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awakened-harmony · 3 years

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Realized i should probably make a other Universes chart for how vita is in the off chance people are interested in her non-main UT verse (Underfell) so i’m not just scrambling! SO here is the other variations of vita.

Undertale tag: In the world below (Undertale verse ~ Vita) - Used to be her UF tag but i changed it

I don’t actually have much to add about Undertale since all her elements remain about the same, Perhaps the only true difference is that she’s while still disliking of living underground, She’s content with how asgore has done to keep monsterkind happy despite their circumstances and happily. Openly shows affection to anyone who requests. it

Under the read more is Horrortale and Underswap because they BOTH got longer then i intended them to. I may explore other AU’s if asked but these three will be the main ones :D

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Horrortale tag: Pray for your time and i’ll bring it so (Horrortale verse ~ Vita)

She like most of the monsters had grieved for the death of the king at the hands of a human who despite her own fear at the death of their ruler knew had only been scared, She like most of the monsters had Panicked when the news of the core’s failure came to light, But she had hoped that they’d get it fixed. That even as the food became scarcer, The air in the dark caverns grew musty and the lights soon turned off completely. She could only hope that it would be fixed, It was only when the first monsters started to die that her hope begun to crumble, Slowly and carefully being chipped away, It was a sensation that helped her ignore the rumble of pain in her belly because all of her rations went to her son. She had to keep him safe, Fed as best she could, She had to be there for him. Help him even if she could help no other soul then her child, He. Her last true piece of her mate, A symbol of their love.

....She failed.

In the end, Maybe it was because of how young he was still, Maybe something in the air had become poisonous that he couldn’t withstand while she could due to her age. To this day, What ifs and maybe’s run through her head about what she could have done differently, like a mantra of pain and grieve. The only thing clear in her head was the resolution in her soul as she put her son out of his misery, The looping memory as she took the light of her life, The joy of her world’s soul out of his chest and could only whisper a prayer of safe travels and a ‘i love you’ before she crushed that beautiful soul in her hands. Forcing it to shatter into hundreds of little pieces as his body turned to dust, She knows she had to do it, but she still can’t forgive herself for it and she’s certain hell awaits her when she dies. If she dies.

Because even as her son had faded, Vita maybe not have thrived, But she survived. Even as she starved and once strong limbs atrophied, She still took it upon herself each day to stand, To get up, To find food if she could...and give it to others. She’s not sure why she doesn’t die, But her best running theory is that her healing magic has turned inward on itself and heals her soul even as her body withers around it. It heals and heals and heals, She is sure that if not for her starved body, She would have been dead of a hundred different cancers by now.

Instead her house, What was her house has essentially become a church. Waterfall had always been the last monsters they thought about because what did they have to offer to the rest of the underground? Snowdin held the way all humans entered the underground, Hotland held the core, The capital held the largest of the undergrounds population and it held the queen. But waterfall? They’d been seen as obsolete and though not sealed off from the rest of the population, They weren’t welcome anymore. So just as snowdin eventually got sans, As corrupt as he was as a protector, Waterfall got Vita. Her continued survival despite starving, Her hope that things will improve one day, Her gracious giving of all but the clothes off her back. She protects the monsters of waterfall and many of the remaining population, the weak, the sick, even the dying come to her. Some if only to spend their last moments to feel as if someone still cared about them, To have their final fate given to them in kindness and not suffering, She who would deliver their souls to Asgore.

Things to take note of in her Horrortale verse: - Vita’s son is dead and she killed him, Killed him to end his suffering as he’d started to decline like some of the other monsters.

- She’s rail thin and looks as though even the lightest wind could blow her over and while she can no longer defend herself, Her followers who praise and follow her lead will kill for her lest they lose their chosen spot of hope in the hell that had become of their home. So while waterfall IS a safe passage, it’s only if you respect she who guards it.

- Vita has leaned heavily into her old beliefs, She’s become incredibly soft spoken and seems to murmur her prayers in a haunting whisper alongside her followers, Asking for help, For hope, For forgiveness for the sins she has committed, To allow her to bear the sins of her followers because they only do as she asks and while she does talk to monsters sometimes without this inflection, It is rare and often only resurfaces with monsters she knew personally whether it be before or after the war.

- Her LV is higher because she mercy kills monsters who are dying of starvation, Of lack of magic, In the words of her followers. She’s sending them to asgore. She brings them comfort in a painless death, She is viewed as a Messiah and in some messed up way, She has more family then she’s ever known in this verse.

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Underswap tag: Oh maiden with your soul of stone (Underswap verse ~ Vita)

In underswap, Vita despite her soul of Pacifism and her once gentle demeanor turns a full 180 upon the learned death of her mate drusil while protecting the queen in an assasination attempt in the exploits of the war decides to take up the mantle that her mate had left vacant, Abandoning her duties as a healer, Her soul corrupts and becomes one of a Warmonger. She once known for her overwhelming amount of kindness becomes a symbol to fear, Nicknamed by the humans as ‘the siren’ and takes the place of her previous mate by the queen’s side as one of her guards, She personally ensures that the humans lost some ground in the war and for a time. Gave hope in her own way that monster kind would once more be able to thrive as they once did.

But even with her furiosity, That doesn’t happen, They still get sent underground. Not that it truly stops vita, Urging the queen that retreat isn’t an option, That while monsters might be trapped, There would one day be a time they return and they had to be ready. Despite that, the queen initially refuses and while vita still served as her guard, Anger does brew under the surface at her refusal. Another blow is struck when a human does fall underground and instead of rightfully being slaughtered. She and her Meek husband adopt the pitiful creature.

She’s not sure whether she felt vindicated or distraught when the news broke out that both the human AND the young prince were dead, That they’d tried to cross the barrier, that if only they’d come back with a few more souls. They’d have already been free, But instead the dust of both of them was scattered on a small plush toy of the prince’s. It was in this moment even as her coward of a husband flee’s with the humans true body, the queen finally saw the right path to take, At the cost of her entire family and she declared that any further humans to fall into the underground were to die, Harvested for their souls so she may become a goddess among monsters and break the barrier.

And she carries on this duty for her queen with what some see as a sense of pride, She is well known for collecting three of the human souls currently in the queen’s possession, She does eventually step down as the captain of the royal guard and allows Alphys to take the position. But she still co-leads and her advice is taken very seriously, She trains new recruits, following the old army ways of breaking their recruits, they either walk or become something worth her while.

Things to take note of in her Underswap verse: - She’s not downright cruel to monsters but compared to other monsters in US, She comes off as harsh and rough, hard to get close to though she has a fondness for monster children, Recruits she see’s potential in and her fellow comrades whether they be retired from the guard or not because they served well.

- She doesn’t have a son, She was pregnant at one point after they were sealed in the underground but...she doesn’t talk about what happened and nobody has dared to ask.

- Her soul is corrupted and has been since her mate’s death, Maybe with the right people and enough work, it could be restored but there’s no saying she’d be the same after all she did under her corrupted soul’s influence.

- She still lives in waterfall but her house is smaller and only has the bare minimum on the inside, It doesn’t feel very homely so to speak.

- US vita is fucking buff as hell and could snap your spine like a kit kat bar

#Oh maiden with your soul of stone (Underswap verse ~ Vita)#Pray for your time and i’ll bring it so (Horrortale verse ~ Vita)#In the world below (Undertale verse ~ Vita)#//SO yeah #//One of them's basically a religious cult #//and the other one comes off like a bitch #//vita's havin' a...time

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irinapaleolog · 4 years

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The Rise of Skywalker Does a Terrible Disservice to the Women of Star Wars

Besides Reylo, one of the great marketing tools of the Star Wars sequel trilogy was its emphasis on girl power, as well its subversion of class dynamics. The films showed that women -- even poor, destitute women with no connections to powerful men -- could play the same role in the franchise as every cocky flyboy or adopted son of a moisture farmer. Unfortunately, and despite the press tour assurances from the cast and crew that Rey and her gal pals are here to lead a new generation of fans into the new world of gender equality, The Rise of Skywalker makes sure that none of the women of the franchise gets to live happily ever after nor establish any lasting romantic connection.

Instead, Episode IX leans heavily into the tired trope of the "strong female character" that has to resign from silly notions like love and family to live up to her full potential. Adding insult to injury, the film removes all agency from the women, and instead thrusts them onto a straight-and-narrow path of contrived choices foisted upon them by male characters or by the Force -- which, in J.J. Abrams' movie, acts not as the power that propels life in the universe, but like the mean Catherine de Bourgh of Pride and Prejudice.

Let's start with Leia Organa, whose call for help in The Last Jedi was ignored by the entire galaxy. However, Lando Calrissian, who has been hanging around on Pasaana doing who knows what, just has to say the word for an entire legacy fleet to appear out of nowhere. Then there's the handling of her Jedi training, which she gave up because she felt the Force might corrupt her unborn son -- a narrative choice that comes out of left field but that mirrors the real-world dilemma of women giving up promotions for fear that their careers might get in the way of parenting.

But we could argue that Leia's arc in Episode IX is clunky because Abrams had limited footage of the late Carrie Fisher. But what about the characters portrayed by living actresses?

There's Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran, who had a major role in The Last Jedi with an interesting arc of her own. Unfortunately, a vocal segment of Star Warsfans loathed the character and harassed the actress until she left social media. Things looked brighter when Abrams announced Tran would rejoin the cast in The Rise of Skywalker and that her role would be even better. She was billed as a general, an essential part of the Resistance; Tran went on a press tour and talked about the great feminine energy of the set. The comes The Rise of Skywalker, where Rose appears three times, speaks four lines, and is sidelined to the "really important job" of tech support, with her connection with Finn never addressed. In The Rise of Skywalker, Rose doesn't get romance, connections, friendship, a job, or a story of her own -- something that should please the most toxic fans.

Then there's Jannah, played by Naomi Ackie, another "strong female character." The twist this time is that, like Finn, she's a former Stormtrooper who mutinied and defied an order to kill a bunch of villagers. For a few seconds, her story is hopeful and fascinating, and teases the line from the trailer that "good people will fight if we lead them," that free will and the power of the individual are concepts that exist in Abrams' Star Wars.

How foolish of the audience to hold such hope. Jannah and Finn explain theyweren't the ones who decided to spare the innocent villagers; it was a feeling. The Force takes care of silly dramatic concepts like agency, choice and heroism. Jannah is not a good person because of her actions, but because the Force willedher to be one. The only funny thing about this depressing predeterministic twist is that it also works as an apt metaphor for the actions of the characters in The Rise of Skywalker, who do things not because they make sense, but because the script -- the Force -- says so. To add another nail to the coffin, The Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary hints at Lando being Jannah's father, yet another woman of Star Wars whose story doesn't matter unless she's related to a legacy male character.

Moving on, Keri Russell plays Zorii Bliss, a spice runner from Kijimi who essentially wears Leia's slave outfit, only with thermal underwear. Zorii's only purpose in the story is to provide a tragic background for Poe Dameron, as well as a potential love interest. She's also a glorified MacGuffin holder (twice!), and one of the many characters that Abrams fake-kills to ignite an emotional response from the viewer in a desperate effort to make Poe sympathetic. Zorii's role could have easily been filled by Rose, who was an actual tech whiz with a questionable past and a potential massive beef against Poe. After all, he's directly responsible for her sister's death.

Let's move on to Rey (Daisy Ridley), who is retconned from being a resilient orphan scavenger strong in the Force... to receiving her powers from a male bloodline. Now, to be perfectly clear, there's nothing wrong with overly dramatic space operas where everyone is related to a royal family, but this "reveal" goes against the premise of The Force Awakens and the heart of The Last Jedi, which proposes that anyone can be a hero.

There were no hints at all about this "twist" -- not in the movies, in the animated series or in the ancillary material, which makes it feel like a last-minute decision designed to appease those fans who accused Rey of being an overpowered Mary Sue, overlooking one of the most common Mary Sue tropes: their tendency to be secretly related to important canon characters.

Another Mary Sue trope exploited in The Rise of Skywalker, but that wasn't even touched in the previous two movies, is the female character sacrificing herself for the greater good, only to be saved at the last minute by a man, which is exactly what happens here. This double-whammy of "being powerful because of grandad" and "getting to live because of a man" is particularly egregious, and caters to no one, because of what happens right after Ben Solo sacrifices himself. We'll get to that in a moment.

