#the ignoring of largely important things for largely unimportant reasons

[victim9d]

cassie refusing to wear her glasses and walking into shit kinda iconic tbh

[atlas-likes-writing]

June of Doom Day One - "Help Me."

Characters: Bruce Wayne/Batman, Clark Kent/Superman, Alfred Pennyworth, Ra's Al-Ghul (mentioned), Tim Drake/Red Robin, Damian Wayne/Robin, Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, Dick Grayson/Nightwing

Summary: Bruce has always been stubborn, much to the dismay of those around him. It's only when he has no other option that he actually decides to ask for assistance.

Word count: 1603

Tags: Light angst, light gore, injuries, depictions/recountance of injuries and violence, medicine/medical terminology.

Author's Note: In comparison to other angst fics I've written, this one is incredibly tame. Call it the calm before the storm for this challenge lol. Enjoy! As always, feel free to like, comment, and reblog. It helps me out a bunch.

@juneofdoom

Masterlist | Day Two

The Dark Knight is revered across the world as being untouchable. Unbeatable. The stuff of legend that you tell your kids about so they will behave. “You better be good, or the Batman will come and get you in the night!” It works a treat. There are some people in the world who don’t even think He exists. They believe it’s clever CGI or paid trauma actors or a talented cosplayer (as to what they’re cosplaying is up for debate, for obvious reasons). Like on of those fake movies where people on social media work together in their thousands to gaslight people into thinking they exist when they don’t. It’s not true, of course. Batman is as human as any other person on Earth (except for the large variety of aliens that also call Earth home, but that’s another thing to ignore). He is human. He has skin and lungs and teeth and a tongue; and with such things comes vulnerability. The Dark Knight is not untouchable, and he certainly isn’t unbeatable. 

Especially considering the state he is currently in. 

It is well-known throughout the hero community that Ra’s Al-Ghul is not a man to be messed with. Whenever his name pops up on mission briefs it is always given to the more capable heroes in the Watchtower. Usually the Big Three: Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, and today was no different. When the small-time hero of somewhere unimportant came shuffling over to his office to timidly poke his head through the door, Batman was surprisingly quite understanding. 

“That must have been a formatting error. I’ll handle it, don’t worry. Ra’s Al-Ghul isn’t a villain for the regular hero. Thank you for bringing this to me, Jerry.” 

How on earth he knew the man’s name was between him and the gods. He scampered off and out of Batman’s office before he got the chance to ask, his own fear getting the best of him. How heroic. 

Now, while Bruce is clutching his side and using his cape as an impromptu bandage across his torso, he wishes that Clark and Diana were not on their respective breaks. 

“The kids are on school break. I’m going to take them to visit Ma and Pa for the weekend. Shout if you need me, Bruce.” 

“My sisters in Themyscira have requested my presence for a ceremony of some kind. It is apparently important, so I will be back in about a week.” 

He can’t blame them, of course. Superhero work is tough, and everyone is in need of a break now and again. Jon and Kon are important to Clark, as are his own children to Bruce, so he understands. And the surprise birthday party for Diana has been in the works for months. Being the only naturally born Themysciran, it is a ceremony worth celebrating for the Amazons, so Bruce can’t fault them either. He just wishes their departures could have been spaced out a little more so he wouldn’t have to deal with Ra’s alone. 

Now, in the middle of god-knows-where in some North African country, he is alone. Crippled by some sort of Lazarus Pit magic that was blasted across his thigh and various sword-related wounds dotted around his torso and legs. He’s been in worse situations, but he’s also certainly been in better as well. With Alfred piloting the Batwing from the safety of the Batcave, he’s got about four hours until it arrives, and he can be brought back to his own domain. Back to safety. He hesitates at the idea of calling for help from Clark. The man has his own priorities, and it’s been an incessantly long time since he’s had time alone with his family without the stress of hero work. 

However, some priorities overrule others. 

“Clark, help me,” he whispers, voice cracking and hoarse after hours of fighting and sustaining injuries. As he treks away from the arena where Ra’s and Bruce fought (some secluded spot in the middle of a dessert - Bruce would personally guess Ethiopia due to the landmarks surrounding him, but he has been wrong before and wouldn’t be surprised if he was at this moment as well) and with the fact that Ra’s has been defeated in mind and handed into the local authority, he pushes forward. Every step through sand dunes feels as if he’s walking through treacle, and he can’t help but struggle with his own body as he reaches the crest of a particularly large mountain of sand. In the distance, the sparkling lights of a large city twinkle at him with the promise of assistance, but he highly doubts he’ll get there before he collapses to dehydration or his injuries. He’s already exhausted the little water he had in his utility belt and the bandages in it have already been used to patch up wounds of the highest severity. The strange green magic that Ra’s used on him made the material of his trousers stick to his left leg painfully, so he had to cut the cotton-Kevlar material off.  

So, there he is: trudging in the middle of some desert in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night - dehydrated, injured, and miserable with his incoming support not available for another several hours and half of his costume in disrepair. He can’t help feeling a little irritable towards his comrades for this, even if he is completely aware that it isn’t their fault. He was the one who deemed it too dangerous for his children to come with him to combat the Demon’s Head and made the incredibly intelligent decision to go alone. Even Alfred had urged him to go with one of his more mature children, but his fear of losing them after what happened to Jason put the rational part of his brain on autopilot in favour of the worried parent in him to disagree with every alternative. He can just hope that either his family or Clark finds him before it’s too late. 

That’s the last thought he has before he collapses, face first, into the sand. 

— 

He’s in and out of consciousness for a long time. When he’s got half a mind to take in his surroundings, Bruce notices that he is travelling. Rapidly. When he blinks, he’s in a vehicle, then lying down on something, then surrounded by darkness. He hears voices too, but they’re often mixed and warped together until he can’t discern whose is whose. Eventually, the soft timbre of Alfred reaches him, followed by the worried voice of his eldest son. It’s then when he realises he’s back in the Batcave and safe, so he closes his eyes again and stays like that for a while; not particularly in the mood for waking up. 

When he properly regains consciousness, he’s met with a pounding headache and a sharp ache overwhelming his legs and chest. Bruce opens his eyes and is immediately blinded by the bright LED of a medical light glaring down on him. He squints into it and brings his arm up to cover his eyes with a groan, and the room, which he didn’t realise was occupied by others, suddenly went silent.  

“Bruce? You’re awake!” That was the voice of his third son. 

“It was about time, Father. How was Grandfather?” That was his youngest. 

“Stop pestering him! Let him get his bearings before you overwhelm him with questions.” His eldest daughter. 

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t overwhelm me with questions at all. At least, not yet,” Bruce grumbles, attempting to sit up without triggering a massive headache and failing miserably. He slumps back on the hospital cot, closing his eyes. He feels a cool and damp fabric being placed on his forehead, realising that Alfred is busy doing his medical ministrations as he always does. 

“You gave us quite the scare, Master Bruce. I hope this acts as a lesson to not fight the League of Assassins without correct backup,” the butler states. Bruce sighs, the act causing pain to shoot through his ribcage. Ah, so he broke them.  

“I won, didn’t I?” he states, attempting humour. The joke falls flat in the now silent room and the man represses the urge to sigh a second time. 

“We all know that’s not the point here, Bruce.” His eldest son, Dick, steps forward and stands next to the cot where his father lies. “You gave Clark quite the scare.” 

That’s what gets Bruce to open his eyes. 

“He’s here?” 

“He’s upstairs in the Manor. He wanted to give you space.” 

He can’t suppress the sigh this time and it turns into a wince. 

“Damn it. Can you bring him down here? I want to apologise for keeping him from his family.” 

“Visiting hours are closed for a few hours,” Alfred states bluntly and shoots a poignant glare behind him at the several others in the room. They all look away, shuffling around awkwardly. “Unfortunately, your stubbornness is apparently hereditary.” He turns to face them all. “Children, Master Bruce is awake. You can come back later when he’s in a better state of mind and body.” As if on cue, Bruce groans in pain after a failed attempt to move his legs into a more comfortable position. 

“Right- yeah. Sorry, Alf. We’ll go.” Dick begins to turn away but stops himself halfway to the door. Once the others have left, he gives a meaningful look to his father.  

“Stop thinking you have to do everything alone, Bruce. You have friends. Act like it.” 

With that, he leaves, leaving the Dark Knight in the care of his butler and his own thoughts.

--

Will be posted on Ao3 later on :)

[galaxy-sharks-and-bottled-ships]

Yeah. I try not to butt into this stuff, because it feels like I’ll just perpetrate the problem further. But yeah especially as a Native American I get really annoyed when people act like states aren’t at all similar to countries, or all USA is the same. Most of the time they won’t even acknowledge the huge differences in cultures between west and east coast despite the literal thousand miles of difference. Yet just because of different individual governments European countries get more recognition for their diversity than states even though some are smaller than states in population. (Not like size matters). It’s silly and an oversimplification in both directions especially since many countries have similarities as well as mixed cultures and yeah, separate regions to the countries too.. But again it always feels like for some reason they want to value their differences over ours. Idk.

