jews that occurred in those countries were because they discovered that the Jews had kidnapped and slaughtered children, in order to make the Passover matzos."[96][97][98]
In an interview which aired on the Al-Quds TV channel on 28 July 2014 (as translated by MEMRI), Osama Hamdan, the top representative of Hamas in Lebanon, stated that "we all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos. This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence."[99] In a subsequent interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Hamdan defended his comments, stating that he "has Jewish friends".[100]
In a sermon broadcast on the official Jordanian TV channel on 22 August 2014, Sheik Bassam Ammoush, a former Minister of Administrative Development who was appointed to Jordan's House of Senate ("Majlis al-Aayan") in 2011, stated (as translated by MEMRI): "In [the Gaza Strip] we are dealing with the enemies of Allah, who believe that the matzos that they bake on their holidays must be kneaded with blood. When the Jews were in the diaspora, they would murder children in England, in Europe, and in America. They would slaughter them and use their blood to make their matzos... They believe that they are God's chosen people. They believe that the killing of any human being is a form of worship and a means to draw near their god."[101]
Allegations of genocide against Palestinians by Israel have been described as a form of blood libel by some critics.[102][103] In contrast, several leading Jewish and Israeli anti-Zionist academics[104][105][106][107] and organizations[108][109][110][111] have similarly described the state of Israel’s continued treatment of Palestinians by classifying it as a genocide,[112][113] citing the Ten stages of genocide alongside genocidal language incited against Palestinian civilians living in Gaza invoked by Israeli officials during the 2023 Israel-Hamas War.[114][115]
In March 2020, Italian painter Giovanni Gasparro unveiled a painting of the martyrdom of Simon of Trent, titled "Martirio di San Simonino da Trento (Simone Unverdorben), per omicidio rituale ebraico (The Martyrdom of St. Simon of Trento in accordance with Jewish ritual murder)". The painting was condemned by the Italian Jewish community and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.[116][117]
The QAnon conspiracy theory has been accused of advancing blood libel tropes through its belief that Hollywood elites are harvesting adrenochrome from children through Satanic ritual abuse in order to become immortal.[118] In February 2022, a sculpture of Simon of Trent depicting the blood libel was used to promote the adrenochrome-harvesting conspiracy theory.
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auspicioustidings · 5 months
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Savage
Summary: Request for some Scottish warrior Soap taking an English maiden as a prize.
Words: 3.7k
CWs: Violent non-con (I am so serious, do not ready this if it's not your thing), hardcore smut
Authors Note: This is very much a rape fantasy. Traditionally rape fantasies have historical grounding in minorities who felt ashamed of their own desires so had to fantasise a situation in which they were blameless for engaging in a stigmatised action because it was forced. It’s sort of where a lot of the noncon trope in bodice rippers comes from because women in unhappy marriages need a fantasy in which they can get rid of the shame for wanting passionate or rough sex because they imagine they fought against it. A lot more people have rape fantasies than people generally realise and truly a miniscule barely there number of them would ever think it was ok to actually assault someone. All that to say, this is not me condoning anything in real life. If you find fantasies like this don’t do it for you, then do not read it, but don’t then shame people who do. There is psychology behind why people fantasise about these things, it’s pretty normal and you don’t need to be worried that it is some moral failing. Mind your business.
It was a miraculously good match for you, a high ranking soldier of the King’s army. You were technically of noble blood, but just barely. You lived simply, not in a large house but in a small village where you held no sway over anyone else and were treated as common. But the village was close to the border between England and Scotland and every day it became more tense as whispers of raids from villages to the West skittered between houses like rats.
You didn’t know how your uncle had made arrangements for this beneficial marriage for you, but it would get you moving South in a few days time to marry and then you would finally be able to relax with this war much further away from you. You had heard horror stories of what happened to young maidens when savages came pillaging. They said that they didn’t wear anything under those kilts, they said it was to make it easy to bury their cocks in any hot hole they could find. They said they didn’t have any tame qualities, not like the English. Scottish men were feral, the comparison to dogs not holding water because at least dogs could be trained. 
When you retreated to bed you got on your knees to say your prayers. As always you had to beg forgiveness for the licentious thoughts that sent thrills straight to your cunt whenever you thought about the images all those rumours put in your head.
The noise of chaos woke you in a panic, heart hammering against your ribcage as the smell of smoke drifted on the air and war cries sounded. You recognised your own kinfolk of course, the battalion of soldiers stationed here to keep eyes on the border. But it was the cries of those animals from the country to the North that sent you scrambling out of bed in only your chemise, knowing you had to run and hide before they could see you.
You slipped out of the bedroom, a frightened little rabbit looking for a burrow to hop into. The smell of smoke was stronger in the main room and you could see the orange glow of flames through the window. Going outside would be a risk, but hiding in here may get you burned to a crisp should this building be lit up. You did not have time to make the decision as the door burst off of its hinges, a muscular man in a blood spattered kilt with a warrior's mohawk and wild eyes panting like a dog as he caught sight of you.
You were frozen, unable to even breathe. And then after a beat his mouth stretched into a horrid manic grin as he bounded towards you. That finally shifted you from freeze to flight as you scrambled back through to the bedroom, trying to get to the small window. You threw the top half of your body through the gap but his rough hands grabbed your naked ankles and yanked you back, hard. You felt the chemise catch on the window frame, the fabric bunching up to completely expose you to him before he let go of your ankles letting you crash to the ground. 
Your knees throbbed from the hard floor and by the time you were trying to crawl away he had his hand in your hair, brutally pulling your head up and craning it to look at him leaning over and getting into your face.
“Hear I have a wee noble bitch on my hands.”
Of course he would know. There were families here who would tell them anything to save themselves and pointing them in the direction of a noble maiden, one who was betrothed to an English soldier at that, would certainly be information that could spare them. The shouts outside sounded more heavily weighted towards those in his own gruff and growling accent now. The English soldiers were losing.
“I-I don’t know what you are talking about ser” you cried gently, not knowing how else to save yourself. 
“Bonnie words” he growled, pulling so sharply at your hair that you thought your scalp might be bleeding and using his other hand to grope meanly at one of your breasts through the rough fabric of your nightwear.
