#So I will. Not do that. And will instead study the revolutionary war like a good little public historian and privately

[fantasy-costco]

After this semester ends in like a week I won't have any more religious studies classes like. Ever again. My religious studies advisor already told me that people have tried to put religious studies classes towards history degrees in the masters program but the school won't let them. I can always keep researching on my own and part of the point of this minor was to get the tools to do so but religious studies is a field full of so much bias and it's nice to have someone to guide me through that.

[thesharktanksdriver]

Blood's Thicker Than Water (Platonic)

Made this cause I love assassins creed and I hate how they left the plot point about Desmond having a kid from a one night stand. Like sure there’s a comic for Elijah but let’s be real, who here has read that comic?

Sorry if any of them seem out of character, I haven’t played the games in a long while lol

Also thanks to my friend for streaming the games so I can get back into them lol

You never really met your dad but from what your mother described him as he was….a troubled soul

Now to be fair you’ve never exactly met Desmond Miles yourself but from the stories she told it’s obvious he had his fair share of demons

Some of which seemed to spill from the cracks of his soul from the short time she spent with him

A bartender is what he was, until he suddenly up and vanished from said bar in 2012 and died not too long after

It didn’t really make sense then even to your young mind

The gap between his sudden disappearance and death leaving too much unsaid for your mind not to be annoyed by

But as a child you eventually put the thought away

Eventually you forget

Instead going on to pursue your next whim as you focus on the present, or in your case Learning about the past in the present time

Unlike your fascination with your father that went away, your love of history never faded with time

It just seemed to grow the older you got

Your not sure why but something about history just clicked with you

It was somewhere within the range of middle school and reading national geographic that you had realized you liked it

That despite how some areas of it were bleak and disturbing it was interesting

And it got even more so interesting as you delved deeper into the depths of libraries

Nose buried in books lined with dust and old parchment

Yellowed pages and old ink that you carefully decode from centuries of lost meaning and metaphors lost to the modern age

You studied from the ancients all the way up to Victorian

Easing your way though literal centuries of historical records as you soaked up information like a sponge

And it’s there you vegans seeing an odd…repetition of events that seemed to occur

Odd assassinations plagued each era you looked into, all of which connected somehow by people in odd dress

In some journals that had luckily stood the tests of time you uncovered more eye witness accounts

A solider’s log back in the revolutionary war talking about an odd man meeting with his superiors in the dead of night

The diary of a log master who wrote of an odd frequent visitor that had an odd blade hidden beneath his sleeve

The drawing of a Victorian child being freed from a factory that had a hooded lady and man on the rooftop

I’m one you found a symbol, one created from the bottom perspective of an eagle skull, something also commonly associated with these hooded figures

What’s odd as well is that with these hooded assassins you also find traces of another group

One well know to historians such as yourself

Oddly enough the symbol of the Templar knights keep showing up even after their annulment

It’s odd, but what’s more odd enough is that both seemed to be tied to other historical artifacts

Ones well kept in archives and from the public eye

Ones you shouldn’t technically know about if not for you sneaking into sections your don’t have the status to enter

Their always gold with odd symbols. Somehow always pristine and polished despite the fact their dated to be from before ancient times

They for some reason seem to call to you specifically

Tempting you with forbidden knowledge you wish to taste like Eve

But for now you choose to wait until you can do proper analysis on them without the risk of punishment

So you lie and wait

Admittedly you didn’t think anyone expected for you to be this good at your job

In their defence you were a university student here on Co-op and not an actual full time historian

Hell you were in first year for gods sake

But somehow despite it all

Despite the fact you had actual historians and people in the history program years above you here you quickly began to become an outlier

A shinning beacon within the large archive, so much so that you began being allowed in the restricted sections you already snuck into

Mind you, now properly allowed there with some supervision of sorts gave you much more flexibility in research

You got to touch these artifacts

Hold them in gloved palms as silk covered finger glide across its edges and ridges

You study them extensively decrypting and decoding the ancient texts and hieroglyphs

Jotting down what you found in both a report and your own personal journal

Your not sure why you do so but you chock it up to making sure no one takes credit for your work

And this continues to the point your eventually allowed alone with them

It’s great

You dedicate yourself to this task as you learn more and more

Soaking up knowledge like a sponge as you find out more of what was previously lost

Find new angles and perspectives on events

For history isn’t just a set time and date, it’s interpretation based on what we know from sources

And even then sources can be biased

Sources can lie and silence another person’s view on the event

Your more than happy to try make your own interpretations

Admittedly when you were asked to study what looked to be a necklace from these unidentified ancient artifacts you were ecstatic

How could you not be?

Intricate gold woven in something akin to Grecian jewelry

Yet also had hints of something akin to Egyptian

It also…glows? Or at least you swear you’ve seen it glow gold and pulsate a few times but that could be the sleep deprivation speaking

Either way it’s an honour

One you don’t take lightly as you study it

Spending countless restless nights and days trying to crack its code

An unknown source has been funding the archive and your research quite a bit

Betting big money on it much to your surprise and suspension

You get that this is potentially something big but it feels out of left field

Especially since no one knows the name of the company

It’s just under an anonymous donation every month

It’s sketchy

But you aren’t one to argue about free money to further your and your colleagues pursuit of knowledge

Not when this beautiful place used to be underfunded

Not when most historical records were donated by people with a good conscious

Not when this place was almost shut down

With a sigh you continue on your work

Diligently tact checking and writing up a storm

Your writing looks like chicken scratch but that was a commonality between all history majors

Well, along with being giant nerds

And it’s there at that desk at 3 am in the morning, tired and only running on 3 hours of rest you find something peculiar on the necklace

A sharp jaded edge that you absentmindedly prick yourself on by accident

With a groan you wipe the blood away on your pants

Then going up to get a bandaid

You swore to god if you died of tetanus you’d be positively pissed

Unknown to you the necklace starts to glow

When you get home your more exhausted than usual

Your limbs feel like their kade of concrete and your head is stuffed with tissue

Eyelids trying to glue themselves shut

You practically kick off your shoes before tumbling to the couch

Not bothering in changing clothes or showering for the sweet relief of sleeps embrace

So you flop down face first into the old leather cushions of your couch

Only putting in the effort of fishing a hand to grab a throw pillow and blanket from nearby that you burrowed yourself into

A comfy cocoon/prison you couldn’t will yourself to leave even as you swore for a moment you heard something in the house

But your mind writes it off

Your too tired to question anything let alone get up

All you want is sleep

And that’s exactly what you get as your eyelids shut

You fall into the realm of dreams, odd ones playing out in your mind

Blurred images of odd men

A weird void-like realm

The cries of an eagle overhead

A single word appearing in your head

Kenway

And then your eyes snap awake when the sound of arguing fills your ears

Yelling of several male voices jumbling up your already fogged up sense as you practically fall off the couch in a mixture of fear and confusion

Curses escaping your mouth when suddenly the voices go silent and your left in a realm of fear

Hair standing on end as the creaking of the house makes you more alert

Despite the fact you’d never fought a day in your life you will up the courage to grab a baseball bat and cautious cross to where you heard the commotion

Careful steps on the non-creaky boards of the home that you’d luckily memorized

And there you find several men in old garb

Accents of Red tying them together like a string of fate

Or a trail of blood fainting their very existence

they turn to you with sharp eyes

It’s the one in modern clothes that surprises you the most

The face of your supposed dead father staring back at you

Ocher brown eyes that had long lost their life now rejuvenated as they seem to find familiarity in your own features

Some of which mirror his own along with some of the others in the room

The bridge of your nose

A all powerful spark in your eyes as they flick between everyone and escape routes

The way your lip slightly twitches when you try to keep a brave face

Your posture as you decided what to do

It’s all too familiar to him and them in a way that isn’t just coincidence

Especially not when all of them are Kenway

Not when he had been able to prove to them that fact through the experience of virtually living through their lives up until his death

“I’m not sure who the fuck all of you are but get out of my house.” Your fingers twitch and flex as your palms grow sweaty, the wood absorbing the pressure and moisture “especially my dead dad look-alike”

You all but confirm his suspicions

Their suspicions

And it looks Ike for you tonight will be much longer than you anticipated

Turns out that artifact you were studying wasn’t just as normal one

Neither were the other ones you looked at

The way they explained it as was their “artifacts from dead gods”, a fallen civilization that engineered humanity into being their slaves

It’s a lot to take in

Even more so when your suspicions of something bigger happening throughout global history with those odd deaths were real

Oh, and these were you dead ancestors and dad somehow back from the grave and now in your home

…..yeah safe to say that’s a lot to take in after an already very long and tiring shift

You sit there as they explain this, half asleep, and half exasperated

Cause how the hell are you supposed to believe all this bullshit that for some reason feels correct

Something in you tells you that their right yet your mind is fighting that logic

You’d always been a logical person, when it came to most situations you used your brain instead of your heart

And in those cases things ended up fine

But now your faced with this

A situation where your heart is screaming for you to listen as your brain tries to take this all in

Cause logic is completely out the window at the moment

For now you have to trust them even if your still afraid

I mean, how couldn’t you be?

But you get the sense that they understand

At least a little bit by how their also thrusted into a new environment without much say

Perhaps that (along with your own apprehension) is helping comfort them as well

So for now they’ll stay

Your just thanking (the dead) gods that grandma and grandpa’s old home is big enough for all of them

Altaïr Ibn-La’ Ahad

The oldest down the line of your dad’s side of your lineage finds himself often reading through your books in your study

It was a bit of a surprise one day entering it to find him sitting in a spare chair but you don’t mind the silent company

Especially as he seems to find interest in your studies

Occasionally he breaks the silence and asks you a question about the subject he’s reading about

He’s by far the oldest (even if he’s back in the body of his prime) of them therefore he’s the one who has the most figuratively to catch up on

So you indulge him

And also asks questions as well that he seems eager in answering

Knowledge connects you both, scholarly intellect being the bridge between the two of you despite centuries of time apart

Typically he asks about thinks such as modern life and what is know about his home, what happened to it? What it’s known of his era

You answer as best you can

Especially since that era of time isn’t exactly your forte

But he appreciates it anyways

Appreciates that you try, appreciates that you passionately care about history in the first place

Admittedly your mom was supportive but never understood your love of history

She’d listen to your rants and long conversations with a polite smile but you knew she never understood what you were talking about

But he does

He does and contributes whole heartedly in just as much passion

It’s nice

What’s also nice is that he’s studied the artifacts you now study as well

So now your both constantly coming up and developing ideas together

A constant back and forth

Hypotheses, discussion, and testing

Delving deeper into discovery like you’ve wanted

But with this he also helps you see where passion and obsession mix together

After the loss of his wife and son he delved into studying as a form of escape

It drove who was left away

Made the pit in his heart deeper

He doesn’t talk about it often but he seems to see how you may go down the same path

And he warns you of it

Unlike his younger self (that he now appears as) he’s wise if a little rough around the edges

He encourages knowledge but not to the point where it’s an all encompassing and toxic obsession

Within the household he seems to take a somewhat neutral but quiet role

He helps out and offers advice and guidance

Much like a teacher and grandfather of sorts

Speaking up when he has to and making sure the house doesn’t end up in disrepair

He seems to have a fascination with modern appliances, or at least holds a thankfulness for them

Like a few others he sticks to his robes most the time but you’ve seen him sport more modern clothes once awhile

Stuff still somewhat reminiscent of what he wore before but with a modern flare. Things with hoods and draping. Silks and wool. Something with an accent of red mixed in

Sometimes when you fall asleep in your studies you find a blanket draped over you and a cup of tea at your side

He won’t admit it’s him but he’s the only one who knows your tea preferences

He keeps his worry for you deep down but it’s somewhat relived when seeing that you take his warning of not taking the pursuit of knowledge too far

“It says here there was something called the “French revolution”. Would you care to explain what happened here to me?” He asks making you pause your work for a moment, when he sees your smile he knows your answer. Sure he read some of this book and got the gist of it, but something about seeing your eyes light up at his inquiry makes him feel at peace for a moment.

