#atrocities will be committed that you cannot even conceive of

[noknowshame]

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

[jewfrogs]

from a jewish person: what do you think is the single biggest fact that jews uniquely must learn or accept in order to unlearn the zionism they've been raised with?

picking out something specific is difficult because zionist myths form sort of a tangled web, but maybe the most insidious to me is the idea that the state of israel keeps us safe and is the only thing that can keep us safe (a sentiment i have heard from jews who do not live in the state of israel and do not ever intend to, as if simply its presence on earth as this miraculous “safe haven” provides them any protection while they are thousands of miles away, which is some marvelous magical thinking). i wish all jews would come to accept these things:

one, that even if the state of israel could ensure our safety and our survival, the palestinian people are not an acceptable sacrifice or a stepping-stone to reach that imaginary aim. safety purchased with palestinian blood is not a worthwhile pursuit, and an eternity of shame on everyone who claims otherwise.

and two, that the state of israel specifically cannot ensure our safety and our survival. as long as there is a state of israel (which, be’ezrat hashem, will not be much longer), there will never be any measure of peace, for that part of the world or for our people. there will only be immeasurable harm done by our people (a stain on our name and on our soul) and to our people: generations of jews inheriting and handing down abhorrent racist hatred; white supremacist structures that discriminate and commit atrocities against jews of color; rich centuries-old diasporic jewish cultures denied, repressed, eradicated, as people are forced to flee their homelands for a country that does not value their traditions.

what is that worth? what benefit is there in this form of safety? why can we not conceive of better for ourselves and for everyone else?

[themattress]

One Villainous Scene - Confrontation on the Altar

Kingdom Hearts has never conceived of a better original villain than Xemnas, the leader of Organization XIII. The Nobody of Xehanort, top apprentice to Ansem the Wise, he possesses all of his human self’s memories and ambitions, but the lack of a heart tells him that he isn’t his human self - which just creates an even larger sense of inadequacy than Xehanort had. 

And thus while Xehanort (who stole his master’s name of “Ansem” and became a Heartless) was following his research and considered his goal to become a god and remake the universe as a place of darkness as serving the higher calling of fate, Xemnas’ desire is wholly personal: by becoming a god and remaking the universe as a place of emptiness, he will have validated his non-existence by making every other existence bend to his evil will.

While the exchange between him and his old master during the climax of Kingdom Hearts II is epic, I think the following sequence on the Altar of Naught is the best expression of Xemnas’ character. First off, he is so used to everyone being pawns in his machinations that he arrogantly commands them outright to go forth and bring him more hearts to repair the damaged Kingdom Hearts of Peoples’ Hearts. Xemnas then turns to psychological manipulation which he is clearly very adept at, asking philosophical and moral quandaries of them with such earnest conviction in his voice that you almost believe that he believes it.

But then Sora tells him to cut the crap, after which he laughs and freely admits he’s a sociopath with no remorse for any of the atrocities he has committed. However, even without a heart, it’s not as though he can’t feel anything at all....he is still naturally drawn to feelings of anger, hatred and negativity, which (following some deceptive trickery to give the heroes the slip) he uses to merge with the remains of Kingdom Hearts and enter its spiritual plane. And in doing so, he states quite clearly what he considers the heart’s greatest value and what all of his efforts have been about: “That fool Ansem said the heart’s true nature was beyond his understanding. But it’s not beyond mine! Hearts are the source of ALL POWER!”

Inside Kingdom Hearts, Sora and his friends fight to stop Xemnas’ World of Nothingness superweapon that he created with his newfound power before it can go lay waste to all the worlds. Once Xemnas is defeated, everyone ends up back at the Alter of Naught. The final exchange between Sora and Xemnas is so telling: Xemnas - Xehanort in general - has been steeped in negative emotions for so long that he genuinely cannot remember positive ones, let alone feel them. And as much of a horrifying monster as he is, that is still incredibly tragic.

[unmeiha-arc]

@scionitics​​ probably forgot that their Hermes sent :    ‘  grief  is  just  love  with  no  place  to  go .  ’

          For as long as she can remember, grief has ever been her closest companion; with each recollection of the life she lead by another name in this time — his time — a companion even longer still. In a way, she supposes he’s right. She grieves for that which she’s lost, for that which she will never obtain; for possibilities and impossibilities both. For love that will never have the chance to find its mark. Love of home, of family, of friends, of —

          ❛ You must have a great deal of love, then. ❜

          To have grieved so much that it consumed him, mangled him, made him unrecognizable even to himself. A part of her — ancient, buried — already knows this; knows how deeply he loves, how deeply he hurts. She of the present sees it, too: that the man before her is a far cry from the man who had pried her soul from her body and bound it to the shambling corpse of someone she never even learned the name of. Yet she cannot help but recognize in herself fragments of what he would become — of what he became. What would he think, she wonders, of the horrors he has yet to conceive? Of the atrocities he has yet to commit? Would he have the strength to overcome, as she had? Would things be any different if he knew? Could things be any different if he knew?

          In the back of her mind, she hears Elidibus’ warning: You cannot reshape the past to undo the tragedies of the present. Cannot unmake the sorrow and suffering fated to come. She twirls the Elpis flower in one hand and regards it with curiosity, unable — or perhaps unwilling — to meet his gaze, gentle fingers of the other brushing the soft petals as purple bleeds into crisp white, staining them with the echoes of her soul’s sorrow for the inevitability to come. When she finally looks up at him, she offers the purple flower with a smile.

          ❛ I suppose I do as well. ❜

                                                          𓆩❀𓆪

[whitehotharlots]

Things really are this bad

Yesterday, Freddie posted an excellent piece titled “People of Color Have Agency.” It’s free and I encourage you to read it all the way through, but its gist is found in the title: contemporary anti-racism regards non-white people as having no control of their actions, nor any moral culpability for anything they themselves do. Why? Because white supremacy is such an all-encompassing causal force that it prevents non-white people from having human agency. Freddie points out, correctly, that far from being liberating, this conceptualization of race and racism flatly dehumanizes non-white people, and, in doing so, centers the actions and experiences of white people as having determined the entirety of human existence.

From the piece:

I suspect that placing all of the blame for historical crimes on white people is strangely comforting for white leftists: it advances a vision of the world where only white people matter. It says that the sun rises and sets with white people. It suggests that white people wrote history. It assures white people that, no matter what else is true, they are the masters of the world. That all of this is framed in terms of judgment against the abstraction “white people” is incidental. I think if you could strip people down to their most naked self-interest and ask them, “would you be willing to take all the blame, if it meant you got all the power?,” most would say yes. And of course in this narrative people of color are sad little extras, unable even to commit injustice, manipulated across the chessboard by the omnipotent white masters whose interests they can’t even begin to oppose. All of this to score meaningless political points in debates about inequality and injustice.

I don’t have anything especially poignant to add (you really should read the whole piece). He repeatedly assures his reader that some of the more absurd aspects of anti-racism being described actually are real and quite pervasive. This move is necessary because, although his descriptions are objectively correct and plainly obvious, they cannot be articulated with appropriate harshness without it sounding like the writer is exaggerating (a poisonous rhetorical milieu made all the worse by conservative critics who could have a field day simply describing wokeness as it actually exists, but instead understand it in the most idiotic manner imaginable.)

But no, Freddie was not exaggerating. Everything he describes I have seen in person and in print multiple times. There exists, believe it or a not, a sizeable faction of the left that does not believe Imperial Japan was an imperialist power, that expecting non-white people to adhere to basic standards of decency is akin to slavery or genocide, and that black people are so inimically traumatized by historical racism (that such trauma is even literally embedded into their genes) that they cannot follow rules or obey laws. This is the state of liberal antiracism in the early twenty-twenties, and it doesn’t become any less ugly by us pretending that it’s not as bleak than it actually is.

Basically, people belong to two groups: Non-whites are non-entities and therefore sympathetic, blameless victims. Whites, conversely, are all-powerful and therefore the horrors faced by most people all across this blighted planet are caused by the very existence of whites. This understanding is racist, chauvinistic, narcissistic, and dehumanizing. And it’s utterly dominant in anti-racist discourses right now.

I have made this point before, but it bears repeating: whiteness and white supremacy have become conceptually indistinguishable. The former was previously understood as a description of a people’s racial markings and was therefore fluid and inchoate and, progressives once believed, a complete social construct, a fabrication, something that we faced an imperative to stop taking seriously. The latter concept, white supremacy, was used to describe myriad aspects of a pervasive system of racial inequality. A small child can suss out how weakening the conceptual status of the former is an absolutely necessary prerequisite for addressing the urgent concerns posed by the latter. 

Instead, however, the contemporary anti-racist left (call them what you want: corporate anti-racists, wokes, neoracists... it’s all the same stuff) has done the exact opposite. Racialization is calcified to the extent that we consider the presence of racial markers to be the sole driving force behind all human interactions. This makes malignancies unchangeable, but that’s beside the point. We’re not actually looking to reform systems and improve the lives of everyday people of color: we are, instead, concerned with burnishing the image of the Democratic party, helping dull grad students get their PhDs, and assisting the book sales of a small handful of the most cynical authors the human race has ever seen. 

But this is just all so incredibly absurd. Like... Jesus fucking Christ people, fucking think about this shit for a second or two. Take this piece for instance. It’s not from everydayfeminism or some random tumblr: it’s from the New York Times. It describes an incident in which two black middle school girls were very badly harassed--even urinated upon--by 4 middle school boys. The headline reads “A Racist Attack Shows How Whiteness Evolves.” The catch? The perpetrators of the attack were not white.

Just because the boys weren’t white doesn’t mean they weren’t doin’ some whiteness. Oh no. As the author explains:

While it’s tempting to see the reported ethnicity of the boys suspected in the assault as complicating the story and raising questions about whether the assault should be thought of as racist, I look at it through a different lens. Instead of asking what the boys’ reported racial identity tells us about the nature of the attack, we should see the boys as enacting American whiteness through anti-black assault in a very traditional way. In doing so, the assailants are demonstrating how race is a social construct that people make through their actions. They show race in the making, and show how race is something we perform, not just something we are in our blood or in the color of our skin.

Herein, race is not only real but inevitable, all-pervasive, and unchangeable. And race does not correlate with traditional markings like dialect, place of birth, or skin color. Nosir. Race is behavioral. The stuff this writer dislikes (rightly or wrongly) are what constitute whiteness. The stuff this writer loves (victimhood, and also presumably the Marvel Cinematic Universe) are what constitute non-whiteness. 

This idiotic conceptualization leads inevitably to all matter of malignancies--from petty inconveniences to world-historic atrocities--to be understood under the same umbrella, and emanating from the same magical force--a force which, it just so happens, we’ve already established cannot be altered or changed or even understood in a coherent manner. Whoops, sorry. But, hey, this is why it’s good that we don’t want to reform anything even though all we talk about is how bad everything is. Biden 2024, y’all: Keep America Entropic.

If this understanding of anti-racism had been explicitly designed to worsen and perpetuate racism, it could not have done a better job. But it wasn’t--maybe in the upper corridors of the liberal political and NGO sphere some people realized this was a great way to pretend to care about racism without actually changing anything, sure, but a vast majority of the people peddling and accepting this bullshit are earnest in their desire combat racism. They just can’t conceive of doing so in a manner that hasn’t fully internalized the deranged, neurotic mysticism that’s drilled into our heads from birth in order to make us accept the brutal inhumanities of neoliberalism. 

[anarcho-smarmyism]

How would prison abolition deal with murderers, serial killers, paedophiles, torturers,kkk members,neo-Nazis and terrorists? Some people are a legit danger and cannot be allowed to roam society.

So I didn’t answer this at the time, because the anon who sent it is almost definitely the racist troll sending me shit I’m not going to publish (so like uhhh bear that in mind lmao), but I’ve blocked them now and it’s been a few days, so hopefully they’ve fucked off by now. Plus, I’ve been thinking about this question a LOT since before I received it. It’s a question that I think most people have about the concept of prison abolition and reparative justice, and not everyone with these concerns is asking in bad faith. Besides which, with the recent attempted coup and the way it looks like people who participated are actually going to face legal consequences for it (which alone was somewhat surprising to me tbh), I’ve been seeing a lot of leftists discoursing over whether it’s morally okay and intellectually consistent to be happy about cops beating up, killing, and arresting KKK members and Neo-Nazis, so it is now actually topical! Under the cut due to long response~

So the first thing I want to point out, is that literally every single one of the groups of “legit dangers who cannot be allowed to roam society”, are already out there right now. In our current “justice” system, it’s common knowledge that monsters often get off on a technicality, or because they just have the money to throw lawyer after lawyer at the charges, or because they outright bribe someone, or countless other ways to get around the law. You can look on my own literal tumblr blog and watch me argue with grown ass adults who will bold faced admit to consuming child porn with half-assed excuses, and you’ll find more open pedophiles on sites like twitter, reddit, or 4chan, or porn sites where “teen” is usually one of the most popular categories. Besides which, have you ever looked at the average sentences for convicted rapists, wife beaters, or pedophiles, as compared with the sentences for getting caught selling drugs? In middle school I had to walk a mile or two to get to school through a neighborhood we’d been warned had a convicted pedophile in it, who had just been released after less than 15 years. In that same city, I heard a story about a woman shooting and killing her rapist, and prosecutors were discussing giving her the death penalty for it (she was bragging and laughing about it on video, it was definitely premeditated, but still). Have you ever looked at the statistics of how many rapists and abusers aren’t reported, or if they are reported aren’t prosecuted, or if they are are prosecuted with a slap on the wrist (remember Brock Turner????) Also I notice how you didn’t even mention domestic abusers or rapists in your list of people who need to be locked up lolololol shows where your priorities vis a vis “public safety are I’m sorry, but the system just does not work the way you think it does, the we are taught it does.

