#that you exist in a perpetual state of exception

[communistkenobi]

having gone through (and still in the process of going through) the thousand different processes for changing my legal name and gender marker in every conceivable place those things could come up, one thing I’ve noticed is that being trans wreaks administrative havoc. the particular process of changing your name because you’re transgender isn’t strictly unique, because people change their legal name(s) for lots of different reasons, but there is a systemic unpreparedness for dealing with the scenario of a user or client or patient whose name and gender has changed simultaneously. the most common response I get when I ask somebody at a front desk if I can change my name and/or gender in their system is “huh, this has never happened before!” and then they go talk to their manager. and so to get anything done you have to continually assert that it’s possible, you have to explain that you’ve changed it elsewhere, you have to carry around legal documentation to prove that it’s happened, and you effectively become a perpetual edge case for any given administrative system you exist in. I know, intimately, how my university’s IT systems work in terms of field input because it’s so decentralised that changing information one place doesn’t change it in a lot of other places, and the act of having to be registered at a university with two conflicting legal names means I have to have an ongoing relationship with their IT help desk. People talk a lot about how we have to become medical experts in order to assert our own identity, but you also have to become a fucking IT expert too

[fairuzfan]

About liberal Zionists.

First, Zionism is a nationalistic ideology so we have strike one for how they constantly feel "betrayed" by leftism. But also, when I go to the blog of a liberal queer rights, equal rights for all Zionist there are some things I noticed.

Zionist 1 has mostly agreeable positions in their own thoughts and reblogs. They want the sufferings of the Palestinians to end but have mostly shallow ideas on how that could be accomplished because the central violence that the state Israel enacts on the Palestinians is invisible to them except a short "the settlements are bad". They accept that Gaza is suffering too much but stay clear to call it a genocide.

Zionist 1 often reblogs from Zionist 2.

Zionist 2's opinions and reblogs are now way less agreeable. When I say "agreeable" I mean agreeable to a nominal western, white, somewhat leftist audience. Z2 openly has nationalistic views, everything starts on 7.10 except Hamas was always bad. Some denialism on past Israeli atrocities. Calls Jews critical of Israel "self-hating" without pause. When the topic of genocide comes up they say it doesn't exist. Maybe they criticise Netanyahu.

Z1 makes sure that only some of Z2' thoughts and reblogs end up their own blog.

Z2 often reblogs from Z3 who is an open, flag waving, idf idolising, arab hating islamophobe. They don't care about civilian casualties because in their opinion there are no civilians and/or they deserve it for electing Hamas and not fighting against Hamas right this second. The hostages are worshipped, just like every political decision of Israel, current past future. They deny that a genocide is happening but only on the word alone because they wish that everyone in Gaza should die and disappear.

Z2 makes sure that only some of Z3 thoughts and reblogs end up on their own blog.

And this is how supposed liberal or leftist Zionists regurgitate far right fanaticism even if not openly all the time.

You distilled this perfectly, this is exactly why I dislike so many liberal zionists on here. They straight up reblog from people who were genocide deniers and those people reblog from outright fascists. Like yeah if I see you make community with people who spout zionist beliefs then I'm considering you a zionist, even if you deny it.

Also the liberal zionists always talk about how we should "stop dehumanizing Israelis for the actions of their governments" when we very much can see the way Israelis perpetuate the colonization of Palestine. Oh and they also don't think palestine is colonized by Israel.

But yeah this is exactly it thank you anon.

[pillowspace]

HI….👉👈 AM I ALLOWED TO ASK ABOUT YOUR SIBLINGS AU????

sooo so curious if you have an facts or tidbits to share like! whats their dynamic like? is there any Backstory to this oooor just for fun? i am. very very interested ehe

(only if u want to tho!!)

(About this post and this post)

Mmmm! Let me see what I can think of!

Mal's full first name is Maldu. I imagine everyone would call them Mal except for Odile, since she calls Bonnie Boniface, and would presumably call Mal "Maldu."

Mal is like 12-15, I'm not really strict on the exact age. Since Mal would be the second youngest, they would probably like following Bonnie around even if Mal doesn't really know how to "play" or anything. They just kinda... stand there and try to curiously mirror whatever Bonnie does.

Mal is a bit quiet. They can speak, but they don't do so often, and are more likely to speak when they're upset than when they're pleased.

The red star that hangs from their bandana cannot be seen in colour unless Mal is especially upset. Not the most upset of their life like Siffrin, but even just a big cry could cause the star to shine for everyone to see.

Mal is very sensitive and cries easily. Siffrin's grown practiced at calming them down but still gets freaked out by the sudden tears.

Mal likes quietly watching and listening. They enjoy being taught by their allies how to perform certain tasks, and will give that wide-eyed look of a silent "really??" when praised for doing something right. They soak up praise like a sponge due to a perpetual feeling of doing something wrong.

While their right eye spirals, Mal's left iris is entirely white! It's usually covered by the slanted hat, however.

And! I hadn't actually really thought of a backstory until just now, but does this work? I think it maybe could

Siffrin accidentally created Mal through Wish Craft when he had a mental breakdown as a child/teen soon after the northern island's disappearance, though neither of them know this, and they did not meet until a couple years after this happened. Mal's existence slowly came to be with a clear understanding that they existed for a reason, but they weren't sure why. When Siffrin and Mal eventually crossed paths, it was like finding a second half that you hadn't even realized you had lost. Though even after meeting, the two are still unsure of how this happened to begin with. As far as Siffrin's concerned, the two just "clicked," and does not remember the breakdown. Meanwhile Mal's not really sure where they came from or what they are, but they gladly latch onto the protection Siffrin offers.

Mal is simultaneously an extension of Siffrin, and a separate being entirely. Mal was made from Siffrin's soul, even if Siffrin hadn't meant to share himself like that. When one is hurt, the other shares the echoes of their pain. Mal likely severely panicked when Siffrin lost the eye, and the echoing pain in Mal's own head surely didn't help. If ONE panicked kid (Bonnie) wasn't enough, you also get TWO in this AU! Congrats!

Since Mal was created from Siffrin's distraught state, it reflects through Mal in certain ways. How sensitive they are, how timid they are, their unease, their anxiety, etc. Siffrin's helping Mal every step of the way though, and is very protective of them, urging his allies to be gentle with them.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Pavlovitz at The Beautiful Mess:

Wake up, White Liberals, Progressives, and Moderates. It's morning in America. A lot happened while we were sleeping. This is not the nation we thought existed back on January 20th of 2009: likely the last time many of us were fully awake. Back then, we basked in the warm glow of the arrival of a Black President and we grew comfortable, nestling down into a complacency that only the blind spots of privilege and false information provide. The joy of that moment, and the recent civil and human rights wins became a slow-acting emotional sedative that slowly squeezed out the urgency from us; one that gradually dulled our senses.

The visible victories numbed our minds into imagining we had arrived together at Dr. King’s glorious mountaintop. If we had taken the time to ask vulnerable, oppressed people, they'd have warned us not to fall asleep. Believing that the aspirational "we shall overcomes" that once rang out were now a fixed and unchangeable present, we settled cozily into that place where the heart rate slows and the limbs and eyelids grow heavy—and where without realizing it, slumber suddenly overtakes you: One blink awake, the next blink asleep. And for eight years we began to sleepwalk through the world, physically here and moving through daylight but not fully present, not totally seeing—caught between the actual and the unreal world, between the true nightmare and the imagined dream. Yes, we still talked and marched and campaigned and worked, but we did so slightly sedated in the haze of bad stories, willful ignorance, and wishful thinking. Meanwhile, the bigots woke up.

Shaken violently from sleep on that same January morning in 2009 by the reality of what decades of fear and terrible theology taught them was the absolute worst place they could find themselves—they began to mount a fierce counterattack. They infiltrated local politics and school boards and state election positions. They created news outlets and social media platforms designed to filter out everything except that which would fully trigger terror within the hearts of their intended targets and would-be allies: fantastical stories of a pervasive and coordinated Gay Agenda coming to convert their children; of violent, heavily armed, brown-skinned drug gangs overrunning our borders; of godless, abortion-mad progressives having indiscriminate sex without fear or care; of Muslim terrorist hordes infiltrating our neighborhoods and bodegas; of America-hating Democrats coming for their jobs and flags and prayers and guns. And we were still sleepwalking...

They leveraged thousands of Christian pulpits, where every seven days they'd wildly stoke the fires of people's phobias and fears, weaponize the Scriptures against gays and migrants and Muslims, pervert the expansive Gospel of Jesus into rabid nationalism—and sermon by sermon, enlist them all into service as passionate soldiers in the Army of the straight, white, American, male Lord.

And we were still sleepwalking... Then, to inculcate the terror fully, they propped up a sideshow carnival barker as their chosen one; a barren, empty husk of a man with no discernible moral convictions beyond wealth accumulation—who they could use as a flesh and blood avatar to embody and perpetuate themselves. They fashioned a vile, blustery orange idol to rally the fearful and the angry and the callous hearts around; one who would daily dig into the stinking muck to find a deeper bottom—and in the sleep-induced state we were in we thought it was a joke. We laughed ourselves back into a dreamworld where everything would be fine and where decency would prevail and where the system would work; so much so that one hundred million of us slept all the way through an election cycle. And here we are, a hair’s breadth from fascism.

John Pavlovitz says it best in regards to White Liberals, Progressives, and Moderates of all stripes: stay awake and don’t sleepwalk like what happened during Obama’s term.

[troythecatfish]

Israel exists ONLY to perpetuate white supremacy and western imperialism

Know how you can tell?

Because the United States has NEVER taken up the mantle of ANY people fighting for the right of return

Not once. Not ever.

It didn't back ANY of the peoples fighting off French and British colonialism. It never said a word of support for Aboriginal people in Australia, or Indonesians fighting the Dutch, or the ANC in South Africa

The only except is Israel...

A white supremacist apartheid colony.

[fangsandfracturedhearts]

Fangs and Fractured Hearts

Chapter 16: Riddles

Summary: After embracing eternity as a vampire spawn under Astarion's wing, the Crimson Palace becomes a haunting symbol of the man he once was. As his personality unravels into a dark abyss, you flee. A year of hardship unveils the harsh reality of existence as a vampire spawn.

Just as all hope seems lost, a twist of fate reunites you with Astarion, revealing a glimmer of hope amidst the shadows. As you navigate the complexities of your relationship, you must confront the unsettling truth behind the Rite of Profane Ascension and the devilish secrets it holds.

In a race against time, you embark on a daring quest to save Astarion from his descent into darkness. With each choice you make, the stakes grow higher, testing the limits of your courage and determination.

Will Astarion find redemption, or is he destined to succumb to his own inner turmoil?

Word Count: 6.8k

Pairing: Ascended Astarion x female!Tav Spawn

Warnings: [Will try to continue to add more, but in general expect explicit content for mature audiences]

Possible spoilers. Eventual Explicit Content. Slow Burn. Thoughts of Suicide. Violence. Blood. Injury. Mature Content. Self-Harm. Mentions of in-game content. Completely fabricated camp events. Mentions of Astarion's Trauma.

If you notice a very critical tag missing, please don't hesitate to let me know

Rating: Explicit 18+ - [Meant For Mature Audience]

The manor is mute except for the scratch of paper as you flip the page of Astarion’s sketchbook and contemplate the detailed drawing of yourself. You frown as you try to brush the name over the woman, painting her with the letters and hues of every syllable. It doesn’t matter what portrait you look at; the name still feels foreign and unrecognizable.

Whoever the woman in these drawings is, she is lost to you. She took her name to the grave, and some things cannot be exhumed. You close the book, your eyes sailing up the wall toward the ceiling.

Should you miss her? Grieve her? Forget her?

Climbing onto the bed, you hold your palm out, summoning the flames from the candles. You close your fist to extinguish them and let the black wings of darkness envelop the room. You have a strange feeling that you’re not entirely that woman any longer, which you can’t put into words. You were disassembled somewhere between life, death, and this everlasting afterlife, and your pieces weren’t arranged in quite the same pattern.

You have lost and gained so much in so little time. Would you recognize yourself even if you had a reflection?

There’s an ache in the vacant chamber where your dead heart hangs, frozen in the static state of death. The pang of discomfort doesn’t belong to you, though. Astarion has been leaving the link open more and more, and you’re learning what he meant when he said the world around him seems to move in slow motion.  

