#sasha's bloc

[the-magnusinstitute]

All staff and visitors,

It’s pride month! LGBTQIA+ inclusivity is a core tenet of our organisation, and here at the institute we pride ourselves on acceptance and celebration.

Tim Stoker, our LGBTQIA+ ambassador, will be organising multiple events throughout this month, including a Magnus Institute bloc at this year’s London Pride!! Today, Tim is holding a showcase of one of the more tame Leitners, a collection of comics by Alison Bechdel, led by self proclaimed ‘resident lesbian spokeswomen’, Bill de la Cruz and Sasha James.

Happy pride, everyone!!

[hopetorun]

10 SASHA BARKOV!!

framed for a crime they didn’t commit … kinda … this took on a life of its own. sorry sasha isn’t actually in it much.

“It’s a frame job,” Matthew hisses through the phone. There’s a long pause, dead air as his words process through all the layers of security and as the response filters back.

“You can’t be sure of that,” Darryl says. “You haven’t been working with him very long.”

“Long enough,” Matthew says. The phone’s a land line, corded and attached to the wall. It’s an old safehouse, but when he asked Darryl said it’s more secure this way. No chance of the phone being taken away from the room it’s supposed to be in, falling into the wrong hands. “He doesn’t kill people, not like this. He doesn’t kill the wrong people and then get caught.”

“Well, he did,” Darryl says, his voice flat. “You have a mission to finish out. Report now while I’ve got you on the phone anyway, and then go back to your apartment and get to work.”

Matthew reports. There’s not much to tell aside from Sasha being dragged away by the local police at the crack of dawn today. His next meeting with his mark isn’t until tomorrow, and he and Sasha hadn’t made much headway on the data from the extraction Sasha made two nights ago.

Sasha would have mentioned if he killed someone during that B&E. He would’ve mentioned it if there was even a chance someone died. He knows about cleaning up loose ends. He trusts Matthew to help him with that. Matthew decides not to mention the data, or the little progress they’ve made with it. Technically that’s Sasha’s mission anyway.

They set a deadline for Matthew’s next report, he tells Darryl he’ll head home, and then he locks up the safehouse and heads to Sasha’s apartment. It’s been ransacked, of course. Maybe by more than just the cops. If this was a frame-up to get Sasha out of the way, then whoever did it had plenty of time to get in here and look for evidence.

Matthew knows more than any of them, though. He finds the safe quickly, behind a false wall in the coat closet, and gets it open on the second try. The hard drive from two nights ago is still there — thank god — and so is Sasha’s phone. Not his cover phone, the important one. The one where Matthew can activate the voice control and say call Paul, and it does.

“Sasha?” the voice on the other end of the line says.

Matthew clears his throat. “It’s not — it’s Matthew. Sasha’s been arrested.”

Paul swears under his breath but otherwise seems to take it in stride. “Local police,” Matthew continues. “They say it’s for murder. He didn’t kill anyone.”

“I know he didn’t,” Paul mutters. “Fuck.”

Matthew stands in the closet, clutching the phone he can’t actually unlock, waiting impatiently for Paul to say anything else. He just swears again, and then says, “Is there anything else?”

It’s a long shot. It’s a risk. It’s possible Matthew’s about to make the biggest mistake of his career, including the time he dropped an armed charge off a roof and caused a city-wide lockdown in Bucharest. He doesn’t even know if Paul trusts him. Sasha was concerningly vague on the subject. But he spent years training to analyze a situation, and to trust his instincts because his instincts are honed by years of practice at this. His conscious mind is still working through all the pieces of evidence that are telling him to say it, but he knows they’re there. You don’t get to where he is in this job without good instincts and the ability to read the field.

“Darryl doesn’t want me looking into it,” he says. “He was insistent. Didn’t listen when I said it wasn’t like Sasha to leave a mess like that.”

Paul hums. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” Matthew continues.

“But you think it’s weird your handler wanted you to leave your partner in a former Soviet bloc prison?”

“Yeah,” Matthew says. “Yeah.”

“No fucking kidding.”

“I didn’t tell him about the hard drive,” Matthew adds. “That was strictly Sasha’s mission. Technically I’m not required to report to him about it.”

“Okay,” Paul says. Faintly, Matthew can hear typing. He’s holding the phone so hard his hand hurts. “I — okay. I need to get some balls rolling. Can you take this phone back your place and store it securely?”

Matthew can. But— “Darryl knows my safe code. He’s not in the country, but he could be.”

“Doesn’t matter. Take it anyway. I need to be able to reach you.”

Matthew does it. He gets a distracted goodbye from Paul, and then has to stand there trying to focus his mind for several minutes. He leaves the hard drive in the safe and locks it again, and then wipes down everything he’s touched. If the place gets searched again, his fingerprints here won’t help anyone.

With Sasha’s phone shoved in his pocket, he heads home and hopes to hell Darryl doesn’t decide he needs to check in on him in person anytime soon.

[mariacallous]

Meduza: New E.U. sanctions against Russia: The European Union has announced a new sanctions regime against Russia in light of the death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny and other human rights violations. According to a press release, this new sanctions framework is part of the bloc’s response to “accelerating and systematic repression in Russia” and includes a ban on exporting equipment to Russia that could be used “for internal repression.” The E.U. also introduced sanctions against Russia’s main prison authority (the Federal Penitentiary Service) and 19 individuals, including several judges, prosecutors, and members of the judiciary who played a key role in Navalny’s imprisonment and the sentencing of veteran human rights defender Oleg Orlov and dissident artist Sasha Skochilenko. 

[presidentstalkeyes]

More Psychonaut Headcanons:

So I've been thinking. It's implied a lot in both (main) games that the Psychonauts as an organization has a divided reputation, with some viewing it as past its prime and no longer needed - Lilli being the biggest example. The Psychonauts' financial woes in the second game only reinforce the theme - clearly they're not getting as much funding as they used to, from... whoever their backers are.

I'm assuming they receive funding from governments who 'opt in' to make use of their services. They're headquartered in the US because that's where Green Needle Gulch and the Quarry is, and they have a lot of American agents, but that doesn't make them an American organization. Indeed, at least two of the original Psychic Seven are non-American, possibly more (Lucy is Grulovian, Cassie is Chinese, Helmut and possibly Otto are ambiguously European going from their names, and Compton is presumably British going from his accent). Not to mention they got their big break (if you can call it that) from being called on by the international community to battle a problem in Grulovia.

It's clear they didn't start out with the intention of becoming some kind of international psychic safeguarding force - it's stated by Otto that the 'true mission' of the Psychonauts is scientific research, and Ford at the end of 2 says he wants the organization to return to its scientifically-minded roots. However, judging from the implied poor state of psychic acceptance before their arrival, I find it hard to believe there wasn't at least the implication they'd use that research to further the cause of ensuring safety for psychics everywhere.

It was only after the Maligula disaster that it was made clear there needed to be a deterrent against psychic threats, since as the nature of psychics became better understood, that drastically increased the chance they'd grow to that level of power in the first place. Since the Psychonauts were at the cutting edge of that research, it was decided they'd have the responsibility of looking into these threats and curtailing them. Fighting psychic threats was considered a part of their research - by tackling them, and exploring their minds, they'd gather valuable data.

The Psychonauts' 'downfall' in the eyes of many came about as a result of four things, each of them intertwined.

The first was politics. Since it's implied the games take place during the Cold War, neither of the major power blocs at the time were really keen on a powerful, independent agency that transcends borders and answers to neither side (a majority of their agents are from 'Western' countries but Mikhail - and possibly Sasha, depending on which Germany he's from - shows they'll consider prospects from the Eastern Bloc, too).

Furthermore, both the United States and the Soviet Union undoubtedly would have wanted to use psychic powers for their own gain, with no regard for the long-term impact on psychic safety. A majority of Soviet-aligned states would have banned the Psychonauts altogether, viewing them as a Western meddler, while the cold war-era US would have paid lip service to supporting them but start its own in-house 'psychic soldier' programs on the side, siphoning money and resources away from the Psychonauts (which is bad because their HQ is based within US borders). Deprived of much-needed funding, that leads us to problem two...