“Would I ever!”

Ezio Auditore da Firenze

This man is quite literally all up in your (and everyone’s) business

Not in an annoy way per say but he’s definitely curious about the lives his descendants have led (both good and bad)

Ezio is very clearly a family man and it’s somewhat ironic to see since half of this household has some sort of familiar issue

Most of which is some sort of daddy issue stemming from either Haythem or Edward that trickled down the line to you

Something that Ezio is seemingly trying to wrap his head around

Out of the others he’s the one who opens up the most

Partially because you think he misses his immediate family and friends

It must be a lot to handle being away from home, now in a foreign land where everything has changed

Despite that though he keeps a brave face

Almost always flashing a smile as he drags you from your study to have some “bonding time”

You won’t admit it to his face but you don’t mind

Especially as he gives your poor hunched over back a break

And treats your pallet to some good old fashioned (literally) Italian food and not cup ramen once again

He tried it once and threw your supply out, saying he’d be supplementing you with food from now on

You can’t exactly say your disappointment or upset from the heaven that is fresh baked garlic bread and pasta

He cooks not only for you but for the others of the house as well, saying his sister taught him lest he piss off his future lady

Taking in their suggestions and cooking foods from their homes as a way of him offering comfort

Whilst he does these tasks he often hums in his mother tongue of Latin

You don’t have the heart to tell him it’s a dead language

Especially when he seems so happy that you can somewhat understand it

He’s happily rambling and teaching you words

Helping you sound out phrases and pronunciation correctly unlike your Latin professor

Some of his songs he lightly sings under his breath get stuck in your head since he has a good singing voice

But despite the facade you see the cracks

Sometimes you find him looking at modern objects mumbling about how Leonardo would have loved to see this or made something similar

Or how Claudia would’ve liked this book

How Petruccio would have loved this toy

It….leaves a bitter taste in your mouth

Once upon a time you felt this same type of longing for family

Once a time you thought of you dad before going to bed and staring at his old Polaroid with hope

One that would never come to fruition (until now)

It’s why you indulge him, to keep his mind off the deeper plunge of melancholy

Compared to the others he’s relatively open to modernizing

In fact he seems somewhat excited in these things

Raiding your wardrobe like a damn fashionista and critiquing what’s good quality

He also has a wide variety of looks, not sticking to something similar to his time of dress

Versatile and somehow up to date? Your not sure how but somehow he’s in fashion?

Like he must’ve found a copy of vogue or something cause there is no way he just guessed that this was the new trend

When you pressure him on it he replies that he’s simply that amazing

You call bullshit but have yet to find evidence

But in the meantime you ask get him to tell you about Da Vinci and you furiously jot down what he says

Sometimes when he looks at you he sees flashes of Claudia’s quick wit

It makes him long for home yet as he looks at his descendants and ancestor he also feels….something

A small pit of warmth developing as he gets to know the inhabitants of this house longer

Meet Altair besides through a weird vision

His home is in Florence yet that feeling of comfort from the Villa is bleeding into these old (yet new) walls

“So this painting is his most famous work?” He asks looking at your computer with a bit of confusion, his scared lips quirking at the digital image.

“Yeah. This is actually probably the most famous painting in the world”

“Really? Of all his works this one is considered the best? I’m not doubting his skill but of all his pieces?”

“Believe me, I get it. It’s only this famous cause it was stolen”

“Stolen?!? Tell me who did it! I swear-”

Edward Kenway

For someone who was a feared pirate on the seas he’s surprisingly much less violent than you’d think him to be

Sure, he’s scary as hell still but at least he’s not stabbing you in the back and making off with your grandmas pearls or something

Still your a bit unnerved by him considering you did a project on him back in middle school and he’s now in your home

Munching on some god damn biscuits as if this was a normal situation

His son Haytham avoids his as best he can but he seems to bond with his grandson quite easily

Or more easily than he does with Haythem

It takes some time but you eventually go to him when you find him awake at the dead hours of night

A whisky bottle in hands as he occasionally takes a swig in silence as he stares out the window

You don’t talk

You don’t need to when he drinks in silence for awhile staring at the moon before eventually talking about the guilt

In his pursuit of power and gold he let people die

Greed woven into his soul as he sacrificed good men for his cause

He changed and did good yet his past haunts him

Hands stained red

Guilt eating away

A son who doesn’t want anything to do with him

At some point when he stops his rambles you speak

Reminding him that while his actions weren’t good he changed

It doesn’t wash the blood away but it stoped more from staining his hands

Though Haythem avoids him Connor is more than eager to fill his place

It doesn’t fix his overlying problems but it does help

In the morning he ends up talking with you more after this as your initial fear melts away

You end up seeing Edward Kenway, not the fiercesome captain of the Jackdaw

You see a man burdened by past mistakes and still wishes to do better

You see a human being at its core

With history it’s easy to forget the people your looking at was once alive and a breathing being

One who was just as flawed as you and I

But seeing a infamous pirate captain cry about issues pertaining not just time him made you remember that

He isn’t opposed to modernizing but seems to keep a certain sea-like touch to his appearance

Clothes for labourers and something loose is what he normally sticks to

He’s lucky though since he doesn’t exactly have traditional robes and can incorporate what he appeared in with a modern flair

Occasionally when he gets drunk he slurs out old shanties and talks about his epic tales

You might or might not have freaked the fuck out learning that James kidd was actually a woman

Mind blown

Ezio and Altair had to drag you away from your computer from writing an entire essay

Sitting on your countertop he holds a glass of whiskey in hand, one held out for you as you sit down beside him. The moon casts its gentle rays and lights the marble slab you both sit on. “I prefer Rum but this’ll do” it’s said in a playful tone that makes you nod and take a sip.

“I can grab some captain Morgan later…speaking of which, did you know him?

“No, but I did find a few of his things laying about “

“Care to tell?”

“Aye, sure thing”

Haytham Kenway

As the only Templar in this house it’s safe to say he’s definitely the outlier of the bunch

A relative lone wolf from the group that all hold some sort of Ill feelings towards him

From his father its confusion and sadness

The others it’s a mix of that and anger

From Connor it’s just plain…well your not quite sure how to describe it

The two’s entire family situation is just plain messy and thick with tension that their blades could cut through

But here’s the thing, in this house your also an outlier

A neutral zone so to say

Hell, the entire house seemed to be a haven of sorts from their whole Templar vs Assassin conflict

To be honest you don’t really care about this secret war

Well that’s a lie you are interested in these war of secret societies but you don’t specifically care to get involved in their politics

Not when you have business in interfering in it unless a fight breaks out and your telling everyone to calm the fuck down

So safe to say your kinda the only one who talks to Haytham

He is…well sometimes he’s a bit of an ass (in the British type of way) but at the same time he’s good conversation

Specifically when it comes to that of morals and philosophical beliefs

He is a conflicted man

A flawed one

But he holds his beliefs and morals despite the fact he’s been hurt and betrayed by a man he viewed as a mentor

He doesn’t talk about it much but he’s still hurt

Still seething with venom that burns his soul and flesh

Makes him want to lash out despite his upperclassman appearance and attitude

That despite it all he loves his son, so much so he willingly walked into what would be his death knowingly

That despite what happened he loves his dad yet can’t face him yet on account of what he became

What ideals and morals he still believes in even now

It’s perhaps he’s venting this to you rather than a journal because he knows you won’t judge him unfairly on the basis of what side your own

Your judging him as a flawed man and as an equally flawed person

It’s with him as well you open up about your own frustrations

How you still don’t know how to feel about this all

The fact that a lot of what you once knew was flipped on it’s head

Along with the fact your not even sure how to address your dad

It’s an entire mess but perhaps your both messed up together and that also draws you both to talking

To discuss your feelings of insucurity and confliction

To feel comfort that your not alone in not having your emotional shit in order

On some especially…emotional nights you both both have a cup of tea

He seems to enjoy that each time you use a different type, much of which used to be hard to obtain due to shipping and it’s prices

He hasn’t really yet grasped modern technology but your slowly helping him with it

It’s kinda like trying to teach a grandpa to figure out a phone, but now it’s him with the concept of a microwave

Like some of the others he’s yet to really also change his clothes to something modern

There has been a few times though he sported sweaters and vests

Your now working on helping his wardrobe since he prefers a sophisticated look

Occasionally he looks at the photos that line your walls, looking as you evolve through the ages

It’s…odd

With Connor he never had the chance to watch him grow

Never a snapshot to immortalize what he was like a child but now ones of you litter the walls like paintings

He feels melancholy

Yet at the same time he’s happy to get another chance maybe

One that is seemingly being helped by your gentle hand unknowingly

“I never thought about it until now but the stars are different” he says taking a sip of his matcha tea, he lets it pool on his tongue and experience the flavour. Not his favourite but not the worst

“That’s cause of light pollution here…though the stars do move so it it’s possible they’ve shifted position in the sky”

“Do they teach you about the stars in your schooling?”

“Yeah I took some. Not sure why, it just kinda spoke to me. Maybe it’s the Kenway blood”

Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor Kenway

Of the group Connor is the most quiet and surprisingly the one whom you connect with the best for some reason

Perhaps it’s cause your both socially awkward in ways that let you relate

Or the fact you’ve both been ostracized by society for various reasons

His company is that of a quiet one but one you accept it with ease as you both sit and enjoy each others company

A quiet kinship made of unspoken but understood words from one another

The reminder that someone else is there and your not truly alone

He is perhaps the one you feel you can understand the most

And it’s the same likewise for him

Your both people deeply hurt and still bleeding internally

People raised by only their mother in a cruel and harsh world

People who were let down one way or another by their father

People who are still mad and angry but use that to further their determination

It’s odd but you feel truly understood

Like your soul was peeled back to reveal at your core your still a lone spirit lost in the world

One clinging to what they know as their only lifeline in this confusing and jumbled mess of a situation

The hulking 6 foot 2 man shows you trails near your home

Taking to the forest paths you’ve know your entire life and helping you discover even more about them

And while he does this he teaches you more about the world as you both walk the old beaten path

He tells you how to identify what type of tree is which, which stones are likely geodes and what tracks belong to who

It’s honestly petty interesting especially since he adds snippets of stories from his heritage

In return you talk about what you know as well

Snippets of your own knowledge that he seems to store into his mind just as you do with his stories

An equal exchange of sorts

On these walks you begin to notice he takes you out on these when your at your most stressed

The times in which your mind is overworking and consuming itself with anxiety

The times in which you need to breath

Connor doesn’t seem like one to vocally express his care but he does so through action

Small inconspicuous actions that mean a lot more than what meets the eye

It’s seems that his towards you is helping you when you need it most

Taking you away to just take a moment for yourself

To just breath in the fresh air and let the sunset coloured leaves of autumn crunch under your boots

Letting the cold breeze take away your worries

It’s perhaps better than any type of verbal support

Yet another unspoken action of care and compassion through knowing and watching

Of watching and knowing when you need a break

When you realize this and give him a small tired smile as a thanks he seems to know

Only giving a small nod with a minuscule smile of his own

It only grows bigger when you begin to ask him if his traditions, of the stories and practices of his people that he’s more than willing to tell when he knows you ask out of genuine curiosity and respect

Connor is somewhat 50/50 in modernizing

He adapts quite well but still needs help with certain things as he navigates the situation

But like usual he is anything but resourceful as he watches what you do and figures it out

He helps the others quite a bit with what he’s picked up and somewhat takes pride in the fact he can help them

Whilst he’s privy to wearing his robes he isn’t against more modern clothes

The only problem though is sometimes finding stuff that fits him considering he’s not only a giant but also fairly muscular

But your both eventually able to find some stuff for him to wear that he likes

He really appreciates though that you try to buy clothes and jewelry from nearby indigenous peoples

It might not be his but he appreciates the sentiment and familiarity that the beaded jewelry give him

“I’ve lived here my whole life and walked down these paths a thousand times yet it seems more like your the local here” you say with amusement as you follow Conner through an area you’d be never been before.