You once made the mistake of thinking Astarion could no longer feel, but you couldn’t have been more wrong. The reality is that he feels everything with an intensity you cannot begin to fathom. His emotions are like shooting stars. They streak through him, blazing bright and winking out in the blink of an eye.

His beating heart gives away Astarion's return. He doesn’t bother lighting a candle when he enters the room, hanging his formal suit coat.

You light a candle with a twitch of your finger. “You must forgive yourself, Astarion.”

Astarion sighs, rubbing his face. “What gave me away this time?”

“The same thing.” You splay your hand across your chest. This is not the first time you’ve mentioned the ache, as if your heart is in a perpetual state of being torn. “When you hurt, I hurt.”

You feel his intention to cut the coupling, to give you a break from the pain, and you fight against it.

“Don’t,” you rebuke, narrowing your eyes at the increasing pressure in your head. “Please. Stop trying to shut me out.”  

Astarion’s eyes fall to the sketchbook you left on the bedside table. “Do you not recognize your name still?”

“No,” you say, shaking your head and fidgeting with your fingers. This is the whole reason for the pain he’s been wallowing in—a bog of guilt and shame. He’s more upset over it than you are. You smile, making your voice a gentle hug. “Give me some time, and I will get used to it.”

“You should not have to get used to your own fucking name,” he hisses, squeezing his eyes closed, and the pain in your chest increases. It feels like your heart is warping itself into knots. “Not even Cazador went as far as to remove my name from my memory.”

“You are not Cazador,” you snap back sternly. “Stop comparing yourself to him. The situation is entirely different.”

“No,” Astarion growls, raising his voice, overtaken by repulsion. “I’m something much worse. At least there were limits to his power. No restrictions hinder me.”

“Good Gods! Just stop!” You yell, jumping off the bed. You’re unsure if your anger is partly due to what Astarion is feeling or your irritation at his self-loathing. At least he cannot remember taking you to the kennels. You don’t think he will ever recover. “You’re not him, and you’re not the darkness inside. You must separate the two.”

Astarion scoffs, turning away and waving dismissively, “I think it best if you rest in your room tonight.”

You deflate, anger being replaced by his disregard and the sharp sting of rejection. Astarion has been making you sleep in your room for days. At first, you thought he needed space, but he’s only become increasingly distant and withdrawn.

“Why are you doing this?” You step toward him, but he tenses and shies away, making you halt. You try to decipher his retreat through the bond, but Astarion is carefully guarding his emotions.

“Doing what?” He asks casually, keeping his blank stare on the wall.

“You show me an open door, then slam it on me and pull the rug out from under my feet!” You look up, hating that tears have begun crawling down your cheeks. “You think keeping your distance from me is keeping me safe, but you’re tearing me apart. Do you even want me here anymore, Astarion? Should I go?”

“Don’t go,” he whispers, brittle and weak. If your hearing were not so sharp, thanks to your vampirism, you wouldn’t have heard him. There’s another stab in your chest that feels like it rips the muscles right off your bones, and you whimper, clutching at your skin. “Please.”

“I can’t take this anymore,” you plead, taking another step, only to watch him tense. Your arms drop to your sides. Your heartbreak is affecting him. You can see it in the way his jaw clenches, and he winces almost imperceptibly at every sob you stifle. “Why are you pushing me away?”

Astarion finally turns, wracking his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know if I can be what you need me to be—what you deserve.”

“I know you don’t love me,” you sigh, shrugging. It always comes back to this. “You need to listen to me; let my words sink into your skin and fade into your soul. I missed you with such intensity that it felt like I died every day we were apart. You are my forever, even if I am not yours, and that’s okay.” You shake your head dismially, unsure how to get through to him. “I love you. Goodnight.”

You’re near your room when Astarion appears in front of you out of thin air, and you bump into him. He vaults you off your feet and into his arms before you can register his movement, making you yelp at the surprise of having your feet swept out.

“Shit,” He holds you firmly against him, his lips pressed to your forehead in a lingering kiss. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to leave. Stay with me, little love. I need you.”

“Stop pushing me away.” You tangle your fingers into his hair, with your face nestled into the crook of his neck.

“I will.” His hand comes to the back of your head as he walks back to his room and places you gently on the bed with adoration in his eyes. “You are my forever, Illyria. Aeterna Amantes.”

“Lovers forever,” you finish, sidling up close to him and laying your head on his chest.

The teeth of guilt gnawing inside your chest cavity have finally relinquished your heart as their chew toy, and all that remains is the steady thrum of Astarion’s borrowed heartbeat.

“Until the world falls down, my love,” he purrs, placing a finger under your chin and his lips embracing yours.

The slow rocking rise and fall of his chest is like the sway of gentle waves; the beat of his heart is a lullaby whispering serenity into your soul, and you slip peacefully into your trance.

Upon waking, your hand meanders across the silken surf of the sheets, only to find Astarion’s side of the bed cold and void. Rolling onto your back, your eyes drag open, and you listen for the telltale susurrus of a heartbeat. A frown creases your forehead when you’re met with nothing but the anonymous creaks and groans of the manor.

Astarion doesn’t usually leave without mentioning his absence as a warning to stay indoors and away from the windows. A florid scent catches your attention, prompting you to turn your head.

On Astarion’s pillow, a red rose rests and a folded note with your name penned in his delicate, flowing hand.

“Good morning, beautiful.

I apologize for my absence, but I am not far. I’ve left blood for you in the kitchen.

Eternally yours,

Astarion.”

The promise of awaiting blood stirs you to your feet hastily. Your belly coils with anticipation, and you barely have enough restraint to dress and run a comb through your hair before you’re bounding down the stairs.

A golden goblet, elaborately etched with prismatic dragon scales that mirror yours, sits on the counter. You snatch it greedily and bring it to your lips. The blood is cool, so you allow your palms to heat slowly, warming it as it inspires your taste buds to recite their devotion to the ambrosial elixir. It’s unmistakably Astarion’s blood. It knocks you over in a wave of delirium that makes your knees weak, and you lean into the counter to keep yourself from melting into the floor.

You’re not sure if it’s your imagination or reality, but you veritably hear Astarion chuckling in your head.

The meal is finished too soon, and you groan as you clean the last traces from your lips. When you open your dreamily heavy eyes, another folded note, previously hidden by the flared base of the goblet, catches your attention. You blink rapidly to clear the insensibility glazed across your sight before you can make any sense of the words before you.

“Find me using the clues I have scattered for you, my clever Illyria.

We have much to discuss.

“Reminisce beneath the faded tapestries, where laughter once echoed; seek the embers of our stolen kiss."

Clues? What in the Hells is Astarion up to, and what the fuck do you have to discuss? An icy shock runs from your dead heart into your feet. Is it possible he found out about Mizora and knows you’ve been keeping something from him? Would he play a game of cat and mouse with you?

You would not put it past him.

He’s left the link between you open, and you cannot feel any malice vibrating in the orchestra of emotions. If he’s figured out your secret, he’s hidden it well.

You stare at the hint with a furrowed brow. Embers of your stolen kiss? Faded tapestries? The pad of your finger rubs over the fringe of scales scored into the goblet’s surface while you think, and then you realize the damn chalice itself is another tip.

This does not belong to Astarion, or it didn’t before you and he stole it after breaking into a shop one night during your adventure. Astarion caught you eyeing it while you were buying supplies. You deemed it an impractical purchase. There was a far more dire need for healing potions and other necessities than to waste coin on frivolous trinkets.

He woke you up that night, dressed entirely in black, and dragged you back to the shop for a thrilling night of thievery and resulting debauchery. Where did you two go after to celebrate?

The Blushing Mermaid.

You dress quickly in a red dress with lace sleeves and a glimmering, golden dragon that snakes up your side. The skirt hugs your hips, flares slightly, and flutters around your knees. The golden bands of the matching hairpiece and circlet wreathe your forehead and long hair.

Throwing on your sandals, you stop dead at the door. The sun still shines outside, as evidenced by the tawny luminance glowing between the cracks in the drapery.

Astarion’s voice frisks across the bond: “You needn’t fear, love. You are safe.”

“What are you up to, Ascendant?” You query back, opening the door slowly and sticking your hand in the small ray to validate his claims.

He giggles, “Solve the riddles, and all will be revealed in time.”

The sky sings of sunset in hues of fire hearths gilded with golden inlays. Despite Astarion’s assurance, your skin still flinches over your muscles as if trying to pull itself away from your figure. Your eyes keep steadily on the majesty of the horizon as you trot through the streets to the Blushing Mermaid.

With the recent meal sloshing around in your stomach, your bloodlust is easier to manage. Still, when citizens brush by with their dainty necks on display, you’re tempted to give them a nibble.

The tavern is as busy as it typically is for late afternoon, but most patrons take no notice of you, engrossed in their revelry.

“Ah, the leaking blood bag.” Captain Grisly’s voice drifts from her quarters. “Nice to see you again. I hardly recognized you without your quarterstaff and haggard, blood-soaked robe.”

When you turn and her eyes catch the cracked crimson of yours, she gasps but holds her tongue with a clenched jaw.

You smile reassuringly and taunt, “Don’t worry. I won’t bite unless you ask very nicely.” There is something about people being afraid of you that’s thrilling. You cannot explain why. Perhaps you’re learning to accept this new you instead of feeling ashamed. It’s freeing. “Was my pale companion here earlier?”

The woman eyes you skeptically and nods, “Yes, Lord Ancunin was in earlier, but he warned me not to assist you.”

“Of course he did.” You roll your eyes as Astarion chuckles in your head. “It was nice to see you.”

“Please try not to make a meal out of my patrons,” Captain Grisly smirks. “The cleaning bills are already enough of a menace.”

You chuckle while your eyes dart around, trying to remember what you and Astarion got up to that night. The memory is garbled under the lagoon of ale you must have drunk.

You drank a lot. You danced. Oh Gods. You danced on the stage.

Your eyes swing to the faded tapestries hanging above a small alcove. Astarion had dragged you off the stage when your provocative swaying earned the attention of too many ogling eyes for his comfort.

“You are a godsdamned delinquent, Illyria,” he’d purred in your ear while he ironed his body to you possessively, shielding you from the onlookers with a forearm pressed above your head. “I have half a mind to take you right here, enchantress, to show these fools you belong to me.”

A small table sits in the alcove with a single candle lit. A white rose rests on it, with a dainty silver chain wrapped around the verdant stem. Unwrapping it, you hold a locket in your hand. The edges are adorned with two exquisitely detailed dragons, one light silver and one dark, forming a heart. In the middle, a black diamond is held by the silver dragon, and a normal diamond is held by the dark one, creating a magnificent contrast.

Opening the clasp, your eyes anchor to a sketch you haven’t seen before. It’s not of the mortal woman you don’t remember. It’s of you, as you must appear now. Your eyes are the only thing in vivid colour, and your fangs peek out of your smiling lips. Even though the picture is small, it holds an impossible amount of detail.

The smooth metal of the back is engraved with Astarion’s nickname for you, Amarillis. It’s Elven, your mother tongue, for Flame-Flower.

Putting the locket on, you find another note nestled between the petals of the rose.

“Where the forgotten lay to rest under the celestial canopy, find the crimson-kissed stone where a single star shines alone.”  

If you know Astarion, he’s left another hint somewhere in plain sight, like the goblet. You scan your surroundings for anything that looks out of place, and you find an image hanging on the wall behind the stage that you don’t recall being there.

You recognize the statue, Balduran Looks Out to Sea, located in the Tumbledown district of the outer city. It’s not an area you’ve spent much time in. Astarion and you went to sit on the cliff and watch the sunrise the day before you went to kill or be killed by Cazador.

Now, you just need to get there without eating anyone.

Twilight is a tangible whisper, bruising the stretch of sky in purple and navy when you return to the streets. Alleys and paths are easiest for you to traverse, and sometimes you Misty Step and skate over the roofs when you feel bloodlust evaporating from your control.

At least Tumbledown is far less busy than the Lower City, thanks to the misty veil that never seems to disentangle from the town. The soft percussion of waves from the River Chionthar pulsing upon the cliffside is rhythmic as you walk up the quiet path leading to the statue.

You reread the note, “Where the forgotten lay.”

Cliffside Cemetery.

The large graveyard spreads before you, composed of a bafflingly complex network of headstones, tombs, and old mausoleums. You keep your eye out for anything red, which will appear brazenly against the drab background of the assorted greys and greens of the mossy tombstones.

