#from like... centuries before

[yourangle-yuordevil]

[Birds of a feather AU] Absolutely incapable of asking each-other out normally in every single universe <.<

[ooliecat]

the cake was a lie

[gabelew]

I wanted to draw teen Sidon and Bazz hanging out in Sidon's room, so it was a good moment to finally plan out said room study (that is just a part of his quarters).

It's actually Dorephan’s old quarters, repurposed after he outgrew them. He's responsible for like, half of the clutter, the rest is all Sidon.

[surreal-duck]

es rarepair week 2024 day 1 | AU/future

lil ghostic au of mine!!! yuzuru and the rest of fine are long since trapped souls in an abandoned mansion of which rst come across while looking for shelter during a storm :] it doesnt um. particularly end well

[lyculuscaelus]

We’re in one of the oldest fandoms where the canon itself is long lost and the source materials for us to draw inspiration from are those of the earliest fanfics themselves—two of which being commonly accepted as beta canon due to their top quality. Sometimes these fanfics contradict each other due to all sorts of OOCs and inconsistencies which is forcing us to choose our own sources to rely on to draw fanart and write fanfics. Each generation of fanfic writers are introducing more headcanons in their works and sometimes their fanfics of fanfics become so popular that they are prompting new sub-fandoms to emerge, inspiring more people to draw fanart and write fanfics for these fanfics of fanfics. It’s almost as if there is a family tree of fanfics and we’re now reaching the third generation and beyond

[ashbur]

i've been trying for a long time to articulate what exactly is so obnoxiously White about trans tumblr's insistence that we shouldn't even bother trying to improve the current system because we can overthrow the government and establish a leftist utopia if we just organize well enough and fight with our teeth. but i think a lot of it just boils down to the fact that it's inextricably reliant on a very naive and very white narrative about victory and power, as well as a refusal to look toward BIPOC communities and leaders, who have been honing their perspectives and strategies about resistance and liberation for decades or centuries.

most of the insistence that a queer anarchist revolution really can work if we all just get on the same page, seems informed by very little other than the narrative that Righteous and Virtuous Underdogs with the Power of The People will always prevail in the end, if they just band together and use their wits. which isn't true, not even a little bit. it would make you dizzy to comprehend just how many communities of people did everything they could to resist western imperialism and fascism, and were squashed like insects without so much as a note in the history books to remember them by. The Good Guys Can Beat the Bad Guys If They Try Hard Enough is a true enough sentiment for white folks that they get it spoon-fed to them from the moment they're born. but it's time to grow up and live in the real world, with those of us who had to understand that The Bad Guys Usually Win before we could understand almost anything else about our cultures and communities.

and very relatedly, there is no atrocity happening to trans people in america (or elsewhere in the west) right now that has not already happened to BIPOC communities. this isn't to degrade or downplay the suffering of white trans people, just to remind you that you are not the first, and this sort of victim status isn't special and exclusive to people like you. there is no special oppression or pain or grief or rage or protectiveness that you're feeling right now that ethnically marginalized groups haven't felt before. there's no new and unique and superior revolutionary tactics that no one ever thought of before a bunch of twenty-first century white 24 year olds started posting about them online. this is relevant. this gives us exponentially more data about what sorts of techniques do and don't make a material improvement or successfully send a message. it's extremely fucking frustrating watching white queer people ignore that data and just go off on their own theories and emotional instincts because they think that their position is special, and that they have better ideas and can do a better job than BIPOC revolutionaries.

there are communities all around you who have been fighting the same battle against the same enemy that you now have to fight for generations now. it makes you look like children when you act like this is a struggle unique to the queer community, or like it's one that we can punch our way out of if we all Embrace our #Rage and reblog aesthetic posts about ancient war gods. i implore you guys to look towards BIPOC activists and observe their successful and unsuccessful work, before you decide to make claims about what manner of resistance we need or what realistic goals should look like.

before anybody jumps down my throat about it, i know that there are and have always been many BIPOC activists who support a more 'tear it all down' approach. a lot of them had really compelling ideas and were great at radicalizing more people to the cause. it is also objectively true that none of them have ever successfully brought their visions to fruition, and no material benefit has been brought to their communities by their failed attempts (although many also engaged in real-time material community aid and harm reduction)

[greencloakedfae]

yeah nell is hot and we all want her to be suave and competent at sweeping people off their feet but that woman is a loser. she gets bitches but its entirely through being so naturally attractive that her asshole behaviour is just endearing. if you somehow do find yourself as the object of her affections her attempts will be stilted at best and insulting at worse. she'll figure it out eventually but canon nell? absolute loser <3

[nanathebunny]

i personally think we should consider the very real possibility of armand’s descendants walking around the world . he had siblings .

