#and having discussions that involve implications of someone 'deserving to die' in a way or another

[loredwy]

Dont you all hate when historical events happen around you forcing you to only hear about tragedies and poverty and death for months non stop on loop

[mariana-oconnor]

The Veiled Lodger pt 2

Team Lion represent!

Poor lion deserved none of this.

Then, having reassured her, we followed her up the straight, badly-carpeted staircase and were shown into the room of the mysterious lodger.

Wow, Watson. You weren't satisfied with insulting her last time, now you're insulting her interior decor?

From keeping beasts in a cage, the woman seemed, by some retribution of Fate, to have become herself a beast in a cage.

Watson is also on Team Lion!

Long years of inaction had coarsened the lines of her figure, but at some period it must have been beautiful, and was still full and voluptuous. A thick dark veil covered her face, but it was cut off close at her upper lip, and disclosed a perfectly-shaped mouth and a delicately-rounded chin. I could well conceive that she had indeed been a very remarkable woman.

And then he's getting horny on main again, because he is Watson and we all know Watson has three settings with descriptions of people: horny, disgusted, and animal references.

"Because the fate of someone else depended upon it. I know that he was a very worthless being, and yet I would not have his destruction upon my conscience. We had been so close—so close!"

She was either having an affair or she has a secret relative. My money is on affair.

The woman rose and took from a drawer the photograph of a man. He was clearly a professional acrobat, a man of magnificent physique, taken with his huge arms folded across his swollen chest and a smile breaking from under his heavy moustache—the self-satisfied smile of the man of many conquests.

Oh yeah, Watson is in horny setting atm. But also judgy. You cannot tell how many 'conquests' a man has had from his smile, Watson. I refuse to believe it.

"That is Leonardo," she said.

Leonardo???!

Although, from the description, maybe it's closer to this version:

It was a dreadful face—a human pig, or rather a human wild boar, for it was formidable in its bestiality. One could imagine that vile mouth champing and foaming in its rage, and one could conceive those small, vicious eyes darting pure malignancy as they looked forth upon the world, Ruffian, bully, beast—it was all written on that heavy-jowled face.

Animal imagery and disgust. Watson's really pulling out all the stops for this one. I like how Mrs Ronder is just 'compare, contrast' right up front, instead of actually explaining anything. This is a show and tell presentation.

"He tied me down and lashed me with his riding-whip when I complained."

What is it with these abusive spouses and beating their wives with riding crops? That's the sort of thing you only do after extensive discussion and clear, informed consent.

Welp, Team Lion is currently winning.

"We planned that he should die."

Oh, it was premeditated. Good for you.

"We made a club—Leonardo made it—and in the leaden head he fastened five long steel nails, the points outwards, with just such a spread as the lion's paw. This was to give my husband his death-blow, and yet to leave the evidence that it was the lion which we would loose who had done the deed."

Look, look, look, look. I am fine with killing the evil, abusive husband. Two thumbs up. Could not be more onboard with this plan. But blaming the lion. You couldn't have come up with a plan that didn't involve a poor animal being implicated and (presumably) put down because of it?

Come up with a different way of killing him and just give each other alibis. Don't blame the poor lion.

"Its hot, filthy breath had already poisoned me and I was hardly conscious of pain."

I... don't think lions have poison breath. Like I've never met one in real life, but I feel like I might have heard about that if it's true. And I especially don't think their breath is bad enough that you can't feel the pain from having your face eaten off. Not that I've ever experienced that either. I think it might have been the shock.

"When I came to myself, and saw myself in the mirror, I cursed that lion—oh, how I cursed him!—-not because he had torn away my beauty, but because he had not torn away my life."

I mean, understandable, but also you did keep him trapped in a cage, force him to perform for crowds and then frame him for murder, which I assume he was killed for. Like... you may have deserved just a leeeeettle bit of mauling. Karmically. Perhaps.

Then Holmes stretched out his long arm and patted her hand with such a show of sympathy as I had seldom known him to exhibit. "Poor girl!" he said. "Poor girl! The ways of Fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest."

I don't know why Watson is so determined to tell us that Holmes rarely shows sympathy when he shows sympathy in almost every other story. He shows sympathy to the characters who deserve sympathy.

And Eugenia here does deserve it, although it was a dick move to frame the lion. Her life has pretty much sucked. Can't blame her for trying to get out of it.

"Your life is not your own," he said. "Keep your hands off it."

Well, my last sentence was not supposed to be foreshadowing.

Holmes is not here for that Romeo and Juliet bullshit. (Not that this is about Leonardo dying, but still)

Although if she's already dying, would this be considered closer to euthanasia?

But she implies the reason she wants to do it is because of her face. I'm glad that Holmes is having none of that. The attitudes here towards her scarring are just all over horrendous. But I'm so glad this story ends with her choosing not to do it, because the message of 'if you are a woman who has lost her beauty and become disfigured your life is not worth living' would have been a horrible one. Glad they avoided that ending.

That was... short, and very messy. I'm glad she got out of the abusive situation, but I wish she'd actually been able to do something with her life rather than shut herself in her rooms forever to hide from the world. I'm also sad the lion had to die for her freedom.

Just very sad all over, this one.

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[elriell]

Two Mates? Elriel & (El)ucien Theory.

These are just a few of my thoughts compiled together regarding having two mates, the signs and breadcrumbs Sarah has incorporated. If you know me you know am a Lucien fan so this is nothing hateful towards him and we will be looking at his place within it all as well, that being said this will have bond rejection/misalignment talk so if that is not your cup of tea I understand and you can skip this! As always I would love to hear everyones thoughts so long as we are all respectful ♡

Let's start by discussing the where the two ships align and parallel mates behaviour, and then we will discuss where their arc's veer from each other...

“TOUCH HER, SMELL HER, TASTE HER– THE INSTINCTS WERE A RUNNING RIVER.” (Lucien in ACOWAR about the mating bond.)

“Letting his scarred fingers touch her immaculate skin. Letting them brush the side of her throat, savoring the velvet-soft texture.”

“Azriel's fingers lingered at her nape, atop the first knob of her spine. Slowly, Elain pivoted into his touch. Until his palm lay flat against her neck.”

“They'd exchanged looks, the occasional brush of their fingers, but never this. Never blatant, unrestricted touching. ”

“He prayed she didn't peer down. Prayed she didn't understand the shift in his scent. ”

“Her arousal drifted up to him, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head at the sweet scent. He'd beg on his knees for a chance to taste it. ”

“He needed to know what the skin of her neck tasted like. What those perfect lips tasted like.”

“This one moment, and maybe a taste, and that would be it.  

“Yes" Elain breathed, like she read the decision. Just this taste in the dead of the longest night of the year, where only the Mother might witness them. ”

Now you can easily parallel this to any of SJM's mates, like Feysand or Nessian. But for the sake of brevity I will leave you with the original link to the wonderful @suelky post where it was pointed out w/ Feysand quotes as well. [source]

Also "The instincts were a running river.” sounds a little like “Azriel’s Siphons guttered, the stones turning as dark and foreboding as the deepest sea."

The Bonus POV has a lot of typical "Mates" behaviours manifesting between Elain and Azriel, and it would make sense this would be a extreme POV shift as we have never been inside either of their heads before so we were bound to have a major learning curve, especially with Az who is so reserved with his emotions.

“But Lucien’s attention went right to the hallway toward the back, his nostrils flaring as he scented Elain’s direction. And who she’d gone with. A low snarl slipped out of him—”

“So you will leave Elain alone. If you need to fuck  someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her."  Azriel snarled softly.”

There are countless main trio parallels but most of you are aware of which one is my favourite...

“Knelt on those stars and mountains inked on his knees. He would bow for no one and nothing— But his mate. His equal.”

“Her arousal drifted up to him, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head at the sweet scent. He'd beg on his knees for a chance to taste it.”

"Every instinct in his body came roaring to the surface, so violent he had to choke them with a brutal grip or else he'd find himself on his knees, begging her for touch, for anything."

And on to where they go their separate ways from a textual perspective;

"Elain only shrank further into herself, no trace of that newfound boldness to be seen.”

“Rhys kissed the hollow of my collarbone, and my core went utterly molten. “My brave, bold, brilliant mate.”

“You can give everyone that I Will Slay My Enemies look—which is my favorite look, by the way. You can keep that sharpness I like so much, that boldness and fearlessness. I don’t want you to ever lose those things, to cage yourself.”

“And he had the nerve once his powers were back to shove me into a cage. The nerve to say I was no longer useful; I was to be cloistered for his peace of mind.”

“Remember that you are a wolf. And you cannot be caged.” He kissed my brow one more time, my blood thrumming and boiling in me, howling to draw blood.”

I think finding freedom and power from within is something that the books have emphasized through Feysand and Nessian's journey's. Which is so interesting considering Lucien and Elain are both feeling tied to each other, as if in a cage of sorts.

Elain herself has been stuffed in to a box of other peoples making throughout most of the series, it quite prevalent she might feel caged by their opinions of who she is.

"Maybe she was never given a chance to be that way." I whipped my head towards him. "You think I stifle her?" Rhys held up his hands. "Not you alone."

“Nesta had been right. It was like a prison, this place.” [Graysen's Manor]

“Shall I tend to my little garden forever?” When Nesta flinched, Elain said, “You can’t have it both ways. You cannot resent my decision to lead a small, quiet life while also refusing to let me do anything greater.”

“She ignored me, and saw Elain as barely more than a doll to dress up, but Nesta was hers. Our mother made sure we knew it. Or she just cared so little what we thought or did that she didn’t bother to hide it from us.”

And as for Lucien I think his duty and honour to her is what is caging him;

“I can’t stand to be in the same room as her for more than two minutes. I can’t stand to be in this court and have your mate pay for the very clothes on my back.”

“Why are you here?” Cassian asked, unable to help the sharpness. “Where’s Elain?”

“I am not always in this city to see my mate.” The last two words dripped with discomfort.”

“Why?” Not a flicker of emotion. “He is Elain’s mate.”

I waited. “It would be an invasion of her privacy to track him.”

Godbless Azriel for respecting Elain's privacy.

I think we would see/understand a lot more if we got a chance inside their heads but the one time we did see Lucien's POV we got a good glimpse at how he feels about his situation with Elain and it wasn't particularly positive and reminded me of Rhy's parents.

"She’d seen him not as a High Lord’s seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him. Elain had been … thrown at him.”

“...to remember that she picked it. Picked me. That it’s not like my parents, shoved together.”

Not using the word cage per say but the implication isn't much better.

“You know them better than I do. But I will say that Lucien is loyal—fiercely so.”

“So is Azriel.”

I don't think the debate is really whether Lucien is deserving of her, or even Azriel for that matter, it is a question of who is actually right for her and vice-versa, who has she been consistently written to thrive and smile alongside. And that is Azriel.

Why does Sarah constantly put Azriel in the picture, from day DOT. She was screaming "hey look Azriel is here, and they would work magically together"

“And I think Elain—Elain would like it, too. Though she’d probably cling to Azriel, just to have some peace and quiet.” I smiled at the thought—at how handsome they would be together.”

There are several instances/evens that occur throughout the series that set both Elucien and Elriel's relationships apart, and I think it is highly intentional on Sarah's part...

“I said quietly, “We will get her back.” But Lucien was watching me warily. Too warily.”

“From the shadows near the entrance to the tent, Azriel said, as if in answer to some unspoken debate, “I’m getting her back.” Nesta slid her gaze to the shadowsinger. Azriel’s hazel eyes glowed golden in the shadows. Nesta said, “Then you will die.” Azriel only repeated, rage glazing that stare, “I’m getting her back.”

Or we can look at both Solstice's and the clear differences in how their relationships are growing, and also how well one and other know each other.

“Tell me when you knew,” he demanded, his knee pressing into mine. “That Rhysand was your mate. Tell me when you stopped loving Tamlin and started loving him instead.”

“He left the rest unspoken. Because her mate was here, sleeping a level up. Because her mate had been in the family room and Azriel had needed to stay by the door the whole time because he couldn't stand the sight of it, the scent of their mating bond, and needed to have the option  of leaving if it became too much.  Elain's large brown eyes flickered, well aware of all that.”

&

“I want to see her. Just once. Just—to know.” “To know what?” He hitched my damp cloak higher around us. “If she is worth fighting for.”

“Azriel stiffened. “I know. I helped rescue Elain, after all.” Az hadn’t so much as hesitated before going into the heart of Hybern’s war-camp.”

GIFTS REFLECTING THEIR RELATIONSHIP MILE MARKS

“Az ran a hand through his dark hair. “Are we …” Unusual for him to stumble with words. “Are we supposed to get the sisters presents?”

“I handed Elain the small box with her name on it. Her smile faded as she opened it. “Enchanted gloves,” she read from the card. “That won’t tear or become too sweaty while gardening.” She set aside the box without looking at it for longer than a moment. And I wondered if she preferred to have torn and sweaty hands, if the dirt and cuts were proof of her labor. Her joy.”

“Don’t forget that gardening often results in something pretty, but it involves getting one’s hands dirty along the way.” “And torn up by thorns,” I mused,”

“I didn’t dare mention that if she had been wearing the enchanted gloves Lucien had gotten her last Solstice, nothing would have pierced them at all.”

“He and Lucien did not exchange gifts, though the male had brought a gift for Feyre and one for his mate, who barely thanked him after opening the pearl earrings. Cassian’s heart strained at the pain etching deep into Lucien’s face as he tried to hide his disappointment and longing."

Not only is she visibly uninterested which is painful to watch, it also highlights how little he knows about her. SJM is creating a visible gap in their dynamic.

“The golden necklace seemed ordinary -- its chain unremarkable, the amulet tiny enough that it could be dismissed as an everyday charm. It was a small, flat rose fashioned of stained glass, designed so that when held to the light, the true depth of the colors would become visible. A thing of secret, lovely beauty. “It's beautiful," she whispered, lifting it from the box. ”

“My Nesta. Elain shall wed for love and beauty, but you, my cunning little queen … You shall wed for conquest.”

“I painted flowers for Elain on her drawer,” I said, sawing and sawing. “Little roses and begonias and irises. And for Nesta … ”

“She plucked another figurine from the mantel: a rose carved from a dark sort of wood. She held it in her palm, its solid weight surprising, and traced a finger over one of the petals. “He made this one for Elain. Since it was winter and she missed the flowers.”

“Elain bit her lip and then smiled sheepishly. “It’s for the headaches everyone always gives you. Since you rub your temples so often.”

“I led her into the sitting room, where Cassian had a bottle of amber-colored liquor in each hand, Azriel was already rubbing his temples,”

“She hadn't bought her mate a present. But she'd gotten Azriel one last year -- a headache powder he kept on his nightstand at the House of Wind. Not to use, but just to look at. Which he'd done every night he’d slept there.”

“Azriel unwrapped the box, glancing at the card that merely said, You might find these useful at the House these days, and then opened the lid.  Two small, bean-shaped fabric blobs lay within. Elain murmured, "You put them in your ears, and they block any sound. With Nesta and Cassian living there with you...”

See yet again a very thoughtful and funny gift on her part. Now at it's core even just simply comparing their general reactions says a lot about the story Sarah is putting forward.

"Silence again. Then Azriel tipped his head back and laughed. I’d never heard such a sound, deep and joyous.”

“He chuckled, unable to suppress the impulse. "No wonder you didn't want me to open it in front of everyone."  

Elain’s mouth twitched into a smile. "Nesta wouldn't appreciate the joke.”

“Elain bit her lip and then smiled sheepishly."

"Cassian’s heart strained at the pain etching deep into Lucien’s face as he tried to hide his disappointment and longing."

“She hadn't bought her mate a present. "

The writing is nothing if not clear about the discomfort both Lucien and Elain feel in regards to each other, though they lay under different reasons.

We are given multiple incidents in which we are told about how mating bonds are not perfect and we are given clear examples of it repeatedly, about woman enduring out of obligation, and do not forget this is heavily discussed literally in regards to Elain and her circumstances.

“She’d been revealed as his mate, and endured the miserable union mostly from gratitude for her unharmed wings.”

“You said your mother and father were wrong for each other; Tamlin said his own parents were wrong for each other.” I peeled off my dressing robe. “So it can’t be a perfect system of matching. "

“She glowed with good health. Except … Her brown eyes were wary. Usually, that look was reserved for Lucien. The male was definitely in the family room,”

“Elain had already departed with Feyre, claiming she had to be up with the dawn to tend to an elderly faerie’s garden. Cassian didn’t exactly know why he suspected this wasn’t true. There had been some tightness in Elain’s face as she’d said it. Normally when she made such excuses, Lucien was around,”

“Elain, the wretch, had taken the seat between Feyre and Varian, about as far from Lucien as she could get.”

VS

“That smile grew, bright enough that it lit up even Azriel’s shadows across the room. “I would like to build a garden,” she declared. “After all of this … I think the world needs more gardens.”

“Then his gaze shifted to Elain, and though it was utterly neutral, something charged went through it. Between them. Elain’s breath caught slightly, and she gave him a shallow nod of greeting before brushing past, leading Nesta into the room.”

What if ”—I jerked my chin toward the window, to my sister and the shadowsinger in the garden—“that is what she needs? Is there no free will? What if Lucien wishes the union but she doesn’t?”

“Can you truly fly?” He set down his fork, blinking. I might have even called him self-conscious. He said, “Yes. Cassian and I hail from a race of faeries called Illyrians. We’re born hearing the song of the wind.” “That’s very beautiful,” she said. “Is it not—frightening, though? To fly so high?”

“ I couldn’t tell if she was looking at his blue Siphon or at his scarred skin beneath as she breathed, “Beautiful.” Color bloomed high on Azriel’s golden-brown cheeks, but he inclined his head in thanks and led my sister toward the back doors into the garden, sunlight bathing them.”

“This is Truth-Teller,” he told her softly. “I won’t be using it today—so I want you to.”

“Never, Rhys said from where he finished buckling on his own weapons against the side of the wagon. I have never once seen Azriel let another person touch that knife.”

The romantic subtext is there and has been for quite some time, they prove it book after book when SJM continues to grow their bond and nurture it whilst breaking her connection with Lucien further apart, and for what reason?

