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magnus-the-maqnificent · 3 years

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Let's Analyze - Alec in CoFA

So, I’ve been seeing plenty of discourse on two of my mutual’s blogs about this topic… so I thought I’d sit down and write another analysis post about my beloved Alec Lightwood cause people are still giving him shit for a book that came out ten years ago 🤦‍♀️

This is gonna be in two parts, and I'm putting both under the cut:

PART 1 - ALEC’S INSECURITIES

So, the first part - how Alec’s insecurities drove him to saying stupid things in CoFA

A quick disclaimer - I’m NOT blaming Alec alone for his and Magnus’s break up. What happened was pretty complicated, and the blame cannot be put on one person alone.

That said, let’s start with Magnus and Alec’s early ‘official’ relationship, in trsom.

These scenes are taken from only the first part of the book, but I’m pretty sure they’re more than enough to get a sense of Alec’s insecurities and all the chinks in their relationship. Throughout the entirety of trsom, we see more bits and pieces of Alec’s insecurities about Magnus’s sexuality, and his past and all the people he might have known - and that’s okay! Insecurities happen, cause brains are stupid like that.

But all of Alec’s insecurities could’ve been laid to rest with a simple conversation. But the conversation never happens. Magnus tends to deflect and change the topic every single time his past is brought up. I understand Magnus’s reasons for hiding his past, of course, but it doesn’t help his relationship with Alec. Magnus hiding a good chunk of his past will inevitably lead to Alec questioning himself - why is he so secretive? Why is he not telling me anything? Does he not trust me? ...and so on.

And when Alec is already feeling insecure in this relationship, this happens - (sorry about the terrible cropping btw)

And then later, while Magnus is talking to Camille,

Now… when people are insecure about something, they get irked at the smallest of things. I’m saying this as an insecure person myself. So now, you've got Alec, who's insecure as fuck, and his vacation with the person he loves got cut short by his ex who refuses to talk to anyone but him, and when they get there, his lover and his lover's ex seem to have obvious chemistry, he gets hit with the reality that his lover has dated several, probably even hundreds of people before him; and he has to leave them alone in a room so they can talk, and then he hears the ex basically just list all his shortcomings - i.e, his mortality, his appearance is compared to some random dead guy (sorry, Will) whom your lover had a crush on, which is just weird, and when you've had enough and open the door, it's to see your lover and his ex, standing close as fuck, and he's! touching! her! face! and! looking! into! her! eyes!

*takes a sip of water* yeahhhh... Alec was straight up having a bad day.

And at this point, a) Alec is still in his first relationship. He didn't get to navigate romance when he was younger, and while there's nothing wrong with that, there weren't exactly cutesy presentations titled 'how to keep your relationships healthy' floating around the internet. Heck, he didn’t know the internet. He didn't know that he had to communicate with Magnus, and it doesn't help that boy avoids conversations about feelings like the plague. And b) at this point, Alec would be facing several negative emotions - insecurity, obviously. Hurt. Helplessness, because of his mortality. Fear, that he might not live up to Magnus’s past lovers. Jealousy at seeing Magnus and Camille so close.

Negative emotions like these often tend to show up as anger or sorrow... and in Alec’s case, that would be anger. Which leads us to THIS- (🙈)

*sighs in second-hand embarrassment*

*drinks more water*

*this is gonna be so hard aksjakak*

So. Alec dealt with his insecurities... by being a mean, mean bitch to Magnus :/

Let's break this scene down, slowly, bit by bit.

First, Alec cuts into a conversation between Magnus and Jordan, when Magnus mentions Woolsey Scott, followed the rest of that particular page. To Alec, he's just a figure from Magnus’s past, and a possible lover, though in Alec’s defense Woolsey Scott WAS Magnus’s lover. This is the first instance that we see in which Alec lashes out at Magnus. It seems like he's trying to make a point to Magnus - "I don't know anything about your past, and so I don't know who you've had romances with, but I want to know." Except he makes his point in the worst way possible and ends up slutshaming Magnus.

The "What's true?" line, in response to Jordan saying "so it's true what they say about warlocks, then?" is pretty obvious. Alec is clearly not liking the idea that this random werewolf might know about warlocks, and in particular, his Warlock boyfriend.

Next... ooh boy... Alec basically snaps and in the next few paragraphs accuses Magnus of wanting to flirt with others which... is not a good look on ya honey 😕. These lines are the ones that get him accused of being biphobic... but is he really? I'm gonna talk about that in part 2.

So, in the first paragraph, where Alec makes the comments about Jordan, I find his choice of words pretty... interesting, seeing as 'messy-haired', 'broad-shouldered' and 'chiseled-good-looks' are all used to describe Alec in the series. Not sure if its relevant, but definitely interesting.

And in the next one, where Alec says, "or there are plenty of pretty girls here, since apparently your taste goes both ways. Is there anything you aren't into?" The 'apparently' makes me curious. In rsom, Alec mentions that he's only recently heard of the term bisexual, and there's plenty of time between rsom and cofa, so Alec should be absolutely sure of atleast the basic meaning of bisexuality. But I'm pretty sure it's just inconsistency on cc's part, since if rsom didn't exist, this book would be the first time Alec learns about Magnus’s bisexuality. (Which is obvious when you look at the scene after Magnus reveals that Camille is his girlfriend.) And as for the second sentence, I feel like it's a fallback to earlier in the book when Magnus says (I'm just gonna write the dialogue from memory), "I've dated men, women, warlocks, faeries, vampires, werewolves and even a djinn or two." Here, Alec is angry, and he takes the knowledge that Magnus has dated a variety of people and once again, lashes out.

Looking at all of it together, Alec’s insecurities are definitely a factor in all of this. We know Alec has pretty low self esteem in tmi, and he keeps having irrational thoughts about someone else grabbing Magnus’s attention, like in the trsom scene I've posted above. And he ends up taking out his insecurities on Magnus.

Was it wrong of Alec to say all those things to Magnus? Yes, absolutely. But looking back through all his scenes in cofa, it's easy to see how he could've fallen into the pit trap of emotions.

And before anyone says "but it wasn't addressed in the later books", it was, in CoLS. I’ve hit the image limit, so I'm just gonna type it out -

"[Magnus] said it would be better if he didn’t come. Apparently him and the Seelie Queen have some kind of history."

Isabelle raised her eyebrows.

"Not that kind of history," Alec said irritably. "Some kind of feud. Though," he added, half under his breath, "the way he got around before me, I wouldn't be surprised."

"Alec!" Isabelle dropped back to talk to her brother....

So, there. Alec makes yet another slutshaming comment, Isabelle overhears and is clearly not happy about it, and it's clearly implied that she talks to Alec about it. And Alec doesn't make any more slutshaming comments since then. Boy now knows what he did was wrong, and makes sure not to repeat it again.

Although, I do wish we had more than this. I wish we had more of Magnus and Alec talking about this argument, heck, even about all their arguments and the reasons they broke up, but you can't get everything you want, apparently :(

And now onto the next part...

PART 2 - IS ALEC BIPHOBIC?

The short answer, uh, no, not really.

The long answer.... would be complicated.

So, back in the day, when this discourse was at an all time high, I remember reading a bisexual person's essay about this topic, and they said that this comment from Alec - "or there are plenty of pretty girls here, since apparently your taste goes both ways. Is there anything you aren't into?" - would be a biphobic microagression.

According to Google, a microagression is "a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority".

And in Alec's case, IF his words were biphobic, they were completely unintentional. They were microagressive. Which is... still bad, of course, but it's more complicated than that.

If you look back on Alec's supposedly biphobic statements, they're more about Magnus’s hypersexuality and promiscuity than anything else. Yes, even the line i mentioned like two paragraphs ago. At first glance it may seem like a direct attack on Magnus’s sexuality, but think over the explanation I gave for the line and it will make sense. And a lot of people know that the whole 'bi people fuck around a lot and are cheaters' thing is a stereotype.

Now, it may seem like I'm going off topic here, but bear with me. I couple of days ago, I watched this video by chance. (Tw for the aids crisis and lots of biphobia, not from the narrator, if you wanna watch the video). Basically, back in the 1980s, bisexual men were scapegoated for spreading aids to the straight community and were vilified by popular media as being promiscuous scepters who would cheat on their wives with gay men and then give aids to their wives. (Yikes 😬). And since bisexuality was practically unheard of before all this (several bisexual activists have stated that all this shit, though unfortunate, pulled bisexuality out of the closet), it's safe to assume that this is how those stereotypes came to be - through 1980s propaganda.

But living with this propaganda is... a very limiting experience. The people who leaned and unlearned and fought against this propaganda are mostly US Americans who grew up with it, either the actual propaganda itself or passed down by their parents. But like I said, it's a very limiting experience. US is but one country out of many, and even for those living in the USA there's a chance that they grew up in a very hush-hush environment. People who grew up hearing all these stereotypes will see it as biphobia, while people who didn't - like Alec, and me, and several other people will not. A lot of people grow up with absolutely no knowledge of the queer community, and chances are that they'll be incredibly confused when a stereotype is pointed out to them, and they often get no more explanation than 'this is a harmful stereotype'. Queer experiences aren't the same for everyone, and while I respect the people who see this as biphobia, they should recognize that there are many people who won't see it that way.

I have seen bisexual people say that Alec's words were biphobic, and I've also seen bisexual people say that they weren't. Thus, there is no clear consensus about whether or not Alec was being biphobic. And like I said earlier, Alec grew up far, far away from mundane anti-queer bigotry. He was essentially a clean slate when it came to knowledge of eer microagressions of any kind, because microagressions and stereotypes are often incredibly specific, don't have anything to do with a person's race/sexuality/gender, etc. and will make zero sense unless you know the history behind them. To Magnus, who lived through the anti-bisexual scapegoating, the words would've definitely stung, but Alec didn't even know the implications he would be making with this words! Of course, the impact is greater than intention, and I imagine Magnus would sit Alec down one day and talk about all this history with him.

And idk if I can even blame cc cause the history of bisexual men is RARELY ever talked about, atleast on the internet.

Also, this scene in cofa is the only instance where he can be interpreted to be biphobic. Nowhere else in all of tmi, and even tec, do we see Alec express hatred or disgust or microagression towards bisexual people. If this was seen in a repeating pattern from Alec, one could argue that he's biphobic... but he isn't. Some might point to some of his internal thoughts in trsom to argue otherwise, but I believe that actions are superior than thoughts.

There's also the thing about unlearning prejudices, but in Alec's case there was hardly anything to be unlearned. The only prejudices he did pick up on were against himself, through vague homophobic comments from Robert.

P.S if you've read this far, I am legally entitled to compensation for thinking of cofa Alec for 48 hours. Put your favorite Alec moments in my askbox cause I wanna focus on his good side now. 😎

But yeah, the main thing here is that Alec has grown from his mistakes, apologized, and hasn't repeated this behavior at all.

And lastly, I just wanted to add - I don't think all this was unintentional on the author's part. She's grown up with the us American queer community, and has mentioned that she has bisexual friends, who have no doubt faced prejudices because of these stereotypes. I think she was trying to condemn making such statements, but a lot of people don't read between the lines and end up misinterpreting it and make both the character and her to be biphobic.

So... TLDR; was what Alec said biphobic? Maybe. It depends on who you're talking to. Is Alec, as a person, biphobic? Nope. Not at all. 😌

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feralphoenix · 4 years

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SONGS OF RESISTANCE: The View Myla Grants Us Of Hallownest’s Moths

hello again hollow knight fandom, i am back with my picante takes and ready to discuss two things i love: myla hollowknight and the moth tribe! Let Us Be Sad About Them Together.

as with my previous essay i’m going to be putting this fellow up on dreamwidth later for accessibility purposes since my layout text may be too small for high-res pc users. this time i’ll be attaching that in a reblog to avoid this post getting eaten by the dread tungle algorithms.

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay discusses colonialism and genocide both in real life and the fictional depictions in Hollow Knight, as well as racism in the zombie horror genre and in fandom.

ALSO: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: THE VIEW MYLA GRANTS US OF HALLOWNEST’S MOTHS

In this house we are all love Myla.

Well, in all fairness, there are probably plenty of Hollow Knight fans who aren’t interested in her character, since which fictional characters one attaches to is always a matter of personal preference. But she’s still well-loved for a minor NPC and inspires a high level of devotion in her fans. There’s nothing that whips folks into a frenzy like a cute character you can’t do anything to help, and unlike some other characters in Hollow Knight Myla’s fate leaves no room for ambiguity. Once you pick up the Crystal Heart you’re left with only two choices: Avoid her, or kill her.

A lot of Hollow Knight’s world is designed to make you care about it so that it will hurt more when Ghost’s violent skillset proves too limited to save something or someone. The consequences of Hallownest’s founding and policies have directly or indirectly caused a great deal of damage to everything, and chief among those consequences with massive damage and a wide splash range is the Infection. Much has been said elsewhere by other people about Hollow Knight’s predominating mood being a struggle against futility, with Ghost arriving at the eleventh hour and every new tragedy designed to make the player more desperate to find something actionable, only finding out by trial and error what’s beyond your personal ability to save.

Myla, in that sense, is a typical example of that worldbuilding. She’s a particular kind of stock character in the zombie horror genre, the innocent who falls victim to the plague and cannot be saved, wrenching audience hearts and demonstrating the stakes.

But Hollow Knight plays with the trappings of zombie horror in a very unusual way, one I find thematically fascinating.

