#the celts were also fucked up

[tyriq-edits]

In the Plain of Nysa (Trigun Greek Mythology AU)

Nicholas D. Wolfwood

Priest of the Twins' Cult

Lives pretty much in the Sanctuary of Nysa by himself but gets occasionally visited by other Members of the Cult, his younger brother Livio or people in need of the Twin Gods' Blessings.

A (Kinda?) normal Priest living in his tiny Sanctuary offside from Civilisation on a small Island in the Aegean sea called Nysa.

His Duties for the most Part consist of Prayers and Sacrifices for the Gods And keeping the Temple and Statue of the Twins clean and occasionally doing a Ritual on thr Request of the odd Visitor.

Did not expect one of the Gods he is serving to be dropped off at his Temple by the goddess Meryl and her Satyr companion Roberto and to be stuck Body-Guarding said God but oh well here he is.

May Or May Not Regret Giving Vash That Short Chiton.

For more Information/lore about this AU just look at the in the plain of Nysa tag on my page or just send me an ask in my inbox.

Also shout out to my best pal Stephan for teaching me how to draw.

Additional Ramblings about the lore and WW’s design under the cut

This is btw what a Penennular Fibula looked like and I only now noticed that WW is wearing it wrong in my drawing 🥲 The needle is supposed to rest on the Bow of the brooch and not in the opening in the middle.

Also this Fanfic takes place approximately around the time of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), however Penennular Fibula were primarily worn by either Celts and Romans. So as you can tell while I am trying my best with historical research and keeping things somewhat historically accurate, there are still creative liberties being taken for this AU.

As for why this AU and Wolfwood‘s Sanctuary are called "in the Plain of Nysa“: It‘s actually a reference to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, aka the most complete version of the Myth of Hades and Persephone we have. In this Hymn it says

In other words it was "in the Plain of Nysa“ in which Persephone was kidnapped by Hades. On a fun note, Nysa is actually not a real place anywhere in Greece. It was instead meant to symbolise "a place far away“ the same way we tend to say "in a kingdom far away“ when starting to tell a fairytale. However that did not stop some Ancient Greeks from guessing where Nysa might be located. Some thus point it to be situated somewhere in Macedon or today‘s Balkans, others claimed it was around the area of the Black Sea or…. That Nysa was on the Island Naxos. Which is why in early drafts the Sanctuary was meant to be located on Naxos itself but as I have never been to Naxos in my life it felt disrespectful to the actual people who live there so I just changed it to the Sanctuary of Nysa being on a lone non-existent Island near Naxos instead.

On a smaller note Nysa was also said to have been the Birthplace of Dionysos, with his name meaning "God of Nysa“. In other Stories however Nysa was the name of a mountain on which Dionysus had started his cult.

I am also taking some creative liberties with how Priesthood functioned in ancient Greece. Unlike how it works in Catholicism and other religions, Priests in ancient Greece were not a separate social class. Heck apart from a few Cults and sanctuaries, being a priest was not even seen as a main occupation of job for that reason. And a priest usually wasn‘t chosen by some council, but in many cases you just paid a certain amount of money to become a priest. They did not even have an official attire like catholic or shinto priests do nowadays. However they were still expected to dress somewhat formally compared to WW‘s Exomis, which is basically the ancient greek equivalent of a priest showing up in shorts, flip flops and an old Tshirt.

The Twins Cult in this AU is by the way HEAVILY based on the Eleusinian Mysteries, aka the Mystery Cult dedicated to Demeter and Persephone. I will some day make a post dedicated to them and priesthood in ancient Greece as a whole.

And yes I still fucking hate drawing feet and shoes.

#in the plain of nysa #as you can tell i am still not good at art #and this AU is basically just me using my Archeology degree as excuse to info dump about ancient greece #vashwood #trigun stampede #trigun #trigun 98 #persephone au #vash the stampede #vash x wolfwood #tristamp vashwoood #tristamp #tristamp vash #tristamp wolfwood #nicholas the punisher #nicholas d. wolfwood #wolfwood my beloved #wolfwood x vash #trigun wolfwood #wolfwood fanart #trigun maximum #hades and persephone #fanart #my art #my artwork #greek mythology au #greek mythology #archeology

[eirgachuair]

How Are You Going to Be Irish and a White Supremacist?

no bc how are you going to be irish and be xenophobic? how are you going to be irish and be a white supremacist?

throughout ireland's history, our island has seen celts, vikings, it was a mixmatch of different cultures from the getgo.

even before the plantations, normans invaded the island, they eventually essemilated into irish culture while keeping some of their own.

then moving onto the most successful plantation, the ulster plantation, spaniards helped with the irish's effort, and then in later times, the french helped us as well.

the famine:

the Choctaw People sent us aid, the tsar, an ottoman sultan, many countries sent aid, a Philidelphia Irish Famine Relief Committee made up of catholic protestant and jewish people was set up to give aid to the starving irish, so many countries helped us. FFS even the english helped in some strange ways. 'International fundraising activities received donations from locations as diverse as Venezuela, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Russia and Italy.' [Wikipedia, Great Famine (Ireland)]

this might not be important considering that despite the fact these absolute jokes use republicanism and patriotism to justify their bigotry, they don't consider the people in the ni to be 'actually irish', but NICRA (northern ireland civil rights association)

NICRA aimed to stop irish catholics being discriminated against with jobs, voting, housing, and also aimed to tackle the Special Powers act which put many away in jail unfairly and without trial. NICRA WAS LITERALLY BASED OFF OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA.

we've all seen how palestine and ireland have supported eachother through the years. how palestine is being fucking carpet bombed right now thanks to a colonial force. do you know how much good the so called 'patriots' of this country could do if they put their energy to helping people instead of being absolute scumbags?

if you are irish and you are a white supremacist, if you're irish and you're xenophobic. you don't get to hide behind patriotism.

if you loved being irish, you would look back at history and see all of the countries that helped us, all of the countries that had no reason to, but saw themselves in our struggle, that sent aid, that supported us.

if you were a true patriot, you would learn your own language instead of scoffing at it. you would promote the protection acts for the irish language, you would help create and fundraise for cultural festivals. you would reinstate old traditions . you would protect and help nourish your culture but you dont. instead you assault and attack innocent people based on the fact they're not "irish enough".

if you were a true patriot, you would follow in the footsteps of the likes of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement of the 1960s, of the Irish people who donated to Native Tribes during the pandemic.

your skewed sense of pride is based on the fact our ancestors bore so much pain and suffering yet still managed to fight for freedom. that pride, that patriotism all means nothing if you are using it to uphold the colonial standards of white supremacy that helped shackle them in the first place.

okay thats all i wanna say bye bye

#sorry for the rant btw #this might be a little bad w wording so sorry abt that #irish #ireland #northern ireland #white supremism #xenophobia #rant

[kisnin]

"Simple" does not mean "crappy".

Just cause you have a sword and I a club, does not mean I'm not capable of beating the living SHIT out of you.

This kinda a callout to people who write about improvised weapons/simple weapons in a negative light.

Good example: Pitchfork. It's a farm tool and it has some SHARP AS FUCK points to it. In steady hands, it can be an excellent weapon. You can use it as a spear/short pike. You can whack people with it cause it's got good weight. You can even give someone the catclaw treatment XXL with the tines by slashing. You can catch weapons in it and spin them out of an opponents hands.

Another example: javelin. They're simple to make but are devastating. You will rarely survive a clean hit from any sort of throwing spear.

Examples continued: sticks and rocks. Never underestimate the effectiveness of beating someone over the head with a stick or slamming a rock into their chest. Even good armor will have issues against shear concussion force. Or, employ the rock via sling. Or just drop it on them from high up.

Another thing to mention is bronze weapons. Bronze is in many ways an excellent material. While it doesn't have the hardness of iron or steel, it's still capable of fucking someone up. Bronze can also, despite popular opinion, be hardened. This is done by working the material with a hammer, causing the crystalline structure to compress, short explanation. While this still doesn't have the same hardness of hardened iron or steel, it dramatically increases the durability of the piece.

Whatsmore, many writers, historians, and such have a very "civilocentric" (which is a word I pulled out of my ass, but I will define as... uh. I need a language expert @mommalosthermind, I apologize for name dropping but you seem to have a grasp of this based on your blog) view of history, and often weapons.

IE: a sword (or other object) has to be metal.