“A mating bond can be rejected,” Rhys said mildly, eyes flickering in the mirror as he drank in every inch of bare skin I had on display. “There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some… preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.”

“Why not make them mates?” I mused. “Why Lucien?” [...]

“I’m serious.” I turned toward him and crossed my arms. “What decides it? Who decides it?” Rhys straightened his lapels before plucking an invisible piece of lint from them. “Fate, the Mother, the Cauldron’s swirling eddies …”

“What if the Cauldron was wrong?”

“Just this taste in the dead of the longest night of the year, where only the Mother might witness them.”

“The Cauldron chose three sisters. Tell me how it's possible that my two brothers are with two of those sisters, yet the third was given to another.”

It is remarkably interesting to me that we are told about what Rhys suspects/believes is responsible for mating bonds, paralleled alongside Azriel questioning it all, I also think it is abundantly clear from his answer to Feyre he doesn't truly know for sure.

We also have several lines of dialogue talking about the sisters and fate, their reason for entering the IC's life. Not only that but we get a glimpse at Azriel's personality and how despite the world (Rhys and the mating bond in general) telling him to despair, he still found it in him to have hope the Cauldron could be wrong.

This is so significant, and she has carefully woven his character throughout the series to make this incredibly plausible.

“If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make, not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair.”

“And then he said to my sisters, “We have not known each other for long. But I have to believe that you were brought here, into our family, for a reason, too. And maybe today we’ll find out why.”

“All three sisters blessed by fate and gifted with powers to match your own.”

“Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does not happen often, but …”

“Oh, I can, and I will. If Lucien finds out you're pursuing her, he has every right to defend their bond as he sees fit. Including invoking the Blood Duel.”

As you can see even back in ACOWAR she was weaving the web for Elriel's journey and an upcoming Blood Duel/The threat of one.

“Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”

I think it is pretty clear from all the quotes above that Lucien is no her ideal spirit and vice-versa to be frank when you put it side by side his budding relationship with Vassa or hers with Azriel they are clearly very different.

“On the continent, there are territories that believe the females literally belong to their mate. But not here. Elain would have our full protection if she rejects the bond.”

“Azriel's hand slid up her neck, burying in her thick hair. Tilting her face the way he wanted it. Elain's mouth parted slightly, her eyes scanning his before fluttering shut.  Offer and permission.  He nearly groaned with relief and need as he lowered his head toward hers. ”

Elain is choosing Azriel, choosing their bond over the one assigned to her time and time again... Back to mating bonds;

“The ancient healer jerked her chin toward Lucien. “See what he can do. If anyone can sense if something is amiss, it’s a mate.”

“The mating bond. It is a bridge between souls.”

"She pointed at Lucien as she saw herself out. “Try sitting down with her. Just talking—sensing. See what you pick up. But don’t push.”

“Can you hear mine?” He wasn’t sure if she truly meant to address him, but he said, “No, lady. I cannot.”

Her too-thin shoulders seemed to curve inward. “No one ever does. No one ever looked—not really.”

"Azriel’s hazel eyes churned as he studied my sister, her too-thin body. And without a word, he winnowed away. Mor watched the space where he’d been standing long after he was gone.”

“Should we—does she need …?” “She doesn’t need anything,” Azriel answered without so much as looking at Lucien.

Elain was staring at the spymaster now—unblinkingly. “We’re the ones who need …” Azriel trailed off. “A seer,” he said, more to himself than us. “The Cauldron made you a seer.”

“It made sense, I supposed, that Azriel alone had listened to her. The male who heard things others could not … Perhaps he, too, had suffered as Elain had before he understood what gift he possessed.”

“But Azriel nodded. “You knew,” he said to Elain. “About the young queen turning into a crone.” Elain blinked and blinked, eyes clearing again. As if the understanding, our understanding … it freed her from whatever murky realm she’d been in.”

Are you telling me that Madja saying a mate would know, would sense whatever is going on with her, and as it turns out Azriel was the one to sense and uncover it is solely what, a coincidence? Also to emphasize what she said about "A bridge between souls..." Where else have we heard that terminology? The Truth-Teller scene.

“I saw the painting in my mind: the lovely fawn, blooming spring vibrant behind her. Standing before Death, shadows and terrors lurking over his shoulder. Light and dark, the space between their bodies a blend of the two. The only bridge of connection … that knife.”

Not to mention this scene is simply iconic for a multitude of reasons, how poetic Feyre describes them, the clear soulmates/ying-yang subtext and him giving her something he has given no other but that's another story.

Azriel has also been displaying some very protective fiercely so mating vibes towards her,

“Azriel stilled. “What happened to Elain?” Cassian waved a hand. “A fight with Nesta. Don’t bring it up,” he warned when Azriel’s eyes darkened. ”

“Cassian surveyed the shadows gathered around Az. “You all right?” His brother nodded. “Fine.” But shadows still swarmed him.”

“Nesta saw the blow land, like a physical impact, in Elain’s face, her posture. No one spoke, though shadows gathered in the corners of the room, like snakes preparing to strike.”

“Azriel’s Siphons guttered, the stones turning as dark and foreboding as the deepest sea. “Where did Lucien go.”

I think there are some mixed opinions on Lucien and whether he deserves her (and vice-versa in this fandom) but I don't think that is what this comes down too, they are both handling it in the way they think best/following their instincts.

Lucien is hurting throughout this process as well, but I think ultimately it is honor and loyalty binding him to her not any genuine emotion for her as a human being fae. I think realising they are not meant for each other and supporting each other developing true bonds with other people will be their journey. And it would be a completely fresh and new view of a mating bond.

Smaller pieces of dialogue that need little explaining and a rather oddly specific choice of words in the latest book that is meant to set up the next one in the series:

“You’d know if she’d died,” Azriel said, pausing his work and looking up at Cassian. He tapped his brother’s chest with a scarred hand. “Right here—you’d know, Cass.”

“Elain and Feyre—that was the new status of things. The bond Elain had chosen.”

"I'd never do such a thing. you must be thinking of your other mate."

Honestly? At this rate I have no doubt Elriel are endgame and everything within canon text spells that out but I truly believe he will be her second mate/the will form a bond via some circumstance that shall arise due to these little hints.

I would love to hear your thoughts and/or additions because I by all means didn't do a massive deep dive and there are most likely tons more examples to add but I didn't want it to become overwhelming to read!

Hope everyone has a spectacular and magical evening <3

[robininthelabyrinth]

extra 1 for Tedious Joys, with thanks to all the suggestions from people engaged in the discussion on tumblr, your ideas were fantastic and I used all that I could fit in!

-

Before Lan Qiren left to attend the first discussion conference held after Nie Mingjue’s ascension to the position of Nie sect leader – a notion that still gave Lan Qiren a stomachache merely to think of it – Lao Nie made him promise three times over that he would keep an eye on his painfully earnest, straightforward eldest son and keep him from doing anything foolish.

“Of course I will,” Lan Qiren finally said, exasperated: any more nagging, and he was going to be late. When he’d thought to himself that he’d picked up a wife, he hadn’t really expected this part of it; if anything, he assumed he’d be the one doing the nagging. “You know perfectly well that he’s as dear to me as my nephews! I don’t know why you feel the need to even ask.”

“Your nephews have good self-control, a trait my Nie sect most definitively lacks,” Lao Nie said. “We’re all in agreement that it’s not yet time to challenge Hanhan. What if A-Jue forgets that and, I don’t know, punches him in the face?”

“He won’t,” Lan Qiren said. “He’s a good boy, your son; you’ve told him not to, so he won’t. Anyway, if it really comes to it, I won’t let him.”

Finally, Lao Nie let him leave, and Lan Qiren made his way to the Lotus Pier for the discussion conference. Nie Mingjue and his retinue had arrived shortly before he did, the circles under his eyes and the small signs of mourning he still wore making him look older than he ought to be; there was a scowl fixed on his face that did not disappear entirely even when he nodded to Lan Qiren, although it did soften a little.

Lan Qiren’s heart hurt for him. To manage an entire sect at fifteen – even with support, the pressures of it must be well-nigh unbearable, and it looked as though Nie Mingjue had started using his cultivation to get him through all the nights of missed sleep, as unwise as that approach was in the long term.

It was strange to go to the habitual meeting of the Great Sect leaders, the one they had with each other before they mixed with all the other sect leaders, and bow to Nie Mingjue as if to a peer, rather than to a junior.

Stranger still to see Wen Ruohan do the same, a mocking smile on his lips as he raised his head from the greeting.

“Sect Leader Nie,” he said, and there was almost some sense of satisfaction as he said the unfamiliar words – no one had had to use them when it was Lao Nie, of course. “I bid you welcome, as the newest member to the ranks of leadership among our Great Sects.”

Nie Mingjue did not respond with words the way he had when similar sentiments had been offered by others – no Please give me guidance here, though that was understandable given what the entire cultivation world knew he believed about Wen Ruohan – and contented himself by merely jerking his head again in a nod.

“Your father was a very involved member of our little group,” Wen Ruohan continued, and was he really going to offer Nie Mingjue his condolences for Lao Nie’s death? Propriety demanded he do so, but he’d never cared much for propriety, and given his actions it would be an offense to all sensibility. “One could hardly hope to match him in his passion and enthusiasm in all that he did. I look forward to seeing you...take his place.”

His eyes flickered over Nie Mingjue from head to toe, blatant in its unspoken unspeakable implication, even as Nie Mingjue’s eyes went round with disbelief.

A moment later, it ended up being Lan Qiren’s fist that found its way to Wen Ruohan’s face.

Luckily, Wen Ruohan found it funny - laughing at how he’d managed to break Lan sect discipline, rather than taking offense - and no war was started.

Whether that would last once Lan Qiren reported the substance of the conversation back to Lao Nie, however...

-

“You know,” Lan Qiren said, staring at the ceiling and wishing it would come down on top of him. “It’s very nice that you’re all such good friends.”

His nephews both bobbed their heads in a polite nod.

“I’m sure Mingjue and Huaisang greatly appreciate it.”

Another nod.

“However, they are now sect leader and sect heir, and we must treat them with the dignity that those positions require.”

A third nod. He was starting to wonder if they’d been replaced by dolls with loose necks.

“This is why they were assigned their very own rooms in our guest quarters, rather than spending their nights in yours.”

“Nie Huaisang will be lonely if he sleeps by himself,” Lan Wangji said, stubborn as ever. “My room is better.”

“Wangji. Yesterday, you chased Huaisang up two separate hills with your sword, sat on him, made him cry, and then wouldn’t let him up until he admitted you were superior in every respect.”

Lan Wangji smiled briefly, a rare and beautiful sight that warmed the heart. “Mm. Deserved it.”

Lan Qiren flailed a little. “Wangji, do you even like him?”

“No.”

“Then why do you care where he sleeps?”

“If he sleeps badly, he will do even worse than he already does,” Lan Wangji said. “Someone might make fun of him.”

“…and what happens then?”

“Bite.”

“Wangji! We’ve discussed this, no biting people. Not even if they’re making fun of your friend!”

Lan Wangji nodded in a way that suggested he was only being agreeable so that Lan Qiren stopped insisting on silly things like Nie Huaisang getting his own bedroom instead of sleeping on the spare bed in Lan Wangji’s and not actually agreeing in the slightest.

They were still working on the biting thing.

Giving up, Lan Qiren turned his gaze to his older nephew.

Lan Xichen squirmed. “…sometimes I go to stay in his rooms instead?”

“You’re not even planning on coming up with an excuse?”

“Lying is forbidden, uncle.”

Lan Qiren pinched the bridge of his nose.

-

“For this sort of thing, you go to your eldest uncle,” Lan Qiren said flatly, and after a moment of contemplation, Lan Wangji conceded that he had a point.

After all, Lao Nie had been married several times, presumably intentionally, whereas Lan Qiren had ended up with a wife through circumstance and luck.

Lao Nie was a very good wife, though, even if for some reason Lan Wangji was required to refer to him as eldest uncle rather than calling him aunt – though that was mostly his uncle’s preference. Lao Nie thought being called auntie was hilarious.

In retrospect, though, Lao Nie’s tendency to think things were hilarious was a lot less endearing when it was aimed at him.

“Just tell him you like him,” Lao Nie suggested, as if that wasn’t the most ridiculous Nie sect style advice possible. “Tell him you want to spend more time with him.”

Lan Wangji shook his head firmly.

“How is this Wei Wuxian supposed to figure it out, then?”

He wouldn’t. Obviously. The question was how to get rid of the feelings, not how to actually let Wei Wuxian know that they existed.

“I don’t know, I find sex works really well to deal with repressed emotions associated with pining.”

Lan Wangji wanted to die.

Or possibly find and bully Nie Huaisang the way he used to when he was a kid. Not that he would, of course, he was above that, and also Nie Huaisang was really good at getting revenge and he couldn’t risk that happening where Wei Wuxian might see.

“Sex is not a valid solution in all cases,” Lan Wangji’s uncle interjected.

“Ah, Qiren, Qiren. Are you still holding Hanhan against me?”

“Yes, I am. He tried to kill you.”

“So?” Lao Nie shrugged. “That describes basically everyone I ever slept with.”

“Have you ever considered that that may be part of your problem?”

“Don’t act like I’m the only one! Look at Wangji here; the first thing he noticed about this Wei Wuxian character was his excellent fighting skills – a moonlight duel on the rooftops, how romantic –”

“You don’t know what romance is –”

Lan Wangji was just going to go back to his unrequited pining.

It couldn’t be worse than having to listen to this argument again.

-

Lan Wangji was fighting frantically, but he already knew his sword would not be sufficient.

They were going to burn the library.

All those precious books..!

His uncle had already sent Lan Xichen away with the most important ones, but Lan Wangji didn’t want to lose any of them. These books had been his friends growing up, the source of his strength and the consolation in his loneliness – their pages bore silent witness to his childish tears, the imprints of his dirty fingerprints, the good times and the bad. There were books he had thumbed through a thousand times until he knew them down to the last idiosyncratic quiver in their calligraphy and books he had not yet acquainted himself with, had only seen on the shelves and thought one day. To lose them now, old friend and future friend alike, would be to break his heart.

There was a sound behind him and he spun, already tired, exhausted, and it was Wen Xu behind him, the leader of the invading Wen sect cultivators himself. He was smiling so cruelly, holding a fire talisman aloft like a flare, knowing that Lan Wangji wouldn’t make it in time to stop him –

A hand wrapped itself around Wen Xu’s wrist from behind, freezing the motion.

Freezing not just him, but all the Wen cultivators around him, each one of their faces twisting in horror as they realized that a cultivator dressed in astere mourning white that might be mistaken for the colors of the Lan sect had managed to get through their forces to stand at their master’s side, even if his hands were empty of any weapon.

Their horror quickly turned to agony, and then nothing at all, as the reconstituted Jiwei flew through the air, battering through their swords with overwhelming force and piercing their bodies, as vicious and free as if she were alive – there was nothing that quite compared to the Nie sect’s fierce sabers when unleashed at the beck and call of their masters, a weapon against which regular spiritual weapons had difficulty holding up.

With their bodies fell their fire talismans, their flares, and suddenly Lan Wangji felt hope thudding in his chest: one man could not change the tide of war, but he could change the course of a single battle, especially if he could convince Wen Xu to order a retreat.

If Wen Xu ordered a retreat now –

The library would survive.

“Tell Hanhan that Lao Nie said ‘hello’,” Lao Nie said in Wen Xu’s ear – his face was as pale as a ghost in the fire and moonlight, his lips red as blood and his smile full of viciousness like a slash across his face –and with a single twist he snapped the bone of Wen Xu’s wrist.

-

“It really isn’t me!” Wei Wuxian protested. “For one thing, didn’t the sightings of old Sect Leader Nie start before I took up demonic cultivation?”

“I don’t think it was you that did it,” Nie Mingjue said, not for the first time. His eyes kept flickering around the room as if seeking help, and his expression, to those that did not know him well, was stormy; Wei Wuxian saw this and clearly panicked, continuing to try to explain.

To those that did know Nie Mingjue well, it was immediately obvious that he was trying very hard not to laugh.

Lan Xichen sympathized.

It wasn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault that it served their purposes for the moment to have it be thought that Lao Nie was a spectre arisen from his grave in search of personal vengeance on Wen Ruohan – it was certainly causing Wen Ruohan no end of agony, judging by the way his strategy got a lot less rational and a lot more frenzied whenever Lao Nie put in an appearance – and if he was even slightly more discreet a personality, they would have simply brought him in on the secret already.

They were planning to – Lan Wangji had insisted, looking pained on his secret beloved’s behalf (secret in the sense that Wei Wuxian didn’t know about it, not secret in the sense that everyone else in their small family knew about it) – but they hadn’t had a chance. Lao Nie had insisted on being there to make things clear, since apparently he’d accidentally-on-purpose bumped into Wei Wuxian a few times in the Cloud Recesses while masquerading as a Lan sect elder so that he could evaluate his nephew-by-proxy’s crush, and he hadn’t yet arrived.

Which led to the current situation of Wei Wuxian being earnest and Nie Mingjue attempting to send mental smoke signals to Nie Huaisang in an effort to have the latter rescue him.

To no one’s surprise, Nie Huaisang was being no help at all.

In fact, his occasional well-timed sobs of “Wei-xiong! I thought we were friends! My father’s corpse! How could you?!” were in fact making things notably worse.

“I didn’t! I really didn’t!” Wei Wuxian yowled.

Lan Xichen was not going to laugh.

He wasn’t.

-

“And who’s to say the Yiling Patriarch won’t try to take charge of the Nie sect, too..?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m actually alive,” Lao Nie said loudly, and Lan Xichen flinched at first before relaxing. He’d forgotten, somehow, that Lao Nie had been the most shameless member of the last generation; it was no surprise that he, who could be as blunt as his son when he wanted to be, would address the whispered rumors drifting around them directly and without pretense. “Wei Wuxian may be a demonic cultivator who created a conscious fierce corpse, but no one has yet suggested with any plausibility that his abilities extend to living people who were just in hiding – which is a good thing, given how many people here would fall into that categorization.”

There was an awkward silence.