Then there's the Force vision scene. Rey already had a trippy Force vision in The Last Jedi, a deep dive into an array of feminine symbology that she wasn't afraid to confront, from which she emerged heartbroken but stronger. In The Rise of Skywalker, this moment is undercut and shows Rey terrified of the darker, sexier, powerful version of herself, which is a hard pill to swallow. Rey explicitly says that she has nightmare visions where she and Kylo Ren are the evil Empress and Emperor of the Galaxy, linking the fulfillment of her desires to the galaxy's apocalypse. In Episode IX, romantic love is a flaw that the "strong female character" should overcome, but sex is pure evil.

Her visceral rejection of her dark side is also a 180 turn on her chill acceptance of her darkness in The Last Jedi. In the real world, women are taught from a young age to hide their negative feelings, to smile and live to be pleasant to everyone, to not be loud or angry or intense. That mentality only makes things easier for everyone in the world who is not a woman, and runs contrary to the quickly angered but enthusiastic scavenger of the previous two movies. However, by the end of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey has transformed into this Cool Girl version of Ideal Femininity/Strong Woman Character.

Ben Solo's death right after his redemption and first kiss should have been treated like a tragedy at least by Rey, and at least for one minute... but she does not react at all. The camera cuts from Ben's clothes folding as he disappears to Rey's neutral expression as she flies back to the Resistance. His death, and any emotional reaction that it might have caused in the protagonist, is not mentioned at all, which is baffling, to say the least. After a brief reunion with Finn and Poe, Rey immediately regresses on-screen to a lonely child on a desert planet, sliding down a Tatooine sand dune and negating her evolution for the last two movies, just so Abrams could throw in a homage to himself.

For the sake of argument, let's take Rey's reveal of her villainous ancestry at face value, and let's imagine that Disney had prepared this reveal from The Force Awakens: Her ending is still insulting, because it forces her to pay for the actions of her grandfather, despite having suffered as much as anyone from his evil ways. Palpatine's murderous pursuit of his son's family was what caused Rey to grow up heartbroken and abandoned on Jakku.

Rey longed for family and love her entire life; she jumped at the opportunity to establish a real connection with Han Solo, Maz Kanata, Finn, Leia, Luke and Kylo Ren, and in The Rise of Skywalker she looks longingly at the Pasaana children, clearly wanting a family of her own. Rey marveled at the green of Takodana in The Force Awakens and at the water of Ahch-To in The Last Jedi. Just like Anakin, she hated the desert. So why does the plot force her to go back to Tatooine to take on the Skywalker name, a planet where none of the Skywalkers, Organas or Solos were born; that Anakin and Luke longed to escape; where Shmi Skywalker was enslaved twice and then killed; and where Leia became Jabba's sex doll? Wouldn't it make more sense for her to head to verdant, watery Naboo, where both Palpatine and Padmé came from, the place where the latter wanted to raise her Skywalker twins?

But, no, Rey doesn't get to live where she would be logically happier, or where it makes sense; she goes where the fan service is stronger, and the twin suns of Tatooine were unparalleled -- until now. When an old woman asks Rey her family name, she answers "Skywalker," which doesn't hold up to close examination. Luke Skywalker refused to train her, Leia's name was Organa, Ben and Han were Solos, and she's standing on the Lars' buried homestead. And although it makes sense that she would lie about her true ancestry, denying the Palpatine name still reeks of burying her darker side, which worked really well for the Jedi Order.

Compare this ending of a lonely girl on a barren planet lying to strangers about her family name to the ending of The Return of the Jedi, where Luke, Han, and Leia are surrounded by life and celebration, and everyone is radiant with love and living family. Or compare it to the ending of The Last Jedi, where a Force-sensitive boy is looking up at shooting star. Or even the final scene of Revenge of the Sith, which takes place in the same spot after the fall of the Republic, the death of Padmé and the rise of Darth Vader -- but at least in that little spot there's love, family, life and hope.

Directed and co-written by J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, Billie Lourd, Keri Russell, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, and Carrie Fisher, with Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant.

#the rise of skywalker #reylo

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shayde-n-friends · 4 years

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Reaper High - Next Gen: Children of Nomads and Royals

((After getting 2 Commissions of Ajax, and seeing lots of love being given to Jazz, I decided to just up and make a post about the many Next Generation characters that i’ve created over the years.

Ajax - Shayde and Vega’s youngest daughter. She is the only one of the children who was born with Natural Guardian powers, or at the very least, something akin to them. (Perhaps it was her golden chip? No one knows...not even Shayde’s Ghost.) At some point in her life, she acquired Roulette’s old sword; Worldline Zero. With it’s power, combined with her ability to create rifts in space inherited from Vexus, Ajax discovered that she was able to travel through time using the sword. She’s quite the troublemaker when she wants to be, but more often than not her heart is in the right place. When she makes a mistake, it weighs heavy on her, and goes to the greatest lengths to fix what she has broken.

Avior - Shayde and Vega’s only son and Prince of Cluster Prime, Avior dedicated himself at a young age to defending those who could not defend themselves, and giving people something to look up to when things are looking grim. He studied and trained under some of the greatest heroes he could think of: Saint-14, All-Might, Super-Man and Captain America to name a few...Although, despite his knightly philosophy and manners, he styles himself after Lord Saladin and The Iron Lords. Being about 8 feet fall, he sometimes intimidates the other students at Reaper High. That, and the fact that he has Vexus’ eyes, and teeth.

Weiss - The Elder Daughter of the Royals, and seemingly the most low key, all Weiss wants to do is learn the history of her two heritages. When she was young, Weiss was as happy-go-lucky as her mother. Growing up, she began to learn about Vexus’ crimes, and the banishment of her grandfather. Combined a less than positive school experience, this caused Weiss to become far more jaded. Like Roulette, Weiss has little time for bullies, blowhards but is far more likely to shut them up if they don’t have the smarts to do so themselves. She appears to be the most tame of her family, but deep inside, power greater than her sibling, parents and grandparents combine BURNS...

Morrigin - Daughter of Stake and Number 86, Morrigin is as tough as both her parents and then some. Growing up among Ex-Teens Next Door agents and Clones, Morrigin had no shortage of exposure to extended family, her cousins included. Training from both her mother and father have honed her into a disciplined fighter, and a capable leader, if not a little arrogant. Of course, with her parent’s combined strengths, she also shares their weaknesses, such as 86′s temper, and Stake’s crippling lack of fashion sense and dance talent.

Thomas - Against everyone’s expectations, Volker and Brit remained together after the Apocalypse, even more unexpected was the birth of their son, Thomas. His parents raised him to be a cat-burglar from an early age, though Volker did remind him that not everything should be stolen...just the stuff that people who already have a lot don’t use. At some point before attending Reaper High, Thomas acquired the means to train as a Titan Pilot, but didn’t get his hands on one until getting to the school...Stealthy, Agile, and well versed in assassin combat styles and gadgets, Thomas can easily slip away from any trouble he might find himself in.

Kaze - If Brit sticking around to raise her child was a surprise, than Misty raising her child with Dreamer was nothing short of a miracle. After they had amassed a small fortune from their Bounty and Treasure Hunting days, the two found a place to call home, and so the inquisitive Kaze was born. Of the Clones’ Children, she is the most in-tune with her heritage, having powers from her mother, as well as Combat skills passed down to her from both parents. She can speak fluent Mandolorian, and forged her own sword in the vein of Misty’s. Even more curious, is that Kaze appears to be able to use The Force, even though neither of her parents were able to...because of this, Kaze is exposed to dangers that others may not be.

Coyote - Nobody knows where Coyote truly came from. He appears to be a Yautja-Human hybrid, with some elements of what seems to be Crescentian DNA...He is apart of a new tribe of Yautja founded by Marsh after the end of the Apocalypse, protecting the vulnerable Cresentian populace from natural predators and hunters in exchange for bonding with members of the clan as partners on the hunt. Though Coyote has no Partner, he more than makes up for it with his cunning and prowess as a tracker, Capable of wrestling with beasts 3 times his size, and just as able to take them out. He doesn’t speak very often, which is why no one can seem to get a straight answer about his origins out of him...

Samuel - It took Frida a long time to convince Russell to have a child, but the wait was well worth it. Russell made certain to be there during every step of Samuel’s life. As a result, the boy was spared from the parental issues that plauged his father. With his father’s training, and his mother’s inventive ingenuity, Samuel became a prodigy in combat and vigilante justice. Despite his mostly positive upbringing, he never found much reason to speak. As such, he tends to express himself through gestures and actions. He lacks his father’s temper, but has his dexterity and skill with weaponry. Samuel is more in tune with her mother, sharing her mechanical prowess...and her sense of humor.

Helena - Though some miracle of science and biology, Shard and Melody were able to have a child, a perfected techno-organic being known as Helena. Imbued with the powers of both her mother and father, Helena is a powerhouse of speed and power. The only issue being, she is incredibly shy. She has the ability to stop time, materialize armor for herself from thin air, transform into a mechanical beast like her parents, and move just as fast as Shard, if not faster. She’s fiercely loyal to those who she claims only “Tolerate” her as a friend, and doesn’t give herself as much credit as she deserves. The only time she’s been known to come out of her shell completely is when one of her friends are in danger, revealing that sometimes she can be just as cocky as her father. (...And that embarasses her to no end!)

Ragran & Selmaxen - At some point in RH History, Heater began a complex Relationship with a version of Hekapoo from another timeline or dimension. Which one? Nobody knows...what everyone does know is that after the apocalypse, Heater ran off with her for years, and came back with a pair of Twins: Two girls named Ragran and Selmaxen. Ragran shares her father’s vow of silence, while Selmaxen tends to chat up a storm. Both of the twins have the ability to use their mothers scissors, or duplicates from the looks of them, and have power to manipulate, control, and create fire, lava and obsidian thanks to their fathers supernatural exploits in Hell during the apocalypse. They aren’t dependent on one another, but when they team up to do much of anything, their synergy is unmatched.

((This is just too much fun to come up with and write about! Seeing RH Next Gen stuff makes my heart soar, and it saddens me that I fall into ruts so often that I’m starting to lose steam on this sort of thing. But i’ll keep trying to keep my motivation up, and so long as im motivated, i’ll keep writing stuff for RH!))

#Reaper High #Reaper High Next Gen #OCs

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ganymedesclock · 5 years

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So you said in an earlier post that you’d been thinking of a hypothetical Sendak reform arc. Could you elaborate on that?

So this is one thing that’s actually sort of still a theory.

Simply: I think Sendak and Lotor are half-siblings, with Lotor the elder of the two. We’re told pretty clearly Zarkon had no other partners before Honerva; Alfor remarks that he’s astonished at the idea that Zarkon would ever marry, and the way Zarkon acts around Honerva initially would seem to make it pretty clear that he’s not exactly done this romantic song and dance before.

However, Sendak is significantly implicated with the royal family both in the main universe and in the “happy family” universe we see in late s8.

In the main universe, while it’s subtle, s4e3 has some very meaning-laden exchange between Lotor and Zarkon about how Zarkon never personally trained Lotor. Lotor is basically saying he only fails because he was not taught, which we know on Lotor’s side he’s setting up to be rejected by Zarkon- so he’s asking for something he’s confident Zarkon will never give him.

This is noteworthy because we only hear that Zarkon personally trained one person: Sendak. We in fact literally see Zarkon training Sendak in the “happy family” universe- and if you look at what that version of Sendak is wearing?

It’s the exact same red armor with gold accents that Zarkon and only Zarkon wears. Not explicitly confirmed to be lordly armor, but, that’s still very significant that we see Sendak bedecked in Zarkon’s colors.

In the main universe, of course, that’s not the case, however, also in the main universe, when Haggar chooses someone to back instead of Lotor for the throne, she goes to Sendak. Furthermore, when Pidge and Allura question hologram Sendak on the Atlas, Sendak asserts that he comes from an “unquestionably galra lineage” but does not clarify who his parents are.

There’s also the fact that when Sendak does arrive to the Kral Zera, he’s dismissed specifically for having vanished when Zarkon needs him. This is significant first because it implies that while Zarkon cut Sendak preferential treatment in the form of personal training, that’s not reinforced by the imperial hierarchy. Somehow, Sendak caught Zarkon’s eye in a way that Zarkon was implicitly involved with Sendak’s education, possibly even from a very young age (s1e9, Sendak implies that he sees himself as having no identity outside of serving Zarkon which are the words of an indoctrinated person), but without Sendak having really climbed the ranks or received positive acknowledgement from any of the imperial brass.