You cried out, feeling the tears immediately spill over and stream down your face. He was so strong, you could barely budge against his hold, and he reeked of blood and fire and sweat and hot arousal. You squeezed your eyes shut and he only growled at you.
“Ye’ll keep those eyes open, yer going tae watch yer wee English cunt take me like a whore or I’ll take yer tight arse instead.”
You choked on a sob and opened your eyes, seeing that his were full of sick glee and heat. The hand groping at your tits moved under the chemise to cup roughly at your sex and he pulled you to your feet by that hand. You screamed at how it felt as he abused you with his hand, grinding the heel against you. You felt a hot flood of bitter shame as he swiped a finger violently through your folds. What he found there made him pause for a moment, his face lighting up in unrestrained glee.
“Fucking English slut. Y’er dripping.”
You had heard women who said it would be better to be wet if they were to be taken against their will. You did not agree. Him knowing that your traitorous body found his rough abuse of it arousing was so humiliating you felt you would rather die. He was so oppressive in his demeanour, so big and aggressive above you that you imagined he may break your bed with what he was about to do to you. How foolish of you to think he would have that level of mercy.
“Going tae show all those bastards how their women take Scottish cock” he laughed, spearing two fingers inside you to their full length with no softness at all and pulling you by them.
You could not breathe. You had never had anything inside you and those two fat fingers felt like they were stretching you so much you would tear. He walked backwards so he could keep them firmly inside you and you stumbled pathetically after him, needing to keep as close to him as possible to stop the painful press against your walls that came from him pulling if you did not move. 
The shame was overwhelming as you emerged, full of his fingers and stumbling after him with tears streaming down your face, to find that your country's soldiers had been defeated with the survivors on their knees, hands bound. You were being paraded in front of them you realised, they had been put right here in the town square so they could bear witness, the Scottish soldiers standing behind them feral and full of lust as they took in their leader pulling you in front of them by the cunt. 
When he ripped his fingers out of you, your knees buckled and a high whine left you. You had went from feeling too full to feeling far, far too empty. You could barely hear anything but the blood rushing through you as your heart hammered. That and him as he taunted the soldiers on their knees. 
“Our women would ne’er let ye touch them, they’d die first. Yer clean wee English princess on the ither hand?” he said, planting a booted foot to your chest and pushing until he had you pinned on your back underfoot, “she’s gagging fir it. Foaming at the gusset tae take strong Scottish cock, put a real warrior in her belly.”
His own men cheered at that and you watched on with horror as he cocked his head at one of them and he began to approach you. 
“Naw a monster though am I my wee slut? Ye’d be wet enough fir one of their small English cocks nae doubt, but fir mine? Going tae need something to help me sink in good and deep.”
The other soldier went to his knees between your legs and you watched as he pulled his throbbing cock from under his kilt, jerking it violently. You tried to move away, his cock so close you could feel the heat of it between your legs, but the boot on your chest held you still. When you tried to close your legs the man touching himself used his other hand to wrench one of your knees until it was touching the ground, using his own knees between your thighs to help him keep your glistening cunt fully on display.
When the head of his cock stroked through your folks, slicking you with his pre-cum and bumping at your clit, you were so overwhelmed that you didn’t quite manage to bite back your moan. They laughed meanly at you as the man found his release, spurting hot cum all over your pussy, smacking his cock against your stomach when he was done to shake off the last drops.
It was filthy, you felt sticky and like you were on fire. The next soldier took his place and spat right on your already disgusting cunt as he began to stroke himself. By the time he had painted you with his seed and the third was started, the man above pressed his foot harder to get your attention and all you could do was stare up into his taunting eyes, trying to focus on him so you could not think of what was going on between your legs. You cried up at him, trying to find any level of sympathy in him.
“Keep crying and I’ll gie ye something tae cry about princess.”
Oh you hated him calling you that when you were pinned down in the dirt, defeated soldiers of your country watching as their enemies smeared their cum all over your exposed body. Watching as they made a sloppy mess out of you in preparation for their leader to shove his cock deep inside and pump you full of his savage children.
You did not know how long you stared up at him, not able to look away as you felt the heat of his men on your body, your own body getting hotter and hotter with each slide of velvety throbbing skin against your own. He had started to talk to you, his eyes not budging. It wasn’t the defeated soldiers he was taunting, it was you, ruined and disgraced under his boot.
“See how good I am tae ye little whore? Letting my men make ye flush wi pleasure. Don’t deny it, think I cannae see yer face whenever ye feel a cock on that wee untouched pussy? Like a fucking bitch in heat. I’ll fuck ye like one. Get ye on yer hands and knees so ye can look yer precious King’s soldiers in the eye when ye fall apart on my cock. When ye’r fucking begging for my cum. Wilnae even have tae dae any work, ye’ll be fucking yourself back on me ye needy slut.”
You shook your head in horror at his claims, the true fear being that he would make them true. Already you felt in a daze, felt empty and desperate. But you felt fear as well as he put his arm under his kilt, rucking the fabric up to grab at his cock. It was huge and you found yourself panicked and squirming as the last of his soldiers grunted and slapped the meat of your thigh to get you to stay still. You were rambling incoherently as the man above stroked slowly at himself, causing that thick weapon between his legs to throb and seem even bigger. 
“It won’t fit, it’s not going to fit, please I’ll die, you’ll split me open. It’s so big no no I can’t, I can’t!”
You didn’t even feel the last of his soldier’s loads splatter onto you, didn’t notice when his hands left your flesh. You would have rapidly purpling skin in the shape of fingerprints all over your thighs from how you had been held still by all of them, but you could not feel the dull pain of it through your fear of what was to come.
“Ye’ll take whit I gie ye and ye’ll fucking thank me princess.”
He removed his foot and it was only then you realised that he had been pressing down hard enough that your breaths had been shallow. The rush of oxygen from being able to fully expand your lungs again made you horribly dizzy, but it also flooded right down to your clit and made your body jerk violently with the sensation. 
He didn’t take his hand from his cock and he bent so he could use the other to grab your ruined hair again, yanking your head up and shoving himself into your mouth. You choked, legs scrambling to get underneath you to give you some stability with which to batter your fists against his thighs, trying to pull away. He laughed meanly at your attempts, moving the hand that was touching himself to join the one tangled in your hair on the back of your head and pulling your head at the same time as he thrust forward, settling himself fully in your throat. 