Intra-agency friction and mission creep. As it turns out, there's a lot of moving parts behind ensuring psychic safety. Sometimes it involves fighting a psychic bad guy, other times it involves rehabilitating that same bad guy so they don't cause any more trouble. Sometimes it involves teaching children - or indeed, adults - how to properly control their powers so they're not a danger to themselves and others. Sometimes it involves studying not only psychics but non-psychics who've had contact with psychic phenomena. All of this requires money and administration, leading to all sorts of divisions and bureaucracy. It also requires facilities, which means more money, more staff to run those facilities, etc. At a certain point it becomes difficult to keep track of everything, leading to some parts of the agency operating largely independently - bad news if they end up turning into money-sinks (and have little to nothing to do with psychics at all, like food chains and media franchises). As a result, issues with individual agents were often sidelined, which lead to...

Problem three, scandals and a loss in public trust. Considering both Coach Oleander and Gristol Malik were able to conduct their evil plans right under the Psychonauts' noses, possibly for years, despite a majority of agents having some kind of telepathy... well, it doesn't paint a flattering picture of their ability to keep their own staff under control. And that's just when their ire is aimed at itself - imagine if a Psychonaut agent went rogue and started targeting ordinary civilians. Even most 'harmless' psychic powers like Clairvoyance are easily abusable - which is a prime reason why psychics struggle to find acceptance, as many will assume they're up to no good. I personally think many repressive governments throughout history would have (forcibly) used psychics to their own ends, painting an image of psychics being a tool of the oppressor. The Psychonauts promised to change all of that, and so seeing that promise broken, even slightly, would come off as a major betrayal.

The fourth problem, weirdly enough, was that despite all of this, the Psychonauts actually succeeded in improving the state of psychic acceptance... in the more wealthy 'Western' countries where it drew a lot of its personnel from, and where it got most of its funding. Ironically, this success lead to the organization being seen as 'redundant' as these countries started passing legislation to protect psychics and promote psychic safety programs of their own, while private entities also started offering psychic services (at a hefty price, yes, but still). This lead to the funding drying up even further, and by the time the games roll around the organization has been forced to downsize significantly to cut costs.

The chief counter-argument among the Psychonauts leadership to the idea that they're 'no longer needed' is that it's simply not true. There are still huge swathes of the world where psychics are routinely exploited and turned into weapons against normal people, hurting everyone involved - even in so-called 'accepting' countries there's problems, and it's important to have an independent entity run by psychics, for psychics, beholden to no government or corporation that might seek to use them as tools in unrelated conflicts.

Those like Ford and Otto who want the Psychonauts to go back to its roots would argue that, more than anything, knowledge is power - they could accomplish just as much as they could in their heyday, if not more so, and with less fuss, simply by cooperating with governments in an advisory role and organizing large-scale research efforts; focusing on proactive prevention, not reaction.

In fanfics set in the future, I imagine the Psychonauts have undergone something of a reorganization, becoming overall more decentralized and clandestine, with cells based all over the world funding themselves both openly and via fronts (and having their own leadership to reduce the amount of micromanagement needed) and are accountable to each other (capable of smacking each other down if they fall out of line). The Motherlobe (which remains the public 'face' of the agency) having more concrete divisions with clearly-defined duties and an upper limit on personnel to ensure quality of mind, and R&D splitting off into an entirely separate organization, Mentallis Labs, focused only on R&D. It provides the Psychonauts with their technology and scientific know-how but doesn't get directly involved with their other activities.

[jacensolodjo]

Oops I’m actually not done talking about husband and wife team Aleksis and Sasha Kaidanovsky that are totally Ukrainians or at least one of the pair.

Aleksis was born January 23rd, 1989. What else happened in 1989? Oh ya, the fall of communism in eastern europe. Note I don’t say defeat, I don’t say death. Just the fall. It lost its grip on the eastern bloc. The official fall of the Berlin Wall is actually considered November 9th 1989. Even if it took more than one day to take down all that concrete and junk. 

And I don’t agree with it, but Sasha was born February 9th, 1989. I really REALLY much preferred when she was YEARS older than Aleksis but whatever (I really don’t know the point. So she was a few years older why wasn’t that okay? It was only 6 years difference). Point now is that they were both born months before the Berlin Wall began to get yanked down. 

And then on top of that, they were born only a couple years before Ukraine’s official independence. They are babies when Ukraine is growing, when the tenacity of Ukraine is at an all time high since the Holodomor and subsequent war. This would EASILY affect the Ks to become the people they are now. If, of course, they are Ukrainian. They grow up hearing about all the bullshit their parents and grandparents went through, and so they now have the fate of the world resting on their shoulders. No, their Ukrainian shoulders. Ukrainians, seen as just being the dumb hick version of the slavic people. UKRAINIANS thus: holding the siberian wall for SIX YEARS. Longest neural handshake? EIGHTEEN HOURS, a universal record claimed by Ukrainians and beaten by NOBODY. 

Also I think this is only in the novelization but... that remark by Pentecost about how they can get you ANYTHING? Where would that sprout from? When Ukraine was considered “the Ukrainian SSR”. When their ancestors had to find a way to get needed food or there would have been NO aleksis/sasha. When, much more recently, a Ukrainian-Jewish man stood before all the world and said “i don’t need a ride, I need ammo’. Yes pacrim happened before that last one but do you see how easy it is to squeeze into Cherno Alpha lore? The Ks die fighting until the very last because that is what their Ukrainian blood screams to do. Because they were in their early 30s when Russia invaded Ukraine. Because freedom fighter could totally be on their resume. There’s no way a team like the Ks would stay out of the war. It is what they are BEST at and they will do it in defense of their home. 

ANYWAY the Ks being not only millennials but Ukrainian millennials puts them in a unique position. They have seen their world end once before. They’re not going to let it happen again. 

(also we bump into the whole ‘everything east of germany is Russian’ thing. Just because Cherno is considered a Russian jaeger doesn’t mean he is or at least not his pilots. Ukraine just happens to be so far west but I can see the Ks smelling an opportunity so they pack up to become jaeger pilots. A lot of it also hinges on whether we want to operate under the idea of the Russian invasion being a thing in the Pacific Rim timeline or not.)

[hydralisk98]

Mycenaean Pylos & Tiryns (article 0x15/?) WIP

Continuation on this article thread:

Preface

In the reality that is "16^12", Angora is a striking bronze age-themed inhabited planet of stark contrasts within the galactic community. And while at least as far as what the "state of affairs" is during the dawn of their 46th century things are moving along fair nice and sweet at the global scale [...];

Main characters

Kate Kér (self-insert, autistic INTJ brunette, [...] )

Ava Booksword (synthetic-tier android ENFP blonde, starting out as domestic servant by law and eventually earning her way to full citizenship)

Shoshona (black angora housecat)

Nil (second person perspective camera / audience perspective + insertee)

Secondary agents at play

Tano (INTP)

Milan (ENTP)

May (ISTJ)

Sasha (ISTP)

Pana (ISFP)

Valenz (ESTJ)

Ursa (ENFJ)

Elke (INFP)

Miscellaneous personas to account for (13th - 48th) Will add the 36 of them in a further article.