Sect Leader Jin coughed. “No one is suggesting that you’re Wei Wuxian’s puppet, Lao Nie,” he said, even though someone had very clearly been suggesting exactly that and if anyone believed that they had done so within Sect Leader Jin’s home without his knowledge then Lan Xichen was worried about what else they’d be willing to believe. “We’re merely expressing concern regarding his increasingly reckless actions – and on behalf of the Wen sect, no less! Especially with him having custody of such a powerful tool as the Tiger Seal, it is a little suspicious…”

“Wait, are you suggesting that you think Wei Wuxian has been possessed?” Lao Nie said. “By Hanhan? That’s ridiculous; they’re nothing alike. Wei Wuxian attended the hunt at Phoenix Mountain and didn’t hit on me once, there’s no way Hanhan is possessing him.”

Sect Leader Jin’s eye twitched.

Lan Xichen did not smile, but it was a challenge. Truly there was no one quite like Lao Nie when he was in full swing.

“Still, if people are having that sort of nonsense float around, I think it makes perfect sense for me to go check up on him to see how he’s doing,” Lao Nie continued. “I’m a respected member of the previous generation, and no one knows Hanhan better than me. Better still, I’ll take Qiren with me; we’ll make a holiday of it – it’s the least we deserve, really, now that we’re both retired sect leaders.”

“I suppose it would be more appropriate to send someone removed from active politics,” Lan Qiren said, voice a little toneless and neutral as always. “That would allow us to avoid any unfortunate implications that other sects were seeking to utilize the bad reputation of demonic cultivation to extract the Tiger Seal for their own purposes.”

Lan Xichen’s uncle was a renowned teacher, but equally well known for his inability to read the subtle nuances in social situations – no one else could have gotten away with just saying that when everyone was painfully aware that it was the subtext of Sect Leader Jin’s actions.

Though, actually, it was possible his uncle just hadn’t realized it was, in fact, meant to be subtext.

“I think that makes perfect sense,” Lan Xichen interjected before Sect Leader Jin – or Jin Guangyao, for that matter – could say anything. His sworn brother had never entirely forgiven Lao Nie for showing up at the last possible moment to murder Wen Ruohan personally before he could claim his head himself, even though the fame he had won for being their spy had still been sufficient to get him a spot in the Jin family, and as a result he was inclined to use his clever tongue to oppose Lao Nie just because he could. “Sect Leader Jiang, Wei Wuxian is a member of your sect, and therefore you have primary charge of him. Would you be willing to take Lao Nie and my uncle with you when you go to see him to act as impartial judges?”

“But I don’t want to be a third wheel on their old people sex honeymoon!” Jiang Cheng blurted out.

There was another moment of silence, and then Lao Nie burst out in howling laughter.

Nie Mingjue followed suit only an instant behind him, and of course once Nie Mingjue was laughing then there was no hope for Lan Xichen; he’d never been able to resist Nie Mingjue’s laughter, so rare after he’d become sect leader. Within moments, the tense atmosphere Sect Leader Jin had so carefully cultivated had been utterly shattered and the entire room was sobbing with hilarity, excluding only Lan Qiren who was scowling at all of them and Lan Wangji whose laughter was entirely in the way his eyes were crinkled in the corners.

“Sect Leader Jiang,” Lan Qiren said icily as his former student cowered in front of him. “I will have you know that Lao Nie and I are not in a sexual relationship –”  

“Wait, you’re not?” Sect Leader Jin blurted out, clearly despite himself, and that just set the whole room off again.

-

“Welcome to the Unclean Realm,” Lao Nie said.

“Since when do former sect leaders act to greet people at the door?” Wei Wuxian said, grinning at him: they had gotten on splendidly ever since the whole ‘did I resurrect you from the dead by accident’ question had resolved, and Lao Nie helping him out of the tough spot with the Wen sect by arranging his marriage to Lan Wangji had sealed his approval of him forever.

That was why he was arriving with the Lan sect delegation, after all, although Jiang Cheng had kicked his heels around at the entrance in order to ambush him – he wanted to ask some questions about Jiang Yanli’s upcoming wedding plans – and of course the Jin sect had gotten suspicious that they were up to something and waited as well so they were now coming in as one big group.

At least it gave Lan Xichen some time to chat with Jin Guangyao, who seemed much happier to be spending time away from the rest of his family; based on what he’d overheard of their conversation, they were scheming to get Nie Mingjue to relax a bit more and let his father temporarily take up sect leader duties again now that he and Lan Qiren were spending half the year at the Unclean Realm.  

“I’m on punishment duty,” Lao Nie said, looking delighted by it.

Which, hey, seemed weird, but based on everything Lan Wangji had told him about the former sect leader Nie (and his own mysterious ‘eldest uncle’, as he’d been known while he was at the Lan sect) and his former exploits, it seemed very in character for the man. And, well, Wei Wuxian wasn’t really in any position to throw stones…

“Eldest Uncle,” Lan Xichen said, looking over. “Did you do something to irritate Uncle again?”

“I didn’t! It was something different, actually, which I’m not at liberty to disclose to you.”

Oh, now Wei Wuxian was curious, and so was everyone else – Jiang Cheng sent him a ‘you don’t have shame, why don’t you ask’ sort of look at once – and since he did not, in fact, have shame, he asked, “Are you sure? What could it possibly be that you did?”

“Oh, Xiao Nie knows what he did,” an old woman in Nie sect colors said as she passed by. “And he’s going to stand there until he admits that he was wrong.”

“I’ll be here until I collapse,” Lao Nie explained proudly, but by that point everyone had stopped caring about whatever new thing he’d done in light of the newest twist.

“Did she just call you Xiao Nie?” Jiang Cheng said, sounding betrayed.

“…yes? She’s my great-grandaunt, she can call me anything she likes?”

“It’s just wrong,” Wei Wuxian agreed. “Isn’t it just wrong?”

“It is a bit wrong,” Jin Zixuan said, looking perturbed.

“Very wrong, even,” Lan Xichen said. “I didn’t know anyone did that.”

“No one does,” Lao Nie said. “Now stop gossiping and go inside already!”

“They say married couples start to act like each other,” Wei Wuxian said to Lan Wangji, who looked amused. “There really seems to be some truth to it – do you think he’ll start reciting Lan sect rules next? Ooh, or musical cultivation?”

Finding out that Lan Qiren was apparently the musical cultivation equivalent of a mad scientist in his spare time had been the happiest moment in Wei Wuxian’s life.

“Just wait until you see what Uncle is like when he’s drunk,” Lan Wangji said, and stop. What?

That was a thing?

Wei Wuxian had to make that happen right away.

[masterthespianduchovny]

Let’s take age off the table, I know shocker for me, the other thing that bothers me about this development isn’t that it can’t develop into something serious without major sacrifices happening if they stay together.

And that doesn’t it right with me.

Society loves romanticizing that “if it’s true love, a sacrifice doesn’t feel like a sacrifice.”

Girls are especially conditioned with this belief. On average, girls and women give up far more for love and a relationship and a significant amount gross to resent this in some capacity. They have to tell themselves that their relationships and kids made the sacrifice all worth it. And can’t express regret at the road not taken.

It’s why the saying, “you can’t have it all” is mainly directed at women and almost never men. Because, in comparison to women, men tend to have it all. Men are less likely to give up careers or take a step back in the name of love. And, when they do, they typically have more opportunities for them than women.

And the same goes for people of color. Their is rampant racism and hiring discrimination, so Black people have to move more carefully professionally.

Which brings up to the Sam and Rebecca storyline.

Both of them love and are invested in their careers. Their relationship jeopardizes either or one both of their professional goals and desires.

The idea that they can and will get over this because “love” is so dangerous because this relationship had massive red flags and was problematic from the word go and they both knew and know that. It’s not like they dated without personal attachment, and then a professional opportunity presented itself.

No, they voluntarily entered into a relationship that can only end in disaster.

If they stayed together and went public, there is no way in hell Sam could stay on the team.

Which means Sam would be the first one to take a professional hit. Sure he could go to a new team, but we wouldn’t know where that would be, if he would have to be traded/loaned, and if where he went would even be beneficial for him as a player. There is also his rejection taking a hit, because even tho they will pat him on the ass, his professional cred will have taken a massive hit.

And, for real, what owners do you think will be okay with a professional player having that kind of access and intimacy with another owner?

Sam’s professional development would also take a hit. Remember how Sam was struggling with Richmond at first, until Ted problem solved why that was? Remember how his stats was taking a hit? Remember how ted constantly advocated for Sam as a player and utilized him in a way that was appropriate for him and, in turn, his confidence not only returned and flourished under Ted.

And we saw how Jamie reacted when his loan was terminated. We saw the difference of play and what it did for his confidence training under ted v not.

I’m not saying Sam needs ted and can’t succeed without him, however, coaching arent a one size for all. Some coaches work better for some than they do for others. Some players need certain types of coaches and only respond to one specific coach.

Sam’s development is threatened by not only losing a coach, but having to play for a new team, learn a new system, and make bonds with new players. It may not seem like it, but switching teams, esp when don’t want to, is hard on players.

Sam would be voluntarily setting back his career to be with Rebecca, which may harm him in the long run.

With Rebecca, most have noted that she’s been treated like shit in the media and, in this case, it would be rightfully so. We shouldn’t be arguing that just because Rupert’s gets a pass, Rebecca should too. We should be arguing that Rupert needs to be criticized just as much if not more for what he did. Professionally speaking, Rebecca actually deserves far more criticism than Rupert. He just ran a mediocre club, she’s unintentionally undermining it by dating a player, which reeks of massive irresponsibility on her end.

Some have argued that since Sam and Rebecca have great chemistry and this could be something great, maybe Rebecca should sell her club.

Fucking, excuse me?

Regardless of how Rebecca originally felt towards the club, she has grown to love it and has a deep attachment. She even takes genuine pride at her ownership and trying to get them to succeed.

Some are really saying that a woman should sell her club to be with a man she shouldn’t have gotten involved with to begin with? Like, I’m hearing that correctly??? (Yes, this has been said.)

So in a profession where women rarely own clubs and a professional she enjoys, is a because she should give up for love?

And if this relationship doesn’t work out, which it most likely won’t, them making these massive sacrifices won’t be “no big deal, I’m glad I took the risk.”

It would be, “what was I thinking selling my club/fucking over my career?”

Rebecca’s media problem wouldn’t go away with her selling the club, she’d still be dating a footballer and mags would still write about her. This is a fucking juicy story. It would take years before this wouldn’t be in constant rotation. Even if they both went away, this story wouldn’t die and would hang over AFC Richmond like a dark cloud.

Love isn’t going to make Rebecca stop caring about what the media says about her, esp if they’re right in their criticisms this time around. That criticism practically ate her alive. She’s going to feel like the monster she thought she was in season 1.

Especially since this is going to be way worse and more frequent.

And do you imagine that she keeps her relationship with Keeley or Higgins? Do you think she doesn’t become a pariah?

So a woman who already went through a humiliating and public divorce, then gets into a relationship that increases attacks and criticisms on her ten fold, and she sells her club to be with this dude (hypothetically, of course), do y’all think Rebecca doesn’t feel even more isolated and lonely? Do y’all think that Sam’s love is enough to compensate the massive loses she’s taken? That nothing else matters because she has him?

Some want to pretend like it’s no big deal, but either they don’t understand the implications or they think just because it’s fiction it doesn’t matter, but it does. It does matter what they’re saying and what they’re not saying. Because if it’s fiction and doesn’t matter, why complain about how raze is being portrayed as well as gender?

Age can’t be treated as unimportant because it’s a fictional pairing, yet racism and sexism doesn’t. That’s called inconsistency and cognitive dissonance. Either all of these things matter or none of them do and, yes, in this case it is all or nothing.

I’ve explained enough why this age difference matters and to pretend it means nothing because “he’s an adult.” Like man, young adults are truly fucked if older people feel this way. If older people feel their responsibility and obligation for protecting younger people stops at 18.

And, perhaps, this explains why people don’t understand the other complexities and nuances of what this relationship is fucked up. Or why they’re downplaying it.

As someone once said, “all art is political.” This and these discussions are a politic of sorts and so many people are missing the mark, yet are only advocating and having nuances discussions on this topic advocate for a problematic and detrimental relationship.

[beardofkamenev]

When Adults Attack! (Teenagers)

(Sorry to everyone for dragging this up again, but some people are chronically incapable of letting drama die down.)

The last time I posted about this was 18 February. It’s now late-March. Despite repeatedly claiming to be “over it”, a self-proclaimed “respected history blogger” has been screaming into the void for over a month now. She seems to be under the unfortunate impression that she’s completely innocent of wrongdoing, all the criticism is unprovoked, she has been targeted by “white bigots”, and that she’s somehow the real victim here. So now I have to explain why that’s bullshit. Unlike her and her two friends, I don’t make extreme but vague accusations with zero evidence. I don’t make empty threats about “exposing” people.

The short story? She involved her own self in a situation that had nothing to do with her, downplayed her friends’ racism towards others, incited her followers to harass a teenager, repeatedly lied to her followers about the multiple POC who criticised her friends being “white”, and has continued to inflame the issue while trying to downplay her role in doing so. The long story? Well, I’ll let the receipts do the talking.

That’s Olivia’s first post at the start of February, days before I or anyone else had even said anything. “My anonymous Jewish friend said!” should have been a red flag to anyone capable of reading anything longer than 280 characters. I’ve already explained why Haley (lucreciadeleon/turtlemoons plus her 92849374 alt accounts) is full of shit and so have plenty of others (here, here, and here, to name a few).

Olivia claims that, as a Romani woman, she’s not obliged to engage with content that offends her. Fine. So why is a black teenager obliged to engage with Haley’s deranged anons? Why are her hate anons are so worthy of a response that not responding is an act of ANTISEMITISM that warrants Olivia telling everyone what an antisemite this teenager is for not responding? FYI, NO ONE is obligated to respond to anon hate, especially from people they’ve already blocked. And considering Haley admitted not once, not twice, but three times to breaking Tumblr’s TOS to circumvent a mutual block and send those anons (including how she did it), people are especially not obligated to engage with her.

I made my first posts exposing Taylor (lucreziaborgia/elizabethblount) and Haley’s lies and backtracking on 6 and 7 February. This was before I acknowledged Olivia’s role in inflaming the situation. In fact, I didn’t even know about her tweets until 8 February. Yet, here she is on 6 FEBRUARY already bitching about my posts to her Twitter followers. She has some nerve acting like I victimised her, just because I posted the screenshots of her bitching about me. And bragging about ‘gaslighting’? The word that multiple people have separately described what her two friends subjected them to? Classy.

I can’t “stalk” her public Twitter any more than she can “stalk” my public blog. What an exceptionally stupid claim to make, considering her tweets kept getting recommended to my mutuals whether they liked it or not. Have some integrity and own the shit you say, rather than backtracking, deleting your posts, and pretending that you didn’t say the things we saw you say. If you want to talk shit about others in public, be ready to answer for it in public.

I also wonder how this started over Henry VII. I specifically wonder how this discussion between myself and May (richmond-rex) triggered Taylor’s totally unprovoked racist comments about how we and Nathen Amin “simp for a dead white man”, and we should “simp for someone who actually advocated for the rights of others” instead. The implication being that Tudor history is only for white people like Taylor, and that only her fave is worthy of discussion (“AnNe BoLeYn WaS oThErEd BeCaUsE sHe WaS tAn.” Good grief).

When multiple POC called bootleg Regina George out for it, not only did she say she couldn’t possibly be racist because Haley approved of her racism, but also tried to argue that Nathen Amin deserved it because it was inappropriate for a British man to joke about Brexit. She then claimed we called her “anti-Welsh” (another fucking lie) to make it seem like a bunch of cRaZy blacks and browns were attacking poor, innocent white her (with Olivia coming to the rescue, of course). And as if that wasn’t enough, Haley then sent these bad faith hate anons calling Nathen Amin’s tweet ANTISEMITIC, for no other reason than to retroactively justify Taylor’s racist comments (though I didn’t see Haley getting offended when she was hate-scrolling through his blog before Taylor was called out).

That was the “antisemitic shit” Haley “privately messaged about” that Olivia thinks deserves a response. In case it's not clear: defending racism makes you complicit in racism. Being Jewish is NOT a get-out-of-racism-free card, and Haley trying to use it as one is absolutely dishonest, especially when NO ONE even knew she was Jewish until she finally admitted in February she was the anonymous ‘Jewish friend’ who sent those batshit anons. Other Jewish people also called Haley out on it, yet Haley and Olivia have conveniently ignored that little fact since it contradicts their narrative.

You think it’s over? Nope. Taylor then slunk into May’s dm’s with a half-arsed apology, where she admitted that the only reason she made those racist comments about Nathen Amin was because we “attacked Gareth Russell first” (“BeCaUsE AnNe FaNs CiTe HiS wOrk”) and she “just wanted to educate us about not lionising Henry VII” (even though anyone with eyeballs can read our discussion see she’s full of shit). At the same time, she and Haley were messaging other history bloggers, telling them that everyone who called them out were antisemites (including an openly Jewish mutual of ours) in an attempt to alienate them from the community. And this was just in JANUARY.

“I can’t be racist! My Jewish friend agrees with my racism!” That steaming load of backtracking horseshit is unfortunately the kind of nonsense Olivia has chosen to defend. FOR WEEKS Taylor ignored May’s messages, explaining why she — a black woman — found Taylor’s comments offensive. Did Taylor listen? Nope. In fact, she only replied in February: after she already started posting about how ignoring Haley’s hate anons was “antisemitism”. How convenient. Taylor might be a fucking idiot but we’re not. She only replied to May because she was afraid we’d use her own words against her. Clearly she never learnt a damn thing because here she is on 6 February backtracking on her apology. “Actually, I did NOTHING wrong! Also, you’re all antisemites for saying I did because my Jewish friend agrees with me!” And what made Taylor feel as though she had permission to start deflecting her vile behaviour onto others in order to get the heat off her? Olivia’s post about ‘their Jewish friend’ Haley: the one that followed Olivia’s “private discussion” with “her two friends”. Taylor is a racist hypocrite who hides behind the few minority friends she has to justify her racism, and attacks every other minority who disagrees with her. It’s no coincidence that the majority of the history bloggers who have a problem with Taylor and Haley’s nasty behaviour happen to be POC.