For a quick overview, the “zombie” as we know it in popular culture is an appropriation of a voudou (the Black American spiritual practice) concept that deals with the fear of slavery killing one’s spirit. (People more versed in/with roots in voudou culture can give a much more comprehensive overview than this simplistic one.)

The zombie horror genre, especially in Western media, is part of the great white fragility stock plot trifecta (the other two being alien invasions and robot uprisings). Zombie horror in particular expresses white fears that marginalized ethnic groups will rise up violently in revenge for their mistreatment and destroy white society. The fear of “that which is human, which ‘humanity’ is not” (to borrow mecha visual novel Heaven Will Be Mine’s pithy term) and the extreme levels of violence towards human-but-not bodies typical of zombie horror are often an expression of such bigotries. This is, again, a subject that’s been discussed in greater depth and with more nuance elsewhere.

But what Hollow Knight does is take the ugly metaphors and it makes them literal, makes it harder to ignore the toxic subtext of the genre. The Infection is literally a native god’s revenge on the settlers who committed genocide* against her people. How the Pale King’s colonization of the crater negatively affected the preexisting groups of bugs underpins every level of the worldbuilding, as does Hallownest’s cruelty towards its neighbors.

Hollow Knight is a game that is about the tragedy of Western imperialism. It is one of the work’s central themes. There are a lot of conversations that need to be had about the ways these themes manifest and, on a real-world level, about fandom’s predisposition to avoid the subject.

But, for now, let’s get back to Myla. If she fits such a stock zombie horror archetype, and Hollow Knight uses zombie horror tropes to underline the conversation it attempts to have about colonialism, then what has Myla got to teach us about the overall worldbuilding?

There's two topics I’d like to broach here: First we’ll get into how the circumstances of Myla’s infection fit in to the implied role of Crystal Peak in pre-Hallownest society. Then let’s take a long look at the lyrics of Myla’s song and what it implies.

MYLA, THE CRYSTALS, AND THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

If you think about it, Myla is an interesting outlier compared to the other NPCs we encounter on the verge of succumbing to the Infection. Both Bretta and Sly are unhappy: Bretta is a lonely, anxious bundle of abandonment issues yearning for someone to sweep her off her feet; Sly misses his pupils and loved ones who’ve left him in death (we never learn who Esmy is or what they were to Sly, but we sure can tell they’re not around anymore). The temptation to dream away those sadnesses seems to play a part in their vulnerability to the Infection, and also why Ghost’s interruption brings them back to reality.

Not so Myla. She appears to be blissfully unaware of her fellow miners’ fate, and most of her dialogue prior to her infection (besides the song - we’ll get to that later) is about how much fun she’s having at her job and how much she enjoys Ghost’s occasional company.

Yet she still winds up infected when Ghost’s back is turned. Why?

Not to discard the possibility that Myla’s got her own issues too, but in her case there seems to be another likely cause at hand: The crystals. If hit with the Dream Nail before infected, she mentions that she can hear them “singing” and “whispering”.

Under the The Hunter’s Hot Takes section of the Hunter’s Journal entries on various Crystal Peak enemies, we can learn more about the crystals - particularly in the entries for the Husk Miner and Crystallized Husk.

Crystal Peak’s crystals were thought of as particularly precious in Hallownest and harvested en masse for use in luxury items and the like. To do so, the mining operation was set up throughout most of the mountain, though the area around its peak still remains largely untouched. However, there’s more to the crystals than just that. Like Myla, the Hunter notes that the crystals can be heard to sing very very softly if one listens closely enough.

Perhaps of even more interest than that is this particular comment he gives us, from the Crystallized Husk journal entry: “There is some strange power hidden in the crystals that grow up there in the peaks. They gleam and glow in the darkness, a bright point of searing heat in each one.”

I don’t think it’s a particularly revolutionary idea to point out that there’s some connection between the crystals and Radiance’s power; this is something many players have intuited just based on Myla’s dialogue. But, in order to understand what Myla is demonstrating about the game’s world I think it’s important to think about what that connection is.

Speaking of which, the local Whispering Root has two important clues for us: The phrases “light refracted” and “energy contained”.

The very top of Crystal Peak is one of the only places in the crater where the moths’ architecture has escaped Hallownest destroying it, and is the only place in the entire game setting where their religious iconography remains fully intact. There are stone monuments covered in their language (which has been destroyed with the rest of their culture) and the statue of the Radiance - this is easier to see in the Wanderer’s Journal tie-in book, but the huge stone arches upon the Crown represent Radi’s halo and its rays and encircle her when viewed head-on or from a distance instead of the side view we get in the game.

The crystals grown here were used by the moths to store and cultivate Radiance’s light. It’s impossible to know what sort of architecture/infrastructure existed inside the mountain before Hallownest stole it from the moths. But between the massive scope of her statue and all the texts at the Crown, and the fact that the moths were working with their literal actual god’s freely given power here, it can be safely asserted that Crystal Peak was a holy ground to them.

Hallownest didn’t care about the mind-boggling level of spiritual significance Crystal Peak must have had to the natives, though. To the Pale King and his people, the crystals are just a natural resource to be harvested for personal profit.

This is unfortunately a conflict that still plays out in colonized countries today. If you’re American, #NoDAPL probably comes to mind; Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are filled with these sorts of horror stories too. Settler disrespect for indigenous sacred grounds is a huge problem that needs addressing. If you’re looking at the story of Crystal Peak and thinking it’s very on-the-nose... maybe it needs to be.

Anyway, Myla is nowhere near as miserable as Bretta or Sly, but she still notices that something’s up with these crystals. She hears the voice coming from inside, and she’s curious, and she tries very very hard to listen to it... so she DOES end up hearing Radiance’s voice. Radiance’s real voice, not the songs and whispers inside the crystals: The voice of a frightened, angry, grieving god who knows there’s a new vessel running around in Hallownest, and doesn’t want any part of that. A voice that’s pleading for someone, anyone to kill this dangerous creature, and save her from the threat Ghost poses.

Between how freaked out Radi is to know Ghost is poking around, the tendency we see in her boss battles for her to panic and kneejerk blast things at full volume/vibrance when she’s panicking, and the way her dream broadcast seems to be only a one-way communication line while she’s in the Black Egg... naturally this spells disaster for poor Myla.

Similar to the Moss Prophet, this small tragedy is a demonstration of the eleventh-hour state the conflict is in: The Pale King has escalated this situation so far, and Radiance is so traumatized and isolated, that bystanders who might in a kinder timeline have become Radi’s allies instead get caught up in her AOE. Myla’s definitely not as aware of the overall situation as the Moss Prophet, since she’s a Hallownest bug and not an indigenous one the way they are. But she noticed things were not as they seemed, and she was curious. Who knows what new possibilities could have opened up, if Radiance was able to truly communicate with bugs in the outside world?

Small side note before we move on, but I’ve noticed a tendency among some folks who notice the missed connections to come down extra hard on Radiance and chalk Myla’s infection/Moss Prophet’s death down to deliberate cruelty on her part. I’d like to gently push back against this.

Living in a post-colonial world we all absorb some level of prejudice from our surroundings, and it’s important to take a look at our first assumptions about people (or, in this case, fictional characters lol) to examine whether these prejudices we’ve inherited have influenced those assumptions.

So, if your first instinct is to look at this situation and say the problem is that Radiance is being too harsh and too angry where she should have stepped back and softened her emotions for others’ benefit to gently persuade them to her side... Please think about how when people of color and non-Christians express anger or hurt at our treatment, or even so much as calmly assert our boundaries, white/Christian viewers often view us as much more aggressive and threatening than we actually are. The “angry black woman” trope is a good example of this stereotype. You may want to look up the HuffPost article “Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism” and its discussion of white fragility to further understand this phenomenon.

It is absolutely essential to remember the complex power dynamics in play in Hollow Knight and that the Pale King deliberately imprisoned Radiance (who had at this point already gone through an extreme amount of trauma) in a way that would compromise her ability to communicate with others. If you can extend compassion to characters like Ghost or the Pale King and empathize with their motives/feelings when their actions cause harm, but you are not willing to do the same with Radiance... it’s important to sit down with yourself and examine why that is.

THE MEANING BEHIND MYLA’S SONG

Okay, let’s switch gears and take a look at the lyrics to the song Myla sings, since it’s got some interesting things to tell us too.

The first verse, which you can hear from Myla the first time you meet her/before you acquire Vengeful Spirit, goes:

Bury my mother, pale and slight Bury my father with his eyes shut tight Bury my sisters, two by two, And then when you’re done, let's bury me too

There’s not much particularly story-related going on here except foreshadowing that Myla may in fact wind up dying. Most of what we get here is that a) this is a song about burying the dead and b) it’s morbid as fuck.

Curious, a new player might think of the mention of burying the dead; there are a lot of corpses just lyin’ around all over the ground - something that might lead one to believe Hallownest didn’t have such a custom. Later players will discover the Resting Grounds, confirming Hallownest did bury its dead... and that the gravekeepers are all dead too.

Let’s look at the second verse, which Myla remembers and will sing after you pick up Vengeful Spirit:

Bury the knight with her broken nail, Bury the lady, lovely and pale Bury the priest in his tattered gown, Then bury the beggar with his shining crown

This right here is where it gets interesting. The first verse describes the singer’s family as dead or dying, but the people we’re burying now sure do have some parallels to Hallownest's ruling body, don’t they?

Among Hallownest’s Great Knights, three of them - Dryya, Isma, and Ze’mer - were women. They are also very dead or might as well be: Dryya was killed by Traitor Lord’s resistance, Isma is a tree spreading acid through the kingdom’s waters to cut off access to the City of Tears, and Ze’mer hung up her nail after her mantis girlfriend’s death and only lingers on as a revenant.

While there aren’t any characters who are described in-text as “priests” in Hallownest, the idea of a tattered gown might bring Lurien the Watcher to mind, or perhaps the Soul Sanctum’s magicians before they went rogue.

The lovely, pale lady in the song can only refer to the White Lady, Hallownest’s queen. And there’s only one man in the game who has a shining crown: The Pale King. The lyrics are particularly derisive towards him in a way they aren’t to any of the other figures listed, too.

So, it seems like whoever came up with this song didn’t think much of Hallownest. With that in mind it’s hard to think that it originated from any sort of faction loyal to the king.

We’re missing a line from the third verse, which Myla sings after you’ve beaten Soul Master and she’s beginning to become infected. But what we do see of it is Huge in terms of lore:

Bury my body and cover my shell, [...] What meaning in darkness? Yet here I remain I’ll wait here forever ‘til light blooms again

So. The “protagonist” of this song’s family has died, and they expect to die as well, but even unto death they're waiting for Hallownest to fall and the light to return.

The moths became Hallownest’s gravekeepers after the Pale King forcibly assimilated them. Under the Pale King’s light, the moths forgot Radiance and most of their original culture, but Seer tells us in her final monologue that a few individuals remembered just enough to pass bits and pieces down through the generations. This secret resistance among the moths was what kept Radiance alive and prevented her from being sealed away entirely.

This song Myla sings comes from that moth resistance.

Code songs amongst oppressed ethnic groups are very much a real thing, especially when groups have to communicate or signal each other within hostile parties’ hearing. Since I’m American (and had a big ol crush on Harriet Tubman as a little kid lmao!) the first thing that came to mind for me when I made this connection was the working songs escaped Black slaves used in the Underground Railroad.

These have another point in common with the moth gravedigger song Myla sings, in that they enter the general cultural consciousness through out-group people who don’t know the true context. If you ever pick up a book of American baby songs, you’ll probably find some Underground Railroad code songs in there - often because generations ago white kids heard these songs from Black slaves or servants, and went on to sing the same songs to their children with zero awareness of what the songs were really for.

So some Hallownest bug somewhere probably heard the moths’ song and liked it and sang it in a context totally divorced from its original one, and it got spread around and passed down to become one of Myla’s old favorites, with her seemingly not realizing the meaning behind the lyrics. The moths’ song of devotion to their lost god survived them as a people.

This is some VERY realistic and layered worldbuilding. There is so much to glean from just one NPC’s dialogue when put together with other clues. Of course all of it is SAD and DEPRESSING, but Hollow Knight is a tragedy with a super unsubtle point to make about the unsustainability of Western imperialism.

What happens to Myla is awful, and upsetting, and unfair. So was what happened to the moths and their sacred ground, and to Radiance too. It’s important to understand the scope of the conflict that led to all this happening, trace it to its roots, and lay it at the feet of the ones responsible for engendering all this tragedy in the first place: Hallownest and the Pale King.

*A NOTE ABOUT MY USE OF THE TERM “GENOCIDE”

This is a tangent, but since there’s some debate about whether it’s appropriate to define the Pale King’s actions towards indigenous bug nations as genocide, allow me to cite the official definition of genocide here.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention for short) defines genocide like this:

Genocide is any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group, as such:

A) Killing members of the group

B) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

C) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

D) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Among the abovelisted, Hallownest is guilty of A (Deepnest and the moths), B (Deepnest physically/the moths vis a vis brainwashing), C (the mantis tribe and the hive), and E (the moths, which we know from Marmu, and possibly the mosskin also - Isma is mosskin).

Then there is cultural genocide, i.e. acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group's way of life. Let’s look at the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) and how it defines cultural genocide:

A) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities

B) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources

C) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights

D) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures

E) Any form of propaganda directed against them

Hallownest is guilty of every item on this list. A: The moths, attempted with Deepnest. B: The moths, the mantises, the flukes, the mosskin; also attempted with Deepnest. C: The moths, the mantises, the flukes. D: The moths; attempted with the mantises and Deepnest. E: The mantises and Deepnest.