Massive keywords "deque"

Groovy soft natural retro grunge warm natural filmic comfort, tramway at dusk from mesas to the ocean far away, distant future LISP DIY copyleft cartoons, symbolic CAS LISP Gruvbox poetic devkit, soft-rounded bold geometric shape language, fontmap vector prefab modules, slice-of-life cozy rollerwave cartoons, communal retrofuturistic optimism, Bauhaus, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, "Gruvbox Light Medium" + "OldBook Light Academia" mashup, seventies toon cel, copyleft GLOSS data transparency movement, soviet-bloc indie shareware culture, Nintendo 64 console with 64DD expansion cartridge, SEGA Dreamcast, DEC Alpha, Sanyo 3DO TRY, Nuon, Ouya, Commodore PETSCII CBM-II, Commodore Amiga 3000+4000, bronze-age historical time period, Chronokinesis, True Polymorph, lunarpunk mysticism, Teslafunk, Solarpunk, Cyberfunk, syndicalism, georgism, ecology, harmonious innovation, progressives, seventies rollerwave futurism, filmic, OGG container format, OGV, OPUS, Vorbis, OpenEXR, Animated SVG, CSS3 animations, PK3/ZIP file archives, USD format, harsh raster XY plotters & printers, selectric typewriters, comforting Shoshone music / songs / hymns;  "Soyuzmultfilm", "Helluva Boss", "The Powerpuff Girls Z", "The Powerpuff Girls", "Jet Set Radio", "Newgrounds", "Jin-Roh The Wolf Brigade", "Android Arts", "Nicky Case", "Jucika", Nintendo 64 with N64DD module, SEGA Dreamcast, Sanyo 3DO, Nuon, Ouya, DEC Alpha, Commodore 64, DECmate II, DECmate III, Intersil 6100 & 6120 lineups, PETSCII, OpenXanadu web, IBM Z/16 Linux One mainframe, OpenPOWER, Libre GLOSS data-transparent Apple Silicon M3 system, RTTY protocols, Minitel / Videotex services, hard-copy terminals, Typex, Telex Teleprinters (read-only & Read/Write), block data terminals, explorable explainers, federated ActivityPub RSS feeds, SPARC Voyager, Xerox Daybreak, R2E Micral Portal, libre bio-modding & cyberware, Pflaumen, Utalics, Lambda Star, Lambda Nova, Wyatt, Sass, MathML, XML+XSL, OpenREXX, PDP-8/e, PDP-12, PDP-15, ALGOL68, LISP 1.5, Steel Bank Common Lisp, Trial Engine, GNU Hurd, Linux, Macroware, SoundTracker, Multi-Agent Simulations, Mixtapes, Android Clades/Classes (Robots, Droids, Synthetics), Open Virtual Worlds, "Rogue Servitors";  "Liberty" caucus within "Union Party", Al-Gore (2000), Trump + Michelle Oprah (2004), Theodore Roosevelt (1912), Charles Hugues (1916), Progressives party since ~1910-1915, Pedro II of Brazil + Haile Selassie equivalent figure during the later 19th century, political split around 2024-2025, female programmers still in charge, gender inclusivity, major 3D, animation & game engine-y frameworks abundant in Common LISP (Trial Engine + AutoLISP as copyleft GLOSS / open source licensed software);  Rust red dark grunge wood, translucid glass, matte plastics, fuzzy wool, forest flora, ocean water, arcade cabinets, hyper mall shops & stores, conversation pits, wax cylinder records, 45rpm autoplay mini-vinyl records, datasettes, cassettes, analog Laserdiscs, DECtape, MiniDiscs, programmable androids, retro unit record equipment, mainframes, LTO tape cartridges, amber earmuffs, black spirals-pattern balls, black matte lipstick, cloven hoof shoes; [...]

Soundscapes, music & ambiance playlist

Shoshone Union (So)fi music playlist?

Locations, maps & contextual clues

Beyond Heat Death / Entropy time periods of a far far away past dimension lies questions & their answers we were seeking for... , ?;

[sashasbloc]

A little #inspo from Dave Brubeck to get you to the weekend…

[aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman]

Christiane F. and Lilya 4-Ever are always linked in my mind because they’re both grim, depressing art hoe teen movies about suicidal girls growing up in the asscracks of Europe and spiraling into drugs, prostitution and abuse.

Some hoes stan Mean Girls as the ultimate teen flick but these 2 are for Edgelord bitches who did their makeup like Sasha Grey, read about serial killers, listened to Einstürzende Neubauten and were on Prozac.

Literally imagine being a depressed girl in 80s Berlin at least you could go to a David Bowie concert and do coke. Lilya is worse bc she’s in a Soviet Bloc country living in Novostroika during the era where Putin orchestrated FSB apartment bombings.

But just how they represent the shitty non-glorified reality of being a teen or early 20s or whatever even life after that. When you drunkenly apply lipstick in a McDonald’s bathroom during a night out, or take a long train ride back home after meeting your friends and you’re like wow. I want to kill myself for some reason / I’m suffering from the existential emptiness that comes with being a modern woman in an urban environment.

[aro-is-gay-af]

Slavic Names in Twilight | Meta

This post is going to be long, so if you don’t have time, I advise you to come back here later (or not come back at all, up to you).

Honestly, I have no words for Smeyer anymore. I, probably like most of us, read the books while being an adolescent. When I was 12 I didn’t see a lot of things that happened to be in the books and were:  a) misogynistic  b) sexist c) abusive d) racist and that the story itself was bound to Mormons (sick!). 

If you want to read about it a little bit more I strongly recommend this post by @stregoni-benefici​ and @carlislesscarf​ 

This post isn’t going to be about how Smeyer treated The Quileute Tribe, indigenous people, people of color or women. This post is going to be about how lazy Smeyer exactly was while creating this story and how her prejudices influenced and created false image of yet another culture. 

Why am I making such a fuss because of this? A few days ago I was reading something about Garrett on Twilight Wiki page. By sheer luck, I clicked on Kate’s character and, what I saw there, outraged me to the point where I needed a little while to calm myself. 

I was 12 when I first read the books. I never bought official twilight guide, I only used Twilight Wiki to keep myself up to date. I clicked on Kate’s character and saw that she hails from Slovakia. Forgive my utter confusion, when I remembered other sisters’ names. Tanya and Irina. Also, Kate was created by Sasha, who also created Vasilli (an immortal child), which is why she was executed in the first place. 

While the story is charming, WHY THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE SUCH NAMES?! 

To understand my rage, I need to elucidate the matter a little bit for all of you. This will be the historical part. 

According to Twilight Wiki, Sasha was changed before 1000 AD. Then, she created Tanya, and not very long after, Kate and Irina. And now. What were the historical odds while it happened? 

Before 1000 AD, Slovakia wasn’t Slovakia but Great Moravia. Great Moravia lasted about a century - the time span here is approximately circa 820 AD to 906 AD. When Great Moravia no longer existed, territory was taken by Hungarians (Magyar tribes also referred to as Hungarian clans) and the development of future Kingdom of Hungary began. Then, around 1000-1001, King Stephan was crowned as the first King of Hungary. Some elements from the former Great Moravia were acquired by The Kingdom of Hungary. 

King Stephen managed to establish eight counties within his kingdom. Around 1015 some territories of today-Slovakia were acquired by Boleslav I of Poland (later king of Poland), however, King Stephen managed to recapture the territories in 1018. Wikipedia isn’t consistent here - while on History of Slovakia we have these information, the History of Poland during the Piast dynasty says: 

From 1003 to 1004, Bolesław intervened militarily in Czech dynastic conflicts. After his forces were removed from Bohemia in 1018, Bolesław retained Moravia. 

and:

[translation here is mine as the site is in Polish] Between 1003 and 1025/1031 the lands of today's Slovakia were part of the Kingdom of Poland after being conquered by Bolesław Chrobry. The Polish-Hungarian Chronicle described that "The Polish borders stretched as far as the banks of the Danube, to the town of Ostříhomia, then to the town of Eger, and further to the river called Ciepla [Topl'a] as far as the town of Salis, and there the borders between Hungarians, Ruthenians and Poles ended". 

Than, probably around 1031 AD the territories were acquired back. King Stephen died and his kingdom fell into internal conflicts. Soon, in 1042 AD emperor Henry III mingled to acquire some lands for himself (he was the Holy Roman Emperor). Anyway, then came 1048 AD and that’s what happened: 

In 1048, King Andrew I of Hungary conceded one-third of his kingdom (Tercia pars regni) in appanage to his brother, Duke Béla. [...] During the following 60 years, the Tercia pars regni were governed separately by members of the Árpád dynasty. [...] The dukes accepted the kings' supremacy, but some of them (Béla, Géza and Álmos) rebelled against the king in order to acquire the crown and allied themselves with the rulers of the neighbouring countries (e.g., the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia).

The history of the Tercia pars regni ended in 1107, when King Coloman of Hungary occupied its territories taking advantage of the pilgrimage of Duke Álmos (his brother) to the Holy Land. Although, Duke Álmos, when returned to the kingdom, tried to reoccupy his former duchy with the military assistance of Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, but he failed and was obliged to accept the status quo. 