Despite Olivia admitting that she knew nothing about that situation other than what those two told her, she still took it upon herself to misconstrue and downplay to all her followers the extent of her friends’ racism, lies, and general nastiness (here she is on 9 MARCH). For her, our problems with racism are little more than “stupid drama”, “Henry VII drama”, “Gareth Russell drama”, “overreacting to a joke”, and “petty disagreements over dead people” because her friends are the perpetrators. Yet she demands everyone sympathise with her never-ending dramas and projects her behaviour onto others, despite the fact that she’s shown absolutely no understanding for why so many people have problems with her friends and has consistently defended the perpetrators. She’s entitled to be upset at whatever she wants to be upset at, but she is not entitled to tell her followers that we can’t be upset about racism directed at us, especially when that situation NEVER EVEN INVOLVED HER.

I agree. It’s disturbing that three grown women in their mid to late 20s have a vendetta against an 18 year old. Olivia acknowledged that her posts were reckless and that she would have acted differently if she just sat down and thought for one fucking second. But rather than correct the record on the same platform she made those accusations, she doubled down and took off to Twitter, saying that her anger entitled her to act that way. All with zero acknowledgement of the fact that the teenager SHE falsely accused and repeatedly mocked for her age was still being harassed by HER followers as a direct result of HER posts.

She might love the ‘clout’ that comes with a large following, but she evidently doesn’t care about the responsibility that comes with it. In Taylor and Haley’s case, it’s little more than a means to intimidate others into silence. Olivia might be a “respected history blogger” or a “good historian”, but that definitely doesn’t make her a good person. Far from it, if her behaviour is anything to go by.

This was on 9 February, 3 days after my first post. Bitching about me was all fun and games until the receipts came out, huh?

There’s nothing “insane” about keeping receipts, especially when Taylor and Haley are notorious for lying out of their arses and fake-apologising to people in the dm’s, only to continue mocking them on Twitter afterwards. You know what is insane though? Searching ‘romani’ on our blogs in a pathetic attempt to dig up dirt that doesn’t even exist (yeah, stat trackers exist). Do you know what else is insane? Haley spamming people with passive aggressive anons and sending anon hate to people who’ve already blocked her. She also “stalked” our WOTR group chat, though she’ll never admit to it, despite accidentally posting the dated receipts proving it. Oops!

It’s no secret that Taylor and Haley are cowards (as all bullies are), so it was no surprise when they eventually involved Olivia in their month-old vendetta against a teenager. They wanted to school a black girl on racism and Congolese genocide apologism, so they needed to get a “respectable history blogger” on their side. And Olivia happily obliged, kicking up such a fuss on their behalf that the teenager just offered to end it (despite the fact that Olivia vagued her first). Yet still Olivia continued, publicly mocking her age and calling her an “antisemite” long after the discussion was over (here she is on 24 February still carrying on). Either a teenager is old enough to be publicly shamed for being an “antisemite” and “antiromani bigot”, or she’s too young to be taken seriously. But at 25, Olivia is certainly old enough to know better than to participate in this kind of vile, petty, wannabe Mean Girl behaviour.

Olivia is not black. Taylor is not black. Haley is not black. So for the record, if you are not black, it is not your place to tell BLACK PEOPLE whether they can take issue with apologism for BLACK GENOCIDE. Multiple black history bloggers have already explained why they had a problem with Gareth Russell’s comments about the Congolese genocide (including the teen in question), yet that was less important to Olivia than not being able to call him a sexist weirdo because he’s gay. Olivia cannot speak on all minority issues — especially black and brown issues — and it is arrogant of her to assume that she can, especially since her understanding of the Gareth Russell issue came purely from “what she discussed with her two friends” by her own admission.

What a take. Here’s the “anti-Romani” post that I supposedly made. Precisely ZERO of my posts were about Olivia and not once did I even name her directly. So her claims that I mounted some kind of “vicious attack” against her is, uh, bullshit. Criticising her and her friends for their nasty, dishonest, and irresponsible behaviour isn’t “anti-Romani” just because she’s Romani. It’s no more “anti-Romani” than her erratic attempts to “expose” me are anti-Asian just because I’m Asian. It’s not any more “anti-Romani” just because the UK government has passed anti-Romani laws, any more than her telling deranged lies about me for over a month is an anti-Asian hate crime simply because there’s been an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. I’m not British. I’m not from the UK. I have no control over whatever dumb, racist crap her government does. So she can fuck off and continue fucking off if she wants to make me personally responsible for that. The backlash she received had nothing to do with her identity and everything to do with how she purposely incited harassment against a teenager, defended her friends’ racism, and spread demonstrable lies to her followers. The “viciousness” of the backlash she received is directly proportionate to the viciousness of her own baseless attacks against others. She can claim to be more mature than an 18 year old all she wants, but do you know what the actual mature thing to do would have been? To not promote her friends’ lies and nonsense, especially when the other people they tried to involve had the sense to stay out of it.

Olivia, Taylor and Haley are fully-grown adults, but take no responsibility for their actions. Yet, they expect teenagers to have total control over not only their own emotions, but also the emotions and actions of others. Olivia thinks that a teen should be personally responsible for the behaviour of fully-grown adults, yet she’s close friends with Taylor — a racist, xenophobic bully who screenshots Tumblr people’s posts to mock them on Twitter (here and here from December), called Poles who’ve lost relatives in the Holocaust “genocidal loving freaks”, accused an openly Ashkenazi Jewish blogger of “internalised antisemitism” just for criticising her (a white gentile), said that people who like Mary I “resent their own siblings”, co-opted our struggles under Spanish imperialism just so she could bully ‘Spaniards’ (despite her being American and therefore equally responsible for genocide, by her flawed logic), and said that the black teen who called out her racism “really deserved to be bullied” and “needed to be policed”. Olivia is also close friends with Haley, who has a history of attacking people over posts that have nothing to do with her, publicly admitted to circumventing blocks in order to send hate anons, and likened me — a Filipino immigrant — to DONALD TRUMP and a neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist just because I posted the receipts exposing her lies, harassment of others, and projection.

Most of the people who have spoken out against these three didn’t even know each other until last month. Some of ‘us’ have actually blocked each other. Yet all of us agree that their behaviour towards others has been absolutely unacceptable. How is it that so many unrelated people from different corners of the ‘fandom’ have exactly the same problems with exactly the same people? If Olivia want us to take personal responsibility for “our friends’” behaviour, then she should first take responsibility for hers.

This is on 26 February, over a week after I last posted. As anyone with eyeballs can see, I called her British once. Not “repeatedly”. ONCE. So she can fuck off again with that bullshit. And why did I point that out? Because Olivia, a British citizen, made pejorative comments about “white Eastern Europeans!!!” just because she thinks some Polish people committed the heinous crime of... screenshotting her tweets. They didn’t even do it, and even if they did, how is that even relevant? Everyone knows that one specific Polish person lives rent free in Taylor’s head, so clearly Olivia just took Taylor’s word for it that it must have been The Poles who were “stalking” her. Maybe don’t take paranoid liars at face value next time?

Shameless, ignorant, tone deaf nonsense. Olivia constantly demands that people treat her and her identity with the utmost respect, yet here she was on 9 February already disrespecting the identities of others just so she can score some petty ‘oppression points’ against them. Why even bring their nationalities up? And why call them “white Eastern Europeans” instead of Polish since she knows they’re Polish? Is it because acknowledging that they are Polish would mean acknowledging that she doesn’t actually have a monopoly on a claim to discrimination or Holocaust trauma? Could it be that dismissing them as just some “white Eastern Europeans” was just another way for her to add credence to her own “pathetic lies” about the situation? There’s a word for that behaviour, and it starts with pro- and ends with -jection.

Let me reiterate: it is IGNORANT of her to use their identity against them, especially when hate-crimes against Polish immigrants have increased in her home country, and especially when the specific people she insulted lost close relatives (including Jewish relatives) in the Holocaust. It’s not “repeatedly mocking her identity” to point out her hypocrisy. Her being Romani is not an excuse for casual xenophobia. She might be able to hide her identity in the UK (though she shouldn’t have to), but Polish immigrants do not have the privilege of passing as first-language white British. I cannot pass as non-Asian. The black girl she and her friends tried to bully off Tumblr cannot pass as non-black. Olivia weaponising people’s identity against them just because she thinks they saw her public tweets is ignorant, petty, and completely uncalled for. She should be absolutely ashamed for using that pathetic argument, but based on her most recent farrago of nonsense, she probably won’t be.

Here’s her on 7 MARCH. And of course Taylor was the first to like it lol. Olivia may have deluded herself into believing she was just an innocent bystander, but unfortunately, enough people saw her admitting to inserting herself into the situation at the behest of her two friends. With every post before and since, her accusations have gotten wilder and wilder, falser and falser, and more and more irrelevant because she knows full well that none of her followers will bother fact-checking her. That’s the beauty of vagueing people. It’s how Taylor and Haley have been able to get away with pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes for so long. Too bad repetition, projection, and self-righteous outrage doesn’t equate to the truth because those are all those three have.

“SOMEONE NEEDS TO EXPOSE THE WHOLE DAMN LOT OF THEM! BUT IT WON’T BE ME!” 

No one has said anything since 18 February, yet here’s Olivia publicly inciting her followers again. She’s “done talking about it”, yet she’s the only one continuing the drama. She is being ‘persecuted’, yet she mobilises her followers to go after others. She needs to be defended against critics, yet she also can’t resist bragging about big her Tumblr following is, how “piddly” our notes are compared to hers, how she got over 30 followers to report my posts (they’re still up lol), and how many people she can get to dig through our blogs to find anything to “expose” us. Olivia, I’m sorry that you require constant validation from strangers on the internet, but not everyone has the same priorities as you. Some of us just come here to have fun, but having shitstarters in the community is decidedly un-fun.

All my posts were directed at Taylor and Haley, but since Olivia insists on making this revolve around her, let me clarify: she is a hypocrite and a professional victim. Words have meaning, and those words are the most accurate words to describe her behaviour. It has fuck all to do with her identity. She and Haley are professional victims because they act as if their minority statuses exempt them from basic rules of online courtesy and entitle them to run their mouths about others with no consequence. And Olivia is a hypocrite because she demands the respect and understanding that she has repeatedly refused to show to others. She made ignorant, xenophobic comments against Polish people because she falsely assumed they screenshot her public posts bitching about others. She pretends that the many POC who have spoken out against her are just some “white” hive-mind because admitting that we’re not white will discredit the victimhood narrative she’s been peddling to her followers. And she arrogantly presumes to be ‘our’ voice in the community, all while mobilising her following to intimidate and silence the minorities who take issue with her and her friends’ vile behaviour.

It’s extremely telling that in every one of her unlettered rants, Olivia made the conscious choice to conflate us with “white gentiles”, “white antisemites”, and “white Eastern Europeans”. Why? Because in order to “name and shame” us, she’d have to admit to her followers that the majority of the people criticising her aren’t actually “white”, but are in fact black, brown, and Jewish. Having repeatedly demanded that her followers defend her, her reputation and credibility now depends upon people continuing to see her as the oppressed victim of “bigoted whites”. Unfortunately for her and her friends, the truth will always come out. That’s what receipts are for, no matter what they claim.

The history community didn’t side with “a white gentile woman”. We sided with a black teenager who Olivia and her friends repeatedly mocked for her age, publicly and privately spread false accusations against, and incited their followers to harass with their never-ending posts. We sided against white racists like Taylor, and her white-passing enablers like Olivia and Haley. Since being called out for racism by a black girl discredited them, they had to discredit her. And unlike the others Taylor and Haley tried to involve, Olivia was their willing accomplice. If she has now been “alienated by half the history fandom”, it is because of her own behaviour and rightly so.

The ideal course of action would be for Olivia to finally take some responsibility for her actions, publicly apologise for her role in inflaming this drama, and move on like the rest of us have tried to do. But unfortunately, she may be too far gone in her own pathological need for online validation to ever admit wrongdoing without some serious introspection. So perhaps, Olivia, if anything else, you should just take your own advice and, once and for all, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

[cryptovalid]

The weird politics of the Blip

The more the MCU fleshes out the events after Avengers: Endgame, but especially in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the less sense the geopolitics of the MCU makes to me. In this essay I will be sharing my perspectives on politics in the MCU. If you’re not interested in that sort of thing, don’t feel obligated to engage. Also, by the very nature of this essay it will involve spoilers for the MCU and discussions of topics like state violence and terrorism, so consider this a trigger warning.

It’s an understatement to say that the world would change radically if half the population would randomly disintegrate, and I understand that speculating on the consequences of those people coming back after five years is no simple task. There might even be story considerations I am unaware of.

But the idea that the world’s governments would immediately start forcibly removing people from the homes they lived in for five years, to accommodate people who were declared dead five years ago sounds really strange to me. Let’s explore this.

If you were the survivor of a disaster that cut the world’s population in half, what would this look like to you? You’ve presumably went through a lot of hardship and trauma in the years following. You’ve sold some of the things belonging to your deceased loved ones, or bought stuff from other people in a similar situation. You may have relocated, started a new family. Grieved.

And suddenly those people you literally saw turn to dust in front of you just appear again, like nothing happened? Literally in the same befuddled state in which they died. 

And I have to stress: they died. there is no way to suggest that a person can be atomized and still be alive.

So why would you even trust that this was the same person? In a very real sense, it’s an identical copy of your deceased loved one. Similar to teleportation, this should cause us to wonder if they were truly resurrected, or merely cloned. What kinds of rights do they have, being legally deceased? Would we even know if these were impostors, if the situation changed them somehow?

I’m not saying there’s no answer to these questions, just that people should disagree on this. People would have high-minded philosophical, scientific and religious debates. Conspiracy theories and fistfights. This is by far the most world-changing event ever recorded. It should have massive ethical, political and spiritual implications.

And what I think we should think about is that these people who returned have nothing. They have no memory or lived experience to prepare them for this different world, all of their material possessions belong to someone else now, and by definition, all political, economic and military power is held by those who stayed, who now have a material conflict of interest, because if they acknowledge that you are the same person and deserving of the things you had 5 years ago, they have to give it back. Even without the administrative nightmare this would represent, the returned have nothing. Even their work experience is practically meaningless, especially in high-paying jobs. 

What would happen if Steve Jobs somehow magically returned, having no idea what Apple had been doing in the last couple of years, and demanded to be put back in charge of Apple? It’s not exactly an easy ‘yes’, is it? The world’s power balance would be forever shifted. 

I’m not saying everybody would be unsympathetic to the plight of the people who unblipped. But I am saying there would be a massive movement or series of movements opposed to giving them back their stuff. And I’m saying that movement would not only be popular but also backed by every powerful business interest and government.

Because realistically, the unblipped would be the refugees. They are the ones who would have lost everything, fighting an uphill legal battle to even be recognized as alive and as the same person they were 5 years ago. They would be the ones in camps, waiting for supplies.

Ironically, they would be the ones most hurt by the status quo returning to normal, as there is no way to keep massive famines and shortages from happening in this situation without international coordination. 

So why did the MCU decide on the opposite idea? There are two arguments I can think of: one narrative, and one political. On a narrative level, speculating on a changed world is complicated and risky. If Marvel wants to make stories relevant to us in our world, they have to more or less get back to a status quo we would recognize before it would complicate their properties going forward.

The second reason, I think, is that to truly explore a world like this is radical and potentially a liability for Disney, both in terms of their audience and their relationship with the US military.

Of course any real discussion on policy in this situation requires the heroes to at least pay lip service to a political opinion, which could cost them a lot of fans. We are talking about the legitimacy of borders, of private ownership. Any examination of the edge cases will cause people to have Strong Opinions of their own. In a crisis like this, can people squat in empty houses? Do these people have human rights and refugee status, and how should those be protected in the real world? Can any state justly displace people and if not, are these people allowed to disobey the government or even fight them?

Since the US military subsidizes Marvel’s use of military hardware, it has script approval. So that can also explain why they can’t make the US government the bad guy or present a truly different world where the US military is rightfully no longer in control. 

Who can legitimately deprive people of things they need to survive in a crisis like this? What’s more important: the right to own a house and keep it empty if we so choose, or the right to live in a house? 

If we get too deeply into it, Karly’s position (in theory) seems very compelling, like Erik Killmonger’s before her. And so, they have to make her (like him) a hypocrite who goes too far, so it doesn’t seem like the MCU is advocating violence against the state. 

Karly’s ideology is muddled by the writers because the violence she performs has no chance of actually achieving her goals of global solidarity. It feels tacked on to make her less sympathetic. Realistically, someone like Karli would be holding political rallies, sit-ins. Writing op-eds, staging marches and organizing her community into self-sufficiency. Possibly getting into fights with the cops during evictions or protests. If you read Falcon and the Winter Soldier as a kind of allegory for American politics, then Walker represents Trump, Sam represents Obama, and Karly represents... whatever conservatives think socialism/BLM is?

So it feels like FatWS is trying to thread the needle: Nationalism is bad, but so is statelessness. A state should have integrity, and benevolence. And it can have those things, if represented by the right people. Then, the violence is just and measured. It’s barely even violence at all.

I’m kidding of course, the kinds of solutions the MCU offers are basically ‘Co-Intelpro, PMC’s and neighbourhood watches... but run by morally perfect people’. It’s the way a propagandist would represent clandestine domestic espoinage or police brutality: Sam and Bucky would never kill anybody defenseless, and they would never interfere with legitimate polical movements. Because the writers create a perfect world where it’s always clear what everybody’s intention is before the fighting starts, and non-lethal violence is a reliable default option, no more morally problematic than some rough-housing by rambunctious kids.

I know I can trust Sam and Bucky because the writers would never give them realistic implicit biases in a way that would endanger their moral character. They are perfect because they are not real.

The robots, aliens and wizards are not the only unrealistic thing about the MCU. we have to be aware of how artificial the politics are, even if we want to suspend our disbelief. Or else we end up trusting politicians when they embrace a fundamentally immoral status quo, and let thousands die to maintain it (I know, a WILD hypothetical that will surely never come true, but worth keeping an eye out for.)  

The politics that a blip would realistically set in motion are so different from our own, that it would call into question the legitimacy of private ownership and the state. In order to avoid upsetting its fans and its financiers, the MCU has to return to a status quo where those political realities can be taken for granted.    