He smiles, it’s small but there as he adds “just a matter of perspective. You see the paths your used to and I see ones you hadn’t noticed”

Desmond Miles

Yeah so this is entirely awkward for you

Like how the fuck do you emotionally deal with this and the fact your very dead dad who didn’t know you existed till now is now very alive

And living in your house with his very dead ancestors that are also now alive

Case and point you don’t, specifically you ignore the problem and act like everything is fine

You lock yourself away and try to avoid him like the plague

Somehow Scurry past him and into the kitchen to grab something before returning to your abode to eat

But then things got complicated

Things change

You began talking to the others

Slowly coming out the darkness of your study and joining the dinner table

But you still try to avoid him

It feels like the sight of him burns your mind, all those nights as a kid coming back to you

The hope and then disappoint in learning he died and that he likely never wanted you

Your mother never said this but the other kids did. They always teased and picked at the fact you were a mistake

It’s why you push so hard now to be the best, To prove them wrong (to prove to yourself that your worth existing)

The fact is that now he’s here and you don’t know how to deal with that

How would you even start?

What do you even say to him?

You quiet down when he enters a room because you don’t know what to do

Whatever your about to say dying in your throat like a caged bird and all that came come out are garbled noises as you evade him

Eyes casting down to your hands like a child averting their gaze from their parent when in trouble (he is your dad so it’s the same thing right?)

Leaving the room he’s in as quickly as you can once a take is done

The others notice quick, I mean how can’t they? A damn butter knife can cut through the tension

The whole thing with Haytham and Connor is less tense than this

But what can you even do?

How in thick do you talk to him and how can he even talk to you?

Your 18 and in university, he’s 25 and was a bartender in New York before apparently sacrificing himself for the world

He’s closer in age to being a big brother rather than your dad.

But even besides that he’s been long dead and gone since 2012

It’s been years since that point and more importantly he’s someone important and your not

He’s an assassin born to a bloodline of other assassins

Someone who was raised in this tradition with greatness not only in his origin but also in his death

And your you

A child born from a one night stand who’s only achievement is being good at knowing about old people

It hurts but it’s true

If he’s a star then your a candle compared to his light

A mere blip or spark to the greater picture

There had been times he looked like he wanted to say something but you scurry away before he can say anything

Sometimes you catch the looks and small gestures Ezio tries to make as if to encourage him to go up to you

How Connor sometimes brings up to you how he wishes for reconciliation with his dad and that perhaps it’s possible with your own

Altair not beating around the bush and plainly telling both him and you to talk

But it all feels for naught and dies when those feelings and thoughts return

But eventually he corners you

Well not really corners you per say but he catches you as you leave your study after a talk with Altair

“Listen I don’t have any grudge against you. For one you died, I’d be a dick if I blamed you for that or your decision to save the world and whatever. Second you didn’t know about me in the first place” you say briefly looking up at him before averting your gaze, he looks like he wants to say something but he can’t get a word out before you continue “but you don’t have to act like my dad or anything. You never asked for me, it was a mistake, I was a mistake and I’m fine with it.” (Your lying to yourself)

You leave before he can get a word out, and he’s left alone in the hallway. When he returns to Ezio he just sits down in silence. It’s enough for everyone to know I didn’t go the way he wanted.

Admittedly when you begin to notice odd figures at the achieves you write it off

I mean it could literally be anyone plus the supervisors aren’t making a fuss about them here

If anything their welcoming them and looking at them with hopeful eyes

Small glances full of opportunities in them

It’s odd but maybe their just some non-profit here to support the archive

Or even private benefactors of sorts

But then they turn their attention to you

Plastic smiles on their faces, artificial pleasantries as their main spokeswoman sits in front of you in a slick suit

Her stilettos tapping against the ground as your eyes trail to her bodyguards of sorts

They stand not too close nearby

Watching

Waiting

And then she begins talking

And slowly you grow more and more uncomfortable

Hands playing with one another, fingers twitching in your palm as crescent are indebted in your skin

They apparently are interested in your findings

In your research

But more specifically you

They’ve researched you…a lot

Down from where your mother was born to her great great something grandfather

And your father

…but that’s not public knowledge

It wasn’t even on your birth certificate

This….this isn’t

She smiles though now the darkness melts away into something more knowing

Dangerous and sadistic of sorts

And it’s there on her little pin showing her name you recognize the logo

Within your house you’d vaguely heard whispers of the others talking in hushed tones

You didn’t mind

The less you know the better in that sense

Out of sight and out of mind

But sometimes you’d hear the mumbles of a name that you didn’t put together until now

One spat with venom just as they did with the word of the Templar

Abstergo

You barely have time to react before your black bagged and sufficiently knocked out

Mind drifting to that of panic

What would happen to you?

What will happen when the others find out?

But then those thoughts fade away into the dark void of sleep

When you wake up things are odd

Everything is a sterile white and too bright for your foggy sleep tinged eyes

The room is blurred as is your senses as you weightlessly drift

Everything feels odd

And then it happens sharp and pure pain that leaves you writhing and screaming into the void

And that’s when you notice that white light had left and your in a void of sorts

Empty glitching effects all around you as your left to look around in confusion until you see something

A memory? Specifically one of your memories

Your staring at a simulation of sorts of your past self

A 8 year old in their bed with chubby cheeks pulled up into a melancholy smile

You recognize this moment, your small hands holding a picture that had long been put away into a scrapbook and forgotten

Your left wordless and confused

And then that bitch’s voice appears again and she explains

This entire thing is a simulation of your memories

And essentially their gonna go through your head picking through them to not only learn what they want but then use you as their lab rat cause of your bloodline.

Cause apparently memories of your ancestors could be accessed that way and it was generally easier to have a descendant rather than finding objects and artifacts

And it’s there in that simulation it feels like your mind is being ripped apart

Memories ripped from your mind to play out in front of you as she makes comments and documents them before their forced back in and another is ripped out

Like book having pages torn out and then crudely stitched back in

It hurts so damn much

Over and over

Your just left in screaming again on the ground of this simulated world as she makes idol comments

Left begging for it to stop

For someone to help

For the love of god someone help you make it stop

Of course this would happen to you

You’ve always had shit luck despite your whole family motto being “make your own luck”

What utter bullshit

You can’t make good luck from bad

Can’t just change things when the scales are already tipped one way

But then like a miracle from above she goes quiet and suddenly the memory is gone

And your left in the void still reeling from it all

Still on the glitching ground before once more white encompasses your view

Blinding and bright as your still recovering

And then an unfamiliar voice tunes in

“Your safe” it’s heavily accented, in an Irish twang that’s soft as he says these words to you. A reminder that your ok now, it’s over. “Can you walk?”

You try to look at him with squinting eyes yet they still can’t adjust, your limbs feel heavy like solid rock. Unmoving even as you try. With some difficulty you shake your head

“Aight, I’ll have you carry you then. Are you alright with that?”

“Just get me out of here…please. I just want to go home, I miss my family” it sounds pathetic but as tears begin to fall the stranger doesn’t seem to think Ill of you.

“Don’t worry, I get what that’s like.” The tone is sympathetic and like before is soft “you’ll be home I no time, I promise”

You think for a moment before responding “I trust you”. For a second you feel him go still at that before he picks you up.

For awhile there’s buzzing alarms and panic as your saviour gets you out whoever’s you were taken too

There’s not a moment of silence as he sharply runs and dodges past what you think to be gunshots

Occasionally he grumbles something but for the most part he seems calm

Composed despite the chaos of it all

So much so that it makes you wonder if this is an average Tuesday for him

There’s so much shout and yelling for your already pounding head

But sometimes the yells are silenced as the sound of a blade cuts it short

Footsteps far behind eventually stopping

Sirens getting more and more distant and allowing you and the man to breath

It’s there in the pocket of silence you learn his name

Shay

It sounds familiar, like really familiar yet you can’t put your finger on it

Either way your grateful because how can you not be?

Your away from that place

Away from the torture of having your mind picked apart like a lab experiment

Having the privacy of your memories looked at and prodded

But now your somewhat okay

Your eyes feel weird, your vision feels weird like it keeps switching between something

Your at least somewhat able to walk though it’s unbalanced

but Shay doesn’t seem to mind

He offers an arm that you cling to for support

A kind smile on his face as he makes sure you didn’t injure yourself further

And then you notice his clothes are….old

Like Haytham and Connor level old

And…shit

It’s halfway home through the trails you recognize due to Connor that your vision changes

The world feels bigger as if your third eyes opened or something

Shays figure and presence is highlighted in a clover green

And perched nearby is another green figure, one waiting for a good moment

Shay follows your sight before promptly having to duck out the way from a knife that flies at his head

He pushes you back behind him, you stumble back vision switch between monochrome and normal as someone else grabs you

Instinctively you almost yell before realizing who was now helping keep you steady

And the other person now attacking Shay

“Connor! He’s good! He saved me!”

“He’s a Templar!”

“So is Haytham and you haven’t killed him…again have you!”

At that Shay pauses, turning to look at you with confusion as Connor stops his attempt as slitting his throat

Ezio on the other hand helps you up but keeps a firm protective grip

Watching Shays movements like Connor in apprehension before the two settle down and stare at you for more detail

Both waiting on your word

“He saved me and today has been a long ass day-“

“You’ve been gone for 4 days”

You pause momentarily at that before adding “long 4 ass days of having my mind literally ripped apart. Can we please head back to the house and settle this there? Thank you”.

The moment you get back your almost immediately tackled to the ground by a familiar white and red hoodie wearing absent (dead) father

It’s….odd but nice

Desmond (still feels too awkward to call him dad) is holding you like a lifeline and you notice bags beneath his eyes

He looks like hell

But none of the others are any better either

They all like positively exhausted yet light up when seeing your safe

Your home

It reminds you of your mom when you returned home from school

The long work day evident on her brow but her smile lighting up the room at the sight of your face

It’s no different compared to then except for the fact they all (except Haytham) then protectively pull you away from the nearby Shay who’s being glowered at by Connor

Safe to say it’s a little awkward until you somehow pull free of Desmond’s death grip hobble your ass between the two lone Templars and Assassins

A long discussion having to take place between them all as you not only explain what happened but also it seems you all forget one crucial thing

It seems you forgot about your mom’s side of the family

Whoop de Doo you have more things to process and so does everyone else here

Specifically Connor and Haytham Because before apparently knew (or know of) Shay

Great, another complex relationship in this household like there needed to be more of that

But with this entire situation it also highlights something bigger

Your not safe

None of you are safe

Perhaps you never truly were

And that in turns leaves you with the difficult decision of what to do next

Because In this difficult game of politics between two ever warring groups your a neutral force

You wanted to stay that way but unfortunately fate had other plans

as your drug into this game your left with limited options of sides for not only yourself but for the others who seem keen on following you

Even the two (former?) templars seem to follow your decision

So When Des…er your dad suggests finding his old friends it seems like the best option

It’s either that or be kidnapped and prodded again and who knows what abstergo will do to everyone else (even one’s that once upon a time we’re on their side)

Besides, he says you’ll get along well with someone named Shaun so It can’t be too bad

So he sends out a message and you leave the home you find yourself look at with melancholy

It stopped being a home when mom died but now it seemed like it was just that again

Only time can tell what will bring upon you next

But….you think you’ll be ready for whatever is thrown at you when you have this odd group of family at your side

The expression of blood is thicker than water never really held much weight since you only ever had your mom until she was gone

But maybe you understand it a bit better now

[on-partiality]

On the topic of judging historical figures by modern morals

This is heavily opinionated, and it's a topic I've seen debated a lot, so I figured as an American Revolutionary War account I'd give my take on it. I'd love to hear other people's takes, as long as we keep the discussion civil and respectful. Thank you!