Source for the two quotes above. 

You may ask, why on Earth did I just present to you part of history of Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. Because I want you to understand how completely ridiculous and simultaneously offending are the names of characters that Smeyer gave within this coven.

History shows us that, even though, these times weren’t exactly peaceful, there wasn’t an ongoing war. We have Hungarian tribes and the part, when some territories were acquired by a Polish king. What I mean by that, is that probably names around 1000 AD varied as to where your family lived, what was your social status, and probably were influenced by newly adopted Christianity. It is more likely that people on this lands were named with names of Hungarian origin than Russian. And I still think the majority of names were of Slavic origin, only with some local variations going on. 

Now, a little bit of common knowledge. People who descend from Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary are best buddies for life, even if they never saw each other. We have mutual respect for these countries and for ourselves, as our history brought us together multiple times (bad times and good ones). Russia IS NOT a part of this “mutual respect pact”. Mostly due to events that happened during both World Wars (i.e. Katyń Massacre), as well as other ones (Partitions of Poland, Eastern Bloc - communism). 

Most of the names used by Smeyer are of Russian (or Greek, or Hebrew) origin. Not Slavic origin. And while Russia is also the part of Slavic languages, there’s a significant distinction between West Slavic Languages (Slovakian, Czech, Polish language), East Slavic Languages (Belarusian, Russian, Ukainian) and South Slavic Languages (i.e. Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian). 

It makes difference to the point that if I go to Slovakia or Czech Republic I'm able to communicate with people in my native language (Polish) while they can answer me in their native language. Not everything is going to be the same but you're able to maintain a conversation mostly about every topic that you'd like to discuss. It isn't impossible to do so with Russian or Ukrainian but it's much harder and there are more differences, and sometimes you aren’t able to communicate this way. The same goes with i.e. Croatian or Bulgarian.

Don’t get me wrong, dear friends from Russia (if anyone from Russia will ever read this). I’m pissed off because even though Smeyer created not one, but four characters with SLOVAKIAN origin, she didn't use at least one name which fully originated in that territories (and probably was used) around 1000 AD. She went for Russian names because, sure, let's do that, there's no big difference anyway and it’s easier. To add to that, Smeyer used Russian names which are widely used NOWADAYS, not ones which were probably popular (or just used) thousand years ago. 

Now, quick briefing on very popular names from that time (c. 1000 AD) in Slovakia and Czech Republic. 

Here’s the full article on Slavic names.  

While some of these names are used today, some of them aren’t at all or are used in a different, more evolved form. 

Now, to the names of our characters. The most explainable and justified name here is Kate’s name. In Twilight Wiki we can find that her actual name was Katrina and that her preferable name now is Kate. Let’s see the origins of the name Kate. 

Full article here. 

While we can read that variations of that name in Czech are: “ Katka, Kateřina, Kačka, Káťa, Kačenka, Káča, Kačí, Kačena” and in Slovakian “Katka, Katarína” still the origins aren’t Slavic. 

Next, Irina. 

As Wikipedia says:

Irina is a feminine given name of Ancient Greek origin, commonly borne by followers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is derived from Eirene (Ancient Greek: Εἰρήνη), an ancient Greek goddess, personification of peace.

Diminutive forms in Slavic languages include Ira, Irinka, Irinushka, Irisha, Irka, Irochka, Irinochka.

Here, we also don’t have Slavic origin. While it’s better than with Kate’s name because origins here seem to hugely blend, the proper origin of Irina’s name is Ancient Greek. I will never believe that a peasant girl from around 1000 AD was named Irina.

Here’s the full article. 

Next, Vasilli. 

Wikipedia doesn’t say much, except it’s a RUSSIAN NAME with Greek origin.

Full article here. 

Now, finally, we’ve two names left. First, Sasha. 

Finally, first one, which has Slavic origin. And while this name has many variations in many languages, I don’t believe that anyone in Slovakia prior to 1000 AD would name their child Sasha. This name gained popularity in 1970s, and I believe that it would be used rather as diminutive of a name in 1000 AD than a name itself. 

Full article here. 

Last, but not least, Tanya. 

Here, also, it isn’t a full name. Full name is Tatiana, and Tanya, especially in Slavic it is used as a nickname implying intimacy with the person OR used for baby talk. 

Full article here. 

What’s my point here? Even though two of these five names are partially Slavic in origin, they sound like Russian names. Not Eastern Slavic in one fucking bit. Sure, Smeyer could do a simplification and say that, yeah, girls acquired other names as centuries passed. Agreed, even strongly. 

BUT

Smeyer never said anything like this. Also, I’m under the impression that this names were meant to sound Russian. And, people, don’t get me wrong, I really hold nothing against Russians, but because of doing such thing Smeyer has perpetuated certain patterns and beliefs that have become firmly established in US culture and West culture in general by now. 

No wonder why some people never distinguish between Russia, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic or Ukraine, or other countries from Easter Bloc. How can they, where in majority of mass media they’re taught that IT IS EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Why should they bother? 

I have many friends among Slovakian people. Slovakia is like a second home to me. I also have a few friends from Czech Republic. And before, I’ve never been bothered by this name thing because I was a child. Today I couldn’t be silent about it. 

It’s sad that another culture and fantastic history was just blended in with Russia because why not. I don’t understand why in Western movies or books all people from former Eastern Bloc need to be Russian. 

I am Polish and to me it’s just extremely sad. We (and I think I can count in here Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, but also Croatia or Serbia) have fantastic culture and very long, eventful history. People from these countries are welcoming and share great hospitality. 

I don’t know why Smeyer did something like this, but I suppose it’s just a thing she does to everyone. Rip away their culture and pretend she didn’t do it. 

I am grateful that this fandom is a lot wiser than the creator of the books. This is what I said in the beginning of this post. Smeyer could’ve gone to library and read a little about the history and the names. I mean, If she didn’t found it on the Internet, because it was 2006, I believe, so she could research it. If there was nothing on the Internet, I’m sure a library would do. 

She did a poor research or didn’t do it at all. And that’s what happened. Was it worth it? I don’t think so. 

***

Everyone, please, comment, but be kind to each other (and to me xd). I wrote what I felt. As I’ve told you already, I’m Polish and I really felt that I should write this meta/disclaimer from a point of view of a person who lives in Slavic-origined country and has many Slavic-origined friends.

I still feel triggered because of this. Reblog this so others could see and say what they think. 

[xxrainbow-princessxx]

Mama knows best - Leo x Isabella, Alessandra & Natalia, m!Blaine, m!Alexei

Very short story - my TRR AU x Foreign Affairs mash up

Royalty moves in small circles and Isabella and Leo are questioning why their daughters have a sudden interest in attending Vancross ... there’s maybe 2 swear words overall so read at your warning

Approx 1,150 words

This is the first story I’ve written in a while

Taglist: @drakewalkerfantasy @lorirwritesfanfic @lorircreates @rainbowsinthestorm @itslaniquelove @kimmiedoo5

@speedyoperarascalparty @kingliam2019 @rafasgirl23415 @texaskitten30 @choicesficwriterscreations

Isabella’s dark chocolate brown eyes slowly raised from the book she was reading, interrupted by the giggling of her two Eighteen year old daughters wagging a booklet and piece of paper in front of her, “Mama!” Alessandra grinned, “Vancross is doing an open day... can we go?!” followed by her sister immediately begging, “Please!?!” for added effect. The Laurentian Queen’s brow furrowed as she hesitantly took the documents from the Princesses who were almost giddy with anticipation. “Please mama...” Natalia clasped her hands together excitedly, “I think it would be really good for us... you know, future leadership and for the Kingdom!” Isabella wasn’t convinced, her almond eyes narrowed ever so slightly with doubt, “I’ll think about it... I’ll need speak with...” but before she could finish her sentence, Alessandra interrupted, “We already told Papa... he and Uncle Liam think it’s a great idea!” the Laurentian Crown Princess beamed. “Did they now?” Isabella’s left brow raised slightly in question, “I’ll take a look...” Something was definitely off with this picture and Isabella was ready to find out what.