You were gagging around him, tears really streaming down your face now as you begged him with your eyes to let you breathe. He held you there, his own eyes glittering with satisfaction, until your muscles started to give in and you felt your eyes dropping closed as your brain became cottony. Then all at once he pulled you off and you were gulping in oxygen around your coughing and sputtering, the rush much more intense this time. 
He held your head tilted up at him so he could watch your face as he shoved his boot between your legs and got you over the edge. Oh weren’t you a delicious little thing for him, getting off so hard on how he used you, moaning shakily and wantonly in the dirt beneath him in front of his triumphant soldiers and your defeated ones. 
“Good fucking girl” he growled with a feral grin, letting you ride it out with little aborted thrusts on his boot, unable to control your body. 
You looked gone, eyes glazed and body slack. Couldn’t have that, he needed you screaming for him. He needed your blood fighting between being frozen with terror and boiling with need. And he needed you full of him, needed to be able to feel his own cock through your stomach so fucking clearly that he could jerk it. 
You were thrown forward, top half of your body collapsing pathetically into the dirt right where it was covered in the sweat and cum of his soldiers. He manhandled your hips up, leaving your face crushed into the dirt and your ass up high for him, cunt presented. You felt his hot breath at your ear and it was a sudden shock when you realised he was growling lowly into your ear, his words for you and you only.
“S’going tae hurt, yer going tae scream yerself hoarse for me and then I’ll get ye tae milk me when I rip pleasure out of all that pain. Will treat ye right after little princess, like one of my good Scottish lassies, but right now ye’r my fucking English whore.”
The confusing mix of sentiments cleared some of the fuzziness from your mind but you had no time to dwell. He was right, it did hurt and you did scream yourself hoarse. He had lined himself up and plunged into you, cock coated and slick from the cum of his soldiers but no less huge inside your tight virgin pussy. He had split you in two, you were sure of it. His cock must have broken through you, was sitting in your ribcage and punching all the air from your lungs.
You blacked out for a moment, coming right back to when he pulled out to fuck brutally back into you again, slapping your ass so hard that you felt the sting all the way up to your fingertips and making you choke on the sob that fought through the screaming. He ripped at your hair, making you look at the defeated soldiers on their knees. Making you watch their own cocks swell at your treatment. Your utter ruination was making them hard. Your head being wrenched back meant you had to go to your hands as he pounded you, and you saw how they looked as one of your breasts was fucked right out of the chemise, bouncing lewdly for them to see with every hard thrust.
The humiliation had you digging into the dirt like you had claws, feeling the bite of the earth pushing under your nails. It sparked something in your brain, almost like you could see them sharpen. Like you could feel your shoulder blades become more pronounced, become something sinewy and sleek and animal. He was fucking you like a predator and you were drooling and howling and panting like his prey, back bowed as he pulled your hair harder and had to staring at the sky babbling prayers into the night air. 
“S’too much, can’t, I can’t. Full, too full.”
“Ye fucking can. Yer tight fucking cunts trying tae strangle me, wants my cum so bad naw? Perfect English pussy, so slutty and needy for a real cock” he growled, hand letting go of your hair and smacking your ass right over where he had before, causing you to howl at the pain. 
The pain and something else, something that had no place here and yet had been lingering from the moment he had caught you. Something that had been getting closer and brighter and more insistent with every abuse you were subject to. Something that he invited in when your arms collapsed beneath you without him holding your heads weight anymore and he ground your face into the ground before bringing his hand to your clit and pinching. 
Your scream was raw and hoarse, throat well past being able to produce a clear sound. The orgasm was blinding and every bone felt like it had liquified. You saw white and then you saw hardly anything, only vague shapes and colours. The only thing now was how his cock filled you. The shame was gone, replaced with the truth that you loved this. You loved how he used you like this, how he violated you in front of these soldiers just because he could.
“That’s it princess, fucking take it” he hissed, stopping his thrusts and letting you do all the work.
You didn’t even realise now how you wildly fucked yourself back on his cock trying to chase the pain of overstimulation, addicted to the way it made you feel some sick hazy pleasure. You were drooling onto the dirt, tasting the earth mixed with cum and finding the disgust of it only felt right now. When his hand came to your stomach and pushed to feel himself bulging there you came again, harder, babbling thank yous to him.
He bit out a string of curses above you as your pussy squeezed so hard it was forcing him out, but he was strong as he forced himself balls deep and held there, finding his release as you milked everything out of him and into your womb. The liquid heat of it was the last thing you felt as you passed out, blissed and fucked out of your mind. 
John MacTavish allowed himself a moment to lean his body against your back, inhaling the scent of sweat and dirt and cum and fear and lust from your limp body. So good for him, took it perfectly. He hissed when he finally pulled out, resisting the temptation to just keep going beyond what would feel good because fuck, being inside you had been a religious experience. 
He was nothing if not a man of his word though, and he scooped your body gently into his arms to get you onto a horse and ready for him to take over the border where he could give you that princess treatment he had promised. The surviving soldiers they would leave beaten and bloodied but not dead. After all, someone had to tell your betrothed all the details.
-
“Fucking MacTavish” he hissed after excusing the man who had given the report.
He had made him give it in full detail, told him to leave nothing out. 
“Kept her alive by the sounds of it, maybe looking to get a bastard out of her” Garrick mused.
“Knowing him he’ll keep her near the border to taunt us instead of moving her further up North” Price added.
Simon Riley would not be letting his betrothed get away with allowing MacTavish of all people to take the maidenhood that rightfully belonged to him. She needed a proper punishing fuck from an English man to learn better.
“Doesn’t matter where he keeps her. I’m going to take her, and she’s going to learn what happens to sluts who spread their legs for those Scottish bastards”.
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whiskybravo · 2 years
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I love how in a lot of people’s eyes Minecraft is a wholesome, peaceful game, something that you can leave a child playing unattended and nothing bad’s gonna happen, but my top creepiest gaming experience was finding two dead villages in a row.
