listen. listen, there's a kind of intimacy in having a dedicated rivalry, okay. who else is going to know you like this!!! also it's funny
Ascanio Maria Sforza: la parabola politica di un cardinale-principe del Rinascimento, Marco Pellegrini
Julius II: The Warrior Pope, Christine Shaw
and on della rovere’s soldier comment:
Popes, Cardinals and War: The Military Church in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, D.S. Chambers
and finally! regarding the delightful Mess of political-family relationships, including the marriage comment (altho the montefeltro family that giovanni married into did have sforza family ties, since giovanna's mother was battista sforza, but this is about the more immediate alliance based relationship and della rovere's hand in the rejection of a milanese match for his brother. and. this is not even remotely a serious comic, but now I am once again thinking about insular all these families are. the fucking medicis are here too, if you go half a step to the left on della rovere's family tree)
Julius II: The Warrior Pope, Christine Shaw
Giulio II, Il papa del Rinascimento, Giulio Busi (Bianca Maria Visconti is Ascanio's mom. btw)
panel inserts of the cards they're playing with are all from the Visconti-Sforza tarot deck! (I used public domain scans/photos for the comic itself)
ko-fi!⭐ bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app
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if there’s one trend i hope dies in the future it’s making fun of light mode users
there’s a lot of valid reasons to use it (including, y’know, just preferring it) but i personally use it because i have cataracts that make reading small light text on dark backgrounds on really difficult sometimes and it sucks being made fun of for using what is to me an accessibility aid
anyways i don’t think a lot of ppl think about it tbh. i know i certainly didn’t before i had to start primarily using light mode! so i figured it was something worth bringing up 🤷
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idk why but just imagining soap taking care of love when ghosts not around- maybe she got too drunk out at night with some friends or got hurt or maybe just one her period who knows
Yes more poly Ghost/Soap/Love, the softest throuple. Ghost runs and errand and leaves Love in Soap's capable hands.
You've learned very quickly that Soap is about as close to an actual walking heater as you can get. That's not a bad thing either. Ghost is always a nice sort of cool lukewarm, so being sandwiched between them in bed almost puts you at an equilibrium, and when your hands are cold you can just stick them under Soap's shirt. Seeing him yelp and flinch away from the chill is pretty funny too. Soap's internal furnace is especially helpful when it comes to aches and pains, something you are taking full advantage of.
Soap rubs his hand over your stomach, pressing just below your belly button as you lay over his lap on the couch. You're cramping hard. You've already thrown up once today because of it and you spooked Simon bad enough for him to willingly go to the pharmacy. You give a quiet pained hum as Soap pushes a little more firmly, the heat helps, the pressure helps, honestly you think death might help.
"No tears, come on sweetheart," Soap mumbles, thumb soothing gentle circles against your skin. You're doing your best.
"Can't you just magic the pain away?" You whine. Simon did it once. It was blissful.
"What, so I can feel it? Pain's gotta go somewhere, lass, and I'm not putting Ghost through it." Ah. That explains why Simon didn't offer again. Babies both of them. Who are you kidding, you're a baby. This sucks.
"At least get me a blanket then," you grumble. Soap rolls his eyes with a smile.
"Got a better idea, let's just..."
Soap twists on the couch and hitches your legs up around his waist before he settles comfortably(flops, he flops) on top of you. It feels like all the air has been forced out of your lungs, he's heavy and you're moderately crushed, but you're used to it; Simon does this all the time. He's so warm. A weighted heated blanket compressing you exactly where you need it. Soap's lips drag along your jaw absentmindedly, letting you get settled and comfortable under him.
"Better?" He asks, his teeth just scraping your skin. You nod, careful not to headbutt him as you melt against the couch. Your arms are tight around his shoulders, holding him close as he takes his time sucking bruises along your bared throat. "Best part," he rocks his hips against yours, and the breath the catches in your throat is plenty distraction from your cramps. You hadn't even considered that.
When Ghost gets home you and Soap are passed out on the couch. Tangled together in a way he finds probably more endearing than he rightly should. It's cute seeing how tightly you hold onto Soap, the way he presses his face against your neck, the soft sleeping breaths you share. Ghost settles a small brown paper bag on the kitchen counter and goes to put the kettle on.
He scoops a spoon of the floral mixture from the bag into your preferred mug and switches the kettle off before it can wake you up. Best to let you sleep while you can, he knows its been sparing these last few nights. Hopefully this will help. Painkillers are all well and good but with how bad your pain fucked him up? You need some magical intervention.