“Jimena?” Isabella called to her Lady in Waiting as the Princesses merrily skipped out the door, waiting for them to leave as she continued quietly, “Can you find out all about this ‘Open Day’ and who is currently enrolled at Vancross for me before we entertain this...” Jimena began to laugh, “They want to go to the Vancross Institute?! Is that not where King Felipe threatened to send you when he found out you were spending a little too much time with a particular Crown Prince...” Isabella’s lips began to curl upwards, “Exactly... so why the hell do those two girls want to go to a diplomacy boarding school that is ran like a military camp? I doubt the reputation has changed much...” Jimena nodded, “I’ll make a few calls...” Isabella sighed heavily as she began to shake her head as she picked up her book once again, “What are those girls up to?”

Jimena returned with her findings a few hours later just before the Royal family sat down to dinner. “So mama...” Natalia spoke the ice on the Vancross subject, “Do you think Sasha and I can go? I mean...” she began to smile, “I’m sure we’ll learn something from the experience!” but Isabella didn’t speak as she picked up her knife and fork, her eyes rolling to the left as Leo chimed in replying to his daughters, “Don’t push your luck just yet... but it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea...” Rolling with it, Isabella began to giggle to herself, “Possibly not... after all it is a three day intensive course, there wouldn’t be much time to socialise...” Natalia nudged Alessandra under the table giddily as the Crown Princess pitched in, “Yeah... we think it would be good for both of us to have more of an understanding...”

“Uh... huh... An understanding of what exactly?” Isabella quizzed the twins carefully, “Forging political alliances, the fragility of diplomacy or decisive decision making and interpretation?” Both of them looked a little nervous but nodded, “Yes mama... all of that and Princess Dionne goes there - so we already know someone...” Isabella’s lips began to curl upwards as she turned to her husband with a mischievous smile and a subtle wink, “Well then... that’s great news, I was more concerned you’d want to be there because of Blaine Hayes and Alexei Vukoja...” watching the Princesses blush ever so slightly. Leo began to clench his jaw finally realising what the girls were up to as their mother continued, “I’m sure your father recalls the First sons of Ardona and Esherstein memorably from the last Eastern and Central European bloc gala we hosted...”

Leo’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the gala, remembering all too well watching the First Son of Ardona leaning against the ballroom wall as he flirted with Natalia brazenly in front of him and telling Leo that his mom still had the hots for the Rys brothers whilst drinking her fathers supply of Lythikos wine. “Over my dead body!” Leo exclaimed, “You’ll not be going anywhere if they are in attendance!” The girls expressions dropped immediately, both pouting and protesting, “That’s not fair!” trying their hardest to make their parents see it from their perspective, “Security will be everywhere, there’s curfews...” Natalia looked over her shoulder towards Javier who guarded the door, “Javier, please tell them the security detail will be fine?!” but Isabella stepped in quickly with a smile, “It’s fine mi querida... I’m sure...” she looked back toward Leo as she placed her hand gently on her daughters arm before returning her warm chocolate brown eyed gaze, “We can let you go... I’ve already made the arrangements...”

Leo’s brow furrowed immediately at the thought, listening to his daughters squealing with delight, “Sasha... Lia...Nico...” he barked nonchalantly, “I would like a word with your mother please... in private...” All three quietly pushed out their chairs, finding solace in the family room as Leo glared at the petite brunette, “What the fuck Bella?!” The Laurentian King growled, “They’re not going!” The more Leo’s face reddened with anger, the more Isabella couldn’t help herself laughing, “Do you honestly think I am that stupid...” she began to grin, “You and Liam shouldn’t have told them it would be a good idea before you spoke to me about it!” Leo quietened down, “I didn’t know it was somewhere for Royal and entitled brats to get together! Why did you tell them they could go?!” Isabella’s almond shaped eyes narrowed as she smiled, “Because... after speaking with the headmistress and a small donation, turns out that during the Open Day - the current students will be taken ‘off campus’ suddenly for a few days... so you tell me...” the Laurentian Queen grinned as she picked up her wine glass, “Is that a decent enough punishment that they may actually learn something?”

Leo sucked in his cheeks as he lifted his own glass, clinking it against Isabella’s, “Touché...” he began to chuckle, “Education’s important...” the former Cordonian Crown’s Prince’s sea green eyes flashed a dark forest green, “... and I’m sure those boys will be pretty disappointed that they’ll be unintentionally stood up...” The Laurentian Queen’s long dark eyelashes fluttered as she took a sip of her wine, her eyes locking onto her husband’s, “People will learn not to underestimate me...” Leo slowly began to grin as he rested his finger under the petite brunette’s chin, delicately tilting it upwards towards him, his voice low and gravelly, “I never do kitten...” As Leo gently placed his lips against Isabella, the Laurentian Queen giggled softly, “They forget we were young once... do you remember our sneaking around?” The Sandy haired Cordonian stared into his wife’s eyes longingly, becoming lost as his attention was drawn to the small specks of honey and caramel that flickered in the light, “...but there’s a difference beautiful...” Leo quietly spoke, “...You were always meant to be mine...”

[bigbrotherlouis]

hey sasha, thoughts on communism?

i get it. i’ve read marx, i have two degrees in fields that study systematic injustices, i read the news and can see the failings. i’m an anthropologist and i can read the room. i’m anti-capitalist. i can understand how and where and why communism is so attractive. sure.

but here’s the thing:

when you’ve lived in cinderblock brutalist apartments that were only meant to last like ten years but were built thirty years ago; when you’ve stood in line for hours at the store only to get half your grocery list because the supplies ran out; when practically everyone you know has had an uneasy experience with the secret police; when your parents laugh about being followed around with a machine gun in stores because that was a normal part of life or buying doubles of everything because you don’t know when it will be in stock again, if ever; when you’ve been in the state-run orphanages and seen treatment that still gives you nightmares (tw for literally everything you can imagine, if you google this); when people talk about how their names were put down for an apartment and a phone and a drivers license at birth and still had to wait for an opening years after they became an adult; when you have story after story after story from the most normal people about being forced out of family homes, or forced to cook for dictators, or forced to watch as cultural and historic places are destroyed; when communist leaders grew fat and rich off the oppression of their people; when you know how the communist regimes treated anyone they couldn’t make into a perfect citizen-- hundreds of thousands people who disagreed, minorities, women, those who were disabled, lgbt+ communities, artists, politicians, all lost; when you have read about the artificial famines created after the governments tried to deprivatize farms, the holodomor being the most horrific example but plenty others as well (also tw for everything if you google holodomor); when you know how cultural and ethnic identity was stamped out in favour of allegiance to the communist party; when you know people who almost died in 1956 hungary or 1989 romania or, shit, 1990′s former yugoslavia because they were protesting the rule of a corrupt government; when you have lived in post-communist countries and have heard from people who have lived it firsthand,

communism kind of loses its appeal.

(if you want to do some reading on this, i’d really recommend looking at stuff from people in post communist countries. i’m only really familiar with post-soviet bloc stuff, because that’s my context, but i’d recommend how we survived communism and even laughed by slavenka drakulić or lost in transition: ethnographies of everyday life after communism by kristen ghodsee)

[dinviataunuitiptrans]

E ziua lu mama mea azi. Face 59 și de câțiva ani încoace am început s-o "terorizez" cu drag și afecțiune - verbală, pentru că maică-mii nu-i place cu îmbrățișări și chestii d-astea și chiar nu-mi place s-o chinuiesc așa că oricât îmi vine s-o țin în brațe prefer să mă abțin deși mi-e greu că e mămica mea. Mnoh. Da' înțeleg, că n-a avut cine s-o învețe cum stă treaba cu de-astea, ea n-a crescut nici cu afecțiune și nici cu iubire. Las' c-o alint eu.