[agenericplaceholdername]

Wu goes from being concerned about his "old bones" to being turned evil, confronting a failure from his past, nearly aging to death, reliving his youth, confronting a failure from his past (again), regaining his motivation, and then finally directly confronting the embodiment of evil itself.

Underrated character journey is all I'm saying

[marlynnofmany]

Note for someone to turn into a story: one way to give the middle generation/s on a generation ship a purpose in life, aside from "raise the children whose children will eventually land on the colony world," could be as creators of art and story. Music too.

Just imagine: you have your whole life ahead of you with all the training and materials of this vast spaceship at your disposal, and all of society plans to revere the creative masterpieces you and your peers come up with.

No pressure.

But yes possibility.

[johaerys-writes]

Can I just say, if you read or hear some wild version of a greek myth that you're already familiar with, there's no reason to come on here and make a post like "was no one going to tell me ___?! This changes EVERYTHING!" Chances are what you heard is simply some obscure version of the myth or a crazy tidbit about a well-known character that's only found in some forgotten scholiast's note on Pseudo-Apollodorus or some shit, a thousand years after the Iliad was written and any of that stuff was even relevant.

No need to get all up in arms about it. No reason to make that specific version your entire personality. Very, very few things in greek mythology are set in stone, there's always someone making stuff up, and especially when it comes to extremely popular characters like Achilles, every area in Greece likely had their own version of their myth. So take everything you hear with a grain of salt! Have fun, make stuff up yourself! That's literally the whole point

[mortifying-macaroni]

Saw this ship chart going around so ofc I've taken the opportunity to make one for the Sabbat's power couple™

[starry-bi-sky]

"Odysseus and his crew could've just fished!"

"lmao Athena is yelling at Odysseus for not fishing instead"

"why didn't they just fish? they're on the ocean!"

Me, tiredly: no.... no they could not have 'just fished', you don't know what you're talking about. please... please just sit down. Athena would've "my goodbye"'d his ass on the spot for suggesting to fish instead

[winepresswrath]

One thing I do think iwtv makes clear is that it's hard to hold the balance of power in a relationship especially if you're deeply traumatized by all the horrible shit that happened to you when you were young and powerless. You're never absolved of the greater weight of your punches when you lash out, even if you are lashing out for understandable or sympathetic reasons. You could have prevented it even if it would be so so much easier if you couldn't. Interesting that to my memory they almost completely erased Armand's meditations on the power/murder issues in maker/fledgling relationships but tbf showmand isn't really the type to monologue on that subject. Anyway Cladeline is the closest that the show comes to arguing you can navigate that kind of power disparity successfully but the tools it uses are very interesting to me. Madeline is a self actualized adult with considerable strength of will when she meets Claudia; despite her relative youth, and Louis being a significantly weaker maker than Lestat, she's not trapped in a baby bird body. One day she would presumably outpace Claudia in strength, and they both know it. In the interim, her ability to move through the world in the guise of an adult white woman is something of an equalizer. And still Claudia moves so carefully around her, makes herself emotionally vulnerable to her by giving Madeline her diaries to read, shares what information she has willingly and honestly. Tries to give baby vampire Madeline what baby vampire Claudia lacked and needed. Crucially, they both really like each other and are happy to be upfront about how much they value their relationship. No one's begging anyone else to stay; no one's bartering with their body and affection. I wish we had seen more of it!

[serpentface]

What are Faiza’s thoughts/feelings on (presumably?) seeing human sacrifice performed, or in theory, irt her religious beliefs?

It's a little complicated, but less than might be assumed.

This IS something she's witnessed personally, and been involved in the process (not participating in the rites themselves, but in organizing them). But she has no sensitization to it- she's grown up seeing people executed, regular everyday animal sacrifices, and the yearly dry season human offering. It's something that is entirely separated from the concept of murder (which is regarded as abhorrent, as murder is in basically every culture (it's just that definitions of what types of killing is and is not murder varies)) and nothing disturbing or unusual in of itself.

It's a fairly small part of a much broader framework of religious practices that she ultimately does not believe in. Her reaction is more 'this doesn't actually have an intrinsic point, but it is what it is and has some practical benefits'. Her views on the Wardi faith are conflicted but overall positive. Even if she doesn't Believe in 90% of its core elements, she sees it as Beneficial- it's the Only thing that unifies the entire Imperial Wardi cultural sphere. This is important to her both on the level that Imperial Wardin is a tenuous union of city-states and tributaries and dozens of peoples and that its stability relies on its shared religion, and that it's a grand equalizer- its benefits cross class and ethnic lines within this rather broad cultural sphere.

