#you also have a hungarian name. how could you betray me like this.

[nadjasnandor]

this is the worst thing he's ever done

#the freddie shit and all the pillaging have got nothing on this #you also have a hungarian name. how could you betray me like this. #nandor #text #wwdits spoilers

[vladdocs]

Dracula and the Boyar Mane Udrische Original in Russian: http://samlib.ru/.../dracula_ziznvzrosl_1448_1456_boyarin... Annotation: Of all of Dracula's associates, it is Mane Udrische who is the most interesting figure. The fate of this boyar deserves to be told separately, and the reason is not only that it was Mane who helped Dracula to become prince for the second time. Before us is a very unusual person - the traitor, who suddenly came to his senses and corrected the consequences of his betrayal. It's not every day, you have to admit... To begin with, it is necessary to clarify how to call this boyar correctly, because in some books, they try to hide the unsoundness of his nickname and write "Udrische". All this is ridiculous because in the original Romanian letters of the 15th century, drawn in the Slavonic language, this boyar is listed as Udrische - without any "t" - so most likely, the nickname is based on the ancient Slavic verb "drill". (note: this google translated, so don't worry about his name, it will keep changing) There is no need to be surprised, because in the Middle Ages unsound names were quite common. Suffice it to recall one of the close associates of Ivan the Terrible, a high-ranking oprichnik, called Vasily Dirty. In the Service of Father Dracula The first information about the boyar with the nickname Udrishche is found in the charter, issued no later than 1445, so we can say with certainty - this man made a career thanks to Dracula's father. Mane Udrische is mentioned in the charter together with his brother Stoyan (aka Stoyka). Both brothers are named as participants in the princely council. Sometimes this charter is dated 1439-1440, which means that Mane Udrisce could have begun service not in the 1440s, but earlier - soon after Dracula's father became prince - or even earlier, that is, at a time when Dracula's father was living with his family in Sighisoara and was only a candidate for the throne. In the Middle Ages in Romania, it was customary for any candidate for prince to gather around him a handful of trusted men from the boyar milieu to help him conduct affairs concerning politics. These people had no money or connections, but they had useful talents, such as the ability to speak well, strategic thinking, the ability to write things down on paper, etc. If the candidate became prince, all his assistants, who until then had served for free, received positions at the court, land, and other favors. Among the confidants of Dracula's father who gathered in Sighisoara may have been Mane Udrisce, but even if he came to the service several years later, it can still be said that Dracula himself remembered "Uncle Mane" from his childhood. There is also no doubt that in the 1440s Mane Udrisce with his younger brother Stoyan though established in the princely council, but did not play a serious role there. The position of the two boyars can be shown by recalling the rules, according to which the medieval Romanian charters and edicts were composed. Not only that the text had to list all the boyars, who were present at the princely council on the day of the publication of the charter, but it was also required to keep the order of listing - the more noble person, the closer to the beginning of the list. That's why the fact that Mane Udrisce and his brother in the charter of Dracula's father are mentioned at the very end of the list says a lot. Betrayal Of course, Mane Udrische considered himself destitute, and he was not willing to accept that. He wanted to continue his career, and brother Stoyan probably held the same opinion, but both brothers understood that it was unlikely to expect new favors from Father Dracula. Then came the memorable events of December 1446, when the Hungarian Janos Hunyadi came to Romania with an army, had Dracula's father beheaded, and installed Vladislav on the vacant throne. Mane Udrische supported the Hungarian protégé, and did him some very valuable service, because Mane's influence in the princely council increased dramatically. In all Vladislav's letters

where Mane Udrische is mentioned, this boyar is always the first in the list of council participants. He was the last, and now he is the first! Such changes do not just happen! As for Stoyan, he became the head of the cavalry along with another boyar - Dimitar. Awakening of Conscience With the change of prince, Mane's career ambitions were satisfied. Manet became the most influential boyar in the council, and a higher position simply did not exist. This man's thoughts were no longer preoccupied with material concerns and, quite naturally, switched to the spiritual. In the letter of January 2, 1450 it says that Mane Udrische gives a watermill to the monastery called Kozya. What caused such generosity is not specified, and this is quite strange, because the same letter tells in great detail the story of how the boyar Kazan and his brother Radu decided to make a gift to the monastery. Kazan and Radu wanted abbot Joseph to include their entire family, namely their father Radul, their mother Stana, Kazan and Radu themselves, and their late brother Sahak, in the "monastery memorial". Kazan and Radu asked for "eternal remembrance" for themselves and their kin, and in return they gave a watermill and "a place under the cell" so that one of the monks could live near the mill and watch over it. In the charter it is reported that Kazan and Radu have asked sovereign Vladislav to certify this agreement between them and the monastery, so that the next abbot will remember who should be remembered - in general, a lot of details, and in this heap somehow strange looks a single phrase that another watermill donates boyar Mane Udrische. One gets the impression that the idea of the donation occurred to Mane suddenly when, while attending the council, he heard Kazan and Radu's request. "Well, and from me, add the mill," probably said Mane, who suddenly wanted to do a good deed, but what sins he sought to atone for with this beneficence, he did not say. To Dracula for forgiveness Apparently, the gift of the mill did not help much, and his conscience continued to plague Manet, so that no later than 1455 he began negotiations with Dracula. That the initiative in these negotiations came from Manet and not from Dracula is almost certain, for we know how Dracula felt about Janos Hunyadi, the murderer of his father - a reconciliation never took place. So why would Dracula seek reconciliation with any of the traitor boyars? Dracula had no reason to negotiate with Mane Udrische, but Mane had a reason - an unsettled conscience. I want to remind that this boyar got into the princely council thanks to Dracula's father, and although after that Mane's career growth slowed down, it was not a sufficient reason for the careerist to condemn Dracula's father to death. Probably in 1446 Manet Udrisce thought otherwise, but after 8 or 9 years, having received all the material benefits he wanted, he changed his mind and decided to rectify the consequences of his long-time betrayal - to return the Romanian throne to the rightful heir, i.e. Dracula. From a purely practical point of view, it was more advantageous for Mane not to do anything, because the risk was serious: 1) Who knows how Dracula would behave at the first meeting - maybe just seeing a traitor, would cut him down and would not listen to anything; 2) Vladislav could have found out about the negotiations with Dracula, and then Mane would have been executed; 3) The coup d'état could have failed, in which case Mane would also have paid with his head. And yet this boyar decided to act - he sought out Dracula, who was at that time in Moldavia or Transylvania, repentantly bowed his head to him and offered help. In the service of Dracula. The fact that negotiations really took place is not doubtful, because of all the boyars who betrayed father Dracula, Mane Udrisce and his brother Stoyan were the only ones mentioned in the letters of Dracula himself. The other traitors (12 people) are not mentioned by Dracula even once. They are not mentioned in the letters of subsequent sovereigns. These

boyars simply disappeared, and what happened to them is clear - they were put on a stake. So why did Mane Udrishe and Stoyan escape this fate? There is only one answer - they helped Dracula to regain power and told about the details of the boyar conspiracy, which could not be found out by studying the archives. It is also important that Mane Udrisce with his brother Stoyan repented in time, because it is obvious that in the autumn of 1456, when Dracula had already overthrown Vladislav, the remaining boyar traitors also tried to beg for forgiveness. The 12 previously unrepentant conspirators were shedding tears and saying they were sorry, but it was too late. Mane Udrische and Stoian repented beforehand - no later than 1455 - and therefore survived. Secret agent for the recruitment of the boyars It is not known how Mane's conversation with Dracula took place when the boyar came to the son of his former sovereign for the first time, but the outcome is known. Dracula agreed to accept help from Mane, but set a condition: "I will no longer forgive any of my father's traitors - I forgive only you and your brother - so if you pull any of Vladislav's boyars to my side, pull only those who have recently entered his service and have not stained themselves with betrayal. Manet returned to the Romanian court and began to conduct "subversive activities" there - he spoke with several boyars from the princely council, offering to go into the service of Dracula. As Mane had promised his new lord, he spoke only to the new boyars, and eventually recruited several. These boyars are mentioned in Dracula's letters of commendation: 1) Kazan Sahak, the same one who in 1450 gave a watermill to the Kozia monastery, and he got his nickname from the name of his deceased brother. Some researchers write that Kazan served as head of the Chancellery of Prince Alexander Aldea in 1431-1436, as well as his father Dracula in 1445, but in the charters of those times Kazan is mentioned without a nickname, so it is likely that the head of the Chancellery was another boyar with the same name, and Kazan Sahakov to Vladislav did not serve anyone. 2) Stan Naegrev - the son of boyar Naegrev, who served as head of the cavalry of prince Dan. Stan Naegrev served no one before Vladislav. 3) Duka - he descended from a Greek family. He served no one before Vladislav. The subversive activities of Mane continued until the spring of 1456, and then the preparation for a coup d'état began. In a letter dated April 15, 1456, drawn up shortly before Vladislav was overthrown by Dracula, there remains evidence that Mane Udrische was not present at the council that day. Instead of Mane, his son Dragomir Udrisce sat there, and the boyar himself apparently went to Dracula in Transylvania to give an account of the work done and to discuss all the details of the impending seizure of power one last time. Further Fate Dracula came to power in August 1456, and the boyar Mane Udrische is mentioned for the last time in a charter dated April 16, 1457. His younger brother Stoyan is mentioned for the last time on September 20, 1459. Researcher M.Cazacu in his book "Dracula" hints that these boyars disappeared from the charters because they were executed, but it is unlikely that Cazacu is right. One must not forget that Mane Udrische and his brother in the second half of the 1450s were already in a respectable age. Both were under 60 years old, and Dracula was a vigorous ruler, constantly going on campaigns, so it is likely that the elderly boyars simply could not cope with the pace and decided to retire. Another argument for a peaceful departure has to do with the fate of Mane's estates. If Dracula had executed this boyar, he would have confiscated his land, but this did not happen. It is known that Mane's son Dragomir inherited the estates. Dragomir is not mentioned in Dracula's charters, but is mentioned by Radu the Beautiful, as well as by subsequent sovereigns.

#Vlad voda #Vlad Tepes #Vlad Dracula #vlad the impaler #Ladislau Dragkwlya #history #wallachia #romania #vlad dracula tepes #article #Dracula and the Boyar Mane Udrische

[latter-day-saint-nick]

I heard that the BBC Dracula adaptation written by Stephen Moffat was really bad, and it made me curious to see just how bad it was, so I decided to watch it for myself. It was not one of my smarter decisions.

But in order that my suffering won’t have been completely in vain, I’ll recap it here for those who are curious as well, to spare you the pain of actually having to watch it. You’re welcome!

Let me describe the viewing experience as best I can.

I have a BBC iPlayer account, so I could watch the show legally. My wife tells me to pirate it instead to avoid giving Moffat the views. She is right. I click on the first episode.

Episode 1

We start with a framing device of a severely ill Jonathan Harker in a Hungarian monastery, telling his story to two nuns. I do not hate this framing device. The original novel was told through diary entries, newspaper articles and letters, so having different characters tell the story of what happened to them to others is a neat way to adapt this type of literary device. The dialogue quickly takes a turn for the ridiculous, though, when one of the nuns, Sister Agatha, asks Jonathan in a silly accent if he had sexual intercourse with Count Dracula. Because queerbaiting? Is vampirism an STD now?

Still, the show tricks us into thinking that it’s going to be a fairly straightforward adaptation of the story as Jonathan recounts how he arrived at the castle, met the Count and became his prisoner. Later, this will turn out to be a sweet, sweet lie, but I don’t know that yet. At first, Dracula looks about a hundred years old and has a bad Romanian accent, but the more he feeds on Jonathan, the younger he gets, and the more refined and posh his British accent. Because this Dracula does not just absorb his victims’ lifeforce but also their knowledge. I find that stupid.

Dracula says the famous “I do not drink... wine” line. Badly. Still, the reference is mildly cute the first time. He repeats the line several times throughout the show, and it gets progressively less funny each time.

Jonathan reads a letter from his fiancee, Mina. In it, she jokes about how she’s going to sleep with all the cute men in the neighbourhood while he’s gone, as well as the adorable bar maiden, if she needs some variety. I sigh as I realize that this is probably what Moffat considers good queer representation.

At one point Jonathan talks about falling asleep, and Sister Agatha proceeds to ask him if he had dirty dreams about his fiancee. She persists with the question, even after Jonathan tells her that that’s private. It doesn’t seem like a pertinent question, but I guess Sister Agatha is just a pervert. Or maybe Moffat is.