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heritageposts · 1 year
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how do i start to read marxist leninist/leftist stuff ? i searched on the internet but it’s super confusing lol
the most important value for me as an ML is anti-imperialism, so i guess i'll always recommend that people start with works centred on that
some suggestions below (all books should be available either on marxist.org or as pdf/epub files on libgen)
American Holocaust by David E. Stannard
about the colonization of america. not explicitly marxist, but it's probably done more to radicalize me than any other piece of writing. this is the pile of corpses capitalism is built on:
Within no more than a handful of generations following their first en counters with Europeans, the vast majority of the Western Hemisphere's native peoples had been exterminated. The pace and magnitude of their obliteration varied from place to place and from time to time, but for years now historical demographers have been uncovering, in region upon region, post-Columbian depopulation rates of between 90 and 98 percent with such regularity that an overall decline of 95 percent has become a working rule of thumb. What this means is that, on average, for every twenty natives alive at the moment of European contact-when the lands of the Americas teemed with numerous tens of millions of people-only one stood in their place when the bloodbath was over. To put this in a contemporary context, the ratio of native survivorship in the Americas following European contact was less than half of what the human survivorship ratio would be in the United States today if every single white person and every single black person died. The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. That is why, as one historian aptly has said, far from the heroic and romantic heraldry that customarily is used to symbolize the European settlement of the Americas, the emblem most congruent with reality would be a pyramid of skulls. - David E. Stannard
2. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin
Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. - Vladimir Lenin
3. The Wretched of The Earth by Franz Fanon
Let us look at ourselves, if we can bear to, and see what is becoming of us. First, we must face that unexpected revelation, the strip-tease of our humanism. There you can see it, quite naked, and it’s not a pretty sight. It was nothing but an ideology of lies, a perfect justification for pillage; its honeyed words, its affectation of sensibility were only alibis for our aggressions. A fine sight they are too, the believers in non-violence, saying that they are neither executioners nor victims. Very well then; if you’re not victims when the government which you’ve voted for, when the army in which your younger brothers are serving without hesitation or remorse have undertaken race murder, you are, without a shadow of doubt, executioners. And if you chose to be victims and to risk being put in prison for a day or two, you are simply choosing to pull your irons out of the fire. But you will not be able to pull them out; they’ll have to stay there till the end. Try to understand this at any rate: if violence began this very evening and if exploitation and oppression had never existed on the earth, perhaps the slogans of non-violence might end the quarrel. But if the whole regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the oppressors. - prefrace by Jean-Paul Sartre
4. Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire
Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa I have talked a good deal about Hitler. Because he deserves it: he makes it possible to see things on a large scale and to grasp the fact that capitalist society, at its present stage, is incapable of establishing a concept of the rights of all men, just as it has proved incapable of establishing a system of individual ethics. Whether one likes it or not, at the end of the blind alley that is Europe, I mean the Europe of Adenauer, Schuman, Bidault, and a few others, there is Hitler. At the end of capitalism, which is eager to outlive its day, there is Hitler. At the end of formal humanism and philosophicrenunciation, there is Hitler - Aimé Césaire
5. Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti
probably the most accessible introduction to communism that doesn't demonize countries that have undergone—or attempted to undergo—a transitation into socalism (like the ussr, cuba, etc.)
The very concept of "revolutionary violence" is somewhat falsely cast, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to prevent reform, not from those struggling for reform. By focusing on the violent rebellions of the downtrodden, we overlook the much greater repressive force and violence utilized by the ruling oligarchs to maintain the status quo, including armed attacks against peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests, torture, destruction of opposition organizations, suppression of dissident publications, death squad assassinations, the extermination of whole villages, and the like. - Michael Parenti
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flowersandbigteeth · 3 months
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Your orc husband comes to fetch you
A little thing to start 2024. I've gotten lots of requests for more orcs ^_^
General Plot: Your husband finds out you've been injured in battle and comes to fetch you.
Orc (Reven) x GN reader
Word count: 1K-ish
More SFW fics
TW: Mention of amputation, mention of break up, hurt comfort, sfw fluff, size difference
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“Heard the news?” Reven’s client asked, a brave move considering the razor at his throat. 
Skilled fingers never wavering as he drew the blade across his client's chin, he let out a bored grunt, focused on his task.
“There’s rarely any news that hasn't made it through the shop.” 
His client’s eyes twinkled, eager to share some gossip. 
“They say the Dragon Slayer is retiring.” 
Reven’s graceful stroke paused, and he pulled his hand back before he sliced the man's cheek. 
“Oh? I thought they’d never give up their crusade.”  
“Word is the crusade is over. The dragons pillaging Walker’s Keep are dead. The slayer killed them all.” 
Reven took a deep breath before asking his next question. 
“Will they be returning to their homeland?” 
The client snorted. 
“If they ever leave the hospital. They were gravely wounded in the final battle. Thank the Goddess the dragon’s gone, they won't be doing much-” 
The razor clattered to the floor with a metallic clang, and Reven’s feet carried him out the front door of his barbershop without a word to the half-shaved client sitting in his chair. 
He left his crinkled apron in the dirt as he mounted his horse and steered her towards the road to Walker’s Keep. 
“Come on hero, eat a little,” one of the nurses at the clinic urged you, holding up a spoon of oatmeal. 
You waved it away with your remaining hand, your face a miserable, twisted version of itself. 
She huffed, getting annoyed. 
“You haven't eaten in three days! It's only a hand. Some of the people here have lost brain matter, their genitals…You've already killed the dragons. You don't need-” 
A clamor outside the door of your hospital room cut off her little tirade. 
An orderly’s deep voice drifted through the door. 
“Sir! Only family can-” 
“I am family, dammit. I'm their husband!” 
Reven’s familiar baritone made your heart flutter. Still, you were afraid. It had been so long since you'd seen one another. Three years and you hadn't parted on a happy note. 
The door flew open, and there he was, his massive shoulders filling the frame, emerald green skin as rich as you remembered it. He’d changed his hair, no longer cropped around his ears, but long hanging in a thick ponytail over his shoulders. 
He tipped his head to enter the room, dark eyes on you, and his lips twisted around his tusks in an expression you remembered as annoyance. 
“Get out,” he barked at the nurse, and she shuffled past him without question. 
Your voice was only a murmur.
“You came.” 
“Of course, I came. I would have come sooner, but someone failed to send their spouse a note mentioning they’d lost their hand!” 
Your eyes dipped, full of shame. 