Any sort of discussion of the wide-reaching harm Radiance caused MUST include the context that the Infection is her response to multiple levels of genocide. Discussion that does not include this context loses nuance and simplifies the conflict and power dynamics portrayed in the game in ways that reflect real-life racism and Christian supersessionism.

Now, this is NOT some sort of holier than thou Fandom Purity dunk to say that it’s Bad or Wrong to care about Hallownest’s nobility. Like, one of my favorite characters in this dang game is the White Lady, who spent a long ass time enabling her husband’s actions before she finally walked out on him over the mass infanticide thing. You can, and it is okay to, love TPK and want rehabilitation for him while acknowledging that the dude has done objectively bad things.

I just feel that it’s important to keep things in perspective so that we don’t wind up stirring a bunch of real-world bigotry into our fandom funtimes. A lot of us don’t have the luxury of turning our brains off and simply Not Seeing It, because these same sorts of dynamics are behind a lot of the hardships that threaten our everyday stability.

It’s pretty hard to have conversations about those things in real life if one can’t even recognize them in fiction. So, this might be a good opportunity to start practicing anti-racism so we can better utilize that ideology in real life, where the stakes are much higher.

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #hollow knight meta #myla hollow knight #the radiance #hk myla #hk radiance #essay #long post under cut -

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xxdeathspellsxx · 4 years

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I’m so sorry I’m going to sound so ignorant rn but I’m so confused- so is the star they used on the shirt bad? What’s the best way I can go around researching this history of the appropriation of the star, it’s antisemitism, and why people are angry about it? Also, were you saying the return video in the forest was a antisemetic too...? There are so many things in everyday life I’m finding are antisemetic and I just,,, didn’t know, it’s crazy how much history has been erased and twisted.

it’s ok! it’s a lot going on and a lot of language getting thrown here and there so i’ll break it down as best as i can. i’m going to create a pagebreak bc this is going to be a lot of text.

to be specific here, the star we are referencing is the six-pointed star. also to note, when i say “occult”, i mean the quotations as such because the Hot Topic website used that specific word to describe it.

so the star they used on the shirt is historically a jewish symbol, or the magen david. this website here is an explanation of the symbol, its historic use, and the meaning of it. the breakdown of it is basically that it has been used both within jewish history and in non-jewish history. it wasn’t officially recognized as an aspect of distinct judaism until relatively recently (as in, the past couple centuries recently), but it has grown to be associated specifically with our culture over time. with that said, it’s been more readily appropriated by groups associated with western/specifically european occultism, which is directly rooted in antisemitic beliefs. i do want to state that this antisemitism has been reworked into other coded language, and while the “evil” things present in such culture no longer state that they are jews, they still hold jewish stereotypes and harmful tropes.

more modern connections between these modern-european “occult imageries” tend to feature said six-pointed star. as mentioned, it’s now commonly associated with judaism, and given modern-european occultism is mostly tied to teachings of the antisemite Aleister Crowley (don’t get me started on how much this guy was a douche--my HS senior paper was 10 pages of fuck-this-guy), it’s not hard to tie the use of the six-pointed star to antisemitic beliefs. however, i do want to state that not everyone who uses this symbol is aware of this. i like to believe that most people (including whoever made this shirt) wasn’t aware of the connotations, and used the symbol as they’ve seen it on repopularized “occult imagery”.

so. after that word vomit. lets unpack the use on the shirt.

the star on the shirt is not bad inherently. the way its used is improper, but the star itself is not bad. my people adorn ourselves with it. i have one on a chain on my neck at all times that i never take off. we often use it as our physical signifier--you often see it on synagogues and often our religious wear, like kippahs.

however, when used outside of a jewish context in, for example, “occult” clothes, it does not carry pro-jewish connotations. i would not label it as directly acting upon antisemitism, as most people who use it are not using it for antisemitic purposes. however, it has an antisemitic history out of jewish contexts in recent years, therefore making it harmful.

when i typically see it being used, i tend to see it as a miseducation, and that people don’t understand it’s harmful. i hate to say it this way, but antisemitism is ingrained within countless cultures throughout the world. ashkenazic (the european jewish ethnicity) antisemitism is ingrained in european history and culture, and therefore is so common that it’s forgotten.

for further research, i recommend using jewish sources and researching the meaning of the symbol, and research crowley and his rebrandings.

SO TL;DR for that section: the symbol itself is not bad! it’s an identifier for most jewish people today, and we often wear it ourselves (i do so myself!). however, it being used out of context currently, specifically in correlation with european “occultism”, is interpreted as antisemitic in nature. with that said, i believe it’s best to give people who use it the benefit of the doubt, and gently educate them.

OKAY SO ON TO THE SUMMONING

this is a reference to the iron cross shown in the video. basically it’s a symbol that was used over the history of christianity (and catholicism? i think?), however it was appropriated by the nazis.

i dont think the summoning video was antisemitic. i dont think they were using the symbol as a nazi symbol.

do i think they should’ve chosen something else given the nazis used it? yes. but i dont think they were using it with nazi-intentions. i just think they didn’t really do their research (a common theme, apparently). but many people (mostly non-jews, again) leapt to call it antisemitic because it had been used by nazis. i think this was also overstepping jewish voices but that’s my stance on that.

to wrap this up... yeah. antisemitism is older than christianity. it’s sort of what we build our holidays off of (i say this as a dark-but-real joke, but a lot of jewish holidays are about suffering). it’s generation upon generation upon generation of systematic harm, relocation, slavery, genocide, etc. we were blamed for the plague, we were blamed for crops dying and financial collapses. and currently, we’re being blamed for literally all the world’s problems (again). most conspiracy theories center around “it was the jews”, both from the old days and today. in the US, still, we are astronomically more likely to be hate crimed than any other religion. i have been told to my face before by someone that they want to kill jews, and was told that watching old holocaust videos were cathartic. this was in an extremely liberal college setting.

i don’t want to say these things to make it sound scary, because if there’s anything jewish people are, it’s resilient. but i say these things because i think it’s important to see that and recognize how deeply antisemitism is ingrained into the world and into cultures. it’s shocking when you realize how deep it goes. the best thing you can do is amplify jewish voices, listen to jewish people, and be an ally to us.

thanks for reading my rant <3 let me know if there’s anything else i can clarify.

#i'm gonna put a tw on here bc i get into historic antisemitism #so tw on antisemitism through the ages and mentions of violent antisemitism

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greatworldwar2 · 4 years

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• Duško Popov

Dušan "Duško" Popov OBE was a Serbian triple agent who served as part of the MI6 and Abwehr during World War II, and passed off disinformation to Germany as part of the Double-Cross System and working also as agent for the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.

Dušan "Duško" Popov was born to a Serb family in Titel, Austria-Hungary on July 10th, 1912. His parents were Milorad and Zora Popov. He had an older brother named Ivan ("Ivo") and a younger brother named Vladan. The family was exceedingly wealthy and owed its fortune to Popov's paternal grandfather, Omer, a wealthy banker and industrialist who founded a number of factories, mines, and retail businesses. Records from as early as 1773 describe them as the most affluent family there. Popov's father expanded the family's business interests to include real estate dealings. When Popov was an infant, the family left Titel and permanently relocated to their summer residence in Dubrovnik, which was their home for much of the year. They also had a manor in Belgrade, where they spent the winter months. Popov's childhood coincided with a series of monumental political changes in the Balkans. In November 1918, Austria-Hungary disintegrated into a number of smaller states, and its Balkan possessions were incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929). The newly established, Serb-led state was plagued by political infighting among its various constitutive ethnic groups, particularly Serbs and Croats, but also Hungarians and Germans. The young Popov and his family enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle and were far removed from the political turmoil in the country. They boasted a sizeable collection of villas and yachts, and were attended by servants, even on their travels. Popov's father indulged his sons, building a spacious villa by the sea for their exclusive use where they could entertain their friends and host expensive parties. He was also insistent that they receive a quality education. Apart from his native Serbian, Popov was fluent in Italian, German and French by his teenage years. Between the ages of 12 and 16, he attended a lycée in Paris.

In 1929, Popov's father enrolled him into Ewell Castle, a prestigious preparatory school in Surrey. Popov's stint at the school proved to be short lived. After only four months, he was expelled following an altercation with a teacher. He had previously endured a caning at the teacher's hands after being caught smoking a cigarette. Another caning was adjudicated after Popov missed a detention, and so as to evade further corporal punishment, Popov grabbed the teacher's cane and snapped it in two before his classmates. Popov's father subsequently enrolled him at Lycée Hoche, a secondary institution in Versailles, which he attended for the following two years. At the age of 18, Popov enrolled in the University of Belgrade, seeking an undergraduate degree in law. Over the next four years, he became a familiar face in Belgrade's cafes and nightclubs, and had the reputation of a ladies' man. In 1934, Popov enrolled in the University of Freiburg, intent on securing a doctorate in law. Germany had only recently come under the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, but at the time, Popov paid little regard to politics. He had chosen Freiburg because it was relatively close to his native country and he was eager to improve his German-language skills. Germany was already the site of mass book burnings, the first concentration camps had been established and the systematic persecution of Jews had commenced.

Popov began his studies at the University of Freiburg in the autumn of 1935, and in subsequent months, began showing greater interest in politics and voiced his political opinions more vigorously. Around the same time, he befriended a fellow student, Johnny Jebsen, the son of a German shipping magnate. The two grew close, largely due to their raucous lifestyle and a shared interest in sports vehicles. In 1937, Popov began participating in debates at the Ausländer Club, which were held every other Friday evening. He was disappointed that many foreign students appeared to be swayed by the pro-Nazi arguments espoused there. Popov discovered that the German debaters were all hand-picked party members who chose the subject of each debate beforehand and vigorously rehearsed Nazi talking points. He persuaded Jebsen, then the president of the club, to inform him of the debate topics in advance and passed this information along to the British and American debaters. Popov himself delivered two speeches at the club, arguing in favour of democracy. He also wrote several articles for the Belgrade daily Politika, ridiculing the Nazis. In the summer of 1937, Popov completed his doctoral thesis, and decided to celebrate by embarking on a trip to Paris. Before he could leave, he was arrested by the Gestapo, who accused him of being a communist. His movements had been tracked by undercover agents beforehand and his acquaintances questioned. Popov was incarcerated at the Freiburg prison without formal proceedings. When Jebsen received news of his friend's arrest, he called Popov's father and informed him of what had occurred. Popov's father contacted Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović, who raised the issue with Hermann Göring, and after eight days in captivity, Popov was released. He was ordered to leave Germany within 24 hours, and upon collecting his belongings, boarded a train for Switzerland.

He soon arrived in Basel and found Jebsen waiting for him on the station platform. Jebsen informed Popov of the role he played in securing his release. Popov expressed gratitude and told Jebsen that if he was ever in need of any assistance he needed only ask. Upon his return to Dubrovnik in the fall of 1937, Popov began practicing law. In February 1940, he received a message from Jebsen, asking to meet him at the Hotel Serbian King in Belgrade. Popov was shocked to find Jebsen a nervous wreck, chain smoking and drinking exorbitantly. He told Popov that he had joined his family's shipping business after graduating from Freiburg and explained that he needed a Yugoslav shipping license to evade the Allied naval blockade at Trieste. Popov agreed to help Jebsen, and the latter travelled back to Berlin to collect the required documentation. Two weeks later, Jebsen returned to Belgrade, and informed Popov that he had joined the Abwehr, German's military intelligence service. Jebsen's ability to travel across Europe on business trips would remain unimpeded so long as he submitted reports detailing the information he had received from his business contacts. He told Popov he joined the Abwehr to avoid being conscripted into the Wehrmacht. Jebsen said military service was not an option because he suffered from varicose veins. The news came as a surprise to Popov, as his friend had previously expressed anti-Nazi views.

Popov informed Clement Hope, a passport control officer at the British legation in Yugoslavia. Hope enrolled Popov as a double agent with the codename Scoot (he was later known to his handler as Tricycle), and advised him to cooperate with Jebsen. Once accepted as a double agent, Popov moved to London. His international business activities in an import-export business provided cover for visits to neutral Portugal; its capital, Lisbon, was linked to the UK by a weekly civilian air service for most of the war. Popov used his cover position to report periodically to his Abwehr handlers in Portugal. Popov fed enough MI6-approved information to the Germans to keep them happy and unaware of his actions, and was well-paid for his services. The assignments given to him were of great value to the British in assessing enemy plans and thinking. His most important deception was convincing the Germans that the D-Day landings would be in Calais, not Normandy, and was able to report back to MI6 that they fell for this deception, which corroborated Bletchley Park's decryption of Lorenz cipher machine messages. Popov was famous for his playboy lifestyle, while carrying out perilous wartime missions for the British.

In 1944, Popov became a key part of the deception operation codenamed Fortitude. At the time of the operation, he was staying in Portugal. He stayed in Estoril once again, at the Hotel Palácio, between March 31st and April 12th, 1944. When Jebsen was arrested by the Gestapo in Lisbon, the British feared Popov had been compromised and ceased giving him critical information to pass along to the Germans. It was later discovered that the Abwehr still regarded Popov as an asset and he was brought back into use by the British. Jebsen's death at the hands of the Nazis had a profound emotional impact on Popov.