The moonlight casts eerie shadows that stretch and disfigure the terrain. The stars ignite the velvet wreath of night as you finally come upon a headstone with a red rose draped over it.

The weather over the centuries has worn, stained, and cracked the stone. Crouching, you carefully wipe off the grime that dulls the worn epitaph.

“Astarion Ancunin,” it reads.

Rest Peacefully Beneath a Canopy of Stars.

Your fingers trace the jagged lines unconsciously as tears brim in your eyes, sinking to your knees.

“I have not returned since I punched a hole in my coffin and dug through six feet of dirt nearly 200 years ago.” Astarion’s voice floats from behind you.

Leaping to your feet, you whirl with more agility than you’ve ever possessed and thrust yourself into his arms. Astarion is dressed in clothing reminiscent of his camp clothes, leaving the typical opulence of the Vampire Ascendant behind.

“You are not forgotten, Astarion,” you whisper against his chest.

Astarion’s arms wrap around you. His timbre is angelic and deep, vibrating through your skin and massaging your spirit. “I was. For 200 years, I was a ghost stalking the streets while whoever I was, whoever I could have been, lay dead and buried."

Taking your hand, he walks toward his grave, letting his fingers coast over the roughened stone. “Cazador was waiting for me when I surfaced, hacking up dirt and congealed blood. I was his from that day forward. Even this grave is located on lands once owned by the Szarr family. Yet another nod to his ownership of me, I suppose.”

His finger taps the headstone, but he’s smiling when he turns to look at you—a real, genuine smile that fills your heart with warmth. “Then you fell like an angel from the heavens, quite literally, and waged war on everything I thought I knew about the world. You gave me something I had been without for centuries—hope.”

“I’m no angel,” you whisper.

“You’re my angel, Illyria,” he asserts. With Astarion’s attire and the way he’s speaking, which is so entirely familiar, there’s a shot of recognition that stirs your psyche. For the first time since you relearned it, your name is not an abstract word in your head. Astarion must feel it because he smiles broadly and continues, “No one cared, no one gave me a second look, and no Gods answered my prayers. No one is like you; you’re you. You stood with me through bloodlust, pain, and misery. You trusted me. You were patient. You cared. You were the only one who never gave up on me. You still haven’t given up on me, even though it’s an objectively stupid thing to do.”

“You were being very sweet until you called me stupid.” You giggle as he wipes the tears from your cheeks.

“Sweet and savoury, my dear,” he chuckles. “I’ve been free for over a year. Yet, I am just beginning to figure out who I am and what I truly want out of this newfound life.”

“What do you want, Astarion?” You lean into him. “The world is yours for the taking.”

“Not what,” he says, shaking his head, sliding an arm around your waist, and his fingers grazing over the locket on your neck. He smiles, “But you will have to finish this little quest to find the answers you seek.” He hands you another note and winks, “I’ll see you soon.”

Astarion gives you a small, playful shove and strides away with a smirk. He bows and shifts into an unnaturally large, white bat with crimson eyes you would recognize in a sea of them, soaring around you while you laugh.

“You’re adorable, but are you soft?” You ask.

He answers in your head with a lilting laugh, “Shall we find out?”

He lands, folding his wings and resting on his headstone, and cocks his head. Your fingers tremble, unfoundedly afraid you might hurt him, as they stroke down the alabaster fur.

“Soft and cute.”

“I aim to please,” he snickers, taking off to kiss the stars. “You are wasting time, my treasure.”

You giggle at his jeering and watch him streak through the sky, so beautifully free, before reading the note.

"Seek the shore’s embrace, where stars align, and ascend the steps, bathed in candlelight’s shine. There, seek the terrace above the riverside; a question to decide.” 

Shore’s embrace. Now, this you know well. When Astarion turned you he insisted on renting a villa with this name near the river in the Lower City.

The trek back to the Lower City somehow feels lengthier as nervousness hits you, ticking away in your chest, every beat of Astarion’s heart amplifying your anxiety as if the seconds were grains of sand slipping away, impossible to grasp.

You can’t entirely tell if it’s yours or his. With the bond open and uninhibited, you are entangled, a tapestry of threads entwined so seamlessly that it’s difficult to distinguish where one of you begins and the other ends.

If Astarion has figured out you’re hiding something, he’s given you no indication, but some part of you still wonders if you’re walking into a trap. It’s hard to control your thoughts so they do not transfer to him, which he’s been trying to teach you so that you can keep the bond open, but your private thoughts can remain your own.

It makes you wonder what thoughts he keeps from you.

You smell the aromatic perfume of roses before you round the corner. The villa hangs onto the wall and overlooks the River Chionthar. The silver waves sway and reflect the impending dawn’s early light, cradling the morning’s first blush. Candles light the steps covered in white and red rose petals. It almost feels wrong to step on something so wonderful.

The beat in your chest thrums with anticipation, like your extinct heartbeat has woken and risen from the grave as you ascend the staircase to the grand entrance. Your breath catches in your throat as you enter the foyer. The sparkling crystal chandelier is lit, casting scintillating rainbows across the room. Rosemary incense burns, filling the air with an aroma that reminds you of home—of Astarion.

You follow the scattered rose petals leading to the terrace as the golden crown of the sun crests the horizon. Fear typically follows such a sight, but you’re revelling in grandeur.

The heartbeat behind you is the only thing that alerts you to Astarion’s presence. The man seemingly appears out of thin air, but if you had that ability, you would take advantage of it too, you suppose.

“This is beautiful,” you say, and your words are abruptly cut off.

As your eyes fall on Astarion in his resplendent tailored suit, he descends to one knee. His crimson eyes meet yours, sparkling with a celestial constellation mirroring the infinity of his love. The newborn sun lights up the adoration in his features.

“Illyria, my love,” he begins in a soft whisper before your brain can catch up to what is happening. “You are the fire that lights up my darkness, a melody that soothes my troubled soul. After being with you, there is no doubt that I have touched the heavens.” He hesitates momentarily, and the bond surges with warmth, longing, devotion, and good Gods, love, “I love you, and I fall more in love with you every day. I do not know what tomorrow brings, but right now, with you, the world feels right.”

His hand reaches into his pocket and produces a small, velvet box. Lifting the lid, the quick breaths you didn’t realize you'd been taking catch in your throat as your eyes fall on an exquisite ring, nestled on a bed of crimson silk, intricately crafted with a dragon claw, clutching a heart-shaped diamond to match the locket.

Astarion’s warm caramel baritone holds the sweet promise of eternity: “Will you marry me?”

Your hand shoots to your mouth to stifle the sound that erupts from your throat, somewhere between a whimper and a squeak. Your knees fold, unable to hold your weight any longer, and you drop, folding your arms around his neck and draping yourself over him.

His hand comes to your back, and he kisses your cheek. “Is this happy crying, or have I made a grave miscalculation?”

“Happy crying,” you stutter through shaky breaths.

He chuckles, nuzzling you. “Is this a yes?”

“Yes!” You pull back, nodding in case he cannot understand you through your weeping. “But I need one thing from you."

"Ask, and I shall make it yours,” he purrs.

You cradle his cheek, sweeping your thumb across it. “Say it again.”

He smirks, wiping the tears from your cheeks. “I love you.”

“One more time,” you choke out.

“Gods above,” he giggles. “Is this all you will have me say now?”

You smile, the tips of your fangs peeking from your lips. “It sounds very good in your mouth.”

“You know I do not repeat myself for anyone,” he taunts. “Anyone but you, my love.” Astarion takes your hand, slipping the ring onto your finger, looking deeply into your eyes. “I love you, Illyria, my wife, my everything.”

“I love you, too, Astarion, my husband, my shining star.”

He beams, “I do rather like that, you know,” he muses. “When you call me husband.”

His arm wraps around your waist, easing you to your feet. You clutch onto him to keep yourself upright as your knees wobble like a newborn fawn and try to watch the sunrise with your head on his chest, but your eyes keep drifting to the ring adorning your finger, reminding yourself that this did, in fact, just happen.

“Do you like it?” He murmurs, catching your eyes moored to it.

“I love it,” you whisper. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I should hope not,” he chuckles. “I designed it. No one will ever have anything similar.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, you know me,” he shrugs. “I killed the jeweller to make sure he could never replicate it.”

Your head snaps up, wide-eyed, to look at him. He glances at you and bursts into laughter. “A jest, sweetheart.”

“I hope you at least compelled him to forget it,” you snicker. “Or I may have to drain anyone I see with anything similar.”

“Oh,” he giggles. “I do so adore it when you’re murderous. Speaking of draining someone, I’ve had you running around the city all night. You must be positively famished.”

“You fed me,” you say, arching a brow at him. “Lucky for the citizens of the Lower City. Some of them smell very tasty.”

Astarion’s hands find the back of your thighs, and you wrap your arms around his neck as he lifts you. “Not as tasty as me, I hope.”

“No one could ever be as tasty as you,” you purr. “Your blood is nearly as charming as you are.”

He chuckles, taking you into the villa and setting you on the lofty mattress. “Well, who am I to deny your hunger? I would not be a very good husband if I did not keep my lovely wife satisfied. Would I?”

“What are you saying exactly?” You sweep your fingers through his hair as he undoes the elaborate clasps of his suit jacket. He discards it and loosens the collar of his shirt. You quirk your head at him. “Speak plainly.”

“I want you to bite me,” he purrs, pushing your legs to part for him with his knee and leaning over you. His lips mould to yours in a reverential kiss as his hands wander your body and ignite your desire.

“Bite you?” You breathe. “You said I couldn’t.”

“No.” Astarion removes his shirt, and your palms skim over his chest. “I said you can’t unless I permit you. You are as close to a True Vampire as you can get, my consort. It will not change you.”

“I don’t want to change,” you murmur, your fingers pressing firmly into his sculpted muscles. The offer of blood is tempting your hunger. “You’re giving me permission?”

He smirks, “Go on then. I’ll allow it.”

“Where?” Astarion cranes his neck to the side in an invitation. It takes everything you have not to leap for that magnificently pulsing vein. “Your neck?”

“Is there something wrong with my neck, my dear?”

“No. Of course not,” you giggle. “You have a very lovely neck. This is just new, that’s all. I didn’t think you would want to be, uh, well, bitten.”

“Your bite, my sweet,” he purrs, pressing his chest against yours and pinning you between him and the mattress. “Is divine. Only you will ever get the great honour of biting the Vampire Ascendant.”

“I godsdamned better be!” You huff, “I don’t share, Astarion. Not your body, not your blood, and definitely not your heart. You are mine and only mine. ”

He giggles, “Possessive little thing. Aren’t you? Not to worry, my love. I do not intend to share. I am yours. Wholly, and completely yours.”

You trace your lips down the shell of his ear. Your heart frolics at the ardent shudder that courses through his body and how the breath hitches in his throat. Kissing his neck until you feel the vein pulsing against your lips, you wait until he whispers his shaky, anticipatory approval.

The razor-sharp points of your fangs kiss his skin, and you wait for your body to seize up, but it doesn’t. You bite quick and sure, trying your best to be gentle. You feel the pop of your fangs puncturing his skin. His blood erupts into your mouth, caressing your tongue with heavenly heat that cascades through the channels of your veins and nestles between your thighs. You drink from him slowly but deeply, and your body trembles.

Astarion groans, deep and rich, his hot breath fanning the cool skin of your neck, and you feel the icy pinch of his fangs sink into you. You wash through him, and he passes through you in a paradisiacal torrent. The pleasure that harmonizes over the bond is transcendent. You swear you could come undone for this alone, and you ease your fangs from his neck and moan.

He kisses you with a bruising intensity. His tongue parts your lips so you can taste the essence of each other, and he bucks his hips into your aching sex, sending you spiralling into that frisson of pure delirium.

The clothes on your body feel much too restricting, and you whimper. The barrier of fabric between you feels unbearable. Astarion’s fingers go to his trousers, but his usual adroitness is nowhere to be seen as his fingers fumble with the laces.

He stares at his fingers dumbfounded for a moment and then looks at you with an arched brow and giggles gleefully, “Do you by any chance feel absurdly intoxicated?”

You writhe on the bed, unable to contain your ardent lust, as your brain awkwardly processes his question.

“Entirely,” you laugh. Gods. You thought you were high on him last time, but you are almost senseless in your need. You’re not even sure if you’re walking on the planes of reality or in some delightful hallucination, and you cannot find it within you to care. “Is this not normal?”