Jonathan finishes his story about how he escaped from the castle. He bemoans that he can’t go home to England, because he is such a changed man and he can’t even remember his fiancee’s face. Sister Agatha reveals that the other nun with her is actually Mina. What a tweest! Apparently even before Jonathan told his story, Sister Agatha managed to figure out that he is English, tracked him down, found his fiancee and had her brought over to Budapest. The show is clearly hoping that the unexpectedness of this twist is going to distract us from the fact that it makes no damn sense at all.

It also turns out that Jonathan has become a vampire, and the sight of blood nearly makes him attack Mina. Of course, being one of the main heroes, he was never turned in the novel, not that that matters.

At this point Dracula shows up at the gates of the monastery in the form of a wolf. And I don’t mean that he shapeshifts like an Animorph. He is literally inside the wolf’s body, and he claws his way out of it, emerging at the gates naked and covered in wolf blood. I really don’t know why.

He and Sister Agatha proceed to have a sass-off. My wife makes fun of the dialogue by saying that it’s basically this:

“I’m a badass sister!” “Yeah, but I’m Dracula!” “Yeah, but I’m a badass sister!” “Yeah, but I’m Dracula!” “Yeah, but I’m a badass sister!” “Yeah, but I’m Dracula!” “Yeah, but I’m a badass sister!” “Yeah, but I’m Dracula!”

By the time my wife has finished the joke, the banter is still going on. It feels like it’s never going to end.

The Mother Superior tells the nuns to arm themselves. My wife starts wondering if we’re actually watching a Mel Brooks movie. Also, Sister Agatha is revealed to be Van Helsing. This is not as meaningful as the show seems to think it is, as she and Dracula haven’t had any past encounters. So it’s really just, “Oh, she’s actually a gender-swapped character from the book. That’s cool, I guess.

Finally, Dracula slinks off because he can’t get inside the monastery without being invited. He manages to find Jonathan, now fully a vampire, at a window and gets him to invite him in. You’d think this would be the end of the stupidity, but clearly I haven’t suffered enough yet.

Jonathan finds Mina and Sister Agatha. Sister Agatha tries to fend him off, since he’s, you know, a vampire and tried to feed off of Mina earlier. Mina, however, believes that the power of love can save him, so she approaches him. I point out that in the book, Mina was characterized as being very intelligent, not that that matters. As it turns out, it wasn’t Jonathan at all, but Dracula, wearing Jonathan’s skin, which he rips off, like something out of Hellraiser. He never uses this power again in the rest of the series.

The episode ends with him attacking the two women. Against my better judgement, I decide to watch the next episode, because while this was bad, it was bad in a fascinating way. Almost like something Tommy Wiseau would make. Okay, maybe not. Tommy Wiseau as Dracula would have been a lot more entertaining.

I click on the next episode.

Episode 2

We start with another framing device. This time Dracula is telling the story of his voyage to London to Sister Agatha while they’re playing chess. See, it’s symbolic, because they’re having a game of wits where they’re trying to outsmart each other! Okay, to be honest, I have no idea what Sister Agatha is trying to do. I guess Moffat is too clever for me.

Sister Agatha asks Dracula how he got to England. He tells her that he went on a ship. Inexplicably, this is not the end of that, but he proceeds to tell her about everything that happened on the ship, including conversations between characters that he wasn’t there for. Maybe he was listening at their doors.

I sense impending doom when I realize that this boat journey is going to take up the entire episode. In the book, it only took up a few pages, not that that matters.

Rather than staying in his coffin in the hold during the day, as he does in the book (not that that matters), Dracula mingles with the passengers. When Sister Agatha expresses surprises at that, he comments on how stupid it would be to stay in his coffin in the hold. You know, more adaptations should have lines about how stupid the source material is. It makes you look so smart.

How does Dracula avoid the sunlight during the day, though? Never fear, he simply spits out a pall of fog that surrounds the ship at all times and blocks out the sunlight, because I guess that’s a power he has. Like his wearing of other creatures’ skin, it’s not one he ever uses again, though. He tells Sister Agatha, “Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you.” Because referencing songs from a hundred years in the future is apparently also a power that he has.

We are introduced to the other passengers, who are a surprisingly diverse bunch. I can’t get too excited about this, however, as I know that they are all going to die. One of the passengers is an Indian doctor who has encountered the undead in the past. That would probably make for a more interesting story than this one, but then again, I don’t really want Moffat to tell it, so I don’t know why I’m complaining.

Dracula starts killing off crew and passengers one by one. I keep expecting the show to cut back to the chess game, with him telling Sister Agatha, “To make a long story short, I killed them all.”

The passengers begin to fear a killer on board, but never seem to suspect Dracula, who plays them against each other. They also discover that they’re all travelling to England at the behest of the same mysterious benefactor, who of course is Dracula, using a pseudonym. Because he hand-picked all of them for the special qualities he would gain from drinking their blood or something. It is way more convoluted than it needs to be. Is Moffat capable of writing a protagonist who is not an arrogant white man too clever for everyone around him? We may never know...

Throughout the episode there’s references to an unseen invalid staying in cabin 9. It turns out to be Sister Agatha, whom Dracula has been steadily draining. The chess game is just a hallucination that he induces in her while he drinks her blood. What a tweest!

Just like in the previous episode, the framing device is dropped about two-thirds through and we are now seeing the story in present tense. Dracula frames Sister Agatha as being the mystery killer, but she manages to reveal that he is a vampire just as she is about to get hanged by the crew. They manage to fend him off, but not before a few more characters die by being incredibly stupid.

One of the characters is a young English lord who just got married to a rich heiress, but is secretly having an affair with an African man pretending to be his servant. I can never remember his name, so I call him Gaylord (I’m allowed to make jokes like this). Gaylord is Dracula’s new business partner and he betrays the rest of the humans, because he thinks Dracula is his BFF and values his skills as a businessman. As it turns out, Dracula only chose Gaylord because of his wife’s wealth. Now that he has killed her, her money goes to Gaylord, and by draining Gaylord, it goes to Dracula. I was unaware that being someone’s business partner entitles you to inherit all their money after their death, so I assume that Dracula acquires people’s money by drinking their blood, just like he acquires their skills and attributes.

Sister Agatha assumes command over the ship, using her divine nun powers, I guess, and she prepares for Dracula to return and finish off the rest of the humans. I get bored and finish a chapter in a book I was reading earlier.

Eventually Sister Agatha blows up the ship to prevent Dracula from ever reaching England, which they keep referring to as “the New World”. That’s not what that term means, but who cares at this point? Dracula, encased in one of his boxes, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, only to break out and walk the rest of the way to England along the ocean floor. There he is greeted by cars and helicopters and someone who looks like Sister Agatha, but wearing modern clothes. What a tweest!  Did it take him a hundred years to break out of his casket, or is this like The Village, where we were in modern times all along? The episode ends here, so I guess I’ll have to watch the next one to find out.

I am curious to see this stupidity unfold, but not sure I can take any more right now. But my wife applies some peer pressure, and I put on the final episode. Pray for me!

Episode 3

The previous two episodes were pretty bad, yes, but mostly in a way I can handle and even laugh at. They have not at all prepared me for what I am about to witness.

This episode doesn’t have a framing device, which makes me wonder why we bothered with those in the other two.

The Sister Agatha clone turns out to be her great-grandniece, Zoe. So it’s like Back to the Future where people keep having relatives who look exactly like them. Except Back to the Future is a comedy, and this is meant to be taken seriously.

Dracula escapes from the Anti-Dracula Brigade on the beach and breaks into some poor woman’s home after killing her husband and stuffing him in the fridge. I’m not sure if this is meant to be funny or scary. It ends up being neither. Dracula kills the woman as well, after lecturing her for taking all her modern-day luxuries for granted. Social commentary, I guess?

We are introduced to Seward, a young medical student who makes up for his lack of personality with a creepy obsession with his friend, a vapid, selfish party girl. Yes, this is Lucy Westenra. I found her a likable character in the novel. Not that that matters. I call this Lucy a slut, only for Lucy to make a comment on slut-shaming, which makes me feel bad. The irony is that I’m pretty sure we’re meant to see Lucy as slutty and shallow.

We’re also introduced to Quincey. He’s a douchebag. In the novel he was kind, brave and heroic. Not that that... whatever.

Seward is contacted by the Anti-Dracula Brigade, which is actually called the Jonathan Harker Foundation, but I prefer Anti-Dracula Brigade. It was formed by Sister Agatha’s relatives and Mina Murray with the goal to find Dracula and then to keep him alive to study him. I honestly would have thought that Mina would want Dracula dead, after he terrorized her and murdered her fiance, rather than sticking him in a cage for science, but it’s not like character motivations have to make sense. After all, this is Moffat, bitch!

Van Helsing explains to her students that Dracula was in suspended animation for over a hundred years at the bottom of the ocean until she accidentally woke him by sticking her fingers in his mouth, which allowed him to draw blood and be renewed. She doesn’t explain why her Anti-Dracula Brigade consists of medical students, rather than experts in their fields. She also doesn’t explain why he didn’t grow old again, like he was at the start of episode 1, after not having had anything to eat for over 120 years.

Dracula has been caught and is contained in a cell at the Brigade’s headquarters. I honestly don’t remember how that happened. Did they forget to show us that or did I just black out? Both seem like likely options. The cell contains what I assume is a Kindle, to keep Dracula occupied. Van Helsing comes to talk to him, and he scoffs at the idea of a woman being in charge. She tells him that he slept through the women’s rights movement. I am paralyzed with fear that Moffat is going to attempt to explain women’s rights to me. Why would God test me like this? My relief knows no bounds when the characters change the subject immediately. God is good after all.

This reprieve doesn’t last long. My faith is once again tested when I am forced to witness one of the most idiotic scenes I have ever had the misfortune to watch on screen. It begins when Renfield is brought in. I know that a Dracula adaptation turning silly when Renfield is introduced is not unusual, but Moffat always strives to exceed expectations of ridiculousness. In this version Renfield is Dracula’s lawyer, working for the same firm that he hired 120 years ago when Jonathan was their representative. They have been Skyping, using what I thought was a Kindle, but turns out to be a proper tablet. It wasn’t supposed to be connected to the internet, but all Dracula had to do was guess the WiFi password. Which was his own name.

I cannot deal with this. This scene has broken me. I am a broken man. I cry out in anguish and despair, for what else can I do? My wife, who has gone to the kitchen to get herself a drink, comes to see if I am okay. I am not. I may never be okay again. Moffat has marred my soul forever.

Renfield argues that the Anti-Dracula Brigade is keeping Dracula against his will and that he hasn’t actually done anything illegal, so they are forced to set him free. On the way out, Dracula finds Seward’s phone and uses it to meet up with Lucy. There’s also something about Van Helsing having cancer and drinking some of Dracula’s blood in the hopes that it will cure her. I don’t really care about this, but it’s important to the plot.

There’s a time-skip of a few months. Lucy is engaged to Quincey, but still sneaks off regularly for dates with Dracula where she lets him feed off her. I suspect that this is Moffat’s attempt at making the character more feminist. You see, instead of just passively being attacked by Dracula in her sleep at night, she actively goes out to find him and chooses to be drained by him! This does not make her a better character. Really, it just makes her seem stupid as well as callous, since she doesn’t give a damn about any of Dracula’s other victims who don’t give him consent to drink their blood.

There is a very annoying reference to the novel when a vampire child calls Lucy “Bloofer Lady”. Like the wine line, it sounds more stupid every time the show repeats it. Also, the vampire kid shows up in one more scene before Dracula kills him. Glad he served a point.

Dracula finally drains Lucy. Her family holds a funeral, thinking that she’s dead. But as she’s been infected with vampirism, she is fully conscious while she is being cremated. So we get to watch her burn alive, screaming in pain all the while. Hey, did I mention that Lucy is played by a black actress? Remember in season 10 of Doctor Who when something terrible would happen to Bill Potts every other episode, like having a hole shot through her chest or being turned into a Cyberman? Now, I’m not saying that Moffat enjoys having horrifying things happen to his black female characters... but I’m not not saying it either.

Lucy escapes from her coffin and takes revenge on the crematorium workers. During this scene we only see her reflection, in which she looks normal, which makes it painfully obvious that this is only how she sees herself, and in reality she’s going to be revealed to be horribly burned. The show plays coy with this for an annoyingly long time.

Van Helsing, still dying of cancer, breaks out of the hospital with help from Seward and they go visit Dracula in his flat. Yes, Dracula has a flat. It’s not hidden or anything. It’s even listed in the phone book. Look, it’s almost over, so who cares?