So like, when it comes to humans being ritually killed, she doesn't think there's a still-extant God that enters their bodies or that their deaths materially enable the seasonal cycles to continue and bring the rains back. But she does think it has a Point, in the same capacity that she doesn't believe most of the core tenants of the faith have material reality, but the religion's role in society has material benefits. It has a point, and it's not murder, so she ultimately has little beef with the concept.

The instance where it crossed the line to 'this is fucked up' is in the context of the drought. With the drought intensifying, the usual one-off one-person annual dry season offering was extended to dozens of people (which Was officially condoned). In addition, as the years went on and civil unrest intensified, there were instances of civilian suicides and murders that were clearly attempted offerings (as well as suicides and murders that were at least loosely Framed as offerings but definitely weren't). In the fifth year, over a hundred Ephenni Galenii offered themselves up in an independent mass-offering (condoned by the priesthood but not by the Usoma). And yet the drought wore on.

THIS all was disturbing to her. This wasn't the faith functioning as intended, this was symptomatic of impending collapse. This was a waste of life that was TRULY for nothing. The officially condoned sacrifices were clear and desperate flailing by the Usoma and/or priesthoods to spiritually address the drought and famine (in addition to really, really poor attempts to practically address food and water insecurity and social unrest), and the civilian sacrificial murders and suicides were this unrest and mass despair crystalized into horrifically needless, pointless death and brutality. (These civilian killings were widely seen as horrifying by devout believers as well btw, just because human sacrifice exists in a culture doesn't mean people think religious killing and suicide is Okay And Normal In Every Situation)

The horror of All That was one of the motivating factors in her role in organizing the pilgrimage as a more controlled, intentional, and directed use of religious practice to reassure the public, that would also attempt to practically re-unify the divided priesthood/military/royal family. The seven-beast offering is a long established concept (rather than desperate flailing of 'add more people to the dry season offering' or 'get a hundred Galenii to drown themselves in a muddy riverbed'), the pilgrimage format is a public show of unity and requires significant internal diplomacy to function.

---

I'm also going to just like take this opportunity to clarify her worldview:

She ascribes to a culturally specific form of atheism that posits that God fully, permanently died in the act of creation, Its death kicked off the cycles of the world as we know it but Its spirit no longer has any capacity to interact with the world. The existence of a creator god is reckoned as self-evident, but its continuing presence in the world is disputed. Therefore, the vast majority of religious practice (which is entirely built around interactions with God's continuously cycling spirit) has no intrinsic effect.

This stems from a niche branch of materialist Burri and Wardi philosophy. It's a very uncommon belief (and has its own subvariants- some extreme materialists dismiss the existence of the soul itself (God died and there is no soul so It's Gone) and some that characterize God as merely absent (God died and Its spirit is absent from the world, in the same capacity that the souls of the dead are absent from the world once they successfully move on) (Faiza falls into the latter camp). The heavy prioritization of orthopraxy over orthodoxy means that a person holding these beliefs in of itself is not often going to be a major cultural issue so long as they perform expected practices, but standards of orthodoxy are higher in the priesthoods and like. Her entire role is as a priestess. It's not something she can be open about. It's also not something she can talk about with any of her personal relations (she was introduced to the concept after maintaining contact with her childhood tutor and regularly discussing philosophy with him, but the guy was elderly and died when she was in her mid 20s.)

This translates to her being more open to questioning other elements of her cultural framework, but the rest of her worldview is fairly normative, there's nothing else she rejects as thoroughly as the continuing existence of God. She believes in the soul, ghosts, evil spirits, luck, curses, and spiritual pollution (though should be noted that the Ways she believes in them are influenced by a materialist philosophical lens, and as such her interpretations are non-standard). She also thinks there's some truth in the folk magic practices that attempt to influence luck and curses (these traditions rarely actually involve God in their framework), and the ones she rejects are on a more typical class-aligned basis of being 'Foolish Commoner Superstition', not in a 'magic is not real' capacity.

So like it's a mixed bag where she thinks the religion itself has material points and value, and she takes pride in being an Odonii. But she's still locked in a life of performing endless rites that have no internal meaning to her and give no sense of comfort beyond self-assurance that they're for a greater good, giving hollow reassurances to her religiously paranoid brother and not being able to fully connect to her extremely devout true believer sister. It's isolating, and it wears on her.

[magpie-trove]

I know there was and is sexism in society but also I get really annoyed at how authors today write about it in the past