Astarion throws his trousers to the side, rucks up your dress clumsily, and tosses it away. “I’m not entirely sure. I may have read something about it, but I cannot quite remember where or when.” He shrugs. “We will have to experiment.”

Precum glistens, dripping from the head of his swollen cock. You are overcome with the absolute need for his salty, heady taste on your tongue. You lunge at him, bowling him over. Your movements are somehow swift and equally ungainly.

You lick up his shaft with a long, broad tongue stroke, feeling the ridges of his distended veins, before you engulf him in the wet heat of your mouth. Swirling your tongue around the blunt head of his cock. He sucks in sharp, shuddering breaths, fingers in your hair as you worship him, hollowing out your cheeks and sucking, taking him deeper and deeper until his cock tickles the back of your throat.

“Illyria,” he moans breathlessly. “Hells. You’ve got to stop before I lose my composure.”

But you’re not entirely sure you could stop, even if you wanted to. No. You want to feel his cock twitching on your tongue and his seed shooting into your throat. You want to drink his essence like a fine wine.

“Illyria,” he warns, trembling fingers curling into your hair. You feel the telltale pulse, hear the way his breath becomes ragged and uneven, and you take him over the edge in a few bobs of your head. He cries out, your name a sweet litany in his voice.

His seed bursts into your mouth, and you moan at the salt of him, swallowing every drop he gives you like a thirsty traveller. He is candied like heaven, wicked like hell, and, oh, so fucking delicious.

He pulls your head back by your hair and stares at you like he has found an oasis in an arid desert. You lick your swollen, red lips, determined to get every last drop of him that you can.

“Bad girl,” he purrs, shoving you flat on your back and pressing his lips to yours. He explores your mouth. “I taste exultant on your tongue.”

His fingers run through the seam of your dripping folds, coating them in the sleek of your arousal and easing into your fluttering channel. Astarion presses the pads firmly into that sweet spot inside that blinds you with pleasure, the heel of his palm caressing your clit with mind-numbing friction.

It does not take him long to settle into a rhythm that throws you somersaulting over the cusp of your own release with a lewd, wild cry, and he does not stop until he’s lured every possible shockwave from your body.

Astarion grabs your waist, tugging you down the bed as he settles between your thighs, sliding his length through your folds, his head teasing your overstimulated pearl. He guides himself into you, working your sex open inch by inch as you stretch to accommodate his girth.

Where everything before this was wild, almost savage, and borderline uncivilized, this is slow, passionate, and unhurried. He rocks his hips in languid pumps, coming to his forearm with his forehead pressed against yours. He is not fucking you. He is making love to you.

“You are mine,” he rasps through shaky gasps. It is not a proclamation of his ownership of you. It is not a command. It’s more of a plea for reassurance. “Yes?”

“Yours,” you confirm breathlessly, your eyes squeezed closed in pure rapture as he massages every one of your ridges poetically. Your fingers slide into the hair at the nape of his neck, and you cling to him as if you might float away on this cloud. “I’ve always been yours.”

“Gods. I love you,” he shudders between uneven breaths.

You will never tire of hearing those words, tasting them as they hinge off his tongue, and feeling them as they dally over the bond.

You clench around him, expelling a sighing groan from his mouth that you catch on your lips, determined to taste his ecstasy. His arm folds around your waist, forcing you to arch into him with his other hand at the back of your head. Astarion changes the angle of his thrusts but keeps the easy tempo. The blunt head of his cock waves over the sensitive pad of nerves inside you with every roll of his hips, and his groin grinds against your needy clit.

Astarion purposefully brings you close to your climax and then eases you away from it until you’re a whimpering mess beneath him.

“Astarion,” you pant, unable to take this withholding any longer. From his taut muscles and the way Astarion shakes, you know he cannot either. “Gods.”

“Open your eyes and come with me, my love.” Astarion increases the sensual pace rhythmically. The building pleasure pools in your abdomen, coiling tighter and tighter with every snap of his hips.

You open your eyes, blinking away the daze of passion, and cradle his cheek as he gazes at you affectionately. You’ve never seen his eyes so vividly crimson, as if his love for you itself was shining through the scarlet depths.

He knows the moment you begin to tread the fine edge of euphoria, gripping his girth and begging him to flood you with his pleasure. You shatter, spasms and white-hot pleasure ripping through you so intensely that the candles in the room go out and reignite with every contraction of your walls.

“F-fuck,” he moans loudly, a roll of purring thunder echoing in his chest. With one last pump, Astarion tremors, cock pulsing, and spilling into you. His hips stutter, pulsing deeply within you with every twitch of his cock.

He pushes the sweaty strands of hair from your face as you both struggle to catch your breath. You may never get used to his new speedy movements because, before you even realize you’re moving, he’s rolled you so that your limp body blankets his.

His fingers caress up and down the valley of your spine as you nuzzle into the crook of his neck, heaving a sigh of pure happiness while you are once again captivated by the ring wreathing your finger.

Astarion kisses your palm, placing it on his chest, and plays with the ring on your finger. “Will you tell your friends?”

“Our friends,” you correct, even though many don’t fancy him. “Of course. I am not ashamed.”

Astarion nods with a lopsided grin. “Even Gale?”

“Especially Gale,” you giggle.

“I simply must be there when you do,” he snickers. “The look on his face is sure to be exquisite.”

“I am positive he will have choice words for me,” you laugh.

Astarion bristles, “He best watch his words when I am near. I will not tolerate him speaking down to you.”

“Easy, Ascendant,” you tut, clicking your tongue at him. “I am capable of dealing with Gale and his words. I am not a maiden in need of saving.”

Astarion relaxes, chuckling, “A maiden you most certainly are not. I am going to have to field noise complaints.”

You pat his chest, smirking, “All in a day’s work, husband. Our neighbours are going to hate us.”

“We will simply purchase all the houses in the neighbourhood if they become too bothersome,” Astarion chimes, jostling you. “Think of all the places I could make you scream for me.”

You both break into laughter together, still immersed in the intoxication of each other’s blood.

But your bliss doesn’t last long as reality grips its claws into your rapture and bleeds it dry.

You cannot possibly continue to keep what you know for him. How can you expect your love to thrive where secrets sleep? He has to know he can trust you to be honest with him, even when that honesty frightens you. You would want him to tell you if the roles were reversed.

Guilt and fear tangle together and ball in your throat. Astarion jolts at the sudden change in your mood as it resonates over the union, sinking into him as if it were his own. His brows furrow and his eyes dart around aimlessly as he tries to understand the trouble he feels.

“What is wrong, little love?” He coos, taking your hand in his. You can feel his anxiety and the quickened pace of his heart in his palm. “You are frightened. You needn’t be afraid. I am getting better at controlling it. You can tell me anything.”

You steel yourself against the panic. His. Yours. Your combined dread.

You swallow and force the words out of your mouth. “I know what ails you.”

Big thank you for everyone who takes the time to read/reblog/comment, and all the other magnificent things. Your support gives me the motivation to keep this fic going, and I appreciate each of you!

As always, please enjoy.

AO3 [Crossposted]

Master List of Chapters: Fangs and Fractured Hearts

If you're interested I write another fic with Spawn Astarion x Tav called - Shadows of the Past

Small Notes:

-We finally got Astarion to say he loves her, multiple times, and a lot more than that. ❤️💍

How is he going to react when she finally comes clean? 🫣

[daeneryseastar]

there’s genuinely no point in taking certain fans of That character seriously because they’ll be the first to purposefully misunderstand the story in order to uplift their own useless fav + any other female character with the slightest bit of autonomy is reduced to a girlboss caricature.

it’s basically the ‘masculine’ vs ‘feminine’ women trope and how all of these women suffer from the same system but some have fought their way towards having basic bodily sovereignty and others have assailed themselves within their circumstances, “you desire not to be free but to make a window in the wall of your prison,” and either perpetuate the abuse they deal with OR sit back and take it like a ‘good’ woman, hence the lack of culpability the stans of said character allow her to be responsible for. the mentality at play here is ‘she is a victim but she cannot possibly ALSO be a victimizer’ but both *can* be true at the same time.

rhaenyra is fighting to be the first ruling queen of westeros, a position that has been set in place before (aerea/rhaenys), but never come to fruition. her heirship has been contested since day one simply on account of her womanhood, not her political prowess or the dubious parentage of her first three sons. this is a fact, and the consequences surrounding her ascension have facilitated a civil war all in the name of the status quo. one side is attempting to honor the wishes of a deceased king, the other wants power, and uses the patriarchal standards already in place to further that goal. this leads to the death of rhaenyra, all but two of her biological children (to her only one survived), her former good mother, her husband, and the assured extinction of dragons.

rhaenyra is looked down upon by a certain portion of this fandom because the concept of protofeminism doesn’t exist to them. the idea that a woman being allowed to take a position of power during the medieval ages might lead to greater precedents involving women’s rights, which is exactly on par with westeros relying on the precedence of male preference primogeniture and the ruling made by the great council of 101ac. rhaenyra, obviously, didn’t make significant changes to women’s positions in westeros because she only ruled for a six month period in king’s landing and was beset by betrayal and treachery consistently during this period.

she was involved in a war that annihilated almost her entire family for the baby step progress of ‘daughters can inherit over sons,’ there was no time to help others when she was losing allies left and right to this very war. cases like the rosby and stokeworth situation are used to back up this take, dispite it being agreed upon rhaenyra verbatim chose to pass over them for fear of losing even more allies AND to protect the girls from being sold to violent misogynistic rapists as war prizes, not just because she believed herself to be the exception to the rule (corlys, in fact, is the one to state this). we also have no definitive proof showwise, either, that she truly believes in the system of men come before women -always- when the only thing said in regard to this is a throwaway line of jacaerys and baela’s sons inheriting the iron throne followed by her stating lucerys and rhaena’s children will inherit the driftwood throne, which is most likely a poor writing choice behind the scenes rather than any concrete proof to the latter.

brave baela, named after her grandsire baelon ‘the brave’ TARGARYEN, daughter of daemon TARGARYEN and laena velaryon, who had TARGARYEN ancestry, granddaughter of rhaenys TARGARYEN ‘the queen who never was,’ rider of the dragon moondancer, identifies completely with her targaryen ancestry and it is an integral part to understanding her character. she is of blood and fire, not salt and sea, and believes driftmark should pass accordingly to someone who corlys would value much more than her, the little girl he’s constantly overlooked on account of her gender.

baela is fighting to put rhaenyra on the throne and in turn jace and herself as the future king/queen. it’s not just for herself or for her stepmother, but for those who have now fallen as well. “i grieve my grandmother who loved me, but i carry her on with me. i will see rhaenyra ascend the iron throne, as rhaenys wished. as rhaenys HERSELF should have.” this cause is bigger than baela, bigger than rhaenyra herself, and baela knows this. yet somehow she’s ‘boring’ and ‘cringe’ in her dialogue or ‘nothing but a cheerleader,’ because she does not carry hatred in her heart for her kin over things they themselves cannot control.

what they have in common is their will, their wants, their ambitions; something that can’t be said for the other character because the writers want her to be a lead but don’t know what to do with her. she’s been relegated to nothing more than her hypocrisy, her self righteousness, her victimhood. she sleeps with a man whilst not married, she takes abortive teas against her religion, she abandons her children in their need for comfort, she’s spat on by the men around her and her own sons when seeking to place herself back into a familiar position of power. this isn’t the first time she’s experienced misogyny, but it is the first time she’s feeling the full ramifications of ridiculing and conspiring against the female claimant redirected at her, on account of the same reasons she took advantage of to propagate herself and her eldest son.

in the grand scheme of things rhaenyra and baela wouldn’t even typically be considered ‘masculine’ women, they’re just outspoken, assertive, and proactive; prone to not taking every bad thing that happens to them without at least some type of their own get back, and it doesn’t revolve around abusing other women to uplift themselves and the men they surround themselves with. which isn’t to say that the ‘feminine’ women’s strifes don’t matter, but to certain stans if they aren’t sitting back and being a pretty passive victim their struggles as a woman don’t count, for whatever reason.