It don't. There are WORLDS of cultures (not just non-western ones, though they are really easy to use. I'd draw your attention to the celts and Germans but that would mean I'd have to get out my notes from HS and extended education so well skip that.) WHERE SWORDS ARE NOT METAL. Take a trip down to the Kiwiville Before the Tommies (New Zealand, and brevities sake Polynesia) and you'll find any manner of examples in many different materials ranging from the possibly impractical (shark tooth) to the downright terrifying (sharpened fucking WOOD) that sit in the category of a sword.

Or we could take a trip across the pacific (or just far south for me) to Mexico, where the Aztecs and other cultures used obsidian blades glued to wooden paddles to achieve an effect something between a sawblade, cleaver, and club. Said weapons were VERY effective, and in some cases may have even destroyed European swords in action.

In similar style there's also evidence that atleast one person naped some flint into a blade shape, and the glued it to some backing. They then probably became the single most stabby motherfucker on the block (flint wounds are fucking terrifying, cause they often come with a serrations status effect).

To conclude this rant.

There is an entire wide world of THINGS to use. ANYTHING is a narrativly possible and reasonable weapon.

#i rant on the can #young man yells at confused writers for no reason more at 8 #my fuckin foot in it #history: its not just for funny suit people with shiny paper #source: my ephemeral bussy #fite me

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Hi! I really loved a post you made earlier about how society is only now returning to a variety of religious beliefs and was wondering if you could talk more about it. Any thoughts on countries taking up their original religions? Magnus and asatru? Rhys or his siblings with druidism?

TW discussions of religion, religious skepticism and fictional depictions of religion in historical fantasy. I feel like they pick up things they themselves remember but the modern human iteration is... Meh. No shade to believers, I did some time with the Nordic pantheon before the Nazis took it over but the modern iterations of almost all European pre-Christian religions are unfortunately mostly constructed between the 18th and 20th centuries. Almost none of it dates back further than revivals during the enlightenment. Would they see echoes of their lived experience in these revivals? Sure. I just don't know if they'd be adherents to the modern form when they can remember at least some of the real thing, otherwise now dead and gone. So I do think there's things in them that survive but they can't quite look at modern paganism as a belief system.

But two parts I think would really feel important to them: a lot of the pagan revivals are about a rejection of the Calvinist themes of Reformation and counter-reformation Christianity that emphasize individuality, created the belief of the elect who are saved by god and stripped Christianity of a lot of its older emphasis on community and mutual aid and responsibility. I think a lot of the pagan revivalism would very much appeal there and in its counter-culture themes.

And second, because I'm a weirdo who uses hetalia to get into really niche topics and practice writing historical fiction I want to publish when I'm grown, I try to stick to what we actually know. I want to replicate the perspectives of history. The fantastical aspects are often just adaptations of what magic was actually believed in, as far as I can adapt from a very limited pool of knowledge. I have written Alasdair carving the symbols we have from some Pictish standing stones and Ogham, a Gaelic form of literacy into objects and sacred trees to make them into portals and protective objects. I have written Arthur's primary contact with their mother as being not when he visits the site of her barrow and the Kirk that gives them their name that was later built on he same site, but after he drowns or is caught in a storm, because we know the Britons of prehistory and the Roman era and even into the early medieval believed water was a kind of portal between this world and the sacred. I gave Rhys their mother's bronze age sword because magic swords are everywhere in every flavor of Celtic Mythology. Arthur keeps Cromwell's head on the mantel partially because he's a stubborn fuck who can hold a grudge for centuries but also because we know that the ancient Celts believed the head specifically to be a very powerful magical object.

Norse paganism as we know it today is based on things like the Icelandic Sagas and the descriptions of the temple of Uppsala by Adam of Bremen. Those are fantastic documents but they only come into being centuries after the end of the Viking age and are written by Christians, usually clerics, and usually men. Our heads are full of images of powerful priestesses, shield maidens and goddesses, but more than a third of human women were starved as children compared to under ten percent of boys. Every Norse grave is different, with only general categories being able to be sussed put based on grave goods, the style of inhumation or cremation and marking ships or stones. We just don't know fuck all about the specifics what the people of this era really believed.

Or with the British celts. We know what the Romans said. That they burned criminals in wicker men, committed human sacrifice, that the Romans slaughtered the druids on Anglesey in Wales. We know the names of their gods when they are twinned with Roman ones or archaeologists find inscriptions. But so many of them are only known by one or two inscriptions. There are only eight for Brigantia and she was the patron goddess for the largest tribe by territory in Iron Age Britain. We know they offered sacrifices of value to bodies of water, we know from medieval Irish sources, also written by Christians, that they had 4 holidays aligning with the seasons and divided the year into half light half dark. But we don't know shit about songs or prayers or even how much the Romans made the fuck up. Which was likely most of it but we'll never know. What the Picts in Scotland may have believed is especially lost, we don't even have most of their language or even sheep counting like Cumbrian.

There's been a lot of push back against terms prehistory and dark ages and rightly so in that they conjure images of a filthy past, people living in their own shit and grim misery. But on a historical level, on an archival level, there really are such things as dark ages and prehistory where we just do not know the details and when discussing and writing religion I err towards what we know the most about, especially where archaeology and history can support each other.

#the ask box || probis pateo #meatsack mechanics || the sociology and biology of nations #today on: I use hetalia to figure out how I want to write historical fiction when I grow up lmao

[pacifymebby]

https://www.tumblr.com/whey-aye-sam-fender/656267645139681280/in-newcastle-we-say-pet-and-someone-was-trying

Such a good read x

“In Newcastle we say ‘pet’ and someone was trying to tell me that was fucking offensive towards women. You’re not going to delete my fucking colloquial identity. It’s not even gender-specific; we say it to men and women. My Grandma calls me ‘pet’! That brand of liberalism is fucking destroying the country. We could be getting Boris Johnson and all them pricks out of office if we stopped sweating over shit like that”.

put his whole chest into that :')

he's so real for that too! I do think that the attack on that kind of language by a certain brand of academic liberal as being "sexist" comes from people outside of those working class towns, and is ultimately an attack on the language and dialects of these places. People would say it isn't that deep telling people they can't use pet names, but it starts to be about where you draw the line? "You can't use your dialect if you want to be taken seriously/ professionally" is something you quite often hear/ see, like writers who write in Scots (Irvine Welsh/ Trainspotting) are often shunned or taken less seriously, you're taught that if you want to go to uni you have to speak a certain way, if you want to be perceived as clever you have to speak in RP because people think a working class accent sounds scummy and stupid.

I think what he's talking about with "pet" being called sexist, is part of that general classism towards local dialects. And local dialects are a massive part of community identity. I heard someone speak in a welsh accent earlier and was like oh shit, a friend <3 and thats the same with dialect, speaking in your local dialect is a way of showing that you're part of that community and have a group of people on a level with you.

I used to live in the midlands where instead of pet you call people duck, and the phrase "ey up me duck". apparently comes from when the vikings were around, it was used to identify you as being a celt or something? I can't remember exactly but I know the words are derived from the Scandinavian (like a lot of Geordie terms) and so they're intrinsic to the fabric/ history of a specific area and using them links you to your ancestors and that kind of thing is often really important for people (especially when they're from historically downtrodden communities!!! Its a way of having dignity and pride in your community/ class)

Anyway this is such a big rant lol sorry, im actually also really crazy passionate and a big nerd when it comes to dialect because I've picked up a lot (in an attempt to fit in in the various places I have lived) and also been raised with conflicting opinions on (my mums parents were always telling me not to speak in my accent when I was younger, they tried to teach me to speak RP and to drop dialect, my dad and his family pretty much went the other way and encouraged me to be proud of it haha)

#politics #a bit?

[veetyuh]

Another really strong relationship in the polycule, outside the complicated NornScotIre web, is probably EngSea. Especially from a historical perspective, good fucking god the amount that England is literally obsessed with a tiny fort is incomprehensible. Pretty much a Belarus-Russia situation, except Peter actually reciprocates.

The first and most obvious thing is power dynamics. Peter is 18, he's just reaching adulthood, he's super isolated with few social skills, facing his mortality as that 100 year expiration date ticks closer. He's ungodly old for a micronation (81!), too young for a "real" nation, and he's the UK brother everyone forgets. He's a black sheep. He's alone. And he's been fighting for his life since day one, left by his older brothers to fend for himself.

Arthur gave this kid his identical trauma. But because of what Peter is -- a fort made to protect Arthur at all costs -- he didn't develop npd or bpd like Arthur. He internalized it, and tied his self-worth to it. Arthur marooned him at sea for a decade. Well, it must be because Peter didn't fight hard enough! He should have killed more Nazis, maybe then Arthur would love him -- never mind that it was a horrible, unfortunate mistake that no action of his could have prevented.