In 1972, John Cecil Masterman published The Double Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945, an intimate account of wartime British military deception. Before its publication, Popov had no intention of revealing his wartime activities, believing that the MI6 would not allow it. Masterman's book convinced Popov that it was time to make his exploits public. In 1974, Popov published an autobiography titled Spy/Counterspy, "a racy account of his adventures that read like a James Bond novel." Miller describes it as "fundamentally accurate, if occasionally embellished". Several of the events described in the book were either entirely fictional, such as a fistfight Popov claimed to have had with a German agent, exaggerated for dramatic effect, or could not be substantiated through subsequently declassified intelligence records. Popov's wife and children were apparently unaware of his past until the book's publication. By the early 1980s, years of chain smoking and heavy drinking had taken a toll on Popov's health. He died in Opio on August 10th, 1981, aged 69. His family said his death came after a long illness. He was predeceased by his brother Ivo, who died in 1980. Popov was the subject of a one-hour television documentary produced by Starz Inc. and Cinenova, titled True Bond, which aired in June 2007. Two other documentaries recounting Popov's exploits, The Real Life James Bond: Dusko Popov and Double Agent Dusko Popov: Inspiration for James Bond, have also been produced.

#second world war #world war ii #world war 2 #wwii #history #german history #spy history #james bond #espionage #MI6 spy #british history #long post #biography

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and “hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

#history #long post #anonymous #ask

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vampiresuns · 4 years

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Anatole’s Family Tree

this is Anatole’s family tree down to it’s basics, and you can have some info about everyone under the cut. I apologise for the intersecting lines, but family colours will help distinguish Florentino and Matilda from the Radošević they married.

hexagon is for he/him, circle for she/her, rounded edges for they/them

Vitale Cassano

Aquarius sun, Scorpio moon, Capricorn rising, Leo Mercury, Scorpio Mars, do NOT fuck with this man.

Former Consul of Vesuvia, responsible for the biggest (to date) expansions in the Vesuvian public space, the reason why Vesuvia was an attractive, rich location with solid public funding which ended up going to hell with Lucio’s administration, but that’s another story.

If he knew that his hard work would go to hell like it did, he would’ve made a coup to change the course of history.

Fuck around and find out in human form. His entire energy is condensed in this post.

Had the art of delivering insults diplomatically down to an art, however. “You’re tacky and I hate you” would destroy a diplomatic relation; “I believe a less heterodox decision which might hold the weight of this agreement with less attached risk” doesn’t.

Friends with Dragoslav Radošević parents, as in those friends you call uncle when they’re not really related to you, but kind of are by default of closeness anyway. Befriended him because he was the most eccentric person in the room and he was bored.

Amparo Mediavilla

Is that even her actual family name? Who the hell are the Mediavilla? Where does her money come from? She says she’s from Karnassos but literally no one knows (she does, she just won’t tell). Has a brother named Seraphim Mediavilla, and that’s all you need to know.

Vitale was well aware she was probably a smuggler, but he likes her surprisingly present honour code anyway. Plus, she was fun, she was different, she was efficient. We stan.

She’s half the reason why the Cassano’s library in the Vesuvian Palazzo they inhabit in the Heart District is basically an open research centre for all of those travellers who seek knowledge. The Cassano have almost always have an open doors policy — the Consul acts in behalf of the people, and the people are allowed to go to the Consul. Amparo expanded and bettered that system, to the point it acted as Vesuvia’s public library and the biggest reason why the Palace didn’t quite have one — it was an understanding that it wasn’t needed. The only time the Consul’s Palazzo has been closed to the people of Vesuvia is during the plague.

Longest lashes ever seen in a person.

Somehow already knew the Radošević, they liked her honest opinions and her distaste for explaining herself.

Luciano “Lucenzo” Cassano

Vitale’s baby brother, they had a significant age difference.

Known later as ‘Great Uncle Lucenzo’, literally no one called him Luciano but Vitale when he wanted him to stop doing something stupid. Not that Lucenzo thought his ideas were stupid, after all, this man was an architect and patron of the arts, and Goldgrave’s favourite loose canon ball.

He was not allowed to set a foot in Firent. When you asked him why, he kept changing the story.

Met his wife at an orgy. Yes, you read that right.

Octavia Cassano

Sweet lady, do no harm, take no shit, appreciates a good laugh in life.

Met Lucenzo at an orgy. She made a joke, and the person she was focusing on didn’t find it funny, but Lucenzo did.

Came from another prominent Vesuvian family. Worked with her BIL, Vitale, in developing social policy plans and judicial reforms in Veusuvia. Which also went to hell. If she was alive today, Portia would be her favourite and would literally fight to have her work with her.

Greenest eyes this side of the straight of seals.

Agrippina & Iovanus Cassano

Amparo’s and Vitale’s children, Agrippina is two years older than Iovanus.

Agrippina stepped down from becoming the Consul out of personal preference. They were a scholar and proficient historian, very talented in the art of mixing a good drink as well. Closest to the Prakran intellectual circles and is one of the notable alumni of the Prakran University. One of her later acquaintances, Rosario Aster, would eventually become Anatole’s tutor in History and Politics before he went to university himself.

Agrippina partly worked as a diplomat attaché, wasn’t a full on freedom fighter simply because there wasn’t an uprising to be one in. If Vitale is the MO of the Cassano, Lucenzo their spark, and Amparo their zest, Agrippina is, surprisingly, their political compass. Agrippina and Lucio weren’t on the best terms, they were in awful terms actually. The Cassano and him are simply like oil and water, it just doesn’t mix.

Iovanus took after Vitale and became the Consul. He was less of a surprise stew than the father, though, and inevitably, his best focus became damage control.

His entire vibe is moomin going on a murderous rage and then holding back. He’s folding the knife. For now. Iovanus was a pain in the ass to have as a predecessor in the position of Consul because this man constantly had his patience tested and his city funds used in things he didn’t want to do. Responsible, along with Agrippina, with the current functioning of the Council of Vesuvia and it’s final opening before Anatole’s times. What that composition and functioning is, is something I might, one day, decide to write down, but not today for the sake of staying on topic.

They’re the closest thing to the “spirit” of a tribune of the plebs I can think of, without like, either of them ending up dead like the Gracci brothers.

Cassandra Cassano

Finally some fucking scientist/mathematician. Mathematician wife of Agrippina. Did some political economy, but that hadn’t been invented yet, mostly liked numbers for the sake of numbers and finding out what she could do with them.

Having in mind that when I say ‘Vesuvian’ I mean solely location and original seat, not ethnicity, comes from a Vesuvian Family which settled in Venterre. Studied in Zadith and Prakra, but met Agrippina during some diplomatic function.

She was someone else’s date, and Agrippina was working with Iovanus is some diplomatic relations, and Agrippina literally said they were happy and willing to stay to seal the negotiations if Cassandra would go out with them. Cassandra was bored off her skin, and said yes.

They married by the end of the year.

Valerian Cassano

Iovanus’ husband. Renaissance man in the humanities department, very savant, a virtuoso, but his true passion was the performing arts. Darling of Vesuvian opera and theatre.

Met Iovanus through Lucenzo (patron of the arts, remember?). Iovanus went to every single of his plays for a year, made some very light advances as a “fan”, until Valerian asked him what his deal was. Iovanus was disarmed by gorgeous light amber eyes and witty snark, having no option but to admit his feelings.

Cemented the Cassano-Radošević relationship with Goldgrave. Most of the family thought it healthy for a dose of ‘get of your high-horse’ check.

Hated the Colosseum with a black tar vitriol.

He was Elysian Radošević’s (Anatole’s great grandmother on the Radošević side) best friend.

Matilda Cassano & Krešmir Radošević

Here’s where the story gets a bit sad. Inherited all of the snark of Valerian, but wanted nothing to do with her family’s ventures.

They just didn’t click. She always thought her fathers were very dedicated men, but needed to let loose a little. She was here for a fun time, not a long time. Which was sadly, literal.

For the longest time, it was an understanding that her cousin Cassiopeia would inherit the consulship from Iovanus, which Matilda didn’t love. She didn’t want the Consulship, but thought she was entitled to it. She could be the Consul and Cassiopeia do the job.

Cassiopeia did not like the idea, specially because within the Cassano it’s an open rule that the title falls on whomever willingly wants to take the mantel, number one. Number two, it came with an awareness of your social position and what good you could do with it, having in mind you weren’t really necessary for society. Someone else could be the Consul, the people, if given a chance, would govern themselves. It’s part of the Cassano mythos that surrounds them that they’re a protective line between misused political power and the people of Vesuvia. So, no, Matilda shouldn’t be the Consul.

Honestly, did Iovanus and Valerian spoil her too much? They have no clue. They just think she might be wired that way, because she always disliked it.

She married the fourth of the equivalent generation of the Radošević siblings, Krešmir Radošević.

Krešmir was a bit of a loose shot, doing “useful” things because he had to, not because he wanted to, so they took to each other like fish to water. They both wanted to have fun, the problem was they wanted to have fun with no respect of the world around them. Krešmir had middle child syndrome, which became worse after his youngest sibling, Ilnya, died at 27.

They had two children: Vladislav Radošević and Valeriy “Valerius” Radoševic.

Sadly, they passed away when Vlad was 14 and Val 4. They went on a holiday, leaving the kids with Mircea Radošević (Krešmir older brother) and Florentino Cassano (Matilda’s cousin and Mircea’s husband), as Iovanus and Valerian were in no place (out of grief) to take care of the children, and Mircea and Florentino were their de facto care takers already.

Now, onto the Radošević, so mind you, we’re going back a couple of generations.

Dragoslav Radošević

PRIME recipient of the Radošević tradition of breeding polymaths/”renaissance people”. This man spoke 6 languages, knew astronomy, economy, mathematics, accountancy, a bit of law and a whole lot of history. Excellent chess player.

No one’s exactly sure what the hell he did, he did too many things. Some sort of diplomacy was clearly his most usual job. Big friends with Agrippina, Cassandra and Iovanus. Everyone thought he’d marry Agrippina but both of them dry heaved at the possibility.

He was a bit of a character though. Very conspicuous man with particular rituals. Taciturn man, too, but overall amicable.

Had a very long, stable marriage with Elysian, his wife. Survived the death of two of their children. The death of Ilnya hit Dragoslav more than anyone would expect, but he had a very “let me grief in private” stance. The key to understand a Radošević is that their mentality is “whatever happens to you, whatever life throws at you, you find a way to survive it.”

His is a family of eccentrics, inventors, patron of the arts, humanists and scientists; when he says his family, he means the Cassano too.

No rumour ever mattered to any of them, and Dragoslav & Elysian were a prime example of it. Theirs is a family of academics full of anxieties about the world surrounding them, whose sorrows were scars they rarely showed. Private yet with an extensive, and international, circle of acquaintances who deemed them all charmingly strange on their best days; prideful, analytic, often with a drink in hand.

Had a sister who had three partners, all of them women, too.

Elysian Radošević, nee Juriša

Wallachian by birth, first person in her family (aside from one aunt the Juriša did NOT speak about) to marry someone who wasn’t a Wallachian in a couple of generations. Not that she minded, everything I said about Drago, applies to Elysian.

She was a child of high society, bonded with Valerian, her best friend, out of their love for Operettas, though while Valerian went pro, she was an amateur — still, very good at it.

Excellent piano player, loved a well crafted, ingenious garden.

Beacon of the Radošević righteous rage. The Radošević are meant to be from a place called Balkovia, which is modelled after Yugoslavia, with many of the “bumps” in actual history colliding (A/N: Anatole is a latine-slav like me, for a reason). Elysian was the friend of artists and partisans, and had absolutely zero respect for certain kinds of leeches in political power. Zero national pride in this one, but at least, she came from a place were partisans stood (or used to) stand up to injustice.

In her dignified clothes with her amiable smile, she will bite ankles. Try her, you just try Elysian Radošević and she’ll remind you of all those people who ever said: They shall not pass.

Ambrozije Radošević

Diplomat, politician, eldest of Dragos and Ely’s children.

Inherited his father’s temperance but also had Elysian’s "Excuse Me, What The Fuck Is This Shit” attitude. Still, many times when he talked about his job, he had to stop his mother to go out and bite ankles.

Was the Radošević rage an answer against the grief of living and growing, against the cycle of dying and rebirth, and a cry of this is not enough, what I get is not enough? Maybe. Ambrozije liked to theorise about it.

Married Eloise Isaković and had two children: Kuzma and Lucija.

Best fencer of his generation.

Eloise Isaković

Didn’t take the Radošević surname solely to spite her family. She was disinherited for wanting to marry a Radošević. Her father said “if you want to marry then be a housewife for those freaks and I’ll take you out of University.”

The Radošević were like not in my fucking watch.

You bet Elysian and Dragoslav had words about that.

Percy Shelley, if Percy had been a woman, and also an anthropologist.

Will make femur jokes.

Kuzma & Lucija Radošević

Less in the centre of things than the rest of the family, out of virtue of “dear God, I get they’re my family but these people are fucking weird.”

The Addams energy was too much for them.

Kuzma is an alchemist and an inventor, moved to Zadith to study, never came back. He has two daughters and a wife, though.

Lucija became a diplomat for Balkovia, has a seat beyond the straight of seals. More traditional for diplomacy than Ambrozije by all means.

Very Dad please not now, but she does love the old man.

Married, never had children.

Neuma Radošević

Painter, a gay who can do maths, so that’ll have you knowing she’s stronger than you already. Perspective does not scare her.

Little does.

(Moths do, for some reason).

Claimed to have zero magical ability, but it was heavily disputed because how the hell did she paint like that.

Travelled a lot with her bohemian artist found family.