There are so many things that were considered fine years ago but wouldn't be tolerated at all in modern society, and that's not a bad thing. In fact, it's good; it shows just how much we as a species have improved over time. I think it's beautiful that we've managed to come this far. However, because we as a society have advanced so much, the past starts to seem barbaric, and it'll only seem worse as we improve more and we'll have a longer list of what we see as wrong.

I don't believe it's fair to hold people who've been dead for years and years to a modern standard because how could they possibly know that what they were doing would be seen as horrible in the future if it was fine in their day? What if after we die, driving cars is seen as absolutely unnacceptable (bad example, but I couldn't think of anything that's acceptable now but could be horrible in the future)? We would have had no way of knowing that it would be seen as such an intolerable act and what if because driving cars would be seen as bad, any and all achievements we'd made would be dismissed and we'd be villainised for something we never could've had anyway of knowing would be wrong in future? It'd be unjust. The fact that I had to come up with an example proves that we have no way of knowing what'll be considered horrible in future, we can only guess.

But when a historical figure did something that was wrong even for their time, That's a completely different situation because then the 'they couldn't possibly know that it'd be seen as bad in the future' justification doesn't work anymore. I believe that it's perfectly fair to despise those kinds of historical figures because they would've known that what they were doing was wrong. such as men like Thomas Jefferson, who publicly spoke out against slavery but profited off of it, owned lots of slaves, and started having non-consensual relations with a girl who was considered too young even by 18th-century standards.

Also, when I say it's fair to hate such historical figures, I think I need to add: do not to hate on people for their favourite historical figure; some people like studying controversial men. I hate Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, but I wouldn't belittle anyone who likes them and I can understand that they did a lot for America. It's incredibly important that, regardless on how much you love or hate a historical figure you have to remember the most important part about studying history: nuance! Everyone's morally grey and the best historians, anthropologists, etc. understand that looking at everything with a shallow black and white bad and good isn't going to get you anywere!

In conclusion, I believe that we shouldn't judge people by standards they never knew would exist and instead judge them by the standards of their day. Every person in the history of the world is morally grey and if you can't understand or don't want to acknowledge that nuance (the most important part of studying this kind of thing!) then history isn't for you.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

As a Greek i find hilarious and bitter that people still remember the ancient tales of our ancestors and are studied globally hoe well written they were but we modern Greeks don't produce that anymore like why?

Where did all the creativity go instead of making the same stories everyone globally make that sometimes don't even reflect our society?

I understand what you mean cause I've heard the same comment many times, but let me come to this from another angle.

Fuck what foreigners think. The ancient Greek works have great merit and no one in the world is wrong for studying them and appreciating them. However, the overstudy of these manuscripts has led to needless over-analyzing of texts and the overlook of other great Greek works. The Western world has focused so much on ancient Greek works and has talked only about them for such a long time that more than half the world has forgotten that Greeks existed beyond that era.

We have GREAT literary Greek works from medieval times. It wasn't "the Dark Ages" for us, baby! I'm talking about the Alexeiad, the Digenes Akritas Epic cycle, the satiric works "Timarion" and "Mazaris", the poem the "Spaneas", the (huuuge) "Fountain of Knowledge" by Ioannis Damaskinos, the historical work of Ioannis Malalas, the works of Mihail Psellos, the HUNDREDS of medical and scientific books, and other works that influenced the East and the West alike. That's just the tip of the iceberg!

Why don't we feel proud about those? Because we don't know them. Why don't we know them? Because it's not trendy to study these periods.

We also don't talk about the hundreds of amazing writers we had the last century - including those who got Nobels - because that's not trendy right now.

We have to stop seeing the value of Greek literature through the eyes of foreigners. We have to promote Greek works because we can't just wait for a Shannon in New Jersey, US, to discover it and like it, in order for us to appreciate it too.

Also, we cannot re-invent the wheel. Our ancestors wrote some great stuff for their era. In 2023 this stuff is still great but it's not THAT revolutionary. So there's no comparison in regards to novelty. But we can produce good works regardless.

Greece is not a colonial power or a former colonial power like the European "Big Powers" (these 8 countries), or an empire like the US. Our nation is still recovering for 400-600 years of slavery and occupation AND the dozens of traumatising conflicts and wars that came after that. We can't expect the same growth at the same numbers as these luckier countries. We can't afford as a nation to have extremely popular events and promote the arts like they do in LA, or in Berlin, or London. Let's be kind to ourselves.

In continuation of the previous point, Greece today doesn't have enough powerful publishing houses to back great writers. Our writers, except 4-5 names in the whole country, don't see a penny from their work even after selling hundreds of copies. Even if you earn something, it's not even enough for a month's groceries. So writers either have to choose to spend only 10% of their time writing, or 80% of their time writing and live penniless.

The creativity is there, but Greeks rarely have the time and resources to pursue their writing passion to the point of greatness.

[lyxthen]

@mewhenthhe asked, and you shall recieve!!!

The Characters:

ANDRAE MONRAGEN (She/He): Andy was born from an old prestigious family. Andy always tried (and failed) to comform to their standards. She was smart, which earned her praise, but not well behaved; impulsive and entitled, she had a tendency to get in trouble and big anger issues. As a teen, she ran away from home and eventually joined the first revolutionary army. As an adult, she goes on to study law and earns herself a prestigious goverment position as a sentator at age 30.

WYNN RANHET (He/They): Wynn was a kid raised by his grandmother. His people, a cultural minority, are refugees from a natural disaster that made the archipelago they used to live in uninhabitable. They have a lot of knowledge about the stars, about math and music. He cries and breaks down and becomes helpless. Andy finds him and defends him, though. She sticks by her side since, joining the army and going on to study mathematics. By 30, he becomes a goverment accountant.

LUWËN MONAULLA (She/Her): Luwën was a child of a family who only recently became rich. They are very concerned with "looking good" to high society, to act like they deserve their place. Luwën plays the part well, that is, until she ends up pregnant as a teenager, after which her parents disown her. She becomes a pianist, and later a sex worker. She becomes acquainted with Wynn during the war, both of them becoming close friends. At 32, she is still a pianist and sex worker, though her situation is a lot less precarious than when she was 20.

The Story:

The story involves a lot of fantasy politics, but at the core of it, it is about the deteriorating relationship between Andy and Wynn. Andy is becoming increasingly ruthless with her methods, and while Wynn has overlooked (and taken part on!) many atrocities while in the first revolutionary army, he did so thinking it was "for a greater good." It is only through his deel platonic connection with Luwën that Wynn manages to escape his toxic situation and learn to deal with his past mistakes. It is important to note that he and Luwën stay queerplatonic: for a lot of her life, Luwën was pressured into sex and relationships when she wasn't comfortable, and Wynn was dehumanized and only seen as a tool to further the army's agenda. By the end of the story, they are each other's life partners, though their relationship is never turned romantic.

Andy's story ends quite sadly. She eventually realizes she is perpetuating the same harmful power structures she once wanted to destroy and which kept her and the people she loved opressed, but by then it is too late. The people are unhappy with how the new goverment is run, and she becomes a political target. She is eventually captured, tried, sentenced, and executed by the second revolutionary army. Wynn is left to take care of their child, and takes care of them along Luwën's own daughter.

This is a drawing of them as adults, just before all the melodrama goes down. While above I drew them with modern clothing, the setting, aesthetically and thematically, is more akin to 1910's Mexico and Russia clumsily thrown into a meat grinder. I must also mention that both Wynn and Andy are both technically "non-binary" as their culture broadly recognizes five gender categories instead of two, and they do not fit the categories that would correspond with our concepts of man and woman.

[larrythefloridaman]

For character bingo, someone I'm sure you have no thoughts or opinions on,,,,Crimson CPUK?

i had a whole extended fucking tirade written about crimson but tumblr ate it so fuck me i guess. most of it'll be in the crimtoinette fic in Spirit because im psychologically incapable of writing shipfic that isnt also a character study of at least one participant but the point of what i wrote was this:

"imagine if a Paradise Lost 'daddy-issues-satan' type guy was an insufferable 'love is a neurochemical conjob'-ass selfish lonely hedonistic ex-catholic atheist reddit doomer who tempts and enables people to explore the worst parts of themself in a principled war of rebellion against god in an 'arent you tired of being NICE? dont you just want to go APESHIT?' sorta way fully convinced of his irreconcilable separation from good and good things without Taking them like a parasite because his abuser trapped him in a vicious inescapable cycle of punishment and death. and imagine if he got to start healing and rediscover hope again when he learned that this was all a worthless effort because his abuser, again, Kind Of God, wanted to and would've always demonized him regardless of what he did by nature of her own arbitrary choice defining him as inherently evil by nature of birth and so he had no reason to shackle himself to cruelty any longer because there was never any revolutionary point being made in doing it he was just making her job easier and his own life harder for no real gain, not even a spiritual victory of pyrrhic resistance against her toxically positive absolutist power, so he can let his guard down and soften and grow and there will be people who despite everything will meet the real, honest him with compassion, instead of him dragging others down with him into the tar pit of his own toxic misery he's been privately stewing in for longer than most of the cast has been alive trying to be something he isn't, trying to make a point to someone who was never listening and never going to, if he will meet punishment and hurt no matter what, whether its deserved or not, whats the point in making it worse? but hes still kinda trying to be a little bitch about it as he babysits children and saves lives by force of habit. would that not be fucking harrowing. would that not be fucking incredible. would that not be fucking hilarious. is that not profoundly endearing to everyone else. also transgenderism is SO cool"

[mrjakeparker]

First off, for anyone who needs a primer on AI Generated Art here's a concise video on the subject to get you up to speed: LINK I used Midjourney I started out with these prompts to see what I would get: Astronaut with a skull head +skull + skeleton + red spacesuit + character design + full body + red + sci-fi + star wars + Ralph McQuarrie + Jake Parker, cartoon, cartoon network, adventure time style. Then I thought I'd mix it up and see what prompts like octane render + 3d would give me. I didn't like what I was getting so I went back to my original prompts but added rubberhose animation + pixar + disney + 3d. The results were better, so I asked for more variations. When I got them I decided I was getting diminishing returns and called it a day. Lots of interesting ideas to put into my design, but no one design really felt like it nailed the vibe I got from my original design. After this experiment here's what I think:

1) AI Art Generators will only become more powerful/capable. So wishing it away is a waste of time. The only path forward is figuring it out how to implement it and how to regulate it. 2) With revolutionary technology comes a reorganization of status and power. The status quo HATES this and will do almost anything to stop it from happening.

AI Generated Art shifts the power (and wealth) of creating images from people who have training, to people who don't.

This reorganization happened in the 2000s when programs like Maya, 3D Studio Max, and Photoshop made art creation a lot more accessible to people who couldn't paint traditionally, or sculpt clay.

It allowed places like animation studios to be havens for creative people to make art who might not have been able to draw really well. Which really upset people who had trained to animate in 2D on paper, and who studied classical painting techniques. Which leads me to 3: 3) Not everyone who is creative can make art, and not everyone who can make art is creative. The creative people who could also adapt and learn new tools absolutely thrived in the new digital art world.

A lot of the art I've seen generated from AI is a lot like hearing someone impersonate English but who doesn't know the language. It sounds right, but they aren't actually saying anything.

4) I see these AI Art generators as tools. Another resource for creative people to add to their toolbox to make them even more creative. Or at the very least, make their job easier.

5) AI isn't an end to end problem solver for productions. There's still a needs to be an artist to translate it into something usable. Someone needs to interpret AI art into something a modeler can model, or set designer can build.

Example: After a producer plugs a bunch of prompts from a script into Midjourney they take it to the art dept. The crew gets a brief from an art director and instead of a lot of back and forth, the art director points at a page of AI art and says "Make it look like this"

6) Questions I’m still thinking about:

- Do these AI Art Generators actually undermine illustrators, photographers, concept artists? Or does it actually elevate these industries?