"Mama Regina Mea", așa am trecut-o în telefon. Iar Regina mea s-a născut în satul Țibucani (nu vă spun dacă ăia de Sus sau ăia de Jos) și e cea mai mare dintre cei trei copii ai lu mamaie Catinca. Sincer habar n-am care e diferența între ei da' știu că mătuși-mea e mijlocia iar unchi-miu e mezinul familiei. Iar cum mamaie și tataie erau țărani deci cu treburile câmpului, responsabilitatea casei și a creșterii mezinului, plus o soră, a picat pe umerii lu mama mea, atât decât că mama mea era și ea tot un copil. Da' la țară nu contează dacă abia ești în școala primară, nu contează că ești copil, așa că mama s-a trezit că trebuie să-și crească fratele mai mic și să fie și "fata în casă" și să se mai ducă și la școală. smr, mie mi se rupe sufletu de ea de fiecare dată când mă gândesc la copilul din ea. Povestea din copilăria lu mama care mă întristează cel mai tare e aia despre cum stătea treaba la ei în familie atunci când venea vremea să mănânce. Ca să știți, mama a crescut într-un patriarhat tipic, adică de căcat, și-mi povestea că atunci când se așezau la masă, tataie Gheorghe (nu l-am cunoscut da așa i se zice) era primu care primea ce era mai bun de mâncare, el fiind capul familiei (și înțeleg de ce făcea asta, așa era el nesimțit), apoi urma mezinul familiei, sora mijlocie, mama și la urmă ce rămânea era a lu mamaie. Și groaznic obicei a preluat și mama smr; și tare mă supără când îmi amintesct toate fazele când făcea fix la fel, iar când gătea divinul acela de pui la sticlă cum doar mămica mea știe să facă, ea nici nu lua în calcul să mănânce altceva în afară de spate, gât, aripi, astea gen; apoi am crescut și io umpic și nu mă mai lăsa sufletu s-o văd cu obiceiul ăsta prost și împărțeam cu ea sau câteodată făceam schimb - și asta se întâmpla dacă reușeam să fiu suficient de insistent sau convingător, sau ea mai puțin căpoasă. Tata a fost mereu un egoist, mai ales cu mâncarea.

Despre mama cred ca as putea sa scriu o viață întreagă plus încă doua sau trei, așa de tare o iubesc. M-am hotărât s-o iubesc la loc imediat după ce mi-am început tranziția cu testosteron. Cred că prin adolescență am luat pauză din iubit mama. Când eram mic eram cel mai sensibil la ea, mă întrista tare mult când o vedeam ca e tristă și plângeam când o vedeam plângând, și încercam să n-o supăr și nu că-mi era frică de bătaie, ci pentru că îmi era tare dragă și o iubeam mult de tot și chiar nu-mi plăcea s-o văd stresată. Ce-i drept nu prea reușeam să n-o supăr deloc da' niciodată nu i-am purtat pică lu mama că mă batea; când eram mic nu mă supărăm pe ea și nici n-o drăcuiam în gând că vedeam și eu că nu dă cu ură așa cum făcea tata când mă bătea, iar acum știu că bătăile erau din epuizare psihică, din disperare că nu înțeleg de vorbă bună, de oboseală, lipsa de parenting skills, vârstă fragedă, 3 copii plus un bărbat prezent dar neimplicat... plus încă o grămadă de alte motive care mă fac nu doar să nu-i port pică ba chiar s-o iubesc și s-o admir și mai mult. Și oricum ea nu ne bătea atât de des, ea era cu țipatu mai mult.... așa știau și vecinii de la bloc când a ajuns Mariana acasă de la servici.

Azi am sunat-o s-o iubesc, și după ce mi-am făcut numărul de afecțiune verbală i-am urat să-mi trăiască măcar încă o mie de ani. Ea n-a fost de acord, și după ce mi-a zis că nu vrea să ajungă bătrână în baston că nu vrea să depindă de nimeni a făcut și gluma proastă să zică că mamă-sa a murit când avea 60 de ani și că deci și ea mai are umpic. Așa că am anunțat-o și eu că dacă plănuiește sa moară prea curând atunci mă omor și eu, îmi fac supradoză de heroină în venă și mă duc după ea, că nu se știe ce e dincolo și singură nu pot s-o las, dacă pățește ceva. A râs și-a zis că nu sunt sănătos la cap și să termin cu prostiile. I-am spus și eu că o iubesc și că o ador și să nu plănuiască să moară prea curând. Nu i-am zis că dacă o pierd pe ea ființa mea o să se anuleze complet de dor și durere și că prefer să crească viermi în mine și copaci din mine decât să n-o mai am pe mama mea. Am zis să nu-i zic așa că oricum nu pricepe felul în care o iubesc și iar îmi dă cu dismiss; și nici n-are cum să priceapă, înțeleg, pe ea n-a învățat-o nimeni că merită să fie iubită, da mă ocup eu de asta. Și-o fac de câțiva ani, de când am început tranziția și-am început să-mi alung demonii din mine ca să fac loc la cea mai multă iubire din univers. Iar odată ce m-am privit în oglindă și l-am recunoscut și l-am primit pe Sasha în viața mea parcă m-am transformat într-un fel de făt frumos smr, m-am făcut cel mai coios bătăuș de zmei, de demoni și de alte lighioane care-mi întunecau sufletul de eram un toxic, transfob, homofob, rasist, sexist, clasist, ipocrit, fals, neasumat, și de-a dreptu prost.

Pe mama cel mai tare ar bucura-o dacă aș accepta ca trebuie să mă integrez în sistemul opresiv patriarhal capitalist din care face și ea parte (și să-mi termin facultatea - oricare -, să mă angajez, să trăiesc și eu cum trăiesc alții, eventual să-mi fac gagică, apoi nevastă, apoi credit ptr prima casă, apoi să mă descurc eu cumva s-o fac bunică a 5-a oară) dar din păcate nu vrea să înțeleagă că eu mai repede aș distruge sistemul din care face ea parte, pentru că și sistemul ăsta a distrus-o pe ea - sunt foarte sensibil la mama, doar am zis.

Pe mine în schimb cel mai tare m-ar bucura dacă maică-mii nu i s-ar mai face dor de fata aia cu pălărie de cowgirl, cravată roșie si chitară de gât, care stă înrămată într-o poza pe noptiera de deasupra patului ei, pentru că idetitatea aia n-a fost niciodată reală și-mi pare rău s-o văd tristă după nimic.

Iar astăzi am scris primu meu articol de blog pentru că am sunat-o pe mama să-i zic la mulți ani și s-o iubesc, apoi m-a certat că cică de ce nu duc la bun sfârșit niciodată nimic din ce încep (ea se referea la facultatea de Asistență Socială), iar eu mi-am amintit că de vreo două săptămâni mă chinui să pun pe net o grămadă de poze de pe 13 Septembrie de la "Sisü" și să zic și vreo do'o vorbe pentru că fix azi se termină expoziția #laymedownacrossthelines din care face parte și performance-ul ăsta în care m-am dus io la Timișoara venit din Londra ca să mă las la organele genitale goale de amoru artei contemporane radical feminista queer, și dacă tot zice mama că trebuie să mai și termin chestiile de care mă apuc atunci nah, habemus spațiul ăsta, #dinviataunuitiptrans, că și așa își așteaptă rându de vreo 2 ani.

Despre Sisü n-am mai apucat să scriu că m-am luat cu ziua lu maică-mea și astea, așa că pun doar poze, da' pot să vă recunosc cel mai cinstit că dacă aș fi avut de ales între să-mi petrec 13 Decembrie cu mama de ziua ei sau să particip la finisajul #laymedownacrossthelines, fără îndoială eram de la 8 dimineața în față la Kunsthalle Bega așteptând cuminte să-mi deschidă careva ușa ca să mă pregătesc să mă întâlnesc cu oamenii și cu sufletu lor gol, așa de drag îmi este Sisü ăsta și toată atmosfera de la #laymedownacrosstheline; oricum mama preferă să stea în pat de ziua ei și să-și țină nepotu în brațe, și dacă aș fi acasă probabil mi-ar tolera prezența până să-i înceapă telenovela... așa că csf, ncsf, fiecare cu filmu lui.