Never married.

Anatole loved watching her paint as a kid, she taught Valeriy to paint and about art as well. Big difference was Valeriy had a better hand for it than Anatole did, who literally can’t draw to save his skin.

Mircea’s favourite.

Mircea Radošević

Distinguished man, owns my heart.

“That was nOT POLITE”

Pretty level headed, has a big heart and a lot of will to help people. Just don’t be impolite, or he won’t like you.

Yes, he’s a libra.

An Architect, got to meet the other Architect in the family Lucenzo Cassano. That’s, in fact, how he met Florentino. Of course Lucenzo had an apprenticeship for Dragoslav son, but of course. The rest is history. Longest lasting marriage in both the Cassano and the Radošević tree by virtue of them gaving gotten together fairly young, and in the furture dying of a very, very old age.

He enjoyed travelling and the finer, beautiful things in life. If you want to equate his views to anyone in the real world, think about William Morris saying “I do not want art for a few; any more than education for a few; or freedom for a few.”

Aristically, somewhere between Gaudi and Morris.

Worked in several restoration projects both in Balkovia and Vesuvia.

Lived in Vesuvia on and off with Florentino and the children, which meant Vlad and Val were raised right between the vortex of everything that is the Cassano and the Radošević.

As polite and diplomatic that he is, he isn’t really a doormat, and if there’s anyone he would throw hands for it’s for his children (yes, he sees them as his children), and Anatole. Disrispect tha boy in front of him and he will throtle you and say you did it to yourself.

Florentino Cassano

Nicknamed Floren, Florence, Florens, Flolo, Tino, Tinino, Antonino.

Very responsible, big sense of family. Closest in personality to Vitale Cassano, his grandather.

Son of Agrippina and Cassandra, took after Cassandra’s love for numbers, but mixed it with Agrippina’s eye for politics and his Aunt Octavia’s knack for political economy (even if it had’t been invented yet).

Financier and investor worked in the public sector, ran the coffer of the Council of Vesuvia for a while, but quitted out of management differences with certain people in Court and up. Still very willing to help people of all backgrounds manage their assets though.

A bit of a hardass, when Matilda and Krešmir died he said of course they would, as it was very in the likes of them to get so lost in the moment and their ideal world where they had no earhtly responsibilities to forget they had two young sons.

Still, when Vlad and Val first called him “Dad” or “Father”, respectively, he kinda cried big tears. Freaked Vlad out because he thought he had done something wrong. Florentino was quick to tell him he hadn’t.

Ilnya Radošević & Blasio Abadzić

Ilnya was another one of those Radošević that you weren’t exactly sure what the hell was it that they did, because they seemed to have a lot of eggs in different baskets. Was an astronomer, though.

Strongest intuition/six senth in the Radošević. Another of those cases where it was definitely magic (Ilnya was clairvoyant) but they all passed it off as having another explanation.

Was the most joyful, had the most contagious laughter and the quickest, most wicked sense of humour.

I’m not entire sure how Blasio and them met, they haven’t told me yet, but it was one of those meetings which changes your life forever.

Blasio is equally irreverent, if not more. This one post of a man playing the guitar and an old man dancing to it is the exact vibe Blasio had (he’s the old man dancing, the man playing the guitar would be his grandson Milenko — who’s Anatole’s cousin however many times removed).

They lived in Vesuvia. Ilnya was a court scientist. The Cassano library has a try globe map that was their work with a court cartographer. It has a map of the region, of the world, and of the stars for navigation purposes.

Ilnya died of sepsis at the age of 27, going on 28. To this day, no one knows exactly what took them out.

After Ilnya died, the Cassano offered to take Blasio and their twins Atanasie (pronounced Ah-ta-na-SY) and Violeta in with them to ease of the expences of raising two kids as a single father. He accepted.

Blasio was a composer and dramaturg. He took it as a personal goal not to let the joy escape from his life after becoming a widower. Said carrying on with joy and irreverence was his job, as if to preserve his spouse’s legacy.

Vladislav Radošević

Whatever name theme you sense with him and his wife, don’t @ me about it!!! I remade this entire family on a whim, I will take my headcanons about other things and build from them.

Eldest of the V² brothers, if people had soulmate marks, his soulmate would be his brother. Vlad has always felt responsible for him and, unlike him, remembers much of how they parents actually were or how carelessly negligent they could be. His defence against grief was becoming taciturn and “distancing” himself from things. It didn’t always really work for him, but he sure did try.

Grew up with the mistaken feeling that the rest of their families were taking care of him and his brother as a favour. He eventually wrapped his head around the idea that it wasn’t a favour.

Called Mircea and Florentino “Father”/”Dad” for the first time when he was 16, never went back. It wasn’t like he didn’t spent a lot of time being brought up by them due to his own parents absences.

Taciturn, remarkably inventive and intelligent, has a bit of trouble coming out of his shell. Prefers to observe, then pounce. Other than this, his main personality trait is “I love my wife, I love my son.”

An alchemist, works in what would be closest to biochemical engineering.

Mircea and Florens discovered he would be very suited for that field because when he was a kid he kept designing buildings to show Mircea. They clearly showed he had not a predisposition to become an architect, but whatever weird, inexplicable mazes he created always came with solutions attached and clever mechanisms.

He’s a problem solver, he’s just shaking years of bad mental health habits of his shoulders.

A scorpio and a cat person. Has two cats with Louisa, Kiki and Keke (their actual names are Cyrila and Cecilia).

Yes, his brother is also a scorpio, yes his son is also a scorpio. They get along, however.

Met Louisa in some sort of medical-alchemy conference/symposium (whatever that would be aplicable to the time, what matters to me is that you get the idea). Louisa didn’t like his attitude, called him out, and Vlad simply blinked, apologised, and did better.

A second apology and further conversations ended up with them falling in love.

If Vlad knows what allowing himself to love and live feels like, it is because of Louisa and Anatole.

He gets pegged.

Speaks five languages and won a regional fencing championship when he was in his early 20s. Still thinks his brother is better at fencing than he is.

Louisa De Silva

Latin American, eldest of three sisters (Paris and Alma being the other two De Silva sisters). She emmigrated from her native country to a. study medicine b. because there was a Dictatorship at the time, and her parents suspected Louisa would not keep quiet enough to guarantee her safety.

She personally swore never to go back until there were no active traces of said dictatorship left in her country. Nothing, not even the war that eventually rose up in Balkovia has made her change her mind, and probably nothing will. Once she is set on what is right, she is set.

Met Vlad as mentioned above. She didn’t appreciate his initial “careful” cynicism, but also didn’t believe he was as insufferable as most people thought he was. Someone with attention to detail, determination and who prefers to stand back from social situations, who hasn’t actually done anything nefarious, offensive or in bad taste isn’t a bad person.

Once she paid him a visit and he opened the door shirtless because he thought it was his brother, and Louisa almost wheezed in front of him.

“I’m going to sleep with Radošević” “But you don’t have to?” “No, no, I’m gonna.”

Speaks five languages.

Speaking of the war I mentioned: there was a war in Balkovia which began little before Anatole was born, and therefore around 29 years before the events of the game. At the time, Vlad and Louisa were already together, and planning to move to Vesuvia. However, the war began, Vlad felt torn about leaving and not helping, not that he wanted to admit it, and Louisa said “well, I did not leave a country ridden with injustice to passively see war crimes being committed.” As soon as she could after Anatole was born she volunteered as a field doctor.

And she is good. “Louisa De Silva” would absolutely resonate in Nazali’s or Julian’s fellow doctor knowledge level of notoriously good.

Aquarius sun, Saggitarius moon, she’s active, independent, unconventional, friendly, very understanding and highly humanitarian. Louisa loves people and cannot stand injustice. Loves and craves learning and is very sincere. She can be a bit impulsive, but she’s good at coming back from it.

Much of Anatole’s sense of social duty and sometimes even social fight is due to Louisa.

Vlad and Val call her Lulu. Anatole always calls her Mamá. Always. It doesn’t matter what language he’s speaking, she is his Mamá.

Louisa De Silva, santa patrona del pueblo que lucha.

Often dragged Vlad and Val into some of her schemes. Val loves to complain about it, but he actually adores his SIL.

Valeriy “Valerius” Radošević of the Cassano of Vesuvia, former Consul of Vesuvia and Court Advisor.

Here is where I would like to clarify and remind the (very patient) reader that this is my own interpretation of Canon, and I’ve triedto build with it from what little we were told of this specific character, Vesuvian lore, and the story I wanted to tell. I tried to do my best with the interpretation of the character, but know you’re in no obligation to adhere to my ideas.

Some people can call him Val, namely, his parents, his nephew, his SIL and his brother. Literally anyone else he will bite your head.

Inherited his mother’s and his namesakes witty snark, even if it’s not always witty.

I have the personal hc that Lucio cannot, for the life of him, pronounce slavic names, so Valeriy became Valerius, though his family already called him Valerius because it was the one nickname he accepted.

However, for the most part, his family calls him Valeriy, in contrast to Vesuvian citizens, who call him Valerius.

Doesn’t remeber his parents, and doesn’t like to think about them. It is very tragic that they died, but they left him, and he has no time for people like that. His brother, however, had always been there. So have been Mircea and Florentino.

I’ve always hc he had one big love in his youth, but couldn’t actually stand the idea of an empty marriage based on status and decided to never marry.

Wasn’t always this high and mighty. He has always been a complicated man, with complicated tastes and even a snob, but he was raised in two multicultural families, based in two multicultural cities. What I personally hc happening here is that he truly hates his job. He does like the sense of status and the power that comes with it, but the responsibility? The state of things when he took over from Iovanus? The paperwork? The staleness of it all? And to do it for a city that ate itself up?

He would’ve given his cousin Cassiopeia his left arm to take the position for him, but in the end, he was subject of what he thought everyone expectations were. He feared more not being enough in the eyes of his grandfather, who did not want to repeat the same mistakes he did with Matilda, than saying “Nono Iovanus I actually hate this job with all my soul.”

But then again, the power attached to it.

I fully believe that if you had given Valerius a position that was, say, a cultural authority of sorts? Where he could focus on the arts, theatre, food and those sort of things? He would’ve thrived. The city would’ve been leagues away from where it was if he would’ve been allowed to solely focus on art.

Instead, he has to fix people’s problems, and he doesn’t want to. It isn’t that he doesn’t care in the slightest — he does, in the distant sense of people should not be dying left and right, and cities should be ran by competent Statespeople. Of course he believes that! He’s a Radošević and a Cassano of Vesuvia, who do you take him for. It was his family that 500 years ago stepped up into the position due to their sheer excellence, of course he believes that.

Just for the love of everything you deem holy, do not fucking leave that fixing to him. He’s begging you, and he doesn’t actually beg

(At least that’s what he says in public)

While he doesn’t quite like magic, or rather, doesn’t quite understand it and takes a lot of self proclaimed magicians as frauds (and an insult to good peope’s intelligence), he’s never had a judgamanetal attitude towards Anatole’s magical sensitivies. Most of what he sees about it is his inordinate aptitude for languages. He tends to take it as his nephew being simply Better, because if this man is something, that thing is proud.

He eases off after the events of the game where he can simply be a court advisor and give himself a chance. Not that it excuses or ammends any mistake that he committed, but it’s a place to start. He can do that, he thinks.

His was the decision to close during the Plague, and for the first time, the Palazzo the Cassano inhabit in the Heart District to the City.

His grandafther Valerian was (is) still alive while he’s the Consul, and tried to reach out to help him when he began to do deals with the Devil many times, but Valerius sucks at letting people help him. Officially worse than his brother at it.

He is, however, the best fencer in the family, and he is one of the best singers, he just doesn’t do any of both much in front of people. What he does when he’s at home is none of your business.

While I could feel pages of headcanons about this man, but I will try to stay on topic, and mostly address my previous post about the subject of Valerius’ and Anatole’s relationship, which, now that I’ve reworked the families into a story I do feel excited to tell most of it no longer applies.

The timeline is p much the same, both with Valerius, and with Anatole travelling with tutors to study and visiting whenever he could.

His feelings when Anatole dies stay the same. The difference is Anatole's family does know he dies when he stands as the Apprentice (normally, he doesn’t, he just stands as an Arcana OC). During the time of the plague, Vlad and Louisa travelled to Vesuvia to help, so they do know their son died.

What ends up breaking Val is not only losing his nephew (and again for what) but also seeing his brother and his SIL completely break. It was his job to protect him, and he didn't do it. He wasn’t enough.

I headcanon that when Anatole doesn’t die, one of his deals with the Devil is that no harm comes (from the Court) to Anatole. I also hc that for someone who has such pride in his intellect (which is there, he is pretty smart) he did rather unsuitable dealings with the Devil, by which I mean he dealt in really awful terms that he, himself, would’ve berated anyone else to have done out of their sheer idiocy of not fully using their leverage.

The main difference with the post is that Anatole and Valerius do not suffer their family anymore. The Radošević and the Cassano are opinionated and very "If something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us" but they're good, eccentric, people-leaning people, albeit wealthy. Hence, why I personally hc that what happens here is that he hates the job but loves the status, but the status carries the responsibility of people asking him for things, and he doesn’t want to be asked for things. He will be in his room if you need him, and please do not need him.

(In Anatole’s case, it's finding his place in the world. It’s a journey of diaspora and of becoming. To win, you must first know yourself)

Vlad and Louisa adore him to bits still, complicated as he is.

Anatole and Valerius do fight in some of the LI routes and during those three years before the game begins.