However, Janka, who is stated to be more cautious and calculating of the potential contenders, definitely seems to think Sendak’s trouble- to the point that when he smugly dismissed Gnov a second ago, once Sendak turns up he’s proposing alliances, and then, when Sendak has him cornered, Janka tries to barter with him.

The other significant side of why Sendak is dismissed at the Kral Zera is that it mirrors something Throk said about Lotor in s3e1- where the first criticism Throk voices of Lotor is “Why is he not at his father’s bedside?” It implies that within the empire there’s a cultural attitude that children should serve their father, and if they don’t, that’s dishonorable or untrustworthy of them.

And Zarkon is considered beautiful enough his likeness is put on posters, so while Honerva’s disoriented and beset with amnesia (or, in the happy family universe, died) it’s quite possible that Zarkon took another consort, and that consort might have produced Sendak.

But if Zarkon never acknowledges Sendak as his heir, or favors him with the title of prince, that’s going to create an interesting issue. It would explain why Zarkon would spend so much time training Sendak, and why Janka would consider him a threat, but Ranveig would dismiss him.

Also during the Kral Zera- Sendak and Lotor talk rather personally to each other. The implication is some history there, and, moreover…

The happy family universe seems to tell us something else. That Zarkon and Honerva seem to have set Lotor and Sendak against each other.

While Lotor and Sendak don’t seem super close in the “Happy Family” universe, it still stands that this idealized depiction of the galra royal family has both of them. Presumably, in that universe, Sendak would be acknowledged as the younger prince because Zarkon would have likely remarried in the wake of Honerva’s death.

And during the Kral Zera, Lotor seems specifically trying to warn Sendak. There’s a lot less of the scorn he addresses Zarkon with when he accuses Zarkon of being Honerva’s puppet in s5e2; rather, there seems to be this undercurrent of “don’t you see what she’s doing to you?”

So that creates this interesting thread, if that theory’s true (and since canon’s done and both Lotor and Sendak are dead, I figure you can basically choose to take it just on the grounds that it makes things a lot more interesting if it is true) It would imply Sendak’s the Azula to Lotor’s Zuko. Two abused children whose paths diverged a long time ago.

But I was aware a big reason I started to feel really bad for Sendak is, on top of all of the implications he was heavily indoctrinated and that, again, in s1e9 he earnestly brags about not having any purpose in life outside of the empire, talking up how being surgically taken apart and cybernetically augmented made him ‘better’ in his own eyes- his ultimate death is basically hollow. It’s bereft of even the spite that led him to first attack Earth- it’s just an empty repetition of the values he was raised with.

Sendak is ultimately a deconstruction of the Red Paladin role, as much as Zarkon- an abusive tyrant- is a deconstruction of the Black Paladin role. Sendak’s loyalty is manipulated. It’s exploited. While he is clearly an adult with a lot of autonomy, he’s an adult that grew from heavily indoctrinated roots. As he says himself, he basically can’t imagine a life outside of the empire, outside of his role, outside of being what he is.

And the way Lotor talks to him at the Kral Zera really makes me think that you could have built something very interesting in Lotor who wasn’t derailed away from the heroes at the end of s6… trying to reach Sendak. Trying to actually help him. Because frankly, it’s possible they grew up together- it’s possible they were even friends at some point. They could have been friends even as late as the colony, and Ven’Tar, with the rift only really happening in full with Lotor’s exile. Because we see at that point Lotor had no real intention of breaking with the empire, he wanted to make it better and he wanted Zarkon’s approval.

There’s still a lot Sendak would need to answer for, and, ultimately, it would have to be Sendak finding a reason to want to change, but, so much of his unwavering faith in the empire seems to be born entirely out of isolation and indoctrination. He’s never had any other path, and, especially if he was considered illegitimate as an heir, he’d start to resent Lotor for being formally acknowledged as a prince when not only is Lotor in exile and resenting Zarkon, but, bigoted voices within the empire would be quick to insist Sendak, as a pure galra, would be “worthier” than his Altean half-brother.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Sendak #Lotor #season 8 #readmore #sepublic

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crafiet · 5 years

Note

1-50 OC questionnaire !!

ill use ary

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?anyone else paranoid about people stealing their unpublished work or ideas or name bc me. her name is ary and i found it from a generator [lmao so original] and i thought it was cute. her last name is like pretty standard for fantasy and it inspired me to have everyone elses last names in a similar vibe2. Do they have any titles? How did they get them?WELL lmao shes had a lot. prisoner #22876, the wraith, princess ary. ive scrapped all except the prisoner one and u can guess how she got it3. Did they have a good childhood? What are fond memories they have of it? What’s a bad memory? she was raised among royals and nobles so she has a lot of good memories with her parents and other kids her age running around doing dumb shit. most of her bad memories happen once she becomes a teenager4. What is their relationship with their parents? What’s a good and bad memory with them? Did they know both parents? she has an overwhelming love for her parents, she idolizes them heavily and is grateful for how much they taught her. a good memory is probably them teaching her how to use magic for the first time and she being unable to control it and almost burning her eyebrows off lmao5. Do they have any siblings? What’s their names? What is their relationship with them? Has their relationship changed since they were kids to adults?no siblings6. What were they like at school? Did they enjoy it? Did they finish? What level of higher education did they reach? What subjects did they enjoy? Which did they hate?tbh i havent thought much about their education system as young kids, since its not really relevant and i dont tend to worldbuild stuff that never shows up. however she did attend an academy specifically for her magic caste and she had a fun time up until some shit went down and she deserted. shes pretty competitive and liked versing her friends7. Did they have lots of friends as a child? Did they keep any of their childhood friends into adulthood? she was one of those weird kids who preferred hanging out with her parents over everybody else. so she had one good friend in the academy whos still her friend today, but otherwise she would race home and annoy her mum lol8. Did they have pets as a child? Do they have pets as an adult? Do they like animals? no pets. she has a soft spot for horses though, because she has had so many in her “career”9. Do animals like them? Do they get on well with animals? horses like her, i guess they can sense shes good with them. at one point in the novel she sees some jackals and is afraid of them so shes probably not a dog person10. Do they like children? Do children like them? Do they have or want any children? What would they be like as a parent? Or as a godparent/babysitter/ect?she doesnt have anything against kids, but shes not very good with them, shes never been one for baby talk or dumbing herself down. in one draft she takes care of some adolescents and lets cyri take over bc he loves kids lol11. Do they have any special diet requirements? Are they a vegetarian? Vegan? Have any allergies?nahh12. What is their favourite food? uhhhhhhhhhhhhh13. What is their least favourite food?uhHHHHHH14. Do they have any specific memories of food/a restaurant/meal?man idk, its not like my characters arent well rounded realistic people but im not gonna know her favourite fucking colour bc it doesnt matter in the story lmao15. Are they good at cooking? Do they enjoy it? What do others think of their cooking?i would say shes ok, she doesnt burn anything but shes not a gourmet chef [despite having lessons as a child]16. Do they collect anything? What do they do with it? Where do they keep it? ohh i used to have an answer for this but she probably doesnt now just bc shes pretty nomadic and usually only has the clothes on her back lmao17. Do they like to take photos? What do they like to take photos of? Selfies? What do they do with their photos?cameras dont exist in her world my dudee. but if she lived in modern day which ive thought of, shed be the type to take a bunch of pics of her friends and stuff she likes bc she likes having the memory in a solid form, her actual memory is shit lol18. What’s their favourite genre of: books, music, tv shows, films, video games and anything elsehmm i suppose shed be a horror fan, and shed love making fun of stupid characters19. What’s their least favourite genres?man idk. romance? shes kinda #2edgy4me20. Do they like musicals? Music in general? What do they do when they’re favourite song comes?hmm i think shes more a soft music fan, just something idly playing in the background. ex. a bard playing something for the crowd while she kicks back w friends21. Do they have a temper? Are they patient? What are they like when they do lose their temper?she has a short temper. shes easily triggered with any emotion so shes quick to argue or whatever22. What are their favourite insults to use? What do they insult people for? Or do they prefer to bitch behind someone’s back?id like to think shes witty, and she always says stuff to peoples faces bc a bitch has rabies and wants to fight apparently23. Do they have a good memory? Short term or long term? Are they good with names? Or faces?bad memory, shes gone through physical torture and isolation [wew] so. shes better at names, growing up with royals she got to learn a bunch of family names etc24. What is their sleeping pattern like? Do they snore? What do they like to sleep on? A soft or hard mattress?a light sleeper. crazy light. and she can sleep anywhere, so she has no problems sleeping on the ground unlike others25. What do they find funny? Do they have a good sense of humour? Are they funny themselves?she pretends to be stoic but when u get to know her her humour’s pretty lame, shell laugh at anything if just to make u feel better26. How do they act when they’re happy? Do they sing? Dance? Hum? Or do they hide their emotions? she tends to hide them under an indifferent mask27. What makes them sad? Do they cry regularly? Do they cry openly or hide it? What are they like they are sad?despite being able to hide her emotions, she does succumb to fear a lot and cries openly, but will continue to do whatever shes doing through tears so shes scary in that regard28. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared?abandonment is a huge one. shes not a fan of predatory animals. shes brave though, and will do whatevers necessary, kinda like unwilling exposure therapy lol29. What do they do when they find out someone else’s fear? Do they tease them? Or get very over protective? she doesnt like exploiting people so shell never use someones fear against them. for friends, shell protect them and warn them if something like that is gonna happen30. Do they exercise? Regularly? Or only when forced? What do they act like pre-work out and post-work out?lmao she walks or goes horse riding everywhere and is severely malnourished31. Do they drink? What are they like drunk? What are they like hungover? How do they act when other people are drunk or hungover? Kind or teasing?i just wrote a scene like this!! shes louder in general, laughs more. her guard comes down more and more with every drink. she can hold her liquor pretty well but when shes blacked out shes pretty much useless32. What do they dress like? What sorta shops do they buy clothes from? Do they wear the fashion that they like? What do they wear to sleep? Do they wear makeup? What’s their hair like?she prefers comfort and mobility over everything else. she tends to dress pretty masculine, and never does anything with her hair. does she know what a brush is?33. What underwear do they wear? Boxers or briefs? Lacey? Comfy granny panties?...................ask her lol idk. probably just basic comfy ones34. What is their body type? How tall are they? Do they like their body?she is 5′9. when shes healthy, she has a willowy figure but more on the boxy side than curvy. she doesnt really attribute much to her body [imagine living life without dysmorphia mfg]35. What’s their guilty pleasure? What is their totally unguilty pleasure? i dont she counts anything as a ‘guilty’ pleasure. she just enjoys what she enjoys, fuck whatever people think36. What are they good at? What hobbies do they like? Can they sing?she loves fishing! she used to do it a lot with her dad. i dont think shes a particularly good singer37. Do they like to read? Are they a fast or slow reader? Do they like poetry? Fictional or non fiction?yeah she likes reading. she reads pretty fast and prefers nonfiction. she thinks poetry can get too pretentious lmao38. What do they admire in others? What talents do they wish they had?#deep but i think she admires kindness and care in others. she wishes she was a better person at times and wants to be able to express how much people meant to her39. Do they like letters? Or prefer emails/messaging? lmao letters are the only thing in her world. if she lived w us shed probably be all about texting 600 in a row and then calling when u dont reply “what do u mean you cant answer. its called INSTANT messaging for a reason!!”40. Do they like energy drinks? Coffee? Sugary food? Or can they naturally stay awake and alert?she stays awake through sheer willpower shes a beast41. What’s their sexuality? What do they find attractive? Physically and mentally? What do they like/need in a relationship?shes bi/pan. not really a thing about labels in her world. she loves long hair and soft personalities42. What are their goals? What would they sacrifice anything for? What is their secret ambition?plot spoilers!!43. Are they religious? What do they think of religion? What do they think of religious people? What do they think of non religious people?shes not religious. there is a heavy theme of religion in the novel [which i need to write better in the second draft] but she was kinda skeptical as a child and probably lost faith entirely after she went through some harrowing stuff 44. What is their favourite season? Type of weather? Are they good in the cold or the heat? What weather do they complain in the most? winter. she prefers the cold and hates heat45. How do other people see them? Is it similar to how they see themselves? i think people see her as scarier than she is. shes a formidable opponent and does not give a fuck what you say, but her reputation precedes her a little bit, a lot of things she did out of fear or force are seen as ‘badass’ and ‘brave’46. Do they make a good first impression? Does their first impression reflect them accurately? How do they introduce themselves?shes a compulsive liar, and a good one at that. so she tends to show herself differently to almost everyone she meets, but usually its a false potrayal47. How do they act in a formal occasion? What do they think of black tie wear? Do they enjoy fancy parties and love to chit chat or loathe the whole event?ugh she haaaaaates formal stuff and parties. she grew up royal and had to suffer through many a dinner and gathering. at this point in her life youd never get her in a dress that impeded her movement. shes ok with dresses but really big poofy ones she refuses to wear48. Do they enjoy any parties? If so what kind? Do they organise the party or just turn up? How do they act? What if they didn’t want to go but were dragged along by a friend? in our world shed be one for a chill house party. show up with a case of beer, sit outside by the barbie, listen to music and talk shit. shes not good at organising so she doesnt tend to host, and if she were dragged by a friend itd probably be to a formal event or with people she didnt know so shed just sulk in the corner49. What is their most valued object? Are they sentimental? Is there something they have to take everywhere with them?she abandoned her material possessions before the story a. bc she was forced and b. they bring back way too many painful memories50. If they could only take one bag of stuff somewhere with them: what would they pack? What do they consider their essentials? food, change of clothes, weapons. thats about it. she tries not to be super nasty and find an inn to shower and stuff but shes also poor af