Exactly! Exactly this! This is what makes me so mad! They value their own differences more than they value ours and when we get mad at them lumping us all together they claim we're uneducated because we can't name all their countries and capitals and the like.

So? They can't name ours. Can they even name Africa's or South America's countries? I'm willing to let it go as a difference between education and relevance to the student but they never do. Like learning European French as a poor American just being a waste of time versus learning Spanish and using it to help people in my day to day life.

But for some reason it's somehow incredibly important we know all about all the European countries? And how dare we not be educated on the matter! Shame on us apparently?

We get lumped into one big "Ha Ha fat dumb Americans" category like we don't have our own individual things. Like we don't have different cultures buried in time and twisted to the point of almost not being recognized by history and whitewashing.

Just because a lot of it is gone though doesn't mean the ghosts of the past haven't haunted the future. Our foods have been deeply changed from the recipes the settlers would have first used. Little hints of the past remain and I am so tired of watching it get further buried and ignored.

Of being relegated as unimportant compared to this or that from some town in Germany or somewhere else.

Each state has its own culture and history and further more each state was built in such a way that they have their own governmental system in place. They effectively are mini countries in every sense. They have their own size, culture, history, and government. They just so happen to all obey the same overarching government. Like an agreement of sorts.

A bit of a reach but almost like a United Nations except they're more like States still in that we don't have our own military each.

After all, the definition of a country is a settled population, a clearly defined territory or border, and a self sustainable body of government isn't it? I believe all 50 states meet that criteria.

...truthfully I think what makes me the maddest is that deep down I know even if the tribes were still as numerous as they used to be and the cultures not largely wiped out they'd still be relegated as somehow lesser than.

If it's not "culture enough" when white people were influenced by it how culture do you think it would be if it wasn't white people? I miss what used to be. What I never got to know. I hate how it can't be taken seriously even when all that remains in so many cases is some sort of an echo blended in with everything else. And at the same time I am so damn proud of what remained despite it all I can't stand to see it erased or shunned.

But yeah I get what you mean. Honestly, I don't normally get involved in this mess either except I've had to sit and grind my teeth while sister's boyfriend visits from the Netherlands and tells us all about how German beer is superior to anything American made. I don't even drink beer but it's the fricking arrogance that gets me. And he does this with nearly everything. I made stroganoff and he got mad because I didn't cook it with vodka in it. I didn't even know it is supposed to have vodka in it?

Offered to make three sister soup (what mom always called hamburger soup because she didn't know what her mom called it and also had substituted venison with ground beef) and he called it vegetable pottage after I told him what it was and then went into depth about the historical relevance of it and how likely it was this group or that group of Europeans who brought the recipe over.

He tried to correct us on how to pronounce Tuscaloosa. A name given from the Choctaw words for Black Warrior. Or really tushka for warrior and lusa for black. Don't even get me started on the history lesson he had planned on which settlers came up with the name and it's original European meaning.

I nearly bit him.

[lantsovsupremacist]

I was wondering if you could do a Nikolai fic w a Tidemaker reader who works for him on the Volkvony ?

whenever i read nikolai stuff, i imagine his girl to be a tide maker. so, of course it’s my honor to make this happen 🙏🙏 also i got carried away and there will most certainly be a part 2 🤪🤪

mijn dochter: my daughter (i went with dutch because that’s what kerch is supposedly influenced by)!

nikolai lantsov: mirror ball

it all began out of desperation, as most things in your life often did.

born into a family of ten living on the farmlands of kerch, there were always too many mouths to feed. despite the nature of your family’s occupation, whatever could be harvested or slain for food often ended up sent to the markets to try and keep up with the land payments. it was this necessity to help your family (an expectation of yourself as the middle child as much as your younger siblings) that kept you from attending school the day testing occurred. considered the bottom of the lowest class, nobody deemed you important enough to reschedule a test or even find you a spot for the next year’s round.

you believed the position of the testers. it was not because you felt particularly unimportant, just that there was no history of grisha in your family or few you had ever come into contact with. in fact, watching the older kids get tested was your only example of grisha power. a lack of suitable education did not help your case. so, you disregarded the event or lack thereof quickly after it passed.

however, when you pulled the tide in to help the withering crops survive one summer—out of sheer desperation—you could no longer ignore the possibility. the land only needed to close in to the sound by a few feet in order for the water to saturate the fields properly. it could have been a trick of a weary mind. you might not have even realized what had happened if not for your father’s startled gasp.

he muttered a single word, grisha. anything else was unintelligible under his breath—likely a slew of curses. he had even less of an education than you and your siblings. for months, you pleaded for your parents to pretend as if nothing had changed. your oldest brother knew the word for it: tidemaker. one of his best friend’s at school, their older sister had been one. but, she had been taken away. you could not imagine leaving your fields and the sun that hung above them.

you did not want to be a danger to your family, what with the way in which discovered grisha were treated in kerch’s cities. you could only hide for so long. in addition to this worry, you believed by using this resource, you could find better pay to send home. it was not the second army you desired to join but perhaps, some freelance work.

the volkvony was much larger than the scattered fishing boats dotting the coast. even those you saw rarely, the docks being miles outside your town. the pirateer’s vessel and those occupying it radiated power. the reminder of your own ability did little to ease your anxiety.

you mother’s final parting words rang in your head, and you held onto the echo for as long as you could.

“you are a fierce force to be reckoned with, mijn dochter.”

right now with your knees knocking and shoulders shaking, you hardly felt it. your mother often remarked you showed courage in different ways. you might have paled at standing up to the bully that had broken your sister’s arm as a child and allowed your eldest brother to physically retaliate, but your calm nature quieted her cries as you held her gently, waiting for help. you knew that even when he did not verbally express it, your father still appreciated how you took it upon yourself to care for the little ones, handle the crises at home. you made life work for everybody.

your littlest brother, espen, would think you were strong despite the obvious nerves riddling your form. before you left, he hugged you goodbye with all of the strength his two-year-old body could muster, imbuing you with it. his childlike magic satiated any apprehension that came your way on the voyage to the boat’s docking in ketterdam—a city’s whose reputation limited your visits to three occasions in eighteen years. and when it faded, because it always did, you held tight to baby noa’s fairly like giggles, each one of her accompanied smiles locked carefully away in your heart.

even with living a life largely locked on land, the water brought a unique sense of calm to your restless spirit. to any onlooker, your closed eyes and deep breaths by the banks could be attributed to the anticipation of adventure. however, anyone who truly knew your heart would understand the greater impact of the tides. they might even notice the slight curl of your lip or scrunch of your nose, the actions of concentration supporting the delicate ripples of waves on the edge of the sound.

a voice from behind you nearly caused you to jump right off of the dock. one might think that growing up in a household of ten, you would be painfully aware of your surroundings. that could not be father from the case. you did not intend to walk through life stuck in your own head, but it was a habit.

“we’re boarding now,” the same person spoke again, “you’re our new tidemaker, right?”

“that’s right,” you annunciated softly with a nod of your head.

now having stepped forward, you identified the figure to be a girl a few years your elder. with short cropped hair and a glint in her eyes, she intimidated you. however, her tone was kind and seemed welcoming.

“i’m tamar and that,” she extended a hand to point, “is my brother toyla. heartrenders.”

you nodded again, rolling your lips into your mouth. following behind her, you strung your bag over your shoulder and avoided the more worn planks on the dock. the wood was speckled with age.

“how long have you been in the harbor?” you questioned, genuine curiosity in your words.

“only a few days,” she replied without turning her head, opting to keep her gaze ahead as she weaved through the crowd, “ketterdam intrigues sturmhond, but he never keeps us here for too long.”

recognizing the captain’s name who had graciously offered you a position onboard the volkvolny only two days prior, you continued after tamar. you remembered his crooked jaw and nose that had obviously been broken before. however, the ease of his smile and light in his eyes gave you the push to accept. he had approached you in the spot which you had stood only this morning and caught you in a similar position. he had been uniquely attentive.

the way he revealed that he had caught onto your ability with the ripples in the shallow water still caught you by surprise and perhaps, amusement. he had asked you to help him skip a rock. you smiled at the memory now, a small but authentic one only for yourself.

“are all of the hands grisha?” you asked another question, careful to lower your voice.

home to various brothels, pleasure houses, and gambling dens, as well as gangs, ketterdam could trap grisha in servitude if they were not vigilant. this and the general boisterous nature of the city were largely your reasons for avoiding it. you preferred the tranquility and predictability of the countryside, where all that stood out among the plains were the occasional rolling hill and far away slopes of mountain.

your older brother coen studied in the most acceptable part of the city on a scholarship, the only one of your siblings (including yourself) that showed enough intellectual promise to merit pursuing an education over farm work. the only other member of your family to dare encounter the barrel was lotte. given she was now estranged and likely involved in gang work, her possible presence did little to soothe you.