People who make this argument always act like the systems we have now are efficient and nigh on flawless when it comes to “not letting dangerous people roam society”, but it isn’t and it can’t be and it never will be. That very fact ought to be enough to shake your faith in the idea that society will become a nonstop Purge of indiscriminate violence if everyone who’s committed a sufficiently despicable act of violence isn’t locked up for the rest of their lives -but you might say, “okay, but those are flukes, the system still works because most of the people who are “a danger to society” are usually locked up.” I’m not completely sold that that’s even true (have you ever heard of the opportunities cops had to bring in serial killers and murderers, who just didn’t care enough to try? Jeffrey Dahmer is a good example of this), but I’ll assume it is to move on to my next point.

Even if we assumed that the system as we have it, worked flawlessly as designed, that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of the categories mentioned here are people that are actively running the very systems that this rhetoric is defending. It’s well-documented that American white supremacists of various stripes have infiltrated law enforcement and the military for the express purpose of not just “roaming free”, but getting to exert the power of the State over people of color. Cops and soldiers kill people all the time, and not only are they not penalized, they’re celebrated for it. Agents of the State fucking torture people all the time, and I don’t just mean Guantanamo Bay or war crimes by soldiers; cops have been caught on camera spraying protesters with pepper spray and beating them once they’ve already been handcuffed or while they’re chained to trees or whatever -not because they think they “need” to, because they want to, and they know they’ll get away with it. Cops also systematically torture people in prison with solitary confinement. Heads of state drop bombs on civilians for “politically motivated reasons”, they do all kinds of shit that would be called “terrorism” if anybody but a State did it; and people might disapprove, but they don’t (generally) claim that the politicians and generals who made that call are “a danger to society” that need to get life in prison. If you genuinely believe that whether these acts of violence are “legal” or not changes whether they’re okay, or that a person who engages in illegal violence is “dangerous” but people who engage in legal violence aren’t... I’m honestly not even going to try to refute that here lol, prison abolition is level 5 shit and you’re at level -1, study how authoritarianism in general works before trying to understand prison abolition (not trying to be a dick here, it’s what i would tell my younger self when I believed the same thing). 

It simply does not hold up to rational scrutiny to believe that society will collapse into an orgy of violence and mayhem if we abolish prison (or that we’ll have to resort to medieval punishments instead??? lol funny take i remember from some racist troll or other over the years), when those dangers are already present (and in some cases widely celebrated as “heroes” and given the power to indiscriminately brutalize “acceptable targets” with the State’s monopoly on violence) under the current system.

The next thing people need to understand is that contrary to popular belief and despite how counterintuitive it sounds, even the brutality of our current prison system is not an effective deterrent to crime (linked a Guardian article that looks like it has some good info on this, but I recommend a book called Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice by Adam Benforado for more information). Let me say that again: the threat of prison has been empirically shown to be INEFFECTIVE as a deterrent to crime. Do you really think that a serial killer or someone who wants to blow up a building full of people is going to be more likely to follow the law for fear of prison, than regular people doing regular people crimes like selling drugs or getting into drunk fights that go too far? 

I don’t think anyone is actually willing to argue that prison “rehabilitates” anyone, or does anything besides make regular criminals into angrier, more antisocial, more desperate criminals with more criminal connections and less options for any kind of a legitimate living, so I’m just going to point out that having such a large prison population arguably creates more people who have shitty lives of poverty and are surrounded by people who are in and out of prison. It’s not like that “makes” anybody into a serial killer, but I feel like you’d have to willfully ignorant to act like it’s not a factor in increasing violent crime in affected community.

So, I’ve so far argued that prison is an ineffective solution to the problems it claims to exist in order to solve, and that in many cases, it actually makes the problems that lead to these sorts of dangerous people (”regular” murderers and the radicalization of Neo-Nazis and KKK members in particular, I think) becoming dangerous, or at least more dangerous, in the first place. What I haven’t done, is talk about what I believe is the real core of the issue when it comes to prison abolition: nobody wants to fucking peacefully rehabilitate these people. I am arguing for a system that would handle these people basically as gently as possible, with the goal of releasing them back into society eventually, and I still believe these things mostly intellectually, not emotionally. I don’t want the men who sexually assaulted me and/or my loved ones to get off scot free (they did, of course, but that’s beside the point), much less serial killers or Nazis, and I’m not about to get on my high horse about wanting revenge on people who’ve committed these kinds of atrocities. The reason I’m a prison abolitionist in spite of these feelings is that I do not believe the desire for revenge, for punishment for punishment’s own sake, is an impulse we should indulge when creating social and political infrastructures that have ultimate power over millions of lives. In the words of someone talking about abolishing the death penalty, the question isn’t “do they deserve to die”, the question is��“do we deserve to kill”; and here, the question is not “does anyone deserve to be imprisoned in this system”, the question is “do we deserve to brutalize people in this way for virtually zero practical benefits to our society”. What any person “deserves” is a subjective moral and philosophical question, one that no conceivable human justice system could ever actually answer. We as a society need to build alternatives to prison (and police!) that can actually address these problems, actually prevent the conditions that create and enable monsters, and actually rehabilitate (to whatever extent that is possible) criminals -even the ones we, personally, despise. Any long-term incarceration that may end up being 100% required should be designed to reduce the suffering of the person in it, no matter how despicable of a person they are. Trying to solve “the problem of evil” instead of trying to create a more functional and just society is a fool’s errand that can only lead to more evil existing, in the end.

At the end of the day, the “irredeemable” people you listed off as justifications for the continuing existence of prison, are only a tiny fraction of the people in prison, even the ones with life sentences. A full understanding of the horror and oppression the prison industrial complex enacts on the people in it and their communities (and how the system is designed to make a profit off of human suffering and death) is something you’ll have to read some actual books about in order to acquire. However, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that any horror we as a society deem “acceptable” to do to the worst of the worst, will also be done to regular criminals, as well as to innocent people who are wrongly imprisoned. Any brutality you design with a serial killer in mind WILL eventually be a punishment for a petty thief or drug dealer or sex worker, or a person who didn’t commit the crime they were incarcerated for. Is it really worth it? Is it really, really worth all the misery and oppression prison causes, to satiate our sense of justice? I don’t believe that it is. I believe that we have a responsibility both to the incarcerated and to their communities to base our policies and institutions on actually solving these societal problems however we can, and leaving our “eye for an eye” mentality in the dark ages where it belongs.

If you are interested in prison abolition as a concept, I can recommend some good books on it. You also need to understand that concept of “reparative justice”, which I’ve alluded to here but not really explained because OH MY GOD THIS POST IS TOO LONG ALREADY. Short explanation of it is that it aims to repair the harm done by the crime and rehabilitate the criminal through through therapy and trying to get them to actually understand what they’ve done and empathize with who they’ve hurt, while also providing therapy and resources to the victim of the crime (when it’s something violent and the reparation can’t just be “give them their money back plus extra for damages” or something). The point is not to satiate anybody’s sense of justice or revenge, but to proactively try to solve the problem the crime has caused and prevent the offender from doing it again. It would need to work in conjunction with the abolition of police (and replacement with better infrastructure for the few things cops do that we actually need done) and various other social programs and measures to prevent the circumstances that lead to crime. This sounds like a long shot because it is, but just because it hasn’t been done on a wide scale before doesn’t mean it can’t be, and just because it will be difficult doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

[melias-cimitiere]

MINORITY REPORT

People who are interested in being honest, true to themselves and to others, eager to learn truth about things (scientific, historical, etc) and acquire knowledge, please keep reading. Everyone else, carry on with your daily activities; this article will clearly not impact on you in any positive way.

There has been a growing concern during the last few years that people have a tendency to “save the tree and burn the forest”; this is a mentality of gross generalizations, over-simplistic attitudes towards right and wrong, and superficial ideological bubbles that do not take into account reality. When historical truth is no longer convenient, when people forget the right use of words and terms and come up with the trendy, politically correct speech while disregarding the established definitions, then watch out: Big Brother is about (the 1984 George Orwell concept).

Minorities’ rights

There is a large number of people who tend to be sympathetic towards any groups, just because they are labelled as a minority. Instead of examining what they stand for and who they truly are (given a historical perspective), they moralize on their behalf and fiercely try to protect them, with a simplistic and gullible attitude. Let’s try and ask some basic questions:

Are their rights more/less important than anyone else’s?

We should be talking about human rights, and not minorities’ rights. If these groups are human groups, then they have some rights; these rights are protected by United Nations and various Constitutions, and political assemblies worldwide, and any proven violation is condemned. Why should any human group have more (or less) rights than any other group?

Are the minorities always correct?

Of course not. Whoever believes this tends to be extremely naïve. For example, amidst the minorities hide some rather loathsome groups (or individuals), such as Nazis, KKK, international terrorists (like Isil/Isis/Daesh, Al-Qaeda etc). And what about the minority groups of suicide cults, slavery rings, drug-dealers, “black market” merchants (of weapons, substances, toxins, organs etc)? What about serial killers or pedophiles? As you can see, membership in a minority group doesn’t automatically make you correct in all things. 

Issue of historical guilt

What is trendy or fashionable doesn’t make it necessarily better or right. Nowadays it is not trendy or fashionable to expose certain historical facts because certain groups feel discomfort. This is not new; in fact, it has been an issue with history and with science since the very beginning. When Galileo showed the Earth is round and spins around itself, it caused certain “waves”; people even demanded his death. We still have the Flat Earth Society despite scientific evidence of the contrary. With regards to history and warfare, you will not find any parties that are not guilty. In fact, nearly every nation in the world has committed atrocities, vandalism, slavery, aggressive occupation and its army/warriors raping innocent victims etc. In the history of Mankind there are very few true innocents. 

If we do not acknowledge such occurrences as inherent in human nature and as potential threats for everyone, we are doomed to repeat them in the future. Fascism and Nazism is not only a German thing; Slavery isn’t just a “white thing”; Colonialism isn’t just a British thing. We need to address the issues, recognize and study what makes these happen, and confront them. We must all stand united against this, and not devolve into group mentality and us against the others. We need to challenge our own mindset and free ourselves from pre-conceived ideas. Minorities get overly sensitive when people criticize certain behaviors or the past. And yet, how can one hope to be free from prejudice, when one refuses to see the truth, opting to be part of the herd? 

What is Racism?

“Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.”

“The belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.”

[Oxford Dictionary]

“policies, behaviours, rules, etc. that result in a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race”.

Also:

“harmful or unfair things that people say, do, or think based on the belief that their own race makes them more intelligent, good, moral, etc. than people of other races”.

[Cambridge University]

So as you can see, racism doesn’t have to do with minorities specifically. Minority groups can also be racist to majority groups, or some nations/people claim to be superior or “God’s chosen” while this is blatantly racist and, by definition, a harmful and unfair behavior. On a final note, just because certain groups have been persecuted historically, this doesn’t justify them to persecute others while claiming to be victims of racism, as this would be hypocrisy.

What is Discrimination? How is it different to Prejudice?

1. “The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability.”

2. “Recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another”.

Usually people tend to forget the second definition, and over time, discrimination becomes something negative. What about, “a discriminative mind is a mark of wisdom?” Should you not pick and choose according to preference? Are all things the same? Obviously not. Prejudice, on the other hand, is always negative. It is wrong in so many ways to be prejudiced against people of any group; this doesn’t just apply to minorities. However, that doesn’t mean that a person cannot choose what he/she prefers. Preference is an act of freedom. 

Some groups seem to imply that if a person says that he/she is heterosexual, that it means that they are homophobic. I hate prejudice; I support equal rights. I also fully support the second definition of discrimination; I do this all the time. I choose what I like to eat, where to hang out and who to have sex with. I have specific gender preferences; my choices don’t make me phobic of the other minority groups (another wrong use of the word phobic, meaning fear of something. Not wanting to have sex with specific types of peoples doesn’t mean I fear them, it simply means that I don’t like it and I prefer something else). I also choose what to read, what to reject, what kinds of music or movies to watch and so on. I’m sure you do all that too. So remember to use the words correctly.

What is antisemitism?

Semitic groups have been known to spread to a vast region in the Eastern Mediterranean all the way down to the Persian Gulf. Examples are: the Canaanites, the Akkadians, the Babylonians, and the Chaldeans that settled the Mesopotamian South where the Euphrates empties into the Gulf (from the tribe Kaldu – a Semitic tribe from the Amorites), the Jebusites, the Jewish tribes, the Arameans, and many more. So to pick just one of them and say it is the only Semitic group is doing disservice to the rest and is also appropriating people’s ethnic background. 

Also, just because several of these groups were historically persecuted (Jews, Palestinians, small minorities in Iraq and Syria, etc) doesn’t give them immunity from blame when they are the ones committing crimes of racism or persecution. It has become a common thing in certain places from the Levant that one cannot bring about anything in discussion relating history or politics, from fear of offending their sensibilities. This has to stop. People should be freely discussing their opinions, and with the right evidence, they should be able to accept new data. Believing that people from minorities have indemnity from scrutiny is a naïve and socially dangerous stance.

Stereotyping and Reverse Pendulum Mentality

Protect battered mothers / women (but not battered fathers / men?)

Protect raped females (but what about raped males?)

Protect a specific group of a certain ethnic background while turning a blind eye towards other groups of different backgrounds whose rights are violated.

A child goes first (but what about elderly, mentally ill etc which are categories often neglected?)

Homophobic is a bad thing (and not heterophobic?)

A group or groups of different gender definitions must be protected (but shouldn’t all people’s choices on this matter be protected, no matter what?)

It is common, when society realizes that the rights of a certain minority have been violated (ie in the case of persecution, slavery, racist hostility and even killings because of that like the pogroms against Jews and other races), that society goes overboard and through overprotecting, refuse even the slightest of blame, even in documented cases. And yet, there have been plenty of people belonging to minority groups who were guilty of various crimes, including slavery, discrimination or collaborating with the enemy (and all these have been documented also). Minorities can easily become oppressors and they have done so, from ancient to modern times, as any student of history can testify.

Politically correct

We need to see some definitions of this; in the past, I used to pay a lot of notice and try to accommodate to that standard. Not so much now, and I will explain why.