#writing #this was really helpful actually!!!!#i realise how much of my flaws and traumas i project onto her #love a self-insert/emotional support character #cloudybookash

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thursdays-fallen-angel · 6 years

Text

Peace-Weaver, Part 1

Happy birthday, @saltnhalo! I hope you like this, because it’s the best I have to offer. Congrats on being old, fren. <3

(King!Alpha!Cas, Prince!Omega!Dean; 7.3k)

AO3 Link

"Your majesty?”

Castiel hums, but doesn’t look up from his book. It’s not actually all that engaging, but it’s certainly easy to pretend that it is.

“Your majesty, are you even listening to me?”

The condescending tone that laces those words is what finally gets the king to look up, his eyes immediately locking on those of his advisor with a sharp glare. He had been listening, as a matter of fact—he heard every word of Metatron’s drabble about the tenuousness of his position, the need to marry sooner than later, the swelling rumors of a war being started against him by the kingdom to the north. He heard it all.

He just doesn’t care.

Except, that’s not quite true. Castiel cares about his position, and he cares about the safety of his kingdom, but he doesn’t care for the pitch Metatron is giving that, in essence, is a sly ruse designed to get the king to agree to marry his advisor’s daughter.

Metatron isn’t the first to try such a thing, nor will he be the last. He will also not be the last to fail.

Castiel may be an unmarried alpha king, but no matter how incompetent to rule the people of the land might think him, both in his kingdom and beyond it, he has no intentions of giving into the clever puppeteers trying to tie their strings to him. An alpha he may be, but no matter the reputation that precedes his gender, he is not going to be pliant. He is not going to let his lack of omega intelligence doom his kingdom, and his family’s legacy.

After all, the kingdom did not ask for their true leaders to be killed.

Castiel stands and tosses his now-closed book onto the desk. “You are dismissed, Metatron. I have a prior engagement; if you’ll excuse me.”

He ignores Metatron’s offended stuttering as he leaves the study, striding out of the room without a backwards glance. The guards posted at the door will ensure Metatron exits after him in a timely manner, even if his advisor somehow worked up the gall to make use of the king’s study for personal gain, the guards would prohibit him.

Metatron is a slimy beta who cannot be trusted, but the members of the guard are alpha through and through, and loyal to a fault. He will always be thankful for that.

That being said, it is remarkably easy for Castiel to get away from the guards’ ever-vigilant views and slip off into the woods on his horse, unseen. He left only a word with his stable master to let the message be passed along that he would return in a day or two, but doesn’t bother giving anyone any more than that. He doesn’t want to be followed, and he certainly doesn’t want to be criticized.

Even just the journey out through the woods does wonders to boost Castiel’s spirits, as it always does. The distance from the castle may not truly relieve him of his problems, but having the space to think, to breathe, more than makes it worth his effort.

He only wishes that he had something to think about other than his troubles, when he takes these sorts of breaks.

However, given the fact that everything Castiel ever knew came crumbling down when his parents died, he supposes a bit of stress over his fate is one of the better things he could have asked for.

Considering his parents’ importance, it was never much of a surprise that his world crumbled as completely as it did. Any time a kingdom loses its queen and king, there are bound to be repercussions, just as there have been every day of the year that has passed since that wretched shipwreck. There will always be desperate bids for power, in situations such as this one, will always be crimes against the crown even while that crown is shrouded in a mourning veil. And most importantly of all, there will always be attempts to exploit the heirs to the throne.

Or in Castiel’s case, heir. Singular.

He always knew his position was tenuous—as the lone, unwed child of Naomi and Cain Novak, his chances of exploitation were always particularly high. The kingdom of Eden may not be the largest, but it has a long history of wealth and strength, situated on land rich with resources and very nearly impenetrable, thanks to its mountainous border. The long, unbroken line of strong, omega rulers who have sat on the throne for more consecutive generations than any other royal family in the land has also attributed to Eden’s reputation, giving it an edge that has done a great deal to prevent people from taking advantage of the Novaks’ power.

Even before the shipwreck, it was widely considered to be a tragedy that the renowned Naomi Novak left only an alpha son as her heir.

The day Castiel had presented alpha had been one of the worst of his life. There had been complications with his birth which had left his mother unable to conceive more children after him, eliminating the possibility of younger siblings to help carry on the Novak line. Both of his parents had hoped he would present omega, had been sure that it would happen—he was so very similar to his mother, after all—but shortly before his fifteenth birthday, it became clear that he wasn’t similar enough to her. His genetics favored brawn over brain, as evidenced by the rut he fell into, and he had never seen his mother more disappointed in all his life. His lessons of regality and leadership fell to the wayside, and a sword was shoved into his hands the minute he was back on his feet.

That was the first time his world had crumbled.

Now, looking back, he isn’t sure which instance is worse. Naomi’s disappointment in him was always a sore point, and their relationship never quite recovered, but at least she was there. She and his father both.

Castiel constantly spends his time wishing that things were different. He’d been too shell-shocked for the first week or so after the news reached him that his parents’ ship never reached its destination across the sea to properly react, but when the day came for his coronation—a rushed, harried affair, put together only once the reality of Naomi and Cain’s death became unavoidable and unease over a lack of proper ruler began to fester—it hit him in full. When the head priest lowered Cain’s former crown onto Castiel’s head at the end of the ceremony, he was overwhelmed with dread, instead of the pride that his mother always spoke of.

He wished he could have been the omega his mother wanted. He wished she hadn’t died while still dissatisfied with him. He wished that her last living thought couldn’t have possibly been regret over the inevitable end of her family’s legacy.

Castiel may be of age, a man grown, but without an omega at his side, without someone to wear Eden’s real crown, he doesn’t stand a chance. He was trained to be a fighter and made to expect to rear children while his future mate ran the kingdom; it was never expected that he would rule on his own, and his lack of education on the subject reflects that. What little teaching his parents drip-fed him before he presented covered the basics of the kingdom’s workings, but while that can keep him afloat, it won’t do so indefinitely.

From the moment Castiel knelt in the church and rose as a king, the members of his newly-inherited court were ogling the dull silver of his alpha crown. For that very reason, he hardly wears the thing. It sits too heavily on his brow, draws all the wrong kind of eyes. It makes him look more like the stand-in that he is, instead of the ruler he should be.

It’s all so draining to think about.

And that, of course, is why he comes here—a hunting cabin commissioned by Cain when he first came to Eden, and one of the man’s best-kept secrets. It’s near the border, almost dangerously so, but it’s quiet, private, and utterly devoid of people who need to be impressed. When Castiel finally rides into the clearing, the site of the small house alone is enough to begin easing the tension that perpetually resides at his core.

Out here, there are no withering glares resentful of his crown, or greedy advisors angling to steal it for themselves. There is no need for him to hide parts of himself to fit the role he is expected to play because of his alpha designation.

He can be himself. And gods, does he love even that small freedom.

Castiel dismounts from his horse as soon as he has broken through the tree line, leaving the animal to wander for the time being, and makes his way up to the door of the familiar, stone cabin. Back at the castle, everything reminds him of his mother, but here? Everything about this place is Cain, from the overgrown garden situated between the cabin and the lake beyond, to the buzz of the bees the older alpha once regularly cared for, to the simplistic layout of the living space that awaits Castiel when he finally gets the cabin’s door open. He never spent much time here prior to his parents’ deaths, mostly only visiting when he was young and Naomi was too busy with her queenly duties for Castiel to even be near, but even still, the place feels like home in a way the empty castle never quite can.

He takes a few steps into the cabin and starts to disrobe—there’s no need for him to be wearing finery here at the cabin, as the silk of his tunic certainly is—but before he can even get his tunic halfway off, he hears a quick scuffle like that of footsteps, and the unmistakable sound of a closing door.

Castiel goes absolutely still. Even his breaths are silent as he listens, all of his senses straining as he attempts to pick out the cause of the sound or any indication of a repeat. When he hears nothing, he inhales deeply through his nose, then swears under his breath.

He hadn’t taken enough stock of the small cabin when he first entered, but doing so now, he cannot believe how much he failed to notice.

Someone else is already there.

There isn’t much to learn of the intruder from their residual scent alone, but it does provide just enough of a trail for Castiel to be able to find the person’s hiding place with ease. The bedroom door is closed; Castiel waits outside of it for only a moment before gently pushing it open. He’s still on high alert as he steps into the room. The intruder’s scent is more concentrated in here, though whether that’s because the source is nearby or because it’s woven into the sleep-rumpled bed, Castiel cannot yet determine.

He takes another cautious step into the room, and gets a dagger pressed to the underside of his jaw for his efforts.

“Make one wrong move and you’re dead,” a voice growls in his ear. “I don’t know what you were thinking, coming in here, but there’s nothing for you to gain, here.”

Castiel narrows his eyes, but despite the threat being levelled against him, he holds as still as he can. He isn’t in a mood to be murdered, even if he has a feeling he could put his training to use and overcome his attacker if need be. He isn’t so stupid as to underestimate a complete stranger.

He takes a breath, and his eyes go wide.

The man behind him is an omega.

Castiel tilts his chin up and slowly raises his hands in a show of innocence. “I bear you no ill-will. You are in my home; I didn’t know that you were here.”

“Your home?” the man repeats. “Fuck.” The dagger drops away from Castiel’s throat. “Fuck. Figures that you come back now, then. Just my luck.”

When the man withdraws, Castiel finally has the opportunity to turn and look at him. His breath nearly catches when he does; even for an omega, the stranger in his cabin is a beautiful one, with golden skin and bright, entrancing eyes. That isn’t, though, what truly gets the alpha’s attention.

“You’re hurt,” he says, rather dumbly. The omega is wearing a white undershirt bearing no coloring or affiliation to any house, but the plain white of the fabric makes the blood stain across his hip that much more obvious. Castiel raises his eyes back to the omega’s, and when he sees how guarded the man is, he doesn’t even have to think before offering, “There should be bandages here, if you will allow me to help you. A change of clothes, as well.”

The omega’s hand moves to hover over his wound, but even just from the way he doesn’t actually touch it, Castiel can tell that it’s serious. Without the defensive posture, too—though the omega is still clutching his dagger like a lifeline, and Castiel can’t quite blame him for that—it becomes obvious that he’s favoring his right leg over his left, and his weapon hand trembles.

“I’m in your home without permission, and yet you’d help me?” the omega asks. When Castiel nods, his eyes narrow and he asks, “Are you a noble?”

Castiel wets his lips. “Near enough. You may call me Cas.”

No one save his father has ever called him by the nickname, and he feels it’s appropriate to the location. Furthermore, though, it will help him to keep his identity to himself.