“oh, no,” tamar answered, “in fact, most aren’t. we try and keep it quiet.”

humming in response, you used the handrail to board the ship. you took a deep breath to quell any remaining anxiety. once your feet touched the hull, there would be no room for fear or at least, any expression of it. you were used to keeping to yourself, your head down and hands working.

the salt air filled your lungs easily, and you were greedy for more. it left a pleasant enough taste in your mouth. you realized you were content here and wondered if you might even find happiness on the ship.

after showing you to the quarters you would share with two other girls, you straightened your cot and placed your bag underneath it. you made quick work of braiding your hair back, pacing the room as you did so. there was work to be done, and you would be sure to see to it.

grounding yourself to steady the spinning of the room, you faced your things one more time and headed out to the deck above. for once, you were surrounded by people like you. while this did not quite give you confidence, there was a semblance of reassurance flickering in your heart.

you no longer needed to be perfect for everyone else. though your family was still largely your responsibility as they would receive a portion of your wages, you no longer had to pace your interactions with each member. if you wanted to, you could be as loud and lively as the rest of the crew surely was. scrunching your nose at the thought, you stepped by an empty crate and up the stairs. you liked being quiet. it gave you the headspace to observe others.

a long life of making the lives of your younger siblings and parents easier gave you little time to think for yourself or about yourself. maybe this adventure was all a farce to finally please yourself, to learn to believe in yourself, but you had forced it to be about the others. always placing the focus away. that was an easier story to believe rather than accepting that maybe, you were doing something for yourself and maybe, that was okay.

perhaps it should have made you nervous, but you were a shy version of excited at the idea of testing out each variant of yourself to see which one you believed in most. you had shown everyone else what they wanted or needed to see for many years. you needed to live for yourself now.

you had a right to the sea and you were determined to take advantage of it.

[iheartbookbran]

Hey, asoiaf fandom, quick question here but am I the only one who gets deeply uncomfortable by the tone of the discussions surrounding Arya and her relationship with traditional gender roles/feminity? Not only because of the wrong assumptions a lot of people have about Arya looking down on traditional feminine activities like sewing, which she most definitely doesn’t, but also because there’s very glaring inherent classism in those claims.

Not only has Arya (that is, book Arya) never looked down on other women or the work that historically has been associated with them, but she has also partaked in said work herself.

Several times, in fact, and across numerous of her POV chapters:

Whatever names Harren the Black had meant to give his towers were long forgotten. (...) Arya slept in a shallow niche in the cavernous vaults beneath the Wailing Tower, on a bed of straw. She had water to wash in whenever she liked, a chunk of soap. The work was hard, but no harder than walking miles every day. Weasel did not need to find worms and bugs to eat, as Arry had; there was bread every day, and barley stews with bits of carrot and turnip, and once a fortnight even a bite of meat.—aCoK, Arya VII.

Weese used Arya to run messages, draw water, and fetch food, and sometimes to serve at table in the Barracks Hall above the armory, where the men-at-arms took their meals. But most of her work was cleaning. The ground floor of the Wailing Tower was given over to storerooms and granaries, and two floors above housed part of the garrison, but the upper stories had not been occupied for eighty years. Now Lord Tywin had commanded that they be made fit for habitation again. There were floors to be scrubbed, grime to be washed off windows, broken chairs and rotted beds to be carried off. The topmost story was infested with nests of the huge black bats that House Whent had used for its sigil, and there were rats in the cellars as well . . . and ghosts, some said, the spirits of Harren the Black and his sons.—aCoK, Arya VII.

"I saw you looking at me." Weese wiped his fingers on the front of her shift. Then he grabbed her throat with one hand and slapped her with the other. "What did I tell you?" He slapped her again, backhand. "Keep those eyes to yourself, or next time I'll spoon one out and feed it to my bitch." A shove sent her stumbling to the floor. Her hem caught on a loose nail in the splintered wooden bench and ripped as she fell. "You'll mend that before you sleep," Weese announced as he pulled the last bit of meat off the capon. When he was finished he sucked his fingers noisily, and threw the bones to his ugly spotted dog.

"Weese," Arya whispered that night as she bent over the tear in her shift. "Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling," she said, calling a name every time she pushed the bone needle through the undyed wool. "The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Gregor, Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei."—aCoK, Arya VII.

This last quote is interesting, because given Arya’s circumstances in which she has to hide her own identity, she’s not warranted the protection a high-born lady would usually receive, and her punishments are often not only related to physical abuse, but through forced labor as well.

She spent the next few hours tending to the lord's chambers. She swept out the old rushes and scattered fresh sweet-smelling ones, laid a fresh fire in the hearth, changed the linens and fluffed the featherbed, emptied the chamber pots down the privy shaft and scrubbed them out, carried an armload of soiled clothing to the washerwomen, and brought up a bowl of crisp autumn pears from the kitchen. When she was done with the bedchamber, she went down half a flight of stairs to do the same in the great solar, a spare drafty room as large as the halls of many a smaller castle. The candles were down to stubs, so Arya changed them out.

(...)

The afternoon was still young by the time she was done, so Arya took herself off to the godswood.—aCoK, Arya VX.

She got along well enough with the cook. Umma would slap a knife into her hand and point at an onion, and Arya would chop it. Umma would shove her toward a mound of dough, and Arya would knead it until the cook said stop (stop was the first Braavosi word she learned). Umma would hand her a fish, and Arya would bone it and fillet it and roll it in the nuts the cook was crushing. (..) Some nights Umma spiced the fish with sea salt and cracked peppercorns, or cooked the eels with chopped garlic. Once in a great while the cook would even use some saffron. Hot Pie would have liked it here, Arya thought.—aFoC, Arya II.

She had other tasks besides helping Umma. She swept the temple floors; she served and poured at meals; she sorted piles of dead men's clothing, emptied their purses, and counted out stacks of queer coins.—aFoC, Arya II.

And the reason this—hugely important, imo—part of her narrative is so often ignored by fandom discourse is very obvious to me. It is because unlike the activities traditionally performed by upper-class, rich women, which are very frequently glorified by fans (alongside other aspects of the feudalist system that honestly would take way too much time and effort to unpack, but I digress), lower class feminity is simply not as pretty, the hard labor these women would be subjected to is not aesthetically pleasing. Don’t get me wrong, they were abused by the patriarchy the same way upper-class women were, but their suffering was never romanticized or immortalized in a song, their victimhood wouldn’t be cause for outrage, and more often than not, their work and existence would be completely erased.

Arya’s feminity doesn’t cease to exist just because she has to do hard work associated with lower-class women, or because she expresses interests that differ from what is usually expected of rich women. Her experiences as a girl, being exposed to all kinds of abuse perpetrated by men can’t be simply swept under the rug. A great deal of her journey is related to how much the plight of the lower classes matters, that children like Mycah, like Layna, like Gendry and Lommy and Hot Pie and Jeyne Poole, they all matter. And yes, sometimes Arya’s Stark name has given her protection, but other times, the majority of the time, she’s not been in a position in which she can use it as shield, and she’s had to work with her hands and fight for her life and has seen and done horrible things, or else the only other option for her was to end dead on a ditch, like countless other women and children the world has deemed too unimportant to mourn.

[bobafetts-princess]

Daily Thots: Paz Vizsla Edition

I can’t stop thinking about brat-tamer King (second only to Boba) Paz Vizsla and @anxiety-riddled-mando’s brat-taming Paz fic has been on my brain ALL FUCKING DAY so here you go! (I’m on mobile otherwise I’d tag it 😭)

Look. Being a brat wasn’t normally your thing.

You were GOOD. Obedient. Submissive. Always the best for Paz.

Even if you got a little bratty, a few sharp words or even a sharp slap to your bare ass put you back in line QUICK

He never worried whether you were going to start pissing him off to get what you wanted

USUALLY if you wanted or needed him, kneeling next to his knees was enough, okay?

But today? For some fucking reason you woke up in a MOOD today

You were ready to pick a fight and you didn’t care who knew it

You found him in the armory, where you predicted he’d be, cleaning all his gear and weapons

You paused, taking the moment to admire his large form

His broad shoulders and the way they were even broader in his gear

(Also the way they felt under your hands and the way they looked decorated with your fingernail marks)

His hands, the sheer size of them and the way they handled his weapons with ease

(Also the way they felt wrapped around your throat)

His thick thighs, the muscles of them balancing his blaster as he cleaned the mechanics

(Also the way it felt, rubbing the apex of your thighs as you rode it)

But then he looked up at you, giving you a short nod and turning back to his work

Your temper flared, you weren’t in the fucking MOOD to be ignored for something that could easily WAIT until later

It wasn’t like everyone didn’t know you were courting (and fucking)

So there was no MAKER FORSAKEN REASON for him to be acting like you weren’t together

So you stomped over to him, pulling the blaster from his hands and setting it aside

“I need you”

“I’m busy”

“I fucking NEED you, Vizsla” you growled, sitting down on his thigh

But he pushes you off, setting you back on your own two feet

“I said no, behave.” His tone is sharp and normally that would put you back in your place but not today

“I don’t fucking care. I need you” you snapped, taking on a tone you never used with him and his visor snapped up in surprise at you

“Watch your mouth, GIRL, or you’re going to regret it” they way he says it leaves no room for argument but you’re gonna push his fucking buttons today

“I’ll go find Djarin then, I’m sure HE can fuck me the way I need” you toss the empty threat at him like a grenade and he doesn’t answer immediately so you keep fucking talking

“Or maybe even the Armorer, I’ll bet her strap game is better than what you’ve going on,” you snarl this time, moving to walk away from him and take care of yourself but his hand is a vice on your wrist as it darts out to keep you in place

“WHAT did you fucking say to me, girl?”