“The avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” [Oxford dictionary]

“Conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated” [Merriam-Webster]

“Someone who is politically correct believes that language and actions that could be offensive to others, especially those relating to sex and race, should be avoided.” [Cambridge University]

So look again the above definitions and note the words ‘perceived’ in the first, ‘conforming to a belief’ in the second, and ‘believes’ in the third. All these are subjective, thus arbitrary. If one wishes to be well-behaved, then by all means, one should take into account the sensibilities of others over various issues. However, in matters of spirituality, philosophy, history or science, one should care more about the objective truth and less about how people feel about certain aspects of the truth.

     Examples include some of the following:

How many people died in a genocide (numbers differ according to which side you ask);

Is a certain behavior sign/symptom of mental illness (again, the psychiatrists will often tell a different story compared to members of various groups);

Are all people equal? (This often gets mistranslated as an inflammatory comment, aiming to annoy others meaning that they don’t deserve equal opportunities and rights. I am talking about people being equal in skills, IQ, innate abilities etc. Anyone who believes they are equal, must believe in that the humans are a race of robots coming from the same factory and production line.)

Thought Police vs Right to Free Speech

Seeking to prevent possible injustices before they even occur… seems pro-active and good, doesn’t it? Has anyone watched the film, Minority Report? If no, watch it. What about, Fahrenheit 451? Another excellent film (a bit old but a masterpiece). Do you believe in freedom? Can you say what you think without fear? Ask yourself if you should double-guess yourself every time you need to say or write something. People around you are a varied lot; many will not agree with what you say or do. Should you be made to feel intimidated by that? I don’t think so. You have a right to believe what you want and also your freedom of speech is safeguarded by the constitution.

Cultural Appropriation

A touchy subject for a lot of people. “Closed religions”? Kabbalah, deities, voodoo, Hindu beliefs, Native Indian spirit animals etc… the list goes on and on. Are we serious here? I mean, who makes these things up? Wake up people! There is NO closed religion. If a spiritual person or a person with respect approaches a concept or a deity/spirit and that deity/spirit accepts them, then it’s not up to the people to judge badly and condemn this approach! I can (and do) use whatever I want; my judgement is all I need, and that makes me a free man. Please, do not bend to such criticism; learn to think for yourselves. Learn, and experience things directly, if possible. You are born Free, like me. Do not bend to slave mentalities.

Constitutional Rights

Lastly, a bit of the obvious. Surely you are aware that any constitution of a country where there’s democracy and not a totalitarian regime safeguards certain freedoms. One of them is the right to think, speak, write and believe freely. Read up on your rights! Don’t take for granted what other people want you to believe; research yourself and then put them in their place. Protect those rights. People died to establish and to protect them in the past; now you got the ball, it’s your call.

[hunkpurveyor]

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant

I'm way behind on book roundups, I finished this back in October but never wrote up a final impression because my brain is bad and I am bad. So these thoughts are somewhat less fresh.

The third book in a trilogy that has become a quartet is a tricky place to be. You can kind of see the ghost of an ending in the structure but there are too many threads flung far across Dickinson's seas - the scope has expanded drastically since book 1. I'm glad to say, despite this, The Tyrant is still thrilling, book 2 seemed to wallow in its scope sometimes but here it builds and builds to a final sequence of chapters that layers cliffhanger upon cliffhanger, dangling from a few fingers over the edge you discover the cliff itself is teetering on another greater and itself unstable cliff.

There is no credo about the relationship between truth and hurt to serve as epigraph this time, instead Dickinson relates the true historical tale of Vasco de Gama inflicting nightmarish crimes on the Indian city of Calicut in 1502. Dickinson's project has always been unmistakably anti-imperial, but here he begins with yet a further, sicker truth - the things that will be recounted here are terrible beyond fiction.

Thematically the 2nd and 3rd book are less pure in conception than the first. That terrible sickness and betrayal is tempered by Baru's growth as she learns to become human again. But it renders Dickinson's "working from within" narrative a more thorny. She positions herself as the sole inheritor of revolution & the Brain rightly asks - and what if you fall and lose your memory, what if you die? Baru has no answer. Then the Throne has what it wants, the Mbo begins to succumb. Baru is inoculated against co-operation by her initial tragedy but I still find her methodology is not liberatory. We cannot hope for some maverick senator or Koch heir to machinate the downfall of the USA. It would be absurd to propose. Not that I am asking this to be a manual for revolution but Baru's revelation vis a vis cultural inheritance, the incomparable collective nature of such knowledge is not reflected in her plan. She wants to argue the eugenic value of lesbians theoretically at the Metademe for god's sake. This is ludicrously naive. That is to approach Incrasticism as something actually interested in optimisation rather than reproducing fascist ethics.

Would Dickinson dare to have her fail? That would be an astounding move but then so was the first book's denouement.

Thinking back to the first book there is something, I think that has been lost along the way for me. Baru's final betrayal in The Traitor has such a potent gravitational pull I find my mind in its nauseous orbit even now. Her terribleness, the awesome evil of it is attractive in a way that growth and development isn't. I crave damage, perhaps. Hurt is my literary drug of choice. Growth is often feels less true as The Traitor and The Monster's epigraphs would have us ponder on: it's true because it hurts / if it hurts, is it then true? There is something unsaid, unspent in deciding no longer to live in hurt. But the saying or spending would only be a repetition, a ritual of the imaginary purity of being wounded forever. But lately I feel addicted to that wounding - the hard, drudging work of becoming better lacks the same sugarspun taste of destruction. But we're a little distracted.

I can say decisively in the book's favour that Dickinson is now truly stretching his ideological muscles. Everyone battles with deep, difficult questions - the Brain worries at the distance between sign and signified,

"Maybe gods have no consciousness because they do not need it. Maybe that is why they don't answer prayers. They cannot conceive of the world except as it is."

We are confronted with the question of Iscend - a microcosm of the empire's project. Does she have her own agency? Conditioned from birth for her desires to adhere to the republic's, can she make a choice that we can designate as her own? If we say no, are we saying she has become inhuman, she is wholly lost to the ideology of empire, she can never self-determine? Any person she might grow into would still be a result of that conditioning, the poison of Falcrest runs deep. But this doesn't seem acceptable. So we have to liberate ourselves, as people also indoctrinated since birth into a system of imperialism and supremacy, and try and understand what it means for us to exercise agency.

Further, I cannot really plumb the ethics of Tain Shir - and I don't have enough word limit left to try. Basically: political necessity of destruction? No justice only "asymbolic truth"? Primacy of self-determination?

And over and over again we see character's stuck in Baru's original bind. Any atrocity can and must be justified in the name of the ones already committed, the engine of destruction can never be wound down because that renders it pointless, renders its final ideal hollow:

"And the endless self-deceptive blind guilty quest to justify that false science, so that the suffering and misery remained necessary."

But Baru has finally devoted herself to being alive and I am content with the faux ending for now. A moment of peace and companionship for a mutilated woman, a traitor, a monster, an aspirant tyrant striving to be better.

[heartoftheforce]

FACTS / HEADCANONS ABOUT THE MUSE / REVAN

REPOST, DO NOT REBLOG. tagged by: @enterlilith​ tagging:  @voracites​, @hopegained​, @forcesheart​, and whoever else wishes to do this!

1.    While lauded following the Starforge’s destruction, there was still the matter of dealing with the crimes and atrocities Revan committed during his stint as the leader of the Sith turncoats following the Mandalorian Wars’ conclusion. This was a clandestine trial carried out behind closed doors with everyone involved sworn to the utmost secrecy. After all, trying the figure responsible for winning both the Mandalorian and Jedi Civil Wars, regardless of once being the Dark Lord, would no doubt cause a schism the Republic could not afford at the time. And this was no ephemeral legal proceeding, not in the slightest--it lasted for five galactic standard years before being put on halt when Revan vanished from known space.  During this trial, intense debates were waged against the man who could only faintly recall the majority of his doings before the fateful encounter with the Jedi strike team. Testimonies were taken from anyone and everyone who could give reliable accounts. Yet Revan remained resolute, and this resolution only strengthened as time went on and more memories returned to him. Even before clarity returned to his muddled memories, the Revanchist was a force to be reckoned with in such dialogues. His rhetoric was unrivaled just as it had been during the Mandalorian Wars, and the words he said shook many to their core.  If you dug long and hard enough through the secured areas of the Holonet, you just might find recordings of this proceeding.

2.    Despite the rather callous indifference Revan adopted leading up to his role as the leader of the new Sith, the figure was perhaps the most empathetic person ever born. A majority of this empathy stems from his sheer sensitivity to the Force, bordering praeternatural empathic abilities, while the remainder comes from the totality of life he has experienced in his rather short time in the galaxy. This is actually why, I believe, you get those moments in the game itself where the game will tell you that you should probably speak to one of your party members. It’s also why, I think, the Ebon crew are rather forthcoming about their personal lives--especially with Carth. As well as why so many people were quick to trust Revan with their very lives because to speak with and associate with Revan is to almost be with an extension of yourself.

3.    While opinions differ on this aspect, I firmly believe Revan is the strongest Force-sensitive to have ever been born. How everyone speaks about their ability is always reverential, even people who think they could ascend past Revan’s power never refrain from praising his sheer strength. And while I cannot find the video, much to my chagrin, I believe Revan also invented new Force powers--such as Force Storm, Life drain and what have you. Then there’s also the rather unique ability he possesses: being able to literally rip the knowledge out of sentients’ skulls and even instill in others his own knowledge. But this strength does not come from birthright alone, rather through decades of experience and learning has he achieved the pinnacle of strength never before seen again in any save other Force vassals.  The reason for such a potent Force user being born? I believe it’s because of the two great schisms in the Je’daii Order as well as the True Sith Emperor’s existence, threatening the very Force itself in a way not even Darth Nihilus did. An entity whose sole goal is to consume all life in the galaxy to achieve true immortality is the antithesis to the Force itself. So with all these culminating disturbances working to eradicate the Force in its entirety, rather than disrupt the balance alone, the Force needed something capable of embodying the sheer totality of its power.  Thus it conceived Revan, the first of many vassals to come.

4.    Revan and the Exile share one major thing in common--their ability to form Force bonds is unparalleled. However, how they went about this unique ability couldn’t be any more different. The idea of being open to anyone absolutely terrified him to the point of it being nigh debilitating-- there are very few individuals before losing his memory that Revan considered alright being vulnerable to. This phobia only intensified during the Mandalorian and Jedi Civil War as the weight of holding up an entire galaxy bore down on him. So he set out to learn everything he could about such bonds, how they worked, how they formed and, most important, how he could either break or prevent them.

5.   This is something I have been putting off for a long while because of a few reasons: One, my lack of general knowledge regarding all the sentient species of the galaxy. Two, I enjoy keeping a lot about who Revan is specifically, gender and all that, even though I usually default to he/his/him based on my most recent playthrough, ambiguous. As of right now, Revan is a homo sapien until I find something which might be more suitable.  In this regard, I would ask anyone who reads this to feel free to PM me about near-human races that are either underused or very interesting.

[lamiaward]

What if we were both high ranking military officers who kissed and were both girls?

I wanted to write some things for pride month and I had this vague idea of Olivier flirting with Riza to piss off Roy mostly but also genuinely liking the woman and I definitely ship Olivier with Riza so Oops? But also I definitely ship Roy and Riza as well so there’s also some of that (also Riza is definitely bi and in love with Roy but she can at the very least appreciate how attractive and everything Olivier is and probably admires her as well).  Anyways that all turned into whatever this fic is lol.

I haven’t read the manga in a while so some parts might not be canon compliant but I did try to look things up and keep it somewhat canon compliant. And in my head this takes place sometime after Father is yeeted towards Truth. I might change the title this all I could think off oops.

Anyways you enjoy whatever this fic turned into! And happy pride!!

Olivier Mira Armstrong was terrifying. She was ruthless, ambitious and a damn capable general. Riza knew all these facts about the woman, and she actually got along reasonably well with the general. She respected her, definitely, and she was a little easier to deal with than her brother( for one, she did not share the unfortunate habit to walk around half-naked).

However, she was also confusing Riza. Greatly.

General Armstrong had never been “touchy-feely” (as she described it herself, usually with a tone of utter contempt for those who did fall under that category). She was obviously friends with some of her underlings, and even affectionate towards them – in her own way- but she was hardly the one to hug them or otherwise be physically affectionate.

This is why Riza’s heart stuttered when Armstrong, upon seeing her, immediately pulled her closer in a hug. She was slightly stiff, but it wasn’t unpleasant, not necessarily, and when Riza somewhat broke through her own stupor and managed to hesitantly hug her back, Armstrong squeezed her once before letting her go.

“Hawkeye. It is good to see you” it wasn’t a smile, but it was something. It was definitely more friendly than whatever Armstrong greeted most of the other soldiers with (and far more friendly than her expressions around colonel Mustang).

Riza thanked her ability to keep her expression neutral even when her heart was racing slightly, and she had no idea what Armstrong thought she were doing. “  Major general.  How is the North holding up?”

Armstrong cracked a grin. “ Good. It is getting a bit chilly, but that is good for character building” she slapped Riza’s shoulder. “You lot should visit again sometime”.

Riza arched her eyebrows slightly. “ I never thought the day would come that you invite the colonel to visit out of your own free will”.

“ He might freeze to death” Armstrong pointed out, almost gleeful. “And otherwise, he is a weakling who despises the cold so at the very least, I get the opportunity to watch him suffer”.

“ We are simply not used to such temperatures”.

“ From what I remember, you were holding up pretty well”

Riza studied the other woman, still trying to figure out her angle. “ I don’t mind the cold as much. What brings you to Central?”

“Business. And I heard there is a shooting range around here somewhere?”.

“There is” Riza’s eyes flicked to the sword Armstrong always carried. “ I thought you preferred the blade?”