[calliecat93]

ST: TNG S4 Watchthrough Episodes 22-25

Half a Life: Okay Lwaxana, let's see if the fourth time is the charm. So… gonna be honest, this episode just made me uncomfortable with the subject matter. Essentially Lwaxana becomes friendly with a man named Timicin… who is going to commit suicide as part of his culture due to his age. needless to say, I thoroughly am not okay with this. The episode does delve into it like Lwaxana reacts as you would expect and there are points made about how she has no right to interfere in others cultures/personal beliefs and how we treat middle-aged individuals nearing their elder years. But… y’know… a society that dictates that you kill yourself at 60 is… I’m sorry, I just cannot discuss this topic fairly. While I am opinionated, I do try my best to be fair… but I’m just not comfortable enough to discuss this topic in this way because I thoroughly disagree with suicide as acceptable on any level. At least not with how it was done here. That being said, being fair, I can give some praise. First, David Ogden Stiers! Heck yes~! I love his work in various Disney films, and he was excellent here! And on Lwaxana… I liked her here. Not only is her man-chasing ways with a man who is receptive to it so it feels less dumb/annoying/kinda creepy and more charming and legitimately entertaining than when she’s forcing it on Picard, but frankly I was on her side throughout the episode. When suicide is involved, someone should intervene and Timicin shouldn’t have to die just because he’s hit 60 and they don’t want to burden their children with caring for the elderly. My dad died at 54, and I never hesitated in trying to care for him. No one in my family did. But you could see Lwaxana’s pain and grief and when she broke down in the Transporter Room to Troi… God. I may not be the biggest fan of her character, but the poor woman just needs a big hug. In the end, it's really hard for me to tell which side the episode is standing with. it chooses to shoot down the middle with Timicin choosing to go through with it and Lwaxana finally allowing it… but it doens’t feel like we’re supposed to be okay with it. I get it, it’s their planet’s beliefs and whether one should interfere in one's culture or not is a legit question… but when it comes to matters like this I just… IDK. Like I said IDK if I can give this a fair opinion because again, I just don’t agree with the subject matter whatsoever and it just feels utterly wrong. Maybe it’s supposed to, but… yeah. I’m gonna be fair here and shoot down the middle for the rating because I can’t say it’s a poorly done episode and the personal bias may be affecting my judgment… but it is certainly one I am unlikely to revisit. 3/5.

The Host: Crusher’s got a boyfriend, aww~! Too bad that he ends up dead, aww… but it’s okay! Turns out they’re actually a symbiote known as a Trill in a host body and they stick him into Riker in the meantime! Uhh… sure? Is this how it works for Jadzia in DS9? So the symbiote, Odon, is also an Ambassador and still needed, so Riker volunteers to be that host… despite no human ever carrying a Trill before. Needless to say, this not only causes issues for Riker but… well, muddies up Crusher and Odon’s relationship quite a bit. This makes sense, Odon not only mentioning this detail but being a symbiote that goes from body to body can be hard to settle. Crusher does eventually decide to try and make it work despite the awkwardness because she genuinely loves Odon, who is suffering due to Riker’s body just not being suitable. It’s fine, it’s certainly an interesting concept… until we get to the ending. What causes Crusher to break it off with Odon? His new host body suited for them… is a woman’s body. Now she says it’s because she just can’t handle the body hopping and I’m gonna take that as the truth… but the way the episode portrays it, it’s more like she can’t handle the body hopping into a female body despite her saying that’s not it. I know, I know it was the 90’s and again I’m just gonna act like seeing the new body was when the reality was hitting Crusher and she realized that it was just too much too fast. I can buy that. But again, the execution makes it feel… well, there’s no other way to say it, homophobic/biphobic/transphobic. Again 90’s, but still. At least the Trill’s aren’t picky about their gender at least physically, I can respect that. But yeah… needless to say this has quite a few unfortunate implications under a modern lens. Still, it was alright. Considering Jadzia in DS9, I’m looking forward to seeing more about the Trills then. The episode was alright, I just wish that the ending was more open-minded because it really put a damper on my final opinion. It shows that for all its progressiveness, ST still has plenty of prejudices from the real-life eras that they were made in. I’m just glad that we’re at least beginning to improve now. 2/5.

The Mind’s Eye: Geordi has been kidnapped by the Romulans. That sucks… and it gets worst when they conduct a painful mind-control experiment on him. Why? Well, the Enterprise is en route to deal with a Klingon insurrection and have a Klingon ambassador on board. They want Geordi to kill said the ambassador and thus crumble apart from the Federation/Klingon alliance. So yeah, bad. Geordi is a good boy, in romantically hopeless, he didn’t deserve this! Poor guy isn’t even aware of what he’s doing and can’t even sleep properly. It especially got tense there in the end as Data started piecing everything together… just as Geordi is readying to execute the assassination. Thank God that they managed to stop him, but again, poor Geordi. Oh and the fact that there was a Klingon turncoat on board triggering the order… yeah. Looks like Duras wasn’t the only Klingon in ona. Romulan conspiracy. Geordi’s left with implanted memories and the trauma of undergoing a brainwashing that he can’t even remember happening. Another solid episode that continues the threat of the Romulans and this whole RomulanKlingon conspiracy. We’re beuilding up to something, and it’s likely to be explosive. 4/5.

In Theory: A girl named Jenna has a crush on Data, oh my! Data, despite believing that as an android he can’t feel romantic attraction, decides that he’d like to pursue this, even making a romantic program for himself. In other words, it’s The Dauphin 2.0. So first, again with this whole thing about Data being an unfeeling android. Why can’t Data feel romantic attraction? He’s been shown to feel plenty of feelings including some level of affection for Tasa, just because it’s not in the ‘’normal’ way doesn’t make it any less true. Maybe Data is aromantic, but that’s not gonna come up in a 90’s show, which 90’s standards are why this feels so wrong. Data’s curiosity on the subject and deciding to pursue it is fine. He’s new to it and sure studying/emulating what media and books say about romance isn’t always best as the episode does demonstrate. That’s certainly a fine message to express and plenty of people have done/gone through that. There were some fun moments like Data seeking out advice from the others and Worf pretty much threatening Data to treat Jenna, who is part of Security, well or else was also amusing XD But yeah this episode was cute in a few ways, but I just can’t get over that whole ‘Data is emotionless’ thing. The show has shown far more evidence for Data having emotions than lacking them? Maybe Data thinks that he doesn’t, I can believe that, but still. Had they portrayed it simply as Data, being new to love and curious about it, didn’t fully get it/wasn’t ready but was trying to force it anyways and Jenna broke it off because of that instead of using the ‘he was a rebound’ excuse? I’d have been more accepting of that instead of wondering why they even bothered with this plot to begin with. To say that Data can’t feel love and anyone who tries is doomed to failure instead of Data learning to be better over time? Yeah… sorry, not buying it. The Dauphin, despite me not liking how Welsey acted at the end, was standard but still cute. This one though? Sorry, didn’t care for it. But hey, we got Spot again, so that made it worth it! 2/5.

So… aside from the third one, not the best episodes. But hey, everything else this season has still been good. Very least I’ll have plenty to make a Top 5 Best/Worst list for S4 now. Next time is the S4 finale/S5 premiere! Yay~! S4 has been such a fun ride so far! Will the ending end things on a high note and guarantee a strong beginning for S5? We shall see~!

[talistheintrovert]

Deleting my fic

Hi everyone! I just posted an explanation in my Salem Fic about why I will be taking it down in the next few days. If you like, you can go look at it HERE or you can read it under the cut, but I felt the need to explain. 

I'm posting this to let everybody know that I am taking this fic down. I will leave it up for another day or two, and then it is permanently coming down as I have no desire to associate myself with this fic or its origins anymore.

I initially received a single anon comment on this fic when I posted it way back over a year ago:

ANON: Hi if you are going to borrow ideas for fics from other people, even if it’s out there on tumblr, you should at least credit them for the original idea.

and I responded the way I thought I should at the time:

hi, i'm gonna be honest - I forgot where this idea had even come from until you brought it up.

At the time i was planning to do this idea, i considered myself friends, or at least close acquaintances with the person who threw it out there, and offered to write it. Then I became very busy and decided to abandon the idea.

Then, after a bunch of things happened, I stopped talking to that person, and I'm fairly certain they wouldn't even want to see the fic or the credit, despite the idea no longer having anything to do with them.

When I found the idea again, all I had was a word document with a bunch of plot points and ideas written down, and was suddenly struck with the inspiration to write it again.

Because I had honestly forgotten to credit the person involved I will be sure to do that when I update it.

However, i do not appreciate you coming on anon to accuse me like this. I would never intentionally fuck someone else over, not EVER, and I resent the implication that I would. I will, however, be sure to credit Alex, because despite me no longer being friends with her, and the fact that we don't really talk anymore, I respect her enough as a human being not to let her think I'm treating her with disrespect.

Thanks for the anon.

I then reached out to Alex to clarify with her that I had not - nor would I EVER - intentionally steal the idea, and that I was going to clarify that on the fic itself, and she agreed, and we discussed the dissolution of our friendship and then didn't speak again. I went ahead and linked the post with her initial idea in it, which also has our interaction where I offered to write it.  

The circumstances surrounding the whole situation were unfortunate - I perceived her support of a certain fic as potentially harmful, and sent her One Single Anonymous Ask about it. I was relatively polite (although I do understand that anything on Anon can be perceived as impolite) and I asked her specifically because there was a rift growing among halves of the fandom and Alex had always been the person I knew to be the most level-headed and I figured if she could explain why she was right and I was wrong then I would apologise and leave it alone. Unfortunately, as with everything in fandom, it blew up.

I was not the only person who had taken issue with this fic, or the attitude that accompanied it, and MANY people - some that I knew, but most that I didn't - started to also send in asks, and a lot of them were a lot more accusatory, and I'm sure some of them were trolls deliberately designed to rile up the drama even further. Alex has since expressed to me that this all blew up around the time she was having a hard time, and I apologised to her as it was NEVER my intention to launch some kind of attack on her, or anyone. I explained that the reason I went on anon was because at the time, the issue of the fic was so personal to me and I wasn't ready to talk about it with anyone I was friends with online at a limited capacity, because it was part of my life. Just as Alex's own troubles at the time were unbeknownst to me.

I have since opened up about my personal experiences with some internet friends, and in the last two years have grown and learned how to move on with my life, but at that point, the pain was very raw and I didn't want to expose myself to that kind of drama where I would be forced to relive the trauma over and over again.

As it turned out, it didn't matter.

People decided that because I was posting about these issues (without necessarily explicitly bringing up my personal experiences), that not only did I send that one ask to Alex, but that I was responsible for MULTIPLE asks, that I had organised some kind of coordinated attack, that the entire rift was my fault and that I'd done it maliciously. And I spent MONTHS getting vicious, nasty, hateful anons that didn't even all address the issues they supposedly had with me, just told me I was a waste of space, that I didn’t belong, that I shouldn’t exist. I am sure Alex received her own number of those too, and I am truly sorry for that because no-one deserves to go through anything like that.

After Alex and I talked for the last time, I thought we had moved on. I unfollowed her and a number of other creators not because I had anything against them personally but because I realised this was an issue we were never going to agree on, and rather than stoke the flames I chose to step back from them entirely, so that I no longer had to see the content I was uncomfortable with. I respect her as a person, and as a content creator, and regardless of whether I am an avid follower of her anymore, I still support her ability to create and speak freely. I have never blocked her, nor have I ever sent any kind of anon/non-anon hate to her, and I have never, NEVER plagiarised, from her or anyone else.

And yet.

Close friends of mine within the fandom, friends that I don't even consider just fandom friends anymore - friends that I would live, breathe and die for, friends who I love more than anything in the world - have been periodically, over the last six or so months, receiving various anons claiming to be someone who has "had too much to drink" and telling them that I am a bad person, that it's "well known within the fandom" that I'm a plagiarist, and that it is "tiring to see such hypocrisy" when they preach about original content and then remain friends with me.

TO BE CLEAR: I don't think that Alex would do this.

So before anyone gets it twisted, this isn't some kind of EXPOSE where I drag someone's dirty laundry into the open, because I am absolutely not that kind of person, and the one time I waded into fandom drama, it caused this mess, and it ended my friendship with someone who had basically been the cause of me getting into this fandom in the first place. So no, I am not accusing Alex, or any of her friends, of sending these anons.

I understand if they dislike me because of what transpired over a year ago, and I have my own regrets about the entire situation, and I have no desire to bring it all back up again. I'm not doing this to get anyone to go after them or anyone else, because I don't think it's anyone's fault except the anon people in my friends' askboxes. My friends have never publicly addressed the asks, except for a single post this afternoon where Abby told the person to stop, and didn't even answer the ask or explicitly talk about what was said in it.

I don't mind if you hate me. Whether you dislike me on your own time or you do it in my askbox; I've gotten pretty used to anon hate, and I genuinely don't mind people throwing some my way - this is the internet. But when you're going out of your way to harass my friends, I cannot just ignore it.

That's my family you're talking to.

Whoever this anon person/anon people are, you are deliberately taking your personal opinion of me, and you are walking up to my family and telling them that I am not worth their time. You are telling them that I am a plagiarist, despite the SINGLE instance of "plagiarism" (this fic) being an honest mistake, and one that I immediately reconciled once I realised. This fic that I haven't updated since, because I wasn't sure when it would be acceptable for me to do so without upsetting Alex further, and have now decided to delete. I considered deleting it quietly, without explanation, as I did another one of my fics earlier this year (simply because it was a WIP that I was never planning on finishing) but I realised that deleting this fic without an explanation could potentially give this anon person/people more fuel to come after me with, and I really just want this whole drama to be over. It's been a year, and I have no desire to start the debate again, nor do I wish any ill will towards anyone, especially Alex, and I do not want to cause undue drama later down the line when this anon person/people returns to my friends askboxes to accuse them of helping me "hide the truth" or some other bullshit that has nothing to do with them or anyone else.

I'm putting this out in the open to make myself very clear: I am not a plagiarist. And if you have any assumptions that you feel the need to jump on anon to yell, it should be coming to me, not to my family.

This fandom was the first real fandom experience I had on tumblr. I have been involved in fandom culture for years, but always from afar, and it was because of Alex's fics that I found my way into this place, that I met the people I now call my family, and that I rediscovered my own confidence in my writing, confidence that had been lacking for some time due to my personal life. I will always be grateful to her for that.

My writing is my writing. It is deeply personal to me, as it is to every writer, and as someone who plans to have a career in writing, it is incredibly important to me that my work is my own. I would never intentionally steal (or as that anon commenter put "borrow") anything from anybody, and the implication that I would is truly hurtful, especially when it seems to come from a place of exclusively hate, with no actual understanding of the situation. A troll.

I would like to repeat myself: I DO NOT THINK THIS IS ALEX'S PROBLEM and anyone who jumps in her asks to talk about it is not really doing it for the "truth" or for anything other than their own desire to stir up drama. I will be sending the link to this chapter to her myself, because I do not wish for this to be something she stumbles across and assumes I am trying to pin the blame on her for something I categorically do not think she would ever do.

I just want to move on, and I want my friends to be left out of whatever vendetta this anon person/people have.

I am certain I will make more mistakes as I go forward, because that is the nature of growth, but I would like to believe that I have never done anything, especially any of this, as a desire to be malicious or to hurt anyone, even those people who I fundamentally disagree with and do not interact with anymore. I'm not remotely begging for sympathy in this situation - I don't need it, I am confident enough in myself to know that I would not intentionally hurt anyone - I am simply asking for my friends, my family, to be left out of whatever this bullshit is.

I'm sorry if you were expecting a chapter, and I'm sorry this was so long, but I wanted to be clear about where I stand right now.

The 100 is coming to an end soon, and soon all we will have of this show and this fandom is memories, tumblr content, and friendships, and I do not want to spend any more of the limited time we have while this show is still on the air, spreading negativity or letting it be spread. This isn't to start drama, this is to end it.

[starbuck09256]

Can you write something about Mulder and Scully that includes some lyrics from "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel for Season 6 or 7? Or even use the lyrics to create a storyline? . Thanks so much. Love, *Lyrics Anon

Fictober day 6

tagging @today-in-fic @suitablyaggrieved

“I get so tired of working so hard for our survival”

Season 7 pre-requiem

He’s been more pensive then usually these last few days. Chewing on his lip, staring blankly above his coffee in the morning. I wonder what goes on in that beautiful mind of his. Wonder what he is worried about, I know he worries, probably a bit more than he should about things. Normally I would let him solve it on his own, give him time to analyze the facts, make the leaps and connections he always seems to find. His worry scares me this time though, we’ve been through so much, now when we wake up with one another I worry that he regrets it, regrets the change we made in our relationship. He’s so quiet this morning, when we first made love it was with such haste with the passion of two souls denying themselves the purest thing they could think of the days that followed were actually practically perfect. We both slept better, when we did sleep that was. Our caseload has been light recently, since we got that one month suspension over the cardinal o'fallon thing, we were still catching up on closing out all the extra paperwork. Mulder would normally do most of it. He has always been in charge of the hotel rooms, rental cars, the papertrail, not because I’m not capable. But because he has and still does maintain that the files are his in a way. He found them started them, got the approvals, got them reopened over and over. He also sees it as a way of protecting me, while it used to piss me off, his explanation was surprisingly well thought out. “If I do all the paperwork, if there is ever any blowback, any i or t or something like that you will have completely ambiguity. They will have no way to cost you your job. You can maintain that you are still just writing the reports as originally directed.” So after 7 years, he is still the first one in the office in the morning. He works weekends, files reports and makes sure we stay as clean as possible when using Bureau funds.  Now he has a harder time explaining 2 rooms when one is only used. He has been filling out one form it seems over and over, and yet hasn’t asked me to sign off on it. I can’t imagine his lingering looks are about something so contrite as paperwork. It makes me think he is starting to regret the change in our relationship, that he

regrets getting involved with a woman who could never carry his children. I can’t help but feel the pain of the IVF failure as I leaned against my kitchen counter looking at him. A small tear escapes my lid and I try to turn to look out the window. Inside I’m damning myself for the weakness, he’s been so very good to me, always. I know now he will never ever leave me, he will never find a wonderful wife to give him children, to move to that small town in the middle of nowhere that he wants. He won’t get look into his son’s eyes, briad his daughters hair. I was so stupid to ask him to be the father, but I couldn’t bear it if I had any other children then his, and now instead of the world getting at least part of us living on, we will die without an hier. At least my family as Bill and Charlie their great kids. But Mulder has no one, his hope for Samantha now at peace and I feel so much worse for letting hours of pleasure restrict him from the future he so desperately deserves. I have no idea how to end this though, I have no idea how to live without him. He won’t stop my Mulder, he’s already gone to the ends of the earth for me. And that was before the earth shattering sex we have. Suddenly as if he can sense my sorrow his arms are around me. Pulling my body which is wrapped only in his dress shirt and blue panties against his solid bare front. He kisses my temple. 