This strange omega does not need to know that the alpha whose home he invaded is the king of Eden. If he does not know on his own, then Castiel is not obligated to tell him, and would definitely prefer not to.

A few beats of silence pass between them before the omega nods. “Cas,” he repeats, testing the name on his tongue, “alright. I would appreciate your help. You can call me Dean.”

“Dean.” It’s a simple name, not quite befitting of a man who is clearly anything but plain himself, but thankfully Castiel manages to stop himself from saying just that. He inclines his head in the direction from which he just came, toward the cabin’s main living space. “If you’d like to sit at the table, I’ll go get water from the lake, and find the bandages when I return. I’m not a healer by any means, but I’m sure I’ll be able to help in some way, at least.”

Although he still seems hesitant, Dean nods again. “Thank you.”

Castiel answers him with a small smile. He might not know this omega or even have any specific reason to need to help him, but he’s in Castiel’s land and needs help, and that is justification enough in the alpha’s mind. He leaves the bedroom, trusting Dean to follow him out to the aforementioned table. “Sit, and take your shirt off so that I can get a proper look at your wound. I’ll be back in a moment.”

He does not delay in fetching the water that he promised to get, but once he’s outside, Castiel certainly does not hurry, either. He carries a container from the house out to the lake and lets it fill with crisp, clear water, then slowly makes his way back up to the cabin. Only once he’s sure Dean has had the opportunity to leave if he so desires does Castiel go back inside.

Much to his surprise, Dean is sitting at the table with his shirt off.

It’s only when his shock at that fact has him stilling in place that Castiel realizes just how convinced he was that Dean was going to leave. He would have been sure of it.

Not that he’s complaining.

With his shirt removed, it’s easy to see just how hurt Dean is, and subsequently imagine how it must have happened. The cut in his side is deep and jagged—clearly the work of close-quarters situation with a sloppy opponent. Taken into consideration with the few other bruises littering Dean’s torso, and Castiel has no doubt that the omega was in a fight he wasn’t prepared for.

Castiel gets the rest of the materials he needs and then settles onto the stool next to the one Dean has already claimed, the bucket of water ready and waiting beside his foot. Dean holds himself stiffly, but aside from a minor, seemingly involuntary flinch when Castiel firsts touches a water-soaked strip of cloth to the torn flesh just below his ribs, he doesn’t object to the care he is being given. He simply grits his teeth and bears his way through it.

Castiel can’t help but be endeared by the silent show of strength.

He gets midway through bandaging the wound by the time Dean speaks.

“You always this nice to strangers, Cas?”

Castiel pauses and glances up at him. “Do you mean to harm me?”

Dean blinks. A crease forms at the center of his brow. “No.”

“And you came into this house because you needed a place to recover, did you not?”

“I did.”

Castiel smiles. “Then I don’t see why I shouldn’t be nice to you. You have done nothing wrong on my account. I came out here to escape the stress of my everyday life, and as far as I can see, this is distracting me just as well as gardening would.”

Dean doesn’t seem much less confused by that. “And… That’s your alpha scent I can smell, right?”

“Are you asking me if I am an alpha?” Castiel sits up straighter, an eyebrow arching as he considers that. He’s never had his secondary gender questioned. He’s never been around anyone who didn’t know, and who didn’t know what was intrinsically expected of him because of that. “Why do you not believe that I am?”

Dean stares at him for a moment longer, but ultimately shakes his head. “Nothing. Just—you mind finishing this up? I twisted my ankle up pretty good, so I think I’m gonna need your help with that next.”

Castiel’s interest over the question of his gender has not subsided, but he has the good grace to let the subject pass. He nods as he returns to his task of wrapping the bandage around Dean’s middle, and finds another way to fill the air between them.

“What happened to you?” he asks, then for clarification when Dean merely blinks at him, “To lead you here, I mean. In this state. Considering the help I’m providing you, I believe a story is the least you can give me in return.”

“Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” The words are flat, but when Castiel glances up to make sure he hasn’t actually offended his houseguest by asking such a question, he finds the ghost of a smile curling the omega’s lips. It highlights his natural beauty. “I guess it is the least I can do, isn’t it. You drive a hard bargain, Cas.”

Castiel shrugs. He’s actually hoping in large part to learn who Dean is, where he came from, and he assumes that that will be easiest to glean by retracing the omega’s steps. He finishes with the main bandage and seals it off, then slides down onto the floor so that he can examine Dean’s ankle.

Dean makes an odd sound in the back of his throat, then pointedly clears it. Castiel’s gaze raises in time for him to see the omega wet his lips.

“I was, uh—on a trip. Long story short, I was fighting with my mom, and came to Eden a bit… hotheaded.”

Castiel runs his tongue along the front of his teeth. “Where are you from, if not Eden?”

From the way Dean hesitates, Castiel suspects he hadn’t meant to reveal his foreignness. He assesses the alpha knelt before him for a long moment, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, then seemingly comes to the conclusion that the truth is acceptable to share. Castiel can see the resolution of it in his eyes before he finally pulls Dean’s pant leg up to examine his (very swollen) ankle, an excuse for the king to keep his own reactions from being just as easily read.

“I’m from Campbell,” Dean confesses. Castiel forces himself to nod; he cannot be sure whether it is a good or bad thing that Dean is only from just across the border. The omega continues while Castiel prods at his ankle, “My point, though, was that I was hot-headed when I left, so I wasn’t on my guard. I was jumped by a group of bandits just as I got to Eden’s border. I held my own for a bit, took a few out, but in the end, I was too outnumbered. I wasn’t going to beat them all. I ran, lost them in the woods, and was just about to pass out from blood loss or exhaustion or both when I found your house. Walls, a roof, and a clean bed are probably the only reasons I survived.” Dean clears his throat, the sweet, vanilla undertone of his scent momentarily spiking in what Castiel thinks is embarrassment before he tacks on, “Thank you for that, by the way.”

For the span of a few heartbeats, Castiel is struck silent. There is so much information in that for him to process, and the density of it keeps him from finding his tongue right away. Dean being from Campbell doesn’t tell him much. He hasn’t had any contact with the ruling family since his coronation, and knows little about them besides. He has been too busy with local affairs since his parents’ deaths to have time for such extraneous knowledge.

It is, however, interesting to know that Dean was able to fight off even some of his attackers when he was ambushed. While it explains the wounds Dean took on, omegas don’t tend to be fighters.

Now Castiel really wants to know where Dean came from.

“You’re welcome,” he eventually says back to the other man. Then, before the opportunity to ask can escape him, “Why were you coming to Eden?”

“I was…” Dean pauses, his previous hesitation returning. Castiel is too occupied with applying a tight wrap to the omega’s swollen ankle to look up and assess him this time—and he’s too silently pleased by the lack of pain he seems to be causing to disrupt the flow they’ve fallen into—but a few seconds of patience pay off, and Dean answers him without prompting. “There’s rumor that King Lucifer asked Queen Mary for assistance in warring for control of Eden. I know someone in Eden who I think deserves to have warning of that, if it’s really going to happen.”

A war for Eden.

Castiel may not know Queen Mary, but he knows plenty about King Lucifer, and as such, he doesn’t doubt the truth of Dean’s statement for a second. It leaves his ears ringing, and his tongue feels like cotton in his mouth.

If Lucifer attacks on his own, Eden might stand a chance. Castiel may not be the omega ruler his people need, but one of the few things he was taught was an understanding of the ways of war. He is not a brilliant tactician by any means, but Eden’s army is strong and skilled, comprised of the fiercest of warriors. With the help of his few omega generals, Castiel could possibly manage to save his kingdom from being obliterated.

But if Campbell’s army joins forces with Lucifer’s, Eden’s fate will already be sealed. Even if Naomi and Cain were still alive, two full-strength armies marching against their borders would be a terrible omen.

Dean may not know it, but he’s just warned Castiel of his own imminent death.

“…Cas? Cas, are you okay?”

The king looks up. His thoughts feel jumbled, yet simultaneously hollowed. He can hardly get them in order, and he certainly has no idea how many attempts Dean has made to get his attention. He suspects this isn’t the first.

“What cause would Queen Mary have to unite with King Lucifer?” Castiel asks, circumventing Dean’s concern all together. Maybe the omega will have an answer for him, maybe he will not, but regardless, it’s something Castiel needs to figure out for the sake of his own survival. If he has merely offended Mary, or can offer her some type of payment in exchange for an allegiance between them—

“She and Lucifer are convinced that Eden’s king isn’t fit to rule,” Dean says, cutting the head off of Castiel’s budding hope with a single, swift blow. “You know how alphas are supposed to be, with their tempers and stubbornness. Everyone knows that Queen Naomi was pretty desperate to find him an omega to give him some credibility, but once she died, even a letter already sitting on M—” He stumbles briefly, cheeks dusting pink. “Queen Mary’s desk wasn’t enough to make anything happen.”

Another jolt runs through Castiel at that. He’s sure his mother wouldn’t have called his potential marriage a bid for ‘credibility’, but he absolutely believes that she would have been making efforts to find a successor worthy of her. He wishes she had discussed such a thing with him. He wonders where the omega prince of Campbell might have fallen on her list of candidates.

Dean continues, oblivious to just how thoroughly he is turning Castiel’s world on its head.

“But anyways. Especially without anyone lined up to mate with, the king of Eden is easy picking, as far as King Lucifer seems concerned. He’s pretty confident that he can win.”

“No one has ever taken Eden,” Castiel counters. Gods, he feels lightheaded. “The Novak family has held the throne for thousands of years—”

Dean shakes his head. He’s thought about this a lot, it seems. “The Novak family doesn’t have anyone wearing the omega crown for the first time in all those thousands of years. Now there’s two other omegas who want a piece, and who’ve sat at Eden’s border and watched the Novaks thrive for generations. This is as good a chance as they’re going to get.”

He’s right. Of course Dean is right. Not only does he have far more insight into the situation than Castiel can hope for in his own right, but he also doesn’t have anything at stake; it’s easy for him to be level-headed. It’s one of the things omegas are best at.

Castiel takes a deep breath to steady himself. He pointedly doesn’t think about the fact that the pleasantness of Dean’s scent makes it easier to manage; true as it may be, acknowledging it gets him nowhere, and he doesn’t have time to waste on the matter. Not with all that Dean has told him.

There’s one detail in particular which pricks at him, tugs at his focus until he’s brought fully back to attention. Dean’s ankle is long since wrapped by this point, so Castiel lets go of it and returns to the stool so that the two of them can be on an equal level as the king presses for more details.

“Your intention was to come to Eden to warn someone.” It’s a statement, not a question. Castiel leans forward, watching Dean intently. “Are you not fully in support of a sacking of Eden? What are the chances that there are others of your same mindset, and that Mary could be persuaded from joining Lucifer?”

Dean’s eyes slide away, which is far from encouraging. “I have… personal reasons for being against a war with Eden. Unfortunately, I think more people in Campbell would be for it than against it.”

“Personal reasons?”

“Uh, well.” Dean rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Long story short, my mom was an omega who mated with a beta, and people always gave them shit for it. They thought she should have been with an alpha, didn’t think he was good enough, all that. Guess you could say it made me sympathetic to the underdogs of the world.”

“And who is the underdog in this situation?” Castiel asks. The fact about Dean’s parentage is interesting, but he’s not positive on how it relates.

Until, that is, Dean explains, “Eden’s alpha king. The problem is that everyone is assuming he’s not good enough because he’s an alpha, and I can’t be convinced that that’s fair. Not after seeing all the shit my dad went through, especially.”

Oh.

Castiel curls his fingers into his palms to stop the slight tremor he can feel in his hands. Dean doesn’t know him, not really, and yet here he is, in Castiel’s cabin, expressing more faith in him than anyone ever has before. He has no idea how to cope with that.

He decides to ignore it. Best not to let Dean know that he is affected, as he excuses it to himself. His identity is best left concealed.

It would feel deceitful, to tell Dean now.

“Queen Mary may be willing to support Lucifer, then,” he says, getting their conversation back on-track. “Will all of Campbell back such a movement simply because Mary Campbell has something to gain from it?”

“Winchester,” Dean interjects, then explains when Castiel frowns, “Her name is Mary Winchester. She took her mate’s name. Her parents weren’t pleased, but she did.”