Lucy shows up as well and after more pointless build-up, we finally get to see her real appearance, which, surprise, surprise, is horribly burned. She is oblivious to this, because vampires’ reflections are weird in a way that is never really explained. Dracula sees himself in the mirror as old and decaying, whereas Lucy sees herself as being still pretty. I don’t know what it means, apart from that Moffat doesn’t understand vampire mythology and feels that it needs to be made more interesting.

Seward encourages Lucy to take a selfie, which reveals her true face. Why the rules for cameras are different from the rules for mirrors is not explained either. Lucy breaks down crying because being ugly is a fate worse than death. Seward tells her that he still wants to kiss her, because I guess this was meant to be the message? Something about true love? She begs him for death. They kiss and he mercy-kills her. In the book the people who loved Lucy had to kill her to save her immortal soul and to protect the world from the monster she had become, which has a bit more emotional resonance than saving her from having to be ugly for eternity. But, you know. NOT THAT THAT MATTERS.

Van Helsing sends Seward away for her final confrontation with Dracula, because she has him figured out. Having the memories of her great-aunt Agatha within her, which she gained from drinking Dracula’s blood, which he gained from drinking Agatha’s blood, she exposits that Dracula isn’t actually harmed by sunlight or crosses. He just fears death more than anything and so he doesn’t like the sight of the cross which represents someone being willing to die. Okay, but that doesn’t explain his aversion to sunlight! What does that have to do with death? She also spouts off some nonsense about how his fear of death originated from being the weakest in a family of noblemen and soldiers. Um, Moffat? You do realize that Dracula is based on Vlad the Impaler, right? Someone who was known for, well, impaling his enemies? But, again, it’s almost over, so let’s just get on with it!

Van Helsing tells Dracula that because she is dying of cancer, she is accomplishing the one thing he is afraid of doing, which somehow convinces him to kill himself by drinking her cancerous blood, which is poison to him. To make this experience painless for her, he creates an illusion for her where they’re, um, tenderly making love? What the hell? Is that what all their previous scenes were leading up to? Okay, if you say so.

Wait, is that the real reason why Moffat made Van Helsing a woman? Screw you, Moffat! Screw you so much!

Credits roll. This ends one of the worst television viewing experiences I’ve ever had. I go on YouTube to rewatch Sherlock Is Garbage, and Here’s Why. It is deeply cathartic.

#bbc dracula #flipping moffat

[ceealaina]

Title: Standing Face to Face Collaborator Name: ceealaina Card Number: 3088 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Anger Issues Ship: Gen Rating: Teen Major Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Civil War Fix-It, Making Up Summary: When Tony gets an emergency call from Nat after the events of Civil War, he doesn't hesitate to drop everything to help.

... He's never trusting Natasha again. Word Count: 2792

Tony trudged into the workshop, exhausted after another round of Accords meetings. He was done with the entire world -- except for Rhodey, who was beautiful and wonderful and had never betrayed him -- and this close to calling the whole thing quits. He was ready to lose himself in some War Machine upgrades, let that numb his mind for a bit, when his eyes fell on the flashing light on the landline tucked in the corner. 

“Shit,” he hissed, exhaustion suddenly gone. “Friday, baby? Stealth mode, please.” 

“You got it, boss,” she told him, the windows already going opaque. 

The thing was, the tale of the Avengers breakup had been slightly exaggerated. Sure, Steve and his gang of merry assholes were, technically, on the run and, even more technically, no longer classified as Avengers. But they were still out there, actively fighting crime to their heart’s content. Which Tony knew, because he had regular check-ins with them to see if things were okay and to keep them apprised of the Accords situation. He was their ‘in case of aliens’ emergency back up, he sent updates for all their equipment, and once a week -- give or take -- he and Rogers would get into a yelling match over the phone, and usually end up hanging up on each other. They were still his team, and Tony would do anything required to help them (the fact that anyone anywhere thought Steve was capable of breaking into the Raft, without leaving a trace, on his own, was frankly insulting) but he was also about ready to dropkick Captain Asshole off a very tall building. 

But regardless of his personal feelings for Steve, if the emergency line was ringing, he was going to answer it. 

Natasha’s voice was ruhed and harried, sounding like she was trying to keep from being heard. “Tony? Budapest. Right away,” she told him. There was a burst of static, and she gave him a set of coordinates, and then the line went dead. 

“Shit,” Tony muttered, already suiting up. “Friday? Cancel… Everything.” 

“On it, boss,” she reported as he took off into the sky. 

***

The coordinates that Natasha had given him took Tony to some hole-in-the-wall local bar so far on the outskirts of town that he didn’t know if it could really be considered Budapest anymore. He hesitated for the briefest of seconds, but he knew better than to think Natasha might have made a mistake. She hadn’t given him a stealth warning so, still fully wrapped in the armour, he stepped through the front door. 

The bar was dimly lit, a few tables scattered around the room, all sitting empty. There were only two occupants inside: The bartender, who didn’t look up, and a drunken patron half-slumped over the bar, who did. 

“Ayyy!” he cried, holding up his stein and sloshing beer over the counter. “Iron Man!” A moment later he was slumped over the bar again. 

Tony popped his faceplate up, blinking incredulously at the scene before him. “Uh… Okay.” 

The door to a back room opened then, and Clint sauntered out, a beer bottle in hand. “Bout time you got here,” he drawled, and Tony stared back at him. 

“Some emergency, Barton.” 

Clint shrugged, not even looking embarrassed. “Had to get you here somehow,” he replied, and before Tony could ask why, he was opening the door again to stick his head back into the room behind him. “Hey guys!” he hollered. “He’s here!” 

Tony stared as Nat filed out through the door, followed by an extremely put-out looking Sam and then, finally, Steve. Tony took a tiny bit of solace in the fact that apparently Steve hadn’t been told what was going on either. He stopped at the sight of Tony, taking up the entire doorway, and his eyes narrowed. 

“What’s he doing here?” 

Tony resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at him. “Yes. What am I doing here?” he asked instead, feeling increasingly more bewildered. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to, and he didn’t like it. The last time he had been this confused was when Rhodey had kissed him back in college, and while that had turned out pretty fantastic, he wasn’t holding the same hope here. 

Natasha and Clint shared one of those freaky spy twin stares, having an entire conversation without words, but it was Natasha who finally spoke. “So the thing is, Clint and I and… Well everyone, really. We’re sick of your shit.” 

Beside her, Clint nodded sagely, folding his arms across his chest in that way that he thought was supposed to be impressive (it was, the man had biceps for days, but Tony wasn’t going to tell him that). “The two of you,” he said, gesturing between Tony and Steve. “You can’t go five minutes without having a screaming fest. It’s fucking annoying.” 

“So you’re going to sit here, with Sam, and have couples therapy until you work out your anger issues with each other,” Natasha continued.  

Sam drew in a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I feel obliged to mention for the millionth time that I’m not actually a therapist. What the fuck even?” 

“You’re the closest thing we have!” Natasha and Clint replied in unison. It sounded like a well-worn argument. 

“And I don’t have anger issues,” Steve mumbled, sounding petulant. The four of them turned to stare at him incredulously and he shifted a little uncomfortably, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Okay, maybe I have a bit of a temper,” he admitted. “But I don’t see how this is going to help anything.” 

“Not to mention the potential security risk,” Tony added, with a pointed look at the bar. 

“Yes!” Steve practically shouted, clearly looking for an excuse to get out of this. “Exactly.” 

“Don’t worry about them,” Natasha said, waving off their concerns. “They don’t speak English.” 

“And see?” Clint added. “You’re getting along better already.” 

Tony rolled his eyes. “This is bullshit, and I can’t believe you hauled me all the way out here for this. I’ve got forty million actual things to do, so... I’m going. It’s been, uh… Great catching up?”

“Uh-uh.” All of a sudden Nat was holding a gun in each hand. “We’re serious about this, Tony. You’re gonna fix this thing between you.” 

Tony blinked at her. “Are you… Are you threatening me?” 

Natasha just shrugged, arching a brow at him. And the thing was, Tony was pretty sure she wouldn’t really shoot him, but he couldn’t say it with 100% certainty -- he was still wearing the armor. He met her gaze for a long moment, trying to call her bluff, but she didn’t flinch and Tony sighed, feeling his entire body sag. 

“Fiiiiine,” he said, dragging the word out to about five times the length so that she’d know how displeased he was. Pointedly not removing the suit, he stomped over the bar. For a long minute, nobody joined him. Then, after some loud whispering that he ignored in favour of trying to piece together enough Hungarian to get a scotch from the bartender, Steve came over and slumped down on a stool beside him. He didn’t speak, or look at him, leaving it to Tony to start the conversation. Tony kind of regretted putting the faceplate up, because Steve would definitely notice if he made a face at him. “So, uh… Where’s the rest of your motley crew? Simon, or Sean, or whatever his name was. The shrink ‘n gro guy?” 

Steve gave him an unimpressed stare. “I know you know his name is Scott. Just like I know you know that he made a deal with the Feds, and that he’s under house arrest stateside.” He turned away again, and Tony rolled his eyes at the sticky bartop. 

“Excuse me for making conversation,” he muttered. “And, uh, what about Wanda?” 

When he looked at him again, Steve’s gaze had hardened, his expression unreadable. “I’m not telling you where Wanda is.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Tony muttered. “What, you think I’m asking so I can call up Ross and sell her out? Really, Rogers? The back-up, and the checkins, and making myself available to you all the goddamn time is just so that I can fuck you all over at the first available opportunity? Fuck you. I’m the one out there trying to get things fixed so you idiots can finally come home!” 

“Oh yeah,” Steve scoffed. “How altruistic of you. Like how locking Wanda up in the first place was for her sake, not yours, right?” 

“It was!” Tony insisted. “I had her staying on the compound, Steve. You know, the giant ass place where we all chose to live? The one with walking trails and an Olympic size pool and six different gourmet kitchens in addition to the private quarters that are bigger than most NYC apartments? It wasn’t exactly a 6x8 cell.” 

“It doesn’t matter! You can’t just lock people up. People deserve freedom, Tony!” 

“Oh my god. I wasn’t locking her up, I was keeping her from being locked up. They wanted to take her in for questioning, Steve. Do you know what happens when people like Ross take people like Wanda in for questioning? They disappear. Keeping her on the compound meant they couldn’t just waltz in and take her. Not to mention what could happen with random people on the street. She’s misunderstood Steve, I get that. But when people misunderstand things, they tend to fear them. And they can react to fear in pretty violent ways.” 

“I think Wanda can handle herself.” 

Tony scoffed. “Yeah, I saw how well she handled herself in Lagos. You really want a repeat of that in upstate New York?” 

Steve opened his mouth, clearly ready to lay into him, but before he could there was a sharp whistle from across the room. They both whipped around to see Natasha, Sam, and Clint glaring at them pointedly. 

“This!” Clint said. “This is exactly what we’re talking about! Come on, you two were really good friends. I get this is a big disagreement, but...” He gestured between himself and Natasha. “Look, Tasha and I were on opposite sides of the Accords. You don’t see us going at each other’s throats every time we look at each other. We’re still friends! Don’t you want that back?”

Tony felt himself deflate a little. He chanced a glance over at Steve out of the corner of his eyes and found him looking equally subdued. Neither of them actually said anything, but Clint got a smug, self-satisfed look on his face anyway. 

“That’s what I thought,” he told them.

“Okay, so.” Natasha planted a hand in the middle of Sam’s back and shoved him hard, getting a yelp out of him as he stumbled over toward the bar. “Sam’s gonna stay here and... guide you, while the two of you sit here until you get all your shit talked out.” 

“I’m really not qualified for this!” Sam informed them again. 

“And Nat and I’ll be waiting right outside the door until you do,” Clint added, with a look that suggested they’d be doing more guarding more than waiting. 

So, with Sam as mediator, they talked. It didn’t start out well, the two of them doing more screaming than talking, every topic veering into anger. Sam had to interrupt them every five minutes to try and get them to refocus, grumbling the whole time about how he wasn’t getting paid enough for this shit. Once, Clint and Nat had stuck their heads back in, presumably to make sure they didn’t actually kill each other. Tony had been screaming about how if Steve thought Tony had been acting selfishly, he’d better look in a mirror, or was he trying to claim that not telling Tony that his parents had been murdered was really for his benefit. But Steve hadn’t yelled back, and Tony had gotten his breathing and heart rate under control -- without kicking Steve’s chair out from under him, as tempting as it was -- and they had left again. 

And eventually, things had shifted. Tony was still mad, but he could understand some of the fear and reasoning that had led to Steve being so against the Accords, and Steve had admitted that while he still didn’t agree with them, he could see how some oversight was virtually inevitable, and that he probably should have had more faith in Tony, and the possibility of a middle ground. He’d admitted that it hadn’t just been the Accords, that between that, and Lagos, and then Peggy dying, he’d felt like the ground was falling out beneath him and hadn’t reacted well, and Tony had admitted that he could have done more to see where he was coming from -- he wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with the sensation of the ground falling out beneath him himself. 