Everything else stands.

Atanasie and Violeta Radošević, and Aurora Radošević

Thank you with bearing with me so far, I love you.

Atanasie and Violeta are twins, cousins of Vlad and Valeriy, children of Ilnya and Blasio, the happy eccentric duo.

Grew up right amid the Radošević and the Cassano, and it really goddamn shows. They’re en aunt and uncle/counsins saying criptic things with a drink in hand, and you’re not entirely sure if they’re portetns of doom or not, but good for them!

Best violinists in the family though. Play the most instruments as well, as Blasio was a composer and multi-instrumentalist. Neither of them are professional musicians though.

Atanasie is a traveller and explorer, think of the eccentric explorer archetype without the Colonialism nor the grave robbing. Would, objectively, get along the best with Julian. He’s another of those people who knows a lot of things about different topics, but now like cursed/forbidden/borderline illegal things.

If Amparo Mediavilla had been alive to know him, she would’ve been really proud.

Violeta is a botanist and garden designer. The palace did ask her to work with them, but she went No ❤️. She, however, is responsible for the current design of the Palazzo’s winter garden, which in her biased yet correct opinion is the best room in it.

High femme eccentric queen, married Aurora who used to travel around with Atanasie. She’s an archeologist.

They have one son, Milenko, who is... an entire party.

Aelius Anatole Radoševic De Silva, of the Cassano of Vesuvia, former secretary of the Council of Vesuvia, and Consul of Vesuvia

Good ol’ Nana

Technically, that would be his entire ass title (which he correctly insists it’s a public office, not a nobiliary title, because a Consul is a public servant, and people just got mad with power for to long)

He hates it.

Please just call him Anatole, or Aelius if you’re not that daring.

I’m going to use this to talk a bit about Consul Anatole: along with Nadia, he introduced a series of social reforms, solidified them, and changed a lot of aspects of the way in which the City was run, in order to make corruption harder (Nana’s pride and joy are his Anti-Corruption directives) and to protect the reform on themsleves.

Adamantly against having a statue of him. Which was respected while he was alive, but a couple of generations down, they eventually built one, near the main square.

It points east, which is where the sun rises. It’s a metaphor for hope, and for Vesuvia to have the resilence to await for the dawn.

Milenko Radošević

His vibe is this picture of Javier Botet, meeting this meme, and the video of the old man and the younger man playing guitar, where he would be playing guitar. Oh, also, this picture of a guy floating in the Zadar floods of 2017, from this post. If this was a modern AU rest assured that WOULD be Milenko, and he doesn’t even live in Zadar.

When you see internet memes about how Slavs/people from the Adriatic are kind of weird, I want you to think of Milenko.

So yes, you would see him on a floatie down the canals of Vesuvia.

He’s a journalist and a writer, which has nothing to do with him being a character.

Tried to summon the Devil to show the Devil isn’t real. After the events of the game, if Anatole is involved in defeating the devil, he’s always offended he didn’t bring him along, he had points to prove.

Plays the guitar and the double bass.

Looks like an 80s goth, and we will not question how that’s mildly anachronistic. His favourite band would be The Cure. Also would have a soft spot for The Cranberries which he definitely took from Anatole.

When Belle and Sebastian wrote “colour my life with the chaos of trouble” in the Boy With The Arab Strap they were talking specifically about Milenko.

Chugs respect women juice harder than most people. If he chokes on it, then that’s how he dies.

Not allowed in several bars, has at least one sworn enemy in the Vesuvian nobility.

Him, Amparo Cassano (she’s down below) and Anatole are all in the same age range, and they’re a force to be reckon with.

Thank you for staying with me up to this point! We’re about to make another jump back. We’re following Lucenzo Cassano’s line now.

Atilia Cassano & Anzano Ventura

Atilia is the child of Lucenzo and Octavia. Closest thing to a community organiser. Need someone to organise a party? Atilia. A meeting? Atilia. To allocate human resources to enact some policy? Atilia.

Anzano is the son of two High Priests in Vesuvia from one of the temples in the Temple District, which is how they met Atilia.

Anzano doesn’t have a fixed profession, and takes things up according to their interests. Which are varied.

Cares more about their cat than they do about some people, both of them. Neither of them are the kind to wish ill on other people, but if ill falls on you as consequences of your actions, then that’s on you buddy.

Some of the things Anzano Ventura has said, without context: “My heart is green with hope.”

“Figure out what fortune has to hand you and spit twice in the face of the Gods.” It’s a saying from where they’re originally from. They’ve never properly explained what it means.

“These are not gentle waters we are sailing.” There is context for this one. They said this when the Plague began to surface in Vesuvia.

Atilia died a couple years before Anzano, who died of Plague.

This is how Anzano would’ve looked like in his early twenties.

Cassiopeia Cassano & Iris Ravella

If Valerius had not become the Consul, it would’ve fell on Cassiopeia. She was a Vesuvian diplomat and politician, member of the Council. Would’ve become the Consul anyway, but, respecting Iovanus’ wishes and trusting (correctly or not, it’s up to you) Valeriy’s potential, stepped aside.

Truly did not resent Matilda for harbouring peculiar feelings against her because Iovanus didn’t want to let her have the Consulship. Nor she did on Valeriy for his mistakes.

Iris comes from another prominent Vesuvian family. Theirs is a family of merchants, based in Centre City, who weren’t particularly thrilled about Iris marrying a Cassano.

Iris cared very little. They did it anyway.

Amparo Cassano

Last but not ever least.

Ballet dancer, fencer, deeply invested in politics. Amparo takes after the OG Amparo, her great aunt Amparo Mediavilla, in her daring, often without explanation ways, as she does in her honour code.

Sarcastic wit, a little bit petty. Would be one of those people who go “I licked it, so it’s mine.”

Takes up an interest in languages, as well as runes and tarot, though she’s not as good with languages as Anatole is. She says life gave him a magical advantage or otherwise she would’ve bested him. Anatole doesn’t doubt it.

Would climb to your window to impress you, with a sword to her hip. She’s that kind of bi.

Would definitely dance to Caramelldansen, and so would Milenko. Anatole would Not, but would look at Amparo dead in the eye and dance it when they’re alone, because he knows no one will believe her.

She calls him a ‘motherfucker’, to which he replies: “Do I LOOK like Oedipus to you.”

Loud mouthed, but with a good heart.

While her an Milenko are, technically, not actually related, they act like they are. They don’t care that’s not how it works.

Comrade Cassano? Comrade Cassano.

The world is her oyster and she’s about to slurp it.

Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end of this list. Means the world to me, as I’m happy to share the Radošević-Cassano with anyone who is willing to listen.

#aelius anatole #the radosevic-cassano #this? this is Deep Lore #i'm finally done holy shit

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robyndehood · 3 years

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My Son's Story (pt. 1)

DISCLAIMER: I Know it's a bit of a long read, but it's important. Please read. I promise it isn't boring. Thank you!

Hi Everyone,

Intro

This is my first real attempt at Tumblr. Please contact me if anything I post violates a rule or is not considered appropriate. Anything I post, I truly mean no harm nor offense to anyone. But I need to write daily again to regain my gift and share it with the world. I have been working on my version of the "great American novel" for years. As a child, I was well on my way to becoming a successful author, but people had other ideas for my career path - and to put it bluntly - my contribution to society. Writer's block set in and then what was second nature to me - creative writing, became a lost skill. Or maybe a distant memory. Writers know that half the struggle as an artist is the dilemma of our own aspiration towards perfection. But nothing is perfect. It is a social construct and the antithesis of true beauty.

The Ultimate Birthday Gift

So, that said, let's talk about my son. He's three - he's actually turning four in December. He was born on my birthday and has been the greatest gift that I have ever received. I won't pretend that he is perfect or even generally compliant with my directions. But he's loving. He's empathetic. He's brilliant. He's beautiful. And most of all, he is the sweetest person I have ever met.

I am going to go slightly off-topic for a bit; just to paint the full picture. I don't want to ramble and I am definitely a believer that a short and to the point message is almost always far superior to a long and complicated message. But bear with me because this snippet of the backstory is essential. And my son's story is important.

Appalachia

We live in Pittsburgh, part of the Appalachian Mountain Range. There is no other way to say it than the unadulterated, ugly truth of it - Pittsburgh is racist. Very racist. Beyond that, there is a general lack of common courtesy to outsiders, customers of businesses, other patrons in stores, etc. And the rudeness, is actually pretty much unrelated to the racism. It sounds strange and surely, minorities who are on the receiving end of it would certainly assume that racism was the reason why they said "excuse me," "thank you," etc. and about half the time are ignored like they're a ghost. But don't get it twisted - there are many times the aforementioned behaviors by many Pittsburghers IS induced by racism AND a lack of common courtesy and manners. You see, their deep-seated tribalism is indoctrinated into many Pittsburghers so completely from a young age that they know no different. It would be difficult for them to understand this article and I'd bet anyone ten bucks that if enough PIttsburghers read this post - they will attack my analysis of Pittsburghese culture as though the post itself is a blitz on the entire city.

Brown or White?

I am latin and there aren't many latins in Pittsburgh. But when we moved to Pittsburgh when I was in seventh grade, people knew my last name. Summer had just passed and I do get brown. I can get brown very quickly in the right type of sun and I get brown eventually in the sun that exists in cloudy and northern Pittsburgh. In seventh grade, some boys decided it would be funny to call me "estupido," and up until two years ago, I avoided sun exposure that would reveal my "brownness" like the plague.

Subversive, Subconscious, and Secret Racism

So, not long after I started that strategy, I was treated as white. (Side note: latins can be any race; but it seems that societal constructs are seeking to change this long accepted designation and categorize latins as some in between, brown race and not an ethnicity. To be honest, I am ok with that and now proud to be latin.)

The reality of being treated white in Pittsburgh for many years was that I learned what white people actually said when they were only with other whites. The most common thing that was said was one white person mumbling to other white people that someone was a "dumb n******" or a "dumb monkey." I've heard white adults refer to children who were black as "n***lets." But it was always this crocodile smiling through their teeth behavior. They'd never dare say it to a black person. Instead, they'd just indirectly discriminate against them.

I do have to mention that by no means do all Pittsburghers behave this way. It's just too many of them. I don't know the percentage, but if I had to guess I'd say - 50% plus.

Yes, Racism Happens All The Time Even if You Don't See it Happen

Many white people will tell you that racism is gone because they don't ever observe it and Obama was president - a black president. Therefore, everything is now over. I can admit that I have experienced my share of discrimination when my skin darkens. But I had no clue how bad it was for black people out here until my son became the recipient of the ugliness of it all. To me, racists are by definition ignorant cowards; so it makes sense they'd pick on a small boy whose only family is his mother.

Evil Always Starts Slowly

If one reviews history, every evil dictator or regime began slowly chipping away human rights. By the time the citizens realized the dire state of their country, it was too late. Their freedoms were already taken away and mechanisms to fight back had also been methodically erased.

When my son was born - a boy who is half African (his father (if you want to call him that since he is basically not involved) is from Ghana); no issues arose for the first two and a half years. But then the indirect discrimination started. The same rules that applied for white children didn't apply to him. I could give so many examples. But let's just say, as a rambunctious boy, if my son mimicked a white boy's same rambunctious behavior, we were confronted and the white family was not confronted.

One day I made an appointment for my son's hair to get cut at Philip Pelusi. They made the appointment knowing that he was only two and a half. The receptionist let me know that the stylist was a "Grade A Stylist," so I would have to pay more. I was fine with paying more; cool. After the appointment was made, I mentioned to the receptionist that my son was mixed race. We ended the call and I began to get my son ready to leave. Within ten minutes, the salon called back and informed me that they didn't/wouldn't cut my son's "type of hair." I promptly returned the call and explained his hair was curly, that's all. They blatantly lied and told me that the stylist doesn't cut ANY curly hair. Right. So, if a white lady came in with curly hair she would be turned away? I doubt it. Either way, the stylist is "Grade A." She is also licensed to cut hair by the state. Shouldn't a requirement for state licensing require one to know how to cut all "types of hair"?; I saved the recording, by the way, and still have it.

As months progressed, little by little wherever my son and I went in "white areas," we felt hostile vibes. Other incidents occurred that couldn't be proven as racial discrimination, but I knew. Whites behaved as though my son didn't deserve to be around them.

Southern Hospitality

We traveled down south a few times in the past year. Yes, some of the south is very racist still to this day. But not where we drove. Suddenly people responded when we said "excuse me," "thank you," etc. No white families prevented my son from playing with their children. No one told me my son was a nuisance or put out that vibe.

The Lesser of Two Evils?

But we had to come back each time because we live here and I've been working my way out of the projects that I have lived in for four years. Shootings. Open drug use and sales. The smell of crack in the hallways. Infestations in other apartments that come our way no matter what we try. People peeing on the hallway floors. Yes, seriously. Young children being encouraged to bully and beat up other kids. Children stealing or attempting to steal my son's toys because their mothers buy them none. Gamgmembers as young as twelve.

So, I concluded: "yes, we will move, but until then, we only sleep in our apartment and we do not play at the projects' playground." I figured IF I saved a certain number of money since I have a car that I saved for and bought last year, we would make it in our new, chosen city (Tampa or Jacksonville).

But then the racism against my son in the "white playgrounds" became worse. One day he was playing with a five year old boy at an indoor playground. The mother had no issue with it. The father of the boy arrived half an hour in, promptly scooped the boy away from my son, and told his son that he had told him he was not to "play with n*****s." My son couldn't understand why he could no longer play with his new friend and kept calling to him, "friends again!" while sobbing because he thought he had upset the boy. I had to leave with my son because of it.