And so Arthur's love and attention is directly tied to Peter's self-esteem. That's only reinforced by Peter's fort instincts; being made to serve and protect him, naturally, his brain is hard-wired to revolve around him. So when they do get together, it's mostly Peter fretting over him 24/7.

Their history of fighting is so fucking painful and it's 100% Arthur going full yandere mode. He thought Peter died after his sailors were withdrawn, and learning that he was not only alive, but stolen away from him and in the hands of a fucking lunatic? He had to "rescue" him at all costs. Bomb threats to scare them out, trying to steal it while Prince Roy was gone by sending a boat literally codenamed Big Brother, trying to starve them out by making Roy go through customs and ruining their supplies. One outright failed bombing attempt. Offers to buy it. Then trying to fight them in the court system and failing. A significant part of the British government was focused on the reacquisition of that fucking fort. I cannot stress the sheer amount of effort focused around a pair of concrete pants in the ocean. It's like Arthur was having a complete meltdown.

Of course, they're quite friendly now, so I interpret that as Arthur and Peter having reconciled. And with those two, they get super close at an unnaturally fast pace. Because?? They're the same.

But another thing that makes the bond so strong so quickly is that Peter is genuinely always on Arthur's side, in everything that matters. He can't help but be. So, even though Peter falls head over heels and enthusiastically consents, it's inherently dubcon; so much of his love and admiration comes from basic instinct to serve his country, and it's impossible to tell the ratio of instinct to earned love. But that also makes the relationship more stable in a fucked-up way, because Arthur knows he can trust him at a deep, base level. And to someone as unstable as Arthur, having that stability is very important.

Culturally, they're identical. Peter is English. So now, Arthur isn't an outlier as a Germanic in a family of Celts. And

Peter is taking Arthur's place as the youngest. Both have abandonment trauma, so they're co-dependent and need each other very close. Similar tastes, with playful bickering over the smallest of differences. Same sense of humor, so their quips are always well-received. Fuck, they even look alike.

And so he values the relationship so much that he gets more than a little unreasonable. Peter is practically half-German after many years of German immigration -- at one point about half of all Sealanders were German or Austrian. He has all these little habits he picked up, speaks the language, and looks up to Ludwig, the same man he was built to kill. Does that imply Peter can overcome his instincts to some extent? Does that mean he might betray Arthur? And Peter is awfully economically close to Spain, which stirs up old feelings about fighting over colonies. So Arthur gets possessive. Some of the old yandere tendencies between them come out. Except now, Peter isn't being kept from Arthur, but being kept from his friends. Anyone who might "steal" him. No, he is English property and Arthur will make damn sure he never leaves him. Isolating him by spending a ton of time with him, because Peter will always drop whatever he's doing or planning if only Arthur asks.

But it isn't all fucked-up angst. Arthur helps Peter overcome his lingering cptsd, helps him regulate his drinking, and overall improves his quality of life. Peter gets Arthur to open up and be a bit more authentic around himself and others -- albeit, by hyping him up and stroking his ego, which Arthur is prone to seeking because of the npd. Outwardly, they both seem so good, they're smiling more and work so well together, that it's hard for outsiders to see the more unhealthy dynamics that are kind of the foundation of the relationship.

With sexual dynamics the sky is the limit, simply because Peter will do whatever Arthur wants. Submissive, dominant? Service top? Power bottom? Peter is certainly more skilled in some areas than others, but he will break himself to fit into whatever mold Arthur casts for him. Whatever Arthur wishes, he will receive.

Overall the dual healthiness and unhealthiness of the relationship just fascinates me. And the sheer level of co-dependence puts them firmly in the do not separate category, along with WalesEng and NornScot.

#hetalia #hws sealand #hws england #engsea #seauk #headcanon

[agardenandlibrary]

For the Book Recs Ask Game: 14, 66, 134, & 135! <3

alright alright alright. once again, going to try to pull from recent reads to answer!

14. a book that made you trip on literary acid

literary acid could mean anything lmao but let's go with what first came to mind:

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

I wasn't expecting this book at all. It threw cool "so sci-fi it might as well be fantasy" worldbuilding at me. None of these people are innocent, what's a little mass murder amongst our extremely messed up world. We're all gay and we've all done crimes.

I devoured this trilogy and the short stories and I'm ready to read them again soon.

another one I did on the podcast and you can hear my review here!

66. a book that fucked you up

I'm doing two you can't stop me

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Oh, Anne! If I spend too long thinking about her I'll cry. moving on,,,

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Oh, Maia! If I spend too long thinking about him I'll cry. You get the idea.

I also did a podcast episode about this one :)

134. unrecommend any book you like!

okay well, you know what I'm gonna say

From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

it's not worth it. It's like someone took SJM's books and added Twilight back into it but only the bad parts. It's almost 600 pages and really should be 350 at most. Nothing makes any sense. The love interest is a huge creep. I don't think it had an editor. Don't do it.

But if you do, tag me so I can see what you think.

135. recommend any book you like!

The Copper Crown by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

What, you don't like out of print fantasy from the 80s? How dare you.

What if a large portion of the Celts left Earth to get away from the encroachment of Christianity? What if they were the descendants of Atlantis and had magic? What if they founded an empire of planets far away in the stars?

What if we found them again?

#cara reads #ask game

[lilly-white]

Hey, for the Weird Questions for Writers 3, 17 and 18 if you don’t mind?

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

My writing ritual is cursed because: - constantly need hot drink therefore constantly need to get up and make hot drink - constantly need comfort food when a Scene is Hard therefore goodbye any healthy eating habits - obsessively getting into a scene means horrid posture & eyes no longer work - sometimes I put a little candle and try to be nice to myself but most times i’m like NO! NO SELF CARE! ONLY SUFFERING

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

I really want people to understand the successive waves of invasions in the British Isles and the exact displacements of the Celtic populations there, and also that Gaelic & Brittonic Celtic cultures are two distinct cultures even if there is overlap? Like there is different history & language there? Readers don’t seem to understand this and file my characters under “Irish” or “Scottish” when I’m in an era when Brittonic-speakers still occupy the north of Britain, including Scotland (Pictland at the time), which was only just being colonised by Irish settlers. It is largely argued that the Picts were Brittonic-speakers therefore part of the Brittonic tribes of the isle of Britannia, therefore far more related to the countrymen of Wales & Cornwall than any Gaelic-speaking population. And I know there’s Scottish nationalism and stuff that would counter this argument but I’ve read the damn research and it’s there. You had the isle of Britannia which was largely Brittonic-speaking right up to the northernmost point of Pictland, and then you had Ireland which was Gaelic-speaking. And saying “Scottish” implies a Gaelic culture which is not the case in my series and it drives me up the wall aaaaaaaaahh.

It’s important because anglophones all seem to think that there is one monolithic “Celtic culture” and it’s either “IRELAND, FAIRY CIRCLES AND KILTS”, or it’s whatever the hell Shakespeare and Milton farted out that one time back in the middle ages and I’m like. “Celtic” culture is so, so rich and diverse. But people just smush that shit together, Americans are out here doing “wicca” and “ancient Celtic rituals” of Imbolc/Bealtaine/etc and I’m like, you know those rituals are Irish. In Wales you don’t do that. In Brittany you don’t do that. Gaulish Celts also had their own calendar. Please see us :’) (lol it’s fine i know it’s complicated as shit in reality to untangle what the fuck happened and who are “the Celts”, I’m only just beginning to understand the differences because i’m boobs-deep in celtic studies so, i can’t expect everyone to know the intricacies, but it’d be nice if it were more generally acknowledged when people talk about “something Celtic”, that they specify like, “Irish Celtic”, “Welsh Celtic” etc)

Also fuck all King Arthur movies ever made I just want to put it out there (except potentially that recent Green Knight one? I haven’t seen it yet but the Mabinogion-like madness looks great. Just gotta wince inside every time they set Arthur in MASSIVE GOTHIC ARCHES and HUMUNGOUS 12TH+ CENTURY CASTLES like. If he lived at all it was way before the 10th century you guys. But OK hollywood you really can’t pluck him out of those historically inaccurate castles/cathedrals, you just can’t bothered to get a history consultant, i get it, FINE)

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

So!! I write Viking-era historical fantasy, and I incorporate old Norse magic in this tome of my series. And previously I did NO research (or, really not enough) into the actual historical Norse “magic system” if you can call it that. But in the Poetic Edda you really get a great description of what exists in Norse “spellcrafting”. So I’ve got like a bulletpoint list of the magic system now lol which has helped so much with vocab & imagining how the spells are actually cast.