“Shit,” Tony mumbled, rubbing at his eyes as he looked around the bar for what felt like the first time in hours. He didn’t actually remember when he’d stepped out of the Iron Man suit, but he was sitting on the barstool beside Steve in a business suit, Iron Man standing guard in the corner. There was no sign of the bartender or the other patron. “How long have we been here.” He frowned. “And where the hell did Sam go?” 

“I think he gave up and called it quits around the time I called you a hack,” Steve offered. His voice was dry, but he offered Tony a crooked grin, and Tony felt a pang; it had been a long time since he had seen Steve smile like that and he’d missed it. 

He sighed, fiddling with a bare spot on the counter. “I didn’t want to kill Barnes,” he admitted quietly. “Not really. I know it wasn’t his fault. I just… Seeing my mom killed like that? It brought everything all back, and I just saw red. I wanted him to hurt as much as I was.” He gave Steve a wry look. “Not very superhero-y of me, huh?” 

“Yes. Because I’m known for my even-temper and measured responses,” Steve deadpanned. “I get it, Tony. I probably would have done the same. I didn’t want to hurt you either, for what it’s worth. I just wanted to get Bucky out of there. I was scared I was going to lose him again, and you were a little terrifying. I don’t know if you know this, but you’re kind of a badass.” 

Tony rolled his eyes. “You trying to flatter me, Rogers?” 

“I’m just saying, it did take two fully grown super soldiers to even slow you down.” He grinned, then sobered again. “But what you said back there? You were right, Tony. You were my friend. I should have had respect for that too.” 

“Ye-ah…” Tony shrugged. “I get it though. If our places were switched, and that were Rhodey? Full offense, Steve, but I would lay you out to save him.” 

Steve gave him another soft smile. “I don’t doubt it.” 

Tony’s phone gave a loud jangle then, buzzing harshly against the counter, and he and Steve both startled, jolted from the hazy peace they’d fallen into. WIth a rueful smile, Tony picked the phone up and grimaced at the message waiting for him. 

“Shit,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his eyes. He looked over at Steve, an apology on his face. “I gotta get going. Ross has decided to come by in a couple hours, and if I’m not there he’s going to start trying to look into where I am…” 

“Yeah, yeah, no,” Steve said quickly. “I understand.” He hesitated a moment, chewing at his lip. “I haven’t said thank you, Tony. All of this, dealing with Ross, and the Accords, and trying to bring us home…? I appreciate it, I really do. I know it’s a lot, and it’s all on you, and I know I’m terrible at showing it, but I do appreciate it. Thank you, Tony.” 

Tony smiled softly. “Thank you,” he answered, nodding his head back toward the front door. “For keeping them safe.” 

Steve snorted. “Because Nat needs so much looking after?” he teased, earning a soft chuckle from Tony. 

“I missed this,” he told him. “I mean, not the screaming and the yelling and the wanting to murder each other, obviously, that’s all horrible. But…” He gestured between them, not having the words but knowing Steve would get it anyway. “This. I’ve missed this.” 

“Yeah. Me too.” Steve rubbed at the back of his neck. “Maybe we could do it again sometime?” 

Tony grinned, stepping back into the Iron Man suit. “Find me somewhere with a decent scotch, and you’ve got yourself a deal, Steve.”

@tonystarkbingo

#tonystarkbingo2020 #tsb2020 #tony stark #steve rogers #civil war fix-it #canon divergence #natasha romanoff #clint barton #sam wilson

[ofregiums]

silence ! raise the royal standard, for the king of hungary, DOMINYKAS VANCURA, has arrived. being thirty-one years old, he is currently on the throne. many around the court call him the insurgent by virtue of him being perspicacious and captivating, while also being ruthless and aggressive.  —played by max irons

— THE BASICS

full name: dominykas leandro vancura date of birth: july 26th age: thirty-one star sign: leo profession: king of hungary ( canon ), hedge fun manager mi6 operative ( modern ) loyalty: hungary, house vancura, entente alignment: chaotic neutral mbti: estp spoken languages: hungarian ( first ), english ( fluent ), spanish ( fluent ), french ( fluent ), mandarin ( fluent ), russian ( advanced ), italian ( advanced ), lithuanian ( intermediate ), polish ( intermediate ), hindustani ( intermediate ), arabic ( beginner ) mother’s name: gabriella vancura father’s name: richárd vancura ( deceased ) siblings, if any: pál vancura ( older, deceased in canon ), aurélia vancura ( younger ), adelaida & angéla vancura ( younger, identical twins ), dániel vancura ( younger ) children: laima vaisvila ( aged five ) height: 6′2″ hair colour: dark brown. eye colour: blue-grey.

— CANON VERSE

first off, let me start off by saying that dom can be the wOOOoooooOoooRST. what’s his damage, heather ? well, it’s not his family. his family was super loving and supportive and he grew up loving all of his siblings and such. never rly had the responsibilities of being king so he fucked around a lot as a teenager, partaking in hedonistic behavior bc why not ?

fell like fucking head over heels madly in love at the age of seventeen to a lithuanian duke’s daughter and shit, nothing else mattered. she was his polar opposite like a goddamn ray of sunshine but she made him want to clean up his act in a way that he never though possible. he !!! fucking !!! loved !!! her !!!

yep, loved. bc he can’t be happy, duh. they got married at the age of eighteen, things were fucking great. she tempered him down and reminded him that there was good that no one else saw. about two years into their marriage, the two discovered that tiesa was pregnant. but the war was brewing and he felt like he needed to fight and that all sorta stressed his wife out a lot. she has a miscarriage due to it.

that was the first knife to the heart. dom grew resentful and numb to his emotions. he detached from his family and was a far harsher and colder man. lacking a purpose, he went off to fight in the war. witnessing those horrors really fucked him up and added another knife to the heart.

he had a partner in crime in the war, a total ride or die. this was probably the only guy that could coax a smile out of dom lately. so obviously that meant he couldn’t live. he was killed saving dom. that traumatized the hell out of him.

coming back from the war, dom was no longer the boy he’d once been. he’d become a man, and that man was more akin to something horrible. he delved headfirst in hedonism to drown the pain and clutched to anything that could make him feel – if there was anything at all.

then, his father who he LOVED was murdered by prussia. ( clearly, i’m saying fuck dom rights ) 

the final straw for him ? losing tiesa. after the glorious news of hearing that she was pregnant again, the two thought this would be the new fresh chapter in their book together. she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl that they named laima. but as quickly as happiness returned to dom, it was taken away -- tiesa lost too much blood during the birth and didn’t even survive to see her beautiful creation. in absolute anguish, dom plucked all the knives of trauma that had once pierced his heart and declared that he no longer had one -- save for his affection for his sister and child.

coveted the throne from his older brother, but really it’s just something to fixate on so he didn’t delve too much into his own fucked up head. he was angry that his brother refused to attack prussia for their sins against their father. considered his brother a weak leader and fully convinced himself that he would be better. (spoiler alert: he wouldn’t.)

he got the chance to make that selfish, horrendous dream into a reality when the vancura family traveled to bern for the peace talks. one night, pirates stormed the castle taking lives and innocence left to right. dom seized his opportunity and stabbed his brother in the midst of the attacks. as he died, dom promised to exact revenge on prussia for their father. when guards came around, he pretended that it was the pirates that had done the deed. oh no ! long live king dominykas, i guess.

dom is hurting and in return, he wishes for everyone else to hurt. and if that meant lighting himself on fire and burning all the bridges on the way, so fucking be it. he’s vindictive and charming like a fucking snake, and he’s just as venomous.

anyways that’s my trash son. if you’re hot, he’ll flirt. if you piss him off, he becomes a scary mass of rage. terrible temper smh.

prussia, he’s coming for you hoes.

— MODERN VERSE

born the second oldest of the vancura children, dominykas didn’t have as heavy of a responsibility on his shoulders as his older brother did. honestly, he liked it that way. he had no desire in being controlled or even having a hand in his family’s business – banking. his great grandfather created the company and soon, the ambition turned it into an empire.

while his parents had met as children in hungary, they migrated to london once they eloped for a better chance in life. dom has only been back a handful of times in his life to visit family. he hasn’t been gone by his own will since the age of sixteen and doesn’t plan on doing so. 

instead of worrying about the family name, dom enjoyed being the pretty hedonistic rich boy that got everything he wanted and did everything he pleased. was the peak definition of a fuckboi growing up and was very proud of it.

didn’t really want to further his education. while he was naturally intelligent, he never had the desire to just learn for learning’s sake. but not attending university was a non-starter when it came to his strict father. he was handed pamphlets of high-end schools and was forced to make a choice. he decided on oxford university, since he had zero desire to leave england.

that ended up being the right choice because: a.) he met his best friend florian & b.) he met tiesa. she was by far the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life and the moment dom tried to use his usual disingenuous charm on her, she shut him the fuck down. holy shit, he needed it. and the reason that she called him out on his bullshit was exactly the reason he fell in love with her. after much back and forth throughout their studies, she agreed to go out with him and they started dating very soon after.

near the end of his university experience, dom was approached by a “hedge fund firm” for an internship. upon the interview process, he learned that it was in fact a cover for the secret intelligence service. they wanted to hire him as an operational officer. dom, a known thrill seeker, thought it would be fun.

keeping his lives separate proved to be difficult, especially with how things were going with tiesa. they fought a lot about him being secretive and it placed a strain on their relationship. things grew doubly complicated when tiesa announced that she was pregnant. dom asked her to marry him instantly, not wanting this to be a decision that severed their ties. they had an elopement, much to his family’s dismay, and a few months later – laima was born.

if he thought he understand love before, fuck it only grew tenfold. all he knew was that he loved his wife and his daughter and he would do all he could to protect them. ironic, considering the nature of his job.

upon graduation, the secret intelligence service offered him a lucrative new position – in the field as an operative. it sort of felt like something out a movie but this was a cold reality that would change dominykas’ life for the worst.

collecting information, by means or torture or even worse methods, wore on the man. but he couldn’t just back out of his agreement. he was in for life and that was a decision he would have to learn to accept. except, dom was a stubborn man. so, he tried to get away. packed up tiesa and laima and booked a trip to the states. he was willing to trade secrets to the cia for protection.

the day they were supposed to leave, he found tiesa shot through the head in their kitchen. laima was wailing in her nursery. the official news was that it was a botched bulgary. but dominykas knew, he fucking knew. it was them. and he had no choice but to continue to work for them. for laima’s safety.

his mind spiraled into darkness and paranoia after his wife’s death. he didn’t know who he could or couldn’t trust. could it have been one of his siblings who betrayed him ? a friend from his dining club ? truth be told, the only person that he trusted throughout this all was florian but even his best friend could not salvage the shell of the person he’d become after losing tiesa.

now, dom bitterly continues to work for the service, no longer batting an eye at the the violence and schemes of it all. 

drinks a lot more than he used to. too much, actually. 

no longer attempted to be there for laima as he should be. truthfully, he sees too much of tiesa in her and the reminder threatens to take him off the deep end.

#( * introductions. ) #( * rich kid asshole ; paint me as a villain | dominykas vancura. )

[grindellore]

fanfiction: and when he falls (chapter 1)

Fandom: Harry Potter | Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Gellert Grindelwald, Ariana Dumbledore, Bathilda Bagshot Rating: T

Summary: In the beginning, love was blossoming between an unearthly beautiful boy with radical ideas and a penchant for talking big and a spirited boy with a ready quill who was forced to take on the role as the head of his family far too early. In the end, there would be two broken hearts, and the beautiful boy would set out to change the world on his own while the spirited boy would be left behind with utterly destroyed family bonds and a well of guilt inside of him.

Also available on my AO3 (see the link in my profile).

And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again. —Cardinal Wolsey on the “state of man” in William Shakespeare’s All Is True (Henry VIII), 3.2.371-372

The umpteenth version of “those two months of insanity”, but I hope my take on them will still be an interesting read. Canon compliant up until Crimes of Grindelwald with two reservations: First, both of Grindelwald’s eyes are blue (as stated in the Harry Potter books and the first Fantastic Beasts script), just as my physical descriptions in general attempt to comply with the books (Dumbledore has elbow-length auburn hair and a wispy beard; Grindelwald shoulder-length, curly golden hair and—I quote from Deathly Hallows—“a Fred and George-ish air of triumphant trickery about him.”) Second, I hc Dumbledore lied when he said the next time they met (after that fateful duel in 1899) was their duel in 1945.