“ Blades are superior to guns , but that doesn’t mean I can’t shoot one. Your ability with them has even impressed those at Briggs, so I thought I would test my skills against yours”.

“I am on duty right now, general Armstrong, but I could meet you after”.

“Mustang really is hopeless without you, isn’t he?”

“ I will see you later, general Armstrong”

“ All right, good luck babysitting Mustang”.

Armstrong sounded normal enough (and derisive about the colonel as always, so normal business there as well) but what the hell was she doing, hugging Riza and- Riza didn’t even know. It was just off.

Surprisingly, Riza actually had a good time with Armstrong at the shooting range. She was harsh and demanding but Riza could appreciate that. It didn’t hurt that the woman was a good shot, either. Riza liked it when someone could actually (or almost) keep up with her.

“ With skills like yours and that reputation, I wager you could work with anyone and anywhere. Why Mustang?“ Armstrong commented when they finally took a break ( despite her claims she didn’t believe in those).

“I hardly thought you were the type for idle gossip, major general”.

Armstrong sneered. “Hardly that, I am not my weakling brother. I am asking for myself”.

“ Are you inviting me to join the Briggs soldiers?” Riza questioned.

“Something I don’t offer lightly. We could use a shot like yours, though I’d have to give you some blade lessons as well “.

“I don’t like blades. But thank you for the offer”.

“That sounds like a cheap excuse, bordering on cowardly” Armstrong spat.

“ I also already have a position”.

“As Mustang’s bodyguard. I suppose with a moron like him, you really need the best”.

“ Unlike with the Ishval massacre, I made the right decision”.

“ At least you didn’t run”.

“The major is of Ishvalan heritage, is he not? I’d thought you have a clearer idea of the atrocities we committed against the Ishvalan population than others”.

“ I hope you don’t waste your time feeling sorry for yourself and for that war. It won’t help the Ishvalan population- actions will”.

“ I don’t. But I also do not absolve myself of my crimes. Which is one of the reasons I will always remain loyal to the colonel - I believe in his vision”.

Armstrong smirked slightly. “The blind man with a vision. You have to admit, that thing did have a sense of humour”.

“ I did not find it particularly entertaining, and the colonel regained his eyesight”.

“Unfortunately. Do you need to loiter any longer or can we continue to shoot?”

“Give it your all, major general”

Armstrong smirked at Riza. “ You bet your ass I will, lieutenant”

Riza filed away the way Armstrong’s voice lowered and she (playfully? This was Armstrong so surely not) bumped shoulders with Riza as part of whatever angle the major general was working. But even if Armstrong had ulterior motives, it was still a surprisingly good evening.

                       ----------------------------------------------------------------

It became somewhat of a habit. Riza would run into Armstrong and they would do something together, never just something ‘fun’ but something practical like going to the shooting range or cleaning weapons. That suited Riza just fine.

She couldn’t imagine Armstrong doing something as “asinine” as just having a drink, or going to a bar in the first place. Conceivably , she must have at some point (for one , Riza figured that alcohol was popular amongst Briggs soldiers to ward off cold and boredom) but Riza just could not imagine it.

Perhaps that’s why she said what she said what she did.

“ You could join?”

“Join what? “.

“As I told you, I cannot cancel my plans with Rebecca again. But you could join, we are just going for a drink”. She neglected to mention that Rebecca would probably drive Armstrong mad within three minutes- her best friend was the exact opposite of the harsh, ambitious major general.

Armstrong smirked. “ All right. Are you going now?”

“ In my uniform? “ Riza shook her head with a smile. “Rebecca would not let me live that down. She already believes I am too “devoted” to my job. I am going to change at home”.

“ Is this Rebecca a civilian friend?”.

“She isn’t. I met her during my time in the academy and we kept contact afterwards. She’s a damn good shot, but her ambitions never really lay with the military”.

“Why would she even join then? The military can’t use people who aren’t committed, that’s no – “.

“ Did you even bring civilian’s clothing?” Riza cut in.

“ No. Why would I? “

As Riza stayed silent while trying to figure out how to solve this issue, Armstrong smirked slightly. “If you are going to offer to borrow some of your own civilian clothing to me, I can assure you they won’t fit”

“ Well, you can hardly show up in your uniform”

“ Don’t break your head over it, Hawkeye. I will figure something out. Just let me know where I will be meeting you”.

Riza nodded. “ All right. I will meet you there”

After having taken a quick shower and changing into her black jumper and favourite pants, Riza rushed to the bar. Rebecca was already there, with two drinks in front of her.

“You better be late because you were hooking up with some hunk” she called out.

“I was trying to put on clothing, not take them off” she replied. “ Or would you have preferred I showed up in my uniform?”.

“ No, I’m pretty sure you already sleep in that thing. It’s ugly as Hell, how do you- “

Riza sat down, and emptied the glass meant for her. “ I wear it at work , and I am hardly going to break military regulation and start a relationship at work”.

Rebecca smirked. “What about the colonel?”.

Riza felt her lips tug into a smile besides herself. “ He’s a notorious womanizer remember? Besides, he is busier than ever”.

“I remember him sleeping on the job a lot, so I doubt he’s that busy. What about that Armstrong?”

Riza was relieved she had finished her glass , or she might have even choked. Well, she wouldn’t have, but her reaction would’ve been a bit more noticeable at least. “ What- we’re barely even friends Rebecca”.

Before she could argue against that more, Rebecca spoke.  “ I thought you were good friends? I mean, he’s a bit of a weirdo, but you gotta admit, he has those muscles and he seems actually capable of empathy. There are not a lot of men you can say that about”.

Right. The major. Not his confusing sister who Riza found herself spending more and more time with.  “ There would still be the issue of conflicting interests. And I have never thought of him like that”.

“Well, there’s alwa-“

Someone slammed a chair down next to them, prompting both Rebecca and Riza to look up. Riza blinked slowly, staring at the unfamiliar sight of major general Armstrong in civilian’s clothing. She wore black slacks, an open blazer and a simple blouse that was unbuttoned quite low. The sleeves were rolled up.

She tore her eyes off Armstrong to look at Rebecca. “Right, I forgot to tell you. I invited major general Armstrong to join us”

Rebecca turned around, mouthing “Armstrong”. Riza recognized the look on her friend’s face, but she was too late to interfere.

“All right, sit down – Olivier, was it? “ Rebecca leaned forward. “ Are there any good men in the North?”.

“General Armstrong is fine. And I’d say my men are the best – certainly better than those in central”  she said the last with a glance at Riza.

Rebecca looked far too interested. “Really? Are any of them single? “.

“Most of them are”

“Any way you could set me up with any of them?”.

Armstrong rolled her eyes. “ Is it so hard to get a man nowadays? I thought all you had to do was smile and the oaf thinks you’re desperately in love”.

Riza stifled a laugh, but Rebecca didn’t seem to think it as funny.  “ Getting a man is easy yes, but getting a good one.. You seem like the type with impossible standards, so haven’t you noticed Olivier?”

“ General Armstrong. And I am not exactly looking for men”

Riza glanced at Armstrong. She had guessed that long ago, although the major general had never outright told her. And since people were terrified of “the Northern wall of Briggs” , no one would think to outright ask it.

Armstrong studied Riza quietly, before slowly dragging her eyes over to Rebecca. Rebecca shrugged. “ More for us, then. Right, Riza?”.

Riza rolled her eyes. “ I told you, I am not looking for a man. I am busy enough with my job, and I am happy being on my own”.

Rebecca leaned towards Armstrong. “She means the colonel”.

“I doubt that”.

Rebecca snorted. “Have you ever seen them together? And during that business with those homun-whatever- some very interesting rumours there”.

“ Lieutenant Hawkeye could do far better than Mustang. And I have enough trust in her mental capabilities that she would not fall for his so-called ‘charms’”.

Riza smiled. “ I will take the compliment, and ignore your insults on the part of my superior”.

Armstrong smirked at her. “ As you always do”.

Rebecca glanced between the two, then suddenly stood. “ You know what, I am going to get more drinks. For one- “she smiled mischievously at Riza “ that might actually remove that stick from your ass. And also because I really want to be able to say I have seen the ice queen drunk”

She sauntered away. Armstrong turned to Riza. “ How did you two ever become friends?”.

“Rebecca has a great sense of humour- however aggravating she may be at times- and she is the most loyal person you can imagine. She made life at the academy more easy”.

Riza nodded at the other woman’s outfit. “ Where did you get that?”.

Armstrong smirked. “I persuaded someone to give it to me” .

“ It’s – you look good. It suits you”.

Armstrong nodded. “ You look very nice as well. Although I prefer you in your uniform”

For some reason, Riza flushed slightly at that. “ You have ample opportunity to see me in my uniform” she pointed out.

Armstrong smirked. “ That I do. Are you ever going to agree to a sword fighting practise?”.

“ I have told you, I prefer guns”

“ Why? Guns are the coward’s option. Blades are magnificent- and part of a long tradition”

“That may be, but I prefer the distance a gun offers. And it is quicker as well”.

“ Wouldn’t have taken you for a coward, Hawk’s eye” .

“ I am not. I simply do not take pleasure from killing. Guns should protect people, and not- “.

“ Guns, blades, any weapon was made to kill. It is foolish to deny that, and weak as well”.

“ So what you enjoy killing?”

Armstrong shrugged. “ I see it as part of my duty, that’s all”

“Fine, but- “

“Well, don’t you two look cozy” Rebecca said and put three large glasses on the table that were pretty much overflowing. Riza suddenly realised she and Armstrong had automatically bent towards each other as they had argued, and a quick glance at the other tables showed that the few people that were there had very obviously been listening to the conversation as they quickly looked away and struggled to start conversations.

She took one of the glasses.  “What did you get us?”.

Rebecca smirked. “ The good stuff. Cheers!” she took her own glass and empty half of it , then whistled as Olivier took hers and emptied it in one go. “The ice queen knows how to drink!”.

Rebecca leaned forward. “The question is, can you drink Riza under the table? “.

“Rebecca- “.

Rebecca hushed Riza. “ Ah come on, it will be fun! You remember what fun is, right?”.

“ I will need plenty of alcohol to deal with you anyways” Riza said drily, then emptied her glass as well.

Rebecca flagged the bartender. “Three – no wait six more please! The special for three of them, and surprise us for the other three”.

Armstrong arched her eyebrows. “A surprise? He could be putting  poison in there”.

“From what I’ve heard, there are quite a few people who would like to poison you, yes”.

“Rebecca” Riza admonished, but Armstrong actually chuckled.

“True enough. Let’s see what your surprise turns out to be, I can probably take it. I don’t know about you two”.

Riza inwardly groaned. Rebecca was competitive as hell so she already knew where this was going. Great.

Predictably, Rebecca rolled up her sleeves. “ Oh you’re in for it now, ice queen”.

Armstrong didn’t look impressed.  “I doubt that”. She looked at the bartender, who was walking over with their order. He put it down with a friendly smile, which rapidly disappeared when faced with Armstrong’s general expression. As he skittered away, Armstrong grabbed one of the glasses, Rebecca immediately following suit.

Before Riza could remind them they were not teenagers, they were adult women who were (arguably) intelligent enough to figure out this was not a good idea, they both downed their glasses and grabbed the next.

Riza gave up pretty quickly, deciding that if they wished to do something moronic she was just going to lean back and enjoy when it all fell apart, and she was the only one without a raging hangover.

It was actually pretty fun because Rebecca always had funny stories which were even funnier when she forgot half the names or description (“you know the guy he had one of those things like a beard but small sized and it’s just not a good look”) and they both looked like they were having fun as well so that was good.

“You’re too sober” Armstrong suddenly exclaimed, flagging the bartender over. “More drinks!” she called out , leading to the bartender looking at the table as though they were having an existential crisis (there wasn’t a bit of space left only alcohol, more alcohol and food).

“ I don’t – “

The bartender called people over, and five minutes later, all the old glasses were cleaned away and new ones had replaced them. Riza quickly grabbed a few before Rebecca and Armstrong could take their alcohol consumption to dangerous levels.

“ YESSSS “ Rebecca screamed when Riza quickly downed two, and grabbed the next one.

Armstrong just pushed two more her way. “ You’re far behind, Lieutenant”.

“ I am not as eager to get a hangover as you two” Riza replied, but still drank the two glasses.

“So you concede defeat before even trying?” Armstrong said, holding up another glass. Something about the woman’s expression made Riza react before she could think. She grabbed Armstrong’s hand, yanked it towards her own face, and tried to drink the glass.

Predictably, she got alcohol over her clothes but she managed to finish it with a triumphant expression. “ Hand me another one” she said.

Rebecca pushed another one her way. “ Are you going to hold hands with the ice queen during?” . Her eyes flicked to Riza’s hand meaningfully.

Armstrong let go of the glass, and Riza put it down, feeling strange about no longer holding on to the other woman. She quickly grabbed the glass Rebecca had pushed her way and emptied it. “ That’s all?”.

Rebecca smirked. “ Hardly. You’re still behind”.

Riza drank one more glass, after which Armstrong and Rebecca continued drinking as well.

“ You know, I could beat you” Rebecca said, leering in Armstrong’s direction.

“ No, you couldn’t “.

“ I could! Just because you’re like Ri- Riza and the only whatever you want to take is your job doesn’t mean I am not great “. She finished her glass and slammed it down before placing her elbow on the table. “Let’s arm wrestle, because I don’t have my gun on me right now”.

“ Nor would I have let you use it since you are inebriated “Riza pointed out.

Rebecca waved her off. Riza was really counting on the major general to be sensible one but of course she wouldn’t. She threw off her blazer, and placed her elbow down as well.

“Give up already, ice queen” Rebecca said.

“Or what? You’ll lose and I have to concede you can never beat me in anything?”.  

Rebecca smirked. “ Do you hate Mustang because he actually gets to kiss Riza?”.

“No he is simply that incapable, and also my competition”.

“ Also he doesn’t get to kiss me since he is my superior”.