You'd left Reven on a cold December night. He'd begged you not to go, cried, yelled, and made you a million promises if you'd just let someone else handle the mission. But no, you had to be a hero, and look what that brought you. You were broken and useless, alone in a hospital bed. 
“Stop thinking so hard,” he muttered, chestnut eyes roving over you, ever analytical. 
He crossed the room and plopped down on the bed, holding his hand out. 
“What?” you asked. 
“Let me see it.”
You stretched your bandaged stump to him, and he fingered it gingerly. For an Orc he had nimble fingers honed by years as a barber. 
“Bah…Just a scratch.” 
He gently placed it in his lap, twisting his body so the two of you were face to face. 
“It's my sword hand. I'll never kill another dragon.” 
His head tipped to the side. 
“I've heard the dragons are dead.” 
“They are, but-” 
“But nothing. You accomplished your mission…sacrificed for the kingdom…It's time to come home.” 
You blinked at him, tears burning the backs of your eyes. 
“You want me to come home? I'm…I'm useless.” 
He chuckled. 
“Nothing's changed without your hand. You've never been good at anything but killing.” 
“Swordsmanship was my only skill.” 
“A stupid one.” 
His lips twisted around his tusks again, but this time with amusement. Large fingers slipped over your cheek, and he pulled your head to him, brushing his lips over yours. His scent and taste were so familiar. It was as if you'd been holding your breath the three years you'd been gone and could finally get some oxygen. When he pulled back, he looked down at you, expression solemn. 
“I wrote you letters. You never wrote back. Did you toss them all out?” 
You shook your head, trying to hold the tears back. The Dragon Slayer crying was embarrassing. You nodded to the small chest where the nurses had placed your belongings. 
Reven crossed the room, opening the box and pulling out a stack of letters tied with a green ribbon you’d come across. 
“I didn’t know what to say. I felt…guilty…I guess.” 
He tossed them on your lap, narrowing his eyes at you.
“Hello. I love you, would have sufficed.” 
“I’m sorry, Reven. I left and ruined myself when I could have been home with you. I could have been happy.” 
“You killed the dragons, accomplished your goal…You aren’t happy?” 
“It feels emptier than I thought it would. I left you alone. Anything could have happened to you, and I would have lost my chance to see you again.” 
He chuckled. 
“I’m not helpless.” 
“I left you alone. It’s unforgivable.” 
“That’s for me to decide.” 
You looked up at him, searching his eyes. 
“You’d forgive me? I don’t deserve it. I got hurt. You told me this would happen, and I didn’t listen. Now I’m just a burden and a fool.” 
He sighed and pushed you to the side, sliding into bed with you before pulling you back into his lap. His nose grazed the column of your neck, and you felt him breathe in your scent.
“Maybe a fool, but never a burden, and being foolish doesn’t make you unlovable. I missed you (Y/N).” 
“I missed you, too.” 
“You weren’t the only fool.” 
“You started dating another bloodthirsty idiot while I was away?” 
“I should have come with you. I was angry at you, but that didn’t last long. Then I was bitter you hadn’t asked me to join you, and I didn’t insist.” 
“Kharma caught up to me.” 
“If you hadn’t lost your hand, would you still be gallivanting over the countryside fighting monsters?” 
“Probably.” 
He buried his face in your neck, and you felt the slight wetness of tears against your skin. 
“I don’t think it was Kharma…I think it was Fate.”
“Fate?”
“Fate spared two idiots unwilling to budge.” 
You sat on those words for a few minutes, the heat of Reven’s body seeping into your bones. You could never quite get warm the entire time you’d been gone, no matter how many furs you donned. You always felt cold, even with the heat of the dragon’s flame singing the tips of your eyelashes. 
“Don’t leave again,” he whispered.
“It wasn’t worth it. I’d read and reread your letters all those lonely nights, wishing I had the strength to abandon my quest and return. I was afraid…I’ve never been afraid before. I’ve killed monsters my whole life and never felt fear, but the thought that you might reject me if I walked through those doors…that I’d come home to find some other lover warming your bed…our home…” 
You felt Reven smile into your skin. 
“There aren’t too many half-feral sword-wielding jocks roaming around Elderoak. That’s what I go for.” 
“Thank you for coming to get me, Reven.” 
“I should have come sooner.” 
“I wouldn’t have listened.” 
“I’m bigger than you. I should have thrown you over my shoulder and taken you home.” 
“And now…?” 
“You could walk…or I could throw you over my shoulder anyway if you like that sort of thing.” 
You twisted your body to snuggle deeper into Reven’s arms. You finally felt warm for the first time in three years. 
“Did the doctor clear you to leave?” 
“They’ve done all they can…they were waiting on me to eat.” 
You felt his chest shudder as he chuckled. 
“You don’t want cold hospital gruel? Spoiled.” 
“Not spoiled enough. I miss your cooking. I want to go home.” 
He hopped to his feet, making you jump as he hoisted you princess-style into his arms. 
“I’ll come back for your things,” he promised as he carried you out the door. 
“Forget about it…It’s just armor and weapons I don’t need anymore. The letters are the only things I want to keep.” 
“Are you sure? They’re a little sad. I missed you so badly…I whined more than anything.” 
“I want them to…remember how unfair it was…everything I put you through to stroke my own pride.” 
He lifted you up to his lips to press a heavy kiss into your forehead. 
“Even if you forget, I’ll make you remember. You left, but I let you go. I’m sorry for that (Y/N).” 
“Then we’re both sorry.” 
Your stomach grumbled loudly, and Reven laughed again. 
“Sorry and hungry. Think you can get down some tavern food? It’s not my cooking, but you can’t wait to eat until we get back to Elderoak.” 
You looked up at him, cupping his thick jaw with your remaining hand.
“In your company, it’s just as good.” 
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sm-baby · 9 months
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POV: You messed with the wrong mentor
My tablet decided to work okay today so I grace you with concept art of a scrapped episode idea :3
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vexwerewolf · 6 months
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I always figured the Imperials were the good guys.
Nnnnnngh… no. Imperials are the better of two bad options, and it's really muddied because Bethesda lost its good writers years before Skyrim came out. I can feel a hyperfixation coming on, so a quick TL;DR: the Empire is an Empire so it's still bad, the Stormcloaks are just racist saboteurs led by a Manchurian agent and Tiber Septim is a gigantic piece of shit who ruined everything.