“Oh.” Castiel presses his lips together, feeling like a fool. How did his parents neglect to tell him that? It doesn’t bode well for his relationship with Queen Mary. “I suppose I’m not as well-versed in foreign policy as I could be. I had just assumed…”

Dean waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it. The queen is stubborn, and has a tendency to do whatever the hell she wants. Plenty of people probably didn’t pay attention to what she did when she was young.”

“I suppose.”

“To answer your question, though, yeah.” The omega makes a vague gesture, hands spreading out helplessly. “If the queen announces that she’s going to join forces with Lucifer to sack Eden, her people aren’t going to object. People like me might be against it, but I’m not calling the shots.”

“Damnit.” Castiel pushes up to his feet, frustration quickly rising to dangerous levels. He begins pacing the length of the room as he things, the motion helping him to balance as he tries to think.

A war coming from the kingdom to the south, a likely allegiance between that kingdom and the one to the west; who is there left for Castiel to call for help? Eden dominates the westernmost coast of the continent. There is a small section of border to the northeast that he shares with another kingdom, but even knowing admittedly little about Queen Anna, he knows that she doesn’t have the resources to support Eden in a war. Middleton has the smallest army in the land, only equipped for the needs of the equally small kingdom. Calling for Anna would not provide Castiel with any aid.

His parents used to have a good relationship with King Crowley and Queen Meg, but he is on the opposite border, too far to call on a moment’s notice. Coming up from behind the Campbell—Winchester—army might be an advantage, but it might also be a curse. Crossing Campbell’s lands to reach that point wouldn’t be an easy start, Mary would likely be infuriated, and the army Crowley would lead would end up having to fight just to be able to reach the fight. The odds of it working out are slim to none.

The kingdom across the sea is more foreign to him than any other. Whoever may be in charge there may possibly be in a position to help, located geographically as they are, but what are the odds that someone so removed from this continent would put their resources on the line to help someone they hardly know? Even the Novak family name is not worth that much.

Which means that Castiel is alone in this. Eden has no allies.

If he weren’t an alpha, this wouldn’t have happened.

His pacing comes to an abrupt halt, and he digs his fingers into his hair. “I have to go. I need to get to the capitol, I need to tell—”

“Whoa whoa, hey!”

Dean is on his feet and placing his hands on Castiel’s shoulders in an instant, cutting the king off before he can finish his sentence. I need to tell my council. Dean grabs his attention, though, and his touch helps to calm the racing of Castiel’s heart. Omega steadiness, ever-reliable.

“You’re not going anywhere tonight,” Dean tells him, tone leaving no room for argument. “Night is falling, it’s too dark for you to get anywhere safely. And you need to calm down and think about this, okay? I know the thought of war coming to your kingdom is terrifying, but you need to be realistic right now.”

Now that it has been pointed out, Castiel notices that the light of the sun has faded significantly. Dean is right, unsurprisingly. It seems to be a talent of his. Castiel may be stressed, but pushing himself and his horse into a moonlit race back to the castle would be dangerous and stupid. Nothing will be changed if he waits until morning. He sighs, scrubs his palms across his face, then reluctantly nods. Where did the day go? How did it end like this?

He tries not to think about it any more. Problems for tomorrow.

“Yes. Yes, we can discuss this more in the morning. You need rest to heal. You can sleep in the bed.”

Dean shifts back a step, careful not to put too much weight on his twisted ankle, and frowns at Castiel. “Where will you sleep, then?”

The king answers him with a tight smile. “You’re injured, and my guest here. You can sleep in the bed. I will sleep elsewhere.”

Dean shakes his head. “I’m not your guest, I’m an intruder. You’ve already been better to me than you needed to be. And you said yourself that you came out here for a chance to relax. Now you’re telling me you’re going to sleep on the ground, too? Not gonna happen.”

There’s a hint of trademark omega steel in Dean’s eyes as he speaks, and it utterly captivates Castiel, to the degree that forming even a partial objection proves difficult. The king wets his lips. “I will not allow you to sleep on the ground, either.”

“Alright, fine.” Dean shrugs, then turns on his good foot and starts toward the bedroom. “Guess we’ll just have to share.”

That single sentence wipes Castiel’s mind clean. He doesn’t quite know what he expected to come from quarreling over their sleeping arrangements, but this certainly wasn’t it. He stands rooted in place until Dean reaches the bedroom door and turns back to him, an eyebrow raised. Thanks to the dimming light, not even the bandages around his middle could stop Dean from looking like a god made flesh.

“You coming?” Dean asks, and that’s all it takes for Castiel to overcome his trepidations and follow the omega into the bedroom.

For as strange as it should be, though, the actual process of climbing into bed with a man he doesn’t know is surprisingly easy. Dean maintains his existing state of partial undress, but while Castiel chooses to remove his outer tunic, he leaves his undershirt in place to ensure there is no indecency between them.

He is, after all, a gentleman.

They settle in without issue, quietly intimate despite having no intentions to be just that. Lying together in the dark simply has that power of influence.

It almost feels too intimate, though. On the other half of the bed, Dean seems tense, coiled like he’s ready to eject himself from the situation if it somehow advances in a way he doesn’t approve of. It won’t, of course—Castiel would never so much as think of trying something—but they are still strangers to one another, so Castiel cannot say he blames the omega.

Castiel is still a bit tense in his own right from his near freakout over the fate of his kingdom. As such, plucking a subject out of thin air to reset the mood and distract them both from the messes in their heads strikes him as the best course of action available to him. He lets the first thing in his mind fall from his lips, words spoken softly into the dark of the bedroom.

“What was it you were fighting with your mother about when you left home yesterday?”

He can’t see the omega’s reaction, but Castiel certainly hears the click of his throat when he swallows. “I didn’t think you caught that,” he comments.

Castiel lifts a shoulder in a shrug, the sheets rustling along with the movement. “I’m a good listener.”

“Yeah, good listener,” Dean shoots back, “I’m sure that’s it.” He pauses for another moment, then sighs, and turns sober. “We were having a disagreement. She wants something that I don’t want, and she refuses to even listen to me about it. She expects me to obey her like everyone else does, and I won’t. Not when it goes against everything I believe in. I don’t care how pissed off she might be about it, either. I don’t have to listen to her.”

There’s more venom laced into Dean’s words than Castiel would have expected, given how amicable everything exchanged between them—greeting notwithstanding—has been thus far. Castiel understands being passionate about certain subjects, as well, but considering specifically what it is that has Dean upset, whether he understands or not, the king has to frown.

“Is this something that is worth fighting with your mother over?”

The bed shakes as Dean rolls to face him. Castiel glances sideways at him, and holds still in the face of Dean’s glare. “It is, actually, yes. She’s being a selfish, controlling, bitch.”

Castiel winces at the harshness of that word. “You don’t think it could be worth hearing her out?” he tries. “This is something that is worth having a soured relationship? Would you feel the same if it became permanent?”

Dean is quiet for a long moment. “You… Think I should do what she wants?”

“I think not reconciling with your mother can be a terrible thing.”

There’s another length of silence, then the unmistakable shuffling of Dean rolling back onto his back. His previous tension does not return, so even if there is now something else weighing on Dean’s mind, Castiel cannot bring himself to regret it. His advice was genuine; he wouldn’t wish his own pains on anyone, let alone someone who seems as genuine and kind as Dean does.

Castiel settles himself in, readying himself to actually get to sleep. His thoughts are still churning, but that is not enough to stop himself from trying to relax.

It’s odd, sleeping in a bed with another person. Not bad, by any means, as the warmth from another body warms him to his core and the sound of Dean’s every breath is like a lullaby in the quiet of the room, but Castiel has not shared a bed with anyone since he was a boy, likely whenever he last shared this very bed with his father on one of their trips—and that, of course, was very different.

After a few minutes, long enough that Castiel had been certain that Dean had dropped off to sleep beside him, the omega sucks a breath in through his teeth, then speaks out into the silence.

“You really think I should make up with my mom, Cas?”

It’s not hard to understand why that subject has apparently stuck in Dean’s mind. Castiel lets the depth of the question sink in for a moment.

“I believe,” he begins slowly, carefully choosing his words, “that that depends on your relationship with her, and the relationship you want to have going forward. It is hard to say for sure without knowing what you are fighting about, but…” He shifts, adjusting the blanket that’s stretched over them both before confessing, “I lost my mother, and there were many issues between us that I regret never having the chance to resolve because of that. She was disappointed that I am an alpha, and I never even had the chance to take a mate to earn back some of her favor. Not that that would have fixed all of our problems, but it would have been something. As it is, there’s nothing I can do about the regrets I have, and that haunts me most of all. So my advice would be… Don’t let yourself be set up for any similar regrets. Nothing is worth that.”

Dean doesn’t respond to that right away. As the silence stretches on, Castiel begins to suspect he won’t get a reply at all, but just as the king is resigning himself to that fate, Dean lets out a quiet sigh.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he says. “I’ll talk to her when I get home. I’d rather not fight with her.” A beat passes, and he adds softly, “I’m sorry about your mom, Cas.”

The air leaves Castiel’s lungs all at once. “Thank you, Dean.”

Dean hums, but when he curls in on himself to make himself more comfortable, Castiel knows that’s truly the end of the conversation. He listens to the steady rhythm of the omega’s, monitoring it as he drops off to sleep. Just before Castiel drops off to sleep, he swears he hears Dean say, “Night, Cas.”

He’s too far gone to respond in kind, but it warms him nonetheless.

When he wakes in the morning, Dean’s scent is wrapped around him, but the bedsheets beside him are long since cold. He doesn’t need to investigate any more than that to know that the omega is truly gone. He’s surprised that Dean stayed for as long as he did, after all, and logically, Castiel knows that his departure is probably for the best. As much as he might already enjoy Dean’s company, even just after a few hours, he doesn’t have the privilege of time to further appreciate it any further.

Wherever Dean is from, wherever he is returning to, he will be better off there. If war is to come to Eden. Dean is best to stay away, and to stay safe. Being involved with Castiel to any degree would only jeopardize that safety.

And that is something that Castiel does not need more time with Dean to recognize that he refuses to do.

He lies in bed for longer than he should, breathing in Dean’s lingering scent until it begins to fade. It provides him time to avoid thinking about his fate. Time to fantasize about what other courses his life could have taken.

He makes a pledge to himself, then and there.

If he wins the war, the first thing he will do is locate Dean. He’ll search all of Campbell if he has to, but no matter what, he won’t let Dean slip away from him completely.

Once his resolve has been made, Castiel sends a silent prayer up to the gods. If he is going to win—to survive—he is going to need the support of the entire pantheon.

He has a feeling that Dean will be worth the effort.

#destiel #destiel fanfic #king!castiel #alpha!castiel #prince!dean #omega!dean #medieval au #saltnhalo #makenna's writing

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shewhotellsstories · 7 years

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Your Fave is Problematic Pt. 5: Not that kind of girl

Fair warnng this is critical of Sarah J. Maas’ writing.

Celaena from Throne of Glass unlike Clary doesn’t entirely reject traditional expressions of femininity. She is traditionally beautiful and she knows it. She enjoys frilly dresses, books, and swords alike. She also has a tendency to behave in an “unladylike” fashion. However, she does not like or trust other women:

“She never had many friends and the ones she had often disappointed her. Sometimes with devastating consequences, as she’d learned that summer with the Silent Assassins of the Red Desert. After that, she’d sworn never to trust girls again, especially girls with agendas and power of their own. Girls who would do anything to get what they wanted.” (Throne of Glass 166)

Adarlan, the Kingdom Celaena finds herself, in is a ruthless place. It’s filled with individuals with agendas and power. Those who inhabit the royal court are people who will go above and beyond to get what they want. Trusting anyone is the castle or the kingdom as a whole could cost a person his or her life. So despite the ways, she may have been hurt in the Red Desert, in this world she has as much to fear from men as women. The current king is responsible for the slaughter of her family. Her father figure exploited her abilities for years and groomed her to be a killer before she was even an adolescent. During her time in the mines, she witnessed undertakers sexually assault young women enslaved the way she was. So after a lifetime of trauma and betrayal why isn’t Celaena as weary of the men in this world as the women?