“I said, I’ll bet the Armorer can fuck me better than you can, Vizsla, and she doesn’t even have a real cock,” you told him, deciding to go full fucking stupid and dig your hole all the way down

“You’re really trying to get me riled up today, aren’t you, little one?” He almost sounds amused at your defiance, but the hard hand on your wrist makes you question that

“I fucking told you. I need you. And you won’t do anything about it,” you snapped at him, softening slightly as his hand came up to cup your cheek

His fingers release your wrist and he issues a soft command

“Go back to your quarters, I’ll be there shortly.”

“Shortly as in a few minutes or shortly as in eventually?” You questioned, knowing Paz’s idea of shortly and yours could differ greatly

“Let me finish cleaning my weapons and I’ll be there” he promises, pushing you to the side again for something unimportant.

“Fuck off, Vizsla. I’m always there when you need but now that I need you, it’s not as important.” You snap, snatching your wrist back and stalking off

You realize fully that you’re going to pay for your next move but Paz needs to understand you’re serious

This ended up MUCH longer than I’d thought so there will be a part two tomorrow!

Tags: @tibbietibbs @ahoeformando @ladyjenny19 @adonishxney @keeper-of-the-sarlacc-pit @maybege @zombiexbody @sammiesweet @fuckyeahbeskar @bvcketfvcker @ajeff855

Masterlist | Taglist

[eunoiaflow3r]

My Baby

A/N: wrote this kinda quick...but I kinda like it

Warning: angst, fluff, kinda short, mistakes. fem!reader.

Word Count: 1.4k

Request: oscar and the reader have like a fwb type relationship but one day he forgets to wrap up and now she’s pregnant and doesn't know what to do and he panics but then proposes to her.

Summary: y/n’s scared to tell oscar that she’s pregnant with his baby.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your head ached.

Your hair was messy, and you were crying and the stick in your hands showed two lines and you weren't sure what to do. Positive. You tested positive. You didn't know what you were going to do. How did things even get this far? How had you let yourself fall this deep?

-

It had started with a kiss.

A stupid, drunk kiss at a Santos party that shouldn't have happened. He shouldn't have kissed you, he shouldn't have taken you to his room, and he shouldn't have made you feel like you were the only woman in the world when he rocked his hips against yours.

Because no, you couldn't stop there. You two couldn't have enough of each other.

You felt the other so irresistible that you two had decided to just have sex - no strings attached. And strings meant feelings, love, and dates. Because that's not what either of you wanted.

Nope, for a while, mind blowing sex with Oscar did it for you. 

Until it didn't.

When it all started you both agreed you'd stop if either of you caught feelings. Feelings were messy, feelings were unimportant. The only thing that was important was that hour of beautiful pleasure you felt  before going back to your normal lives.

But something changed.

You found yourself wanting more of Oscar - not just what his dick had to offer. You realized that you wanted to go on dates, and you wanted to wake up next to him in the mornings, and you wanted to go to the drive-in with him to make out. That's just not what friends do, and that's not what friends with benefits do. 

So you knew that you had to end it.

Many, many times you tried to talk to him and tell him you had to break things off, but every time you tried, his lips were glued to your neck which seemed to always make you shut up on the spot. 

And this went on a little while longer until you started getting sick. 

Surprisingly, Oscar helped anyway he could. At first you both thought you were hungover - nevertheless he held your hair back (if needed) every time you threw up. He made sure that any food you wanted, you had in an instant. Unfortunately, this only made you love him more - and you knew for sure that you had to distance yourself.

So you did. You stopped returning his texts and his calls. You stopped going to his house, and at first he didn't even notice.He showed up to your apartment one night to ask what was up, but all you told him was that whatever the two of you had - had to end right then and there.

You stopped drinking, and when you noticed you were still throwing up, you took the test. So here you were, on the bathroom floor, crying, pregnant, and loveless trying to figure out what you were going to do.

-

Oscar was restless. He hasn't been sleeping.

At first he couldn't figure out why he was feeling this way, but he soon figured it out when it came to now a week without you. He missed you. He knew the two of you were never serious, but he wished you were. He wanted to take you on dates, and cook for you, and tell you that you looked beautiful every morning but he couldn't.

It was a part of your agreement that neither of you would catch feelings.

So here he was angry, hurt, and tired because in this time without you, he's realized now more than ever that he is in love with you. He's realized that it was never just sex with you, (even though it was great), and that you two shouldn't have made that stupid pact in the firstplace. 

ut now you weren't talking to him and he wasn't sure what to do.

-

Days turned into a week, a week into a month, and a month into four. With everything going on, time had moved so fast, which only made things worse for the both of you. The more time apart, the more you realized that you loved him but there was nothing you could do. Nothing you could say. Plus, how would he even react? Did he even want a kid? 

-

A harsh knock was repeatedly thrown on your door that startled you awake. Who could that be?

You fixed yourself as best you could in the time you had to a broken looking Oscar. His eyes were sad, and his clothes wrinkled, and he wouldn't look you in the eyes. Just the sight of him made you tear up, as of over these past few months you tried your hardest to ignore and forget him.

"Uhm, come in."

Without looking at you, he shuffled inside, taking in his surroundings. Random candy wrappers were strewn across the counter, books he couldn't read the titles of scattered across the table, and a large unopened box leant against the wall. He went over to the table to look at the books, and they all had something to do with pregnancies. 

'Shit.' you thought. You should have put those away.

He walked over to the box and noticed that it was for a crib.

"What the hell?" He goes and grabs a book and holds it up. "Are you?"

 You nod, tears filling your eyes.

"And it's?"

"It's yours Oscar." You sigh. "The baby is yours."

His expression turns to hurt, and he sits down at the table looking away from you. A baby? 

A baby? He was going to be a father? And why did you keep this from him?

"How long have you known?" He's looking directly at you now. 

"When I ended things."

"So for four months..four fucking months you knew you were pregnant with my child, and you didn't think to fucking tell me?"

"Oscar I'm sorry, I -" 

"You're sorry?"

You couldn't look at him and instead walked a few steps away and covered your face with your hands trying not to cry. 

He was so angry with you that he was one the verge of crying as well, but when he heard the sobs leave your body, he got up and wrapped his arms around you causing you to bury your face into his chest.

He said nothing for a moment until he brought down his hand to rest on your growing stomach.

"You should have told me."

You nodded, agreeing with him - more tears falling down your face.

"So why didn't you?" He was hurt. He couldn’t fathom any reason that you might have wanted to keep his child from him. Was it because of the gang? Because he was dangerous? Were you scared of him? Did you think he would hurt his kid?

"I was scared you didn't want the baby, I thought the gang - well I thought since you didn't want to be with me, you wouldn't want my baby, and that you just cared about your gang and that's it."

He shook his head as tears rolled down his face and he pulled you tighter against you.

"I've been miserable without you. You hear me? I've gone fucking crazy without you making fun of me and shit." He starts rubbing your stomach. "That stupid gang don't mean shit to me compared to you and my child."

You smiled. "You mean it?" you cried, your voice cracking.

"Of course I fucking mean it, I wouldn't have bought a god-damned ring if I hadn't."

You gasped, pushing him away from you. "You bought a ring?!"

"Baby, I can't imagine anyone else by my side, and it took me four months to realize it. It took me four months to realize that without you I am nothing, and without a ring on your finger calling you mine, I will always be nothing. Because without you, I am lost. I love you so much mamas and I can't believe you are carrying my child. I love you. And I always will - I always have. 

And even though we shouldn't have made that deal, I'm glad we did because we wouldn't be right here right now, and I wouldn't be asking you to marry me."

Oscar got on his knee, one hand resting on your stomach, the other holding yours gently.

"Y/N M/N L/N will you make me the luckiest man, and father, and be my wife?"

You were both full on crying now, and you managed a yes through sobs.

"Well I - I didn't bring the ring with me 'cause I -"

"Oh shut up." 

And you kissed him. His arms went gently around your waist and ke kissed you with everything he had. Four long months of desperation, and hurt, and pain eased away as he held you like he would never let you go.

Because he wouldn’t.