Chapter 1

Gellert Grindelwald was crouching in the grass in front of the mossy tombstone; positioned, perhaps, directly above the remains of the person interred under it. If there were still remains, that was. The stone was crumbling; all raw, weathered coarseness and sharp, jagged edges. Gellert saw it but he also needed to feel it under the tips of his fingers; needed to follow the traces of the nigh illegible name and, most importantly, the triangular mark underneath. He closed his eyes to eliminate one of his senses, focusing on the sensation of the engraved dents in the stone.

Yes, there was a circle inscribed in the triangle; a line, too, bisecting the angle directly under Ignotus Peverell’s name. They were faint, but they were definitely there.

Gellert drew a shaky breath. This, he thought. This was it. He had been right to visit his aunt in Godric’s Hollow; not just to draw upon her vast library and equally vast historical knowledge, but also for this. This grave, seemingly unremarkable save for its age.

“Are you a distant relative of the Peverell family?”

Gellert all but started at the sound of the deep voice. When he had entered the graveyard, he had been aware of the black cloaked boy, kneeling in front of another grave with a bouquet of white lilies in his hands and shielded from the world by the thick curtain of his flowing auburn hair, so long it was almost touching the ground. Gellert had decided not to greet him, reluctant to intrude on the silent conversation he might be holding with the person he was mourning or, perhaps, with God.

Now the auburn-haired boy was standing right next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a worn but elegant pair of high-heeled, buckled boots.

Gellert, who had always had a sense for first impressions, allowed his own golden curls to flow out of his face, looking up at the boy before he rose in a smooth motion. The other was half a head taller than Gellert, even subtracting the heels. His form was as thin and slender as his face, with a wispy beard, a long, even nose and faint freckles under the rims of bright, light blue eyes.

Right now, these eyes were staring at him, thunderstruck. Gellert knew that reaction. He had seen his own face in the mirror; all even features and angles and long, black lashes over eyes that were a slightly darker shade of blue than the other boy’s. His golden, shoulder-length locks gave him an unearthly, almost angelic appeal that made most people hold their breath for a second when they first saw him.

“Not to my knowledge,” Gellert said smoothly and added a dazzling smile to the rest of his striking outward appearance. He straightened, making himself as tall as possible as he extended a hand towards the boy. “Nice to meet you. I’m Gellert Grindelwald, Bathilda Bagshot’s great-nephew.” The other took his hand, but before he could say anything, Gellert added: “And you must be Albus Dumbledore. I saw photos of you on Aunt Batty’s chest of drawers. She told me a lot about you; said you’re brilliant: Head Boy, Prefect, Winner of the Barnabus Finkley Prize…”

“Stop it; stop it!” Albus chuckled, holding his palms away from his chest. “You’ll make my face turn as red as my hair if you continue like that!” This wasn’t the kind of reaction Gellert had expected. It made Albus’s eyes sparkle and softened his features; made them pleasant and appealing.

Now it was Gellert who was staring, if only for a split second. He had assumed Albus would be rather sullen; depressed maybe because he had just come from a grave—and not any grave but his mother’s, if he recalled correctly from the abundance of information his aunt had fed him at his arrival in Godric’s Hollow.

“My great aunt does have a tendency to talk quite a lot about other people, and it’s often things that are a bit embarrassing,” Gellert conceded with a smile. “Usually good things, though.”

“Bathilda is a charming lady,” Albus said with a genuine smile of his own. “A brilliant historian, too! I wish I had an aunt like her.”

“She’s wonderful even though she’s a bit nosy.” Gellert cracked a grin, registering with satisfaction that Albus held his breath again even though he managed not to stare this time. “Asked me if you wanted to come over for coffee and cake, too.—Well, more like tea and cake,” he corrected himself. “For teatime, anyway.”

Gellert silently cursed himself. He knew his English didn’t betray much of his accent even though it was a bit lilting, but now he had given himself away as a non-native speaker for good. Sure enough, Albus Dumbledore, the wizarding wunderkind, would catch on to it.

“Bathilda may be as English as one can get, but you’re not from here, aren’t you?” Albus asked, sure enough, furrowing his brow in curiosity.

“No, I’m from Sopron, actually,” Gellert admitted. “Or Ödenburg, if that rings more of a bell. It’s in Austria-Hungary. Part of the Kingdom of Hungary, to be precise. My mother’s Hungarian; the father’s Austrian.”

“Interesting,” Albus said, eyes sparkling. “I’m sorry I must decline Bathilda’s invitation, though,” he added, and the light was suddenly gone from his eyes, as if someone had extinguished a candle. Gellert felt a strange and uncalled-for desire to do or say something to see it again. “Please tell Bathilda I’d gladly have accepted her invitation, but I’m afraid I must take care of my younger sister. I left her alone for far too long already, whiling away time at the cemetery.”

Gellert was fairly sure spending time at a deceased family member’s grave couldn’t exactly be called whiling away said time, but he decided not to comment on it. There was something peculiar about this boy; he was young, but there was an air resembling that of an absent-minded professor about him. Gellert felt drawn to him without being able to explain what exactly it was that made Albus so fascinating; what made him think desperately of ways to convince him to accept Bathilda’s invitation after all.

“Why don’t you just bring your sister along to Aunt Batty?” was the most natural thing that came to his mind.

“I’m afraid my sister is very frail … shy and easily distressed when she meets new people…” Albus’s voice trailed off, seemingly unconvinced by his own line of reasoning. He looked to the ground rather than into Gellert’s eyes.

“Why don’t you just ask her if she feels ready to meet me?” Gellert suggested, hope rising in his chest, fluttering up just like, as he hoped, the sparkle in Albus’s eyes. “I’m assuming she already knows Aunt Batty?”

“She does,” Albus admitted, “but she has never been to her house … Besides, my brother will kill me if I take Ariana to Bathilda’s.” He sighed.

“Then make sure he won’t find out about it.” Gellert smirked mischievously. Albus gave him a surprised look. Then the corners of his mouth twitched upwards.

“Fine,” he said, already turning on his heels. “I’m going to ask her.”

Interesting, Gellert thought. Albus had to be fairly desperate to escape his household charges, judging from how fast he had changed his mind. Either that, or… But Gellert quickly pushed that train of thought out of his mind.

“…so lovely if he could finally bring little Ariana over!” Gellert heard his great aunt say from the kitchen. He was in her sitting room, leaning against the bow-fronted chest of drawers on which she kept photographs of people close to her in silver frames. There was a particularly English note to the room, with embroidered doilies and colourfully painted flowerpots and saucers everywhere, but also a note that was purely Bathilda: There were stacks of books all across the room, some of them with an opened book on top and at least one scribble in the margins of the opened pages.

Aunt Batty’s sitting room was a little chaotic, but Gellert supposed it was practical if you were a famous historian and needed to draw on written texts all the time for your own books and articles. Nonetheless, he was feeling a little out of place in his spotless black trousers and black-grey striped waistcoat; too monochrome for the vivid colours of the room.

“Gellert, did you hear me?” his great aunt interrupted his musings about the room. “Should I set the table for two or four; what do you think?”

“Better set it for four,” he called back. “I think it’s better to have too many rather than too less place settings on the table, even if they don’t come in the end.”

He watched as four flowery saucers materialised on the wooden table in the middle of the room, followed by matching teacups and plates. Then there was a knock at Aunt Batty’s front door, and his attention strayed from the self-setting table.

“I’m going to let them in!” he informed his great aunt, already on his way to answer the door.

“Thanks, darling!” he heard her call from the kitchen.

Remembering what Albus had told him about Ariana’s shyness around unknown people, he opened the door slowly and with gentleness. Albus, now wearing purple robes, stood in front of him. His sister was half hidden behind his back, ogling Gellert from under Albus’s arm.

“I’m glad you could make it,” he greeted them both, beaming at Albus in particular. Then he turned to Ariana, bowing down a little to be on eye level with her. She had to be about a head smaller than him, though it was difficult to tell because she wasn’t standing upright.

“You must be Albus’s sister Ariana,” he greeted her, extending a hand. “I’m Gellert, Bathilda’s great nephew.”

She only stared at him suspiciously, making no move to take his hand. He reacted by extending only his bent index finger to her. She tipped at it with her own index finger, making a sound that was almost like a chuckle. His smile broadened.

“Do you want to come in?” he asked her. “Aunt Batty has made her famous chocolate cake.” She nodded. Albus exchanged a relieved look with Gellert as he went inside with his sister.

“Albus!” Bathilda exclaimed, storming out of the kitchen with open arms. She was smaller than Ariana, but that didn’t stop her from hugging Albus with the protective fierceness of a mother hen; it hadn’t stopped her from hugging Gellert with equal fierceness at his arrival either. Albus stooped down and hugged her back, smiling quietly into the tight bun of her brown hair.

“And Ariana!” Bathilda took Ariana’s hands with gentleness, smiling fondly at her. “Would you like to help me a little in the kitchen? Tea is almost ready.” Ariana nodded, and Bathilda tugged her along.

Albus clearly wasn’t at Bathilda’s for the first time. He walked alongside Gellert to the sitting room, taking a seat in a chair next to the empty fireplace. Gellert sat down across the table, scrutinizing Albus’s outward appearance.

“Honestly,” he said, “you’re fitting into this room way better than I do. Though I must admit the colour of your robes jars a little with your hair colour…”

“Interesting,” Albus said completely unimpressed. “A male individual who understands the idea of matching colours. What rarity.” He paused for effect. “Which colour would suit my hair better, Gellert; what do you think?”

“Green,” Gellert said without thinking. He realised he had been led up the garden path the moment the words left his mouth.

“Well … green.” Sure enough, Albus conjured a green carnation out of thin air and attached it on his purple robes. He raised both eyebrows. “Better?”

Gellert stared at him, utterly lost for words—and he was never lost for words. His heart was thumping in his chest. Albus had to know what he was alluding to, but what was he implying? That he was…? That he thought Gellert was…?

The truly unsettling thing was that he would have been right. Gellert’s head was hurting. He hadn’t known he was so easy to see through.

Then again, maybe Albus hadn’t seen through him after all. Maybe he had been making a statement about himself, or maybe it just amused him to scandalise other people. But that was something he, Gellert, thought funny! Would a model pupil like Albus even do such a thing?

Suddenly a large chocolate cake appeared on the table and their cups were full of tea—herbal tea by the scent of it. Gellert was immediately distracted. He found even black tea just barely tolerable, but herbal tea… Gellert sighed inwardly. As Aunt Batty’s guest, he needed to drink what was served to him, grin and bear it.

“Ah, wonderful!”  Albus exclaimed, apparently delighted by the sight of the chocolate cake. “May we help ourselves to a piece, Bathilda?”

“Of course!” Bathilda said, walking back into the sitting room with Ariana. She smiled at Albus. “After all, I know how much you enjoy my cakes.”

“Well, but first of all, we need to serve the ladies,” Albus said as he pulled his wand out of his robes and gave it a flick. Two impeccably cut pieces of cake separated from the whole of it and settled on the plates in front of Bathilda and Ariana. “Then the well-travelled guest.” Another piece went to Gellert’s plate. “And, finally, myself.” The piece of cake that made its way to Albus’s plate was of the exact shape and form as the other three. Gellert raised his eyebrows.

“Are you a believer in the distributive norm of equity?” he asked curiously. “Donum suum aequale sibi?”

“Much as I’d love to distribute sweets proportional to body height,” Albus said, corners of his mouth twitching, “I believe that would be rather impolite toward your aunt and my sister.” Gellert laughed.

“Well then, Gellert,” Bathilda said. “How do you like my cake?”

“Wait a minute, Aunt Batty!” Gellert replied, still giggling. “I need to take a bite first!”

“And you, dearie?” Bathilda turned to Albus. “What do you think?”

“It tastes delicious as always,” Albus said and took his first bite. Gellert blinked incredulously. Bathilda didn’t seem to have noticed; she left her chair and headed for the kitchen again, muttering something about forgotten cream.

“Did you just…” Gellert asked as soon as his great aunt was out of earshot, staring at Albus.

“So what if I did?” Albus put down his dessert fork. “Any other answer wouldn’t have been socially acceptable anyway, would it?” There was an amused twinkle in his eyes. “Besides, I know from experience that your great aunt makes the best pastries and cakes in the whole West Country of England!”

“Oh, thank you, dearie!” Bathilda, who reappeared with a full bowl of cream floating beside her in mid-air, had apparently only heard the last part of Albus’s declaration. Gellert hastened to take a bite of his piece of cake as well so he could make a statement about it based on evidence.