For Celaena, the girls she is pointedly not like are social climbing, boy obsessed, vindictive, empty headed, and for good measure, catty. “Are all of your royal women like that?” the princess said to Celaena in Eyllwe. “Like Kaltain? Unfortunately, Your Highness.” (Throne of Glass 160) This conversation takes place between Celaena and Princess Nehemia. Celaena hasn’t been inside the castle longer than Nehemia and being that she is being heavily guarded Celaena has not had the opportunity to interact with every woman and girl in the castle. Yet, after two negative encounters, one in which she calls the mentioned Kaltain Rompier a courtesan for expressing her interest in the prince she’s deduced that every woman in the castle is catty and empty-headed.

Celaena’s dislike for other women goes far beyond eye rolling. Early in the first book of the series from her balcony, she overhears a group of girls talking about her. One girl clearly jealous of Celaena’s arrival with the much sought-after Prince Dorian calls Celaena a harlot. She responds to this by dropping a flower pot off from her balcony onto them. Now it doesn’t actually hit any of them and it only succeeds in startling them, and this moment was clearly intended to be comical. It’s likely that many a girl or woman has dreamt of taking a similar course of action against the Regina Georges of the world, but a flower pot to the head could kill or seriously injure a person. And it should be mentioned that Celaena has a very short temper and that being trained for assassinship since the age of 8, with her the threat of violence is not idle as she could easily follow through. However, throughout the course of the book more than one character insults or provokes her, in those instances remembering that her freedom is at stake she manages to restrain herself. Unless it involves another girl.

Not all the women in the castle are catty and mean. Nehemia Ytger in particular. Nehemia is the crowned princess of Ellywe with a reputation for compassion and bravery. She is a symbol of hope for her people and upon first meeting her Celaena is in awe of her. Nehemia and Celaena at first bond over their mutual dislike of Kaltain Rompier an antagonist, whose story will be further explored in a later chapter, and the fact that Celaena is the only other person in the castle who can fluently speak Ellywe (Nehemia’s native language). Despite issues of dishonesty on both parts Nehemia and Celaena become very good friends. Nehemia and Celaena are two young women who for many reasons have to keep many secrets, yet in each other they find solace. After years of closing herself off, Celaena shares more of herself with Nehemia than she has allowed herself to share in years and is one of few people whose opinion she values. Their relationship falls into the trope of a heroine befriending a girl who’s been deemed an exception to the female gender.

Ultimately it’s Nehemia’s apparent murder and her devotion to her departed friend’s memory that causes Celaena to promise to see her friend’s kingdom freed. This sacrifice has implications that will be further examined later. Before her death, Celaena and Nehemia share a heated confrontation over Celaena’s unwillingness to challenge the king. When certain manipulations are brought to light, we get the message that she was in many ways the kind of girl Celaena had sworn not to trust.

Even when there are examples of female friendship, it seems that female relationships are inexplicably still tied up in men. Bonds are preserved or initiated not based on shared interests or experiences, but around men. Isabelle and Clary’s friendship is solidified when Isabelle learns that Clary saved her brother’s life and from her perspective spared her another painful loss. The friendship that Celaena and Lysandra develop provides an example of this too. Lysandra and Celaena spent their childhoods at odds with one another because of Arobynn Hamel (Celaena’s mentor). They are brought together the revelation that Arobynn had both girls’ first loves murdered. The desire to punish Arobynn ends the animosity between them when so many other things could have. The upbringing of an assassin and a courtesan are very similar in this universe. Clarisse, a madam, and Arobynn choose prospective students very carefully. They choose children who are parentless and homeless, groom them into their respective professions, and they force them to work off the costs of their education. But instead of bonding over having been exploited in a similar manner or the adult realization that Arobynn was playing them against each other, what ends their rivalry started over their competition for the approval of one man (Arobynn) is resolved because of the grief over two men.

It’s also worth noting that even in a matriarchal society presented, there’s no real friendship among the women, the Ironteeth Witches, that being immortal have centuries to bond. In addition to being literally man-eating, possessing superhuman strength, and ability to fly Ironteeth Witches are well known for their brutality. They raise their children to be heartless and cruel prizing these three things above all else: “obedience, discipline, and brutality.” (Heir of Fire 160)

The boys in the heroines lives also go out of their way to tell both them along with the audience that they’re “different.” Not from any other person they’ve ever met, but specifically from any other woman or girl they’ve ever met. In additional to strong female characters rejecting other women, they must also be defined and controlled by their relationships with men, a trope explored further in the next chapter.

#my senior thesis #anti sjm #anti sarah j maas #anti tog #internalized misogyny #feminism #internalized sexism #young adult fiction #celaena sardothien #nehemia ytger #lysandra #female friendshp #media literacy

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scotianostra · 5 years

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Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan was born on November 25th 1897 in Callander.

Known as Helen Duncan, in 1944, she became last person in the UK to be tried, convicted and imprisoned under the 1735 Witchcraft Act.

Hellish Nell, as she became known, was actually a medium, and by all accounts not a very good one, the way she earned her living was to hold seances and charge plenty for her services, but she was rumbled several times as a fraud.

Nor was she the last person convicted under the 1753 Act – now repealed and replaced with the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 – because in fact three other people were on trial alongside her and one of them was sent to prison, too. Yet somehow the “last witch” nickname has stuck, though records clearly show that some months after her trial and imprisonment in September 1944, one Jane York, 72, from Forest Gate, East London, was charged under the same act with seven counts of pretending to conjure up spirits of the dead. Incredibly, York was simply bound over for the sum of £5 to be of good behaviour for three years.

Ah, but that happened after D-Day, and there is no question when you examine the evidence that the authorities wanted to make an example of Helen Duncan and put her away for the summer of 1944.

From an early age her own family saw her as fey, and her mother was mortified when the child’s behaviour became impossible – she would predict doom and destruction for all sorts of people and was given to outbursts of hysteria.

Her early life was otherwise normal. She moved to Dundee and worked at the Royal Infirmary where she met Henry Edward Duncan, a wounded war veteran and a cabinet maker. They were married in 1916, and Duncan would eventually have six children by Henry who saw a great way of making money from his wife’s talents in clairvoyance – she read tea leaves and made predictions and earned a few shillings for doing so.

By 1926 she had become a fully-fledged medium giving seances during a time when spiritualism was all the rage. Moving to Edinburgh, her seances were soon the talk of the town – even the ghost of that local man turned Sherlock Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a great believer in spiritualism, was said to have materialised at sittings.

A prominent feature of her seances was her apparent ability to produce “ectoplasm” from her mouth during her trances when she was transformed into her spirit partners Albert or Peggy, a young girl whose voices “spoke” through Duncan. She had grown quite obese and the contrast between this 20-stone woman and the childish voices was part of the reason why people believed in her.

It was at a seance in January 1933 that Peggy emerged in the seance room and a sitter named Esson Maule grabbed her. The lights were turned on and the spirit was revealed to be made of a cloth undervest which used as evidence that led to Duncan’s conviction on the Scottish offence of fraud at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in May 1933.

The conviction does not seem to have harmed her career. Duncan was by then making a good living by conducting seances throughout Britain at which “the spirits of the dead were alleged to have appeared, sometimes talking to and even touching their relatives”.

Duncan began to get more famous but also began to be more scrutinized. Director Harry Price of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research examined her. He deemed her ‘ectoplasms’ to be made of cheese and eggs which she would regurgitate up. Price was less than impressed by what he felt was a show woman, exploiting people for money.

“Could anything be more infantile than a group of grown-up men wasting time, money, and energy on the antics of a fat female crook.”

During World War Two, Duncan lived in Portsmouth, the home of the Royal Navy. In 1941, the spirit of a sailor reportedly appeared at one of her seancés announcing that he had just gone down on a vessel called the Barham. HMS 'Barham' was not officially declared lost until several months later, its sinking having been kept secret to mislead the enemy and protect morale.

Unsurprisingly, Duncan's activities attracted the attention of the authorities and on 19 January 1944, one of her séances was interrupted by a police raid during which she and three members of her audience were arrested.

Duncan was remanded in custody by Portsmouth magistrates. She was originally charged under section 4 of the Vagrancy Act (1824), under which most charges relating to fortune-telling, astrology and spiritualism were prosecuted by magistrates in the 20th century. This was considered a relatively petty charge and usually resulted in a fine if proved. She was eventually tried by jury at the Old Bailey for contravening section 4 of the Witchcraft Act of 1735, which carried the heavier potential penalty of a prison sentence.

In particular, the medium and her three sitters were accused of pretending 'to exercise or use human conjuration that through the agency of Helen Duncan spirits of deceased persons should appear to be present'. Duncan was also charged with offences under the Larceny Act for taking money 'by falsely pretending that she was in a position to bring about the appearances of the spirits of deceased persons'.

The trial caused a media sensation and was extensively covered in the newspapers, many of which revelled in printing cartoons of witches on broomsticks. At one stage, the defence announced that Duncan was prepared to demonstrate her abilities in the witness box. This amounted to conducting a séance in the court while in a state of trance and the offer was refused.

Duncan was found guilty as charged under the Witchcraft Act and sentenced to nine months in Holloway Prison, London, but she was cleared of the other offences. She was the last person in Britain to be jailed under the act, which was repealed in 1951 and replaced with the Fraudulent Mediums Act following a campaign by spiritualist and member of parliament Thomas Brooks.

There are two common misconceptions about Duncan's conviction. The first is that she was the last person in Britain to be convicted of being a witch. In fact, the Witchcraft Act was originally formulated to eradicate the belief in witches and its introduction meant that from 1735 onwards an individual could no longer be tried as a witch in England or Scotland. However, they could be fined or imprisoned for purporting to have the powers of a witch.

The second misconception is that she was the last person to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act. Again this is incorrect. Records show that the last person to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act was Jane Rebecca Yorke in late 1944. Due to her age (she was in her seventies) she received a comparatively lenient sentence and was fined.

Additionally, it has often been suggested that the reason for Duncan's imprisonment was the authorities' fear that details of the imminent D-Day landings might be revealed, and given the revelation about the Barham it is clear to see why the medium might be considered a potential risk. Nonetheless, then prime minister Winston Churchill wrote to the home secretary branding the charge 'obsolete tomfoolery'.

Helen Duncan was released from prison on the 22 September 1944 and seems to have avoided further trouble until November 1956, when the police raided a private séance in Nottingham on suspicion of fraudulent activity. No charges were brought and shortly afterwards, on 6 December in the same year, the woman who is sometimes remembered as the 'last witch' died.

A campaign by her descendents to clear her name continues to this day.

Find our more about this strange tale here https://www.prairieghosts.com/duncan.html

#Scotland #Scottish #spiritulism #fraud #witch

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opalescentegg · 7 years

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I’m Easter-drunk and I wanna talk about medieval marriage conventions.