Okay, so the Empire functionally lost its equivalent of the Mandate of Heaven when Martin Septim died heirless at the end of Oblivion. His sacrifice forged a new compact to end the Daedric incursions, but by that point Imperial infrastructure throughout Tamriel had been so badly damaged that it could no longer maintain order. By the time the Mede dynasty got its feet under it, several provinces had either risen in revolt against the Empire or and were busy violently settling bitter generational rivalries with each other.
Most notably, this included the Thalmor, who are openly and proudly an Altmer supremacist movement. Their primary goal is to end the dominion of Men on Tamriel and institute a second Merethic Era dominated by them. This is the most obvious reason for why they want to ban Talos worship - the idea that a Man could become Divine is grossly incompatible with their worldview. (I must note that there's also a much-discussed fan theory stating that they intend to unmake creation in its current form and destroying Talos worship is part of that, but it's partially based on sources whose canonicity is in doubt, so I'm not going to discuss it further at this time.) The Thalmor are pretty much explicitly Elf Nazis, right down to invading foreign countries and rounding up their religious minorities.
It should be considered, however, that Tiber Septim was an UNBELIEVABLY MASSIVE PIECE OF SHIT. There's credible evidence that during his mortal life he assassinated the Cyrodillian monarch to whom he had sworn fealty and then seized his throne. He had a dalliance with Berenziah that ended up getting her pregnant, then forcibly abducted her and had the child aborted without her consent. After gaining Numidium from a treaty with the Tribunal of Morrowind, he discovered that they hadn't given them its power source (Lorkhan's Heart - understandable, since it was the source of their false divinity), and so he created a new one, the Mantella, by tearing the souls out of Ysmir and Zurin Arctus, two of his most loyal companions. He used Numidium to brutally conquer the rest of Tamriel and then turned it on all the noble families in Cyrodil who hadn't supported him. His empire - as all empires are - was built entirely on murder, pillage and rape. And - as all emperors do - he rewrote his own history because nobody dared openly oppose it. If the Aedra truly did award him a seat amongst them after this (and the fact that his bloody armor counts as "the blood of a divine" in Oblivion suggests that they did), it's questionable whether any of them are worthy of worship.
Nonetheless, worship of Talos was of extreme cultural importance to the Nords, because he was considered by history to have been a Nord, and indeed born in Atmora, the mythic first homeland of the Nords (although, again, it's likely he was just fucking lying - heterodox historical accounts suggest he was born in High Rock and never saw Atmora in his life). The White-Gold Concordat was formulated specifically to provoke division between the remaining provinces of the Empire - the Thalmor correctly predicted that the Nords would never tolerate being stripped of their right to worship Talos, and would rise in revolt against an Empire that mandated it.
The specific cause of the Stormcloak Rebellion is also… dubious. During the war with the Thalmor, the Imperial Legion had all but pulled out of Skyrim. This allowed an uprising by the Reachmen, an ethnic minority within southwestern Skyrim who, notably, had been brutally disenfranchised and stripped of their land by… Tiber Septim! Thanks, Talos, you continue to be a gigantic piece of shit! Anyway, they seized control of Markarth and held it for two years, during which by most accounts they ruled it as an independent kingdom that was making overtures towards being recognised by the Empire. After the signing of the White-Gold Concordat, Ulfric Stormcloak raised an army to retake it, and was promised by the Jarl of the Reach (and, allegedly, the Empire itself) that worship of Talos would be freely allowed in Markarth. Ulfric Stormcloak then proceeded to lay siege to the city and butcher it, ethnically cleansing the city of every last Reachman down to the women and children, slaughtering any Nord who had collaborated with them and allegedly even killing those citizens of Markarth who hadn't answered his call to arms.
Inevitably, the Thalmor found out about the Talos worship anyway and the Jarl was forced to sell out Ulfric and his men. This is generally considered to be the betrayal that sparked the civil war, but at this point we must examine who Ulfric is.
Ulfric was trained in the Thu'um from an early age by the Greybeards, but abandoned his tutelage to fight in the Great War. We know little of his performance other than that he was captured by the Thalmor, tortured extensively, and falsely made to believe that the information he had given under torture was instrumental in the fall of the Imperial City. His father, the Jarl of Windhelm, died while he was in prison, and he was forced to deliver a eulogy via a letter that he had smuggled out of the prison. He claims he escaped from captivity, while Thalmor records claim that they let him go intentionally; neither source is particularly reliable.
From a sociopolitical standpoint, Ulfric is a staunch Nordic traditionalist who openly states that he doesn't believe Skyrim has had a "true" High King for centuries, considering recent monarchs to simply be puppets installed by the Empire. He also seems to be deeply racist: in contrast to his father, he banned Argonians from entering Windhelm proper, confining them to the Assemblage on the docks, and he's allowed racist sentiments towards the Dunmer residents of the Grey Quarter to worsen. Even citizens of Windhelm who support the rebellion comment that isn't doing very much governing, since the civil war eats up most of his attention.
One point I will give to Ulfric is that establishing Skyrim as an independent kingdom that can actively resist the Thalmor isn't actually as far-fetched as it seems. After the White-Gold Concordat ceded half of Hammerfell to the Thalmor, Hammefell said "how about fuck you," broke from the Empire entirely, and smacked the Thalmor down so hard they had to sign the Second Treaty of Stros M'Kai and retreat from Hammerfell entirely. This rendered the nation a haven for those opposed to the Thalmor, and they're in such a strong position that the Alik'r can actively hunt Thalmor collaborators like Saadia in other nations. Hammerfell is in a better position than Skyrim, and it did it without any Imperial aid.
(A hilarious fact about the Hammerfell situation is that the Thalmor tried the exact same thing there - inciting a civil war between the Crowns and the Forebears, two factions that have hated one another for generations. Unfortunately, they fucked it up so badly that it actually managed to end the rivalry and unite both of them against the Thalmor.)
But this is where Bethesda's inability to actually capitalize on the good parts of their writing really gets to me.
The Empire in Skyrim… sucks. Like, from your perspective as a player, the first experience you have of the Empire is "okay, so you were at the border alongside this guy and we're executing him today so I guess you get to die too." The only decent Imperial you meet is Hadvar, who makes a lukewarm plea for your life but doesn't press the issue.
