#rf post

[roulettefeel]

Shin going to a game event where people sign up in two-player teams but his only friend in the world hasn't been around in years. Did he hope to see him there?

[appleslices]

Morning Glories and Puppies (details), set of four sliding door panels, Edo period, 1784 by Maruyama Ōkyo (1733-1795) from the Tokyo National Museum

[trans-ralsei]

"Do I deserve this?" "Am I worthy of this?"

So irrelevant. Do you want it?

[rainbow-nijisaki]

Runey Factor 5'd some studies!

[outofcontextrunefactory]

Welp there he goes

[ghostsofwintersnight]

[lynsstrange]

My Roman Empire is that despite representing the epitome of wealth, power, and influence to Rin, Nezha is ultimately powerless his entire life.

He is born to be a political pawn for his father, who's only job is to serve his country, and he accepts this fact eary on. He knows deep down his parents will never love him enough because of what he is, but he still seeks his father's praise despite knowing that he will never be respected.

He has all the power of a nation and its military behind him, but he still is forced to concede to colonizers that he see him as subhuman and backwards because of his race. He has divine shamanic abilities, but is controlled and abused by the Dragon as nothing more than a plaything. He wants to die, but is forced to be immortal by a god he never wanted to serve.

He loves Rin, but knows that that has "never mattered" because of the cycle of history they've trapped themselves in. And at the end of the series he's forced to stab her in the heart, by her own hand and decision, not his.

He's left completely alone, and even though there's a glint of optimism for his nation, he knows the rest of his life will only be a series of sacrifices made for it.

[lunacyorsomething]

genuinely going insane about how "we're scholars, not soldiers" (Babel, RF Kuang) fits in with Arcane. something something Jinx and Ekko are both brilliant prodigies born in an environment that forced them to be fighters something something Jayce and Viktor, for all their involvement in the conflict, were still inventors at heart something something

[thejudeduarte]

No book has paralleled quite like the poppy war 😔😔

[roulettefeel]

Wanted to write some Momdori but so little is known about her it's a little hard so if I write more in this fic she'll be more in the periphery while I write some Kai&Hiyori (&Sei) content.

[lonestarflight]

The second prototype of the Northrop XF-15A Reporter (42-8335) taking off. It started life as P-61C before being taken back to the modification shop of Northrop for conversion into the XF-15. It differed from the first prototype with its Pratt & Whitney R-2800-C Double Wasp 18-cyl. air-cooled radial piston engines

source

[orangerosebush]

Recently, I did a re-read of the AF series, and I am working through some thoughts I have on the Fowls and what allowed them to maintain power -- especially in the sense of being landed -- in Ireland after arriving during the Norman conquest in the 12th century.

Colfer establishes that Hugo de Folé and Virgil Butler arrived in Ireland during the first Norman crusades in the 12th century (1169).

“The first record of this unusual arrangement [between the Fowls and Butlers] was when Virgil Butler had been contracted as servant, bodyguard, and cook to Lord Hugo de Folé for one of the first great Norman crusades.” From: Artemis Fowl. By Eoin Colfer.

At once, these origins of the Fowls would make them ambiguously part of the Old English, a term from the modern period (post-1600) used to describe the descendants of the first Anglo-Norman conquerors who largely inhabited the Pale (Dublin and surrounding areas) and surrounding towns. Hugo de Folé and Virgil Butler would have likely been Catholic.

However, the origins of Fowl Manor complicate this.

The original Fowl castle had been built by Aodhán Fowl in the fifteenth century overlooking low-lying country on all sides. A tactic borrowed from the Normans. From: The Arctic Incident. By Eoin Colfer

In the 15th (c. 1401-1500) century, Aodhán Fowl acquired land for Fowl Manor in the Pale (Dublin and its surrounding areas); the estate has remained in the Fowls' possession ever since, which is important to note.

The Fowls' historical proximity to the Pale likely was what allowed them to maintain power over the centuries.

Between the 12th and 16th centuries, the Lordship of Ireland (1177-1542) placed swaths of Ireland under the control of Anglo-Norman lords loyal to the King of England.

However, by the 14th century (1300s), English rule of Ireland beyond the Pale (Dublin and its surrounding areas) was weakening. Beyond the Pale, (Catholic) Hiberno-Norman lords' fiefdoms had a degree of independence from the English, often adopting elements of Gaelic language and culture.

This changes around the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation and the Tudor conquest of Ireland. In 1536, Henry VIII of England decided to reconquer Ireland and bring it under crown control. Charles II, Henry VII's son, made the re-established Church of England even more explicitly Protestant.

Between the 16th and 17th centuries (c.1550s-1620s), Irish land was transferred to a new wave of (Protestant) settlers from Great Britain and Scotland to strengthen the Crown's weakening control over Ireland and Anglicize (and thus "civilize") the island; the land transfer was facilitated through the creation of plantations, such as the plantation of Ulster.

The Old English, which would have included descendants of de Folé and Virgil Butler, were supplanted by the New English, the Protestant landowners introduced by the Tudors in a number of ventures at plantations.