“Delicious!” he exclaimed after a pause. “There’s a lot of cocoa in this cake, isn’t it? It tastes luscious, almost like melted chocolate!”

“The recipe is a family secret.” Bathilda smiled at herself. “Then again, you are family, so perhaps I’ll hand it to you if you behave nicely during your stay here.” Gellert wanted to tell her how she was probably much better at baking than him anyway, but he didn’t even get to say a word.

“I wish I was part of your family too if that’s the only way to get this recipe!” Albus declared in such a heartfelt way that Ariana started to giggle again. Bathilda made eye contact with her.

“Sweetie, I think your brother is a bit silly today,” she declared. Ariana nodded eagerly, and soon all four of them were grinning. Then Bathilda seemed to remember something.

“Oh dear, I completely forgot to properly introduce you three!”

“It’s no problem, Auntie,” Gellert tried to calm her. “We already introduced ourselves to each other, and you told me so much about Albus...”

“But Albus hardly knows anything about you, darling!” Gellert winced.

“Please, Aunt Batty, let me tell him myself!” he asked, hating how desperate he sounded. He saw the scene right before his mind’s eye: Gellert, this is Albus, the star alumnus of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Albus, this is my good-for-nothing great nephew Gellert who was expelled from Durmstrang Institute. Would Albus still want to talk to him if he learnt right now that he...

“But I think your research project would benefit enormously if a bright boy like Albus could look into it!” Bathilda objected gently. Gellert felt dizzy with relief as he realised she wasn’t going to tell Albus about the disgraceful end of his schooling.

“A research project?” Albus piped up.

“Um, yes, it’s ... a bit difficult to explain.” Gellert blushed. Again, he saw the scene right before his eyes: Hello, I’m trying to find three magical artefacts from a children’s tale. Who was going to take him seriously? If only he could get enough time to explain ... preferably without Ariana and his great aunt present...

“It involves an enormous amount of historical research, which is why Gellert came to me in the first place,” Bathilda explained. “Unfortunately I’m pressed for time to finish a revised edition of my book on witchcraft trials at the moment; the publisher needs the final draft by the end of August. But you know your fair share of magical history as well, don’t you, dearie?”

“Oh, it would be an honour for me if I could help you!” Albus said eagerly, turning to Gellert.

“Perhaps we could go to my room and have a look at Aunt Batty’s books together?” Gellert suggested. “I’m sure she would love to stay with your sister in the meantime; wouldn’t you, Aunt Batty?”

“Of course, darling!” Bathilda beamed. “I need to work on my book this afternoon, but you enjoy knitting, don’t you, Ariana?” The girl nodded and smiled at her. “So we could sit together while I’m writing and you’re knitting,” Bathilda suggested. “How does that sound?”

“Lovely,” Ariana said quietly. It was the first word Gellert had heard her utter during the whole afternoon. She had a bright and pretty voice.

Then Gellert turned to Albus, watching his inward struggle with his promise to take care of his sister himself and the temptation to leave her in Bathilda’s care instead. Just like in the cemetery, Temptation won with ease.

“Thank you, Bathilda,” Albus said. “That’s very kind of you.” Then he gave Ariana a tentative smile. She smiled back, but neither of them said anything.

“Come with me?” Gellert asked before Albus might change his mind. Albus nodded and followed him to the stairs. They were steep and narrow, so Albus was quite close to him when he stopped right behind him. He took the green carnation from his purple robes, twirling it between his long fingers.

“Your reaction was quite satisfying,” he commented offhandedly.

“What?”  Gellert’s hand clutched around the landing. His knuckles turned white.

“There, again,” Albus said. “You seem so confident and sure of your own beauty. I wanted to see if I could do or say something that would unsettle you.”

Gellert stared at Albus in bewilderment.

“As it turned out, I could.” Albus smiled. His eyes sparkled. Then he flicked his wand, and the green carnation vanished. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you. That was not my intention.”

He knows. Gellert felt the pulse of his own heartbeat in his throat.

“Oh, you didn’t disturb me at all,” he said as smoothly as he could and resumed walking. But he was sure he hadn’t fooled Albus.

Notes:

Oscar Wilde popularised green carnations as a symbol for homosexual men in Victorian England. He was tried for “gross indecency with men” in 1895 and jailed in Reading Gaol from then until 1897. Putting a green carnation on one’s lapel would have been considered risqué, to say the least, in 1899.

My headcanon that Gellert is from Sopron is very, very similar to that of Kierkegarden. I developed it independently but we were apparently thinking along very similar lines of reasoning: Nurmengard, the prison Gellert Grindelwald built, is located in Austria; Szent Gellért is a patron saint of Hungary; and Grindelwald is a village in Switzerland, which could be a Habsburg reference since Habsburg Castle, the originating seat of Austria’s long-time ruling family, is also located in Switzerland. (If you want to read this headcanon in a little more detail, follow the #grindellore tag on my blog 😉) Choosing Sopron as the place Gellert was born seems pretty natural, too, considering it’s an old city that used to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary; its status as Hungarian, not Austrian, remained controversial right after WWI; it was bombed several times during WWII; and it was the site of the “Pan-European Picnic”, a peace demonstration in 1989.

In case anyone’s curious: I hc Albus as about 1.85m in this fic; Gellert is about 1.75m; Ariana is c. 1.50m. Albus is frequently described as tall and thin even by the standards of the early 1990s in the Harry Potter series; he would be huge for a human man by the standards of the late 1890s.

#grindeldore #albus dumbledore #gellert grindelwald #harry potter #fantastic beasts #fanfiction #my fanfiction #katemarley #grindellore

[hhuta]

good for you RunningMan112 you're living your best life | wait how old IS mikelangelo,, he's like 49? right? either that or 59 but he looks too young for that | and also i can't believe hungarian betrayed me like that... kinda weird it translated his name tho(unless they have nouns for names like asia again) maybe if google translate was better at its job we could have avoided thiss | yeah zoli makes much mor(e) sense as his first name nickname instead of last name | and it IS it's on yt too -3D

59 GOD LDKAJS NOT THAT MUCH OF A FOSSIL !!! he turns 48 this year. now that u said 59 i think 47 isnt that old at all anymore lkjklJDLKS

ah yea maybe thats why! reaaally confused me tho. we both got clowned bc of hungarian names

zoli is such a cute nickname!

I KNOWWWW I FOUND ITT I NEED TO WATCH IT I KNOW I KNOW......

#asks #3d anon

[michaelok]

17. Reindeer

“I’ll go see the Lapps. They’re our best chance.”

After having it on my list for years, I finally read a David Howarth’s We Die Alone, about a Norwegian commando, Jan Baalsrud, who escaped from the Nazis and by walking, rowing, skiing, and finally by sleigh, made it across the far north Norway, in the Arctic, to finally make it to safety in Sweden. Wikipedia puts it succinctly;

This mission, Operation Martin, was compromised when Baalsrud and his fellow soldiers, seeking a trusted Resistance contact, accidentally made contact with an unaligned civilian shopkeeper, with the same name as their contact, who betrayed them to the Germans.

To set the scene, take a look at this map, from a recent expedition retracing Jan’s exact route:

https://gjeldnes.com/in-the-footstep-of-jan-baalsrud/

Early in his journey, he makes a mistake by trying to charge through a town and outrunning the Germans on skis instead of taking his time and waiting for the all-clear. In doing so, he gets lost in a snowstorm, and nearly dies in an avalanche. He survives, but suffers from frostbite and is unable to walk, making his escape considerably more difficult.

There are many interesting aspects to the story, but I’ll focus on one part I found fascinating: while he was certainly assisted greatly by Norwegian partisans, he never would have made it out without the help of the Sámi people, who, with their sleigh pulled by reindeer, brought Jan to safety.

The Sámi people (also spelled Sami or Saami) are an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway and Sweden, northern parts of Finland, and the Kola Peninsula within the Murmansk Oblast of Russia.

_ _

The Sámi people of Arctic Europe have lived and worked in an area that stretches over the northern parts of the regions currently known as Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Russian Kola Peninsula. They have inhabited the northern arctic and sub-arctic regions of Fennoscandia for 3,500 years. Before that they were probably living in the Finno-Ugric homeland.

Source: Wikipedia

In fact, much of the book is about the time he spends waiting for help out in the snow on the side of a mountain, for the Sámi. The Norwegians, afraid of being caught assisting Jan, essentially leave him buried alive in the snow, while arranging for the Sámi to arrive with their herd of reindeer. The plan is for them to take Jan on their way to their summer pastures in Sweden. While the forbidding Arctic winter poses many problems for Jan, including a snowstorm which nearly ends his quest, the snow, providing a winter road for the reindeer, is also his only chance to avoid the Germans and get to Sweden. Sweden, being neutral, would be a safe haven for Jan.

What of the mysterious Sámi, who despite their significance, are relegated to a but a single chapter (17) in the book?

József K.

Perhaps I am interested not only as they are the key helpers in the story but also because my wife’s grandfather, József, a paratrooper in WWII, supposedly made it out of a Siberian prison camp on a sled pulled by reindeer. This is a story passed down by family members and seems almost mythical, especially to someone who grew up in more temperate lands and only knew that reindeer pulled Santa’s sled. And they could fly.

Now, there are other escape stories. Two I am familiar with are Lajos M., a Hungarian who is imprisoned near the Don river. A more popularized story is the “The Long Walk”, about a Polish officer, Slavomir Rawicz, who escapes from a Siberian prison camp in a snowstorm and treks 4000 miles to freedom. Now, this story is controversial, but that is because Rawicz seems to have borrowed the story, so it still likely has some elements of truth, while the names and places might be invented.

And there is more evidence that even if Rawicz didn’t do the walk, someone else did.

We learned of a British intelligence officer who said he had interviewed a group of haggard men in Calcutta in 1942 - a group of men who had escaped from Siberia and then walked all the way to India.

And then from New Zealand came news of a Polish engineer who had apparently acted as an interpreter for this very same interview in Calcutta with the wretched survivors.

These stories are second-hand, and far from conclusive proof, but for Mr Weir, they convinced him that there was an essential truth in the story that he wanted to retain.

“There was enough for me to say that three men had come out of the Himalayas, and that’s how I dedicate my film, to these unknown survivors. And then I proceed with essentially a fictional film.”

_https://www.bbc.com/news/world-11900920 _

Lajos M., 42 éves / Louis M, age 42

This is a book I picked up at my wife’s house, and is a powerful story of a Hungarian, also a paratrooper I think, that is caught behind enemy lines and send to a prison camp. This book solemnly relates Lajos M.’s incredible suffering as he somehow manages to stay alive in a prison camp. Somehow it was published during the communist times, perhaps that’s why it reads a bit darkly, fatalistically (Stoically?) like The Good Soldier Schweik, Catch-22, Chickenhawks, and Slaughterhouse Five, and other war stories of this nature.

He spends 13 years there until they are finally pardoned. I think at one point, like Dostoevsky, he is sentenced to death, but pardoned at the last minute. The story starts out with Lajos, now working at a factory in Hungary, stealing a blanket, so a co-worker wants to find out why one would steal a blanket, and so unravels the long story. You get the gist of the powerful, dreamlike quality of the story in this summary:

M. Lajos magyar közkatona elment a Donig. 1943-ban esett hadifogságba. Fogolyként elment az ember-lakta világ legeslegszéléig. És onnan is továbbment. Tizenhárom év múltán visszafelé is megtette ezt az utat. Hazafelé. Mindig azt tette amit mondtak neki. Csak közben M. Lajos eltévedt a történelemben.

Hungarian Lajos M. went to Don. He was captured in 1943. As a prisoner, he went to the very edge of the human-inhabited world. And from there he went on. Thirteen years later, he made this journey backwards. He always did what he was told. Meanwhile, M. Lajos was lost in history.

Unfortunately Lajos M. is an obscure Hungarian book, and I haven’t been able to figure out if this a true account, or some kind of merging of a bunch of stories, but no question, like Lajos M., József went to the eastern front, and he made it back, somehow.

Now with these precedents, especially with Jan’s story, could this amazing story of a Hungarian rescued by a reindeer be true? Now, it starts to make sense. Why, of course, the only way to escape would be by sled, it is as normal as a car is to us suburbanites, or skis are to Norwegians in the far north.

I have few details of this story other than this grandfather József K. was (as is often the case with paratroopers) captured behind enemy lines. Theorizing here, but the prison camp, being in Siberia, was so remote (perhaps an island as in Lajos M.’s case, or across 7 time zones like Magadan) that it was not as tightly secured as other, more urban camps might be, since it would be suicide to attempt to escape. Alcatraz was not protected by the prison walls, but by the San Francisco bay, with cold waters, strong currents and sharks.