All of the Imperial Jarls except for Balgruuf and Idgrod Ravencrone are dogshit. Elisif is a naive, incompetent teenager. Siddgeir is an arrogant, incompetent ponce. Igmund is a spineless Thalmor toady reigning over stolen land, having broken a promise he made to Ulfric and thus being partially responsible for the civil war. The replacement Jarls you get if you side with the Empire and conquer territories the Stormcloaks hold at the start of the game fall into two categories: "who?" and "oh fuck not you." If I say the names Brina Merilis or Kraldar, I bet you won't even remember who I'm talking about. Brunwulf Free-Winter, the replacement for Ulfric Stormcloak, has ONE personality feature and it's "I'm slightly less racist than Ulfric." But when you capture Riften for the Empire, the new Jarl is MAVEN FUCKING BLACK-BRIAR, THE SECOND-WORST PERSON IN SKYRIM.
But the Stormcloaks suck worse. Laila-Law Giver is a puppet for the Black-Briar crime family. Skald the Elder is a grumpy, hidebound old man. Korir might as well not be ruling anything at all. If you side with them, you have to sell out Balgruuf when the matter of Whiterun comes up - a man who has never been anything but helpful, supportive, trusting and forthright with you. Oh, and let's not forget that if you take the Reach for the Stormcloaks, the new Jarl is THONGVOR SILVER-BLOOD, LITERAL SLAVEOWNER AND WORST PERSON IN SKYRIM.
(There is an absolutely cursed timeline wherein during the "territory trade" at the peace talks you can hold during the main quest if you haven't finished the civil war quest yet where Maven gets the Rift and Thongor gets the Reach, meaning you have just installed the two most powerful crime families in the country into positions of executive power.)
This isn't just a case of "of course both sides aren't perfect and have issues." This is just "both sides fucking suck." A better game would allow you to make some headway in resolving the massive issues that face Skyrim, but I've already written like nine billion words here so maybe I should go into that at a different time.
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Good Saturday, y’all.
Topic of today’s rant: PEOPLE PRINTING AND SELLING FANFIC & GENERAL FANDOM ETIQUETTE
Profiting from fanfic will ruin it for everyone.
I want all of you who gift us your stories to be safe from lawsuits and beware that your content might be stolen.
Not to be on a soapbox and preaching to the choir but here are.
There are many authors pulling their work off AO3 because people acting on bad faith are printing and binding fics to sell on etsy thus infringing copyright laws. Fanfic has always been a grey area and we are allowed to exist in this grey area because we are not profiting from it. The minute money is exchanged, every party involved is breaking the law.
Why am I complaining about this yet again? Because we might be deprived from enjoying fanfic with the freedom we currently have because the fanfic authors will fear getting sued. If third parties are stealing our work and selling it, publishers and studios won’t care to know who sold it. It is your handle (thus IP address) on the sold fanfic. Because, get this, they are doing downloads straight from ao3 with your usernames.
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Manacled is being pulled from ao3 because the author will publish it as a book. People are putting the book at risk by selling printed versions of it on Etsy.
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I believe many of us who fall on the 20 years of reading fanfic side rather than on the 20 year olds reading fanfic will remember the Anne Rice days. These are not fully over because her son is carrying on the legacy of suing everyone who writes fanfic of her work. And if I may say, she didn’t invent vampires and should’ve taken many seats. I digress.
I am not sure of the levels of awareness within this community and to what extent it can affect all of us. TikTok is a massive contributor to this problem (as it is to many other problems. Again, I digress) since booktok and the binding folks discovered ao3.
You might think, I only post on tumblr so my content is safe. Well, they are finding their way here too. They cringe because tumblr is for old people but they still make their way here with their bad manners and pillaging behaviour.
I want all of you who gift your stories to be safe, lawsuit free, not lose your content and not be afraid of sharing.
I wish I had a definitive solution to this problem but I can only think of small actions:
report the etsy accounts selling fanfic/fanfic commissions,
report the TikTok accounts selling binding for fanfic work,
go back to the days of putting disclaimers on your notes that you don’t own the characters and you are not profiting from the story.
Tagging some authors* here for visibility so you can cascade to more people. Absolutely no pressure tag.
@theywhowriteandknowthings @tightjeansjavi @diversemediums @goodwithcheese @nerdieforpedro @fhatbhabie @undercoverpena @thelightsandtheroses @ezrasbirdie @notjustjavierpena @javierpena-inatacvest @freshlyrage @5oh5 @wardenparker @endlessthxxghts @creedslove @sp00kymulderr @secretelephanttattoo @gnpwdrnwhiskey @whatsnewalycat @pedrostylez @thetriumphantpanda @toointojoelmiller @dancingtotuyo @agentjackdaniels @ladamedusoif @lotrefcp @wildemaven @musings-of-a-rose @justagalwhowrites @morallyinept @pedropascalsx @criticallyacclaimedstranger @pennyserenade @kteague @astoryisaloveaffair @moralesispunk @linzels-blog @metalnecklace
*I can remove the tag if you are not comfortable with being associated with this post.
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theminecraftbee · 11 days
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situation ask game: joe hills for 16?
16. Meeting past/future self
"Howdy!" Joe Hills says.
"Howdy!" Joe Hills says back. "This seems to be quite the predicament."
"Oh god, there are two of them," whispers Doc. He'd just wanted to check on the log shop, man. Joe had said something about fixing some redstone (inherently terrifying to hear), and he'd just wanted to come check on it and inevitably fix the fixed redstone, and now there are two of them.
"I have to say," the first Joe Hills--presumably, the original one, given that he's insisting on saying everything through that stupid hand puppet he made this season, although Doc couldn't tell you--says. "I'm fairly certain seeing my own ghostly visage is normally considered a bad sign in most literature. Luckily, this isn't literature, so I can ignore the ill portent."
"Alas, I am, in fact, a bad omen," the second Joe Hills says, all too cheerfully. The second Joe Hills does not have a hand puppet and appears by all measures to be a ghost. Doc would generally agree that's a bad sign too, except for the fact that the Joe he knows is a ghost about fifty percent of the time, and oh no, he's already confused. There are two of them and he's already confused.