(Because no one saw that drunk history reblog and decided to ask me, “Hey, Opal, what are your views on the weirder parts of medieval marriage?” I’ll try not to misspell too many things---no promises. SO! Medieval marriage. Just how fucked up was it?? Very fucked up, of course. But for the purposes of this....discussion, I’ll be focusing primarily on the conventions found in medieval England. Why England? Well, for starters, it has an incredible history of legal documentation. Seriously, the legal courts (from local shire courts all the way up to the royal courts) recorded damn near everything, and for the longest time too! I know that many medieval kingdoms saw themselves as the stewards of the Roman legal (and sometimes cultural) tradition, but in medieval England that anctually worked out okay (if you allow the inclusion of the Anglo-Saxon wittan, which eventually became the modern jury, but I’m getting ahead of myself). Also, England was the only place where FEUDALISM ACTUALLY WORKED. Seriously! Everywhere else it was given plenty of lip-service but, well---in France you ended up with a few centuries of “local” counts that held more power than the fucking king; then there was the Holy Roman Empire (famously not holy, not Roman, and not and Empire, to paraphrase both Voltaire and one of my favorite university professors---it was also, generally speaking, a hot mess, even on a good day); and Spain (seven fucking centuries of Reconquista does not a stable feudal society make, so sorry); and Italy.....look, the city-states are awesome, but are also about as un-feudal as it gets, so they basically don’t count for anything outside of their economic, and occasionally Crusade-oriented, bubble. Alright, to be fair, most of that last bit had nothing to do with anything----I just really needed to get some of that off my chest. But the documentation thing is actually germane to this topic. First and foremost is the fact that the “terms” of marriage were pretty sketchy for a long, long, long time. One particular complaint that crops up again and again in English shire court rolls has to do with just how married different parties in a couple saw themselves. A lot of this had to do with the language of marriage vows, as well as how marriages were “performed” back before the.....oh, let’s say thirteenth century. For a long while, marriages were considered legitimate if both parties spoke some church-approved vows to one another, and did so with full sincerity and fear of God, etc., etc. The problem there was that which words were church-approved was not always clear. Oh, sure, someone might have the general gist of them, but not the particulars---and since most of the peasantry during the Middle Ages was illiterate, it’s not like they could just write it down for later. Also, the “approved” words tended to change when new popes, bishops, etc. were elected, and it often took a while for information about changes to vow templates (among other things) to trickle down. There was also a more pragmatic element to all of this. Namely, although churchmen certainly hoped that young lovers would seek out a church for the legitimization of their union, they were more than aware of the fact that some people either did not have that option (the nearest church being, perhaps, too far away) or would find themselves too swept up in passion to seek out the nearest house of God. That’s part of why the church-approved vows existed in the first place---the idea was that, in the absence of either the clergy or community witnesses of good standing, a couple could still make a vow before God and therefore legitimize a marriage (though it always helped if they sought out a priest afterwards, to really legitimize it; but, especially in the early Middle Ages, that wasn’t strictly necessary). This is where is gets weird. Also rape-y. So...consider yourself warned, I guess. First of all: THOSE VOWS. There was a lot of confusion regarding vows (part of why the church started insisting that all marriages take place inside a church, with clergy present---less easy to fuck it all up that way). It wasn’t unusual for a man to sort of half-vow to stay with a woman, then for them to consummate the relationship, then for the man to insist that they were not actually married while the woman (citing what she thought was a true vow) insisted they were. Interestingly, this could be brought before the court as a case of rape, seeing as how complete, explicit consent in a sexual act was not necessarily given by both parties----and, believe it or not, the medieval church was DEEPLY concerned with consent; despite any and all social and economic disparities, a marriage was supposed to be (ideally) a union between two equal souls, and that equality meant that both parties had to agree to said union by their own free will, lest they commit the grave sin of bearing false witness before God Himself (not to say that the parties could not be cajoled, coerced, or threatened into “consent” beforehand, only that no one could actually be dragged to the altar, wailing and weeping, without any clergyman worth his salt immediately declaring the pending union void due to lack of consent---no matter what Hollywood might show you.) The point is that the woman (or, occasionally, the man, because that did happen too) could sue for marriage. This was somewhat more of a concern for women, as it concerned their “virginity” or “virtue.” If a woman had been married and was widowed, chances were that she inherited some property from her late husband, and so could levy that on Ye Olde Marriage Market. The prospects for completely unmarried girls and women were more tenuous. Look. For this next part, you need to STOP THINKING LIKE A MODERN PERSON. It sucks, I know, but you must understand how medieval people thought. The short version is that: virginity was an economic commodity. That’s how both men and women thought of it. So, if a peasant girl with little in the way of a dowry, and who had never been married before (and therefore had no inheritance from a deceased husband) was looking to marry, her “virginity” was the best bargaining chip she had. Therefore, if some strapping beau had made what SHE considered vows of marriage before fucking her into the heath, she’d likely feel quite justified in dragging him to the local shire court and suing for marriage----because he had unambiguously “compromised her virtue,” and done so under false pretenses: grounds for a rape accusation, if ever there was one. And, oh, sweet children, it gets worse. I have seen comments on this here Tumblr claiming that medieval women who were victims of rape would be forced to marry their rapists. This is.......not untrue. I cannot and will not say that such things did not happen (especially if a child resulted of that forced coupling; depending on whose medical treatises you read, conception was sometimes viewed as occurring only if both parties involved had orgasms, the idea being that women released an “essence” at the moment of climax the same way men did----the upshot is that a few learned men, I hope, at least tried to make sex actually pleasurable for their wives; the downside is that pregnancy via rape could be cited as “evidence” that a female victim “””enjoyed,””” and was complicit in, her own assault.) However. Things get.....interesting, if not a little uncomfortable, when the situation is turned on its head. You see, women did marry their rapists. But some of them did it willingly----hell, some of them did it forcefully. This is where the “virginity” thing really comes into play. Because if a girl or woman who had successfully “defended her chastity” for all her life suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a sexual assault-----well, it wasn’t unusual for her to drag her attacker before the court and sue for marriage. But why the fuck would she want to????? I get it, trust me. Still, you must remember what I said about virginity earlier. For a peasant girl, her “virginity” was her only bargaining chip in the marriage market; a rape meant that bargaining chip was gone; sometimes things could be smoothed over by a hefty payment of money and/or livestock to the girl’s father/male guardian to “make up” for the loss of virtue and (by extension) family honor, but this was of course not always possible; and so the only way to maintain honor (and, therefore, economic security, and even economic viability in the marriage market, should her husband pass away) was to marry the rapist. Oh, and DON’T THINK for even a SECOND that there weren’t ladies literally hauling their assaulters into the courtroom and, basically, telling them to LIE IN THE BED THEY FUCKING MADE. Look. Just. NEVER think that medieval women, even the poorest and least of the lot, didn’t have power. It was a fucking shitty kind of power, but damn if they didn’t exploit it wherever they could. Case in point: when a rapist wasn’t really a rapist. Soooo, now you’ve heard of medieval women suing her rapist for marriage in order to preserve her social and economic standing! Well, guess what? Sometimes both of them faked it~!! Yeah.....this is where it gets super fucked up. Because sometimes a girl loved a boy. But her father didn’t like that boy, probably for economic reasons, and forbade her from consenting to marry him (because the father was aware of those prickly couples-only church vows, etc, etc.) So how’s a girl to get around this predicament? Why, by being “carried off” ( “rape” coming from an older word meaning “forceful seizure”) by some man (the lover) and his cohorts (his friends, there to watch his back and basically make sure no one comes to kill him after witnessing his “abduction” of the maiden, if anyone witnessed it at all). Then they spend a few days hanging out in the woods before the daughter comes home to her father and says something to the effect of: “Oh, wow, yeah, so this guy, he just grabs me right out of the fields and carries me off the the woods, while I’m kicking and screaming of course, and forces himself on me right there, totally against my will, but the good news is that he’s completely willing to marry me to like make amends or whatever, and oh by the way it just happens to be that guy I’m really into but that you totally hate, what’s a girl to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ” BUT. Because the woman could call it a rape, and even be backed up by witnesses (the lover’s friends----I know it seems weird, but in the Middle Ages witnesses (fuck, personal references) were basically the only currency outside of the gold florin that mattered worth a damn), she could “sue” for marriage, and end up marrying the man she’d wanted all along, no doubt to the consternation of her father. ................Yeah, the Middle Ages were pretty fucked up.

#history #what can i say i'm a chatty drunk #here's your latest unwanted essay #i should be a college student for life is all i'm saying

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/the-real-reason-why-aussie-banks-prefer-to-keep-us-in-the-dark/

The real reason why Aussie banks prefer to keep us in the dark

THE Royal Commission has rightly exposed extraordinary allegations of despicable actions from financial institutions who we thought we could trust.

There have been the allegations of bribes. The stories about fees for no service. The people being sold worthless insurance policies. The list goes on, and it’s going to get longer.

At the core of what banks have done is exploit the trust that we’ve all given them from a young age.

But how did we become so vulnerable and how have they managed to get away with it?

Related: Not our intention to sell ‘rubbish products’, life insurance firm claims

Related: Record class action launched against Australia’s banks

Related: Insurance caller signs up 26-year-old with Down syndrome in shocking calls

Among the reasons they’ve been able to pull the wool over their customers’ eyes, is that we’ve been raised in a country where so many of us never really got a decent financial education.

This lack of financial literacy has left many Aussies vulnerable to exploitation.

In our confusion, we’ve turned to the banks to help us make sense of the mortgages, superannuation, credit cards and insurance policies that we can’t quite get our heads around. And the banks saw us all coming.

They filled this knowledge vacuum with marketing programs for their own products and its been a toxic mix. As a result, not only have we handed our money over to banks, but we’ve handed over the way we learn about it too.

For many of us, letting banks teach us about money started with opening Dollarmite accounts in school as kids. They built trust by getting children to hand over their pocket money to space aliens, and we’ve fallen for the tricks ever since.

The bank’s mortgage calculator says I can borrow this much money? Great, I’ll have the lot. They’re offering me a credit limit increase? I’d better take it, just in case. They must really trust me with so much money! The kids want a guarantor to get a loan? Well I guess the guy at the bank said a lot of families are doing it.

One particular area of concern where it’s been shown that many of us just don’t get it, is when it comes to “interest-only” home loans.

Frighteningly, UBS estimates that one third of borrowers with these interest-only loans don’t actually realise they’re not paying off any of the principal. Even if they do, many more also don’t realise that the interest-only period usually only lasts a few years. Once it expires, repayments rocket up as the mortgagee suddenly has to start paying off the principal.

One couple, Ian and Michelle Tate told ABC’s 730 that after purchasing several investment properties, they discovered this the hard way.

“We weren’t actually told what the terms were, how long the loan was a going for.”

Unable to afford the rises, they face an uncertain financial future. Should the bank have explained things better? Of course it should. But our education and understanding of these issues can’t start the moment we walk into the bank and place our trust in them.

We need to be armed with a better financial know-how years before we’re sitting at the bank manager’s desk.

Another problematic area is when borrowers have massively underestimated their living expenses in order to qualify for higher loans.

They’ve been given the nickname “liar loans”.

UBS estimates that $500 billion has been leant by Aussie banks to customers who gave information that was “not completely factual and accurate” in order to get a mortgage.

Sometimes part of the problem has been trusting a tool that the banks use, a system known as the Household Expenditure Measure, or HEM, which tends to provide a lowball estimate. Customers who have leapt into big loans without providing genuine consideration of whether they can really afford them, or by trusting bank’s assurances have entered a world of trouble. The bright brochures always have pictures of happy families moving into their new home, never the pictures of a desperate family forced to move out, after defaulting on their mortgage.

One more area of concern is a lack of understanding when it comes to well-intentioned family members acting as guarantor on loans, often for their children. Many times it works out, and those for whom it does have much to be happy about.

But when it doesn’t work out, the consequences are enormous and care tear families apart. The Royal Commission heard one example of an elderly woman who got into enormous financial difficulty and almost lost her house after acting as guarantor for her daughter’s loan without understanding the consequences.

“I would have signed anything for her,” Carolyn Flanagan told the Commission.

Phil Khoury, who reviewed the Code of Banking Practice for the Australian Banking Association told the Commission that “it was very clear people were wanting to help family members or associates and getting themselves into a highly risky position they were not clear about.”

Again, many people just don’t understand what they’re getting themselves into and the banks exploit the knowledge vacuum. Yes, we need to come down hard on banks for being complicit in all this going on. Yes, we have to ask where the regulators were and why its taken a Royal Commission to reveal the entire picture of this mess.

But we also need to ask, what’s happened to our financial literacy as a community, and how can we improve it so we’re not so vulnerable to exploitation again.

Part of the answer is a better informed population in an environment where our education about money starts early, continues through life and comes to us independently, rather than through the marketing practices of banks themselves.

We need better structures in place so that we understand the complexity of loans, super and insurance long before we sign up and we need checks in place to be sure that we know the consequences before we make the leap.

In the same way that we promote education and support programs on mental health issues we need a broad spectrum approach to education and support for our financial health.

If we don’t look after the latter, many more will have problems with the former.

And most importantly, any education, awareness and financial literacy campaign needs to be thoroughly independent.

The banks have been the tutor and the salesperson for far too long.

Knowledge is power and if we all know more, we’ll all be better off.

There will be fewer people losing their homes when they default on their mortgages and less drain on the welfare system when things go pear shaped.

In a nutshell, there’d be fewer bankers getting rich because they know the system and fewer of ya getting poor because we don’t.

I think we’d all be happy to see that.

– Chris Urquhart is a freelance journalist. Follow him on Twitter: @chrisurquhart

Source: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/banking/the-real-reason-why-aussie-banks-prefer-to-keep-us-in-the-dark/news-story/6e5431ab5e6a6d7340995fd1ac1c1b9e

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funnythingshere0-blog · 6 years

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The real reason why Aussie banks prefer to keep us in the dark

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/the-real-reason-why-aussie-banks-prefer-to-keep-us-in-the-dark/