In a recent New York Times article on Magadan, the caption to one of the photos echoed this idea

Clearing snow by a lighthouse. Residents refer to the rest of Russia as “the mainland,” a sign of how isolated the city feels.

The story goes that somehow József was assisted by some locals, and placed on a reindeer sled. No one “drove” the sled, according to my wife, “the reindeer knew the way to the next town.” And this is how Grandfather returned home. Now, why would these locals help a prisoner, a foreign invader? Given that they were herdsman, perhaps they realized József was a long-lost cousin, from their nomadic past? This is me entirely theorizing here, but there are tribes in Siberia that live a semi-nomadic existence, almost like American Indians in the States used to, and their language is (distantly) related to Hungarian.

The core Khanty vocabulary still contains numerous examples of vocabulary inherited from the Finno-Ugric proto-language (Collinder, 1962). Khanty is predominantly an agglutinative language with no prepositions and numerous affixes, each of which expresses a particular function.

Jan

Now, getting back to Jan’s epic tale.

With Jan’s tale, exhaustively corroborated in We Die Alone, as Howarth retraced Jan’s steps to validate the story, and even talked with the villagers who helped him, surely there is truth to József’s story too.

This certainly leads to the question of how much help the Norwegians were in the first place. For starters, the ethereal patriotism of the Norwegians is the main reason why the commandos were exposed. The commandos had a list of helpful partisans, so when they landed in Norway they made the unfortunate mistake of talking to the owner of a grocery store whose name matched one of the partisans on their list. However, in a twist of fate, it turned out he was not the person they were thinking of, he just happened to have the same name and now owned the same grocery store after the owner died. Surely some of the fault goes to the commandos, who aren’t careful enough to vet the supposed partisan, and they further compound the error the mistake by being nice and letting this chap go, and depend on his honor not to turn them in.

The grocer wrestles with the matter a bit before making a compromise and calling the town mayor or some other official to inform him, instead of calling the Nazi party directly.

Here’s a movie based on Howarth’s book:

Howarth notes the theory that the locals take their time in alerting the authorities, on the notion that this will give the commandos a chance to escape. Sadly, this nice gesture was not communicated to the commandos, but even if it had, they had no chance of escape in their sluggish fishing boat.

The Pathfinder?

This gets to an interesting side question on the subject of whistle blowers, much in the news these days, and I propose two simple types:

(1) the whistle blower who squawks because they fear for their safety if they don’t squawk and get caught

(2) The whistle blower who, at the risk of his own safety, blow the whistle because of a greater calling.

The Norwegian grocer and others who compromise the mission are “whistle blowers” in the former sense, allying themselves with the foreign Nazi menace due to fear of persecution. Here’s the reasoning of the Norwegian official who turns the commandos in:

“The story was bound to spread, and the Germans were bound to hear it; and then the official himself would be the first to suffer.”

Howarth does not discuss what happens to the few commandos who survive, but we can infer their suffering was great.

Now, as is the case with many pondering this story from the comfort of their armchair like myself, it is easy to blame the weak-willed grocer and local officials for talking, but we were not there, and likely, when push comes to shove, I would do the same I suppose.

Who knows what makes people like Oskar Schindler, a onetime wealthy businessman and Nazi sympathizer, to later put their life on the line? Christopher McDougall explored this idea in “Natural Born Heroes”, when he described a diminutive woman who disrupted the attack of a school shooter, despite, until then, having done nothing out of the ordinary. For another excellent study of this idea, see The Pathfinder, a film by Nils Gaup, in which a young man has to decide whether to save himself, or help a tribe chased by Russian invaders.

Most of the Norwegians Jan meets as he attempts to escape, while they are trustworthy and helpful, are very careful in extending any assistance. For example, rather than hiding Jan in their homes, the partisans keep Jan lodged first in an abandoned, unheated hut, and then nestled in a snowbank at the top of a valley.

To me, this alone is one of the most astounding challenges Jan faced. Clearly, the Norwegians were assuming the Sámi would arrive “any day now”, but as they are to find out, the Sámi have a different timetable. Howarth, like the frustrated Norwegians, seems to take issue with the Sámi and their concept of “the vague imponderable future”

Heroes

Howarth’s book focuses on the many Norwegian’s who assist Jan, so don’t need to mention them here as their story can be found in better detail in the book. There is the midwife who helps him recuperate after his initial escape, and the old Norwegian, Lockertsen, who puts himself greatly at risk, because he rows Jan across the fjord, going at night to evade any Germans potentially on watch, and drops Jan off at Ullsfjord.

The Sámi

No question the locals put their lives at risk, in fact over 100 Norwegians assisted Jan, but my thesis is that the Sámi are the great heroes of this story, next to Jan Baalsrud. Yet the Sámi are not even mentioned in the summary on the book’s back cover, and only are fully covered in the last chapter.

Howarth seems to take a dim view of the Sámi, considering them opportunists simply out for the trinkets that the Norwegians give them as payment. Further, he notes their strange concept of time “the imponderable future”, and other puzzling differences. Now, anyone who knows a strange culture, say the Hungarians, well, aren’t these admirable characteristics instead? As shown below, the Sámi herdsman who ultimately takes Jan to safety ponders the task, as he stands still for 3-4 hours, watching Jan.

Had Jan taken a similar amount of time to plan his route, rather than barreling through the middle of the town, depending on the prowress of the Norwegians in skiing, and the Germans lack of ability in the same, he might not have gotten himself in such a predicament.

I can’t imagine how he finally made up his mind to take him, but certainly the difficult state that Jan was in, and that he would surely die if he stayed in Norway, perhaps swayed him. 

[Scene: Jan is in his snowbank refuge. After waiting there, above the village for almost a month, he has given up all hope. It took every ounce of strength of a few villagers to get him to a plateau where they hoped the Sámi would be. For the villagers, the Sámi with their reindeer would be like a helicopter to one of us, stuck on a mountain. But the snow is melting…]

When he opened his eyes there was a man standing looking at him. Jan had never seen a Lapp before.. the man stood there on skis, silent and perfectly motionless, leaning on his ski-sticks [ski poles, my British friend]. He had a lean swarthy face and narrow eyes with a slant. He was wearing long tunic of dark blue embroidered with red and yellow, and leather leggins, and embroidered boots with hairy reindeer skin and turned-up pointed toes.

In fact, this was one of the Lapps whom the ski-runner from Kaafjord had gone to see on his journey a month before. He had just arrived with his herds and his tents and family in the mountains at the head of Kaafjord, and must have been thinking over the message all the time. When he had first been asked, the whole matter was in a vague imponderable future….He did stand looking at Jan for three or four hours.

Howarth goes on to mention the blankets coffee brandy and tobacco procured at “enormous prices” to give to as payment for the escape. Other Sámi had turned down the offer, so we can gather they understood the risk, and knew the trinkets would not pay for a loss of life, but luckily for Jan, this Sámi (we never learn his name) agrees.

The next thing that brought Jan to his sense was a sound of snorting and shuffling, unlike anything he had ever heard before, hoarse shouts, the clanging of bells and a peculiar acrid animal smell, and when he opened his eyes the barren snow-field around him which hadd been empty for weeks was teeming with hundreds upon hundreds of reindeer milling around him with an unending horde, and he was lying flat on the ground among all their trampling feet. Then two Lapps were standing over him talking their strange incomprehensible tongue….They muffled him up to his eyes in blankets and skins, and lashed him and everything down … There was a jerk, and the sledge began to move.

A lapp on skis was leading it. It was one of the bell deer of the heard, and as it snorted and pawed the snow and the sledge got under way and the bell on its neck began a rhythmic clang, the herd fell behind it, five hundred strong.. the mass of deer flowed on behind, it streamed out in the hurrying narrow column when the sledge flew fast on the level snow.

All day the enormous beasts swept on across the snow.. the most strange and majestic escort ever offered to a fujitive of war.

Hurrah! How exhilarating! I picture the start of the American Birkebeiner ski race, with thousands of skiers churning up the snow, or the giant Vasaloppet in Sweden with 20,000 skiers.

I imagine that was a swell ride too, for József K, to finally leave the prison camp for home.

The Man Who Never Gave Up

https://nordnorge.com/en/artikkel/jan-balsrud-is-the-man-that-never-gave-up/

As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me

Here a German escapes from a Soviet prison camp in Kamchatka and eventually finds his way to Iran. As with “The Long Walk”, there are doubts as to the authenticity of the story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zaq88ixc-FY

The Pathfinder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(1987_film)

How The Long Walk became The Way Back

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-11900920

** **

Lajos M., 42 éves

https://www.antikvarium.hu/konyv/csalog-zsolt-m-lajos-42-eves-lajos-m-aged-42-37420

**The Good Soldier Švejk **

_The unfinished novel breaks off abruptly before Švejk has a chance to be involved in any combat or enter the trenches, though it appears Hašek may have conceived that the characters would have continued the war in a POW camp, much as he himself had done. _

The book includes numerous anecdotes told by Švejk (often either to deflect the attentions of an authority figure, or to insult them in a concealed manner) which are not directly related to the plot. [Source: wikipedia]

The 585 people appearing in The Good Soldier Schweik: http://honsi.org/svejk/?page=4&lang=en

Magadan, Russia

Nine Lives / Ni liv (1957)

[kaleidoscopedude]

all of them

‘all of them’ anons back at it again and its curing my depression

if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?watch game grumps and vine compilations and youll know where i get 99.9% of my vocabulary and humor

have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you? if so, who?uh there was this one fic write all these years ago that really captured my thought process to canon (unintentionally obviously) and i cannot find them now and i miss them

list your fandoms and one character from each that you identify with.bnha- tsu maybe? i feel that ‘take no shit’ vibe shes got goin ontaz- Lucretiahiakyuu!!- definitely Suga  critical role- nott!! 

do you like your name?  is there another name you think would fit you better?my birth name sucks mondo ass. its super common and everyone i hate calls me it. that being said my name is Emory and thats literally 2 letters away from it so. I go by Em as well and its like,, i cant escape my stupid ass birth name lmao

do you think of yourself as a human being or a human doing? do you identify yourself by the things you do?this sounds like something our whack ass shrink from my childhood would ask ngl. i think i AM what i do. it doesnt matter what you say, if your actions betray you later. i try and stay to my word and i am who i am because of that.

are you religious/spiritual?i dont necessarily disbelieve in a higher entity but its what comes with believing that turns me off. so no, for simplicity’s sake, im not

do you care about your ethnicity?no. my dad doesnt, so i never really had to care about Guatemalan culture or Hungarian traditions. i just lived my life never really knowing what that side of me was. i still dont. i think thats why i like giving my characters ethnically-rich backgrounds. 

what musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime?jon bellion’s a big one. p!atd too

are you an artist?yes i am! this is my art blog

do you have a creed?yeah its called “Be Fucking Kind because Nobody Has Time For You to Be a Bitch” i also believe that so long as it does not involve hurting a real human person, people can do what they please and ignore what they dont. its an unpopular opinion but one i hold close. 

describe your ideal day.i wake up and see my friends. i eat good food and spend time with them, no worries about my weight or my other responsibilities. i go home and shower and draw before sleeping soundly (preferably next to someone i love). im a very simple man 

dog person or cat person?dog person bc im allergic to cats

inside or outdoors?hhhh outdoors but nothing crazy

are you a musician?nah. i used to be able to play ‘tribal drums’ as my school called them but i dont really have the skill anymore

five most influential books over your lifetime.harry potter, percy jackson, mary shelly’s Frankenstein, a raisin in the sun, les miserables 

if you’d grown up in a different environment, do you think you’d have turned out the same?ohhhh definitely not!! i dont wanna get to deep but 99.9% of my problems could have been solved by having non-physically-abusive parents growing up

would you say your tumblr is a fair representation of the “real you”?eh. its not that i lie on here or anything im just funnier irl. 

what’s your patronus?a big Forest cat if i remember correctly

which Harry Potter house would you be in? or are you a muggle?hufflepuff. tbh id be the WORST student at hogwarts lmao

would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?hm. my initial response is middle earth bc i love high fantasy but middle earths a fucking shithole without homebrew-type tweaking so Hogwarts just bc i like the idea of levitation spells and using them on myself

do you love easily?yea. not just romantic love either. 

list the top five things you spend the most time doing, in order.texting, daydreaming, drawing, studying, walking around

how often would you want to see your family every year?once or twice, a max of four including funerals

have you ever felt like you had a “mind-meld” with someone?yeah

could you live as a hermit?hhh no i like my tech too much

how would you describe your gender/sexuality?gender: ‘fuck im just a shape floating in space who needs gender’ sexuality: ‘if you hard then you hard’

do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you”?nope! heres the thing about ugly people: we dont have a choice but to develop a shiny personality bc thats the only way well be seen positively. im big and rotund and have terrible skin and yes im an asshole but if you get to know me well enough to see my asshole side then chances are your not really judging me by my looks anymore anyway

on a scale from 1 to 10, how hard is it for someone to get under your skin?its either a 3 or a 10 depending on the person

three songs that you connect with right now.machine by imagine dragons, teenage heartbreak queen by palaye royale, and vanilla twilight by owl city 

pick one of your favorite quotes.listen to the adventure zone and pick literally any line and youd be right

[kidsviral-blog]

I'm Mending My Broken Relationship With Food

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/im-mending-my-broken-relationship-with-food/

I'm Mending My Broken Relationship With Food

After a lifetime struggling with disordered eating, I’m still figuring out how to have a healthy relationship with my body and what I feed it.