“Whatever you are thinking, is wrong.” he mutters into my ear, before trailing kisses down my neck and finally resting his chin against my collarbone. 

“That’s pretty presumptuous, even for you,” I mutter letting my nails drum on the sink for a second to collect my thoughts, go through a way to rationalize how we have to end this, for everyone.

 “I know the last few days I’ve been out of it,” his nose runs against my hair as he gives me more soft kisses. 

“It’s not what you think it is, I promise Scully,” 

“It’s not?” I whisper even I hear the catch in my throat as I turn in his arms. I trace my fingers over his face, let him kiss my palm, wrap his fingers around mine. 

“I need you to sign a very formal form, and you are not going to like it.” 

He releases me moving to his briefcase by the door. 

“What form?” I ask as I trail after him my bare feet cold against the wood flooring. He sighs heavily rubbing his hand across his face and scrunching his nose. 

“You know sometimes, I get so tired of working so hard for our survival.” As he pulls at the form. I can’t help but grin. 

“Isn’t that a line in “In Your Eyes” ?'' he can’t help but chuckle.

 “I believe it is, Scully.” he laughs a little. 

He hands out a very long detailed form, his penmanship is practically perfect. 

“Before you sign this, I know what I’m asking here, I know it goes against everything you’ve probably ever wanted for this, for us, please know Scully if there was a choice, if I could keep things like they are without filling this out I would. But we have an audit hearing in 2 weeks, and it is going to be more than messy, if we have this filled out and filed, we could possibly get through unskaved.” His seriousness is disconcerning as I reach out for the form. 

It’s an HR form one proclaiming notification of a change in relationship status between partners. I look at him shocked as he looks at his feet. I can’t help but release a slow and steady breath as I sit down at my kitchen table to read through it. He hands me my glasses off the side table sits down next to me his hands linked resting under his chin. Listed  are dates, detailed and organized chronologically it requests that we stay partners of course. This is very very serious. I remember when Jack and I dated, how this form was presented and how we had a very long argument about it. Why would I fill out something unless I was positive it would lead to something more, people who casually date each other, that were just fucking do not fill these out. Mulder has filled out dates on this, filled out perhaps far too much and been almost too thorough. I shallow hard, I know of only three other pairs of agents who got together who filled these out. Two of those partners were split up immediately, the last one that was granted, the one that made it, ended in a messy divorce 3 years later shattering 2 adults and their 2 babies. 

“You want to give them the exact thing to split us up? Mulder this might be the craziest thing you have ever done!” I’m yelling I know I am. 

I’m not going to sign this, even if I know in my heart Mulder deserves to find someone who can give him everything he deserves and this form will certainly help push that plan forward, I can’t. I can’t give up the one person in the entire world who has truly loved me for me. The only person who cherishes every part of me, the man who makes me believe in the impossible like miracles, and soulmates. 

“Scully, Scully listen we fill this out, we file it away upstairs it just has to be in the file. No one has to see it. It has to be there, so if…. If hell when they find out that we only use one room. That we only live at one address we don’t both get fired for obstruction to conceal our relationship. We can start just paying for one hotel room, reduce our costs significantly. This would improve our overall budget by 35% Scully, we would be one of the cheapest departments in the Bureau, our solve rate with these dates and the form already being on file prove that we haven’t let our emotions compromise our ability on the job.”

He has my hands in his stroking his thumb across my wrist over and over. 

“They will split us up,” I can barely get out the words before tears sting my eyes and I try to rip my hands away from his.

 “Is that what you want Mulder? Is this, is it too much, being more?” 

I’ve been so stupid my feelings for him have already clouded my judgement on more than one occasion and now here I sit practically devasated. Maybe this was the plan, having me fill out this form so he can see what I want out of the relationship. Use this form to push us into a next step he knows we aren’t ready for this form as stupid as it is basically states that we plan to marry that’s how serious the relationship would be before any agent would ever sign it. I pull my hand away rub my face walk over to the kitchen sink again, hang my head in shame. Shame for having thought I could for a second walk away from him, shame for letting feelings get so deep that our jobs would break us up before we even had time to have an actual first fight. Well here it is, our first and last fight staring us in the face with glossy bold letters including dates of sexual intercourse. 

“Scully, I.. I love you, you know that, this isn’t… we… aren’t, I don’t want something as stupid as a form,” 

“If it was so stupid you wouldn’t be demanding I sign it.” I know my tone is icy. 

I know that my anger isn’t just from a form, it’s from how this looks on a female agent. A male agent can fill these things out all day the implications mean nothing, but for a woman this is basically saying you just sleep around. 

“Fine, let them shut us down, over your inability to admit what this really is.” His words harsh. He grabs his coffee cup rinses it out in the sink. Grabs the form shoves it back into his bag. My anger isn’t abating and he knows now the discussion if there ever was one is over. He grabs his leather jacket and all I hear next is the door shutting. I’m still in his shirt the soft blue still smells like his cologne from yesterday. I’ll have to have it launder and given back to him, while I pick up the pieces of my heart. 

#mulder and scully #txf fic #myfic #s7 #angst #lots and lots of angst #I wrote this in like 30 minutes #with no beta #on my phone #sorry for typos 

[lnicol1990]

The Dark Domain - Session 3

After last session, this one was bound to be easier to DM, right? Still got thrown for a loop when they decided to start a fight somewhere I didn’t have a map for.

*sigh*

Well, on with the session!

Again picking up where the last left off, Irah finishes healing the last person affected by Delirium’s oil fire, alongside Father Saepin. All of his healing miracles have been tapped, with only one singular point of healing left. Exhausted, the two aasimar make their way back to the church to get some well needed and well deserved rest. On the way, Irah notices that the guards on the watchtowers have doubled.

Saepin thanks Irah for his help in treating the townsfolk and wish him a good night before retiring to his own quarters. Irah returns the sentiment and goes to the guest rooms, where his teammates are waiting for him.

It is unanimously agreed that any chance of conquering Quain without bloodshed is gone, and the team discuss tactics. First order of business is to break Delirium out from the catacombs (Irah and Kaieth not knowing that the man in question is hiding under one of the beds). It is then agreed that Father Saepin should then be the next target, as he is likely to be their biggest obstacle to taking the town by force. The firbolg druid, Keen, is briefly discussed, but Rolfor assures them that as long as the forest is not endangered in any way, it is highly unlikely that Keen will come to the town’s aid.

Delirium shows himself at this point, to the surprise of Irah and Kaieth. Seeing that the man is free, and his guards are likely dead, Kaieth offers the plan to lure Saepin to the catacombs and take him out their while he thinks he is in relatively safe company. The elf instructs Delirium and Rolfor to go down to the catatcombs and make some noise to draw the priest’s attention, with Irah and himself following afterwards to block any chance of escape.

The two humans get down to the catacombs, where Rolfor blanks on what he is meant to do. He makes a spur of the moment decision to strip a guard and take their armour and disguise himself. Delirium decides to go back and ask what the plan was, where he is distracted by seeing a lute resting against one of the church’s pews.

Kaieth and Irah are getting suspicious over the lack of noise when Kaieth sees Delirium walk past them and into the main hall. At which point, the stoic elf mutters in frustration.

“I... am going to kill him.”

Delirium picks up the lute and begins to play. He has no idea how to play the lute, but the awkward sound echoes loudly in hall and can be heard down in the catacombs, where Rolfor remembers his part in the plan and rushes upstairs, yelling that the prisoner has escaped.

All the noise has roused Saepin, who enters the church hall to investigate. Delirium, seeing their target, drops the lute and fires an arrow at the priest; just in time for Kaieth, Irah, and Rolfor to see. Kaieth is despairing that this is not the plan and that this is the worst place to launch their attack.

All the while, Delirium is reciting: “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.“

Delirium’s arrow lands in Saepin’s shoulder, and the priest lets out a cry of pain. Rolfor takes the opportunity to rush across the hall and stabs the man in the gut with his rapier. The blade goes through and leaves a deep gash in Saepin’s side, but doesn’t seem to hit anything vital.

Under assault, Saepin calls upon the divine light within himself and shrouds himself in radiant light, appearing as a pair of ethereal wings. The man rushes for the main door, taking another, lighter slash from Rolfor before escaping into the night.

Delirium makes to chase the man, but Irah expends his last spell to command him to stop and asks Kaieth to tie their teammate up. Kaieth, now silently furious at this point for having yet another plan disrupted by the man, does so without hesitation, tying the man up tightly. Irah walks over and knocks Delirium out, apologising beforehand. He then tells Kaieth that they can pretend that the attack was Delirium’s idea, that he’d sowed dissent into one of the guards, and they’d been too stunned to stop him. The pair of them yell to Rolfor to ditch the guard uniform to avoid being implicate as they lean the unconscious Delirium against a pew.

Two guards run in demanding to know what happened, and the team give them their story. The guards believe them and mention that Father Saepin is gone. The team are shocked at this and ask what happened, where they are told that Saepin’s ethereal wings took flight and the aasimar disappeared over the water, heading towards the mainland. Irah is annoyed at this; having been a Scourge previously, he was unaware of the other aasimar powers that the gods could give and miffed that he’d never had the ability to fly.

The guards ask for the team’s aid in moving Delirium back to the catacombs, and they oblige, dragging Delirium towards the staircase downwards before stabbing the guards in the back.

They wake Delirium roughly, and set about continuing their original plan. As Saepin is out of the way, the town is now unprotected, but they now have to conquer it and get their people in place before the priest returns with reinforcements of his own.

As they approach the main doors, more guards with mage support enter. A second fight breaks out in the church, with the mage setting a pew alight when their attack on Delirium missed. Kaieth takes a few solid hits before the guards are defeated, being the only team member to get hurt.

They consider letting the guards come into the church in small groups they can handle, but the idea is squashed when the fire grows and they are forced outside.

Realising that they are now in a very bad situation, Kaieth tells the group to head to the water, so that they can’t be flanked at the very least. Rolfor breaks off to stir up trouble in the town ranks, while everyone else follows Kaieth.

At the docks, they come across a group of townsfolk, led by a young man. The youth approaches the group and asks if the guard have turned on them. Irah and Kaieth share a confused look before saying yes. The youth introduces himself as Nestor, the last mayoral candidate. He had witnessed everything the team had done and come to the conclusion that Quain should side with the Domain, claiming that they were the only people ‘to give a damn’. He and his group of Domain supporters offer to help the team with the upcoming battle.

Irah and Kaieth thank Nestor and the townsfolk for their support, but quietly recognise that none of them are fighters and will likely die in any skirmish they’re involved in. Kaieth instructs the little group to hold position by the docks while they deal with the guards, while Irah tells Delirium to get the druid, that maybe the firbolg will help them if they promise to protect the man’s forest. Delirium gives a sceptical look, considering his previous interaction with the druid, but does as bid and sneaks away to avoid attention.

Irah and Kaieth step forward, hoping to parley and give Delirium time to find Keen. They see Seoran, the Empire-leaning candidate, leading the mob.

The pair do everything in their power to placate Seoran and correct any lies he’s spreading. Kaieth notices that some of the townsfolk in tow are listening, with one quickly slipping away. At that point, Matrim joins the parley. He does his best to persuade Seoran to back down, stating that this is not how Quain works, or how the people behave. Seeing another of their own siding with the party convinces more people to not be involved in the mob. There are more assurances from Kaieth and Irah that the Domain means the people no harm, and are only looking to ease its suffering, overpopulated people by asking for help.

Between the three of them, all townsfolk back off, leaving Seoran with only a contingency of guards.

Meanwhile, Delirium makes it to the forest, and lights a torch. He calls out to Keen, knowing that he’s there somewhere, and threatens a clump of flowers to get the druid’s attention. What he gets is a lone guard, who had been patrolling the woods all day. The guard attacks Delirium and gets a dagger in the upper leg, leaving him prone and bleeding out. Keen appears, at this point fed up with being disturbed, and demands to know what the troublemaker wants. Delirium makes his case, but Keen declines to help, saying that issues between the Empire and the Domain are none of his business and that by druidic law, he couldn’t get involved even if he wanted to.

Back in the village, the party can see that the guards are no longer comfortable with this course of action, but are honour bound to remain by Seoran’s side. So long as someone opposes the party’s presence, they have to be there.

Matrim stands in front of Seoran, between him and the party, and begs him to stop this madness. In response, Seoran draws his rapier and stabs at Matrim. Kaieth, with incredibly honed reflexes, grabs the candidate and switches places with him, taking the hit himself. Thankfully, the hit is ineffective, and Kaieth knocks the man out in response. With the problem out of the way, Kaieth and Irah turn to Matrim, who is looking strangely worse for wear.

A quick examination reveals that Matrim never sought medical aid after the fire and is suffering from fairly bad smoke inhalation. Irah uses his last point of healing to ease the man’s breathing, but is too tired to heal him properly.

Now that Seoran has attacked (or attempted to attack) a fellow towns member, the guards no longer have to stand with him. However, some of them voice concern over not knowing if they should still force the party out. One guard is contacted by a mage on the tower and is told to break off any further confrontation and that Seoran’s arrest take priority.

As the guards disband and return to their posts, Delirium comes out of the forest, meeting up with Rolfor, who had seen the large mob and decided that it was probably wise not to get involved with that. Delirium mentions druidic law on noninterference, and Rolfor nods, saying that staying out of it was probably best then, considering that he has been posing as a druid to the people.

Keen appears out of the woods behind Delirium, carrying the injured guard. He gives the man over for further care and asks not to be disturbed again because, unlike Quain, he actually wants some damn sleep tonight. He mentions to Rolfor that the church fire is not oil based, so the spell he taught will work this time, and returns to the woods. Rolfor creates a large raincloud and puts that now burning church out.

The team meet up again and discuss what to do. Irah produces the scroll, mentioning that he should probably summon the ferryman back now, and that hopefully he’ll arrive before Saepin does with reinforcements. When asked what the signal is, he pauses though, having not asked beforehand. With help from Rolfor and a little input from Kaieth, they realise that it is a simple light signal.

Irah asks Nestor, as the youth is the only candidate still standing at this point, if it is okay that they send the signal off. Nestor turns to Matrim, who is breathing heavily and leaned against a crate, and gets a nod from the older man. Nestor in turn gives Irah permission to read the signal scroll.

Irah decides to return to the beach where they landed to cast the spell and leaves to do so. When he casts the spell on the beach, a green light launches into the sky and explodes like a firework. It stays there for a good five minutes before finally fading.

Meanwhile, Delirium goes to the mayor’s house and asks to talk to Seoran. Kaieth, not trusting the man, escorts him. When they speak with the disgraced candidate, Delirium reveals quietly (out of Kaieth’s impressive earshot) to him that he is indeed not with the Domain and is intending to overthrow it. He asks Seoran if he knows people in the Empire who would want to help him. Seoran doesn’t believe him and refuses to speak. Delirium shrugs and the pair leave the building.

With the signal sent, Irah returns and they discuss what to do now while they wait. Kaieth volunteers to wait at the beach for the boat. As he needs only enter a trance for four hours, he argues that it makes the most sense for him to be there. A member of Quain shyly offers to give them a roof over their heads, but is scared away by Delirium.

In the end, Irah, Rolfor and Delirium camp by the docks and wait for the boat, and pray that Saepin doesn’t arrive sooner. While Irah is setting up the tent, Delirium speaks with Nestor, telling him the same thing he told Seoran and asking if Nestor wanting to join him. Nestor doesn’t answer, and Delirium doesn’t push, leaving the youth to decide on his own. He makes the same offer to many townsfolk over the next half hour before everyone turns in for the night.

Morning comes and so does the boat. Not the ferry the party had come in on, but another filled with Domain troops. Kaieth welcomes the cleric who is clearly leading the troops and she greets him warmly. As Kaieth escorts them to Quain, the cleric explains that they had been waiting out to sea for the signal, and this was always the plan; either they would come to take order once the party were successful, or would wipe the town out if they were not.

Entering Quain, Irah welcomes the troops also and the cleric greets him by name, though he cannot remember her. He also has a bit of bad news: Delirium is gone. A boat is also missing, so they believe he snuck out in the early hours of the morning before everyone else woke up. The cleric is not worried, saying that Quain is her focus and that she should meet with the mayoral candidates, or at least the ones still eligible. 

She heals Matrim properly and they depart to replace the guard with as little fuss as possible.

Kaieth draws Irah away for a moment and asks if Delirium really ran off or if that was the cover story for ‘I killed him’. If the latter, Kaieth would not betray him. Irah dashes the elf’s hopes, however, and tells him that Delirium really has run off.

The trio spend the rest of the morning packing up, when the cleric instructs them to come over to the main square. She has constructed a teleportation circle and says it will take them back to the Domain, and specifically the castle. She tells them all to stand in the circle and she will send them back as the Lord Chamberlain wishes to debrief them and set them their next mission.

As the teleportation spell begins, Rolfor tries to grab the cleric, not quite trusting where they’re being sent, but the woman dodges his grasp. The last thing he sees is a very angry look on her face before it is replaced with the castle’s entrance hall.

They all swiftly make their way upstairs to the chapel, and are greeted by the Chamberlain, who congratulates them on a job well done. He directs them to a map of the world and tells them the next stage of the Domain’s plan:

The party is to gain a foothold on the western coast of the continent, Pentalis. There are four cities of importance: Cassiva, a heavily fortified city to the south-west; Gorvick, a well off fishing city; Sanvale, a wealthy port town that focused on trade; and Junn, a small fishing village that held great strategic value in the north-west. They are tasked with taking the three smaller cities for the Domain, allowing places for soldiers to make landfall. Once all three cities were taken, the collected army would assault Cassiva.