Another time, a ten-year-old boy taunted my son on an outdoor playground and called him a "dumb monkey." My son first attempted to yell, "I NOT DUMB MONKEY," a few times; but the boy persisted and even smirked in my direction. My son ran to me and asked me to make the boy stop. No parent in sight and again, I just had to leave with my son.

Enough is Enough

Finally, last month or so, my son and I were at our usual laundromat doing laundry. We had finished. My son skipped a few steps in front of me and tried to open the glass door but couldn't push the bar to open it because of his height. He placed (yes, placed..lightly) his foot on the door to try to give it a bit more of a nudge. I was a few seconds behind him so just pushed the door open and we went to our car to load our clean laundry into it. In retrospect, I saw an older white male go next door to the beer store right after we walked out of the laundromar. The beer store employee approached us as I loaded my laundry into my car and then intended to leave.

The beer store employee told me he was getting "reports that kids were kicking glass." He said kids. Plural. And what he said made me envision a bunch of grade school kids kicking around broken glass on the sidewalk or parking lot. I responded calmly that "I have one kid and he's been with me the whole time. He wasn't involved." The beer store employee wanted drama to transpire. It was obvious. He said in a threatening manner: "Just so you know, I have cameras." My son and I exchanged glances because we were confused. What kids? Kids were kicking glass. Where? What glass?

Again though, I calmly responded that my son wasn't involved and he should check his cameras. He told me he was calling the cops. So I got my three-year-old son in his car seat and set a time limit of ten minutes to wait. We weren't running when he didn't do anything. The cops of course showed up about a minute later. It's ridiculous because in our projects (different police department than the laundromat police department), there have been shootings where children were outside playing when several clips were emptied into crowds and the police station is a block away. I know people called and it took an hour for them to arrive on scene.

Long story short, the laundromat cops knew it was a bullshit call. The supposed "kicking glass" was because my son placed his foot on the door to try to open it when we were LEAVING. The police eventually informed us that was the alleged "kicking of glass." There was no kicking that happened. The door wasn't even dirtier, let alone damaged because my son tried to use his foot to open the door. Lightly, by the way.

Even though the police were kind to my son, for the next week, my usual gregarious child was terrified to go anywhere. He eventually told me it was because "the cops will chase me and take me to jail because I bad guy now."

He's over it now. Mostly.

But we still have to pick between the craziness of playing at our aforementioned projects or going to a "white playground" and risking my son being rejected. It's usually a 50/50 shot that he will be rejected. If he gets rejected, he gets very upset.

Again, these are problems we never faced on our travels down the southern eastern seaboard. We didn't get treated like this at the destinations or on the journey by car to and from the destinations.

I knew we were living in an extremely racist and rude area, but one day I found this. It's a map delineating the results of a study conducted by Google and others regarding the level of racism in different parts of the country.

I already knew this much. But it's good to know I'm right that we are in the worst part of the U.S. for racism and the kindness we received traveling to those certain southern states was no illusion. And I did ask locals before I found this map if I was right that people are kinder to all colors in whichever given area.

Not the Worst Thing That Happened But the Last Straw

People talk a lot about Karens these days. This lady looked like she jumped right out of a Karen meme. My son was two feet away from her while we waited in line and she said as obnoxiously as possible: "Can you handle this? Please get him out of MY space." Yeah, I didn't let it go. At all. Her argument was that she said "please" so it's OK to make my son feel like a "this" and not a little boy. I held him while he sobbed. Long story short, I decided right then anywhere has to be better than this.

It isn't me just knowing people are being nasty to my son and I'm upset. He understands. He had an evaluation for something and he tested very well. He cried about each of these incidents. He just wants to make people smile and make friends.

So, next month we are going for it. I'm no where close to the aforementioned goal. I have some savings. We may end up in shelters at first after savings dry up in a few weeks. But we cannot survive up here. Nor can we advance here.

Side Note

I wrote this mostly to inform others of the status quo and reality of racism and the real effects it has on one tiny boy. And I know it will just get worse if we stay since it's this bad already.

But if you anyone knows of any resources to help us get on our feet in a month in Tampa or Jacksonville (Tampa is my first choice, but either one.) I have applied for housing, even though I didn't and don't want to go back to projects; but I'd take one down there over watching my son endure so much pain any day of the week.

Ok, so final part: I'm going to say upfront I feel extremely awkward with this paragraph because this isn't my way (years before my son was born I was homeless for a stint and never sat with a sign or a cup. Just couldn't do it), but for my son, I'm going to drop my cashtag here. Everyone is struggling and I know there are people with much worse problems. I appreciate anyone who has read this far and can help spread the reality of what I wrote about. That's the reason for the article; but if help is received at all because of it, we would be grateful but it's definitely a far second most important reason for the post. Here it goes, for my baby, in case it'll change his life and give us that better foot up, here it is: $RobyndeHood

#black love #blm #race and politics #kids #parenthood #parenting #latinboys #latin women #writers on tumblr #black lives matter #black stories #nonprofit #karens

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ukiyoeunoia · 3 years

Photo

information and statistics for james hall

including an in-depth personality analysis

BASIC INFORMATION

Full name: James Jeremiah Hall Nicknames: Jimmy, James, Jim Age: 33 years old Date of Birth: June 13th, 1986 Hometown: Salem, MA Current location: Salem, MA Ethnicity: Caucasian Nationality: American Gender: cisgender male (he/him) Sexuality: Bisexual, Biromantic Religion: Atheist Political Affiliation: Liberal Occupation: On-campus doctor Languages spoken: English, some Spanish, some French Accent: Texan

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Face Claim: Casey Deidrick Hair Colour: brown Eye Colour: brown Weight: 194lbs Height: 6′ Build: Athletic Tattoos: TBD Piercings: TBD

PERSONALITY

Label: The Charmer Positive Traits: + intelligent, compassionate, adaptable, charming, reliable, gregarious Negative Traits: - elusive, insecure, detached, superficial, flirtatious, dishonest Goals/Desires: to raise and maintain a healthy, happy family. to reconnect with his brother Fears: deep open waters, losing someone close to him, facing himself and his past, claustrophobia Hobbies: guitar, singing, riding his motorcycle, comedy movies, songwriting

FAMILY

Father: james jeremiah hall i. 38. † Mother: renee hall (martin). 37. † Sibling(s): david hall, 29. Children: none. Pet(s): bernese mountain dog, murphy.

EXTRA

Zodiac Sign: Gemini - “Despite their unfair rep for being two-faced, once a Gemini is in your life, they’re loyal for life—but they aren’t afraid to voice their opinion if they feel you’re doing something they disagree with or if they perceive you as not being loyal to them.” MBTI: ESFP-A - The Entertainer. “Entertainers are welcome wherever there’s a need for laughter, playfulness, and a volunteer to try something new and fun – and there’s no greater joy for Entertainer personalities than to bring everyone else along for the ride. Entertainers can chat for hours, sometimes about anything but the topic they meant to talk about, and share their loved ones’ emotions through good times and bad.” Alignment: Neutral Good - “A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them.” Enneagram: Type 7 - The Enthusiast. “With an impressively wide and far-reaching collection of talents and interests, they have active imaginations that soar and shine when gifted with new and exciting opportunities. At work, they are highly productive and get along well with others.” Archetype: The Joker - “Light hearted, sociable and fun to be around..” Celtic Tree: Oak - “The Celtic druids knew that, when a child was born under the Oak sign, it’d possess a special gift of strength. People from this Celtic tree astrology sign become protectors of the weak and speak for those who don’t have a voice. They are generous, helpful, and gentle.” Temperament: Phlegmatic - “They are calm, easygoing people who are not plagued with the emotional outbursts, exaggerated feelings, anger, bitterness or unforgiveness as are other temperaments. They are observers who do not get involved nor expend much energy.” Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff - “Hufflepuffs are associated with trustworthiness, loyalty and a strong work ethic. Hufflepuff has produced the fewest Dark witches and wizards of any house.” Primary Vice: Lust - “Lust is a psychological force producing intense wanting or longing for an object, or circumstance fulfilling the emotion.” Primary Virtue: Hope - “Hope being a combination of the desire for something and expectation of receiving it, the virtue is hoping for Divine union and so eternal happiness. While faith is a function of the intellect, hope is an act of the will.” Element: Water - “They “go with the flow,” but don’t flit about like Air people. Their movements have a definite path, albeit an often unexpected one. The Water person’s open heart makes [him] generous, and her empathy can make [him] quite social, although not all Water people are “bubbly.” [He] is often very dreamy, and can be mystical.”

#musings.james #james #salem.intro

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firelord-frowny · 4 years

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So like?? I’m still a baby as far as my familiarity with the Star Trek franchise, and so far, I’ve only really delved into TNG, DS9, and Voyager, but holy WOW, I haven’t ceased to be amazed by the incredible scope of topics and concepts and the boldness with which it dives head first into social issues that most shows, even by today’s standards, wouldn’t touch with a 40-lightyear-long pole.

The Star Trek Franchise has always had a reputation for being ~progressive~ and inclusive in addition to just being straight up beautifully written, and so here’s my dumb lil list of reasons why I think folks should watch Star Trek:

~Female~ characters are characters who happen to be female. Their femaleness is by no means ignored, but it’s also not The Point of their presence in the overall storylines. Women are captains and admirals and doctors and hailed scientists, and it’s not considered unusual or impressive. They aren’t “shattering stereotypes” or “proving men wrong.” They’re simply brilliant, powerful, and authoritative, and no one questions it. On the rare occasion that gender-based discriminatiton is mentioned, it’s usually within a context of “back on Acient Earth when humans were dumb as hell.”

The same is true for characters of color. Though the casts are still overwhelmingly white, characters of color are present, important, and respected. They’re engineers and scientists and security specialists. Also?? Off the top of my head, races/ethnic groups that have been represented as more than just background characters have included black folks, south asian folks, east asian folks, native americans, and I’m suree that doesn’t cover it. Also?? Actors of color also get to play aliens! Idk, I just think that’s cool, considering how people like to pitch a fit any time a black person is cast as a vampire or an elf or an alien or a native of a completely made up country in a world that does not exist.

A healthy, openly affectionate relationship between a black dad and his black son! This happens in Deep Space 9, specifically, between the main character, Captain Sisko, and his son, Jake. Their relationship is BEAUTIFUFL, and honestly, DS9 is worth watching for that reason alone.

Portrayals of masculinity are SO!!! HEALTHY!!! Male characters can be strong and tall and brave and protective of their families, all without also being gross jerks while they’re at it. And?? There are male characters who are more ~effeminate~ and literally no one cares. They’re short or thin or not physically imposing and they like to do soft, quiet things like drink tea or play the flute or sew clothing. They’re still respected and admired and their skills are valued and no one insinuates that they need to “man up.”

Likewise, when a woman is brash and loud and physical and strong and confident, no one tells her to “act like a lady.”

For the most part, human society has evolved beyond money, poverty, and violence. Earth is a unified planet, rather than a bunch of little angry countries yelling at each other. Humans almost unanimously view bigotry, discrimination, poverty, etc, as being primititve and repugnant. These values are obvious in how the human crew experience the various situations and alien cultures they encounter.

Since humankind is “beyond” issues like racism or sexism or religious discrimination and whatnot, the show examines these issues by having the crew struggle to navigate social issues between other alien cultures. They have this concept called the “prime directive” which more or less states that under no circumstances should they interfere with the development of less “advanced” civilizations, and it’s interesting to see them struggle to balance “minding their own business” with “maybe don’t let this planet commit genocide against that planet.”

Despite humankind’s and the Federation’s supposed high moral code, we still see many instances where their choices and actions are questionable, if not outright wrong, and we get to see all the philosophical and literal chaos it stirs up within the galaxy

Romance is rarely a Main Storyline, and even when it’s just a significant subplot, the parties involved always have more to love about each other than just He’s Hot and She’s Hot.

Healthy romantic relationships are shown in interracial couples, as well as couples where both peeps are black. DS9 even brings up some same-sex love and lust, though unfortunately it never lingered on the subjects for long.

Heavy Topics addressed include: transracial (transspecies, really) adoption, the validity of terrorism as a political tactic (yes, the bombing and killing kind), parents whose children die, children whose parents die, slavery, suicide, assisted suicide, religion and faith, lack of religion and faith, the definition of “life”, rights to self determination, bodily autonomy, capital punishment, torture, war and violence in the context of culture... the list is almost literally endless.

Cute/Funny topics addressed include: Humor and what makes things Funny, two Opposite Characters getting into wacky shenanigans together, trying to find the perfect gift for a loved one, miscommunication and how it causes hilarious chaos to ensue.

Basically, Star Trek leaves no stone unturned and deeply explores a lot of topics that I know are important to lots of peeps in my social circles here on tumblr, so like. If you’re running out of shit to do to pass the time while you hide from the plague, I deeeeefinitely recommend Star Trek. You can pretty much start with any series in no particular order, though once you start a series you’re usually best off watching the episodes in that series in order.

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thelivesoftargaryens · 4 years

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It is with a heavy heart I write this. I know this blog is mostly for updates and all things ASOIAF & Targaryen related but I feel like this needs to be said, like I need to acknowledge it because it weighs heavily upon me, even as someone who’s watching from the outside. Inaction is an action and I will not sit by quietly as this occurs right in front of my eyes. It would be disrespectful to everyone who has suffered and perished.