[mariacallous]

There are no superlatives too superlative for Anna Politkovskaya, who, after three books and innumerable investigative reporting trips to Chechnya, was murdered, execution-style, outside her Moscow apartment in 2007. Politkovskaya, a social affairs reporter, was sent to Chechnya in 2000 by her liberal newspaper editor to cover the second, Putin-era, war, not because she knew about wars but because she was “just a civilian”. She turned out to be the best possible kind of Moscow intellectual – a fearless truth-teller. She took issue with the swaggering, macho, murderous pro-Moscow leaders of today’s Chechnya, under Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, (she campaigned against Putin’s man in Chechnya being named to run the region, interviewing people who’d been interrogated by him and publishing reports that he was a sadistic torturer who enjoyed stripping the skin off his victims’ backs).Yet Politkovskaya had no romantic sympathies with the freedom fighters either. Her targets also included the swaggering, macho, murderous anti-Moscow separatists led by Shamil Basayev, now dead, whose extremism plunged Chechnya into a second war against Putin’s forces in 1999 and brought disaster to hundreds of thousands of ordinary Chechen civilians. She’d had considerable sympathy for earlier, moderate, separatists, under Aslan Maskhadov, who’d tried to find accommodation with Moscow as well as more freedom for their people. But, if Politkovskaya was on anyone’s side, it was that of ordinary civilians. Civilians in Chechnya, torn between two rival tyrannies, who couldn’t get their own stories heard by the world – the people who get woken up by soldiers taking their teenage daughter away to rape, or who lose their legs treading on mines, or whose neighbours get their throats cut or their fingers cut off – whose predicament she movingly described. And, of course, she was on the side of ordinary Russians – the people increasingly hemmed in by a blinkered press and ignorant of the world’s bigger realities. What motivated Politkovskaya to go on braving the danger of Chechnya, long after Putin made it clear that journalists were not welcome at his war, was more than compassion. It was the conviction that Russians needed to know what was being done in their name in the secretive south, behind army lines. “I’m sure this has to be done, for one simple reason,” she wrote briskly in A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. “As contemporaries of this war, we will be held responsible for it. The classic Soviet excuse of not being there and not taking part in anything personally won’t work. So I want you to know the truth. Then you’ll be free of cynicism.”

The breathtaking horror – and cynicism – she uncovered gave her a mission so important that she separated with her husband and ignored her son’s pleas to stop her new work. Her discoveries are detailed in this extraordinary book, beautifully written, but so full of tragedy it makes the hairs rise on the nape of your neck. She found corrupt Russian soldiers working hand-in-glove with shady Chechen criminals and political extremists. Her stories put flesh on the widely held belief that Chechnya is a for-profit war. The Russian army, which faces being scaled down as there is no Soviet bloc to defend, has found in Chechnya an excuse to perpetuate itself – and get rich. The economics are grisly: a civilian kept in a pit, alive, by Russian soldiers is worth a ransom from his relatives; a corpse’s price is rather higher. “Everyone has found a niche,” she wrote. “The mercenaries at the checkpoints get bribes of ten to 20 roubles around the clock. The generals in Moscow and Chechnya use their war budget for personal gain. Officers of the middle ranks collect ransom for temporary hostages and corpses. Junior officers get to go marauding during the purges.” Hence an official policy based on, at best, outrageous distortions of the truth, and a landscape empty of heroes or winners.

Politkovskaya’s discoveries gave her life a strange new shape. She negotiated with Chechen hostage-takers who took over Moscow’s Dubrovka theatre in October 2002 (a friend of her son’s was among the prisoners). She was subjected to a mock execution by security forces in Chechnya. Kadyrov’s father, an earlier pro-Russian president of Chechnya, “publicly threatened to murder me. He actually said during a meeting of his government that Politkovskaya was a condemned woman”. In 2004, during the siege by Chechen separatists of a school at Beslan in southern Russia, she was asked, by the Chechens, to join the negotiations. She was on the plane south, hoping both to report on the crisis and to act as an intermediary and help to get hundreds of child prisoners out of the boobytrapped gym. But she was slipped a Mickey Finn [drink laced with drugs] on the plane. The next thing she knew, she was in hospital and it was several days later – too late for the children, who had by then been killed in their hundreds. What she remembered of the experience was the three men she’d noticed in the plane, staring at her with the “eyes of enemies”. She blamed the Russian secret services for poisoning her.

Politkovskaya’s killer has never been named. Nor has the killer of another Russian whistle-blower, Sasha Litvinenko, who was slipped a dose of radioactive polonium in Piccadilly a month later, or a host of other anti-war activists who have met strange, untimely ends during Vladimir Putin’s Russian presidency. It is some consolation to know that, while Politkovskaya’s books are still in print, her voice has not been silenced.

Vanora Bennett about A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya

[jazztidbits]

Sasha's Bloc - Feels Like Jazz

Sasha’s Bloc performing “Feels Like Jazz” LIVE from Herb Albert’s Vibrato Grill & Jazz Club at the ‘Heart On Fire’ CD Release in Los Angeles, California.  Featuring amazing vocalist, Grammy-nominated, Jane Monheit. 

[vaultsixtynine]

sasha and andrew and i did more planning for our fiasco game today (we were supposed to play it but . you know.) and we’re going with a research base in antarctica but the world setting is like, soviet-adjacent world order known as the United Worker’s Union (uwu) that has several blocs, etc. the base is called the koltsov-campbell base but everyone refers to it as Soup Base and it’s ostensibly a secret research base checking out some great Entity that’s slowly thawing from the ice due to global warming

there’s also a volcano and possibly an abandoned submarine and i’m playing a scp-like agent that has infiltrated this base by working as its extremely exasperated head of security; she has to keep these scientists (andrew and sasha’s characters who are have an extremely vicious professional rivalry) that she absolutely despises alive while she makes sure they don’t get too close to The Truth (not that she knows what it is, either, but also fucking with their research is a primary directive)

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘Return to Sender’ (S03E16) Analysis

With what feels like two separate stories slammed together in this episode, it was never going to be my favorite.  And though we have some tasty meta, I was left feeling a bit disappointed, and more than a bit confused on several points.  Come on in to hear what I think about ‘Return to Sender’.

It was inevitable that, after the extreme high water mark that has been the first part of season 3 (the initial bloc of episodes contained some of the strongest material to date from the show, in my opinion), having an episode that really didn’t land for me was inevitable, and would inevitably feel jarring.  That was ‘Return to Sender’, which felt like two good episodes both trimmed way down and slammed together.  It was the same problem I had with ‘Section 31’ last season.  There were several stories in that one, all potentially promising, and all severely undernourished to the point of not being memorable at all.  

‘Return to Sender’ only has two such stories, but they still have that distinct feeling of not being long enough to realize their full potential.  Both feel important.  Both feel like they have a lot to say, both about the plot and about where Sims is as a character right now.  So it’s a real shame that the whole thing feels rushed, and major beats fly by without being given the weight I felt like they deserved.

I’ll talk about the two separately first, and I’ll dig into what meta we can glean.  Then I’ll talk about why the episode, when taken as a whole, didn’t really work for me.  

The first story, which seemed to work better for me, involves Jon going to investigate the previous location of Breekon & Hope.  We find out that Breekon & Hope was the name of the company before the delivery men we know took it off the former owner and took the names for themselves.  We also know that they are all but confirmed to have been the two strong-men from the Circus of the Other.  Given that, their purpose, which had seemed to me to be a bit more freelance, is actually to move important artifacts around in service of the Stranger.  

As Sims himself mentioned in this part, it’s a bit light on meta, but understandably.  I never thought Breekon & Hope were going to be wealths of information, being more ferrymen than players in the game.  Why he felt so hellbent to find their story, I’m not sure, though I figure it’s the Archivist driving him on, making him desperate for any new story.

Indeed, the real intrigue in the first part is Sims’ reaction to standing in this location where someone died, having collected the statement from where Elias left it for him. He himself is bothered by the notion that the death seems inconsequential to him, that his major irritation comes from Elias being a showy prick, rather than the fact that a man struggled and died in that place.  Sims sounds more like Gertrude in this part of the episode than he ever has before, and following on the heels of me dubbing him Head Asshole of the Magnus Institute last week for not even bothering to check in with Martin and the rest of the assistants, this seems properly worrisome.  His humanity seems to be slipping away at an accelerated rate, and he’s not even trying to hold onto it.

So, yes, the story was a bit light on meta, but it was a good story, and well told.  It was nice to hear Jon read a statement again.  It was interesting to see him realizing how quickly the Archivist is eclipsing Jonathan Sims.  Spooled out a bit, maybe with a confrontation with Elias or something, and I think that this would have been a really good episode.