[readyforevolution]

IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS YESTERDAY THEN TODAY WOULD BE A GOOD DAY TO LEARN THIS.... "All stories don't have a happy ending"

In 1866, one year after the 13 Amendment was ratified (the amendment that ended slavery), Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor (peonage). This made the business of arresting Blacks very lucrative, which is why hundreds of White men were hired by these states as police officers. Their primary responsibility was to search out and arrest Blacks who were in violation of Black Codes. Once arrested, these men, women and children would be leased to plantations where they would harvest cotton, tobacco, sugar cane. Or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them; prison labor.

It is believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Blacks were part of the system of peonage, or re-enslavement through the prison system. Peonage didn’t end until after World War II began, around 1940.

This is how it happened.

The 13th Amendment declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (Ratified in 1865)

Did you catch that? It says, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude could occur except as a punishment for a crime". Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing these crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment. This system of convict labor is called peonage.

The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish laws called Black Codes. Here are some examples of Black Codes:

In Louisiana, it was illegal for a Black man to preach to Black congregations without special permission in writing from the president of the police. If caught, he could be arrested and fined. If he could not pay the fines, which were unbelievably high, he would be forced to work for an individual, or go to jail or prison where he would work until his debt was paid off.

If a Black person did not have a job, he or she could be arrested and imprisoned on the charge of vagrancy or loitering.

This next Black Code will make you cringe. In South Carolina, if the parent of a Black child was considered vagrant, the judicial system allowed the police and/or other government agencies to “apprentice” the child to an "employer". Males could be held until the age of 21, and females could be held until they were 18. Their owner had the legal right to inflict punishment on the child for disobedience, and to recapture them if they ran away.

This (peonage) is an example of systemic racism - Racism established and perpetuated by government systems. Slavery was made legal by the U.S. Government. Segregation, Black Codes, Jim Crow and peonage were all made legal by the government, and upheld by the judicial system. These acts of racism were built into the system, which is where the term “Systemic Racism” is derived.

This is the part of "Black History" that most of us were never told about.

[givemearmstopraywith]

i just watched someone saying "christianity is and always will be the cultural appropriation of religions" and they mentioned the resurrection, which surprises me a little. do you know what they could be referring to? they also called it a very common trope and i'm no theologian, don't know that much about other religions or mythology, so maybe you could help?

resurrection narratives are absolutely not unique to christianity. there are resurrection narratives in the religion of ancient egypt (osiris), greece (adonis, zagreus, dionysus, and attus), and sumer (dumuzid and inanna). all of these predate christianity by centuries. to consider resurrection myths appropriation is, however, rather ignorant: the mythologies of the ancient near east are absolutely woven together, to the point where they are almost indistinguishable from each other, especially in the early history of the hebrews. the roman empire was heavily influenced by hellenic culture, religion, and philosophy. consider dionysus, the god of wine: plutarch stated that the stories of osiris and dionysus were identical and that the secret rituals asociated with them were obviously paralleled: the second century AD saw the emergence of greco-egyptian pantheons where the god serapis was synonymous with osiris, hades, and dionysus. this is also similar to the interrelationship between inanna, ishtar, asherah, astarte, and multiple other near eastern female deities (and she likely played an influence in the development of lilith as well). how much did the cult of dionysus influence later rites of the wine and the eucharist in early christianity, especially given that within fifty years of christ's death most christians were greeks? romulus and remus were said to have been born to a virgin, and so was the founder of zoroastrianism, zoroaster, a religion that influenced platonic philosophy and all abrahamic faiths.

christianity is more guilty of appropriation that most other faith practices of appropriation because of the crudeness and hatefulness with which it borrowed judaism and then turned on the jews. but attempting to divide western and near eastern religious traditions into pure (original) and impure (appropriated) is next to impossible. otherwise we can start trying to particularize everything as either pure or impure and discard what we deem as "impure" or unoriginal because we think it is valueless, hackneyed, or unethical. religion does not work like that. christianity does require critical consumption and practice because it has both appropriated judaism and because the way in which it exerted itself as a dominant religion over other faith practices. and the appropriation of judaism must be especially viewed as troubling, because judaism cannot be compared, historically, to religions like those of ancient egypt and greece because until the state of israel it was never a dominant or state religion, and the fact that it survived some odd thousand years without being recognized as a state religion is part of why it's particularly interesting. of course, that has changed now, but this ask isn't about israel/palestine and i won't dwell on it this issue much except to reaffirm that christianity appropriating an oppressed minority religion that emerged out of colonial contexts is very different than christianity utilizing aspects of ancient greek religion or zoroastrianism, and also different from jesus being included in islam, for instance.

interestingly, quetzalcoatl, from the ancient aztec religion, was the patron of priests and a symbol of resurrection. this gestures to the hidden sacred, eliade's hierophany: the hidden holiness, the sacrality and beingness of something beyond ourselves, that underlies all existence, with its own explicit truths that emerge consistently in faith practices that, unlike those of the near east, never interacted. maybe we all carried the same stories out of the cradle of civilization; maybe there is a perpetual and accessible truth that transcends boundaries. i don't know. but everything is borrowed. everything is copy. humanity is not capable of true originality: and isn't that beautiful? everything is taken in communion. everyone is interconnected. everyone wants to believe something, and we seem to be universally compelled by the same truths, motifs, meanings, and stories.

[decolonize-the-everything]

honestly I feel like regardless of the gender/lack thereof of the subject, when discussing "the system of gender" at all we need to and should include discussions of colonialism and racism or else we'll never get anywhere with the discussion. neither of these can even be separated from modern conceptions of gender and how it's enforced the world over that frankly they need to be far more part of the conversation than even patriarchy is (patriarchy would collapse without a lot of these enforced systems, but so it goes for any system of oppression).

discussions of transmisogyny should include discussing colonialism and racism. discussions of exorsexism should include it. discussions of anti-transmasculinity, misogyny, the patriarchy, fatphobia, ableism-- and on and on

you cannot defeat one without defeating them all. if we do not see tackling colonialism as key to efforts elsewhere, and treat any one axis of oppression as a singular issue, any other system of oppression will simply replace what was "struck down" with a different support to justify and maintain its integrity and existence

anyway I know I'm preaching to the choir here. but I saw your response regarding the term exorsexism and I'm sitting here like. colonialism and racism absolutely should be an important and necessary part of the conversation around exorsexism (I will say the people I've seen talk about it do make the topic of colonialism/racism a key part of it but I know they are likely the exception and not the rule). the conversation wouldn't exist in the first place were it not for systemic racism and the colonialism that continues and perpetuates it. exorsexism as we know it literally exists because of colonialism and racism.

Exactlyy

I'm trying to make this word right and I'm realizing that a word that specifically names the oppression you experience for existing outside the colonial binary would also end up being a word that would be oppositional to white supremacy as a whole.

Because if you're colonizing then you're already subscribing to a hierarchy right? Colonialism is made of millions of hierarchies (including the patriarchy where men are on top) but it's also their ideas of gender, of race, of ability, and class that have hierarchies, too.

So to oppose colonialism is to oppose all those hierarchies that only allow one kind of person to determine they're better than others and treat others as lesser. Which is to say anti-colonialism itself it just anti-white supremacy, anti-anyone supremacy.

Which leads me to believe the word I need, the heart of it is about a right to freedom and self determination.

And as such... It might not even end up being specific to gender. It shouldn't be, imo. Two spirits arent the only people affected by colonialism so yes I still want a word for myself and I'll get to that but maybe I have to create a new axe of oppression first. One that recognizes how race and colonialism are built into every system the western world has ever made for the purpose of exploiting anyone defined as "other."

These are the current axes of oppression currently recognized in the usa

This graphic displays what is commonly known as the axes of oppression, which lists the main axes on which people can either be privileged (have societal power) or marginalized (oppressed). The axes, listed on the outermost (black) ring, include race, religion, sexual orientation, age, culture, disability status, education level, etc. Moving one ring inward, it shows the marginalized identities for these core axes; while moving two rings inward shows the privileged identities for these core axes. For example, for the axis of religion, you are privileged if you are a Christian, but are marginalized if you are non-Christian. It is important to note that these axes are based on the current systems in place within the United States and will vary globally.

They're all recognized separately like they're unrnelated. There is no structure for recognizing intersectionality or overlap.

I'd have to create a new axe/understanding of colonial/racial oppression just so I have the structure to then name the specific way it can impact/affect gender, race, sex, class, and other parts of life.

Because you're right, gender as we understand it is inherently tied to race and colonialism, but gender isn't the only thing affected by race and colonialism thats not being systemically acknowledged.

So yeah I guess what I'm actually having to do is restructure/dismantle colonialism and oppression a bit so that everyone affected by colonialism has language to say how.

Cuz run of the mill homophobia and racism are not what we experience you know? Like yeah I'm hated for being queer and brown but it's also so much deeper than that. I'm hated because the very nature of my being challenges every status quo there is. My existence demands respect, freedom to be as I am, and that I have a right to resist anyone who opposes me.

Colonizers really don't like that kind of untamable energy, especially when it spits directly on the systems they use to control everyone.

[kerubimcrepin]

The big analysis of Joris Jurgen's horrible-no-good childhood.

TW: discussions of child neglect, and what might constitute as emotional abuse.

Firstly, to address something, I hadn't in the last liveblog: There are plenty of times in the show where one can see Joris saying things that he may not entirely mean...

But it is especially interesting to see him say something like this immediately after breaking down into tears about it just a scene prior.

Hm. Anyway. I'm sure this won't affect their relationship going forward.

I've discussed Kerubim's issues of self-worth, loneliness, and dishonesty, before on this blog, — but you will never believe it, Kerubim isn't the only one who suffers because of his issues.

It's nigh time we discuss seven-year-old Joris, and the terrible, no good, case of emotional repression and lying.

Let's set the stage first.

Joris grew up in a deeply isolated and neglectful, and at times dangerous, environment, in every single way. And the child neglect Kerubim engaged in lessened, but did not stop after Simone arrived.

He did not have any family members besides Kerubim, — for obvious reasons, both of their family members are either dead, or want nothing to do with them, — and he did not have any friends, besides Tatak. The reason he did not have friends is unknown, but there are several factors that may have contributed to that:

The sorry state of their house might have complicated his relationship with other kids and given him and Kerubim a poor reputation among neighbours;

The part of the city they live in might simply not have a lot of families, due to being a — being, perhaps, mostly populated by adventurers and other people in violent professions, as well as the shops that cater to them (which are, in turn, mostly ran by retired adventurers).

And then there's the third thing: Kerubim is his best friend.

Joris did not have a support system in the form of an extended family, — or at the very least, in the form of friends outside the household, — and It doesn't seem like the other adults Kerubim knows were at all involved in Joris's childhood. Besides that, Joris was seemingly homeschooled, — and, considering Kerubim's finances, and his referencing at least one school's existence, there were other options.

For the large part of Joris's life, they only had one another, and it almost seems like Kerubim, with his abandonment issues, and low self-esteem, acted in ways that isolated Joris further.

Due to Ecaflip's mistreatment of him as a child, and his loneliness due to the death of his family when he was a child, — what he wanted the most as a father was to be a best friend to Joris.

(And, much more selfishly, not that he would admit that, — he wanted someone to replace Lou/Indie/Atcham/Bashi/Everyone else who has left him.)

He could remember being a child, and he knew how he would have liked to be treated, — as a peer, obviously. It's important for peers to respect each other equally, and listen to each other's pain, right?

Except, in a way, Kerubim is perpetuating a cycle here.

And children are not peers, best friends, or caretakers. They depend on their parents for their survival.

And Joris knows what will happen to him, if Kerubim is gone. Kerubim himself was an orphan, and has shared more than enough stories about that.

Because of this, thoughts of Kerubim passing away are a usual worry for Joris, no doubt fueled by Kerubim's dramatics, and love for his attention — and it means he'll do everything to make sure Kerubim is happy and healthy.

Even if it means sacrificing his own comfort for his sake. Even if it means putting up with being treated badly.

Joris and Kerubim have what is known as an "enmeshed", or "codependent", parent-child relationship, the characteristics of which are, according to online resources:

Parents expecting children to be their best friends and always confiding in them.

Children receiving praise for maintaining the family’s status quo, and conflict-avoidant behaviours.

The lack of emotional and physical boundaries.

Role reversal, in the form of the child being expected to take care of the parent's mental health. (Despite lacking the maturity to)

Children prioritizing parents needs and feelings over their own.

Childhood overindulgence, in the form of the parent using the child for wish fulfilment.

Another interesting titbit that informs his character, is that, from a very young age, children learn how to respond to their feelings and express them, based on the way adults behave, by mirroring those behaviours, — and Kerubim is anything but honest about his feelings, more often than not, putting on a brave smile.