Maybe he should go get some coffee. The cafe Cleo set up is supposed to be good, and if he's this confused, maybe he'll manage to get himself to walk past the cats before he remembers he's supposed to be scared.
"Oh no," Doc's Joe says. "I don't have time for bad omens. For one, I'm not any good at killing pillagers. For another thing, I'm busy. See I was trying to help and I accidentally broke Doc's redstone and I feel bad because I think he's like, actually for-real mad about it, not fake mad, and we're supposed to be business partners, right, so I thought I'd come here and fix the redstone. Except then when I was hanging out with Mumbo at the end of our setup confessional Mumbo mentioned something and I just now remembered it and I think I fixed it wrong, so I'm here to try to figure that out, and that means I really don't have time for a bad omen."
"We never do," the ghost Joe says, shaking his head.
Doc, weirdly, feels touched.
"So if you could go away and give me dire warnings later--"
"Sorry, I don't have time to be put off for later! If you put this off for future Joe, you're putting this off to me! Then I'll have to do this all over again, and it'll be a closed time loop. Or, I guess mostly closed, because I don't remember this. But maybe you hit your head and forget everything! I don't know! I don't know how time travel works, but closed time loops were always the really confusing ones because they try to make sense. If we don't try to make sense you might still be able to change things."
"Oh no. What if this is a self-fulfilling prophecy?"
"I hadn't considered that," the ghost Joe says.
"I mean, everything I've ever read says that in trying to avert catastrophe, I am likely to accidentally cause it!" Doc's Joe says.
"Maybe the solution is for you to not believe my warnings?" the ghost Joe says. "No, that always ends badly too. That means there's dramatic irony!"
"Right, right. Maybe you just have to be as clear as possible, so I can't misinterpret your words?"
"No, I think the solution is to be vague," the ghost Joe says. "Good prophecies are normally vague that way. I mean, I'm mostly just here to tell you how to avert the nasty end of the world that kills everyone super dead, not anything too complicated! If I put too many details in, I'll leave in a dramatically appropriate loophole by accident, and then you'll never manage it."
"True, but Cleo says that I should always be given exact instructions, or I'll do the wrong thing on purpose," Doc's Joe says.
"We do that even more with exact instructions."
"That is true! And I guess it's harder to remember exact instructions?"
"Maybe the solution, given that I am going to vanish back to the past in five minutes," the ghost Joe says, "is that I should simply write down my instructions. That will make them harder to misremember or misinterpret."
"I will lose those too! This is too much responsibility!"
"I know! That's what I said!" ghost Joe says. "I said, why are you asking me. I mean I know the ghost thing is the only reason I can do this, but I don't want this kind of responsibility! I am not trustworthy! You all have known this since, like, day one, stop putting this kind of stressful responsibility on me! I do weird things when I'm stressed! I mean, I'm always stressed--"
"That's true, we are," Doc's Joe interjects.
"--but this is even more stressful than that! If I thought anyone else could do it, I would have said no! And now I don't know how to--"
"Man, if the world is going to end and kill all of us, stop worrying and just say how," Doc says, stepping out of his hiding place and throwing up his hands. "You're wasting time!"
"Oh, you're right," ghost Joe says. "So, the world will end when--"
He vanishes.
Doc and Doc's Joe stare after ghost Joe into the distance. Finally, Joe, with the world's most betrayed expression, turns to Doc.
"You scared me off!" he says. "If you hadn't shown up I'm sure I would have explained eventually."
"WHAT," Doc says as calmly as possible back. It does not appear to appease the Joe he's left with at all.
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milksockets · 5 months
Text
why scan?
scanning is something i've done for probably about 12 years now (i'm ancient, for this site), with varying degrees of regularity, intensity, etc. it has ratcheted up since the dawn of 2023, though, which begs the question: why? why put so much time into what could not-wrongly be considered a passive activity, hunched over a piece of clunky machinery with the express purpose of preserving others' creations? the answers are several, and fascinating (not really).
i am a [sober] drug addict. anything i pursue, consume, create--more often than not--ends up taking on addictive qualities. i'll eat the same specific food item for a month, then never want to see, let alone taste it, again. i'll listen to one song on repeat for days until i'd rather hear nails on a chalkboard than have it shuffle on and assault my ears. one of the reasons that my scanning has increased in volume recently is that i acquired library cards to the 3 nyc library systems: nypl, brooklyn, and queens. as soon as i was able to, i pillaged + plundered those fine centers of learning, leaving any given library with as many hefty scan-worthy books as i could [barely] carry. here, finally, was a *free* way of obtaining more + more + more visual media to consume.
2023 saw me get my first legal, full-time job. as such, my adjusting to that hellish reality resulted in a steep decline in my own personal creative output. collaging, writing, and rapping all fell to the wayside as i slowly acclimated to a life of work that almost everyone else my age has known for over a decade is generally unbearable + detrimental to the maintenance of outside pursuits. in times of famine within my own artistic harvest, scanning, archiving, and sharing others' work is a means of feeling as though i am still contributing to the global oeuvre.
there’s an element of losing my mental self in a series of physical motions that becomes almost automatic after some time. “zoning out” is not something endemic to my daily life; if anything, i’m almost always too zoned in. relief is necessary.  especially considering the shitshow this past year has been in terms of my personal life.
i am a product of capitalism’s cultivating a craving for constant consumption. 
it seems that visual content is only going to continue to get more + more uninspired. has everything been done? did social media ruin it all? in any case, i feel a need to document the past. to a degree, it’s my version of doomsday prepping. (god forbid books go extinct altogether.) 
i have always gravitated towards solitary activities. this topic could be a thesis in its own right.
i thrive on external validation. this reliance is something i’ve improved upon over the past several years, but it hasn’t been altogether extinguished. even though the materials i scan are not of my own creation, i nevertheless feel a vague pride in showcasing them. occasional appreciation thereof satisfies this fixation on others’ attention, albeit in a diluted form. 
i am fortunate to live in a city bursting to the gills with cultural institutions. i am also lucky enough to have some disposable income that can be directed toward fulfilling my ravenous desire for visual media. 
p.s. i provide the information available to me for everything i post. (those lacking credits are because they were excavated from a primordial hard drive.) you are more than welcome to bugger off + research further, but there's little point messaging me asking for--or, more often, on here, charmlessly demanding--additional details.
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