So, context: one character is in a coma, protags turn to spellcrafting to go and “fetch his mind” from the realm where he’s lost himself. At first I just had my characters sort of go “to high ground” with some “seidr-workers” to perform a chant. This was wrong, because seidr is exclusively divination & “vengeance-seeking”, and is a female craft (if men do it it’s like a huge stain to your character). The “regular magical lore” that everyone can learn is called “fjölkyngi” and there is one such act that is called “spirit-wandering” where your mind basically travels around without your body. So, since my protags are accompanied by sorceresses, I changed the term “seidr-worker” to “Völva” (which I’m unsure about but at least we’re departing from seidr), and the protags actually go out in the realms in the final draft (aka they drink a potion & have a huge shared hallucination lol), whereas in the previous draft they sort of sang and that was it.

The first sign of departure is a squirm in the stomach, as though something were swimming in there. It’s those invisible hands again, shuffling through my insides, like fat fingers in a dice cup trying to fish out the die. My bow slips from my grasp. I bend to retrieve it, and the world bends around me.

Oh… yes, this was how it went. I breathe in and I know that when I breathe out, I will lose my mind; it will fly out like shreds in the wind. I need – need it to be a controlled exit. Controlled.

I glance around to Tamsin. I have to turn my head around so far until I see her, like an owl making the whole rotation. She’s deep in concentration, her hand beating the rhythm by itself; but her body is going limp. She falls slowly, gracefully to her knees beside me, still banging that stick at her wide drum. I know how that feels, how keeping the rhythm is as instinctive as breathing now – thrum, thrum, goes the ceaseless heart.

Tamsin. Tamsin. I need to stay with her. Stay – stay with her. My tagelharpa slides from my lap onto the ground, and I reach out – there’s so much air between us somehow, my arm stretching into it, a brave traveler disappearing into mist. She beats, and beats, and beats the drum, unfocused eyes skating over my palm.

“Tamsin,” I slur. “Ta… come. Take… my hand, take…”

“I don’t,” come the sounds from her drooping mouth, “I don’t feel so good.”

The stick slips, the drum thrums over the ground. Her palm is warm against mine, a downward motion; a slap that weighs like a stone. And then our joint hands are falling, and we are falling after them. The rocky ground underneath us turns to grey water, gulping us under. A leg, a hip, a curl of ginger hair.

We fall.

Everything rushes past us like wind. Whether it be solid ground or open sky; we are as ghosts passing through. Her hand is in mine, golden threads wrapped around our wrists glowing like hunter’s tokens in the woods, showing the way back.

Blue, deep and royal, opens like a yawning mouth around us. I pull her closer until we’re locked in an embrace; perhaps merged, or perhaps we were always one.

I open my eyes, strain my eyelids.

Where is this… where are we?

Voices flutter on the air around us. A host of crackly elder tones, of wrinkled hands drumming, drumming.

Point the direction, son of Ula.

#writing tracker #sorry i took so long to answer this i knew it'd be a long one lol #i chipped away at it ahah #convos #just #neopaganism seems to have popularised and made accessible some shit that then gets labeled 'celtic' #AND IT GETS IN THE WAY OF THE HISTORICAL RESEARCH SO MUCH #because there are SO MANY shitty not-historically-based books out there as a result #same for norse stuff #norse & celtic culture in general just suffer from people wanting 'the vibe' without really diving deeper into the historical texts #and i guess i get pissed off because i have like this cultural dissonance of like 'is this my culture or is this an irish thing again' lol #why settle for shit like wicca when you could learn what people from specific localities actually did #and it's 100% more interesting and whackier than wicca #all these neopagan books be like 'hello i'm the author and i'm going to smack down a bunch of reference-less knowledge' #'i expect you to take me at my word' excuse me but who the fuck are you anyway #when i read the Holy Book of Women's Mysteries i was like WHAT ARE YOU DOINGGG #why are you making shit up #isn't it more interesting to link it to history??? why take historical shit and warp it like that and lace it with your own brainfarts

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from THE WAYLANDERS

“RPG” that it’s not such; it’s more like a linear adventure with companions set in ancient /old Northwest of Spain, where most of the ibero-celts lived.

Due to a terrible design choice, the characters speak in urban modern English, using slang and curses such as asshole, prick, piece of shit, for fuck’s sake, what the fuck, fucking, etc. It brutally breaks the fantasy setting, making the characters sound like a modern sitcom.

You can play as male or female and pick one of three different pronouns: he, she, they. When it comes to races, you can play as a werewolf, a mourian (immortal race), or a human. Each race has particular resistances that don't matter since the combat is terribly designed anyway.

You have several basic classes that can specialise in subclasses, for example: a sorcerer is the basic class to become frost sorcerer, pyromancer, or necromancer. 

This story contains time travel. However, it’s a time travel that still remains in the past: in this game, the ‘past’ is when the Celt culture was at its peak, while the ‘future’ is during the Christian Inquisition, as the last religion wiping out the druid culture of the Celts. Despite being a nice concept to explore, the delivery of the story is terrible.  

You acquire a magical ship that allows you to jump across time. However, despite having all your crew in it, the time travel only happens to you. I repeat myself: this game has a problem with narrative details. Well, with narrative in general.

The game uses a fantasy map of Spain, it’s easy to notice it. There is a strong focus on the Compostela Church as well. From a design and aesthetic point of view, the game does a nice job, combining real places such as Compostela or Ulver’s castle and making them fantasy places where part of the story happens.

Scenery and graphics are nice, balanced, aesthetically harmonic with their own style, but still yet you feel that most environments are “empty”. There is a lot of nice design in this game but, sadly, it is very unpolished.

You meet companions along the way that, as long as they are not bugged, can occasionally talk to you in the ship. Each of them has a personal quest: one in the past, another in the future. 

Most companions’ quests are about killing someone or looking for someone. 

There are many quests where you are a messenger, delivering words from A char to B char and vice versa.

Companions can be romanced, or at least, the game has been sold saying that. The truth is that it’s very crappy: so far, I only could trigger two “romance” conversations, the rest of the companions have no such option or it’s bugged as most of the game is. The romance happens immediately after completion of the only personal quest that each of the companions has. The romance is just expressing the interest/feelings for the main character and it’s not acknowledged ever again. 

The game sometimes gives you options to make big decision, but they are mostly fake. They don’t end up affecting the main story in the slightest. 

The main character has a terrible insertion in this world. Their race is not acknowledged [for example, I played a Mourian ( immortal race), and companions and NPCs kept treating my char as if he were a standard mortal person. Details of this level [or any level, at this point] are completely lost in the story. 

The general story and the quests, despite having good ideas, are executed extremely poorly. Most of the time you don’t know what’s happening. The scenes sometimes jump from the past to the present and there is no transition. 

Chars that appear in the beginning of the game are completely forgotten during the story, and appear later in the last moment at the end, being the very epilogue of the game. 

You will find stupid and nonsensical scenes like the king waiting several seconds before being killed while telling their people that he loves the queen when he could have run perfectly well from that deadly situation. He dies without any narrative purpose, sense, or motivation. After the tragedy of losing their king, the armies are just “meh” and celebrate too eagerly the return to their lands showing zero mourning spirit for their beloved king. This game has a massive problem in narrative coherence and transitions. There are a lot of situations where the events are simply ridiculous. 

Cinematic and animations are well done, but their transitions between the events tends to be disastrous. You can jump from the past to the present [especially by the end of the game] and you have no idea what happened in the middle. 

Fully voiced (or it tries to, some parts have been left in silence). Your own char never speaks, pretty much like the “warden” from DAO. Even though the game tries to be fully voiced, sometimes entire lines have not been voiced in the middle of a conversation that started fully voiced, or they are not the same as the ones you can read in the subtitle. Sometimes the sound changes its quality in the middle of the sentence (feels like a sound patch). One can see the extreme lack of polishing in this game.  

Combat is bad and terrible. Unbalanced, stuck most of the time, and the powers you cast are poor. The system that allows you to pick new powers or upgrade the ones you already have is filled with bugs and lack of explanations: for example, you can see two symbols to pick in your character’s sheet, but you have no idea what each of those icons represent. 