Joris values his stories more than anything, despite knowing that, often, they may be fake, at least in some parts. To him, words matter more than the truth of the matter, when push comes to shove between them. But also, he doesn't like outright lies, which are just as plentiful between them.

Despite how he may usually act, Joris isn't really the happiest about how their family is. He knows that Kerubim is dishonest and neurotic, and, in a way, it causes dissonance in his mind. He loves him more than anything, and to trust him, — but he knows that to trust Kerubim is to be disappointed.

When something bad happens? It's a guarantee, that instead of being comforted, it will be his job to pretend to be comforted, so that Kerubim doesn't completely fall apart. So that he can still be taken care of, — and every child wants to be taken care of.

Yet another thing he can't really trust Kerubim with.

Just like Kerubim, he is growing up to be a good liar. And someone very much afraid of being abandoned.

But everyone has their limit, fear of abandonment or not. No matter how much you repress these feelings, they'll come bubbling to the surface eventually.

...An interesting tidbit about children raised in enmeshed relationships, is that, at times, as adults, they find it difficult to trust others, open up to people, or have close friends in general. Due to guilt of those people on the outside not being their family, and due to associating close relationships with pain, responsibility, and giving up a part of themselves.

They grow up to be aloof, flighty, and cold.

Another interesting tidbit is that, sometimes, they find themselves unable to leave at all.

[librarycards]

Is there a word for like, the phenomena of many people in academia positions calling themselves "anti psychiatry" but having a really shallow take on it that is openly reactionary and hostile to disabled people. Like they'll say "adhd isn't real" not in a "the way mad people critique and reformulate concepts of adhd takes precedence over the way the medical establishment does" way but in a "stop whining addict you are not medically corrupt but morally corrupt" way that is really obviously hostile to the self-actualization of the disabled. Or they have tunnel vision on deligitimizing all pharmaceuticals. Which seems like a very unthorough and flawed way to critique the medical industrial complex. Companies are lying about drugs, mis-prescribing them, AND with-holding them. You can't just ignore the last one. Entire countries are held hostage by threat of pharmaceutical copyright embargo, and these types could care less. Anyway what's their deal. They seem like fash wellness types in "anti psychiatry" clothing.

this is a dangerous pov that has been embedded in the antipsych movement for a very long time, and continues to be perpetuated by people whose antipsych scholarship doesn't have a strong disability studies conceptual framework. the most (in)famous figure representative of these views is Thomas Szasz, who believed, in short, that "mental illness" was an abdication of patient "personal responsibility" and an excuse for "malingering." He correctly identified mental illness as a sociocultural + medico-legal construct, but chose to blame persons experiencing psychosocial distress/difference for the insufficiency and danger of pathologizing labels, rather than the structural violence that undergirds both discourses and material realities of what is understood as "mental illness."

Personally, I think that this genealogy of antipsychiatry is libertarian in origin, distinct, though not disconnected, to bodymind fascism / wellness-reductionism. Szasz and his ilk are notable in that they believe/d in absolute bodily autonomy and self-determination, with the caveat that such autonomy is predicated upon the absence of social supports for people experiencing distress, and on the absence of compassion for those using violent language in an attempt to make sense of their lived experiences. The reason that I make this distinction is that Szasz is Jewish, and fled Hungary for the US in the 30s. He made the (correct) connection between the Nazi genocide of "undesirables" (including psychiatric patients) and state classification, incarceration, and "slow" genocide of Madppl globally and transtemporally.

But to return to your question: with this, as with pharmaceuticals, there is a fundamental discomfort at all levels of scholarship and discourse with identifying neoliberal capitalism as the enemy of self-determination, joy, community, and, like, an actual future for all life on this planet and beyond. The claim that pharmaceuticals are uniformly evil is a hackneyed way of attacking capitalism for those not yet ready or willing to acknowledge that, even absent a given pill or brand name, the structural violence that we associate with them would remain and simply morph. The fundamental danger of any and all medical "treatment," particularly that which involves significant alteration to an individual's bodymind and/or potential incapacitation, is that medico-psychiatric institutions function as zones of exception for many of the "rights" we are taught that we enjoy. Under the sign of patient, typical assumptions around autonomy, dignity, and equality –– while never fully existent in the first place –– completely vanish. Of course, it is far easier to blame individual people, companies, etc. than understand that disabled/Mad liberation will never exist without total abolition.

Equally, however, it's important to understand that "academics" discussing the abuses of big pharma or questioning the ontology of mental illness, as it were, are not somehow magically separated from psychiatric survivors. The academics dismissed as being unaware of the "real" struggles of psychiatrized people are oftentimes psychiatrized themselves, and their perspectives, writings, and movements are grounded in lived experience. People with academic degrees are not immune from emotional reactions rooted in trauma and anxiety, and in fact, to try to separate "emotion" from academic "reason" is a dangerous eurocolonial practice. In short: many who write, correctly, of the dangers of pharmaceutical companies and practitioner pocket-lining are and have been subjected to these abuses firsthand. This doesn't mean that a wholesale rejection of all medication is, like, "good." But it means that scholars are people –– people with more specialized knowledge in a given area than your average random person, but people nonetheless.

So, to conclude: there are a bunch of things going on that lead to the pervasiveness of reactionary antipsych perspectives. Sometimes, in the case of libertarian or fash (to say nothing of religiously-specific fascism) approaches, there is a willful refusal to distinguish pathologization from material need/suffering, and the assumption that eliminating diagnostic markers will simply neutralize the problem of mental illness-qua-human vulnerability. Other times, conscious objection to myriad genres of oppression under the (neoliberal capitalist) Med/Psy industrial complexes are shoehorned in with these reactionary approaches.

Overall, there are longstanding movements designed to oppress/abandon/eliminate disabled / Madppl in which scholars, wittingly and unwittingly, participate, and given the average joe's utter ignorance of any kind of antipsych thought, it is very difficult to address these issues with rigor and honesty.

Lastly –– I highly recommend doing more reading in critical Mad studies if you're interested in well-thought-out perspectives on Madness, antipsychiatry, and disability justice! Scholars like Liat Ben-Moshe, Jijian Voronka, Margaret Price, La Mar Jurelle Bruce, J. Logan Smilges, sarah madoka currie, Bren LeFrançois, Alexandre Baril, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Eric Stanley, Therí Alyce Pickens, Erica Hua Fletcher, and many others do incredible Mad work explicitly informed by disability and abolitionst frameworks! (and so do I –– at least, I'm trying!)

[imustbenuts]

Reading of Fire Emblem Awakening with a Buddhist lens and the context of the 'sacrifice mc' ending

Preface: Writen by a person who is a massive nerd living in South East Asia. Not a practicing Buddhist but grew up on the fringes of its local influence. Most points here are copy pasted and heavily edited from a prev post I wrote in reply to felikatze's post about Brave Robin some time ago.

EN: Fire Emblem Awakening

JP: ファイアーエムブレム 覚醒

Awakening is a pretty important word when it comes to religion and spirituality, but specifically when put in the light of Buddhism, it takes on extra meaning. Kakusei 覚醒 in JP language has a heavier emphasis on Enlightenment than just waking up after an alarm bell rings.

In this entry, the word Awakening isn't thrown into the title in reference to Robin awakening to the fell dragon; it's a bad end if followed straight anyway. Trying to read it with a non-buddhist lens will often yield the confusion of why self-sacrifice would ever be justified, and in my experience many anglo speaking fans online have indeed express dislike of the sacrifice ending in Awakening.

Which is understandable. But! To the Japanese and many other Asian players, this overwhelmingly isn't the case. And the reason is I think: culture + Buddhism.

The flow of this post will go in this rough outline while I try to explain it from a more Buddhist pov. Sorry if it's messy :(

Buddhism 101 Crash Course (orange so if you wanna skip it feel free)

Original Timeline Awakening

'Our' Shown Timeline Awakening

Ending

Ok. Let's begin

Crash Course on surface level Buddhism 101 (please please go read more on your own if interested, this is VERY surface):

The core idea of Buddhism is that everything is dynamic, fluid, and fluctuating. Never in perpetual stasis. In Buddhism cosmosology, there are different tiers of being ranging from low to high. The goal of Buddhsim is to break out of the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara), and enter into a state of peaceful non-existence (nirvana). Suffering and yearning is inevitable as a part of life, and is meant to be reduced as much as possible for both the individual and others. Causing more will cause the individual to stray further away from the goal of nirvana. Also, that everything in the world is deeply interconnected, and an action will affect things down the line.

And, the final condition of being able to nirvana is to essentially, let go of attachment.

Buddhism Cosmology 101 and FEverse:

So in Buddhism cosmology, there are tiers of beings. The higher one is in this existence tier, the closer one is to breaking out of the cycle. Humans are the baseline, and animals are the lower while supernatural beings are higher as a general rule of thumb. (theres exceptions to this like the hungry ghosts but not impt here for this post)

IN FEA, we have a few characters who are of a vague but present 'higher' tier. Naga, Tiki, Nowe, and Nah. And then there's Grima, the gigantic Fell Dragon. Though we can interpret these characters as different races of beings compared to humans, if we apply Buddhism cosmology, then these are 'higher' tier being. With Naga being one of the highest tier. In fact she functions exactly like a Buddha.

And still, despite being a higher being relative to humans, Grima isn't out of the cycle. In fact, Grima is locked into it. Contrast Naga where it feels like she could go at anytime but choose to stay behind.

Locked in the cycle and not allowed to change

Instead, Grima is bound to a blood pact with Forneus after being artificially created. No matter how its sliced, Grima is closer a tier to the divine dragons than humans and should technically be closer to nirvana, but no dice. In-lore, this supernatural aspect grants power to Forneus' bloodline and subsequently Validar and Robin, on top of binding them to the plane of the living. Grima gets back into existence over the 1000 years after their initial defeat to inflict incredible pain and devastation and gets sealed for it.

So, Grima isn't able to break out of samsara from a Buddhist pov, and each time they come back they're requested/demanded by the summoners to cause immense pain and destruction. As much as there might be manipulation on the Grimleals' side, it's equally possible its willing to on some degree on their side. Thus the cycle of suffering for both them and the world continues.

But there is one extra nuance here to the reincarnation idea in Buddhism: Buddhists prefer the term 're-becoming' or 'rebirth' rather than reincarnation. Its not exactly a re-inheritance of the same exact unchanging soul in a new body, but the passing on of a mind/consciousness which can be malleable. And since a mental state is a lot more fluid and changeable, it's much more preferred to the idea of a same-ish soul being passed on like a hot potato typical in western Catholic interpretation of the same concept. (eternal paradise or damnation being a big thing from what I understand, so it's a very one soul one life one chance kinda deal.) Subtle differences, but put a pin in this for now.

On the topic of memories

A reincarnated person isn't supposed to have their old memories... at least, at first, the orignal Robin seems to do. Now, while big Buddha himself had his past lives' memories, it was only after he mediated and gained enlightenmnet. If we follow this logic, it's likely something broke original timeline (OT) Robin in the opposite way, leading into a... let's just say false awakening. This leads into the first timeline where Robin, retaining all their current life's memories and told their identity was Grima and not allowed to basically begin anew, destroys the world with a zombie apocalypse. In this timeline, Robin awakens, but not to a cool gucci love and peace Buddha enlightenment. Rather, the cynical, nihilistic all things should die and shut up kind.

In normal reincarnation situation, the reborn person is allowed to begin anew. There is a Buddhist hell which fucntions as a means to cleanse one of their bad karma, and so there is a strong emphasis on this. Grima is being shackled to 1 identity imo, and it sucks a bit.

Semi HC territory with this lens too: It's very likely that despair at various point was exploited for this to happen by their worshippers. Bc what better way to than to cut off a person from the rest of the world, from people, and create a situation where the victim has no one to lean on? Exactly like how baby Grima was cut off like in FE:Shadows of Valentia in that sealed off tower known as Thebes Labyrinth. Ofc, this is pure independence at the worst, and also very textbook cultist stuff.

(Side note: remembering past lives isn't really a loud thing in Buddhist practice, I think. It's sort of egotistical to claim oneself as so-and-so, going against some teachings and practice of it since it makes the claimer seem egotistical and arrogant, and thus it's just... bad form to do so. Also its more often than not used as a tactic to scam/manipulate people >_>. )

So, original timeline was played straight to the title: Fire Emblem Awakening. False Awakening. (I hope I'm making sense so far. x_x;;)

Fire Emblem Awakening's original timeline is true to its title and a bleak world.