But instead, brace yourself for whiplash, because we transition directly into the second story. These two are nominally tied together with the log book Jon found at Breekon & Hope, which has allowed him to track the shipments of the Stranger’s packages.  This, again, would be a really interesting idea.  Concluding the Breekon & Hope episode with the idea that he’s going to start using that book to trach these packages would have been a good hook.  

Instead, we hard cut to him at the taxidermy shop from ��Still Life’, apparently working without any sort of fuss or fear with Daisy.  Um, what? I don’t expect this show to hand-hold me or spoon-feed me information.  Far from it.  But a bit of context is always a good thing.  How long is this segment after the former one?  Does Jon have Daisy’s number in his phone?  Did he contact Elias, who sent Daisy to pick him up?  Is this the first time they’ve worked together? Certainly they seem weirdly comfortable in one another’s company all of a sudden, which is quite the change from Daisy wanting to shoot him in the face.  Also there was no mention at all of Basira, like Daisy asking after her and Jon not having an answer because he hasn’t bothered to check on Basira since she was taken hostage?  That would have been an ideal conversation for these two to have.

But, no.  Sudden jump to them confronting Sarah Baldwin, and I feel really bad for that character.  Having her shoehorned into the end of this episode after some great buildup early in the series feels like a disservice.  I’m hoping we get more of her later to let her shine, because this came and went too fast to leave any sort of notion who she is now or what the Anglerfish’s thing might be.  

We’re also missing the bridge between Sims being at least concerned with his slipping humanity in a rather detached way, and the stone cold Sims we get in this latter half.  He’s shaking off any threat Daisy might pose, and the only time he broke his cool was at the mention of Sasha.  He didn’t seem to mind that Sarah Baldwin escaped, nor was he shocked.  He’d got her statement, the story, and that was all that mattered.  The hunger for information was good, but needed room to breathe in the middle of everything else happening.  

And we’re also introduced to the taxidermy skin from ‘Still Life’ again.  Apparently it’s a critical piece of the Unknowing, and to slow that down Gertrude had murdered the former owner of the shop and stolen the skin. And then, in a move that felt more like Jonathan Sims, idiot extraordinaire, than anything else in that latter half of the episode, Sims just out and out admits he has no idea where the skin is.  Sarah bolts, ready to tell the Stranger that the new Archivist is a moron, and that’s that.

Like I said before, each of these halves could have been a really good episode unto itself.  The first would have been a quieter episode, but I could have dug that.  The latter would have been fairly fraught, but Jon actively interrogating a being—not asking for a statement, but a proper interrogation—would have been a really cool thing to explore over 20 minutes.  Jon and Daisy having to uncomfortably work with one another would have been interesting.  Giving Sarah Baldwin more time to draw out the creepiness of the Anglerfish, still one of the most frightening entities from this series, would have been phenomenal.

Instead, everything felt like it was rushed, and all the story threads got the short shrift in order to pack them in.  I think that both parts of this were probably necessary, and maybe the numbering of the episodes just didn’t work for them to be two episodes and still get to the mid-season finale on episode 20 of this season.  But I really wish they had found a way.

I don’t want to make it sound like there was nothing good here.  Though it was rushed, I now imagine that the Stranger’s efforts to retrieve the skin are going to lie at the center of the mid-season finale.  I also think that Jon doesn’t yet realize how dangerous that information is.  If I can figure that out, you bet that Nichola Orsinov can.  And you bet she’ll be sending some visitors to the Archives to retrieve that skin.

And the assistants STILL don’t know anything, what with Jon apparently now partered with fucking Daisy of all people.  Without the key information about the Unknowing and the Stranger, the assistants don’t know not to help some envoy of the Stranger.  They don’t know not to let someone from the circus in.  And Nichola would almost certainly view killing them all as an added fuck-you to the Beholding, so you know she’d do it if she could.  And even if Elias could stop any direct incursions by the Stranger, what if the Stranger were to approach someone like Tim?  What if Nichola were to offer Tim freedom in exchange for a creepy old bit of taxidermy skin?  He’d go for it in a second.

And speaking of Elias, we also have the most interesting line of the episode from Sarah Baldwin: “Is that what he’s calling himself now?”  This, alone, was the one line I’m happy they breezed past.  It was the one beat that didn’t feel rushed, because it should be something that spools out over many episodes.  So as far as pacing goes, that beat did land really well for me.

It seems pretty clear that whoever Elias Bouchard was before, the thing wearing his body is at least no longer him in entirety.  There likely was the original stoner Elias, but he was either replaced by someone else or willingly took on the mantle of something else, making him a hybrid of his own personality and that of something else.  And honestly, I have to wonder if that personality isn’t Jonah Magnus. What if the founder of the Institute found a way to pass from body to body, either completely consuming or living in symbiosis with the current head of the Institute?  It would lend a lot more weight to Elias’ arrogance so far, if he was the beating heart of the Magnus Institute by literally being the beating heart keeping Magnus alive.  And when he dies, he would pass into the next head of the Institute. When he said that killing him would kill everyone there, he wasn’t talking about the body of Elias, perhaps, but the mind of Jonah Magnus.

Or at least that’s the theory I’m running with.  It’s by far the most interesting meta coming out of this episode, as Elias continues to be one of the most intriguing aspects of season 3, even when he isn’t there.

But whoever Elias truly is, I get the feeling that he’s not as in control as he thinks.  He loves playing games, proving how observant he is to Jon.  He wants Jon afraid and impressed.  But Jon’s getting a bit sick of it, and the one thing Elias really can’t seem to control is Jon’s bad decision train.  And that train feels like it’s about to come into station.  Jon’s diminishing humanity is something Elias is clearly pushing, but I don’t think it’s nearly as good a thing as Elias imagines it to be.  It’s endangering his assistants, and rather than using them as touchstones and ways to cling to whatever sympathy and caring he has left in him, he’s running around with Daisy, who isn’t exactly a boost to anyone’s humanity.  And without the emotional connection, he’s clearly missing obvious conclusions.  He’s too focused on the story, and not enough on the people.  

As we come up hard toward the mid-season break (which will follow episode 20 of season 3, for anyone who didn’t know yet), I get the feeling they’re going to leave us with either a cliffhanger or a real shakeup of the current situation.  We know that the first half of this season has been Jon going out and trying to be proactive.  He’s letting the notion that he’s supposed to save the world go to his head. He’s drifting further away from caring about others and falling further and further into the hunger for information. He’s becoming Elias’ sort of Archivist, and I don’t think that’s going to work out well.

Conclusions

Like I said, this felt like about half of two good episodes accidentally put in a tumble dryer together. We get the first half, which explores Breekon & Hope and Jon’s ever-diminishing humanity, and we have the latter half in which Jon is somehow working with Daisy, who is apparently cool with that now.  And Sarah Baldwin is there.  And she gets away to tell the Stranger that the new Archivist has no clue what his predecessor did with the skin that’s critical to the Unknowing.  So a lot happens in a rather disjointed manner, leaving me feeling unsatisfied.  The informational bits we got were good, sure, but lacking in context and grounding. Too much happened too quickly with too little reason to string it all together.  And to waste a character like Sarah Baldwin on what amounted to a cameo feels like a damn shame.

I know these episodes can’t all be to my taste, and that’s fine.  Really, it’s a testament to the high quality of this series that an episode like this, where my problems stem from writing decisions rather than character actions, feels so jarring to me.  I’m guessing this was a one-off thing, made necessary by getting all this information out by the mid-season finale.  I’ve very little doubt that next week we’ll be back on track, and I’ll be loving every minute.

Hopefully Jon, as a character, gets his head out of his ass in time to realize what he’s just done. I want to believe that he’s at least smart enough to realize that the Stranger is going to believe that skin is at the Archives, and will likely either try to infiltrate or attack it directly. It would be nice if Sims remembered that there are people at the Archive that he might remember as being friendly with him at some point.  

And Jon needs those people, because without them his humanity is slipping away fast.  So valuing them and keeping them informed? Sort of a thing he has to start doing if he’s going to be this dumb on the regular.