Never again would he leave yours and his child’s side..for anything.

~~~~~~

[dwellordream]

“...Because if we want to ask “What was life as a woman like in Sparta?” we really need to ask “What was life like as a helot woman?” because they represent c. 85% of all of our women and c. 42.5% of all of our humans. And I want to stress the importance of this question, because there are more helot women in Sparta than there are free humans in Sparta (as from last time, around 15% of Sparta is free – men and women both included – but 42.5% of Sparta consists of enslaved helot women). If we want to say absolutely anything about the condition of life in Sparta, we simply cannot ignore such a large group of human beings living in Sparta.

...The primary economic occupation of helot women was probably in food preparation and textile production. And if I know my students, I know that the moment I start talking about the economic role of women in ancient households, a very specific half of the class dozes off. Wake Up. There is an awful tendency to see this ‘women’s work’ as somehow lesser or optional. These tasks I just listed are not economically marginal, they are not unimportant. Yes, our ancient sources devalue them, but we should not.

First: let’s be clear – women in ancient households (or early modern households, or modern households) were not idle. They had important jobs every bit as important as the farming, which had to get done for the family to survive. I’ve estimated elsewhere that it probably takes a minimum of something like 2,220 hours per year to produce the minimum necessary textile goods for a household of five (that’s 42 hours a week spinning and weaving, every week). Most of that time is spent spinning raw fibers (either plant fibers from flax to make linen, or animal fibers from sheep to make wool). The next step after that is weaving those threads into fabric. Both weaving and spinning are slow, careful and painstaking exercises.

Food preparation is similarly essential, as you might imagine. As late as 1900, food preparation and cleanup consumed some 44 hours per week on average in American households, plus another 14 hours dedicated to laundry and cleaning (Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness (1993)). So even without child rearing – and ask any parent, there is a TON of work in that – a small peasant household (again, five members) is going to require something like 100 hours per week of ‘woman’s work’ merely to sustain itself.

Now, in a normal peasant household, that work will get split up between the women of the house at all ages. Girls will typically learn to spin and weave at very young ages, at first helping out with the simpler tasks before becoming fully proficient (but of course, now add ‘training time’ as a job requirement for their mothers). But at the same time (see Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (2005) on this) women often also had to engage in agricultural labor during peak demand – sowing, harvesting, etc. That’s a lot of work to go around. Remember, we’re positing a roughly 5 individual household, so those 100 hours may well be split between only two people (one of whom may be either quite old or quite young and thus not as productive).

...Let’s start textiles. Spartiate women do not engage in textile manufacture (Xen. Lac. 1.4) as noted previously, nor do they seem (though the evidence here is weaker) to engage in food preparation. In the syssitia, at least, the meals are cooked and catered by helot slaves (Plut. Lyc. 12.5, 12.7). In the former case, we are told explicitly by Xenophon that it is slave labor (he uses the word doule, “female slave,” which clearly here must mean helot women) which does this.

So helot women now have an additional demand on their time and energy: not only the 2,200 hours for clothing their own household, but even more clothing the spartiate household they are forced to serve. If we want to throw numbers at this, we might idly suppose something like five helot households serving one spartiate household, suggesting something like a 20% increase in the amount of textile work. We are not told, but it seems a safe bet that they were also forced to serve as ‘domestics’ in spartiate households. That’s actually a fairly heavy and onerous imposition of additional labor on these helot women who already have their hands full.

We also know – as discussed last time – that helot households were forced to turn over a significant portion of their produce, perhaps as high as half. I won’t drag you all through the details now – I love agricultural modeling precisely because it lets us peak into the lives of folks who don’t make it into our sources – but I know of no model of ancient agriculture which can tolerate that kind of extraction without bad consequences. And I hear the retort already coming: well, of course it couldn’t have been that bad, because there were still helots, right? Not quite, because that’s not how poor farming populations work. It can be very bad and still leave you with a stable – but miserable – population.

Let’s talk about seasonal mortality. As the primary food-preparers in the helot household, helot women are going to have the job of managing a constrained but variable flow of food through an extended family that may include their husband, children, older relatives, etc. Given the low productivity of ancient farming, this is a tricky operation in systems where rents are extracting 10% or 20% of the farming yield every year, but given the demands of supporting an entirely unproductive class of elites, it becomes even harder. The key task here is stretching one harvest through the next planting to the next harvest, every year. That means carefully measuring out the food consumption of the household against the available reserves, making sure there is enough to last over the winter. If too much food is extracted by the elites, or the harvest fails or (likely) some combination, the family will run into shortage.

Now, the clever helot woman knows this – peasants, male and female, are canny survivors, not idiots, and they plan for these things (seriously, far too many of my students seem to instinctively fall into the trap of assuming serfs, peasants, etc. are idiots who don’t know what they are doing. These people have survived for generations with very few resources, often in situations of significant volatility and violence; they’re not stupid, they’re poor, and there is a difference!) – so she will have strategies to stretch out that food to try to keep herself and her family alive.

But that in turn often means inflicting a degree of malnutrition on the family unit, in order to avoid outright starvation – stretching the food out. It also probably means a lot of related strategies too: keeping up horizontal ties with other farming households so that there is someone to help you out in a shortage, for instance. Canny survivors. That said – especially in a situation where shortages hit everyone at once – a shortfall in food is often unavoidable.

But, we need to note two things here: first: humans of different ages and conditions react to malnutrition differently. Robust adults can tolerate and recover from periods of malnutrition relatively easily. For pregnant women, malnutrition increases all sorts of bad complications which will probably kill the child and may kill the mother. For the elderly and very young children, malnutrition dramatically increases mortality (read: lots of dead children and grandparents), as compromised immune systems (weakened by malnutrition) lead to diseases that the less robust old and young cannot fight off.

Second – and this is the sad and brutal part – feeding the agricultural workers, meaning the adult males (and to a lesser extent, adult females), has to come first, because they need to make it to the planting with sufficient strength to manage the backbreaking labor of the next crop. If it’s a choice between the survival of the family unit, and taking a chance that you lose Tiny Tim, our helot mother knows she has to risk Tiny Tim.

So in a good year, there is food enough for the entire household. Families expand, children grow up, the elderly part of the family makes it through another winter, imparting wisdom and comfort. But the bad years carry off the very young and the very old (and the as-yet unborn). For children who make it out of infancy, a series of bad years in early childhood – quite a common thing – are likely to leave them physically stunted. It was very likely that most helots were actually physically smaller and weaker than their better nourished spartiate masters for this reason (this is a pattern visible archaeologically over a wide range of pre-modern societies).

The population doesn’t contract, because the mortality isn’t hitting adults of child-bearing age nearly as hard, meaning that in future good years, there will be new children. In fact, societies stuck in this sad equilibrium tend to ‘bounce back’ demographically fairly quickly, because massive external mortality (say from war or plague) frees up land and agricultural surplus which leads to better nutrition which leads to less infant mortality which leads to rapid recovery.

...And so helot women must have spent a lot of time worrying about food scarcity, worrying if their sick and malnourished children or parents would make it through winter. Grieving for the lost child, the lost pregnancy, the parent taken too quickly. Probably all while being forced to do domestic labor for the spartiates, who were both the cause of her misery and at the same time did no labor at all themselves and yet were better fed than her family would ever be. Because peasant labor of any kind is so precariously balanced, we can really say that every garment woven for the spartiates, every bushel turned over, represented in some real sense an increase in that grief. Subsistence farming is always hard – but the Spartan system seems tailor made to push these subsistence farmers deeper and deeper into misery.

The instances of brutality against the helots – the murders and humiliations – which our sources preserve are directed at helot men, but it seems an unavoidable assumption that helot women were also treated poorly. Spartiate women were, after all, products of the same society which trained young men to ambush and murder helot men at night for no reason at all – it strikes me as an enormous and unsubstantiated leap to assume they were, for some reason, kind to their own female domestic servants.

In fact, the one thing we do know about spartiates – men and women alike – is that they seem to have held all manual laborers in contempt, regarding farming, weaving and crafting as tasks unbefitting of free people. I keep returning to it, but I want to again mention the spartiate woman who attempts to shame an Ionian woman because the latter is good at weaving, which in the mind of the spartiate, was labor unbecoming of a free person (Plut. Mor. 241d, note Xen. Lac. 1.4). The same attitude comes out of a spartiate man who, on seeing an Athenian convicted for idleness in court, praised the man, saying he had only been convicted of being free (Plut. Mor. 221c). This is a society that actively despises anyone who has to work for a living – even free people. Why wouldn’t that extend to its treatment of helot women?

To this, of course, we must add now the krypteia and incidents like the 2,000 murdered helots recounted by Thucydides (Thuc. 4.80). While the murdered are men, we need to also think of the survivors: the widowed wives, orphaned daughters, grieving mothers. This must have been part of the pattern of life for helot women as well – the husband or brother or cousin or father or son who went out to the fields one day and didn’t come back. The beautiful boy who was too beautiful and was thus murdered by the spartiates because – as we are told – they expressly targeted the fittest seeming helots in an effort at reverse-eugenics (Plut. Lyc. 28.3).