This Awakening is just. Wrong. Remember that I mention interdependence being a big part of the core religion's philosophy? Grima shuns this by ignoring bonds and killing all those they might be friends with otherwise. Despite the constant preaching of Buddhism to be peaceful and do good things, Grima kind of murders and kills and is everything associated with darkness and death. Rather than lessen suffering, Grima causes more and takes away others' ability to walk their own path in their goal of total destruction.

Grima also does not even come close to understanding the world and interconnectedness. Thus, Grima with their actions here is doomed to be perpetually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death.

Amnesia zap!

So, stuff happens, Lucina takes on the world and breaks into another timeline. Grima follows, causing alternate (our) Robin to get the big amnesia zap. To do over, basically, to let go of the past and redo it from a clean slate devoid of prior biases and judgement.

In effect, this is as good as being reborn from the Buddhist pov. Remember when I mention not remembering the past life at least in the beginning? And that the mind is fluid?

Later in the game, amnesia'd Robin meets OT Robin/Grima, and it gets. Interesting. The both of them seems to be disturbed by each other. If we follow the logic that these are the same person, then the schism, I think, is rooted very much in their lived experiences and thus take-away of their understanding of their own world.

This characterization further continues into Fire Emblem Heroes. They trigger each others' panic response. It's the maximum uncanny valley feeling, I think, bc it's like looking at a doppelganger: the exact same in appearance, but slightly ever so different in personality, in experience, in belief. To the point that its not exactly them, even though it should be.

At their meeting in FEA, Our Robin the Avatar the MC has already grown close to Chrom and friends. Our Robin understands bonds and their place in the world and finds love and acceptance and a place for themself beside Chrom, and in Ylisse.

This Robin understands the concept of love and interconnectedness. Grima/OT Robin, however, continues to shun it all to the end.

Conditions ok in the new timeline. Let go, Yes/No?

...So in the timeline we're familiar with, what is the Awakening referring to?

If we go by how one is supposed to attain enlightenment in Buddhism, it's by gaining an insight to how the world works, how everything is connected, and letting go of cravings/yearnings. While I think there's possibly a bunch of ways to interpret this in FEA, there is a very simple one.

The easiest interpretation would be that Robin understood their role in the world to be a vessel/reincarnation of Grima, and that it isn't the correct way because bonds are too important, and that no matter how difficult it must be, a worse future must be prevented no matter the cost. Bc they have come to adore their friends and the family of said friends and their future.

And to that future, possibly even the world in which they reside.

Grima however, stands against this. Grima's existence means the future for their friends, possible spouse and children, and Chrom, cannot live. What Grima stands for is annihilation.

There is a way to remove Grima permanently, but that comes at a cost, and that cost is them. Choosing this is to know that Grima as Grima was known cannot be allowed to come into existence, and if they were Grima or even hold the potential, that chance needs to be non-existent. The Grima before them needs to be non-existent. Robin has to be non-existent. (Out of the samsara cycle as you could say hohoho)

The alternative would be to seal Grima away and then let the future deal with them again in 1000 years. To say that Robin is too attatched to their newfound love ones and cannot let go. And this might be more preferable to some.

But we're talking about a game with Awakening in the title made by a bunch of Japanese. And with a somewhat shared culture at least I and my friends here understand. And so, pretty much everyone around me in this part of the world overwhelmingly chose the mutual destruction option.

>Yes

In the sacrifice ending, they let go of their yearning to be with their friends, their possible spouse, their possible children, and Chrom. The world, essentially.

The key difference between Our Robin and the OT Robin is, Robin has hope for the world despite being cut off from his loved ones and knowing they might be in some afterlife hell where they might very well be alone. The emotions of hope and love is just so strong it's convinced Robin that death was worth facing.

This is the True Fire Emblem Awakening.

After the credits, Chrom finds Robin on the ground again, seemingly returned and now fully unchained to the identity of Grima. This is framed as a good thing, as reward for choosing the hard path. (Even tho technically Robin doesn't break out of samsara here but. It's a good job reward for the player I guess)

So when the game asks if you are willing to sacrifice your Robin, it is in effect asking if you the player are willing to accept letting go in hopes of change and the new. (at least in my pov)

And remember the pin? About the soul/mind being malleable?

Grima and Robin are direct contrasts. Line up the themes and they contrast in every way. Past vs Future, Despair vs Hope, Death vs Life. They can be interpreted as the same person or different depending, but it remains that they share the same soul despite being very different.

In effect, this is saying that yes, even indirectly, a complete irredeemable being who has commited so much attrocities it breaks the scale like Grima can change. Can be better. The conditions just has to be there.

Now, all of these is just a reading from a Buddhist pov. There's many many more takeaways and possible routes of extrapolation, so don't take this as me saying it's the only way to read FEA. It is not. It is sooo not there's a bunch of fans out there writnig their own analysis about it.

Also, the Buddhist narrative is not exclusive to FEA. It is in every FE games to some degree. I think FEA and Engage are some of the loudest and explicit. I've written more and complied them here if you are interested in checking out more of my word vomit.

Thanks for reading!

[someonesomewhereooo]

i SWEAR I remember reading a marvel fanfic in which Peter parker found loki nearly dead in a dumpster and didn't want to leave him there so he just. kept him in his bathtub. and filled it with ice cubes. i remember nothing else except that the ending scene was thor and him meeting again. i exist in a perpetual state of torture because I cannot for the LIFE of me find it again and I NEED TO if anyone recognises it and has the name please dear god tell me, I will forever be in your debt if you do 🙏

[twig-tea]

Canadian LGBTQ+ rights; a whirlwind summary

Back in August of 2023 @wen-kexing-apologist wrote an absolutely stellar piece here, and I didn't want to co-opt it (especially because it was already written with an American gaze and I don't want to pile on/distract from the fact that we're talking about Thai BL) so I decided to make this a separate post. And then it lingered in the sad pile of my drafts. But, I'm gonna post it anyway, and take this as an excuse to talk about Canadian history of LGBTQ+ rights apropos of absolutely nothing except the most recent move of the provinces (specifically Saskatchewan) to use the notwithstanding clause to force through legislation that the courts have said goes against our charter of rights and freedoms--specifically legislation that says a teacher cannot respect a child's pronouns without permission of the parent. This is being taken to court (latest as of this writing is that in Feb 2024 the group fighting the law was granted the right to be heard by the court in spite of the notwithstanding clause being invoked, so there is still a chance of it getting revoked via the courts).

WKA talks about what the conversation was like in the US around queer rights in the 20th century; highly recommend reading the linked post first. In Canada the conversation was a little different though with very similar themes; we had the shift to a focus on "privacy" as the driver of our rights long before the HIV/AIDS epidemic, in the 1960s. So much of the push and pull of our laws around homosexuality and gender identity and expression have had to do with the public vs private.

Sodomy has been illegal in Canada since colonization (earliest known conviction: 1648) but laws against gross indecency, which included dancing, kissing, or touching between two men, didn't get codified in Canada until 1892 (and not extended to apply to women until 1953 (thanks)). While these laws essentially outlawed any physical public affection between men from the turn of the century, the fervor to root out and eliminate gayness from society didn't really reach its pitch until mid-century.

I need you all to know about the Fruit Machine, which was an ostensibly "scientific" detection device to identify and purge gay and lesbian civil servants from the military and public service in Canada. While the machine was built in the 1950s and used through the 1950s and 1960s, the practice of using psychology, polygraphs, and interrogation to force military and public servants to come out and take a voluntary discharge existed through to the 1990s.

Our former Prime Minister PE Trudeau made famous the line "there is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation" as part of his so-called decriminalization of homosexuality 1967; this is of course a joke because "buggery" and "gross indecency" stayed on the books for another 20 years, the only difference being they were only punishable if the people involved were under 21, there were 3 or more people present, or the participants were performing these acts outside of their home. You may notice that this meant the policing of public space was where and how homophobia continued to be perpetuated by the state via police.

Highlighting the importance of privacy as a framework for gay rights at this time, The Right to Privacy movement was the name for one of the forerunners of modern Canadian LGBTQ+ rights groups through the 1970s--though worth noting that this group in particular was criticized for its exclusion of WLW and our trans siblings (some of whom of course overlap). The infamous bathhouse raids of 1981 ("Operation Soap"), leading to at the time the largest arrest in Toronto's history, were one of the precipitating factors in the recognizable start of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. In 1986, five years after the raids and thanks to massive effort by LGBTQ+ organizing, sexual orientation was added to the protected list of attributes that it is illegal to discriminate against under the Canadian Human Rights Act (gender identity and expression was added in 2012), and in 1987 "anal intercourse" was made legal for those over 18 (the legal age of consent was made the same for everyone--16--in 2019), and "gross indecency" as a law was finally repealed. The fight for marriage equality was the next step after achieving real decriminalization, and was strongly based on the right to freedom from discrimination as protected by the Human Rights Act.

[Just going to take this moment to note that for some reason they never struck off the law criminalizing sodomy when more than two people are present; this is still an inequality on the books now and people do (rarely) still get charged with it.]

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the censorship fight was most famously held in the written sphere--if you've seen the movie Better than Chocolate, you might already be familiar what I'm talking about. From approximately 1986 through to 2000, Canada Border Services targeted shipments to queer bookstores, holding them up, sometimes destroying the content, putting those businesses at risk, and preventing queer content that passed through border control to be stocked in physical stores. It took the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling in 2000 to shut down that practice as an illegal suppression of a bookstore (Little Sisters in Vancouver, BC, shout-out!)'s right to freedom of expression.

Raids on safe spaces for sexual activity continued to be a driver for action through to the 21st century. The WLW bathhouse the Pleasure Palace (changed from "Pussy Palace" in the late 90s to be more inclusive of our sisters without that particular body part) was raided in the year 2000; 19 years after Operation Soap, and notably the first and last raid on a queer woman's bathhouse in Canadian history. What followed was a massive public coal-raking of police, including the very telling call to action: "out of the bars! Into the streets!" I don't think this was necessarily the intended implication at the time, but looking back the threat was that if we were not given our rights, we would be in everyone's faces (and conversely if we were given our rights, we'd be quiet). The legalization of marriage between any two consenting persons of legal age came five years later in 2005 (I don't mean to imply this effort was the only reason--the fight for marriage equality was active all the way through the 90s and early 2000s; it's just an interesting parallel that two of the biggest wins for equality for queer people in Canada came 5 years after a historic police raid).

One of the factors in gaining acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in Canada was the fight for marriage equality; as it focused the conversation on sameness rather than difference. The queer activism movement here pivoting from messaging around bathhouses and being left alone to marriage equality was an intentional, strategic attempt to be accepted as the same rather than being honoured for our differences. And that fight coming after the HIV/AIDS epidemic and bathhouse raids is no accident as it framed queer people directly in opposition to the stigma of promiscuity that surrounded assumptions about gay people which fed into the lack of support for medical intervention, research, and treatment for HIV/AIDS (here in Canada too, our history is just as gross on that front, people just don't talk about it as much. But Canada followed the US government's example, and so people were left without medical resources for at least eight years in Canada (since the first cases were identified here in 1982) and THREE YEARS after they had been approved by the US--AZT wasn't available in Canada until 1990. Three years in which people died unnecessarily. We similarly approved PrEP four years after the FDA, in 2016. Today, despite "universal health care", if you want access to PrEP, it will depend on the province you're in as to whether you can get it at all for free or whether you need to pay--in my province, it takes 2 months to get free PrEP).

Today, just over 50% of the people with HIV/AIDS in Canada are men who have sex with men; it's estimated 80% of people infected with HIV know their status, of those 75% are being treated, and of those 89% are effectively unable to transmit the virus. In that context, the ongoing fight re: HIV/AIDS in Canada today is around decriminalization, specifically decriminalization of drugs (since ~20% of HIV infections are from IV drug use--one of the many reasons I support harm reduction strategies), and the decriminalization of non-disclosure (since Canada is one of the few places where you can be charged for not sharing your HIV status with a sexual partner). Until very recently, we were also fighting to be able to give blood--it was only in 2022 that men who have sex with men were allowed to donate blood in Canada, which meant every visit to a blood donation clinic involved questions about the gender of your sexual partner(s). And, as mentioned at the top, one of the rights we are fighting to retain right now, is the right to have our gender expression respected without forced outing to a parent or guardian; Once again, the fight in Canada has become centered around the right to privacy.