The gruesome murder of George Floyd was heartbreaking to witness and it once more, brought to light the systematic abuse of African-Americans in the United States. I find it extremely hard to articulate myself, as I do not not have enough experience of this, or know enough about the topic to act as if I know what it’s like. But what I do know is that racism is systematic in the United States. What I do know is that their history is bloody and wicked.

This is awful and I find myself at a loss for words, truly. I cannot express the sorrow this fills me with, or the bitter feeling of how justice is never properly served. Of course it is important to note that not all cops are racist swines but we cannot ignore the fact that the sixth leading cause of death for black men in the United States is police brutality.

I’ve seen horrible images and videos from the peaceful protests in the states. Where children are being pepper-sprayed and teenagers are getting shot in the eye and forehead with rubber bullets. I don’t understand why the officers and national guards suit up as if they’re going to war and not the protest of a peaceful nature. I’ve seen how they’ve attacked mere people passing by, not giving them any trouble. It’s a stressful and mentally draining time for everyone, but I’ve also seen how police & protesters have come together, to both denounce the horrific system that plagues the United States.

What a confusing time it is. What a sorrowful time it is. Therefore I think it’s important to write this note. To denounce racism in all forms. I cannot for the life of me understand how someone can hate another human being, simply because of the color of their skin, or their religion, or their ethnicity, sexuality and nationality. Humans are taught to hate, it is much easier to love. And we must love. We must join together and fight this injustice, to spread awareness. We cannot let it fall in-between the cracks, once more.

Children should not grow up and live in a society where they are judged by the color of their skin. A child should not have to learn how to behave for the police not to shoot them. A child should not have to see their parent get shot, right before their eyes. A young man should not have to die too young. A woman should not have to die for something so simple as a traffic ticket. No one should have to die for the assumption of a forged check. No man should have to fear getting murdered as he goes for his daily run.

Neither a man, woman or child should have to fear the very ones who are supposed to protect them.

How the world can be filled with such hate, I don’t know. I truly don’t and it’s disheartening to see, gut-wrenching. Please educate yourselves on this topic, please donate if you can and spread this. The third picture includes the names of African-Americans who were murdered by the police these past few years.

Say their names. Learn their story. Acknowledge the injustice and try to bring forth justice, for their sakes. For every African-American man, woman and child in the states.

I know that I will never understand.

However, I stand. ✊🏿✊🏽✊🏾✊🏼✊🏻

#blacklivesalwaysmatter #america #blacklivesmatter #injustice #usa #minnesota #georgefloyd #justiceforahmaud #i run with ahmaud #ahmaudarbery #BLM #protest #systematicracism #saytheirnames #sayhisname #icantbreathe #racism #policebrutality

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unsureofreligionname · 4 years

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This was meant to be me venting, but accidentally became a history of my relationship with religion instead.

Alright. So.

Came here to talk about religion because I have no outlet. If you don't want to hear it, just block me. I'm not trying to convert anyone, I'm just explaining things to see if anyone has a feckin name for my damn belief system, because I really want to avoid accidentally starting a religion or something and pissing everyone off more.

People who got pissy last time got on my ass about how I probably wasn't even ethnically jewish, so here's the whole story.

I was raised by a mother who was raised by a non-practicing jewish mother, both of whom converted to christianity in the late nineties, shortly before I was born. They're ethnically jewish, or so I'm told.

Not super related, but, in case it comes up later, I was raised with the belief that my mother's family is a long line of very careful psychics, which roughly means "a lot of the family is sensitive to spirit shit but avoids it like the plague because it's scary."

I was raised by a father who is, as far as I know, not ethnically jewish. He's of mixed asian heritage, so i guess maybe, but I'm going to assume he's not. His parents, however, were both religiously Jewish; my grandmother was adopted and raised Jewish, and my grandfather converted sometime between meeting and marrying my grandmother. They are reform. My father wasn't the most religious guy in the world, but, if you asked, he'd probably either make a joke about ohio state football or say that he was jewish.

I was raised by my father and mother together until I was seven. We didn't always consistently go to church in early childhood, but my mother did take me to two or three for months or years at a time during the 2-5 period. We celebrated christmas and easter, and i had an illustrated children's bible that, if I remember right, was split into two parts: the first was marketed to christian and jewish kids, and the latter- new testament- to christian kids. Guessing the marketing from the publishing organizations. I think I had a few other religious books and videotapes directed towards kids, both jewish and christian. I specifically remember one that illustrated mana as vanilla wafers for some reason. At seven, my parents divorced, and I primarily lived with my dad.

My dad didn't take me anywhere on the regular, but when I visited his parents for the full weekend, they'd take me to the synagogue. This was every couple of weeks. We celebrated major jewish holidays, but smaller festivals only really got a mention. When I was ten, my dad and stepmother married. She wasn't really religious, but her parents were christian, so christmas was back on our roster then, too.

I started going to hebrew school in 6th grade, but I didn't actually have a bar mitzvah because I ended up getting kicked out at around the time I turned 13 due to a whole thing about me going trick or treating when I was "too old" or whatever, shitty parents, so I ended up having to go live with my mom after that.

At this point, my mom was studying to become a youth pastor, and enrolled me into a local christian school with about a hundred students. Unfortunately, this ended up being a weird fundamentalist cult with its own textbooks and teachings, including that bacteria was not real, AIDS was a summoned by The Gays™ to kill all the christians, evolution was a conspiracy meant to dissuade people from religion, et cetera. It was fucking bizarre, at one point they called several of us posessed for being autistic and otherwise neurodivergent, and they categorized us students into the groups wise, fools, simple, and scorners. (I was a fool, by the way.) It was really not ideal, and the weird punishments were pretty traumatic. There was some weird brainwashy type word repetition involved with lookatthepersonsayokayanddothetask over and over and over, and it sucked.

So, I was at that school for about 18 months before they kicked me out for refusing to stand on one foot for an extended period of time after tapping my foot in class which caused a student who disliked me to complain.

At the same time, my mother was working at a small church out of town that wasn't exactly a cult, but I think the pastor kind of wanted it to be? It was like he wanted the cult aesthetic™ and devoted followers and shit, but only had the skill to make a really sketchy and toxic small town church with a lot of people sitting on blankets on the floor instead. That church honestly wasn't a big part of my life the way the fucked cult was, I just sort of went most weeks. I went to a confirmation class there- I'm pretty sure it was a methodist church- and got confirmed into it shortly before my mother left because the administration was weird in like an asshole way, and that was the last I knew of it.

I was homeschooled for a while during the end of this period due to all of the school stuff. Religiously, by this point in my life, I'd developed some of my own beliefs. I believed in most of the new testament and most of the torah, but I didn't have much exposure to the talmud or much of a comprehensive education in any religion. I think I read a bible cover to cover at least once as a kid, including some shitty commentary (it was a preteen bible) that gave me some internalized homophobia issues for actual years. I was also super curious about the paranormal but terrified of possession- remember the cult?- and I was curious about the idea of some people being reincarnated if they were needed on earth again. Not sure where exactly that idea came from, but it was there. People told me from a lot of sides that those with the wrong religion would go to hell, and the cult tried to teach us all to convert people at any opportunity, but, after leaving, the whole situation just made me massively uncomfortable. I did continue to practice the jewish traditions I knew how to do on my own- like hannukah and a weird private sort of passover- and my mother would support this by getting me what I needed for it, even though she didn't participate and I didn't go to any place of worship during holidays.

After getting kicked out of school not that long after adjusting to not seeing my dad or siblings on his side, we moved. My dad lost custody at some point and we no longer had to live close, so we moved and tried to find a better school. It was a Catholic grade school this time, and I was there for about six months, if I had to guess. It was actually a pretty good school, but I had some issues at the time, so I didn't enjoy it much. I was scared of teachers and administration by then, and I had trouble going the entire school day without panicking or not being able to work. There was a period of a week or two in which I didn't speak at school at all. We ended up settling on half days, and, after that, I did well.

The religion class was awkward. The other kids seemed to know more than me even though I'd thought I had a good grasp on religion at that point, and the little information we shared I'd been taught from a very different perspective. Everyone was very nice to me, but I definitely stood out as the kid who wasn't catholic at that point.

Chapel was even weirder. We had to go every wednesday during school, and catholic churches had so many traditions I didn't know about, and the stuff I knew about from either my jewish grandparents or protestant churches had a different name for some reason.

I'm looking at you, sacraments.

Anyway.

I don't think I got much out of the chapel, but religion classes were kind of cool. I liked learning about stuff I hadn't heard before, and the things that were the same were a comfort.

Soon, though, I was graduating eighth grade. I ended up going to a catholic high school. I was still out of place, but I at least had a basic idea of what to do during the mass this school had monthly.

I liked the religion classes here more, how they were an open discussion of everyone's opinions and experiences, and I liked that both of the most recent schools I'd gone to had actual textbooks with facts and studies in them. There were more kids there who weren't catholic, and I felt more comfortable to actually explore religious topics with people. I had a better understanding of catholic beliefs, a decent idea of their traditions, and could recognize at least a few of their holidays I couldn't have before.

I spent my last year of high school at a public career center to start working towards a medical career.

Now, my current beliefs. If you don't want to read it, then just don't.

I haven't been to any place of worship since my school required it, but I do have strong beliefs. I believe in one God (which I generally write all the way out after a billion essays for religion class) who created everything and watches over humans, which he made in his image, etc etc etc. I believe the old stories from the tanakh/old testament/don't care what you call it and the new- yes, including the key messiah bit- though I do think it wasn't all translated perfectly and that it was written by humans who made mistakes and poor decisions sometimes in their writing. I believe people's salvation comes through their intention, not through a piece of knowledge or a creed or good deeds or a tradition, and I believe different people worshipping in different ways is how it should be, because different people NEED different styles of worship. I believe that if someone is genuinely mistaken and incorrect in who or what they believe in, it doesn't MATTER because it's the intention to strive to do good and not harm fellow people that counts. I'm a little guarded about sharing my own beliefs, hence why I made an anonymous tumblr account, but I'm generally very curious to hear about what other people believe. I find that, for me, celebrating Jewish holidays and traditions helps me get closer to God, and I'd like to find a place of worship one day, but churches fucking terrify me now. I worship best by sitting and discussing beliefs, but I have no place to do it now that I've graduated school. I also developed some of my less related beliefs now: I believe in a lot of old stories that have popped up around the world, like fairies of various places, different creatures and entities and things that have become the subject of curiosity or worship, spirits and things, etc. I think many of these creatures exist, just that they may be different from us in the nature of how they interact with the world and matter and that, and I don't think they're deities or anything. I believe in ghosts of humans in some cases, too, though I believe sometimes other things mimic them. I don't find the idea of God having someone reincarnated if he wants the same soul to play many parts in the world unlikely at all, though that's really just me speculating. I still believe in demons, and I still don't want anything to do with them.

A lot of my understanding of things comes from Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant teaching in a strange mishmosh of culture and religion.

I relate to a lot of things directed at Jewish people, and I understand what's directed at Catholic people. Things directed at Protestant people are both understood and, unfortunately, make me instinctively wary due to weird cult trauma (that in no way reflects on actual protestant people, i love you guys some people just suck and twist religion) so are hard to interact with.

In a lot of ways, I'd consider myself Jewish. Culturally, at least, if my religious beliefs aren't "validly jewish" or whatever.

I have literally zero actual connections to any Catholic church, but I almost feel like a weird half-catholic. That's not a thing, but it's how it feels. I believe a lot of it, and I'm interested in all of it, even if I have my disagreements, plus I understand the environments and culture of it, even if I'm a bit of an outsider.

A year- or maybe two years, idk- ago, I mentioned some upcoming holiday or smth in a post and tagged it messianic. That's the closest name I could find for my experience, but apparently some organizations who use the term suck or something. I ended up getting a bunch of asks calling me a predatory fake jew or a fundamentalist christian trying to appropriate judaism or other weird shit that I'm NOT DOING. Because of my experiences in the past, those comments still weigh so damn heavy on my that I broke my resolve and made this stupid account to complain about it.

I don't have a name for what I am. I don't know where to go to talk about my beliefs with people, or what environment I could find to actually practice whatever weird faith I've dreamt up with other people in a way that isn't just picking part of what I believe and leaving the rest to rot. I feel closer to God and more spiritually fulfilled practicing the festivals that call back to what the Jewish people of old went through, but I also believe in the messiah of the new testament, and I like to read the pope's opinion on things, even though I think no human is perfect or infallible. I want to talk about old writings with people and discuss what they mean, from my religion or others, and I don't want to give any of what's right for me spiritually up.

I don't know what this post is for.

Maybe I'm just venting, but I do want to know if this is a thing or if I'm the only one with this belief system. I'm sick of getting shit for the actions of people who I'm not affiliated with, so apparently calling myself messianic doesn't cut it. I can't call myself "spiritual but not religious" either, because I'm very religious, it's just very personal and not something I shove at people, and "christian" doesn't describe a solid half of what I believe. Off and on again I've considered converting to Catholicism, but I think that's kind of grasping at the closest thing that won't piss off tumblr anons as much. (And yeah, the larger Catholic church can suck, but I honestly think I'm gonna get that with any religion with a large following)

Rambling aside:

I want to find a short description that hits the major points of what I believe in order to help me find a place or group of worship that actually matches my spiritual needs without compromising the cultures that I grew up with and making me feel like shit.

(Also don't try to change my beliefs thanks)

I'll be tagging this with anything I've mentioned or vaguely heard of that might be related so relax ok

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