“ He’s also plenty good-looking though” Rebecca pointed out, grimacing. Her arm was starting to tremble, and Riza saw it coming before it did. Rebecca did her usual move and tried to kick Armstrong to make her slip up.

Except Armstrong simply trapped Rebecca’s ankle between her legs. “ That’s the best cheat you have? Absolutely pathetic”.

“Well what’s your idea then if you’re brilliant as well?”.

Armstrong smirked. “ My idea?” she paused significantly, before suddenly bringing her arm down. Rebecca cursed as her hand was pressed onto the table. “ I win “.

Rebecca massaged her hand. “ You’re mean, woman”.

Riza shook her head. “ You could’ve predicted that”.

“ As my best friend, you’re supposed to be on my side”.

Riza arched her eyebrows slightly. “I doubt- “  she cut off when faced with Olivier Armstrong’s hand in front of her.

“ Your turn” Armstrong said.

“What?”.

Armstrong grabbed Riza’s hand. “ We do this at Briggs all the time, to decide who has to pay for the last round”.

“ You don’t have bars around”.

“ There’s one actually. It’s only a two-hour trek through the snow”.

“ Of course it is. Fine”. Riza extracted her hand, rolling up her sleeves before she grabbed Armstrong’s hand. The moment she did, the woman started exerting force. Riza slowly felt her arm starting to move down, and pushed back.

“Give up lieutenant you will never win”.

Riza didn’t bother to reply, simply used all her force to keep her arm from being pushed down. The woman was definitely stronger than her, although not too much stronger. And she obviously did this a lot, whereas Riza hardly joined arm wrestle games.

Riza suddenly had an idea. She blamed the alcohol. Definitely the alcohol. And not how Armstrong’s dry wit matched her own and how she had a way of looking at Riza that had more of an impact than the alcohol and how the whole situation with the colonel sometimes frustrated her when she woke up from the usual nightmare in her empty apartment.

She leaned in very close, lowering her voice significantly while pressing her knee against Armstrong’s. “ You know I never miss a mark”.

Armstrong actually wavered for a second, and Riza immediately pressed the advantage. At the last possible moment, Armstrong pushed back again. They were in stalemate for a moment, Armstrong’s arm nearly touching the table.

“ Bold words , but it’s actions that matter”.

Riza hooked her free foot around Armstrong’s ankle, using it to pull her even closer. “ Is it actions you want?”.

“I’ve been flirting and touching you to piss off Mustang enough that he’d develop an ulcer”.

“ Yes, I know that”.

Armstrong arched her eyebrows slightly. “ How?”.

“ You hugged me because Fuery was behind us and you know he would report it to the colonel. Havoc likes to visit the shooting range frequently, especially after the injuries he sustained in the field, so you know he would see us and likewise report. The incident with my hair- “.

“That one was actually not pre-mediated, it was merely annoying me” Armstrong cut in. Ria wasn’t particularly surprised that the major general had decided to suddenly reach out and almost tenderly brush her hair behind her ear  only because the loose strand had annoyed her.

“ You did not hug me after the first time until you were entering the colonel’s office and I was there as well. Every action around me has been calculated to cause as much frustration on the part of the colonel as possible”.

Armstrong didn’t look particularly- anything, really, now that she was found out.  “I don’t really do apologies. I did, however, actually enjoy spending time with you. It’s why I thought it would work in the first place”.

“ Because I am one of the few Central soldiers that don’t “annoy and bore you to death”?

“ Yes. And some other reasons”.

“ Major general?”.

Armstrong suddenly flashed a wicked grin and bent her head slightly so her lips were close to Riza’s ear. “ Call me Olivier, Riza “.

Riza was taken aback enough to forget about the arm wrestling for a second. That was all Olivier needed; the next second, Riza’s arm was slammed down.

Olivier didn’t let go at first, then slowly pulled back. “ Rounds are on Rebecca”.

“Hey! Riza just lost after whatever sexual tension you two were enjoying I feel like she should pay”.

Olivier looked at Rebecca for a moment. “ You would lose from Hawkeye. So you pay��.

“I can pay half” Riza offered, not ready to deal with Rebecca’s screaming. Rebecca closed her mouth, then shrugged. “ Fine. Ice queen pays next time though”.

Riza handed her some bills, watching Rebecca for a moment as she struggled to stand up and staggered toward the bar.

Olivier leaned in. “How serious were you that you never miss your mark?”.

Riza studied her lips for a moment. They looked very soft. As far as she could see underneath the suit, Olivier was built like the goddamn powerhouse she was , with broad shoulder and well-defined muscles. “ How drunk are you, Olivier?”.

“Not drunk enough to forget I have wanted this the first time I saw you assemble your gun. What about you, Riza?”.

“ I don’t even know” she answered honestly, and leaned in even more. “ This, however, is a very public place”.

“ Hm “.

“ And I want privacy because if I start to kiss you, I want to follow it up with other things too”.

Olivier smirked. “Such as?”.  

“ Well- “.

“Bill paid! Stop the bloody tension already and go take her home Riza”.

Riza slowly moved back. “ Rebecca- “.

“ I will get a cab, so you can finally get some”. She smirked at Armstrong. “ It was nice that you joined, ice queen”.

Olivier inclined her head “ Goodnight”.

Rebecca straight-on cackled.  “Not as good as yours, I am sure”. She gave Olivier a clumsy hug, then pulled Riza up to hug her properly before disappearing after some choice comments that had Riza pushing her away.

Olivier stood up as well. “Where exactly is this home of yours?”.

“Not far from here”.

“Perfect” Olivier said, moving closer to Riza. She pushed her shoulder against hers, and Riza felt their fingers brush for a moment. Her breath actually stuttered for a moment.

She licked her lips. “ Are you ready to go?”.

Olivier smirked. “ Wherever you want me”.

Riza certainly did not mind the images that provoked. Not that the one in front of her wasn’t already very much appreciated- the suit really did look very good. She really needed to take her home. And perhaps on a proper dinner sometime.

She didn’t work under Armstrong- surely that meant this did not violate the fraternization rules? And if it did, she couldn’t bring herself to care. She deserved at least a night, surely.  Or whatever they would give each other.  

 Whatever had never sounded better.

[spectaculardistractions]

The social creed must be imposed on us when we are children; for it is like riding, or reading music at sight: it can never become a second nature to those who try to learn it as adults; and the social creed, to be really effective, must be a second nature to us. It is quite easy to give people a second nature, however unnatural, if you catch them early enough. There is no belief, however grotesque and even villainous, that cannot be made a part of human nature if it is inculcated in childhood and not contradicted in the child's hearing. Now that you are grown up, nothing could persuade you that it is right to lame every woman for life by binding her feet painfully in childhood on the ground that it is not ladylike to move about freely like an animal. If you are the wife of a general or admiral nothing could persuade you that when the King dies you and your husband are bound in honor to commit suicide so as to accompany your sovereign into the next world. Nothing could persuade you that it is every widow's duty to be cremated alive with the dead body of her husband. But if you had been caught early enough you could have been made to believe and do all these things exactly as Chinese, Japanese, and Indian women have believed and done them. You may say that these were heathen Eastern women, and that you are a Christian Western. But I can remember when your grandmother, also a Christian Western, believed that she would be disgraced for ever if she let anyone see her ankles in the street, or (if she was "a real lady") walk there alone. The spectacle she made of herself when, as a married woman, she put on a cap to announce to the world that she must no longer be attractive to men, and the amazing figure she cut as a widow in crape robes symbolic of her utter desolation and woe, would, if you could see or even conceive them, convince you that it was purely her luck and not any superiority of western to eastern womanhood that saved her from the bound feet, the suttee, and the hara-kiri. If you still doubt it, look at the way in which men go to war and commit frightful atrocities because they believe it is their duty, and also because the women would spit in their faces if they refused, all because this has been inculcated upon them from their childhood, thus creating the public opinion which enables the Government not only to raise enthusiastic volunteer armies, but to enforce military service by heavy penalties on the few people who, thinking for themselves, cannot accept wholesale murder and ruin as patriotic virtues.

George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

[aliceslantern]

Beyond this Existence: Counterpoint, chapter 17

Summary:  After being recompleted, Ienzo vows to do everything in his power to atone for the atrocities he committed in the past. But this life hasn't been easy, and he's plagued with memories and nightmares. When Demyx suddenly reappears, the two discover that they have more in common than they thought, though the secrets in their past might tear them apart. Zemyx (Demyx/Ienzo), post kh3

Read it on FF.net/on AO3

---

It seemed like winter would never end.

Demyx and Ienzo sat in the library on cushions in front of the fire. This was the only way to stay warm. Ienzo could not quite recall ever being so cold. Even in two layers, with a blanket, by the fire, he only held the chill at bay. Stone was truly a terrible insulator.

Ienzo could see the tension in Demyx’s shoulder even with the shell of the blanket. “I’ve never done this before,” he said. “Therapy.”

“I’ve never counselled.” Not for good, anyway. “It’s not as if you can make mistakes in this process. Take things at your own pace. We’ve got time.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Maybe start with how you’re feeling.”

The firelight cast thick shadows on his face. “I feel… mostly numb. And anxious. And jittery, like someone’s going to come around a corner and get me. Sleeping is hard. Eating is hard.”

“You’ve barely touched your sitar.”

“Exactly. It’s like my whole head is quiet. Even before I had all my memories, yeah I was messed up, but I still wanted to be alive.”

Ienzo was glad that his hair covered half his face. “Do you want to die?”

“Not… die,” Demyx said. He twisted a corner of the blanket in his hands. “Just… not exist, you know.”

He took a deep breath. The scent of woodsmoke steadied him. “Unfortunately, you’re feeling this way because you’re whole,” he said. “Often the human mind can’t fully comprehend a traumatic situation until after it’s over. Once you’re out, the symptoms become more prominent. It doesn’t help that you had to repress years and years of your time as a Keyblade wielder. It’s a lot of work for the mind to do all at once. It’s actually a miracle you’re as stable as you are.”

“That’s because of you,” Demyx said quietly. “Not because of the power of love or all that. It’s when you were in my head. I know the memories are still there. I remember them. But at the same time, something about it stopped it from hurting so much.”

“I can’t say for certain what I did,” he said. “As I remember it, I was brought to a beach and I found you in the water. I took you out of it. And that’s all. Though--” He wondered if the water had symbolized trauma rather than memory, and if by removing him he dulled the emotional impact of these memories--like a good medication. “I’m afraid I don’t understand this new power of mine, at all. I’m not even sure I can replicate it.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Demyx said. He picked lint off of the blanket.

“The good thing is that by processing these things, the symptoms will lessen,” Ienzo said. “But you’ll have to feel these emotions instead of bottling them up.”

“Oh, goody,” he mumbled.

Ienzo tried to smile. “I’ve been where you are. I am where you are. It’s not easy. But you have to. And you have to want to.”

“I do,” he said. He exhaled. “I want to be happy, and I want to be good, and frankly it really royally fucking sucks that now we have to deal with this shit instead of just, like, hanging out and going on dates and living . Like what kind of negative fucking karma did I gather in my previous life? Was everything I did as Demyx that bad? Do I somehow deserve this?”

“You’re not alone, feeling that way.” He sat up a little straighter. “You and I have had abnormal childhoods, and abnormal adolescences, constantly under the control of one adult or another who was playing god with us. Now that we’re real people, and adults, coming to terms with that utter lack of agency is almost impossible.”

“Agency?” Demyx asked. “God damn it. You’re right.”

“From now on I choose my own path,” he said, nearly to himself.

“But how?”

The million munny question. Ienzo shrugged. “Demyx, I really don’t know. We both want to help people, right?”

He nodded.

“And yet, we cannot adequately help others without taking care of ourselves. As I’ve learned.”

Demyx leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.

“It’ll be best to take things easy for a little while,” he said. “Do what you can, when you can. This cold doesn’t help either. But getting stagnant will only keep you in that mindset.”

For several minutes he was silent. Then Demyx said, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“How do you feel?”

Ienzo looked down. Honestly? Since he’d woken up from the coma he hadn’t given it much thought. He took a few minutes to try and unpack it. Mostly, Ienzo felt cold. Physically and mentally. Not… numb. His panic attacks had severely decreased in both quantity and strength (not that they ever fully stopped ). It was a bizarre sense of being both settled and uneasy. “I feel…” Those infallible two words. “Since I regained the lexicon, I feel stable. But at the same time it seems like a false stability. And I’m not sure if that certainty of falsehood comes from a place of truth or a place of paranoia. Hardly anything in my life has ever been stable.”

“So it feels wrong for things to even out?”

“I… yes. It does. And it shouldn’t. I know that much.”

“I know what you mean.”

The fire was getting low, casting odd shadows in the room. “Do you want to keep talking, or take a break?” Ienzo asked.

“We can keep talking. It’s even colder downstairs.” He took a few logs off of the hearth and put them in the flame. “How did you ever grow up in this place, anyway?”

“Well, to be fair I only lived here three years. From after my parents died, up until I became a Nobody.”

“...Is it starting to feel like home again?”

He considered this. “Yes and no,” he said. “There are terrible memories tied up in this place, and deep, unshakeable betrayals. And yet. As I’m learning to forgive everyone, and myself, those bonds are healing. And you’ve given me some good memories here, too. But this is as much home as I’ve ever had. At this point I have to create these concepts for myself. I never had them before.”

“What? Of home?”

“Of family,” he said softly.

Demyx curled a strand of hair around his finger. “I never really had that,” he said.

“No? Not even when you were a child?”

He snorted. “How do you think this child army thing worked?”

“I do not understand.”

Demyx started fidgeting again. “Well I mean. There were all sortsa different levels to it. Like, there were the wielders who were nobility, and kept passing it down to each other. And then there were just regular families who kept their Keyblades in their family line. And then there were just random ass people who happened to be “worthy” of it.” He said this bitterly. “Lucky me, I was part of the last group.”

“So wielders were the majority group?” Ienzo could not conceive of such a thing.