Slightly tangential to the topic at hand, but I would be remiss in talking about moments in recent history when the law did not prosecute us, but it failed to protect us. In the 2010s, a serial killer was targeting men who he thought he could get away with making disappear; and he was right. The police ignored calls from the community to treat the case as a serial killer for years. Bruce McArthur killed 8 men who had gone missing from Toronto's Gay Village between 2010 and 2017, several who were vulnerable because they were distant from their families (because they were gay and closeted), homeless, and/or in immigration limbo (waiting for status), so it took longer for them to be reported missing. During this time, through to just weeks before the arrest, the Toronto Police insisted in public statements that there was no serial killer.

Black and Indigenous queer people have regularly died as a result of the police being called while they were in crisis. An unnamed trans woman (who was midgendered by the SIU after her death); Regis Korchinksy-Paquet, both in 2020. In 2022, Dani Cooper, queer activist who advocated against police-run wellness checks, was shot and killed by police during a wellness check called for them.

As a positive step, in 2016, Black Lives Matter Toronto staged a protest as part of the annual Pride Parade, making a list of demands, but the one that got the most coverage was the demand to ban police at Pride. This was taken up by the Pride Toronto committee, and since 2017 police have been banned from having an official float or presence at the parade. This has been taken up by several Canadian cities including Vancouver and Hamilton and inspired action in other cities globally.

With that context, in which queer people are rightfully distrustful of police, it is alarming that police-reported hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people (one of the only ways we have of tracking hate crime consistently) had a record-breaking increase in 2023.

In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (the son of PM Trudeau quoted above) gave a public apology to LGBTQ+ Canadians. Here's just a brief excerpt:

"To the kids who are listening at home and who fear rejection because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity and expression; And to those who are nervous and scared, but also excited at what their future might hold; We are all worthy of love, and deserving of respect. And whether you discover your truth at 6 or 16 or 60, who you are is valid. To members of the LGBTQ2 communities, young and old, here in Canada and around the world: You are loved. And we support you."

The important part about this apology was twofold; one, it explicitly named many of the specific instances of oppression I mentioned above, and two, it listed the things the government was doing to make reparations. This included the repeal of the law that equalized the age of consent (which went through two years later, as mentioned above), the pardoning of people who had a criminal record due to unjust laws based on LGBTQ+ discrimination, settlement of a class action lawsuit for victims of The Purge, and a commitment to work towards better resources for mental health and housing for LGBTQ+ people, as well as a committment to continue working to remove the barriers for gay men to donate blood (which went through in 2022). One of the other important achievements was the change to allow an "X" option under gender on Canadian Passports (so the three available options are M/F/X) in 2019 [some provincial gender opt-out options have existed since 2017].

The current government is by no stretch perfect, but it has been good to see some of these moments of our history acknowledged and corrected for. As the global pressure towards fascism continues, it's critical that we remember these changes are the result of hard work, not inevitable "progress", that these fights are ongoing and require our energy, and that change, using a variety of tactics, is possible.

Quick hit facts if you prefer a list to a narrative:

In Canada, it was illegal for men to hold hands with men or women to hold hands with women in public until the 1960s;

The government tried to expunge us from public service in the 60s and 70s;

it was illegal for men to have threesomes until the 1990s;

bathhouse raids were made possible due to legislative inequalities through the 2000s;

Canada took three years longer than the US to approve treatments for HIV/AIDS, four years longer to approve PrEP, and still today access can be complicated/expensive;

it was possible to be of legal age to have sex but not anal sex until 2019;

Gay men were barred from donating blood until 2022;

Canada remains one of the few countries in the world where you can be prosecuted for not disclosing your HIV status (though does not apply if you retain a minimal viral load);

In 2023 some provincial governments tried to make kids choose between gender expression and their privacy (and potentially safety) from their parents; as of March 2024 that fight is still actively being fought.

The take-aways I hope people get from this post:

This history is more recent than we pretend, and is ongoing

Framing gay rights as right to privacy vs right to being not prosecuted for being in public is nuanced and intertwined

Transphobes need to fuck off

Some references/further reading/watching:

Brief history of LGBTQ+ laws in Canada at the Canadian Encyclopedia

The Fruit Machine documentary made by TVO

Article on HIV/AIDS in Canada policy written by one of the policymakers

Timeline of HIV/AIDS Developments (only goes to 2010 so does not include PreP, which was approved in Canada in 2016, four years after its availability in the US)

Article on The Pleasure Palace raid by one of the organizers

Article on the Bathhouse Raids 40 years after Operation Soap

Article on Bruce McArthur's crimes and the review of how police handled the case by former judge Gloria Epstein

Regis Korchinksy-Paquet and the unnamed trans woman dead after interactions with police

Dani Cooper's death

Article about the Supreme Court case brought by Little Sisters bookshop

HIV Non-Disclosure Law Fact Sheet

Article about the end of the blood ban for men who have sex with men

Black Lives Matter Toronto on their 2016 action at Toronto Pride

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's apology

Gender "X" Options on Passports

Stream Better Than Chocolate (you may need to look up where it's available in your region)

Little Sisters Book & Art Emporium

Glad Day Bookshop (Makes a claim for being the oldest queer bookshop in the world; one of the few queer public spaces being maintained/actively protected as more and more of our spaces are eroded, and also just a personal fave so I'm taking the excuse to shout it out too)

[historia-vitae-magistras]

A lightee ask than usual but do you have any food or eating habit thoughts?

Ooohooohh, I did a whole ass seminar on the history of food. Failed it because I almost bled to death but I got to keep all the material! I've got.... a lot of thoughts and feelings about food culture. Too goddamn many, tbh. This got really long so I'll have to do a part two for other characters if wanted but lol enjoy.

Alfred:

 —Actually pretty gourmet little shit when he's got time and effort. He's made food Maria loves so often she has to give up on pretending she didn't enjoy it because fucking hell, he makes good chilaquiles after they've been drinking and fucking. There is, however, a non-zero chance he hasn't eaten a vegetable since the Nixon administration.

 —With that combustion engine metabolism, he's also perpetually hungry, so he eats whatever is around him. His guts do not like this, especially when it's a lot of dairy.

 —He has that kind of lactose intolerance that's tied to his health and stress, so if he's been particularly freaked out lately, he'll remind the world of his nuclear arsenal when he's got to use the toilet after that triple cheeseburger with a side of deep-fried cheese curds.

 —He's a stress eater too. He eats every negative emotion he's ever had especially when he's trying not to binge drink or do drugs.

 —He’s exceptionally food-motivated. They didn’t call one of his first major historical eras ‘the starving time’ without reason. He has preferences, but food is also food, and he’ll genuinely enjoy it in most forms as long as it's not rotten or otherwise godawful. Cowboy coffee and beans for ten days straight, and he will genuinely be the only man on that cow trail not sick of it by the end.

 —This also goes into why he’s so generous with food. He’s big on homemade food. He’ll make a whole big ass batch of like some sort of mac and cheese, and all the neighbours will get a big ol’ bowl of it with an ‘oh just return the Tupperware whenever,’ and it will genuinely be one of the best things they’ve ever eaten in their lives. Europeans recoil in horror, but our portion sizes are almost never single servings. It’s a generosity and hospitality practice except drinks. He really will down like a 2 liter of Slurpee in a single sitting.

 —He doesn’t mind eating alone. Actually prefers it sometimes. He loves eating in his car. American frontier culture, especially mountain men, had an often hyper-individualized, almost mythic culture of spending long periods alone in the woods and not being very sociable; thus a lot of situations where single servings were a thing, eating alone in quiet without something to do can be a real goddamn luxury.

 —He’s a really big protein guy with his metabolism. Sometimes exists on protein shakes but is more often a beef or barbeque or ham or alligator jerky. And a somewhat chunky Alfred is a healthy Alfred. A perfectly cut no flab Alfred is an Alfred who might be severely dehydrated and on several kinds of uppers.

 —He has better tastes than Arthur who didn't really realize food was supposed to taste good until like ten years ago but his combinations can be equally wild and unappetizing as they are batshit tasty.

—He loves spicy food. He's got so many opinions about hot sauces.

—He’s always hungry. If he isn’t hungry or turns down food, its genuinely a bad sign. If he turns down anything or just is just picking at it his food alarm bells should be sounding. He’s either about to declare war or puke all over the table or keel over dead. Peckish or food coma is his default state. Like if he was a smaller guy someone would say he’s got a binge disorder but he’s tall and beefy so he’s pretty okay.

 —Incredibly adventurous eater too. People will assume since there’s that old school culture of Anglo-American who eats the same 7 meals every week and might keel over dead if the meatloaf is slightly different he’ll be a bit hard to please but then he’s absolutely charmed by everything from Korean kimchi to Lithuanian Lašiniai.

 —He loves anyone who feeds him, just got to be a bit careful because he’s got surprisingly delicate stomach for the world superpower.

 —That American obsession with authencity means he’s surprisingly good at remembering people’s food culture or eating norms. He figured out chopsticks in ten seconds and quickly picked up the cues and manners of eating in any given culture. Still struggles with modulating his voice and personality, so he can often come across as rude, but he's so excited to do so. It's almost frustrating how happy he is to try and adapt to people around him and how happy he can be to fit in.

Matt:

 —He's a very good cook when he's putting in effort for other people, but he's not really like Alfred, who he'll make a whole ass meal for one just to relax on a Sunday.

 —He does tend to eat more vegetables than Alfred, but only because his northern vitamin deficiency has him binging them when he can afford them or they're available during the summer.

  —He can be weirdly picky on his own, but no one ever really needs to ask about his favourite food or how he likes anything because he always just goes with the flow around other people. “Just get me whatever you’re getting.” comes out of his mouth often.

 —There's a lot of sour cream/crema and yoghurt/coconut milk involved when he eats Mexican or Indian food for as much as he loves it.

 —Katya was singlehandedly responsible for his ability to maintain a normal weight during the 20th century by adding rye bread and perogies/vyrenki to his diet. He craves mushroom-umami flavours when he misses her, which is most of the time.

 —When he’s normal and eating the Anglo-North American diet, but he isn’t always eating it, he gets some strong sugar cravings, especially when he’s west of Manitoba. He’s as fond of birch syrup as a flavour as he is maple; there’s just less production. But the kind of deprivation he got and his own tendencies to not eat sometimes cause white sugar to just straight-up burns.

 —There's very much something of François to Matt's dietary habits, but less in his personal tastes and more in that he might be more sensitive to flavours. He has that kind of discerning and slightly oversensitive palate, but he’s a shitty perpetually broke frontier settler colony. He knows better/feels too guilty/is too embarrassed of himself to really indulge it.

 —He kept too much of his peasant communalism in his eating habits. Where Anglo-American communities did have a lot of cooperation, communal eating was a special occasion. The norm was based on the individual household. In contrast, French Canadian habitants still technically lived on medieval land plots and owed labour to a lord while also having a culture of seasonal male work, so Matt grew up used to communal ovens and eating most of his meals around others. Later, in Arthur’s jurisdiction, it was usually the same. He got a plate of whatever he was given, and it wasn’t something he had ever had to initiate himself.

 —Partially, he's sometimes exceptionally bad at eating when he has to choose to do it himself. Especially since the Americanization of the food culture took hold in the '80s and '90s. Whereas Alfred is food motivated from going without when he was little, Matt learned how to block out physical sensation until he collapsed because it was rare that someone, including himself, cared about what kind of state he was in. He just doesn’t eat at all when he’s stressed or anxious. And now it's his sole responsibility to do so as there aren’t the same community structures. He has a lot of Alfred’s abundance now, all the brunch and BBQ places anyone could ask for, but it hasn’t meshed with his eating habits. His people gave up so much of their communal eating in exchange for various choices and then wondered why they were so lonely. So he’ll just microwave a potato or a packet of Kraft dinner a day for a week straight and wonder why he feels dead because, technically, he did eat something. It’s seriously a miracle he got as tall as he did.

 —Feed him nothing but hardtack for three years, and he won't complain until he's dropped dead of scurvy. If Arthur puts some sort of godforsaken mixture of plum sauce or gin-infused spag bol in front of him, he’ll compliment it before he disassociates to get at least some of it down.