Every time you fight [whether be in a farm, in a castle, in a forest, in a cave, or in a lost plane of the universe], there is an epic music playing in the background and a constant sound of a cow mooing… it’s a big constant WTF.

Combat with bosses is pretentious, hilarious, and weird as fuck:  you see that their health bar is enormous, almost as if it were a parody of Dark Soul games. It never goes down no matter how much damage you make. However, the damage is being made somehow, and then, out of the blue, you suddenly kill the boss. 

The story tried to create a plot twist by the end. It went poorly. 

Short game that takes ages to finish  because you need to replay entire parts trying to avoid the bugs. I think it would be completed in around 40 hours if it had no bugs. 

  ——- Plot? ——-

It’s not very clear. You are with the King of the Celts on an Island, trying to meet the Celt gods. However, the meeting is not going well. The gods are not appearing and something called “corruption” seems to spread in the living creatures and make them lose their sanity. The king and the group that came with him [you and some companions] join into a quick expedition of the isle to see what’s going on with the gods, but things end up out of control. 

——- Gameplay? ——- 

Standard real-time combat RPG, with the possibility to pause and queue powers. However the queue mechanics don't work well. 

——- Characters? ——- 

Several: mostly your companions and some important NPCs. All of them have interesting nice initial premises but they all end up incomplete or shallow. It’s very disappointing.

 ——- LGBT? ——-

If romance is possible, all companions should be bisexual or at least most of them. 

One of them is a non-binary veteran warrior. The egyptian scholar companion is bisexual.

You have a companion who reincarnates in another gender (I’m not sure how much lgbt this can be, but… it’s clear that this was going to be a nice hook to make the player think about genre if the game were not so bad at delivering  narratives). 

——- Sadness level? ——- 

None. Buggy level: hiper high.

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

Like everything in this game, the end is very abrupt with 3 sentences to round up the fate of two chars that appeared in the beginning of the game and then in the ending. There is nothing more about companions or the effect of apparent important decisions you made.

#what to expect #waylanders #the waylanders #lairofsentinel

[little-elf-wanders]

I made a post a few years ago about white people wearing dreadlocks, I was very angry as you could tell by my swearing every three words and a lot younger. (It's in my dna, sorry.) I still stand by it, I just didn't articulate it right. So, allow me to explain my thoughts there. I'm not speaking out to be a justice warrior or to speak for POC.

I was furious because people like to use historic accounts from Roman's of all people that point to Scandavian's and Celt's having braids. I got a few notes very angry at me for saying this. One even said something about how I wasn't my forebears. One ironically pointed out to me about braids being a thing. I never once said braids weren't, so I'm still laughing since this whole thing is about dreadlocks being excused as braids.

But mostly what was argued was 'culture appreciation'. Cultures all over have some significance with locs, which is true, just not white folk. To the person who mentioned the greeks; those were braids and a lot of them were darker in skin tone, hair colour and eyes. So I don't really know why you're pulling that culture out your ass like it's a gotcha card.

You love to argue for every reason to wear them without actually looking up why POC wear them. That's just really weird to me. For some it's spiritual, for some it's roots back to their ancestors. I got just the tiniest taste of someone slapping my own culture back in my face and got angry. I can't imagine hearing it endlessly.

I think the arguments I've seen for white people with dreads have been extremely shallow and entitled, when it's for fashion and out of not wanting to tend to your hair as often, yet a POC will get judged immediately. I severely doubt any thought goes into that. I'm all for breaking down barriers between us, but to do that we got to fucking try to understand. Not just take it.

I'll be honest, my voice here doesn't mean shit. It truly doesn't. I have - literally - no ties to dreadlocks. Do I love a good braid? Absolutely! This is where my argument came in, I'm very proud of braids, it feels more deeply rooted in my heritage to appreciate braids. But I know the difference between a braid and a loc - which a lot of the people noting me don't. Appreciation is fine when you know the weight and history of the new trend you've picked up. But also just knowing how to be accepting why to some it'd be considered shitty as hell. For one, I can't get over the fact POC will be judged for theirs, yet apparently the whites can just do it cause white. That doesn't sit well with me at all. I've been trying to be more reflective about those things and especially if something is spiritual for someone or religious. It especially didn't sit right when people used baseless excuses like mentioning vikings and ancient celts. The celts whole history was basically stamped out so it's not a good excuse and that's what I'm angry at.

Again, my voice doesn't hold weight. I just hate the excuses. If POC don't mind it, that's one thing. My anger came from a place of my roots having been stolen and twisted, even the religion itself. Cernunnos was turned into the Christian's devil to snuff out paganism and they basically cherry picked our traditions and festivals then villainised the rest. I was deeply angry and have been working through that. A lot of my own history wasn't taught to me in school, either. I don't even know my own language. I had to search it out for myself. I got a basic rundown then it was a heavy focus on England or WW2. So, I got very heated in learning they were saying 'braids' were the equivalent to dreadlocks and using us as the 'okay' signal. We're not. I still think it's weird for us to wear dreads. Do whatever you want but if you get offended by my white ass saying it's weird, that's fine too - they're your choices. My only reason for bringing this out the dirt was just because I realised how deeply hurt I was back then and using the only medium I had to use my voice, which was loud and aggressive. And I feel like... my early anger on taking cultures isn't even a ripple on the bigger issues. I don't know enough to delve into the full optics, even with years of trying to clue myself up. So, I'll just leave it there and hope a years buried post can be better understood today by a much older me.

#keo rambles #my tags don't matter

[hussyknee]

I think I'm so fixated on Imriel's Trilogy because it would be such a great story if it wasn't the author writing it. Which is exactly my brand.

Jacqueline Carey is the most white woman to ever white woman good Christ. I know she apologized for not having any trans characters in Kushiel's Legacy even though it's an LGBT story because nobody knew what the T stood for in the 2000s. But if not for that, she's who I would pick to have gone fully radfem conservative liberal JKR. Not least because you can tell at what point she thought she was too good for an editor (halfway through the first Imriel book). All three books are at least one third longer than they have to be. The tortured fake medieval speak in making my eyes bleed. Did they kill the editors in the publishing house? Put them out to pasture to graze with JKR's? I keep wanting so badly to at least beta read this. The writing's engaging, even if the plots are a bit slipshod, but dear God it would be so easy to make this a bit more readable.

And then there is the narrative. Carey seems to think women are exceptionally sensible soft-hearted unicorn species (when they aren't scheming badass girlboss villains). She's indistinguishable from some benevolently sexist old Victorian guy. Rape only happens to women and children. For men, being sexually assaulted is a good nudge nudge wink wink joke. And the white ethnosupremacy! Girl, an idealised white Tolkien race that's better and more beautiful and progressive than everyone else, most of whom grow more and more misogynistic and barbaric the further away, is still white supremacy even when in it's alternate universe medieval France. Also, beauty standards aren't universal across borders and cultures, especially in the medieval world. How do you put this much thought into an alternate history and complex belief systems and not even consider what it means to have different cultures and ethnicities? You don't get cookies for allowing your Legolas race of people marry into indigenous Celts and Picts when you keep rhapsodizing about how much prettier and more civilized D'Angelines are! And what the fuck is up with this obsession with blood relations?? Why do you need to have your protagonists halfway in love with their adoptive parents (I overlooked it once because of extenuating circumstances but jeez), why do you need to make the adoptive parents have to qualify their claims in the middle of being a parent ("He is my son....at least in my heart") and why do you keep insisting blood connections equate to stronger bonds ("Alais may be the sister of my heart, but Sidonie is her flesh and blood." "She's my blood! Why do you think I tried so hard to protect her from you?") when the whole premise of the series is a ruling family fucking each other over for the throne?

I will say that Sidone finally seems like a real person and she's pretty great, but Imriel's own personality has faded so much to let her shine that sometimes it's like it's just some guy narrating the book. Imriel's intensity and guilt and charm and cunning have all just vanished in the third book. He's just there to weep and gnash his teeth at losing Sidone, tear at his hair about Sidonie being in danger, gaze adoringly at her and being her bodyguard. It's like watching the later seasons of a CW show. Everything is about the badass trophy girlfriend who's always right about everything. Sidonie isn't as obnoxious but good God it's like she's the only real person in this book. Kratos is literally just there to gape at her. (URIST PLEASE COME BACK YOU WERE MY FAVOURITE.) Complete waste of characters who've been so compelling and engaging all this time.

In short, this a goddamn mess. Why do the most privileged, insipid white people get the most opportunity to sell their stories?