“I mean, kinda yeah. Even if you didn’t use it, or train with it, you still had one. There were whole sects who spent their lives doing whatever they thought it took to get a Keyblade, just to look better. Remember that there weren’t Heartless or anything then. It’s purely a status symbol. But around the time I was a baby Heartless did start popping up, taken from the future via the Book of Prophecies or what the fuck ever. And the Foretellers realized they had all this free labor to do the fighting. To gather the light.”

Ienzo leaned forward. He wished desperately for a pen, something he could use to write all this down.

“But of course all the rich snobs aren’t going to do jack shit. And the people that were willing got their asses kicked, or straight up died, and a lot of them had families of their own. But kids, you know, have strong light. What better way to get people to hand them over then feed them a bunch of propaganda about honor? And if they were poor, a promise of three hots and a cot?”

“And that’s what happened to you.”

Demyx nodded. “Yeah. I don’t even really remember my parents, at all. I used to have a picture of them, but… well. It’s lost now. I sort of remember that day. I was real little. Like little enough to not be able to make long term memory. They had this test to see who was worthy. Made it seem like a real ceremony. They took the kids aside, and then each of the five Foretellers would ask the kid a question. I swear I can’t remember any of it, but I’m sure it was all a vague test of character. And then they take you over to a table with some toys on it.” He pantomimed the table. “And they tell you to pick the toy that you like most.”

“That’s the real test, isn’t it,” Ienzo said.

Demyx nodded. “Yeah. I don’t even really remember my parents, at all. I used to have a picture of them, but… well. It’s lost now."

Ienzo took a moment to digest all this information. “So you were really on your own.”

“Yeah. The older kids would kind of look after the little ones until they were big enough to go out on their own. If you were lucky, you became part of a fighting party and made friends. I was part of a couple, but there’s all the typical drama and infighting and cliquishness. There was a lot of fighting. A lot of fighting.”

“Your parents couldn’t visit you?”

“I’m not really sure,” Demyx said. “I visited them, in my spare time. It was my mom who taught me music. But they... you know, it was hard for the two of them to get by, and they moved around a lot. Eventually... I couldn't find them again."

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry.” He sighed. “I’m sure they had their reasons.”

“I also know what it means to be abandoned.” His voice had dropped to a near whisper, barely audible over the crackling fire.

“It really righteously sucks.” He tried to inject some humor into the words, but it fell flat. “Oh boy. Haven’t had to unpack that in a while. Yikes.”

““Yikes” is right.”

He laughed, a stifled, awkward sound, and touched his brow. “I always get thrown to the wolves,” he said.

“Let yourself feel it.”

These were slow, quiet tears. Ienzo crossed the distance between them and pulled him close. “I feel sick,” Demyx said through his teeth. “These fucking -- These people are supposed to care about us. Why don’t they?”

“I don’t know. I don’t…” Ienzo could feel that pain too, sharply and acutely, as though he were being stabbed. Your master abandoned you.  

They told me you’d gone mad!

His breaths were short and shallow. He tried to fight off this distress automatically. But to  not take his own advice would be hypocritical.

They held each other. Cried a bit. It was an odd attempt at catharsis, but he had to admit it was somewhat effective. After all this they lay by the dying fire.

“Why do people cry?” Demyx asked.

“Well, interesting thing about that. When certain emotions rise to high in the body, tears are produced to return the body to homeostasis. Which explains the numbness while crying, and the sense of relief afterwards. Why is it you ask?”

“Just… wondered,” he said slowly.

“Do you feel a little better?”

He laughed weakly. “I kind of don’t want to talk about feelings right now. If it’s all the same.”

“Yes… I am tired.” Ienzo looked up at him. Demyx stared up at the ceiling, his eyes glassy and unfocused. When he realized he was being watched, he flashed a smile. “We should go. It’ll be getting cold soon.”

“I… I want to stay a little longer,” Demyx said. “It’s nice here by the fire.”

Ienzo sat up a little. “If you would like to be alone with me, you need only ask.”

He touched Ienzo’s face. “Isn’t it kind of messed up though? That after this whole deep and complex conversation I want to--”

“I’m sure there’s some kind of deeper reasoning behind it, but frankly right now I do not care,” he said, and kissed him.

It was the sort of kiss that was slow-building. Ienzo felt himself being pulled close, his callused hands slipping under both layers of sweater. In the midst of all this he was no longer cold. With all the layers Ienzo could not find his skin, and laughed despite himself. Demyx kissed him along his jaw.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“There is altogether too much fabric. It feels like fondling potatoes.”

“Oh my god.” He started giggling too. Ienzo realized he’d heard Demx cry far more than he’d heard him laugh. “Maybe we should continue this in your room?”

“I should… I should like that.”

They returned, dodging potential obstacles along the way. Ignored Aeleus and Dilan in the sitting room. Ienzo should not have found such sneaking around amusing, but he did. This was very nearly normal.

Demyx stripped quickly and crawled under the covers.

“Not exactly erotic, is it,” Ienzo mumbled.

“You want erotic, come back to me when it’s not negative eight thousand degrees in here.”

He rolled his eyes. “I highly doubt it’s that cold.” But when he undressed the air was punishing on his bare skin and he could not help but curl tightly under the covers until he stopped shivering. “There’s months more of this yet.”

“God--makes me want to scream.”

“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to contain yourself and be very quiet. Where were we?” He kissed him. No. Here it was not so cold at all. The light in the room had a soft, silvery look to it. He wasn’t sure why, but he was nervous, like this was the first time all over again. So much had changed in the past two months, even if he’d been unaware most of the time.

Demyx brushed the hair out of Ienzo’s eyes. “You still cold?”

He shook his head.

“What do you want to do?”

He felt the color rise to his face. This was normal, he reminded himself. “Make love to me.” Saying it, he felt embarrassed.

Demyx nodded. “Okay--yes.” He shifted his weight, teasing apart Ienzo’s thighs and resting on top of him. The skin there was soft, more sensitive than he thought, and he stifled a breath. “You can tell me what feels good and what doesn’t, you know,” he said softly. “I can’t read your mind.”

“It would be so much easier if you could.”

He chuckled. “Having someone else in your head isn’t all that much fun.” He traced circles on Ienzo’s inner thigh. “It’s right there, isn’t it?”

Ienzo kissed him. He could feel the flush of want in practically his whole body, curious and interesting. It was so bizarre to focus on the body. Most of the time he was so detached from anything. Demyx’s hand left his thigh, crept up past the curve of his hip to his side.

“And here?” He kissed it. It was a lush, electric sensation and Ienzo covered his mouth to keep from making too much noise. He could barely reciprocate. His other hand was caught in the hair at the nape of Demyx’s neck. Already there was a tightness forming in the pit of his stomach. He uncovered his mouth and touched Demyx’s cheek. “I love watching you,” Demyx said. He was slightly breathless.

Ienzo let his hand slip down against Demyx’s chest to his own sides. He gasped. “I thought so,” Ienzo said. He moved still farther down, between his legs. Demyx stifled a sound against his shoulder and then kissed him.

“I think maybe now is a good time to--” Demyx sounded weak.

“It’s in the same place. The lube.” His joints seemed to have turned to jelly, though it was rather pleasant. At least now he knew what to expect. The finger inside him was no longer uncomfortable. He had just enough reason to wonder why that was.

“You okay?” Demyx asked. He was flushed.

“It’s a lot less tight.”

“That happens,” he said. The second finger also went in fairly easily.

Ienzo laughed a little.

“You’re cracking up today,” Demyx said.

“Kind of an inside joke, with myself,” he said. “You’ve helped me change so much. Of course it would be there too.”

Demyx snickered. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a weird guy?”

“Sometimes a little weird is okay.”

“I think it’s kinda hot,” he said. He withdrew his fingers. This time Ienzo could enjoy being taken. Now that he knew what to expect it was no longer so overwhelming. Demyx moved against him, gently but not nearly as tentatively as before. “Slower? Faster?”

“Slow is good.”

“...I was hoping you’d say that.”

With every thrust Ienzo could feel him coming up against him in the exact perfect way. His dick rubbed gently against Demyx’s waist, providing much needed friction. The tension was almost unbearable, but every time he thought he was getting close things would get still tighter, still more intense. There was a lot about his own body he still didn’t know. Finally it all snapped. His vision went gray for a moment, like he might faint. He felt his hands trembling at Demyx’s back. “You okay?” Ienzo asked.

“Dizzy.” He got off of Ienzo and lay on his side. “I think we came at the same time.”

“Is that unusual?” He reached for a handkerchief to wipe off his belly. He wrinkled his nose. It was a shame the whole process was so messy.

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

Despite the stickiness, it felt good to rest against him. “So people really just do this whenever they want?”

He snorted. “You don’t need, like, a special occasion to have sex.”

“Some things still seem rather bizarre to me.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

Now that the heat of the moment was fading, Ienzo pulled the covers up more tightly around them. “How old were you? The first time?”

Demyx blew a raspberry. “Seventeen. There was a guy in the Dandelions. We went on a few missions together. We’re all thinking, like, the end of the world is coming, and post-fight adrenaline plus teenage hormones is hard to resist. Yeah. But we weren’t like… in love, or anything. He was the only one I slept with. Before you, I mean. Why is it you ask?”

Ienzo shrugged. “Merely curious. So there was no one in the Organization?”

He raised an eyebrow. “ In the Organization?”

“While we were in the Organization.”

He shook his head. “Nah. I know some of the others tried that to feel something. I didn’t really care though.”

Ienzo nodded and lay back down. After all that he was exhausted. “I should like to take a nap,” he said.

“I’m getting good at wearing you out,” he teased.

“Amongst other things.” He yawned.

[princesspiratecat]

Personal and a Little Off-Topic

When I set out to create characters for my challenge hood, I wanted them to have a certain amount of realism about them. And on my quest for realism through research, I have to say that my heart keeps getting broken, over and over again, when it comes to the treatment our country has committed against people of color. 

First, we pretty much wiped out an entire nation of Native peoples, that were HERE first. We stole their land, we tricked them, we lied to them, we murdered them, we forced to them live on land that was impossible to farm and had few resources, we took their children away from them, forbade them from speaking their own languages, forced them to accept our own shitty brand of religion, and continually lynched them. Even today we continue to put our own greed over the needs of these people, which sickens me. And yet, we still celebrate Columbus for “discovering” America?! Why?? Why are we lying to our children about the crimes he committed?! Why do we continue to narrate such utter bullshit? 

The other issue I just cannot rest easy with is our past system of slavery. I just don’t have the words to describe how sickening our country was throughout most of our history, and how absolutely reprehensible not only the system was, but the people that participated, fought for, and in some cases died so that slavery would continue. Anyone that says that Civil War in our country wasn’t fought over because of slavery is FULL OF SHIT. And they need to open a damn book and get to reading, because I assure you, the civil war was fought OVER SLAVERY. That was the deciding factor, that was the reason. Everything else paled in comparison to the issue of slavery. 

When I read about slaves I swear I can hear their screams, and the look in their eyes is always one of terror, fear, and sadness. I just cannot believe how long it went on, and how much our country benefited from it economically. It really paints a bleak picture of a our capitalist system when you think about how much was sacrificed so that the cotton, sugar and tobacco industries could thrive- not to mention the slave-trade itself. Was it worth it? Is money worth the cost of the atrocities we committed? Sadly, I think many people think it was. (You can read more about who has profited here, and it will probably shock you.)

And yet there were so many other groups that faced discrimination, some that destroyed lives and others that suffered more mildly. The Chinese, Italians, Armenians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Jews (of course), Mexicans and anyone else from South of the boarder, Indians, Japanese, even Irish! The list goes on and on and on, and all of it based upon some absurd idea that English people were the best. 

Oh, England- how much you have to answer for.

I have a lot of white guilt, and I don’t really know what to do with it. Luckily, both sides of my family came here after the civil war was fought- one side were Russian Jews, and the other side were Scots. So at least I can celebrate the fact that my people never participated in this bullshit, but it’s a small comfort. Very, very small. Am I the only one that feels that way? Please tell me I’m not alone.

As a woman that is married to a Korean born man and is actively trying to conceive, I fear for my future children and I fear for the path this country is on now more than ever. I wish White people would stop trying to deny the crimes their ancestors committed against so many. And let’s stop pretending that the confederate statues have a place in our cities and towns. They don’t. Confederates were traitors and most of them were disgusting, reprehensible people that aren’t worth mentioning.

[warsofasoiaf]

We're tomorrow I believe, so I shall repeat the question, as requested : what are your thoughts on Graven Ashe, the Great General of the Disfavored in Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox's Tyranny?

Graven Ashe is a well-done villain, but the writing of him as a general suffers a bit. In some ways this is a good thing, a flawed general whose flaws logically derive from the character makes sense, and some of those flaws are a natural part of Graven Ashe’s character progression from capable rebel general to where we see him at the start of the Tiers campaign, as well as an exploration of the setting of Terratus. Under a cut because spoilers.

Ashe as a rebel general is every bit the heroic mythos of a rebel commander. Outnumbered by Kyros’s hordes, unwilling to surrender, Ashe took to the mountains, where he fought an impressive campaign. The rough mountain terrain reduces the force multiplier of large numbers by preventing those numbers from being deployed effectively, reducing or eliminating the ability for flank attacks in warfare techinques that are as ancient as they are timeless. Similarly, Ashe using terrain that he and his forces knew by heart gave them a tremendous tactical advantage, local knowledge has been one way that insurgency forces from Persian rebels to modern jihadists have attacked numerically and technologically superior foes. Ashe used pragmatic tactics shaped by natural talent and cunning (he was illiterate before his magical awakening) and his campaign is really nothing short of brilliant from what little we understand of it. Ashe is capable of adapting quickly to the various magics that the Archons arrayed against him. When the Archon of Entropy used magic to destroy Ashe’s weapons and armor, his forces used wooden weapons and other natural tools to continue the fight. When the Archon of Sorrow tried to break the morale of Ashe’s troops, they countered using Northern honor songs and other methods of espirit de corps to maintain unit cohesion. 