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The way some people talk about “misogynistic writing” with the female genshin archons—specifically Nahida & Furina— kills me a bit, because while i do feel there’s valid criticisms of genshin’s writing to be made (especially regarding Ei, who I do feel was done a massive disservice writing wise), often I see people seem to come from a place of not understanding the writing/characters well, and/or leaning into like…very reductive ideas of what makes a female character “good” that honestly says more about their biases than Genshin’s
For example, a common complaint I see against Nahida & Furina is about them being made to be “weak/unserious” and how this is bad writing because genshin is unwilling to take their characters seriously—but the way this is argued seems to suggest Furina & Nahida would be better characters if they were more physically powerful, mature, or “cooler” in some way. But I really dislike the notion of girlbossification being seen as the one standard of good writing for women. A girl being strong and independent and able to punch things really hard isn’t a marker of inherent good writing
Nahida and Furina not being physically powerful or completely sure of themselves is the point. Their lack of life-experience-based maturity and overpowering physical strength are intentional and points of strength for their character writing, not flaws or weaknesses:
Nahida is the God of Wisdom—her primary source of strength is her intelligence, which comes from her curiosity about the world that is intrinsically linked to her being very caring by nature. The reason Nahida is at a disadvantage in physical strength with the antagonists—Scaramouche and Dottore—and doesn’t have an epic moment where she brute force overpowers them, isn’t because Genshin is treating Nahida like an incompetent joke, it’s because her character highlights the overall theme in Sumeru’s AQ that power isn’t everything and strength/wisdom comes from many places.
She outsmarts both Scaramouche and Dottore through her ability to strategize—if you’re trying to sell Nahida as a character who embodies wisdom, it’s far stronger writing wise to have her use her wisdom and mind to overcome narrative conflict than have her be all powerful. If you don’t think Nahida revealing she’s trapped Scaramouche in a dream loop after he tries to rip her gnosis from her, or her standing her ground against Dottore and forcing him to bargain with her when he attempts to intimidate her into giving him what he wants doesn’t make her “cool” or interesting….idk ! Maybe it’s not the writing and just your personal preference for character appeal
Furina —without getting too deep into 4.2 spoilers—has an arc revolving around the loneliness & conflict of needing to mold yourself into a performance for a greater purpose, and grappling with personal identity and autonomy in the aftermath of performance and repression shaping your life. I really don’t understand how people watch how she’s handled and come away with the conclusion her character gets bent around Nuevillette’s man pain/the fact he’s just so ~much more competent than her unless you’re just really not interested in trying to engage Furina’s writing or taking it in confusingly bad faith
Her struggling with lacking the physical power/competence a god “should” have is, again, the point of her character and they are very clear where that lack of ability comes from within the writing. Her narrative actions follow an arc that revolves around this internal conflict she has—she feels very established to be her own person and they certainty don’t shy away from expanding on Furina’s emotions without it only being done as footing for other (male) characters
I think Nahida & Furina were just not what people were expecting the Dendro & Hydro Archon to be like, I also see a lot of complaints that neither of them “act like gods” or “seem very godlike” but see, in my opinion, one of the central themes to genshin overall is to examine the relationship between humanity and the divine. Part of this also includes calling into question what a god should be, especially in relation to humans/having a sense of humanity
The center conflict within Nahida & Furina’s characters is that their sense of humanity is at odds with being held to what being a god “should” be. Nahida is imprisoned by the Sages who treat her with disdain for being a child and not being inhumanly perfect enough to be useful to them as a deity. We see Furina try to engage with her people earnestly in a more human way before realizing she needs to put up the performance that proceeds to shape her life & state of deep loneliness for the next 500 years to be taken seriously and fulfill her duties. You aren’t supposed to look at Nahida or Furina and think they’re all powerful otherworldly divine beings. You’re supposed to view the, as people—people who are young and inexperienced regarding their position in life. Venti and Zhongli act like people in the same way—the only difference is they have more experience and have had the time to accomplish more feats as original members as the Seven
Again, it’s not that I don’t think there’s criticisms to be made. Genshin to me sets up Ei to be a character who requires a lot of self reflection/growth and thought with handling her moral dubiousness, and then out of desperately worrying she won’t be likable enough, seems to bend over with trying to insist on Ei being palpably appealing while not following through on a lot of what her character really needs to feel well handled. (I feel they barely even address Ei needing to rebuild trust with her people and it’s only more clear when you now see Furina spend a lot of time handling something similar despite doing less um, government oppression thsn Ei did for instance HDJNDJDJ. But I guess me pinning where my personal dissatisfaction with her writing comes from is another post in of its own and more based in general issues with Inazuma vs viewing it as misogynistic writing alone) The trend of not letting a female character grapple with her morality and try to push her being livable at the expense of addressing her complexity does honestly feel it falls into a misogynistic writing trends. I am really bummed out with Ei’s execution when genshin has proven through other characters along with Nahida and Furina they are capable of handling a character like her writing wise imo
But I really think, again, if someone thinks none of genshin’s women are engaging or interesting, or that Nahida and Furina aren’t taken seriously enough narratively while seeming to not really understand the intent of the characters’ writing, or want to take them seriously unless they’re cool/girlboss-y enough, I feel it may say more about their ideas of handling women in fiction than it does about genshin. I get personal preferences and not being really into a character, but people so frequently frame it as a possibly misogyny pattern with how genshin writes the female archons and I can’t help but disagree. I think sometimes people don’t consider what the story is trying to say with the characters vs what they think is cool or want (and of course what we all think is cool or may want/expect narratively is always informed by our own biases). There’s a level of subjectivity in how you can interpret writing and narratives of course but they’re just not interpretations I feel fit into what’s presented in the text !
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