I'm going to assume that Phedre's Trilogy is actually good though. I stopped halfway down the first book because I was too shocked and sad when my faves died and picked up the Imriel sequels instead so that I'd already know the basics of what happened in the original. (I literally read the Wikipedia plot synopsis while in the movie theater before it starts so that I'm not surprised by anything. My ex boyfriend once threw a surprise party for me and I nearly broke up with him. I'm too emotionally dysregulated for surprises.) But what I read was really, genuinely good. I skimmed the other two and they also seemed as good. So I'm hoping that whatever youthful talent Carey possessed before bloated egoism brought her down lives up to its promise. Plus I just really love Phedre. Scheming little bitch she is. She's lost all her spice and teeth and self-absorption in Imriel's books, but she's mostly there to be his mother that everyone has a crush on, including him, so it didn't matter. Imriel doesn't have an Oedipal complex, but he always gives the impression that he might if he let himself think about it too hard.

Edit: no but seriously. Why the fuck does this last book read like a bad ghostwriter wrote it??

#you got your wish batty. i'm reading complete trash by an unhinged white woman despite my best efforts #kushiel's legacy #kushiel's mercy #imriel no montreve de la courcel #sidonie de la courcel #phedre no delaunay de montreve #tropes #white feminism #tw rape mention #anti radfem #sexism #white women #racism #white supremacy #high fantasy #knee of huss

[steele-soulmate]

Tattooed Wings, CHAPTER 492, Peter Steele & OFC, Soulmate AU

SUMMARY: Mary Claire Bradley meets her soulmate- literally- the famous Peter Steele of metal group Type O Negative. But will obstacles including trauma, stalkers, and toxic family members get in the way of their life?

WARNING: mentions of child rape (nothing graphic) PTSD, milk kink, soft smut, grinding, assault, fingering, hand jobs, blow jobs, 69, P in V sex, blood, noncon rape, violence, death, vandalism, graffiti, attempted kidnapping, break-ins, wild animal attacks, terrorist attack (sabotage) consensual impregnation, bareback, impregnation kink, creampies, terrorist attacks (shootings) hit and run pedestrian accident, precipitous labor, neonatal death

WORDS: 1171

“Quiet! Don’t wake her up!”

I was awake at once, my heart pounding loudly in my chest as I feigned sleep.

THUD THUMP

THUD THUMP

THUD THUMP

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw… look at the cute little baby!”

“Hard to believe that Master Eric took her as his spiritual bride and she married another man!”

A wild gasp flew out of my mouth as my eyes flew open. The first things I saw were three copies of my childhood rapist’s face clustered around me.

“Ah, welcome back to the land of the living!”

I whimpered as one of the cult members reached into Baby Violet Marie’s hospital issued bassinet and took her out, bouncing her in his arms, getting a soft whimper out of her.

“I can see why Master Eric liked you,” continued another man, reaching out to touch my cheek. “I bet your pussy is-”

The next few seconds happened so fast, but the next thing I knew was that a horrifying roar exploded at the door before the three intruders began to fly all around the room.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DUMB SHITS DOING TERRORIZING MY WIFE AND NEWBORN DAUGHTER?” roared Peter as he battered the celt members around in a full rage.

Security rushed into the room as my older husband bashed two cult members’ head together, snarling and panting as he placed himself in front of my bed, blocking me from my harassers as he cradled our newborn daughter in his muscular arms.

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP screamed the monitor that was measuring my heartbeats, sending a duo of worried nurses racing into the otherwise chaotic room. I was gently forced back into the pillows and had an oxygen mask fitted over my face.

Peter I screamed. I want Peter, I want my husband-

“Sweetheart, oh my sweetheart,” my soulmate whimpered, nudging a nurse out of his way so that he could shuffle in closer to me. “What do you want from me?”

I need to suck my teddy cock.

“Sweetheart…” he grumbled as Baby Violet Marie woke up and started to fuss lightly. “I’ll just be over here, changing Baby Violet Marie’s diaper, okay? I’m not leaving you- I promise.”

I watched as he settled her onto the hospital issued changing station, looking comically out of proportion with my imposing in height soulmate as he changed her diaper, singing and making funny faces at her the whole while.

“Bum bum bum boo budda bum,” he sang out before as he made a face at her and playfully poked at her tummy. “Yabba dabba doo!”

“How long have they been camped out in the waiting room?” I rasped out, loving how affectionate and sweet Peter was being to the result of our neverending love to each other.

“Since the morning after you were admitted to give birth,” a nurse told me, her voice honest and worn. “They have been quite literally terrorizing all who sets foot into the hospital and have been told to leave many times. We also had to call the police on several such occasions to have them forcibly removed from the property, but they still kept returning.”

I removed the oxygen mask from my face once more in order to ask a question. “But if the Eric Dessmor fan club is a terrorist organization classified by the FBI, then why haven’t they all been arrested at this point?”

“Hey there, I have my college degree in nursing, not criminal justice!” teased the second nurse as she pressed a stethoscope to the pulse point in my wrist. “Your heart rate is still a little bit high, but I don’t think that’s really anything to worry about- not with all the unwanted stress that you’ve been under!”

“Thank you, ladies,” Peter sighed, turning back to face me with Baby Violet Marie looking like an adorably snug little bug in a rug from where she was cocooned in blankets against his manly chest.

“Is he truly as big are they say he is?” the first nurse wondered as she was retucking me back into bed.

“Shilo!” gasped the second nurse, smacking her in the backside of her head.

“What? You were wondering back at the nurse’s station!” tattled the first nurse with a huff. “Don’t you dare deny it!”

Shilo was dragged from the room by a bright red nurse, who couldn’t look either my grumbling husband or I in the eye.

I flopped backwards into my throne of pillows, roaring with giggles of mirth.

“I never should have done that fucking PlayGirl spread,” he bemoaned. “It was just a dumb publicity stunt that I did to pump up my music career.”

“Well, you do know that the kids will probably find those pictures one day, and when they do-” I started to point out, bursting out into laughter at the look that shot me.

“NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.” His nostrils flared out as he sulked about with Baby Violet Marie in his arms. “I will quite literally do anything- anything at all- to preserve our kid’s sense of childlike wonder and innocence.”

“But my love, those pictures are up on Google for everyone to see,” I informed him, accepting Baby Violet Marie in for a cuddle and to let her nurse from my tit. “And you know how curious kids can get. We can try our absolute best at shielding the kids from that part of your life, but it just simply will not ever be enough.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he glowered darkly.

I chuckled at his state of mind before turning to coo down at Baby Violet Marie, who had grasped onto a thick strand of bright red curls and was staring up at me with her mommy’s sapphire blue eyes.

“Baby Violet Marie, how old will you be when you first discover you father’s naughty pictures?” I asked her.

“NO!”

TAGLISTS ARE OPEN/ ASK BOX IS OPEN/ REQUESTS ARE OPEN/ PLOT BUNNIES ARE WELCOMED

If you liked this, then please consider buying me a coffee HERE It only costs $3!!!

PETER STEELE TAGLIST

@rock-a-noodle

@ch3rry-c01a

#Real person fiction (RPF) #Tattooed Wings #Peter Thomas Ratajczyk #Type O Negative #Vanessa Rose Pickings/ little girl #Special needs baby #Aria Bradley #Evie Bradley #Deaf #American Sign Language (ASL) #Elizabeth Ratajczyk #Alopecia #Thomas Joseph Ratajczyk/ Baby Tommy #Autism #Katie Ratajczyk #Down’s Syndrome #Baby Violet Marie #Neonatal death #Matching tattoos soulmate AU

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Reading your characters profile, I realize you never mentioned their date of birth.  Can you tell me the year or time period that the characters (USA, Australia, Ireland,….)  be born?

So I kind of did that on purpose because its one of those things that people have their own very specific headcanons and versions and I don't feel that strongly about it because there's multiple ways to go about things and I've changed my mind about this couple of times but generally I go with the earliest reference to a culture emerging I can find. The idea of a nation rather than the hard founding dates because there are more to these things than just when a European stepped foot somewhere. And full disclaimer, when I don't have writing to use, I'm using archaeology and artistic expression as what that idea might have been. Also I think if I were to rewrite this now, but I don't want replace a lot of existing writing I would make them born much later but fuck it, here we go. Also I had so many links to put in this but I lost them so eh, there's one lmao fuck my entire life im so tired.