These victories awakened Ashe’s own unique exarch powers: his troops fought harder, stayed on the march longer, and fought with a unity of purpose that made them, pound for pound, one of the greatest fighting forces of that era. Ashe credited his legion and his legion credited Ashe, and in the world of Tyranny, that collective belief becomes a magical force. First Ashe simply shoulders the doubts of his men, and they fight harder knowing they can believe in their general. This belief strengthened his soldiers to the point where they began to fight past the point of other types of failure, including physical. This feedback loop gave Ashe the ability to shoulder the burdens of his troops from battle fatigue to actual chest wounds, sustaining his campaign far longer than any thought possible and certainly longer than any other had resisted the armies of Kyros. Ashe’s magic is a compassionate one, his regard for his men allows them to fight. 

Ultimately though, the resources that Kyros could provide outweighed even Ashe’s dogged resistance, an often overlooked facet of warfare is that the ability to sustain a campaign often can be a bigger determinant than battlefield victory, despite the allure of the latter over the former as discussed in Cathal Nolan’s The Allure of Battle. Ashe was able to delay every action that Blood Ruin, then the Archon of War, could muster, even defeating him in combat and slaying him, taking the mantle for his own. Every loss that Ashe’s army took couldn’t be replaced, and even a legion magically protected by an Archon’s power became too much. Ashe could nearly obliterate the Scarlet Chorus, but even he ended up in chains, and there Ashe elected to serve Kyros over the deaths of he and his legion. Kyros took the Northern pride by co-opting the legion and removing their name, marking them as the Disfavored and sending them into the field to win the favor of their cruel Overlord.

Here we see Ashe start to be corrupted from his heroic ideal to a dark mirror. Ashe’s regard for his troops meant that he was unwilling to sacrifice them to prove a point. This in itself is a reflection of his pragmatism that he emphasized from the early days fighting in the mountains, but other aspects of himself darkened as he became the next new tool for Kyros. Regard for his men and a love of their culture through their songs which shepherded them through magical sorrow grew the foul fruit of outright bigotry and supremacism, Ashe and the Disfavored are unapologetic in their assertion that their superior breeding, training, and culture make them inherently elite in every conceivable sense, and they relish taking to the field to ‘prove’ that supremacy against all those who would oppose them. Kyros, throughout the game, routinely disregards the Disfavored despite their elite self-conception. When the Disfavored do not conquer the Unbroken quickly enough, the Edict of Storms is dropped upon them for their inability to subject Stalwart quickly enough to suit the whims of the Overlord. When the bickering of the Voices of Nerat and Graven Ashe hamper putting down the Apex rebellion, Kyros drops the Edict of Swords on the entire valley, killing them all. Ashe’s magics are compassionate but that compassion is used in an engine of great cruelty. 

Ashe in the game, however, is far from the great general that he was in his origin story. Equipped with the rings that the Empire can provide, with a cabal of Earthshaker mages at his back, and the strength of his Aegis only mightier, Graven Ashe might be completely unstoppable, but he isn’t. The Vendrian Guard outfight him much the same way he outfought Blood Ruin. Part of it is the disunity between the Scarlet Chorus and the Disfavored, and the Voices of Nerat is actively hostile, aiding the enemy to hamper the Disfavored and devouring Ashe’s son to discover a weakness is unquestionably going to hamper their effectiveness, but Ashe himself acts in bad faith for the coalition, refusing to work with Chorus. After the Tiers would be subdued, Ashe would no longer have any wars to fight, mere rebellions at best, and the Disfavored would never have the chance to earn back their legion insignia and moniker. 

Sometimes the mistakes made are simply too much, too impractical to make much sense from an outside perspective. Starving Azure, sending Cairne to Edgering, all of it is Ashe serving himself, and through that believing he serves Kyros. That too, is part of the themes of the game. Kyros’s lieutenants have such differing visions that they are drawn to, increasingly, open hostility over their differences of what Kyros’s will and Kyros’s Peace mean.At times, Ashe picks tactics with nothing short of Odysseus-level hubris rather than pragmatism, the self-regard of his legion dulls the tactical mind he used to have at a razor’s edge him to deploy suboptimally, such as his inability to take Duskwatch. He listens to his councilors, but even so at times he makes poor decisions. Even his compassion for his men becomes secondary to his desire to prove himself victorious, he marches on Sentinel Stand even though the Edict of Storms was imminent. If this was Ashe simply changing, trading regard for his men for obedience to Kyros, this would be one thing, but that isn’t backed by the game’s internal logic. Ashe disobeys Kyros regularly for personal gain, sending scouts into the forbidden Oldwalls, making unsanctioned peace deals to secure his son in a transfer, and so on. Similarly, the player character becomes an Archon over the course of the game but never becomes slavish to Kyros’s will, even raising a flag in rebellion if that’s what the player wants to do. 

Perhaps some of it is a natural reaction to the story of Ashe’s myth over time. One of the central themes of magic in the world of Tyranny is that legends grow over time, the Edicts being a prime example as illustrated by Lantry. Ashe’s own victories over Kyros might have been exaggerated just as his Aegis was. His origin story is romantic, the real Ashe may have made his own set of mistakes, but Blood Ruin still had to die and the other Archons still had to expend a lot of effort; those may have been exaggerated so those events still had to happen. 

Muddling things somewhat is the nature of the medium. Video games require the protagonist to be capable in a fashion that NPC’s cannot be, in order to give the player something to do. It’s not simply a power fantasy of being the only competent person surrounded by fools, even if plenty of games default to this as a means of easy (read: lazy) writing, it’s a reality of the medium. Ashe must be incapable of some things otherwise the player has no reason to be there. Giving the protagonist room in the story is not a mistake, but I think I would have liked to see more tactical brilliance shown instead to told. Perhaps part of that is the limitations of the isometric storytelling grid. That setup is better suited to telling the actions and exploits of a single hero or party of heroes instead of a full army. The Conquest mechanic is another one it must emphasize Ashe’s mistakes in order to allow the player to favor or oppose him in chargen.

It’s the campaign in Azure that ends up clinching it for Ashe. Ashe wants to use blight Azure, the breadbasket of the Tiers, to starve out the survivors and the Scarlet Chorus both. From a military perspective, it’s exacerbates the occupation of the Tiers. It seems almost excessive for Ashe, but it is logical from his perspective where his Disfavored count for almost everything. He has a logistical slave corps that can move materials in, it will affect only those who are lesser beings in his eyes. It’s also a logical progression in the game’s structure, where when you ally with the Disfavored you slowly commit atrocities with a larger and larger scope over the second Act, killing the infant ruler of Stalwart all the way to a forced famine. Capitulating to a tyrant in order to save yourself was what Ashe did for his men, and so the Disfavored path of the game has to doing much the same, capitulating to Kyros and to Ashe to earn favor and regard.

So, I like the character and the setting even if the military mistakes sometimes become a nuisance. Evil healers are one of the favorite sorts of character dichotomies, and the mistakes are logical even if sometimes I feel that they are over-egging the pudding.

Thanks for the question, Toad.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[hollowedrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, SARAH! — You’ve been accepted for the role of Charity Burbage. What I loved most about your application was the way in which you gave Charity’s newfound fire a source other than her wife’s death. It doesn’t come from death, but life — her wife’s life and the way she lived, ready to take on her own war of sorts. The little details throughout your application kept it a fresh read from start to finish. I’m so excited to see you continue to develop her character. 

Thank you so much for applying. Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the follow list. Welcome to Hollowed Souls!

Name: Sarah

age: 24

preferred pronouns: She/Her

timezone: EST

activity: I would say my activity should be a 6-7/10 overall. My life can get pretty hectic from time to time but it ebbs and flows and I’ll be around to plot and check in most days and able to write replies 2-3 days out of the week.

are you applying for more than one character?: Not this time!

how do you feel about your character dying?: I mean of course I would be sad to see Charity go down in this war but provided I was able to have some measure of creative input as well as able to return to the rp as a different character I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing how Charity’s death plays out. She’s not a soldier for all that she’s trying to be one right now and it wouldn’t surprise me if she did end up as a casualty. To be completely honest the angst addict in me wonders how her death would affect the Order and the plot, would her light going out bring more hopelessness or would it spark dying fires of rebellion? A terrible part of me would really like to find out.

anything else?: Nothing except to say that you’re a fucking Queen Janelle and this roleplay is everything I dreamed it would be when you first mentioned it and more.

ic details.

full name: Charity Melina Burbage

Charity: Meaning “generous love” it is hard to imagine a name more fitting for Charity who was born with a heart overflowing with love for the world around her. Although Florence would have loved any child just the same, it was her wish that she would have a child who would give back to the world the joy that she herself had received in bringing them into it and she wrote that wish into her child’s name and delighted to see it come true as her daughter grew. For a long time all was as her mother had wished it. Her family was not perfect but it was defined by genuine love and kindness and for many years that was enough to keep the darkness from slipping in through the cracks. Little did she know that there was something else flowing within her precious child that would open the doors to a darkness more cruel than she could have imagined.

Melina: Meaning “honey.” Although it was Florence who swore up and down that all the honey she ate when she was trying to conceive and continued to crave throughout her pregnancy was the source of Charity’s honeyed tresses and sweet soul it was William who insisted, eyes twinkling with gentle mirth, that they pay homage to her belief with a name that would soon become his favored nickname for his only child.  Although many of his mates at work offered veiled condolences on the gender of his much longed for child William could not have been more overjoyed with his bright young daughter who met him every day upon his return from work with gifts of braided flowers and treats from the kitchen. It had put a chill in his heart the day she disappeared, however briefly, behind a barrier that he could not breach into a world that he could not fully understand. Although his wife’s undaunted faith in their child and Charity’s own eager curiosity won him over at the time and he encouraged his daughter to find her place in this strange new world that was hers by right of magic the chill never fully faded away and in time he would come to see there was more reason than fatherly concern behind his apprehension.

date of birth: 23, February, 1953 (Pisces Sun, Cancer Moon, Libra Rising)

former hogwarts house: Hufflepuff

sexuality: Pansexual Panromantic

gender/pronouns: she/her

face claim change: nope!

more.

how do you interpret this character’s personality? how will you play them? include two weaknesses & two strengths.

Charity was born with a bright seed of light inside of her that flourished in a home filled with love and patience until it glowed with the warmth of a small sun. Secure in her parent’s love she was driven from a young age to share the fount of joyful kindness (+) that sprung from within her with the world around her. She could not bear to see anything or anyone suffer and was ever taking in misfit strays and wounded animals to nurse back to health, baking treats to give to their neighbors, and doing all she could to wipe frowns from any face friend and stranger alike. Even as she grew and found that the world was much colder than the loving nest of her hometown her light remained growing even stronger despite all those who hissed at her that she had no right to shine. There are those who would call her kindness weakness, even she has cursed herself more than once since the beginning of the war for not being stronger or harder, but there is value in the ability to lift others’ spirits. There is scarcely person alive in Godric’s Hollow who has not lost someone or something dear to them and Charity does her best to bolster the spirits of those around her with hope and kindness on the days she is able to. Unfortunately those days seem to be fewer and fewer as time goes on.

Once Charity’s inner warmth and kindness was as constant as the sun, but loss has worn away at it until some days it gives off little more light than a smoldering ember. The truth is that Charity is terribly depressed (-). Following her wife’s death she had rallied bolstered by her commitment to the cause of preventing further atrocities and the bonds she strengthened and formed within the Order. For a few years she found a purpose and despite the mounting horrors of war she held on tight to her belief that good would win out in time. The Massacre and attack on the Order Headquarters has utterly shaken that conviction and set her back into a darkness akin to the one that overwhelmed her when she first lost Althea. There is something even worse about the darkest days of this relapse that are tinged with bitterness and self-recrimination. When people look to her for the light she used to shed so willingly she is beginning to shrink away from them. So many of them are ready to give up and let hatred run free through their world, what makes them think she has anything left to give? Her mind is a mass of contradictions. At times she wants nothing more than to curl up in bed and let the world fade away and others she hates herself for even thinking of giving up or holding back from the people who clearly need kindness more than ever. Althea would have never given up or cast blame on the people she loved for losses that many of them also suffered. When hopelessness and bitterness threaten to overwhelm her she remembers her wife who was so determined to save the world from forces that Charity did not fully understand and she shores herself up, brews a pot of tea, and finds someone who needs a hand to hold or a shoulder to lean on.

Although most days she cannot see it, it is her spirit alongside the memory of her fierce beautiful wife that makes it so that Charity is so determined (+) not to give up no matter how dire the circumstances. When she was alive Althea was the ‘strong’ one in their relationship. Charity was plenty happy with a simple life full of beauty and was content when after many years of working at a small tea shop in Diagon Alley she was able to buy it from the owner and make it her own. She treasured the smiles of her customers and their compliments on her charmed teas and honey cakes. Although she too could be sweet and kind, Althea was more of a warrior than her sweet gentle wife. She was one of many scientists who formed the forefront of a movement to address the effects humanity was having on their planet and spent her days arguing against those who would harm the world she loved. Despite not fully understanding climate change Charity knew that Althea was working against the folly of men that could devastate both of their worlds if left unchecked. It is the fire she saw in her wife’s eyes when she spoke of men who would gladly let the world burn if it made their lives more pleasurable that is reflected now in Charity’s as she is faced with a group of people who would let their hatred and greed blind them to the evil of their actions. She has to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, good will win out over hatred and cruelty but she also knows that she cannot sit idly by and expect that to happen all on its own. So she remains determined to stand with the Order and make a difference despite the darkness in her heart and the world around her.