- Is it bad to democratize something like art creation?

- Who truly benefits from this shift in power? Where is the money flowing to?

- Should artists have the option of their artwork being removed from the AI generator's databases? Or is any art you post online free game? Does the AI generator do anything different than what an artist does who has strong stylistic influences from other artists?

7) I'm still learning about this, and still reading up on all the pros and cons.

I would love to know your thoughts. 

We've been discussing it over on the Discord for a couple weeks now: LINK

I also posted this on IG and it blew up. I could not keep up with the comments. Over 750 of them! If you want to get a vibe check on what the broader art community thinks of this check it out here: LINK

-Jake

[horizon-verizon]

You probably misunderstood me. You are right that from a purely objective view Rhaenyra should have been a Queen. But as a reader, I see a woman who was given that unique chance and blew it. Blew it so hard that her ancestors are ashamed of her. You know, it is like if a young woman is enrolled to some college where traditionally only men are applied (imagine this hypothetical major). She was given that chance but instead of studying, she took drugs, partied, cheated and missed her lectures. She was expelled from college and they banned from enrolling all women. Unfair? Yes. But I can't say that girl was a pure victim.

*EDIT (5/31/24): Rhaenyra suffers from really bad sexist writing on GRRM's, not just the maesters', part and it undermines his own point.* And no, she doesn't need to be necessarily "moral" like Dany to be a deserving ruler. The below is still relevant.

And why does she need to be a pure victim, in terms of morals, for me to insist that it's more important to think abt how no one (esp men in-world and out of world) was going to care of she was a good, competent leader? It certainly matters in terms of the writing and themes, but Rhaenyra lives in a world where men do not have be competent to be valid leader candidates at the same time.

The point of her story was to highlight how no matter how good or evil or morally ambiguous a person you are, if you are female, you are subject to losing a power men are just granted. Or usurped. And this is inherently wrong. Rhaenyra chose to go to war rather than give up. This is valuable. Visenya was not thinking "for the realm" or for the benefit of smallfolk or outside of her family, yet she as so many fans bc she was not passive or restricted by "madness". She has less sexist writing.

In light of all the above, there is something weird with characterizing the "opportunity" as something a woman can have if she just acts like a "good woman-ruler", as this asker actually pointed out back in January:

A war that has once again been started / provoked by the Greens, because they have fomented a usurpation and usurped the rightful heiress. From the moment the Greens began a plot, war was all but inevitable if they achieved their goal, as it was inevitable that the Blacks would retaliate. They are responsible for this war, it is a fact. [...]

The fact is, the Greens attacked the FIRST, then fought hard, until it led to the fucking war in question. In this scenario, how does Rhaenyra have a real share of responsibility in the birth of the conflict / war? Or even Blacks more generally?

[...] Also, why would Rhaenyra have to be a "revolutionary feminist" according to some, to deserve this fucking throne exactly? Seriously, when I argue that the Greens attacked first, with power greed and misogyny as their primary motives, and are therefore by extensions the antagonists/villains of the story, this bullshit of "but Rhaenyra n 'isn't a feminist who will revolutionize Westeros' is almost systematically released as a response, as if it were a real argument? We do not care ? That's just not the point of what they're saying. Again, there's this completely dumb notion that since Rhaenyra is a woman, then she must earn her inheritance. She has to prove that she will be better than the others, and not just be a ruler who will keep the kingdom possibly stable, etc. This argument is simply another mani manifestation of the misogyny of some fans. The problem being that we have no idea how Rhaenyra's reign would have actually been, simply because she wasn't herself when she got the throne, and she was getting worse and worse because of of all that she had taken in the face and what she continued to take. We don't have the means to know if she could have improved certain things for women, if she would have simply kept the kingdom stable and prosperous, or if she would have been a bad queen anyway.

If she acts according to our (the patriarchal "lords"/the greens) standards and purview, she is a good leader.

I'm not saying that she should have never tried to be more strategic, pragmatic, and/or active in the politics and court of KL. That she should just not learn how to chess-move people so she could prevent, say, Alicent's green council.

What I am saying is that Alicent had effectively made KL an environment hostile to her children's development and has undermined Rhaenyra's ability to practice power since the woman was 10 and Rhaenyra had some reasons to not stay in KL even after Viserys cut his hand and grew worse.

AND

In terms of JUST the competency levels, that she didn't is GRRM's fault, not really hers, because in real history luxurious and "entitled" noblewomen like Olga of Kiev, Urraca of Castile, Elizabeth I, etc. still did stuff and participated in war even when they didn't fight with any of their soldeirs just as many male nobles didn't actually fight w/their soldiers [read the post I linked above in the "EDIT" space, I explain!!!]

AND

If you begin a group/community/etc.'s hostility or disfavor and suspicion against a person since their childhood, they are going to have a very difficult time in independently gathering followers.

Basically, if you are in a setting that makes it that much harder for people to just either be or to do what they want without being castigated or threatened, you increase the likelihood of that person being incompetent or of worse moral character bc that person will default to selfishness real quick in a world that already says you must be authoritative and cruel and selfish to "win". You are definitely accountable, but you have also been shaped. you've been shaped and cornered and developed into a worse moral character, but to blame things that were out of the person's hands on them is unfair.

A)

You: "You know, it is like if a young woman is enrolled to some college where traditionally only men are applied (imagine this hypothetical major). She was given that chance but instead of studying, she took drugs, partied, cheated and missed her lectures. She was expelled from college and they banned from enrolling all women."

The issue, anon, is that the privilege to be a monarch has its legitimization from militaristic quasi-religious beliefs. It's not about deserving based on merit, and the prize is not a career but the total domination of a whole group of groups of people.

Both situations have women entering an institution of some sort historically & traditionally granted only to men, but feudal monarchies are never as altruistic as we want. Being a leader of a nation based on the right of blood; it's almost inevitable that your claimants be monarchists and not feminist democrats or the like. You're likely going to get people who believe in at least some crucial parts of the ideologies their world organizes itself on. Doesn't excuse rape or racism, for example, it's just that I find it strange how one expects most/all persons put in front of them in a text or real life to be as progressive as they want them to be. Again, we're talking about human behavior & recognizing constraints/social norms being used against women for the sake of power and social control, not how her moral fiber defines how much we sympathize with her and if she deserves help based on how sorry we feel for her.

1.

Because this modern 19th-century/20th-century girl/woman already voluntarily enrolled in the school to fulfilling both her personal career and sociopolitical goals, having known through her experience, observation, and education.

A girl in your scenario having a psychological breakdown is likelier due to outside/societal pressures not wanting her to succeed and trouble male privilege and authority's norm (thus she faces near-ubiquitous censure since she still lives in a society where both men and women take exception to a woman doing "man" things) or an intentional evil plot/conspiracy. She already knows what she's up against, why would such a thing happen if not for external forces?

2.

I think that there is a thin, subtle line between making women a monolith/a female individual a representative of all women's capabilities and discerning how a woman's capabilities are perceived to exist through an already patriarchal understanding of women=less-than.

On the one hand, the world of this woman--she is the first woman to be in a male field/space--makes her sit so that people eye her for her ability to go against expectations of her abilities. Materially, she has some sort of responsibility that she makes it through so that other girls and women can feel that such is possible for them, that if they press hard enough they can also achieve things and resist patriarchal pressures against their desires. However, at the same time and once more, much/enough of the audience observing and watching the boundary-crossing is looking at it hoping and actively compromising so they may "prove" how women "like her"/all women should be barred from male-given things AND Rhaenyra cannot be much of an example if people have usurped her and totally blocked her for just being a woman.

In other words, this one woman is made to stand for all women because society already makes "woman" into an entity without diversity, without personality, with personhood and human vulnerability or grace of development and psychology. If a woman breaks apart publicly, it's likelier she'd get called "crazy" or be described as "throwing a tantrum" while also expected to not handle huge responsibilities without male accompaniment, as if she were a child that's also meant to conform her behavior entirely to what others want from her in their own designs, no matter the inspirations for her feelings and goals.

Rhaenyra is not reviled for her taxes in broader/later history, but because the councilors of Aegon III's regency saw that "risking" the throne for a woman was not worth it. Especially with what happens to Baela, with Aegon's council trying to marry her off and criticizing her for acting "unseemly" by hanging out with men, drinking, maybe sleeping around, and definitely flirting and daring to run away and choosing for herself a husband. Munkun saw her actions as "proving" that the woman ruling was chaotic by nature.

3.

Let's consider what happened with the first female marathon runner, Kathrine Switzer, in the 1967 Boston Marathon. She was "allowed" to run but discouraged and criticized for it by her boyfriend and even her own coach at turns before and during the actual run. The organizer, John Semple, shouted and tried to intimidate her, even hitting the coach show trying to protect her and stop him from running her off--during the race. Other people actively tried to stop her from running or felt it was their right to slow her down to get pictures.

Later this same guy (Semple) would try to make it as if he only wanted her to not "mess up" "his" race and was afraid she'd ruin it. Do we actually think that your female student at a male college would not face such discrimination and scare tactics almost daily? Kathrine Switzer, while doing the rune and a little afterward, even blamed herself for much of the abuse she faced. But I don't think that makes her a bad person or even weak. And since she is human, I'm sure she had her moments in her private life. Does this then mean that she wasn't a victim of misogyny and active attempts to disempower her? No, she still faced people trying to deny her autonomy, therefore she was a victim, but a victim who continued and managed to find some

Switzer definitely managed to actually finish and show female autonomy on her own terms by racing despite these things, but she, unlike Rhaenyra, this form of social backlash occurs from the time a girl understands social cues. What happens with Switzer is, I think I can say figuratively, a high-intense microcosm of what happens to girls and women all the time: constant intimidation, belittling, discouragements, and even manipulations to get them to over-compromise or give in to hidden/semi-unconscious desires for control over them/exclusion. How one finds and maintains that strength and focus is always subject to circumstances that shift in constant reflections and response to the environment, which .

If it feels like Rhaenyra was overly unaware, it's because GRRM made her too unwilling to respond to things a bit quicker or anticipate making her fall concentratedly and quickly. I say this because it was necessary--writing-wise in his vision--for Rhaenyra to begin to fall by some sort of action-inaction (Othello and tragedy writing).

4.

What is a "pure victim"? One that does no evil or questionable actions independently with or without provocation at any point in their life, or one that only ever is victimized without trying to take control back after victimization?

At first, there is no such thing as a person, someone who hasn't done something at least amoral once in their lives. In the second option, what do you truly expect a victim to do, sit and take it? And what happens when humans try to take back control after being victimized?

Some like Alicent do worse evils and abuse others, some do more serious things but also strive to be more altruistic, and some aren't so altruistic. In all of these options, there are always mistakes being made, errors, and misunderstandings because that person is navigating how to gain and keep power, riding the line of self-reservation vs helping others without expectation of immediate gain. This is not as easy as it seems since you first have to have an understanding of who you are, which might have been messed up from your trauma and which you must entangle while living life and surviving. In other words, it's a treacherous road of going back and forth by itself. Some will falter, some will "fail", and some will "succeed"; but I don't think what makes you less human is that failure/faltering. Of course, Rhaenyra is not "perfect" nor a "perfect victim"--why should she, for me feel even somewhat bad for her, or blame most of her troubles on the patriarchy that denigrated her in the first place and had set up several of every same challenge that she had to directly face in order to gain power?

There is no such thing as a "pure" victim and there never will be (as in a victim that has no accountability for their own actions, as they are still human beings of some intelligence and cognition). There is just victim who must live on with their traumas and make a life for themselves. Again, Rhaenyra became a tyrant towards the end AND the act against Nettles was still blood purity rearing its head so she can take back control during paranoia, as I state in this Twitter thread. At the same time, she definitely came to the point she was at from misogyny and direct attacks from childhood. Two things are true at once.