The Chamberlain tells them that they are to head to Gorvick first, where a scout has enlisted the aid of a guide for the party. He then calls the debriefing to an end, saying that they have earned some rest and to take a few days before continuing their work.

And so, the session ends.

[jaaswolfen]

Format Ch4

Hello hello! Wolfn here with anew update. It was so long, But I hope you enjoy it!

As always, thanks to @yuukazuto for inspiring this piece of work, and everyone else who work in fanart, fanfic, and the such to keep this ship alive.

Read it in AO3

The following days were torture for the Korean, in more ways than one. The mission had gone public, for the better or the worse. And while MEKA was aware of D.va’s involvement with the newly (re)founded Overwatch, it did not mean they approved of unauthorized tempering with their technology. That blow was taken by D.va herself, claiming that she did the tempering herself, and that was purposely done as to leave no evidence whatsoever of her involvement. Which worked. Kind of. She had gotten an earful of her team and friends, but ultimately knew just how much of a wild card she was sometimes and resigned themselves to saying it was “just D.va being D.va”. Nothing was mentioned to them about her relationship with the hacker. And while it broke her heart to lie to her team again, she knew it was for the best.

Secondly, she had to answer to Overwatch herself. Of course, the fact the two of the more prominently figures in the institution, that being Angela and Winston, were aware to some extent of her shenanigans played in her favor. But there were others, particularly on the more traditional side of Overwatch that were at cross with her actions. Torbjorn was not a happy man. Well, he was never happy, but even less happy with what had happened. Claiming that Hana was indeed not ready for a place in the organization, and that she should face the consequences of her actions. Once the emotional high left him, Commander Morrison also took a more professional approach to the incident as well. “Professional” meaning he was deciding whenever she should kick D.va out and execute Sombra, or, execute them both altogether. Thankfully, the older Amari was quick to shoot that idea down, on the grounds that they both were guilty of using similar tactics as mercenaries. And who knows, maybe one of them had used the hacker’s services themselves.

Worse of all, Hana had been prohibited to enter Sombra’s resting room. This sent the pilot into a frenzy almost immediately, but was subsided just as quickly as it appeared when it wasn’t Morrison, but Angela who alleged that it was ill advised to have her absorb so much shocking information at once.

The truth of the matter was that they had to make a choice. Not an easy one at that, but a choice. What had happened to D.va was absurdly tragic, but she nonetheless betrayed the trust of plenty of her teammates. And even though Sombra had saved one of their own, was one right enough to forget of her previous wrongdoings?

Winston knew that something like this could spell tragedy, so in an effort to clear any lingering questions, he summoned a post-mission meeting to all and everyone who wished to attend. Unsurprisingly, pretty much everyone confirmed as soon as they could. And before he realized, what was intended as a meeting became a trial.

Factions were quickly formed in the base. The younger generation, led by Lucio, firmly believed that both D.va and Sombra had already redeemed themselves by virtue of their actions. And that there was no way in hell that them “Heroes” would leave to die someone who had saved one of their own. They also believed that Sombra could prove herself even further once she was fully healed, and some even dared to say she could one day form part of the team.

The complete opposite, leaded in part by Torbjorn and Morrison believed firmly that while Hana had been a valuable assent, proven to be too much of a risk to continue serving under the name of Overwatch. And instead should return to the MEKA force back in Busan, if they would have her. And Sombra, while a helping hand this one time, was still a criminal and a terrorist. And should be prosecuted and punished as such. Which would mean life in prison, or even worse.

Surprisingly, a third party was formed as well. This led by the Older Amari. She, alongside others like Mc Cree and Genji, claimed that things were not as black-and-white as everyone claimed, and that both deserved a chance to prove their case. But doing so safely and with the necessary precautions taken. They would never question D.va’s loyalty to the cause, but love made us do stupid, stupid things. And this they knew maybe better than anyone.

Hana, now fully healed up, stood anxiously with her arms crossed over her chest. Her determination irradiating from her slim body. It was just a couple of days since the incident, but she already looked ready to pick a fight with whoever dared to look her way. On the opposite side of the room, stood Zarya. The Russian was imposing as always, but ever since the arrival of their unfortunate guest, her mood seemed fouler than usual. Alongside her also stood the swede, if only opaqued by the fury of the one besides him. Little by little, the room began filling up. And indeed everyone had confirmed assistance except the usual. That being Orisa who returned to Numbani, Brigette who was yet to join Overwatch in their base, and Bastion who…

Well, his opinion as a team member was valued, but the language barrier imposed quite the predicament.

They all stood in silence as the last member entered the room. Tensions high as all factions huddled together, wordlessly announcing their thoughts on the matter. Once McCree graced everyone with his presence, Winston’s baritone voice called everyone’s attention.

“Everyone, thank you all for coming in such a short notice.” He called. “I’m sure you all have your own personal duties to attend to, but today’s matter is something that needs to be discussed.” He stopped. Quickly glancing around the room, pretty much everyone knew exactly what today’s meeting was about. Even those who didn’t hear the complete story did not miss their enemy just chilling in their infirmary.

“Today there are two subjects that are to be discussed. First: the consequences for Agent Hana Song, A.K.A. D.Va for her actions leading to the mission in Monaco, and whenever she is fit to continue as a member of Overwatch.” He started. Everyone casted their sights towards Hana, yet she stood firmly. A twinge of guilt crossed her chest, but was completely drowned for what came next.

“And Second: The course of action regarding the ex-Talon agent Olivia Colomar, formerly known as Sombra, based on her actions leading to the same mission previously mentioned. Since both incidents go hand in hand, I ask of all of us present to speak in an orderly fashion, and address the matters in that same order.”

Immediately, Lucio raised his hand, and it wasn’t Winston, but Athena who acknowledged him.

“Yes, agent Dos Santos?” She asked.

“Ok. So the deal with Sombra I can get. But you all still are giving Hana a hard time? She already came clean with you guys!” He claimed. Hana was about to stop him, before Torbjorn answered from the other side.

“So what? It doesn’t change the fact that she lied to us all. She is not a child anymore, and she needs to pay her dues, whatever Commander Winston and us decide!” He claimed. This turned several heads towards him, and some others couldn’t help but nod in agreement. To this, it was Angela who intervened.

“It was not her responsibility alone. She felt confused, scared and alone. If anything, it shows that we were not trustworthy of her, and not the other way around. What about us others that were aware of their relationship and kept it to ourselves? What about Winston? Or Athena? Or me?” She called.

“Bah! If everyone here had a tenth of Winston’s intelligence the world would be a better place! And Athena is a robot. And robots follow orders. It’s just a matter of making sure it can’t pull a stunt like that again!” He claimed again. 

“I am an Artificial Intelligence Module created by Dr. Winston. I can assure you Agent Lindholm, I am far more than a mere ‘Robot’.” The voice came from the ceiling. He didn’t grace her with an answer.

“And me? Don’t you trust my judgement? My medical opinion?” Asked Angela.

“You, child?” He stopped. His eyes wondered unconsciously to Ana. To the patch that decorated her eye, and the reason behind it. “You have been wrong before.” He said nonchalantly, adverting his eyes. Angela’s widened, and her pale skin took to a fiery red. It was a rare sight to catch the good doctor angry, and Torbjorn’s words made her livid. While not all knew of the implications of what Torbjorn had just said, those who did could not help flinch a bit at the hidden meaning. Before Angela could lash out, Jesse took the opportunity.

“That was a low blow Torb, even for someone as “low” as yourself.” He chuckled. Jesse still did not understand the concept of “Time and Place” for jokes. At the silence of his audience, he continued. “Fine then. What about everything else hmm? All of the missions, all of the missed opportunities?” He walked around the room and came face to face with Hana. “You know exactly just how much damage her mech could do, yet she has never dared to even point the damn thing at us. She had literally a bomb capable of tearing down buildings for months stationed right here and yet she never used it.” He lit a cigar, and rested his arm around the Koreans shoulder. “My opinion? Lassie is as trustworthy as any of us. She had her partner, like any of us. She screwed up, like any of us. And yet she always puts the team above everything.” Not like any of us. He wanted to add. But he was trying to defuse the situation, not blow it up. To this, Hana smiled. She didn’t like the situation. She didn’t like that the team was split like this, but she was grateful that Jesse and the others had her back.

To this, Winston once again took the lead. “Ahem. Yes, I do believe that if she wanted to harm us she had had plenty opportunities to do so. But I wish to remind you all that we are to discuss D.Va, the past mission, and Sombra. And Not past incidents regarding the team. Is that clear?” He said as he turned towards Torbjorn. This one only grumbled, but ceded the point. Angela seemed less angry as well, but you could see the mixture of anger and guilt on her face. Others, like Zenyatta and Ana took the stand, but ultimately it was Wintston’s call. He was their commander, and treated his words and experience like such. Both the old Overwatch and the new one. Everyone had a fair point, and he needed a swift resolution.

“Regarding what Angela said, it is true that others, including myself, were aware of the situation. I personally took the proper actions in order to keep Overwatch activities confidential and everyone’s safety to the best of my extent. D.va has been a member of our team for quite some time, and I dare say she has added nothing but good things since her arrival. Therefore, I also believe that D.Va’s loyalty is something we cannot question. Anyone objections?” A low rumble of mumbles went around the room, but no one dared to speak up. Ana and Soldier, the only ones that would be able to speak up to Winston kept silent. Torbjorn let his frustration show, but refused to continue the train of thought, and Zarya simply checked her nails and readjusted her gloves, completely uninterested in the Korean.

“Right. Well then, we will take this matter settled then. However,” he turned to Hana, “The fact that you did lie and use Overwatch resources for other activities is undeniable, and there will be a disciplinary action to be decided. Is that clear?” That improved Torbjorn’s mood significantly. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the Korean, but he had been used and lied to for far too long. Internally, Hana wanted to argue, just for the heck of it. But there were more important matters to settle, so she managed a professional “Yes Sir” and that was the end of that.

Winston took a deep breath, and prepared to address the elephant in the room. “With that settled, it is time to address the second theme of our meeting today. Athena, if you please.” He asked. As per his request, a hologram appeared in the middle of the room. On it, the complete file of one named “Olivia Colomar” with the pseudonym “Sombra” written right above it. On it, a flash of pictures, documents, and clips from several encounters with the hacker on the battlefield appeared. Glitched images and blurry security footage accented just how difficult was to record anything regarding the person in question. And some could even go as far as to argue that the person on the images was a different one each time. Except for the obnoxious tone of purple that served as a dead giveaway. Afterwards, a brief image of the scene in Monaco appeared. As well as a rather graphic image of the aftermath.

“Around 21:00 Hours Monaco time, intel of what it seemed to be a Chemical weapon arriving in Monaco was leaked to us by an anonymous source. Because of the small timeframe, an impromptu team consisting on Agents Soldier 76, Mc Cree, Pharah, Mercy, and D.va were dispatched in order to destroy the cargo and eliminate the Talon forces surrounding it. This would be an oversight of our part, since the so called “leak” was, in reality, a trap set by Talon.” The images turned to a video recording of a nearby security camera depicting the harbor. “During the operation, the modifications made to the self-destruct mechanism in D.Va’s mech malfunctioned after a surprise assault by Akande Ogundimu, better known as Doomfist. This trapped our agent inside the still self-destructing mech, and with the surprise elements of Talon Agents Widowmaker and Reaper, they attempted to use the mech’s power against us.” Once again, the hologram in the middle of the room turned, now to depict a text message, written in a particular shade of purple. The text read as follows:

Mono,

Don’t let them go, It’s a trap.

I’m on my way, pull them back.

S

Murmurs appeared once again in the room, but Winston’s voice silenced them in a polite fashion.

“As you can all see, this is an encrypted message sent by Sombra around 25 minutes after the leak was sent, and 20 minutes after the team parted towards Monaco. Thanks to this, Agent Reinhardt and I were able to arrive as backup for rest of the team, but because of the situation we were not able to reach agent Song in time before the explosion occurred. Luckily for all of us, Sombra did. And she managed to take Agent Song to safety moments before the explosion.” And with this, he changed the image to an aerial shot of the Harbor, now a crater filled with scrap metal and water. After allowing everyone a moment to observe the scene, he then took a deep breath, and change it again to a photograph of Sombra after the explosion. D.Va just closed her eyes and looked away, but the image was forever burnt in her memory. Loud gasps could be heard in the room, and even Zarya had to swallow hard at the scene.

“This. Is the moment after the blast. In saving D.Va, Sombra took the blast full force, and only survived thanks to Doctor Ziegler’s prompt aid, and a genuine miracle.” He took a moment to thank the heavens for that, and to let everyone take that image in. “But by all means she should have died that day. And was prepared to give her life forfeit in order to save out agent.”

A thick Russian accent interjected Winston’s voice. “And the Enemy?” Zarya asked. Winston turned to her and answered.

“Unlucky, the main perpetrators of the ambush managed to escape via dropship. Everyone who got caught in the explosion was either deceased or unable to continue fighting. Local authorities arrived shortly after our departure, but official data tells us that there were…” No survivors.

“They left her to die..?” Mei whispered.

Winston nodded his head solemnly. No one dared speak after that comment.

He then continued the explanation for the rest of the team, but it all became word salad for Hana. There was nothing she didn’t knew about that day. She had replayed the memory time and time and time again. But she needed to move on. For her. For Sombra.

“In strict theory, this was a huge achievement for us. We were able to stop the ambush, cut enemy lies, and strip Talon of one of their greatest assets. Yet it is a bittersweet victory if any. We fell into an enemy trap, and almost lost one of our best agents. If it wasn’t for Sombra, we would have five less agents now. I want you all to think of this before you decide how to proceed with Sombra.” Winston called. Angela walked besides him, in order to continue his train of thought.

“She is now at a physical level enough to engage in some physical activity, and records show both her skills in and outside the field are outstanding. But her mental state is still greatly unstable. If we were to release her into society again, there is a high probability she will end up in Talon’s clutches. If that was to happen, I have no doubt that we would all suffer the consequences. Including herself.” She said.

“Is it possible to for her to regain her memories?” Mei asked.

“We are… Unsure, to be honest. The damage is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, but we theorize that a backup of her memories exists somewhere.”

When she said this, something inside Zarya woke. “A backup? Like a computer?” she asked.

“Yes… Well, basically what she has implanted in her body mostly resembles a computer, but there are other factors we need to take on account. We are unsure if said backup even exists, or how it can be accessed.” She continued. Zaya entered deep in thought. If something like that existed, then she could get her answers herself, without having to rely on that liar of a woman. And depending on what she would find, it may become a great asset to have in the future.

But she would need to find it first. If the rest of the team got their hands on it, who knows what they might find. If they found about Volskaya and her underground deals, would they make her fight her motherland?

No. She would not allow it. She would get her answers first. No matter what.

“Where is this backup?” She asked. This time, it was Winston who answered.

“We do not know. We have been assured is not within Talon, but would they know of its existence, they will surely aim to acquire it first. Therefore, this information stays inside these walls, and will be treated as top secret information. Am I clear?” A resounding Yes was as good as an answer he was going to get.

Winston nodded, and unraveled the plan. “Team! This is what we are going to do. Dr. Zhou, you, Efi and I will continue working in Sombra’s neural system.” Mei nodded frantically, letting him know he had all of her help. Winston appreciated the gesture.

“Agents Genji, Mc Cree I want you two to investigate this backup. Use your own information webs and see what you can find. Anything regarding Sombra is good, but we mainly want the Backup. Work alongside Agent Hana on this, and leave no stone unturned.” Jesse tipped his hat, and by the time he was finished Genji had already disappeared.

”Cpt. Amari, Dr. Ziegler, Agents Lucio and Zenyatta, you two are to assist in trying to help Sombra get her memories back and monitor her mental status. Depending on what she remembers, it could spell trouble. Specially for you Zenyatta. Be extra careful.”

“Please, worry not Dr. Winston. She will be made whole in the warmth of the Iris.” He answered.

“Everyone else! You will continue to operate as normal.  We still have missions, we still need people. And please be careful from now on regarding last minute intel. Today we are all here. I’d like to keep it that way.”

Hana could not believe her ears. They were actually gonna help her? They were gonna help Sombra? “So that means…” she called to Winston.

And Winston answered, a small smile on his features. “Yes, she can stay. And she is not our prisoner. However, you will be responsible for her at all times. That means no missions. And please, don’t sneak out the base anymore.” He said, perhaps a little bit more exasperated than he needed. Hana rushed him and tried to tackle him with the biggest hug she could muster. She couldn’t believe this was going so well. Even Lawn-Gnome kept his mouth shut! Oh boy, she owed him big time for this one! Little did she know, that favor was already payed for.

Winston fondly returned the hug, and with the other hand, dismissed everyone. Hana bolted outwards, rushing towards the Infirmary. And eventually everyone left. Their orders were clear and after such a display, the felt compelled to do something. The moment Hana arrived, she became family, and seeing her like that, it just made everyone feel a little bit better.

  But in the room, now all alone, stood Zarya. An uncharacteristic chill growing on her spine. And after debating for a moment, pulled her communicator, and imputed a very specific number.

“До��рое утро, Volskaya Industries Main Desk.”

This number was the direct line to Volskaya Indistries CEO, Katya Volskaya.

“I Need Katya on the line now. Its Important.”

“Of course. Who is speaking?”

Zarya hesitated for a second, before finally speaking out.

“A Friend.”