Although Charity’s determination remains strong, the fact remains that she was not born a soldier. In school she gravitated towards softer magics. She excelled  in charms and potions that could impart an extra boost of calm or energy to a cup of tea or cake, heal small minor issues, make flowers bloom and last, and photographs move but she was less interested in dueling or defense against the dark arts. As a result she is weak (-) when it comes to battle magic which leaves her at a disadvantage being as she is one of a few remaining members of the resistance. In the beginning her lack of battle prowess had not mattered as much since the Order was better manned and she had other ways of contributing, but now with the Order on its last legs and beginning to fracture she is beginning to feel almost useless. She has learned to cast a Patronus, but is still struggling to learn enough offensive and defensive magic to make her presence in a fight more of a help than a hindrance.

how has the war affected this character, emotionally and otherwise?

There is little the war hasn’t stolen from Charity. It began as a shadow scarcely noticed in the otherwise blue sky of her life nothing more than harsh words hissed and whispered at her in halls and classrooms. By the time she realized how large and menacing the shadow of war had grown it was too late, it had already noticed her and stolen her love right out of her hands. Although it has been years since Althea’s murder Charity still wakes from nightmares with her wife’s name on her lips and tears soaking her pillow. She knows it was hatred, vile and putrid, that stole her wife from her  but on her darker days it is hard not to dwell on her own part in her wife’s death. If it wasn’t for her Althea would have never been in the Leaky Cauldron that day. Althea never would have known there was a world existing alongside her own or that people might wish her dead solely for her lack of magic and the accident of her wife’s birth. If Charity had only paid more attention to the whispers and dark undercurrents that were rising on the streets of the magical world she had come to love alongside the one she had been born into she could have done something differently. If she had known how bad things were getting she could have taken Althea someplace safe. Even if she had only remembered to refill her floo powder her wife might still be alive and well. If…if…if…if, it was a torturous exercise but one that she had trouble stopping once it wormed its way to the forefront of her mind. Although it had felt like the end of the world when Althea’s bright green eyes drifted shut in a darkened alley way it was only the beginning. After Arthur told her about the war and the Order she had fought her way out of the darkness that had descended on her the moment the light had gone dark in her wife’s eyes to devote herself to helping them in any way that she could only to watch her friends suffer and die and finally become refugees of a bloody war.

Along the way she lost her home. After the Ministry was lost Charity had gone home to her parents and begged them to leave. All she could think of was how their home was linked to the magical world and the war that was tearing it apart from the inside out all because of her and the idea of harm coming to them because they had born a magical child terrified her. In turn they had begged her to come with them and she had tearfully refused them. They were safer without her with them and she could not turn her back on the only people fighting to keep what had happened to Althea from happening to anyone else. Her only concession was to give her mother a charmed envelope one of a set that would allow them to trade messages if they needed to and a promise that she would write them when she could. As soon as her parents were safely away she lit her envelope on fire to break the connection between them fearing it would be used to trace them if hers was ever compromised. It broke her heart to lie to her mother but her desire to protect her parents won out against the cries of a small child that lived in her chest who wanted ever so badly to run to her parents and hide.  After her parents left she packed up what she could not live without, including a box full of photographs more precious to her than gold, and moved into the back rooms of her shop on the edge of Diagon Alley. The beautiful town that she had grown up in, had lived and laughed and fallen in love in, held nothing for her now. It was a ghost town full of lovely memories tinged with the pain of loss and like many things it only existed within her reach in photographs.

The Massacre and the combined failed Malfoy Manor mission and attack on the Headquarters dealt a final harsh blow to Charity’s spirit. It meant another home lost since there was enough to link her shop, sometimes used as a safehouse in the past, to the Order that it was not safe to return to. It meant that even more of her friends were dead or lost in a world that seemed colder and bloodier every day. It meant that they were losing, the death eaters took their losses as well she knows but so with Voldemort still living she knows he can continue to spread his vileness and infect new followers to fill his ranks, and that more and more of them wanted to give up. Once they relocated to Godric’s Hollow, a place so cursed by death that not even Voldemort would think to find them there, the already faded light in her chest began to flicker and bleed out. It’s hard for her some days to continue on surrounded as she is by reminders of their losses both in the landscape of the ravaged village itself and in the faces of her remaining friends.

where does this character currently stand? with those who wish to hide in godric’s hollow until the war ends, with those who wish to rebuild the order and continue fighting the war, or on neither side? Why?

Charity is torn when it comes to the schism that is beginning to tear at the center of the Order. On one hand she fully understands those who wants to do their best to remain safe and weather the war in hiding. She loves her friends dearly and wants them all to be safe and knows that there is no way to ever be fully safe while fighting a war. Not to mention there is the fact that given a chance to turn back time and keep her family together and safe far from the ravages of war she knows that she would very likely make the selfish choice to do so. But she also knows that Voldemort and those who think like him will never stop. She saw it in the eyes of the men who stole her wife from her. They knew that there would be likely be no way to avoid the repercussions of their actions, but it was worth it to them to make her and her wife suffer for the mere accident of their blood. Men like them… people like the remaining death eaters will never stop trying to destroy what they think it unworthy to exist in their world. And so those who would fight to keep the thorny vines of hatred from choking out the good in their world have to keep going as well. So as much as she understands the impulse to give in to hopelessness and hide away she stands with those who wish to rebuild and continue fighting. It’s what Althea would have done, it’s what the remaining spark of light in her soul is driving her to do. Kindness is not always soft. Sometimes it burns with all the bright heat of protective love and vengeance against those who would spread darkness. She does think that a secondary safehouse should be set up for those who cannot or will not fight, but she herself refuses to just stand by and let the evil that has infected their world and stolen so much from her and those she loves prevail.

Character Question: What is Charity’s role in the order? Has she found a place or is she still struggling to find her own way to help?

When she first joined the Order she was able to do enough to help in many little ways. She offered up her shop as a safehouse and a place to meet following missions and kept watch with a cup of soothing tea and a hand to hold for when people began to show up and had to wait to see who else would make it back. She kept an eye on the atmosphere at the edge of Diagon Alley and noticed when one by one her muggleborn regulars began to stop in less and less and then not at all. She hid messages in her daily specials and visited fellow members with baskets of food and flowers when they were injured or lost someone. Over time she established herself as a bright spot of hope in the Order by being ready with a smile and a listening ear despite having faced her own terrible loss before ever having joined the war effort.

Since the loss of her shop and her own mounting depression it has gotten harder for Charity to feel as though she is truly benefiting the order. She wants so badly to help and tries her best to remain a bright spot in the darkness for her friends and allies and to support those who reach out to her but there are days that she feels hopeless about her ability to make a true difference. Worse than that she once more feels stretched between two worlds with one foot on each side of the schism that is shaking the core of the Order. She wants to offer her love and support to everyone, including those who cannot bear to fight any longer, but her determination to soldier on causes tension between her own convictions and her desire for everyone to be safe. She wants to fight alongside those who are committed to continuing on, but she feels like she would slow them down in a true fight. She is torn and hurting and trying so hard to find the right balance to hold on to what remains of her light and keep going forward.

However, in many ways I believe she still plays an important part in the Order. Fractured and bleeding though she may be she is still a sign of goodness in a dark world and for many I believe that is important just to see her surviving. I could see her role playing out any number of ways. She is able to understand people exceedingly well and could play a part in bringing together the two opposing sides of the Order. She could also end up a martyr if she isn’t careful.

extra.

Snapshot HC’s

Hometown- Shere, Surrey, England

Parents- Florence (nee Wells) and William Burbage

Charity’s late wife- Name: Althea Quinn. Occupation: Environmental scientist/activist Appearance: Brunette w/ green eyes. They met following Charity’s graduation from Hogwarts as Althea spent most of her summers in Ireland. Charity revealed her magic to her on the eve of her marriage proposal to Althea explaining that she didn’t want there to be any dishonesty between herself and the woman she wanted to spend her life with.

Patronus: Hedgehog- “Cute and loveable inside and out, those who possess a hedgehog Patronus may thrive on giving and receiving love and may feel they need more of it than others realize. While upfront about their endearment and affectionate personality, hedgehogs are also known to be anxious and overly cautious. They often worry about their own and others of their kind’s safety. Those around must approach the hedgehog with care and precision, though, because when defensive and hurt, hedgehogs are remembered not for their sweetness, but for their sharp spikes.” “The first impression of an individual with a hedgehog patronus can be very deceiving. On the outside, they can first appear happy-go-lucky and kind, as well as slightly naive. They are optimistic individuals in the way they want to be happy and have the feeling rub off on others, but this is not who they are completely. Rather, they actually have a tough personality to them, and have the ability to fight and defend themselves. Do not take the for weaklings, because they certainly are not, and are much more perceptive than they appear. The most common house for a hedgehog patronus is Hufflepuff. The most common signs are Cancer and Sagittarius.”

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/salexis19/ch-bleeding-light/

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/emmavanity/playlist/6yJd5ZF9SMj0Rz3MIuILoe?si=IkH6i6Q9Qq24RYF_p486HA

[thechronologicalsuperman]

Do you have a favorite silver age "death" of Superman?

I have two favorite Death Of Superman stories, but the second one doesn’t run until 1970. That puts it in the Bronze Age – at the cusp of Superman’s Bronze Age, in fact – so I’ll get to it then. But, in the meantime, while such an obvious choice makes me feel like a rube, I can’t say better than …

Superman vol 1 No.149 - November, 1961 may be a predictable choice but, then again, there’s a reason that this story is so frequently reprinted, particularly in “best of…” collections.

The essential premise is that Luthor, for reasons of his own, turns over a new leaf. While incarcerated, he develops a universal cure for cancer and hands it, altruistically, to Superman and the authorities of the world. While this alone isn’t enough to spring the former felon from the big house, Superman is willing to put his reputation on the line to stand up for his greatest enemy. 

Naturally, it does not end well. I’ve long been of the opinion that what makes Luthor the perfect nemesis for Superman isn’t necessarily his limitless hate and brilliant mind, but rather than he refuses to be redeemed. One of the great wonders of the Superman catalog is how many of his foes – particularly temporary or enemies making only a single appearance – are ultimately redeemed owing to the Man of Steel’s timely and purposeful intervention. In fact, that is literally the plot of Superman’s debut appearance in Action Comics – he hauls a munitions manufacturer to the front lines of a foreign war, so that the mogul could experience for himself the atrocities committed by his hand in the name of callous profit. 

But Luthor will not allow himself to be redeemed, if only because he considers capitulation to the forces of authority to be the ultimate betrayal of the self. That hatred for Superman is Luthor’s Mark of Cain, and while he yet wears it, there cannot be peace between the two of them.(It’s always been part of my head-canon that Luthor is a die-hard adherent to Nietschzean thought, and obviously views himself as the Ubermensch. Much of his hatred for Superman comes from acknowledging the alien demigod as a reaction against life and, therefore, destructive to the order of a natural world, essentially nihilistic, and an impediment to the proper Ubermensch establishing new values within the boundaries set by the receding ethical antipathy of nihilism following in the false Superman’s wake. I think a couple of writers have taken the two of them on a similar arc before, anyway …)Over the course of the story, Luthor lures in Superman with the most obvious trap – too close to Superman’s heart for the Man of Steel to recognize the danger. Luthor not only goes straight, but promptly proceeds to become Superman’s, uh, pal … complete with signal watch.

Just so I don’t go beat-by-beat throughout the story, I’ll condense what I enjoy so much about it. 

For instance, after twenty years of constant battle, or thereabouts, Luthor finally stumbles on the perfect honeytrap for his Kryptonian foe. But it is such an obvious answer that you have to imagine that Luthor had thought of it years ago but put it off until his criminal record was a bit more robust – after all, this is a scheme he can only conceivably put into action once. He’ll want to make sure it’s the right time.

When Luthor does kill Superman, it’s only the most modest of all deathtraps: A fib. Luthor brings an unsuspecting Superman into his orbital laboratory with false promises of a Kryptonite-antidote, but instead restrains the Man of Steel and blasts him with k-radiation. It’s simplicity itself, it would even be merely analytical were Luthor not leaning over his captured competitor gloating. The kryptonite wasn’t even really what kills Superman, nor even Luthor. It’s the one thing more deadly to Superman than kryptonite – trust.

The public viewing of Superman’s coffin is a favorite scene among Silver Age Superman fans, and for good reason. It’s startling in comics of this era to have a page – and even several pages in this case – without a gunshot, an explosion, a laser-beam descending towards Earth from an invading alien armada. But this story sets aside a contemplative, sorrowful acre for the characters to navigate the hedges and haw ditches of their loss. (Additionally, no pair of sentences will ever better summarize what constitutes Superman’s essential heroism: “He could have ruled the universe! But he unselfishly chose to help others!”)

And it’s no wonder that this story ‘gets’ Superman so essentially, since it was written by Jerry Siegel. If anyone’s gonna know, it’s him. 

Another reason I love this story is that I choose to let it answer a nagging question. Julie Schwartz was said to have originally intended to have Siegel write the last Action Comics and Superman stories prior to the post-Crisis reboot. Allegedly, higher-ups at Warner told DC that in no way would Siegel be allowed near the property at this time, and Alan Moore ended up turning in a classic in his place.But this story actually serves as a fine Siegel-scripted salute to the Silver Age, despite having been published in its heyday – but, then again, maybe that’s just in the spirit of the Silver Age. You never could know what to expect.

The parade of friends, grateful aliens and allies definitely shares DNA with every other Death-Of Superman story, complete with the Kandorians and all. And among the parade of mourners, there must also be the murderer …

I am trying to recall any prior instance wherein the audience was made privy to Luthor’s internal dialogue, outside of exposition and the occasional waxing poetic over his hatred of Superman, and … I don’t think there was one. I mean, I wasn’t specifically looking, but the steely, arrogant Luthor sneering at his captors and their witnesses offers more insight into the villain’s character than any number of volumes – in just three words.

It’s an amazing story in so many ways – that something this grim, emotionally involved, and all-around kind of a bummer was produced in the early 1960s is astonishing. Comics were still being marketed at kids then, and trying to imagine them coming to grips with the themes of betrayal, death and the unsatisfying nature of justice in this one comic is just heart-breaking.

I just realized I actually have another favorite Death of Superman story, from the early 1980s. Guess we’ll get there soon!