View this image ›

Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

It’s a late night in winter, and I am standing over my gas stove heating a metal spoon. I hold the handle gently in my fingers, carefully rotating the bowl over the tips of the indigo flames as the pale yellow pat of Smart Balance butter inside begins to liquefy. The sleeves of my oversized sweatshirt graze the middle of my palms and I step on the hem of my baggy sweatpants as, slowly, I pull the spoon away. A tiny drop of hot liquid falls on my toes as I tip its contents over the edge of a plain white bowl filled with sugar. I add flour, some milk, a few drops of vanilla, and a handful of chocolate chips. I stir. I taste.

I take the bowl to the couch, balance it precariously on the edge, and lie down on my side, my fingers the only utensil, pinching stray sugary flecks off the velvet dark gray fabric as The Real Housewives of New Jersey blares on the TV. It’s been nearly three years since a therapist told me I’m a disordered eater. Yet, after one personal trainer, over two years of therapy, three juice cleanses, four gym memberships, 20 pounds lost, 30 pounds gained back, and thousands of dollars spent on healthy groceries and high-end cookware, I am 24 years old and spending another night, like so many nights before, eating a bowl of last-minute, mediocre cookie dough alone in my apartment at 11 p.m. And I hate myself for it.

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Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

I’ve been overweight — or bordering on it — nearly my entire life, at least since my family moved to the U.S. when I was 4. When I was a child, a routine fight between my Hungarian mother and me was over how much I ate for dinner. Propping my elbows on our scratched dining table, I’d watch her petite, pale hands hovering above me, ladling spoon upon spoon of rice on my father’s plate. “NO FAIR, DAD GOT THE BIGGER ONE,” I’d cry out when my own would finally land, unable to grasp why a 5-foot-10-inch, 200-plus-pound Nigerian man would need to eat more than I did. Seconds, for me, were a must. Thirds weren’t unusual.

Growing up in a white, affluent neighborhood in Lubbock, Texas, I was the only Anita in a sea of Amandas, Brittanys, and Tiffanys. I was biracial, brown and round, with a puffy ball of hair that sat squarely banded in the middle in my head. The boys called it a “burnt marshmallow” and “tumor.” Isolated and othered, I began using food as a coping mechanism around middle school, when my parents began letting me walk home (across the street) alone. I’d spend the two hours until my mom got off work by myself. My best friends had “boyfriends” in the way suburban preteens can — notes, stuffed animals, dates at the roller rink on school skate night. I had a gallon of Edy’s chocolate chip waiting in the freezer for me each day.

Eventually, my mom realized I was sneaking food and she started hiding sweets in the kitchen in hopes of curbing my steady weight gain. Instead, I became an expert at climbing on countertops, calculating how much I could eat of something before she would notice, and burying wrappers in the trash. Often, I’d throw away the balanced, nutritious lunches she’d pack me — whole wheat wraps and sandwiches, fruits, veggies, hard-boiled eggs — in favor of pizza and curly fries. “You ate your lunch today, right?” she’d ask cautiously, waiting for the “yes” we both knew was a lie. She was careful not to tie my weight to my worth, but rather reminded me constantly that what I was doing wasn’t healthy. Looking back, I can’t blame her, but at the time I felt betrayed. Though I couldn’t articulate it then, taking those foods away from me was taking away the one thing that made me feel like I wasn’t alone. I was already the chubby black girl; I didn’t want to be the chubby black girl on a diet.

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Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

As I grew older, I prided myself on being good. I volunteered. I got straight A’s. I didn’t drink, smoke, have sex, or do drugs. But I ate.

What had begun as a way of burying my insecurities morphed into a way of self-medicating full-blown depression and anxiety. Food was my salve and my secret. By the time I was a high schooler in Arkansas, where we had moved when I was 14, I was regularly driving through the local Chinese restaurant, eating crab rangoon alone in my car in the parking lot of an abandoned strip mall. Overwhelmed by a laundry list of extracurriculars that I hoped would get me into the “right college” — student council, cheerleading, theatre, National Honor Society, Key Club, jazz, tap, ballet — I ate until I was too full to worry. When I was cast in my senior musical, I ran to my car after last bell and sped up the highway to Sonic to buy Cinnasnacks (think mini-cinnamon rolls, but more gross) and a cherry limeade in the half hour before first rehearsal. I realized what was happening wasn’t normal when I thought more about what I’d eat when I got to my friends’ houses than the time I’d spend with them.

At the time, I tried to figure out what was wrong with me the same way I tried to find solutions to all of my problems as a teen: magazines. Yet, in article upon article, all I saw were stock images of thin white girls with whom I seemed to have nothing in common. I was obviously not anorexic. I never could throw up after eating, though god knows I tried, so bulimia was out. And while my habits were definitely in line with bingeing, which wasn’t recognized as its own disorder until 2013, I never felt like I ate quite enough to qualify. I had a tendency to buy a lot of things on impulse, take a few bites, then throw them away. I once read somewhere that Lindsay Lohan poured water on her food after she was full so she’d stop eating; I’d subsequently watched many half-eaten tubs of ice cream swirl down the drain.

I hoped going to my dream college would somehow absolve me of my lack of self-worth and, with that, my eating habits. Instead, I spent much of my freshman and sophomore years at Brown feeling like a fraud and making full use of my unlimited meal plan by stuffing to-go containers and eating alone in my dorm room.

Eventually, I began seeing a therapist, who diagnosed me with dysthymia — a low-grade, chronic form of depression — and generalized anxiety disorder. I also began seeing a personal trainer. By senior year, my body finally felt like it fit my 5-foot-2-inch frame. I spoke in class like what I had to say actually mattered. Instead of ruminating alone and in doubt, I opened up to friends and socialized. I went on spring break in Florida and took pictures in a bikini for the first time ever. I felt more in control of my life than I ever thought I could. I was finally, finally, happy.

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Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

But, despite my progress, there was one hurdle for which I couldn’t shake my anxiety: finding a job. An aspiring journalist, I had carefully checked off all the necessary boxes — writing courses, writing and editing for campus publications, three internships — but was terrified of rejection. So instead, I joined Teach for America after graduating in 2012, rationalizing it as a necessary experience to one day write about social justice issues. After a few months teaching third grade at a charter school north of Providence, I was miserable. Inexperienced and ill-equipped to handle the needs of my students, I began yo-yoing between jars of baby food that I’d eat as meals and cartons of Chinese food and quickly gained back half the weight I’d previously lost.

So, I finally sought out a second therapist who specialized in weight and body issues.

“The only reason you felt happy your senior year is because you were thin,” she told me during one of our first sessions. It was then when I learned the name for what I’d been struggling with my entire life: disordered eating, in my case chronic enough that it was periodically a full-blown, though unspecified, eating disorder (the distinction between the two is the frequency and severity of patterns). My therapist coaxed me to recognize how my entire identity and self-esteem seemed dependent on what was on my plate at any given moment. She pointed out that even when I had felt my best, I was undercounting calories, considering a couple dozen spears of asparagus or a couple of eggs to be adequate dinners, despite running regular 5Ks at the time. Instead of becoming healthier during college, I had swung from one extreme to the other. Now I was bouncing back and forth between the two.

Yet, as thankful as I was to have a more concrete understanding of what was going on with me, I rejected her theory. After all, I thought, much more had changed that year than just my weight and diet. The real problem was my job. The real problem was Rhode Island. So, I quit and I left. And, like a bad movie on loop, within a few months in New York I was juice cleansing and takeout bingeing, with a job at a fashion magazine where I was thankful for a cubicle so that that no one could see me inhale the finest Midtown’s hot buffet delis had to offer. Then, for a host of reasons, I quit that job after half a year and spent my “funemployment” obsessively looking for another one, watching all of Breaking Bad, and ordering Seamless at midnight.

Pause. Play. Rewind. Repeat.

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Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

I’m now nearing the end of my second year in New York, and by and large my life has begun to stabilize. I’ve moved out of a claustrophobic apartment I shared with roommates when I first got to the city into one of my own, and have both a job and a boyfriend I love. I cook more and, overall, eat much better, often Instagramming the meals I’m most proud to have made.

And yet — two weekends ago, I visited my parents in Arkansas, and it went badly: My boyfriend and I were fighting, the flights were changed because of bad weather. Exhausted, I spent much of my airport layover on the way back to NYC agonizing over what to eat, wanting nothing more than to drown myself in a combo plate at the King Wah Express, yet ultimately settling on a sensible salad from the glaringly obvious sensible salad place (“green to greens…” “earth fresh…”). The canned salmon was too pale, the dressing too much like something out of a Kraft bottle, and I was too aware of being the overweight woman eating a salad. I pushed it over to the side and grabbed my wallet. After another lap around the food court, I was back in front of King Wah Express.

“How much is just a side of lo mein?” I asked the woman behind the counter.

“$4.99.”

It wasn’t a lot, but I was frustrated that I’d already spent $13 on something that was going in the trash. I changed course.

“I’ll take two crab rangoon, please.”

I sat back down and ate them my usual way: crispy corners first, then soft, squishy middle full of filling. As I dribbled duck sauce out of individual packets and wiped grease off my fingers, I wondered, like so many times before, if my eating habits will — can — ever really sustainably change. I pulled up the waistband of my leggings, aware of the strings already unraveling at the seams in the thigh and that I’d just bought them a little over a month ago. Packing for this trip was easy; I am at the heaviest I’ve ever been and most of my clothes didn’t fit anyway.

The last time I ate crab rangoon, it was 2013 and I was still living in Rhode Island. After failing to go to the YMCA that was across the street from my apartment, I had purchased a membership at a discount gym in a small town 10 minutes away because, somehow, that seemed like a better motivator than a building I could literally stare at out of my bedroom window. I can count the number of times I went to that gym on two hands and have few memories of it, but I do remember the Chinese buffet that was in the shopping center next door. I went to it twice: one time to eat inside, in a pleather booth near a couple and their annoying kids, the other to eat takeout, in a red plastic Ikea chair in my kitchen.

I can’t believe I am fucking here. Again. I thought, as I thumbed crumbs off the airport table.

But that was two weeks ago.

I’ve come to realize I eat the same way I hit my snooze button every morning: just a little bit more. Tired when I should feel energized, so empty despite being so full. Food is still the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. I still spend much of my time trying to hide just how much I eat it. After nine months in my own place, I’ve yet to buy my own microwave, hoping the lack of ease with which I can heat things will keep me from eating myself out of control. I’ve also yet to find a therapist in the city, an endeavor I’ve embarked on most weeks since I moved here and feel wholly overwhelmed by. However, I’m slowly, finally, acknowledging that my disordered eating — though inextricably intertwined with other issues — is also its own source of unhappiness, rather than a symptom of it.

And now I’m trying a new routine. Today was my fourth day starting my morning curled on my couch, sipping a cup of tea before I reach for the handle of the fridge. Before I leave my apartment, I pack lunch — a proper serving of “pad thai” made with spaghetti squash and shrimp, which I relished making earlier in the week, plus blueberries — in a plastic teal bento box with dorky handles. I feel equal parts embarrassed and ecstatic about carrying it on the subway and into my office, mindful of what my co-workers might think of such a marked departure from the spread of constant, countless snacks I’ve carted to my desk, but knowing after I’ve finished what’s inside, I’ll feel better somehow. This time, I won’t throw it away.

Resources

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, here are some organizations that have trained support staff available by phone:

National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders Helpline: 1-630-577-1330

Binge Eating Disorder Association Helpline: 1-855-855-BEDA

National Eating Disorder Association Helpline: 1-800-931-2237

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/anitabadejo/confessions-of-a-disordered-eater

#Body Image #eating disorder #essay