B)

There is a kind and level of scrutiny on Rhaenyra and woman who take on traditionally male-reserved positions (context here, Westerosi monarchy) that has two sides: the woman-as-social-troubler has to work harder to stay in power AND yet, why should she have to "convince" others that she is worthy, esp when many will never be convinced and she will always be less preferred than a mediocre man? The story presents us with this question. She "works harder" precisely bc people will doubt her and try to stymie/block her hypothetically made moves. So there's going to be a perennial back-and-forth. And as we see with Cersei, Catherine the Great, & Elizabeth I, one even can see that a female ruler decided to/pressured-by-circumstances to eschew "ordinary" femininity and claim NLOGness.

That scrutiny she gets is still a colored one, one that is made from an idea of what leadership looks like and it is a masculine/militant and assertive-aggressive kind. Even Alicent's directing the city is publicly not for her but for her son, so it's acceptable. that what Alicent wants and sees her way to power, through her son. People in Westeros are not looking at Alicent as a leader in her own right; they're looking at her as a mother and wife to Kings who hang back and think of ways to defend those men's properties.

C)

I agree that there was a kind of "opportunity" for Rhaenyra or any woman there but (scroll down to section D to get to the main point faster) and think or imply that all or most of her ancestors were primarily interested in female leadership and the death of blood purity is false.

Check this post out by la-pheacienne, who writes how like in Greek Tragedy Rhaenyra is the protagonist: "Both characters [Alicent & Rhaenyra of HotD] have reasons behind their actions but there has to be only one character that is in the right, and that is Rhaenyra. Both characters will be punished for their errors, the hero will suffer because of the antagonist first of all, and their own errors of judgement (tragic flaws) and the antagonist will then suffer for their vile deeds in relation to the hero. That's a Greek tragedy. Simple."

I feel like Rhaenyra was in a place similar to a glass cliff sort of thing:

University of Houston psychology professor Kristin J. Anderson says companies may offer glass cliff positions to women because they consider women "more expendable and better scapegoats." She says the organizations that offer women tough jobs believe they win either way: if the woman succeeds, the company is better off. If she fails, the company is no worse off, she can be blamed, the company gets credit for having been egalitarian and progressive, and can return to its prior practice of appointing men. Haslam and Ryan say their studies show that people believe women are better suited to lead stressed, unhappy companies because they are felt to be more nurturing, creative, and intuitive. These researchers argue that female leaders are not necessarily expected to improve the situation, but are seen as good people managers who can take the blame for organizational failure.

While Rhaenyra is not subject to a capitalist company of main men, there is the same pattern of using women to mark women as unnatural leaders but also using their labor.

There was also an "opportunity" for Aenys I, Maegor I, Alyssa Velaryon, and Jaehaerys I to all push forward female candidates for the throne or heirship...but all decided against it to hold onto power. It's funny how this never gets mentioned in this discussion of their introducing a female ruler into the Westerosi society, that it rested on this one woman. you know some of those ancestors mentioned as having been "disappointed" in her because she supposedly was just not up to snuff. IT doesn't really matter that for generations, women have been purposefully barred from taking the throne and that over time, the Andal preference and precedence of amel-only got stronger and stronger, thus making more problems for any female official heir, later on, to be seen as worthy enough even before she ever attempts to present herself. It's like we have forgotten what happened to Rhaenys, how she and Corlys both worked hard to convince the lords and it still not working out for them, with th votes going nearly unanimously for Viserys!

Yeah, she could have seen the chance to make sure that women could rule easier everywhere else...but you're underestimating how gruesome that task was.

D)

You: "Blew it so hard that her ancestors are ashamed of her."

Anon, which ancestors? Jaehaerys? He would have been more upset that Viserys dared to name her, even over Daemon! He refused to name his firstborn, a girl, his heir, he rather call a council to make sure others chose a mal heir for him than name Rhaenys heir, he passed over her the first time by naming his son as heir and would have kept right of the first night if he hadn't been pressed by both Alysanne and Septon Barth, and it was Septon Barth who finally convinced him. He refused to give as much attention to his daughters as his sons, didn't give them any military or political training or made sure they had equal training so that Alyssa, who wanted to be a warrior, eventually focuses more on birthing Baelon kids. He psychologically tortured Saera in a way to make her submit to his designs on her marriages, when her actions obviously come from him not fully considering her a true agent or full person. He rushed Daella into marriage and pressured Alysanne to marry her off to just anyone, thus the girl married a man more than 20 years her senior before she ever reached 17. And she died in childbirth. Had no relationship at all with Gael.

Again, you must notice how Targ women lose more and more confidence in their rule/autonomous rule/political education with each new generation, right? Naerys and Rhaella are martially raped and have no power to their names whatsoever, relying on male relatives or having none and totally exposed to abuse with little-to-no haven. That's Aenys, Maegor, and Jaehaerys' fault, which I already stated. Maegor would have done what he did to Rhaena and denied her power by marrying her or just imprisoning her. Aenys would not have named her heir at all, thus Rhaenyra doesn't get to even acrue power for herself.

None of her ruling male ancestors would have wanted her to even rule in the first place! They would be "disappointed" no matter what. Maybe except for Aegon I, but again what happened with Rhaenyra is so much more than these individuals' expectations and resulted from their actions.

And as for the female members: Visenya would have hated that Jaehaerys compromised so hard like Aenys, and removed so much of female power. What would she have done after Maegor killed his own nephew, Viserys, after torturing him for days to draw Alyssa Velaryon out with Jaehaerys and their kids? What would Visenya have done if she saw Maegor

Maybe her sister Rhaenys has some "disappointment" in Rhaenyra not seeing, not going to hold you, over Rosby and Stokeowrth. The thing is that even with the rule of six and thumb that she herself enacted, it didn't completely erase men beating their wives because a total raze of Andal traditions would not be politically expedient to her and her sibling's new rule and hold on power, so Rhaenys would have some hypocrisy for her disappointment. Since Rhaenyra was thinking of her own hold on power during a civil war where anything could happen and had a true competitor, unlike the first 3 conquerors, at her door, I think Rhaenys might also consider this and look more broadly, recognize the similar-to-worsened conditions present. But I also think she would see how far women fell off in the dynasty and think of more than just Rhaenyra's personal decisions.

--Digression?--

Visenya and Rhaenys would be horrified that Rhaenyra had to fight at all for her position while side-eyeing her dumb choices, but still going for her and approving of her sentence of her claim of power despite those against her. Visenya would definitely be less understanding of her paranoia, as she's all about strength and competence. Then again, she herself gave too much advantage to Maegor even before he became king because she loved he was technically more hers to love and be loved by. What would Visenya have done if Maegor had died prematurely? Would she also have gone bloodthirsty and raze the earth (figuratively and literally)? By how she reacted to Rhaenys' death, if Maegor died prematurely, there's a chance she's going ballistic?

No Visenya could have insisted that Rhaenyra marry Aegon. But with Rhaenys being 10 years older and having to wait at least until Aegon was 13 (Maegor was 13 when he married Ceryse and Viserys II impregnated 19-yr-old Larra of Lys when he was under 13), how long until then would Alicent have plotted and undermined her, cutting away her influence or going against her more and more, turning Aegon from her as she does in canon and what then? Or would Visenya force/convince Viserys to train Rhaenyra to become a better leader all her own so she could rule over the incompetent Aegon/Westeros, because again she hated incompetence and Rhaenyra would be the actual adult doing things?

--END of Digression--

Alysanne has her own complicated issues with women expecting/seeking power through her relationship with her older sister, and her other daughters. She also tried hard to get women and girls in her family to have the same access to power as the males. She was also intelligent enough to become a maester (as the maester-written account categorizes "intelligence"). If she looked at Rhaenyra, she'd likely be glad there was a female heir but prefer it to be Rhaenys, true, because Rhaenyra is younger and it should have gone to Rhaenys anyway. But ALysanne asserted girls' right to rule not from t heir inteeligence or lask thereof--bc boys don't have to be to be "n0minated". She never expressed conditions on the firstborn girls she wanted to be Queen.

And all of these women and men simply did not live as Rhaenyra lived or lived during a time when misogyny was so set in the systems and against them that they could judge Rhaenyra impartially. Truly, we can't 100% rely on any of these people's perspectives of her. And all of them still did sibling/incest marriages for the sake of keeping their blood "pure" just as Westerosi/Andal peoples did. this is a feudal dynasty, anon.

E)

These posts: #1; #2; #3.

*EDIT* (8/21/23):

THIS is a great post by mononijikayu about medieval queens, female rulers, the history of how women in leadership positions were made and seen as threats to the very structure of social "order", and contextualizing Rhaenyra thru Empress Matilda. I didn't even know about Matilda's husband being comparable to Rhaneyra's Daemon! PLZ READ!!!!

Excerpt:

just as much, along with these fictitious portrayals, more lies are depicted. these women are considered vixens that cause havoc to men by shifting them into desires and danger. through the written word, we see how women are cast in roles of villains in men’s lives. it is because by their conclusive thoughts, women are the only creatures that are able to turn ‘good honorable men’ into despicable creatures who do shameful, deplorable acts for the sake of women’s pleasures.  [...] it is within this narrative that ancient chroniclers declare that women were in fact the doom of men. if they were not able to control the dangers posed by the wiles of women, then the foundations of the mighty society they had built would be up in flames.  [...] as i mentioned, these factors of community are written down and preserved. and with that, the example of the ancients were the foundations by which medieval society built itself. the same concepts continued to cause the same issue within society and that was the exclusion of women from participating in the bigger picture of community and state, much so with governing states in their own right—without judgment or disapproval. 

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Henry Kissinger: Dead at 100

(Only the good die young.)

Stephen Jay Morris

11/30/23

©scientific Morality

Henry Kissinger died yesterday.  He was a German Jew who was a refugee from Nazi Germany.  He was educated at Harvard University, where he studied philosophy.  Somehow, he became Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration.  President Nixon would ingratiate himself in front of Henry, then shit-talk him behind his back. You want to talk about antisemitism?  You should have heard the anti-Jew hate speech Nixon gave to the Watergate criminals.  Nixon didn’t trust Jews.  Here is an excerpt from a published article, including quotes from one of his tapes: Washington "is full of Jews," the President asserted. "Most Jews are disloyal." He made exceptions for some of his top aides, such as National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, his White House counsel, Leonard Garment, and one of his speechwriters, William Safire. Most leftists from my generation viewed Kissinger as a war criminal. However, that would be a deep dive into history, which I won’t write about here. Maybe another time.

Henry Kissinger reminded me of the Peter Sellers’ character, “Dr. Strangelove,” from the movie of the same name.  Likewise, Strangelove reminded me of Kissinger.  Strangelove had this horse with a German accent, and he resembled a cold psychopath.  My grandmother always told me that most Jews in the community disliked German Jews because they had a superiority complex.  Some of them were obedient to the Nazi regime.  A lot of Jews were leftists ranging from Socialist Zionists to Anarchists.  They wanted to overthrow oppressive governments.  Others thought that by being obsequious to an Aryan, authoritarian government, they would be spared being jailed a concentration camp or put to death. The Jewish Community called those Jews “Capos” and, later, “Uncle Jakes.” German Jews told Zionist activists that Hitler was no threat to the Jewish people unless they were Leftists. Instead of going to Palestine, those Jews remained in Germany.

Kissinger was one of those Jews who wanted to be loved by the Goys. So much so, that he would do evil things to win their admiration.

Okay.  I now take a sharp turn and talk about Antisemitism.