Finally, we need to talk about the rape. We are not told that spartiate men rape helot women, but it takes wilful ignorance to deny that this happened. First of all, this is a society which sends armed men at night into the unarmed and defenseless countryside (Hdt. 4.146.2; Plut. Lyc. 28.2; Plato, Laws 633). These young men were almost certainly under the normal age of marriage and even if they weren’t, their sexual access to their actual spouse was restricted.

Moreover (as we’ll see in a moment) there were clearly no rules against the sexual exploitation of helot women, just like there were no laws of any kind against the murder of helot men. To believe that these young men – under no direction, constrained by no military law, facing no social censure – did not engage in sexual violence requires disbelieving functionally the entire body of evidence about sexual violence in combat zones from all of human history. Anthropologically speaking, we can be absolutely sure this happened and we can be quite confident (and ought to be more than quite horrified) that it happened frequently.

But we don’t need to guess or rely on comparative evidence, because this rape was happening frequently enough that it produced an identifiable social class. The one secure passage we have to this effect is from Xenophon, who notes that the Spartan army marching to war included a group he calls the nothoi – the bastards (Xen. Hell. 5.3.9). The phrase typically means – and here clearly means – boys born to slave mothers. There is a strong reason to believe that these are the same as the mothakes or mothones which begin appearing with greater frequently in our sources. Several of these mothakes end up being fairly significant figures, most notably Lysander (note Plut. Lys. 2.1-4, where Plutarch politely sidesteps the question of why Lysander was raised in poverty and seemed unusually subservient and also the question of who his mother was).”

- Bret Devereaux, “This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part III: Spartan Women.”

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel and the Great Tree Part 1

We’re now finally at the mid-season finale of season two, and it’s easily the best episode of this season. That however doesn’t mean that it’s not flawed, so here we go... 

Summary: The group makes it to the Great Tree, only to be confronted by a new adversary: Hector, the brother of Adira, the most dangerous member of the Brotherhood; sworn to keep all from reaching the Dark Kingdom. Despite all that has happened, Rapunzel is determined to continue on toward the Dark Kingdom to uncover the truth behind her destiny. As they navigate through the Great Tree, Rapunzel discovers the Moonstone incantation which overwhelms the magical powers of the Sundrop in her blonde hair and causes injury and weakness to those around her. 

The Brotherhood Is Such a Wasted Concept 

We have a group of highly trained warriors, directly connected to the series main macguffin, who consider each other siblings, who all have conflicting goals, and they’re all severely underdeveloped to the point of ridiculousness. 

For starters, in a show all about pushing sibling rivalries as parallels to the two main characters, it utterly fails to show the only other siblings who are actually connected to the plot acting like actual siblings. 

Adira and Hector should be a parallel to Cass and Rapunzel in this very episode. One that actually ties into the narrative, yet outside of calling each other brother/sister/brethren they don’t act like family; even feuding family. Adira also fails to treat Quirin, Varian, Edmund, and Eugene as family. She shows no real concern for any of them despite saving her home (which would included her family) from the rocks being her main goal. She should be just as every bit as invested in saving Quirin as Varian. Which is yet another reason why Varian should have been S2 and another entry point for him in the show’s plot. 

As for the rest of the Brotherhood, they never even interact at all. I don’t think anyone tells either Edmund or Hector what has happened to Quirin or Varian. And Edmund clearly didn’t inform Hector of Eugene, even though he logically should have. And did any of them know if Edmund was alive, despite Edmund having the means to communicate with the outside world with the crows? 

What we’re left with is a bunch of holes in the story, because there’s now a bunch of holes in everyone’s motivations and their actions never quite line up. 

And before you say, ‘well they’re not that important’, or ‘they’re aren’t meant to be a real family’; then that is in of itself a flaw because they should be. Not making them found family undermines Raps and Cass being found family, as it undermines every other sibling parallel in the show, and those parallels are the only build up we have to the sister reveal in S3.  

It also undermines the moonstone plot and the whole reason why season two exists. Don't introduce things that connect back to your story and not make them important. In fact don't introduce unimportant elements in a plot driven show like this period. 

Another Indication of the Timeline

As stated before, Tangled is really bad at indicating the passage of time, despite the passage of time being a big plot point. We’re now a ‘few months’ past the island, which itself was 6 weeks, and before that it was several weeks to maybe even a few months before getting to the island... 

So when does this take place? Well we were told that season two takes place over the course of a year by the creator, and that this is the mid-season finale so 6 months since SotSD sounds the most plausible. We also see fall trees dotted around like we did during the first half of season one. Which is the only visual indicator we get of changing seasons in the show, but it’s too understated to be properly noticeable most of the time. 

However, the crew themselves can’t even seem to agree if Rapunzel’s Return is her birthday or not, so if you’ve heard conflicting sources, it’s because this shit wasn’t planned properly first. But all dialogue and visual cues point to the first half of season two being at least 4 to 6 months. With 6 being the most logical placement.  

Just a Reminder, that Hook Foot Is Still Useless 

If all you were going to have him do is whine like a child during the only plot important episode that he is in, then why not just replace him with an actual child? 

It takes more work to leave Varian out of season two and force Hook Foot in his place, than it does just to write Varian in. There were so many potential entry points for his character, that the one they would up going with was the least natural to the characters and the story they were trying to tell. And even then, the Saporian take over they went with could still have worked had they handled things properly and pre-planned that stuff out. 

But they didn’t. By all accounts S2 was a hasty re-write to get rid of Varian and Hook Foot was shoehorned in as his replacement at the last minute. And it’s the most utterly baffling creative decision I have ever witnessed in my life. There was zero logical reason for it. 

This Plot Point Wasn’t Built Up Enough and It Goes Nowhere

Look, had they actually pointed out that Cass is a bodyguard now, and that this line from Raps threatens her career goals, that would make sense; or they could have explored the idea that Cass’s identity revolves around her job, and so feeling like her job is pointless makes her feel pointless therefore making her feel insecure about her future. Either of those would have been interesting jumping off points for her character arc and later conflicts. 

But that’s not what they did. 

I think that’s what they were initially trying to go for here, but it got muddled in the mess that was last minute rewrites. 

Cass obtaining her goals in season one is ignored in favor of a bland and vague validation goal from this point onwards. Her issues with Rapunzel are then boiled down to be about; not identity, agency, class, or wanting a future, but into fighting over a dead mom and how one wasn’t ‘loved enough’ apparently. Which makes no sense given what we know of Cass from previous seasons. 

Cassandra isn’t deep or complex; she is convoluted. The writing team couldn’t agree on what her goals and motivations should be, and so she performs conflicting actions throughout the story that actively undermines what was previously established and what she supposedly wants. 

Most people who try to defend the writing for Cassandra do so with this idea that because they had to work hard to ‘connect the dots’ for all these seemingly disconnected plot ideas, means that of course the writing is ‘deep’ but that’s ignoring one of the basic fundamentals of writing.   

The audience shouldn’t have to do the writer’s job! 

Having to think about a story doesn’t mean that you need to go digging around for basic information like the character’s goals or what happened when. A writer’s job is to first and foremost clearly communicate ideas to their audience. Plot and character analysis is about finding extras like, metaphors, moral messages, and coming up with fun headcanons that don't impact the wider story. Because all of the bare bones information needed to understand the story should already be there for everyone to see. 

If you gotta go into ‘analysis’ just explain the damn plot and why things are unfolding the way they do, then the story is badly written. Full stop. 

Cinderella wanting to go to the ball is a simple goal, but it’s an understandable one that anyone watching can grasp. You could go into a deeper analysis about abuse and what the ball symbolises for Cinderella’s character or how the story is an analogy for wider social issues at large, but at the end of the day everyone needs to be in agreement that, yes, Cinderella wants to go to the ball and we know why she wants to go, so that her actions in trying to get there make sense.

No one knows what Cassandra wants. Cassandra herself doesn’t know what she wants. So the ‘why’ part for what she does is never answered. 

Hector Is Wasted

As already stated, all of the Brotherhood is wasted, but Hector more so than most. Season two desperately needed an ongoing threat, a main antagonist to push the story forward. Hector should have been that antagonist. Instead he shows up for this one episode, and then in a few non-speaking cameos in S3. 

Then Why Not Just Stay With Them Adira?

We’re never given an actual reason for why Adira keeps leaving the group, and indeed doing so conflicts with her stated goal of getting Rapunzel safely to the moonstone. It’s just shoehorned in here to create ‘mystery’, but mysteries have to be answered at some point. You can’t throw something in for drama’s sake and not explain why it’s there. 

Lance’s Crush on Adira Isn’t Handled Well 

Look, this isn’t a judgment upon those who ship the characters. When I talk about relationships in the show I’m only talking about how well they are written on screen. I couldn’t care less what the fans do with them. 

Even when I discuss my personal preferences for ships, that is all that is, my personal preference. I don't give a shit if you ship something that I may dislike, or if you hate something that I do enjoy. I’m a grown up with more important things to do than worry over what a bunch strangers may write on A03 about a bunch of fictional characters, and as someone who hates bullies above all else, I’ll defend your right to make whatever content to want to because censorship is just a form of bullying and nothing else. 