Britannia/Eirian — 1500-1000 BC. I'm kind of bullshitting because geography and history are hard to do when there's like 2 pieces of Roman propaganda that survive. The National Museum of Wales says the Celts arrived about 1000 BCE so that's when she found herself rooted in the British Isles. She might be older than that.

Ireland/Brighid — 600-400 BCE. again we're working with what's in a lot of ways prehistory here so the earliest example I could find of what archaeologists identified as a distinctly Irish take on broader artistic styles. Particularly in ironwork. There's a spearhead that was found in the River Inny that is of a style recognisable in medieval Ireland but carbon dated too before 500 BCE.

Scotland/Alasdair — 600-400 BCE. The archaeology suggests a a population increase and an artistic coalescing as temperatures warmed and some new prosperity allowed new pottery styles, increased use of horses came along and allowed the very earliest brochs or stone towers mostly found on the coastlines of Scotland seem to date to this era.

Wales/Rhys — 400-300 BCE. Literally based this off one of my favourite torcs found in Wales and that's as good as I've got send help.

England/Arthur — 50BCE-100 AD. Roman Britain get jiggy with it just wanted a couple of centuries between the baby bilge rate and his siblings.

America/Alfred — 1580s. The first reference I ever saw to America being associated with new opportunities and money making and protestant havens was 1585.

Canada/Matt - 1610s. The first reference to Canadians being different from European Frenchmen was in the 1610s so Matt popped out around then. The French unlike the British or Spanish were less attentive to the claims they made on Canada but then didn't settle for nearly a century.

Australia/Jack — 1790s. Australians as a concept was the late 1790s with some of the first references made by Gaelic speaking Irish prisoners.

Aotearoa/Zee — 1810s. She's a little harder because there's a lot of escaped prisoners, whalers and other random white people living with Māori before the Brits properly showed up but I'm just rolling with it.

#the ask box || probis pateo

[iamnarcissus]

Recently I've been falling down the ancient Druid rabbit hole. Like, these people lived among the ancient Celts and little to nothing is known about them. At all. They were apparently Banned from keeping any physical records of their own. Even then, what little we Do know (and from what I can find while Extremely sleep deprived and with two cups of coffee and like six shots of espresso in my system) is SO FUCKING INTERESTING! The earliest known accounts of the Druids are from around the first century B.C. (or second century B.C. because I've seen conflicting information) BUT it's more likely that they were an established and important community even before that. Even the fucking etymology of the WORD DRUID is like not entirely known. It's a toss up between whether it comes from the Irish-Gaelic word doire (meaning: oak tree) OR it having even older origins than that and coming from the word for "The Knower of the Oak Tree". Most commonly, they're known for being priests/spiritual practitioners similar to modern day priests (in the way that they'd act as mediums and messengers between the divine and the mortals around them), but they were also so much more than that. They were also documented to be teachers, astrologers, scientists, healers, and judges (which in and of itself is cool as Fuck, but apparently they also didn't have required taxes or military involvement so hell yes). A lot of what we Do know about the ancient Druids today comes from the accounts of primarily Romans and Julius Caesar (but I think you have to read between the lines from those accounts because they were kinda anti-Druid so a lot of what they said about the Druids reads like what the modern school system has done with Mayan history. Just a lot of "this group of people is extremely uncivilized and you should follow my beliefs instead cause they're Scary.") They were (and are, due to the druid revivals that have happened over the years) very spiritually connected to nature and focused on respecting and making connections with the natural world and the other people around them. They have like a multitude of nature deities and spirits that they pay respect to and work with (cool as fuck by the way). If you actually stumble upon my rambles and want to read and learn more about Druids (from someone who has more qualifications than a random 19 year old with a decade long obsession with ancient civilizations/mythology and too much time on their hands) I'll put links to some of the articles I read below. ALSO if I got anything wrong Please let me know :)))

Here

And here

And here

And also here

#i am sleep deprived #please forgive me

[tainbocuailnge]

this theory on reddit mostly lists things I’ve been losing m’mind over since like 2017 already (to the point of having a dedicated tag about What Is Up With The Celt And Norse Gods but i kinda stopped talking about it after lb2 bc it gave zero answers lol) or things that further underline that Something Is Up but imo while odin’s involvement in caster cu’s saint graph is guaranteed at this point I’m also certain that it’s not a case of odin masquerading as cu like the theory implies, he genuinely is cu chulainn. in fact, I will say it’s the opposite

rather than odin using caster cu to manifest as a servant, it is cu chulainn who takes odin’s place

now this one will take a while so make yourself comfortable. there’s no reason to believe caster cu isn’t cu chulainn, his ingame and material profile both underline he and lancer are the same person. the way cascu talks to archer in first order would make no damn sense whatsoever if he weren’t legitimately cu chulainn, they blatantly reference their fight in front of the church in ubw. caster cu is undoubtedly the same person as every other cu chulainn.

BUT, interestingly enough, that fight at the church is also where archer says that cu’s gae bolg is stronger than gungnir. in fate/side material it says that gae bolg’s ability to always strike the heart is not an original function of the weapon, but rather something cu made himself. in fate/extra material it is further specified that this ability is one step below being classified as a divine authority. in fsn itself it says that this makes it closer in function to gungnir than his own father’s brionac. 

let me repeat that: gae bolg has functions that cu made himself, that are one step below a divine authority, that make it similar in function to gungnir, and gae bolg is the stronger weapon between the two.

a connection between cu and odin that the reddit post doesn’t mention is that in fate/extella, altera can smell the norse gods on cu. lugh isn’t a norse god, but cu stil assumed it was about his father. while easy to dismiss as some kind of translation error in a vacuum, in the greater context of all of cu’s ties to odin over lugh it’s sus as fuck

in scathach’s interlude, it’s brought up cu’s power might be getting split between his lancer and caster versions, although this isn’t an apparent issue with any other servant with multiple versions. however, cu chulainn was cut in half in fate/hollow ataraxia by lugh’s noble phantasm wielded by bazett, and this is reflected in caster cu’s design. his hair came loose and stayed that way, the spear he leans on to stay upright becomes a staff, and the third earring that prompted this fight dangles off it. a cu chulainn without gae bolg as noble phantasm or setanta’s “gae bolg user in training” skill is not possible because the spear is symbolic of his heroic and tragic fate, but fragarach is “a sword that severs fate.” if something like that were to cut him in half, a portion of cu chulainn unbound by that fate should become possible to manifest, right?

which brings me to something else I believe is very important here: cu chulainn’s heroic fate. because the thing about that is, he may have had that prophecy to ensure the result, but cu chulainn is a hero by choice, not by fate. he’s a demigod and a monster and was prophesied to great glory and untimely death, but his bond ce confirms that long before any of that was relevant he independently decided that he wanted to become a hero, and he continued to make that choice time and time again as he was repeatedly made to prove himself. even cu alter, the most monstrous we’ve seen him so far, insists on maintaining the dignity of a hero. he has aspects of gods and monsters alike but regardless of what his origins are, cu chulainn is the result of choosing the side of humans as a hero. his tragic fate is his own choice, and gae bolg’s ability to always hit the heart that represents this fate is a feature he made himself. as long as cu chulainn has gae bolg he will always be a hero, even if that weapon puts him on the level of a god, even if the bones it was made of make him look the part of monster, because it embodies his choice to be a hero.

the reddit post mentions it’s extremely likely that cascu will appear in lb6 and I agree, so let’s make a short detour to talk about someone else with a god level spear who is related to a camelot chapter. that’s right, I’m talking about lancer arturia alter! she noticed rhongomyniad elevating her to godhood and forcibly turned herself alter in order to remain human, even if it leaves her clinging to existeence with bleeding fingertips. notably, she appeared in the kara no kyoukai event where she is assumed to be an empty suit of armor, the same event where caster cu insists there’s no cu chulainn here. cu alter is a monster king but chooses the pride of a hero even so, a chapter later lancer artoria is a divine king who didn’t make the choice her alter did, saber alter is the person guarding the grail back in singularity F where we first meet caster cu, various forms of saber and cu keep circling each other in this “once is a fluke, twice is coincidence, thrice is a pattern” kind of way. lartoria alter is also one of the leaders of the wild hunt, same as odin, so there’s dots to connect there as well.

what am I getting at, you ask? I’ll tell you what I’m getting at. cu chulainn inherently has the capacity to be(come) the god odin, but chooses to be the hero cu chulainn instead.