Is Antisemitism left wing or right wing? The American Left was comprised mostly of Jews in the mid-Twentieth century. In the 1950’s, during the McCarthy era, some Jews left the Communist Party and joined the Democratic Party. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg got the death penalty, in 1953, for giving secret files to the Soviet Union, everybody knew they were innocent. Many Jews were freaking out over this, so some of them became Republican Conservatives. Did they become more accepted by Gentile America as a result? Not really. Many Jews weren’t permitted to golf on Christian golf courses or join private clubs until the New Left rebellion materialized in the 60’s. The Left has been anti-Zionist since 1948. Is that Antisemitism? Fuck no! Even some Orthodox Jews are anti-Zionist. They are called “Neturei Karta;” they believe there can be no Israel until the Jewish Messiah comes. Needless to say, they don’t believe Jesus is him. So, the Anti-Authoritarian Left is not anti-Semitic. The Tankies are, but they are Authoritarian Left. In their moronic minds, they think Islamo-Fascists are part of an anti-colonial, Third World rebellion.  A minority of Authoritarian Leftists romanticize any guerilla group that terrorizes American Imperialists. Groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party; Not the Communist Party USA.

So, no, the Left is not Anti-Semitic. The Right? They are. Christian Zionists use Israel for their stupid bible prophecies. According to Revelations in the King James Bible, most Jews are going to hell; that is, except for the Jews who accept Jesus as their Lord and savior. Extreme hate groups, like the Nazis and the Klan, see all Jews as evil. A normal person knows that evil exists in

If you are a Left-wing Jew, you have your list. Here is mine.

You want names, you got ‘em:

First on the list is David Berkowitz, famously branded as the “Son of Sam” by the media. He was a serial killer during the 70’s, who murdered six New Yorkers. To be fair, he suffered from Schizophrenic Paranoia and was non compos mentis.  You law students know what that means.

How about Jewish gangsters? There was Bugsy Siegel, Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Louis “Lepke” Bacheller, to name just a few. These thugs go back to the 1920’s and 1930’s. They heavily extorted Jewish merchants for protection. See the movie, “Once Upon a Time in America.” Great flick.

Here follows a prime example of a true Uncle Jake: Nowadays, if you are anti-Israel Jewish Leftist, you are a self-hating Jew. Dog shit!

Introducing Dan Burros. He committed suicide in 1965. Why did he do it?  This dude had Traumatic Stockholm Syndrome. Nobody knew he was Jewish. Here is the kicker: he was the leader of Neo-Nazi group and, prior to that, he was a member of the K.K.K. He hated himself so much that he wanted to become an Aryan. His comrades were suspicious because of his Semitic features. Ultimately, they did some detective work and discovered he wasn’t who he said he was. Now, that’s a self-hating Jew!

Jews like Benjamin Aron Shapiro make me sick!  He is an Uncle Jake and wants to be loved by white Christians.  He has a business called “The Daily Wire.”  It’s allegedly a conservative business that makes its money attacking the Left. He employs White racists like Matt Walsh.  Then there is Benny Netanyahu, the Israel’s Prime Minister.  He is the leader of the Likud Party. His party wants to turn Israel into a Jewish Theocracy and kick all non-Jews.

In closing, I’ll state this: I love myself too much to hate self, as I do all Jews who are on the Left.

But I don’t like Right wing Kikes!

Shalom mother fucker!

[x-authorship-x]

OK

Thanks my 2 hours of sleep for this

Kabuto/Shisui LMAO I'm so curious to see how you'll make it work

(I guess my brain just remembered that Kabuto said he tried to find enough of Shisui's DNA to Edo Tensei him during the war and latched onto the thought of those two together)

Oooooh okay Anon, I see you, and-

Kabuto is a survivor. He adapts. He plots and schemes and he's a medic who knows how to hurt, every move to heal can be used to cause maximum damage. He'd appreciate the fuck out of Shisui, with his Shunshin and deceptive simplicity, and Shisui would respect the fuck out of Kabuto's badassness.

Shisui would very much struggle with Kabuto's approach to loyalty, his morality is less of an issue because Shisui has interesting morals to match (see: brainwash everyone he knows and loves). However, as evidenced by Shisui's own internal conflict towards right/wrong (my enemy also thinks he is right, so if we are both justified... How can I claim the high ground, essentially?) i don't think this would be a hard stop for the ship!

Kabuto probably thinks more highly of Shisui than any other Uchiha. Itachi is a serious threat, yeah, one that Orochimaru himself failed to square up to, but Shisui was Itachi's own inspiration and tutor. He's like your idol's idol. Add in Shisui's willingness to fuck with the mind/reality for a cause, his revolutionary approach to the simple technique of Shunshin, and his extremely fast rise through the rank and to international notoriety...

Personality-wise, Kabuto is restrained and composed, with a clinical kind of sadistic streak hidden underneath (e.g taking people apart in the not fun way). Shisui is the designated Nice Uchiha, he deals with taciturn assholes who are mentally plotting how to disfigure you on a daily basis.

However, I don't see them really getting past the "awareness/appreciation of each other's vicious skill" stage because

1) Kabuto would eventually want to study Shisui in a lab instead of just socially or in the bedroom and

2) Shisui needs more emotional support. He's stressed to his eyeballs (🤡) and could really use a friendly face to watch his back. Dealing with Kabuto would be like navigating another minefield. He can do it but damn if it won't get too tiring and exacerbate the problem after a while.

My final thoughts: not great for a healthy longer relationship, would be an intriguing stress affair, would be great Fucked Up Friends!

[ithacanradio]

btw i just wanted to clear up one thing about reformism vs revolution in practice: with today's forces in the west there cannot be a revolution. this is the result of forty years of class war waged by the bourgeois, so that even the country where the communist party was stronger, Italy, today is very entrenched in red scare and angling towards fascism. this does not mean we should veer towards reform or social democracy because this line of action does not work.

but we should not shun every party as a "reformist" one: to build up again enough strength within the social class, you need to broadcast your ideas to the public, and you need to start guiding the opinion instead of scrambling after mass movements that then die out. A party is a perfect means to achieve much of this. I am not talking about bourgeois parties financed by corporations of course. But there have been socialist organizations blooming throughout the west (France, Italy, Portugal, even the US recently), whose members are all working class, all of them studied theory, all do want a revolution. Whether these parties manage to accomplish their goal of class reunification is to be seen, but to do that they need to rebuild from basically scratch a relationship with the masses. Which means being there in fights, protests, and never compromise for anything less than what Marxist study and revolutionary conscience drives towards: not standing for the burgeois like AOC does, but demanding free healthcare, free education, housing as a human right, minimum wage, no tolerance towards fascism and discrimination. These demands do have the power of rallying the working masses and conversely they could never be brought as far by a disorganized movement. So reformism and political parties who organize the masses with the goal of changing the balance of power, are not the same thing.

[the-firebird69]

There's a few other things going on people are taking a severe beating and you're making fun of each other they're trying to take old lady stuff and everybody told her people and you know what to do they say. There's another thing going on and really just getting angry at each other it's rude. We have some other things happening we're going to mention

--this place to be swarming with clones and it's not now they decide not to so they're going out and trying to do stuff out there and they're getting clobbered so they might turn it the other way after today or later on in the early evening and they're trying to decide but they're going to do some more studies and it's how it goes now we have some other news

-yesterday bja managed to break three smaller mediums but they are out there on the very shore on the edge of the big bulbous part it's like the Southwest edge of that and that's blown over here and it will be here in Force at 2:30 p.m. all right when they're outside they usually hide inside shut the windows and throw carbon filters in even outside they put them but it's not really good to happen today and it really has not gotten here it's true

-osseudo empire is pulling a lot of ships out in the east tons of them is a humongous amount of ships Giant giant numbers most of them are quarter mile they're pretty big and they're out by the Southeastern Islands Puerto Rico Dominican and Bahamas into the North and it's a lot of them and the pressurization of the Southern areas will reduce and quite a bit because they're going to take out one mile and half mile in about 10 minutes to start doing that and they'll stop on the smaller ones and it'll be less moisture. That will reduce the pressure a lot it'll affect over here believe it or not because usually it was expanding underground over this way cuz it gets blocked out and it's going to reduce it about a foot over there today and only 3 hours.. once these ships are out of there and they are going to begin to try and occupy the tunnels right now they vacate them so they're clear of most of the sediment takes a while but they just leave it there and eventually all the disappears.

--another news it seems to be so exciting going on really they're ready for a change and they want to move to California and the South and they want to try and run a plan and they want to go after the pseudo empire for their ships pretty soon they will and they want to take their stash and cash stuff out and so they know that's all coming up and tell me if it's going to kick it off maybe the real thing and they'll be surprised how fast it can really move.

--and a few more items. We have seven or eight people who are just absolutely miserable so going to have them removed. There's more going on now this seems to be a lot of confusion as to what they should be doing but now it's time to all get on the same page and then see the revolutionary war reenactment. During the period of the Continental Congress formation we'll be on upon us a little soon and it was still in the East and I never Mount Vernon was chasing Mary the others were in westborough and towards Waltham Natick sometimes Boston I almost until the 26th half of them went to Amherst area and it was to access arms kids they needed them because of what they're going to announce right as the form the Continental Congress they're going to stipulate what it is they're going to do it again this year it didn't kind of last year this year they're going to make it more meaningful and put it in writing they're going to try and restructure the senate in Congress and the presidential cabinets to be more suited to what they do in their needs. It looks more democratic and now it's not more despotism but it really is the way it should be instead of changing it you don't really have to but this is the schedule and so they're going to start announcing what they're going to do then half of them will go get weapons and come back and announce the rest of it to prevent some sort of coup by the pseudo empire and they'll keep each other in check supposedly

--her son and daughter say that it is a natural time for the movie with Bruce Willis decision New York and those characters have been around a couple other flicks actually fit they are very aggressive violent movies it's not the ones where they take over the White House

Thor Freya

Olympus

[187days]

Day Ninety-Three

There was an ice storm overnight, which led to a delayed opening this morning. I kind of had a feeling that was going to happen, and I'm not mad about it because the roads were GROSS at the time I'd have normally driven to work. They were much better two hours later.

Our parking lot, on the other hand?

I managed to make it into the building without completely falling over like that penguin, but it was a near thing.

Since classes were short- and my ninth grade classes are already half blocks instead of full ones- all I did in Global Studies was give a vocabulary quiz. We'll resume our study of WWII tomorrow.

In APGOV, I was able to do all of my originally planned lesson. I explained the political ideology spectrum (anarchy-totalitarianism), and we chatted about where on the spectrum we all fell, and about agents of socialization in our lives. There were a few common ones for them: parents, living in a tourist town, Covid-19 and the responses to it, gun violence, social media... After lunch, I asked them to think about our Founders, and what agents of socialization shaped their views in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, and- predictably- had them start reading the Declaration of Independence. Most of them finished before the bell, but it's fine if they didn't. They just have to finish by next class.

I ended up staying till almost 4:00 to do some grading, organizing, and email-sending. I'd gotten behind on something I'd told Mrs. C I'd help her with (I apologized, and she was understanding- we've all been busy!), so I wanted to get caught back up on that. I think I'm in a good spot now.

[huxleyfamilyvalues]

3, 4, 12, 13, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25? Is that too many?

Thanks for letting me procrastinate on this jorjorwel essay. Time to make a fool of myself.

3. Top five books of the year

Uhhh ....lol. based on how much I think about them on the regular.

Simulacra and Simulation (jean baudrillard)

The Huxleys: an intimate history (Alison Bashford, this one is so close to being number one but I really like baudrillards cultural analyses lol)

Eating Apes (Dale Peterson)

A Room of One's Own (virginia Woolf)

The fire next time (James Baldwin)

4. Did you discover any new authors you love this year?

Honestly I'm glad that I got to pick up some Naomi Klein, even though I didn't particularly like No Logo I am definitely going to check out her other writing. James Baldwin as well but I didn't discover him, I just really enjoy his writing style.

12. Any disappointing books?

So maybe I read Yellowface by RF kuang to see what the buzz was about! It was okay. It felt like reading tumblr discourse but it was nothing revolutionary.