It is important to note the historical nuance that:

There was no equivalent in Ireland to the English Test Act of 1672, and there were plenty of precedents for exemptions to the Act of Supremacy. The legal position of Irish Catholics was, in many practical respects, better than that of English Catholics; many fines and penalties fell into abeyance under Charles [II], and the Catholic hierarchy co-operated openly with the Dublin administration. From James's [James VI and I] accession, the Church's position was obviously improved; priests emerged into the public eye and were allowed salaries, though they were not as yet endowed. Protestant superiority remained, in many areas, axiomatic; Catholics continued to occupy a curiously edgy position of formal inferiority combined with tacit toleration. But the ambiguities of their situation reflected the logic of local conditions just as much as the shifts in central policy. [...] But the 'Test clause in the 1704 [Popery] Act, obliging holders of public office to take sacraments according to the usage of the Church of Ireland, gradually excluded Presbyterians from town corporations even in Ulster. Despite the regium donum and the Toleration Act, their equivocal relationship with the civil power remained, and would provide a key theme in the radicalization of the Irish political world after 1780, when the threat of Catholic disaffection apparently receded. [From: Modern Ireland, 1600–1972. By R.F. Foster]

Still, the Popery Act would have had consequences for the historical Fowls and Butlers as Old English families. Beyond the Test clause in the Popery Act, it also limited Catholics' ability to buy/lease land, as well as limited inheritance from a Catholic to be by gavelkind i.e., divided equally, and thus shrinking with each generation, the estate between all sons, rather than according to Primogeniture.

It begs the question of how Fowl Manor remained in the hands of the family, rather than becoming the estate of a member of the New English.

As anti-Catholic sentiment was largely grounded in the political context of loyalty to the Crown (as opposed to the Pope), certain members of the Old English gentry could have (and did!) find ways to join the wave of the Protestant Ascendancy.

"The Anglo-Ireland of the day in fact encompassed sizable middle and lower classes -- a heterogeneity that Foster finds "exemplified by that quintessential Ascendancy institution, Trinity College: defined by Anglicanism but containing sons of peers, of shoemakers, of distillers, of butchers, of surgeons, and of builders" (Foster 1989, 173). And not all the "Anglo-Irish" were, strictly speaking, "Anglo." Early in Bowen's Court, Bowen's historical account of her family's Cork home, we learn that "Bowen" derives from the Welsh "ab Owen" or "ap Owen" (Bowen 1942a, 33). Other Anglo-Irish men and women traced their ancestry to the Old English and to Catholics who converted to Protestantism in order to reap the accompanying social, political and material rewards. Violet Martin (better known as Martin Ross) descended from the Old English Martins of Ross, who had owned land in Galway and had converted to Protestantism in the eighteenth century (McMahon 1968, 123). As Thomas Flanagan concludes, "there were many ways of being Anglo-Irish" (Flanagan 1966, 59). So what, then, defined Anglo-Irishness? In [R.F. ] Foster's view, it was Anglicanism. Anglicanism "defined a social elite, professional as well as landed, whose descent could be Norman, Old English, Cromwellian or even (in a very few cases) ancient Gaelic. Anglicanism conferred exclusivity, in Ireland as in contemporary England; and exclusivity defined the [Protestant] Ascendancy, not ethnic origin" From: An Anarchy in the Mind And in the Heart: Narrating Anglo-Ireland. By Ellen M. Wolff

And what do we find out in the first book of Artemis Fowl?

"Beside [Angeline] was a facsimile of [Artemis'] father, constructed from the morning suit he'd worn on that glorious day in Christchurch Cathedral fourteen years ago." From: Artemis Fowl. By Eoin Colfer

Christchurch Cathedral (in Dublin) is Anglican in denomination!

I just think it is so cool that across a few sentences from Artemis Fowl and The Arctic Incident, it is possible to situate the Fowl family within a semi-realistic history of Ireland.

[pastadoughie]

i dont think its innaccurate at all to say that trans women are disproportionately larger targets among queer spaces but i think its really willfully ignorant & disengenuous that many examples people use to prove this deliberately scrub any kind of intersectionality with intersex & transmasculine people because when you make this idea of being "the most oppressed group" a core fundimental of your political platform. you obviously are going to be actively hostile whenever anybody points out that a) their experience w/ mysogeny is not unique & exclusive to "amab" transfems & b) that intersex people exist at all & are direct & extremely harsh targets of transphobia & that many tumblr girls exploit the ambiguity in early intersex termonology to both redefine out everybody who isnt a trans woman & to say its exclusive to trans women. when your goal is oppression olympics, -witch to be clear is a game you are never going to win regardless of how many spaces you fill on minority bingo- youre forced to dip into increasingly blatent bioessentialism & sexism in order to justify yourself.

[angelsaxis]

The thing about Westminster Bridge collapsing is that even the faculty and students on strike fell for the trap that harm done to civilians would be the fault of the revolutionaries and the resistances and not the institutions that forced said resistance's hand. Robin and Co warned London (or wherever it's located) that the bridge would fall. They knew the day. They said the bridge would collapse. That knowledge puts the responsibility of care on the authorities to shut down the bridge and the water way underneath it in order to keep the civilians safe. The fact that they chose not to do that just proved that the rich and powerful do not truly care about anyone but themselves. It would have been inconvenient and it would have been hell and it would have been expensive, and that's why the upper echelons didn't do that. Robin and the rest are going to be blamed for those deaths, but if it's clear that they're an immovable object, an unstoppable force, it's then on London to simply stop pushing and get out of the way.

[seasidefae]

The air smelled like a promise, all of Oxford shone like an illumination, and he was falling in love. — Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang

[royal-hair]

There's a video of them reuniting. Leonor tackled her mom hahaha this is too cute

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