[alhindee]

Can a Muslim's ignorance of creed be excused? تصفح برقم المجلد > Group 1 > Volume 2: Al-`Aqidah (2) > Takfir > Can a Muslim's ignorance of creed be excused? Can a Muslim's ignorance of creed be excused? Fatwa no. 11043 Q: In our country, the worship of graves is rampant; (Part No. 2; Page No. 147)  there are many advocates who claim that the worshippers of graves among Muslims will be excused for their ignorance. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with establishing marriage relationships with them, being led by them in congregational Salah (Prayer). Briefly, they should be treated as Muslims. Moreover, these advocates denounce any one who describes grave worshippers as disbelievers and label them as innovators. They claim that your Eminence excuse grave worshippers for their ignorance and that you approve a memorandum prepared by a person called Al-Ghubashy, in which he seeks excuses for the grave worshippers due to their ignorance. Would you please send us a clear-cut statement showing the cases in which someone can be excused for their ignorance? Kindly, provide a list of some related references that can be consulted on this particular question. Many thanks for your efforts! A: Excusing someone due to ignorance of some religious issues depends on the way he was informed, the clarity of the issue in question, and the varying levels of understanding.When someone beseeches the dead to relieve their distress or ward off evil, they should be informed that their actions are considered Shirk. If, after making this point clear to them and showing them counter evidence in fulfillment of the duty of Da`wah, they persist, they will be regarded as Mushriks (those who associate others with Allah in worship) who should be treated as Kafirs in terms of worldly affairs. Moreover, they will deserve the painful punishment in the Hereafter, if they die under these false beliefs. Allah (Exalted be He) says, Messengers as bearers of good news as well as of warning in order that mankind should have no plea against Allâh after the (coming of) Messengers. And Allâh is Ever All-Powerful, All-Wise. [2] Allah also says, (Part No. 2; Page No. 148)   And We never punish until We have sent a Messenger (to give warning). [3] He further says, ...this Qur’ân has been revealed to me that I may therewith warn you and whomsoever it may reach. [4] It is authentically reported on the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, By Him in Whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, any Jew or Christian amongst this Ummah (nation) who hears about me but does not affirm his belief in that with which I have been sent and dies in this state (of disbelief), he shall be but one of the inhabitants of Hellfire. [1] Narrated by Muslim. There are many other Ayahs and Hadiths showing the obligation of clarifying issues and establishing the evidence before blaming those involved in disobedience. Whoever lives in a country where Da`wah (calling to Islam) to Islam is well known along with other calls to religions and does not seek the truth and believe therein is the same as the person to whom Da`wah reaches but persists in disbelief. The general intent of the above mentioned Hadith narrated by Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) stands as a proof of this view. Additionally, the story of the People of Musa (Moses) affirms this view as well. It narrates that Al-Samiry misguided the people to worship the calf. At that time Harun was appointed a deputy of Musa who had gone in fulfillment of Allah's appointment to him. When Harun reproached them for worshipping the calf, the people said, "We will never cease being devoted to the calf until Musa returns to us." They preferred responding to the caller of Shirk than to the caller of Tawhid (monotheism). Therefore, their act was inexcusable because (Part No. 2; Page No. 149)  of the presence of the call of Tawhid and the recentness of Musa's Da`wah.Here is another example that strengthens this view. Allah relates the discussion between Satan and the dwellers of the Hellfire. Satan lets them down and denies their act as Allah (Exalted be He) says, And Shaitân (Satan) will say when the matter has been decided: "Verily, Allâh promised you a promise of truth. And I too promised you, but I betrayed you. I had no authority over you except that I called you, and you responded to me. So blame me not, but blame yourselves. I cannot help you, nor can you help me. I deny your former act in associating me (Satan) as a partner with Allâh (by obeying me in the life of the world). Verily, there is a painful torment for the Zâlimûn (polytheists and wrong-doers)." [5] They were not excused for trusting Satan's promise and following the Shirk that he tricked them into, despite the fact that he confuses the truth with falsehood and makes Shirk attractive to them, because this occurred at the same time as Allah's promise to them of great reward for those who fulfill their covenant with Allah by following the straight path and adhering to Shari`ah.In the countries where Islam has spread, we find its people are divided into two groups taking different ways. One group calls to different Bid`ahs (innovations in religion) that lead to Shirk and other misdeeds. They confuse people and attract them to their Bid`ahs by any possible means including narrating unauthentic Hadith and strange stories in interesting ways. The other group calls to the truth and guidance, providing evidence from the Qur'an and Sunnah and exposing the falsehood of the opposing group. (Part No. 2; Page No. 150)  Although they are less in number, the clarification and knowledge provided by this group are enough to establish the evidence. What matters is presenting the truth supported by evidence irrespective of the number of its proponents. Therefore, wise people who may happen to live in these countries will be able to find the truth by referring to its people, while being serious in this pursuit and keeping away from bias and tribalism. Those who are not deluded by the wealth of the rich or by the power of the leaders; those whose thinking is not perverted and whose reasoning has not been impaired will be the farthest from those described by Allah (Exalted be He) in the Qur'an: Verily, Allâh has cursed the disbelievers, and has prepared for them a flaming Fire (Hell). [6] Wherein they will abide for ever, and they will find neither a Walî (a protector) nor a helper. [7] On the Day when their faces will be turned over in the Fire, they will say: "Oh, would that we had obeyed Allâh and obeyed the Messenger (Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم)." [8] And they will say: "Our Lord! Verily, we obeyed our chiefs and our great ones, and they misled us from the (Right) Way. [9] "Our Lord! Give them double torment and curse them with a mighty curse!" [10] On the other hand, whoever lives in a non-Islamic country and does not hear about the Prophet (peace be upon him), the Qur'an or Islam takes the same ruling as that of Ahl Al-Fatrah (everyone to whom Da`wah has not reached in an uncorrupted manner). It is obligatory for Muslim scholars to inform them of the Islamic Shari`ah in its totality; leaving no excuse of ignorance for them and acquitting themselves from the guilt of hiding knowledge in the sight of Allah. On the Day of Resurrection, such people will be judged as those who do not meet the conditions to be held legally accountable for their actions, due to insanity or immaturity. With regard to the subtle rulings of Shari`ah in terms of implication or the contradiction of supporting evidence, they cannot be held as good criteria for judging people as believers or disbelievers. Rather, it will be a matter of exerting effort to reach the correct view; meanwhile those who miss the right judgment are to be excused while those who hit the truth are to be rewarded. (Part No. 2; Page No. 151)  As far as such kinds of questions are concerned, people are of varying degrees in terms of their level of understanding, knowledge of the Arabic language, and the scope of reading the literature on Shari`ah (the Qur'an and Sunnah) including abrogating and abrogated texts, authentic and weak narrations and the like.Therefore, it is impermissible for the adherents of Tawhid (monotheism), who hold that the worshippers of graves are disbelievers, to call their fellow monotheists as Kafirs (disbelievers) while they are uncertain of the judgment before establishing proofs and clarification on them. Their uncertainty in issuing such a judgment is justified; they deem it necessary to establish evidence and make things clear to the grave worshippers before finally declaring them disbelievers. On the other hand, the case of the Jews, the Christians, the communists and their likes is crystal-clear; there is no room for doubtfulness of their disbelief and the disbelief of whoever declines to call them disbelievers. May Allah grant us success, set right the affairs of all Muslims, bestow on them good understanding of the religion, protect us and them from the evils within ourselves and from our misdeeds and from saying anything about Allah and His Messenger (peace be upon him) without knowledge. He is the One Who is Capable of doing so.May Allah grant us success. May Peace and blessings of Allah be upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family and Companions! The Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Ifta' Deputy Chairman Chairman `Abdul-Razzaq `Afify `Abdul-`Aziz ibn `Abdullah ibn Baz            [1] Ahmad, vol. 2, pp. 317 and 350 and vol. 4, pp. 396 and 398; Muslim, no. 153; Ibn Mardawaih; Sa`id Ibn Mansur; Ibn Al-Mundhir; Al-Tabarany, Al-Durr Al-Manthur, vol. 3, p. 325; and Al-Hakim, vol. 2, p. 342. [2] Surah Al-Nisa', 4: 165 [3] Surah Al-Isra', 17: 15 [4] Surah Al-An`am, 6: 19 [5] Surah Ibrahim, 14: 22 [6] Surah Al­Ahzab, 33: 64 [7] Surah Al­Ahzab, 33: 65 [8] Surah Al­Ahzab, 33: 66 [9] Surah Al­Ahzab, 33: 67 [10] Surah Al­Ahzab, 33: 68 https://www.alifta.gov.sa/En/IftaContents/PermanentCommitee/Pages/FatawaChapters.aspx?cultStr=en&View=Page&PageID=544&PageNo=1&BookID=7 https://shamela.org/src/files/contents_url.php?id=dd8b40b842f680ac33f5e21898464775 #Islam #Quran #Hadith #Sunnah #Fatwa

[ghostmartyr]

(SPOILERS for Justice League)

The nice thing about most of my problems with this movie is that I can still point back at Batman v Superman and blame it, because without the dangled plot threads of that, at least one awkward as hell scene wouldn’t have happened.

The other nice thing is that I just love Justice League to death, so regardless of quality I spent a good portion of the movie bouncing up and down.

Which led to me nearly accidentally choking, but not the point.

Less nice things include Bruce being an asshole for no other reason than that the script wanted to pretend it was giving Wonder Woman some kind of arc.

(It wasn’t, she was fine, how dare you bring shades of my ship into that mess, and now I get to whine about Fate Zero, too.)

Okay, so.

Brief background.

The only reason I ever ended up here, or in fandom at all, is thanks to fervently shipping Batman and Wonder Woman from the Justice League cartoon. I was in love with the show, and them, and there was Starcrossed, and I wanted fic. I’ve kept my moniker from that fandom experience in use for thirteen years.

That means I get twitchier than usual about how certain interactions are handled, and I kind of spent the entire scene Bruce was berating Diana wishing that Superman wasn’t dead just so no one would dream up that this was a thing that needed to happen.

I’m glad it was universally agreed that everyone would cover for Diana if she went with murdering him, but... writers, please. I want so badly to love your work, and you spend a lot of this movie not sucking at it, so why must you do these things.

Pure surface cringe, there’s enough shippy gaze that the framing utilizes that Bruce bringing up Steve at all just makes me want to hold my head in my hands and die, because as bad as talking about dead ex-boyfriends to get a rise out of your teammate is, it is a million times worse if you have to wonder if part of the reason the boyfriend is worth mentioning is that you want to draw attention to the romantic links of certain characters.

I don’t know if that’s something that would bother someone if they weren’t hyperly aware of anything that could possibly be taken in a shippy manner, but hi, me, so it was bothersome.

Less subjectively, Steve’s impact on Diana’s life is used to make a really stupid point about how Diana’s conducted herself.

The entire movie, Batman’s been awkwardly trying to make his dream team work.

Meanwhile, Diana has a natural chemistry that, as we see, makes the entire team totally chill with her murdering Batman. It isn’t forced, it’s just Diana being better with them, and performing admirably in every task she takes up.

Blindsiding all of that clear proficiency with the accusation that she’s been limiting herself because of dead boyfriend angst is. Well, it violates its own canon, for starters.

Diana comes into contact with all of the mess of the last movie because of things that happened in her personal life, but she rejoins the fight because there’s a fight to be had, and she can help. That is what she does.

Yeah, Bruce is being a complete asshole on purpose about all of it, but the problem with stories like this is that when people start throwing that kind of incendiary language, the implication is that it’s a hard truth that manners have been holding back.

Later the movie tries to do something a little more real with that base, letting Steve behave more as a representative than the actual issue, but.

Okay, let’s talk Fate Zero. I’m up too late to draw good lines explaining things, so let’s just get to an example I can summarize.

In Fate Zero, there is an episode where the three servants who claim the title king discuss what it means to be a king. They each have different views. Saber, whose perspective the series as a whole argues is no less worthy, is the one who gets a call-out speech about how her beliefs are childish, and not something a true king should believe in.

She is denied the last word on it.

Fate Zero ends with Saber feeling as if she’s failed her people because of everything she tried to be for them. The knight that exacerbates this feeling disagrees, echoing a lot of what the story shows, but she doesn’t get to hear that.

The viewpoint that is given the spotlight, even though showing disagrees with the telling, is the one that puts hers in a broken light.

That’s what Bruce baiting Diana feels like. It’s a lot of words that get more credit than they deserve, because the script doesn’t allow Diana to come back with her say from a point of strength.

Like I said, later they try to do something interesting with it. The idea that Diana fears the burden of leadership after watching so many die could have some real depth, especially because she is such a natural leader. The pain that your own calling brings you is what makes tragedies.

But it’s introduced with a heavily vitriolic tone halfway through the movie, and the Diana before that exchange would have made the same decisions that the Diana afterwards does. She has her hesitance about all of this, but she is willing, and she is engaged. Pretending like she isn’t for the sake of having a fake deep conversation about her conduct is patronizing.

And back on petty, I liked Bruce and Diana’s dynamic without all this stupidity.

I don’t need my least favorite (least favorite is actually all things involving Sakura, but never mind that for the moment) part of Fate Zero anywhere outside of Fate Zero.

I also did not need it in Fate Zero.

To be perfectly honest, a lot of the handling of Wonder Woman in this movie is... less than ideal. She does some amazing things, her smile might actually beam sunshine, and she’s wonderful, but certain choices for her are not, including some camera angles and outfits.

I’m guessing the rest of the internet will cover that.

Uh... yeah, I still don’t like this Superman.

I also get the vibe that they’ve left some of the cast severely underpowered to lift him up.

He can fly. You don’t need to do that.

(I’m just gonna leave this link here....)

Barry is wonderful, Barry and Bruce together are wonderful, Barry and Victor going grave robbing manages to be sweet, Victor and Diana are great, Aquaman’s a bit of a douche but he gets the best music cue in the whole movie so who cares, Batman keeps getting guns for some reason but he isn’t murdering humans...

Some of the shot composition is really weird. Poses that work in comic books don’t always... yeah. Also DC’s in love with slowmo and I am tired of it, and I don’t think my eyes could follow most of the action sequences that didn’t use it.

On the whole, this movie made me happy in a lot of ways. I really love Justice League. More of it is going to make me happy. The script was also willing to have some fun with things, and there were moments that were simply delightful.

It was way better than I feared.

Still not as good as this cast is capable of (well. Supes, I’m willing to let my faith in everyone else stand in for you), and I don’t like looking around for things to bash my head in with in a movie theater, so for the love of all things good try harder, but I feel like this verse is getting closer to the things that make the world and characters appealing.

I also feel my eyes shutting without my permission, so my contemplation of clicking ‘Post’ feels way riskier than usual, but oh well, this isn’t a real review, it’s babble because I GOT TO SEE JUSTICE LEAGUE MY LIFE IS AUTOMATICALLY MORE COMPLETE.

Yeah I’m going to bed.

[dramarising-replacement]

The discussion i see everywhere of the beastclans vs dragons never fails to irritate me, because everyone’s argument always boils down to “When dragons were first created thousands of years ago there was a huge genocide therefore all dragons are inherently evil and the real villains and what the beastclans are doing now isn’t REALLY genocide because they deserve it” (what the hell do you call “We will never rest until the last dragon on sornieth breathes it’s last”???)

And i’m just here like

Guys

That’s not how it works

If that was how it worked then all of humanity is inherently evil and deserves punishment for the genocide of the other species of the hominid branch hundreds of thousands of years ago, and also for the ongoing wars today, and basically everything else bad that’s been done by a human ever

You clearly don’t understand how complicated this is

Something i rarely see mentioned is that just being the same species as or descended from someone who did something bad doesn’t make you guilty too. The first contact of dragonkind and the beastclans resulted in a genocide of the beastclans, yes, but that was at the very beginning when dragons where first created and everyone that was involved with that is long dead (There’s also some implication that at that point the dragons were basically babies that didn’t understand fully what they were doing and just wanted to make Large Parental Figure Dragon happy. They were told to spread and claim territory, so that’s what they did, strange tiny things making noises and poking them with sharp sticks be damned.)

And yes, it’s a problem that continues to this day. But just being born one species or the other doesn’t make you inherently evil and guilty of the crimes of others of your species. All this line of thinking does is perpetuate the cycle of hatred and violence, preventing the world from ever moving forwards. So calling either species group “evil” or saying they all deserve hatred and punishment is completely nonsensical (And and even less often discussed thing is that hating someone based on them being the same species as someone guilty of racism is itself racism.). An individual’s crime is an individual’s crime, not the entire species’ crime. The fact that you can have beastclans as familiars alone proves that the us vs them “dragonkind is evil/beastclans are evil/other/ect” concept people have is far from correct and the racism dragonkind and beastclans have against eachother is very far from universal. There’s also the fact that being born and/or living in a tribe/city/country/whatever doesn’t mean that you’re automatically guilty of what your government does. It’s only your fault if you were actively involved in supporting this decision, so the deities telling their followers to wipe out all opposition doesn’t mean anything for an individual dragon’s morality if they refuse to do it or don’t even know that they were told to do it in the first place.

If the ongoing elemental civil war doesn’t make all dragonkind inherently evil, then the beastclan war shouldn’t either. Every side in both conflicts seeks the total eradication of all opposition at all costs (Not to mention that the whole reason this fight is happening in the first place is because the deities are assholes who can’t take the idea of there being any power but them, so they use helpless mortals as pawns that die by the thousands just to spite eachother without having to get their own claws dirty) and their are plenty on all sides who either don’t involve themselves in any of this nonsense or tell the whole thing to go jump in the wyrmwound so they can snuggle with their harpy friends and cousin of a different element in peace.

If i had a gem for every time i saw a clan lore that was multi-elemental, beatsclan-allied, or in some other way a neutral territory i would have a Boolean. Also keep in mind the fact that by the time the beastlans showed up to become a player in the 11-way civil war it had already been so long that dragonkind had most likely pretty much entirely forgotten about the whole thing, so at the beginning of that as far as they could tell these people were just showing up and smashing their eggs for no reason.

ALSO, there’s some implication in the unhatched egg system and some of the cyphers on the letter scraps that the beastclans regularly raid nests and kidnap baby dragons as slaves for war. Sound heroic?

It’s a war. Wars NEVER have a clear good or bad side. The closest you can ever hope to get is a situation where one side is slightly less actively horrible than the other.

Tl/dr: There’s no “good” or “bad” side in this conflict and marginalizing entire species into the clear-cut roles of villain and hero as if they’re somehow a hive mind containing every member of their race that has ever lived is stupid and nonsensical. All 12 sides involved have a rap sheet as long as the windsinger, all of them seek total genocide of opposition, and none is inherently better or worse than the others. Not to mention thinking in terms of “whole species is X” severely limits lore possibilities.