13. Least favourite books of the year?

Peter Chalmers Mitchell's childhood of animals LOL, in fact a lot of the Zoo texts were EXTREMELY dry. I love the content and would read it on my own time but having to comb through it for socialism/eugenics when there is so much for these zoo admins to talk about in terms of animal behaviour is quite tiresome. I learned a lot about 1912 protozoa studies though. Same cannot be said for literally anything EG Boulenger has written. That man writes like shit and his layman writing makes it seem like he got his biology degree by filling out a form in the Daily Mail.

Oh also Fathers and Sons by Turgenev and Richard Halperns Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence.

17. Any books surprise you with how good they were?

Well, did cry reading a room of one's own so that was pretty great. David M. Kennedy's freedom from fear was a little pessimistic but just a beautiful book overall.

18. How many books did you buy?

The Zoo ones. No archive had them. No libraries wanted to loan them. So I had to take matters into my own hands. 💀💀💀💀

21. Did you get involved with booktok/bookblr/booktube drama?

Sometimes my irl bestie sends me shocking book premises about like having sex with doorknobs and balloons or some British lady eviscerating Colleen Hoover but I don't get involved with that kind of thing.

22. Longest book read this year?

I think freedom from fear was 900 pages. This is what I do instead of reading war and peace. Maybe next year I'll finally read war and piece. Or maybe I'll read the entirety of The Science of Life. Who knows.

22. What's the fastest you've read a book?

I read Yellowface in a day but I think that's the point.

25. Reading goals for next year?

Honestly not much, just read what makes me happy. Which will be very unfortunate for everyone who will be receiving British naturalist fancams in their DMs from me. I'd like to reread eating apes tbh. I'd like to make an effort to take books from the library more too. I should stop reading so much academia but I should also start cracking open Foucault. I really want to read The Delectable Negro as well, and get more involved in anthropological studies.

Yay thanks for all the questions :) ily

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 4.12.2 “Preliminary Gaieties“ part 2

Grantaire begins!

The first thing I’m getting from him--beyond the disenchantment with humanity and the sensation of perpetual body horror he seems to carry--is a horror of the way narratives are determined by victors who won by force.

He begins with a negative opinion of libraries, with all their books like discarded oyster shells. Surely not an opinion Hugo shares, but I hear from Grantaire a distrust of both egotism and narrative, along with the misanthropy.

Then, Floréal and her banker. She was a pretty grisette, living the life Fantine lost hold of--she had her flower pot, and she had what sounds like a more specialized form of sewing labor. Now she’s overjoyed that she gets to marry a banker, and Grantaire is disgusted by it.

It could be misogyny here. Just straight up incel vibes, “a pretty girl picked Him instead of Me, even though He was no great shakes either,” etc. etc.

But I think it’s not. Grantaire’s horror seems to me to be about the iniquity of someone having to be happy that they married an entirely unpreposessing banker, because it saved her from a life of poverty. Like Fantine and Cosette, Floréal has an aura of revolution--it’s there in her name (or possibly her nom de guerre, or possibly just what Grantaire has nicknamed her for this anecdote).

And her revolutionary aspects, and her freedom, were worth giving up (gladly! gratefully!) because the iniquities of the world made marrying some stupid banker something almost beyond the wildest dreams of a woman like her.

My sympathetic read of Grantaire here (who is always a little closer to the feminine end of gender stereotypes than he feels like he should be) is that he’s empathizing with the experience of the Floréals of the world: they deserved to have better wildest dreams. Fantine deserved better than being dumped by Tholomyès, yes--but she also deserved better than marrying Tholomyès.

But the narratives belong to the bankers, and so: Floréal got the happy ending Fantine didn’t. She “married above her station,” as they say. Hurrah.

Grantaire goes on to compare the banker with nations who conquer their neighbors simply because they have the power to, describing both as “eagles.” They conquer because they can, he feels, and it’s wrong. But the world is supposed to be happy about it anyway--because the narrative belongs to the victors.

I think we’re learning that Grantaire fucking hates Napoleon (even if he’s veiled about going around saying so), and that’s extremely valid of him. Which--people who know more about Gros should weigh in, but Grantaire did study art under the guy who painted This:

and I have a lot of questions about how that went.

What on earth does it signify that Laigle is also an eagle? He’s a Very different kind of eagle, given that he’s 1) extremely not a bonapartist 2) extremely not someone who goes through the world the way that banker does.

Eagle isn’t one of our uniformly negative animals--it can be used as a compliment, alongside lion; I think Enjolras gets eagled at some point. It may have some war-commander connotations, and Grantaire, unlike his friends, hates war even when it’s genuinely liberatory.

Still don’t know what Laigle has to do with all that, though.

From these very, very valid sympathies, Grantaire pivots to nihilism and hedonism and avoidance. His only solution to any of these problems is: “drink.”

He’s wildly upset because his friends are all maybe about to die, and he’s describing Revolution as the repetitive stage gimmick of an impoverished and uncreative God--though we’ll learn later, when Hugo describes the spring in the Luxembourg gardens (refuting Grantaire’s imagery very, very directly), that there’s nothing impoverished about God. And Joly’s idea (stated later) of the providential office of cats in rectifying the problems of the world (as revolutions do) will be much closer to this book’s ideas of Providence than Grantaire’s rambling about stage sets and cart grease.

Grantaire connects the idea of Great Events, like revolutions, with the idea of Great Men, and he’s fed up with both. And being anti-Great Man is one of our central themes! The book very much agrees with Grantaire that the Great Man is a bad model of how to run things.

But his problem with Great Men and Great Events is the wrong problem: he doesn’t like how disruptive they are, and he doesn’t like the idea that God relies on them like some kind of bad narrative hack.

But the Great Man is a misleading narrartive--maybe because, like the narratives Grantaire disliked above, they're the narrative the victors write.

Because: men of genius DON’T leap out of nowhere and change the world; the world was changed by a million hands over time, and the man designated Great sat up at the right moment, did some things, and then got credit for all of it. Revolutions AREN’T a day or two of violence that erupts out of nowhere as a cheap trick God uses to change things up--they’re the culmination of time, and the changing tides of history, and the long, sustained effort of unimaginable numbers of people.

We were talking in the discord about how Grantaire can’t imagine being a revolutionary without being an all-or-nothing, full-bore, 24/7 revolutionary. If he’s not Enjolras, he thinks, what use is doing anything? And that’s the problem here: he claims to prefer small works and small people and incrementalism, but he can’t see that the people around him, like Joly’s cats, are actually doing that. He hates Great Men, but he thinks the only alternative to them is an utter stagnation where nothing happens at all.

He doesn’t understand that the problem with Great Men (and Great Events) isn’t that they’re a stupid way for God to be running history--the problem with lone Great Men and lone Great Events is that they don’t exist.

[thewidowsghost]

Daughter of the Sea - Chapter 1

So, I started this on my Wattpad, and if figured I'd just put it on here! Just tell me if you want me to add you to the taglist!

Percy's POV

My name is Percy Jackson.

I am twelve years old. I'm a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York, and my sister, (Y/n), taking online schooling at home.

Am I a troubled kid?

Yeah. You could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan—twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

I know—it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course, I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that...Well, you get the idea.

On this trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwiches that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"I'm going to kill her," I mumble.

Grover tries to calm me down. "I'm okay. I like peanut butter -" He dodges another piece of Nancy's lunch.

"That's it." I start to get up, but Grover pulls me back to my seat.

"You're already on probation," he reminds me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Mr. Brunner leads the museum tour.

He rides up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blows my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

He gathers us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and starts telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.

One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mr. Brunner keeps talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickers something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turn around and say, "Will you shut up?"

It comes out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughs. Mr. Brunner stops his story. "Mr. Jackson," he says, "did you have a comment?"

My face is totally red, I think. I answer, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner points to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I look at the carving, and feel a flush of relief, because I actually recognize it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Brunner says, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because..."

"Well..." I rack my brain to remember. (Y/n) would have known the answer. She was nuts for this kind of stuff. "Kronos was the king god, and —"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asks.

"Titan," I correct myself. "And...he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"

"Eeew!" says one of the girls behind me.

"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continue, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbles to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner says, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover mutters.

"Shut up," Nancy hisses, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

I think about his question, and shrug. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr. Brunner looks disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifts off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.

Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."

I knew that was coming.

I tell Grover to keep going; then I turn toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?" Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go—intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything. "You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner tells me.

"About the Titans?"

'"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," he says, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!" and challenged us, swordpoint against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C– in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

I mumble something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner takes one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He tells me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathers on the front steps of the museum, where we can watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm is brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figure maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seems to notice, though. Some of the guys are pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit is trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds isn't seeing a thing.

Grover and I sit on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius, not like (Y/n). She seems to know everything."

Grover doesn't say anything for a while. Then, when I think he is going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he asks, "Can I have your apple?"

I don't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.

I watch the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and think about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sit. I hadn't seen her or my sister since Christmas. I want so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. Mom and (Y/n) would hug me and be glad to see me, but Mom would be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I couldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.

I am about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appears in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumps her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grins at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles are orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

I try to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I am so mad my mind went blank. A wave roars in my ears.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy is sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"

Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"

"—the water—"

"—like it grabbed her—"

I don't know what they were talking about. All I know is that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds is sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turns on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"

"I know," I grumble. "A month erasing workbooks." That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds says.

"Wait!" Grover yelps. "It was me. I pushed her."

I stare at him, stunned. I can't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glares at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she says.

"But—"

"You—will—stay—here."

Grover looks at me desperately.

"It's okay, man," I tell him. "Thanks for trying."

"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barks at me. "Now."

Nancy Bobofit smirks. I give her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Then I turn to face Mrs. Dodds, but she isn't there. She is standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.

How'd she get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure. I go after Mrs. Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, I glance back at Grover. He is looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner is absorbed in his novel.

I look back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She is now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I think. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.

But apparently, that wasn't the plan.

I follow her deeper into the museum. When I finally catch up to her, we are back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery is empty.

Mrs. Dodds stands with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She is making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze as if she wanted to pulverize it...

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she says.

I do the safe thing. I reply, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugs on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes is beyond mad. It was evil.

She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me. I say, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shakes the building.

"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

I didn't know what she's talking about.

All I can think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

"Well?" she demands.

"Ma'am, I don't..."

"Your time is up," she hisses.

Then the weirdest thing happens. Her eyes begin to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretch, turning into talons. Her jacket melts into large, leathery wings. She isn't human. She is a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheels his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.

"What ho, Percy!" he shouts and tosses the pen through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunges at me.

With a yelp, I dodge and feel talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatch the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hits my hand, it isn;t a pen anymore. It is a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always uses on tournament day.

Mrs. Dodds spins towards me with a murderous look in her eyes.

My knees are jelly. My hands are shaking so bad I almost drop the sword.

She snarl, "Die, honey!" And she flies straight at me.

Absolute terror runs through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swing the sword.

The metal blade hits her shoulder and passes clean through her body as if she was made of water. Hisss!

Mrs. Dodds was a sandcastle in a power fan. She explodes into yellow powder, vaporizing on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes are still watching me.

I'm alone.

There is a ballpoint pen in my hand.

Mr. Brunner isn't there. Nobody is there but me.

My hands are still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

Had I imagined the whole thing?

I walk back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover is sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit is still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she sees me, she says, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."

I answer, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

I blink. We don't have a teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I ask Nancy what she is talking about.

She just rolls her eyes and turns away.

I ask Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

"Who?" he asks, but he pauses first and he wouldn't look at me, so I figure he was messing with me.

"Not funny, man," I tell him. "This is serious."

Thunder booms overhead.

I see Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book as if he'd never moved.

I go over to him.

He looks up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."

I had Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I ask, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

He stares blankly at me, "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."

He frowns and sits forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"

Word Count: 3159 words

So yeah, this is the first chapter of this book.

Not much (Y/n) yet, but we'll get there.

Love y'all!              Kaitlynn ❤️😍