No matter how gross or reprehensible I may personally find it. Different stories resonate with different people and for different reasons. I may debate your reasons, if the subject comes up, or critique professional media for the messages it puts out to the wider public, but I’ll never say you can’t like it or that you can’t make it.    

So with that stated, I don’t like Lance’s dynamic with Adira in the show and here’s my reasons for that. 

She doesn’t ever return the feelings. 

At best she tolerates him, at worse she actively kicks his butt when he gets too close, and most of the time she ignores him. Which is for good reason; she’s old enough to be his mom. Why would she be attracted to him? 

Like I’m not saying that age gaps between adults are inherently wrong; I’m saying that if there is a significant age gap then you really have to work hard to build up a reason for why the two characters would go for each other when naturally they wouldn’t be in each other’s usual sphere of dating options. Which the series never does because once again Adira is clearly not interested in him. 

This leads to Lance basically being an annoying ‘nice guy’ who can’t take a hint. Like constantly badgering someone who doesn’t want you to isn’t charming or endearing, and Lance is old enough to know this by now. 

Basically the writers just took the Varian and Cassandra dynamic from Great Expotations and slapped it onto Lance and Adira despite the fact that it made zero sense for their characters. Lance isn’t a lonely teen who desperately wants to fit in and make a connection with someone. He’s not out to prove that he is mature, nor mistakenly believes himself to be an equal to the only other girl in the kingdom that has ever talked to him that isn’t already married/seriously dating and still living at home. Adira never comes around to considering Lance a trusted friend and confidante after shoving nearly everyone else away. She doesn’t seek out his help or approval, nor tries to build him up with compliments, ect, and so forth. 

Now, I dislike the Cass and Varian ship for many, many reasons, but as they are presented on screen in the Great Expo it makes sense for why Varian would at first have an unrequited crush on her. Now after that QfaD he logically shouldn’t ever want anything to do with her but we’ll get to that later. That’s not the case with Lance and Adira; they’re both too old for such a dynamic. 

To add on to the weird factor, they’re both related to Eugene. Adira is technically Eugene’s aunt, even if she never acts like it. Lance is also the closest thing to a brother Eugene has. They don’t recognize each other as such, so if you want to say their just friends or ship them or whatever, there’s wiggle room. But the end effect is like Maya in Girl Meets World crushing on her best friend’s, Riley’s, Uncle Josh. Only even with less basis, and it wasn’t that great there either. 

Why Do you Suddenly Not Trust Adira Cass?

Forest of No Return was all about establishing trust in Adira, including with Cass at the end, so why the sudden back track? Especially since Adira hasn’t done anything but been honest with them, and has saved their butts several times now. All this does is make Cassandra look like an ass, which you don't need to be doing if you want the audience to side with her later on in the story. 

Everyone Now Knows Quirin is a Part of the Brotherhood, So There’s No Excuse For Later

It’s an odd way to state that fact, but yeah, both Cass and Raps are told directly that Quirin is in the Brotherhood, and Lance, Eugene, and Hookfoot are also present and presumably listing to this exchange. So no one in S3 has an excuse to ignore this plot point until the finale. 

This Backstory Goes Nowhere

Adira launches into this story about Zhan Tiri, Demanitus, and the Great Tree and literally none of it actually matters. It’s never brought up again after this episode. We never get any insight into why they were fighting, how Zhan Tiri corrupted a tree, what significance the tree has outside of being really big and holding some scrolls, nor how the scrolls got there, why the tree is still connect to Zhan Tiri hundreds of years later, nor how Demanitus magic spear works or what it even does exactly. 

Don’t introduce lore and then don't have it mean anything. 

Why Do you Care, Cass? 

Cassandra isn’t a lady-in-waiting anymore. We’ve already established that back in Secret of the Sun Drop and in Beyond the Corona Walls. So why should she care if Adira calls her one? Adira isn’t from Corona. Adira isn’t in charge of anything. Cassandra doesn’t even like her, so Adira’s opinion shouldn’t matter. 

This whole season we’ve seen Cass treat Adira like shit, but apparently we’re supposed to feel sorry for her when she can’t take clap back for all the grief she’s given. Is she really so immature that she can’t just ignore a petty insult for what it is? Why does she have to behave so insecure that she will jeopardize the mission or someone’s life over it? This is the deuteragonist I’m suppose to root for and relate to? I mean she’s twenty three for goodness sake! Grow the hell up woman! 

Also while we on the subject, a royal guard and a lady-in-waiting are both servants. There’s no distinction between the two beyond what duties they perform, and that would be the case regardless of what job Cass had. Rapunzel’s a princess, everyone is her servant. That’s how the class system works, and by all means Cassandra enjoys more privilege than most people in Corona. She’s the Captain’s daughter, was granted next in line for that position in SotSD, and lady-in-waiting means to the princess means she’s above all the other maids except for Crowley and Friedberg. Cass may hate her job, but she hasn’t room to complain when Faith is right there and has things much worse. 

In short making Cass suddenly indignant over being treated as lower class when she didn’t give a crap about the likes of Attila, Caine, Varian, Eugene, Lance, ect... just makes her look like a hypocrite. 

The Other Reason to Dislike Lance’s Crush is That It Hinders His Development

Lance’s arc is that he’s suppose to learn to be more responsible. This episode in particular is suppose address his habit of lying... only it doesn’t. We get no real resolvement on this point. We also never see Lance progress enough to give up on Adira and stop pursuing her even when it’s directly pointed out to him that she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. So in the end he still remains immature and irresponsible. 

Though this conversation just proves that Eugene and Lance still have the healthiest relationship in the show. They’re about to disagree or call each other’s bullshit without resorting to insults or getting violent, which is more than what any relationship involving Cass does. 

Questions With No Answers

We never learn why these scrolls are here, why they have the incantations on them and upon the wall, we don’t know who translated them, nor who came up with the incantations in the first place.

This is all important info that he series glosses over, because unlike the moonstone and sundrop, the incantations are things that someone had to have made at some point, and they could only have made them by studying what our plot macguffins are and how they work. Since the incantations are things that are also sought after by the big bad along with the magical objects, then we need to know how the big bad knows about them when no one else does. How they came about. 

Which is yet another reason why we needed a magic system in place. 

This Song is Catchy, But It Doesn’t Need To Exist

In a musical a song needs to either establish the plot, build the world, or further the characters. This song does none of those things, it’s not needed for Lance and Eugene’s relationship, it doesn’t actually resolve Lance’s plot as he is high when he apologizes for lying, and it wasn’t needed to established the man eating plant. I honestly think this song only exists so that the animators could just reuse assets they built to save on money. 

The Hurt Incantation Is the Coolest Thing In the Show! Shame It’s Not Utilized Well

People are suckered into this show by one of three things usually, ‘Let Me Make You Proud Reprise’, ‘Ready As I’ll Ever Be’, or this scene. 

It’s shocking, powerfull, and a really, really awesome concept. It’s one of the best scenes in the show, and an interesting idea that offers up a lot of story possibilities. 

Possibilities that’ll never actually be explored on screen. The hurt incantation isn’t useless, it does affect the plot, but it’s not used effectively. There was so much you could have done with this but it’s then never explored. Characters outright forget its existence even when they have no reason to, or it’s used to do things that should have been accomplished in other ways. It’s also never fully explained or expanded upon. They couldn’t even bother to give it more than one verse. 

All of the incantations are mishandled in this show, but the hurt incantation is the one that has the biggest let down. 

Conclusion 

So that ends part 1, join me tomorrow for part 2. 

[velvetdestroya]

A Vigil, On Birds and Glass. I woke up this morning still dreaming, or not fully aware of myself just yet. The sun poked through the windows, touching my face, and then a deep sadness overcame me, immediately, bringing me to life and realization- My Chemical Romance had ended. I walked downstairs to do the only thing I could think of to regain composure- I made coffee. As the drip began, in that kind of silence that only happens in the morning, and being the only one awake, I stepped outside my home, leaving the door open behind me. I looked around and began to breathe. Things looked to be about the same- a beautiful day. As I turned to step back into the house I heard sound from within, a chirp and a rustle. And I noticed a small brown bird had flown into the library. Naturally, I panicked. I knew I had to see the bird to safety and I knew I had to retain the order of things in our home, and he very well couldn’t take up residency with us. I chased him (still assuming he was a he) into my office, where I have these very large windows. Just then, and luckily, I heard Lindsey’s footsteps coming down the stairs, and naturally being composed as she is, she grabbed a blanket and stepped into the office. He was impossible to catch, and I began to open the windows, via Lindsey’s direction, only to find out they were screened. The bird began to fly into the glass, over and over and in all different directions. Smack. Smack. Smack! I heard another set of footsteps, Bandit’s, running down the stairs in anticipation of the new day. Her entrance into the situation caused just the right amount of chaos (she was very excited to meet the bird) and we found ourselves chasing the bird into the living room. Knowing that this where it could potentially get sticky, being the high ceilings and the beams to perch on, I opened the front door as Lindsey did her best to encourage our new friend out the door. After some coaxing, flying, chirping, a wrong turn back into the library and a short goodbye to Bandit, he simply hopped out the front door- taking off on the fifth leap. We cheered. I was no longer sad. I didn’t realize it, but I stopped being sad the minute that bird had come into my life, because there was something that needed doing, a small vessel to aid and an order to keep. I closed the door. I decided to write the letter I always knew I would. It is often my nature to be abstract, hidden in plain sight, or nowhere at all. I have always felt that the art I have made (alone or with friends) contains all of my intent when executed properly, and thus, no explanation required. It is simply not in my nature to excuse, explain, or justify any action I have taken as a result of thinking it through with a clear head, and in my truth. I had always felt this situation involving the end of this band would be different, in the eventuality it happened. I would be cryptic in