here’s where the proof gets tricky and I have to veer off a little further into speculation rather than simply listing what’s right there in the text, because the missing puzzle piece is the reason why scathach is skadi. it seems the game is purposely vague about that in how it handwaves it as “they share a similar origin” without any further specifics or bringing it up in story, even though there’s plenty other heroic spirits with similar origins who don’t take each other’s names, like siegfried and his scandinavian counterpart sigurd (who are arguably much closer connected than scathach and skadi). even if the truth is indeed that their origin is simply similar and they blended together, it’s strange that scathach-skadi’s profile so strongly insists that she’s predominantly skadi when her noble phantasm is scathach’s gate of skye. a similar case is actually clytie van gogh, who is said to be predominantly clytie but even so her two noble phantasms are both van gogh’s, and curiously enough scathach-skadi featured in van gogh’s event as well. 

what is the reason for skadi being skadi and scathach being scathach even though skadi uses scathach’s gate and scathach uses skadi’s runes? if their origin is similar enough that their true names are getting combined, why are they still different? this is where it becomes theory instead of simply fact: the key lies in their decision to be either scathach or skadi. this mysterious shared origin of theirs at some point made a choice between siding with humans, gods or monsters, and the difference in that choice is the difference in their person. 

scathach is an immortal witch from the land of shadows but before that she was, as far as we know, simply a human who worked her ass off until the world itself was like “wow hold up, one human can’t do that much in their lifetime, you have to be immortal for this to make sense.” scathach HATES being immortal. as far as she’s concerned she’d much rather have died as a human, because all her human achievements became void now that she has infinite time to achieve them. her disposition as a teacher is a natural extension of this mindset: what scathach values the most of all is humanity’s potential to achieve impossible things in their limited lifespans. she is no longer human herself but she can still choose humanity’s side, and therefore she is scathach the godslayer. 

skadi on the other hand is a goddess inherently superior to humans, who cares for them from a place of taking responsibility for them rather than guiding them to achieve their potential. she lacks scathach’s skill or drive to improve as a warrior, and it seems that as “shining bride of the gods” she was more preoccupied with the happenings of other gods than those of humans. the skadi we meet had a lot of her options taken away as only survivor of ragnarok but she decided to live on as scandinavia’s divine guide and insisted on treating all of existence equally. skadi’s material profile notes that if she were to use her full authority as skadi, to choose the side of gods, the part of her that is scathach would shatter. but lostbelt skadi couldn’t pick the side of gods anymore now that she was the only god left. as someone with the aspect of giants she could have chosen the side of monsters as well, but instead she kept a careful balance between humans, monsters, and the one goddess left and therefore she is scathach-skadi, an existence somewhere between the scathach that unequivocally chose humanity and the skadi that unequivocally chose divinity. 

the situation is again similar to van gogh, whose existence is suspended between van gogh as human, clytie as monster, and the foreign god as divinity, and each of her ascension stages reflects one of those aspects. this would imply a third scathach(-skadi) who chose monsters, wouldn’t it? conveniently for my theory there does indeed seem to be a third one; skadi’s material profile mentions that summoning a scathach-skadi with a disposition closer to panhuman scathach is possible, and scathach’s material profile mentions that her body has another “stage” to it, which caster cu also mentions in the knk event. clytie van gogh’s noble phantasms are van gogh’s because she chose to side with humans, likewise scathach-skadi’s noble phantasm is scathach’s because, in letting herself be summoned to chaldea, she implicitly chose the side of humanity as well. 

now, back to cu chulainn and odin. cu and scathach are deeply tied as “the one who gets to kill you/me”, scathach and skadi share an origin, skadi and odin share a connection as norse gods and possibly lovers, cu chulainn and odin share an unspecified connection, and skadi feels poignant but unspecified emotions when she sees cu. caster cu’s first noble phantasm is a druid technique that never actually existed to match a cu chulainn who isn’t supposed to exist either, and his second noble phantasm is the full power of odin’s runes, unused by him because odin supposedly placed some kind of use restrictions on it. meanwhile cu’s personal modifications of gae bolg make it a spear similar to but more powerful than gungnir and altera reads him as norse rather than celtic, so it’s not only caster who suddenly has ties to odin, this is something inherent to all cu chulainns. 

remember what I keep saying about choice? scathach and cu chulainn are both heroes of the human order because that is the choice they made, regardless of their origins. extrapolating from the relationship between scathach, skadi, and cu to fill the gap odin leaves, what we can conclude is this:

cu chulainn and odin share an origin similar to the way scathach and skadi do, cu is simply the one that chose humanity while odin chose divinity

what this means for their exact relationship I can’t say, because it’s super vague what “origin” even means in this context. is it the origin of their literary tradition? is it their character concept? digging through the material books with my limited jp knowledge it seems the kanji used differ from those of the nasuverse magic concept “origin”, but even so it’s interesting that so many of the clues tie into the apartment complex that souren araya used to research origins. 

scathach and skadi aren’t directly related nor are they plausibly the same person, although skadi refers to scathach as her “other self” there is no indication that scathach does the same. what is notable is that “scathach” comes first in their combined name, skadi prefers “scathach-skadi” or “scathach-sama” over simply “skadi”, and skadi respects and fears scathach for her outrageous competence, confidence, and dependability. likewise, even if cu chulainn indeed shares an origin with odin, it’s explicitly stated that his gae bolg is more powerful than odin’s gungnir. cu could beat odin in a fight, scathach can snap skadi over her knee like a twig. those that chose the side of humanity are the more powerful and respectable ones, because this is fate and we will always choose humanity above anything else. that is why I say it is cu chulainn who takes odin’s place rather than the other way around.

right now the biggest mystery with no way to solve it yet is actually lugh’s identity, and by extension the identities of the whole celtic pantheon. as much as we’ve gone into various pantheons, the norse and celt gods are still a suspiciously large mystery. it's not unlikely that lugh and odin are the one with the shared origin instead, and it carries over into cu as lugh’s son. it could be that nasu read the same bit of old academia I remember reading and plays it as cu being an incarnation of lugh as well as his son. with the new valentines event a fha collab that brings up bazett’s ties to lugh is more likely every day. whether I’m right, and what the specifics of the situation are in case I’m indeed right, are something only time can tell. 

honestly though, if it turns out all of this is wrong and caster cu WAS in fact odin all along I’ll still feel vindicated for how my first reaction upon seeing him back in 2015 was “hold on, this doesn’t seem very cu-like of him.”

that’s all I got for theory directly extrapolated from fact, to wrap it up it’s time for some speculation and wishful thinking based on vibes alone.

lb6 as a whole seems to strongly be about “who you are meant to be”, about your destined potential. miss castoria is so different from OG saber that she lacks the name pendragon and it’s even possible to argue that she’s outright an artificial construct made by miss merlin, but even so she is “the once and future king that will come to britain’s aid”. its assigned crypter beryl is a beast in human clothing, and he is openly disdainful of the idea of living up to his potential. “becoming my best self is something I’d never want.” he says as he kills kirschtaria for trying to elevate humanity to godhood. beryl delights in failing to live up to his potential, in not being what he could or was meant to be.

caster arturia’s bond ce says “not a single thing is different. not a single thing is the same. for you have already met your other self.” which will no doubt smack me in the face with what it actually means hard enough to crack skulls once lb6 actually comes around. lb6 no longer has a fantasy tree and is maintained with rhongomyniad, the divine lance that forced arturia to choose between humans and gods. the lostbelt itself is a world of fairies rather than humans.

nothing is different. nothing is the same. you have already met your other self. your origin, your potential, is realized through a choice. you can be a god. you can be a monster or fairy. you can be human. all of those are the same, all of those are completely different. the only difference is the choice, and that choice makes all the difference.

gae bolg is the symbol of cu’s heroic ideal. it’s his choice to side with humans. and while caster cu’s materials state that getting his spear back isn’t his primary goal and he’s assigned himself the role of guide for now, he still misses it a lot. he doesn’t feel right not being a hero, he’s just acting the way he thinks a caster should, and possibly the only reason he even manifested like this is because this part of him was forcibly split off. 

the god level lance that maintains lb6. the god level spear made through his own choices. the fairies that he as druid has a stronger connection with than usual. his existence on the interstice between human god and monster, different in every form yet always exactly the same person. and, the use restrictions on ochd deug odin.

sooner or later caster cu is going to get his hands on a spear. it is going to be gungnir. the restrictions on ochd deug odin will be lifted and he is going to unleash the full force of odin’s magic. and he will still be cu chulainn. 

#the celt conspiracy #metapost #hound of the irish #fate grand order #cu chulainn