its existence, and open upon its death. The clearest actions come from truth, not obligation. And the truth of the matter is that I love every one of you. So, if this finds you well, and sheds some light on anything, or my personal account and feelings on the matter, then it is out of this love, mutual and shared, not duty. Love. This was always my intent. My Chemical Romance: 2001-2013 We were spectacular. Every show I knew this, every show I felt it with or without external confirmation. There were some clunkers, sometimes our secondhand gear broke, sometimes I had no voice- we were still great. It is this belief that made us who we were, but also many other things, all of them vital- And all of the things that made us great were the very things that were going to end us- Fiction. Friction. Creation. Destruction. Opposition. Aggression. Ambition. Heart. Hate. Courage. Spite. Beauty. Desperation. LOVE. Fear. Glamour. Weakness. Hope. Fatalism. That last one is very important. My Chemical Romance had, built within its core, a fail-safe. A doomsday device, should certain events occur or cease occurring, would detonate. I shared knowledge of this “flaw” within weeks of its inception. Personally, I embraced it because, again, it made us perfect. A perfect machine, beautiful, yet self aware of it’s system. Under directive to terminate before it becomes compromised. To protect the idea- at all costs. This probably sounds like something ripped from the pages of a four-color comic book, and that’s the point. No compromise. No surrender. No fucking shit. To me that’s rock and roll. And I believe in rock and roll. I wasn’t shy about who I said this to, not the press, or a fan, or a relative. It’s in the lyrics, it’s in the banter. I often watched the journalists snicker at mention of it, assuming I was being sensational or melodramatic (in their defense I was most likely dressed as an apocalyptic marching-band leader with a tear-away hospital gown and a face covered in expressionist paint, so fair enough). I’m still not sure if the mechanism worked correctly, because it wasn’t a bang but a much slower process. But still the same result, and still for the same reason- When it’s time, we stop. It is important to understand that for us, the opinion on whether or not it is in fact time does not transmit from the audience. Again, this is to protect the idea for the benefit of the audience. Many a band have waited for external confirmation that it is time to hang it up, via ticket sales, chart positioning, boos and bottles of urine- input that holds no sway for us, and often too late when it comes anyway. You should know it in your being, if you listen to the truth inside you. And voice inside became louder than the music. Now- There are many reasons My Chemical Romance ended. The triggerman is unimportant, as was always the messengers- but the message, again as always, is the important thing. But to reiterate, this is my account, my reasons and my feelings. And I can assure you there was no divorce, argument, failure, accident, villain, or knife in the back that caused this, again this was no one’s fault, and it had been quietly in the works, whether we knew it or not, long before any sensationalism, scandal, or rumor. There wasn’t even a blaze of glory in a hail of bullets… I am backstage in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It is Saturday, May 19th, 2012 and I am pacing behind a massive black curtain that leads to the stage. I feel the breeze from the ocean find its way around me and I look down at my arms, which are covered in fresh gauze due to a losing battle with a heat rash, which had been a mysterious problem in recent months. I am normally not nervous before a show but I am certainly filled with angry butterflies most of the time. This is different- a strange anxiety jetting through me that I can only imagine is the sixth sense one feels before their last moments alive. My pupils have zeroed-out and I have ceased blinking. My body temperature is icy. We get the cue to hit the stage. The show is… good. Not great, not bad, just good. The first thing I notice take me by surprise is not the enormous amount of people in front of us but off to my left- the shore and the vastness of the ocean. Much more blue than I remembered as a boy. The sky is just as vibrant. I perform, semi-automatically, and something is wrong. I am acting. I never act on stage, even when it appears that I am, even when I’m hamming it up or delivering a soliloquy. Suddenly, I have become highly self-aware, almost as if waking from a dream. I began to move faster, more frantic, reckless- trying to shake it off- but all it began to create was silence. The amps, the cheers, all began to fade. All that what left was the voice inside, and I could hear it clearly. It didn’t have to yell- it whispered, and said to me briefly, plainly, and kindly- what it had to say. What it said is between me and the voice. I ignored it, and the following months were full of suffering for me- I hollowed out, stopped listening to music, never picked up a pencil, started slipping into old habits. All of the vibrancy I used to see became de-saturated. Lost. I used to see art or magic in everything, especially the mundane- the ability was buried under wreckage. Slowly, once I had done enough damage to myself, I began to climb out of the hole. Clean. When I made it out, the only thing left inside was the voice, and for the second time in my life, I no longer ignored it- because it was my own. There are many roles for all of us to play in this ending. We can be well-wishers, ill-wishers, sympathizers, vilifiers, comedians, rain clouds, victims- That last one, again, is important. I have never thought myself a victim, nor my comrades, nor the fans- especially not the fans. For us to adopt that role right now would legitimize everything the tabloids have tried to name us. More importantly, it completely misses the point of the band. And then what have we learned? With honor, integrity, closure, and on no one’s terms but our own- the door closes. And another opens- This morning I awoke early. I quickly brushed my teeth, threw on some baggy jeans, and hopped in my car. I gently sped down the 405 through the morning fog to a random parking lot in Palo Verde, where I was to meet a nice gentleman named Norm. He was older, and a self-proclaimed “hippie” but he also had the energy of Sixteen year old in a garage-rock band. The purpose of the meeting was the delivery of an amplifier into my possession. I had recently purchased the amp from him and we both agreed that shipping would jostle the tubes- so he was kind enough to meet me in the middle. A Fender Princeton Amp from 1965, non reverb. A beautiful little device. He showed me the finer points, the speaker, the non-grounded plug, the original label and the chalk mark of the man or woman who built it- “This amp talks.” he said. I smiled. We got coffee, talked about gold-foil pickups and life. We sat in the car and played each other music we had made. We parted ways, promising to stay in touch, I drove home. When I wanted to start My Chemical Romance, I began by sitting in my parent’s basement, picking up an instrument I had long abandoned for the brush- a guitar. It was a 90’s Fender Mexican Stratocaster, Lake Placid Blue, but in my youth I had decided it was too clean and pretty so I beat it up, exposing some of the red paint underneath the blue- the color it was meant to be. Adding a piece of duct tape on the pick guard, it felt acceptable. I plugged this into a baby Crate Amp with built in distortion and began the first chords of Skylines and Turnstiles. I still have that guitar, and it’s sitting next to The Princeton. He has a voice, and I would like to hear what it has to say. In closing, I want to thank every single fan. I have learned from you, maybe more than you think you’ve learned from me. My only regret is that I am awful with names and bad with goodbyes. But I never forget a face, or a feeling- and that is what I have left from all of you. I feel Love. I feel love for you, for our crew, our team, and for every single human being I have shared the band and stage with- Ray. Mikey. Frank. Matt. Bob. James. Todd. Cortez. Tucker. Pete. Michael. Jarrod. Since I am bad with goodbyes. I refuse to let this be one. But I will leave you with one last thing- My Chemical Romance is done. But it can never die. It is alive in me, in the guys, and it is alive inside all of you. I always knew that, and I think you did too. Because it is not a band- it is an idea. Love, Gerard

(Source Rock Sound March 25, 2013) [photo credit; ashley bird]

[fullhalalalchemist]

Black muslims endure a lot of racism and sometimes are ignored by the muslim community. I absolutely agree with what you're saying. After all we are all humans when we see such injustices occurring we should stand up for each other and for each other's rights.

I feel people who are saying how people arent coming together for palestine as they did for blm don't mean to target blm activists and those who spoke up about this and continue to do this despite being ignored so much. I feel they are instead targeting the media who yes were very slow on covering blm and also displayed racism when reporting injustices against the black community but I remember for some time the media were covering the issue (though in many cases misinformation was being spread about protestors being violent when this was not the case). Some of the news coverage where I am from reported the protests more truthfully and people were interviewed about blm and their experiences. However big media outlets in my country havent spoken about Palestine and given a voice to people who have studied the situation and are on the ground witnessing atrocities. When they do report Palestine again like the blm a lot of misinformation is spread and we need people to speak up about this. Through the blm movement some white people came to understand how their silence is harmful and stood with the black community. Whilst people of different backgrounds and faiths have been standing up for Palestine I have also witnessed a reluctance to do so as they believe the situation to be about a religious war or typical middle eastern terrorism and dont educate themselves. Some of those who educated themselves about the struggles black people face are silent now. Perhaps they arent aware of the situation and with the social media like instagram deleting/hiding the coverage etc maybe they havent seen what has been going on.

Just like blm was viewed a controversial topic to discuss (which is a load of bs) some are reluctant to talk about Palestine or even reblog posts as its viewed as siding with muslims and being antisemitic. There was a recent election in my home country and the outcome of the liberal party was bad due to many reasons and yet I frequently saw people on twitter saying it was because the party asked people about their views on Palestine when talking to the public and being obsessed with Palestine was a problem. As well as this celebrities who did a good thing by raising awareness of blm and also about stopping asian hate are silent now. As you said we should be supporting each other. All these issues are important to me as people are being treated unjusticely and cruely without a valid reason. This is why its upsetting to see those who say they advocate for all rights aren't saying anything about Palestine. Each issue is important and we must fight against all racism and hate so that is why I am slightly critical of those who seem to be activists in a performative way and who are silent now. At the end of the day I pray all those suffering from hardship and injustice are relieved from their suffering, finally get their long overdue human rights and be treated fairly and equally and find peace.

I apologise for the long ask. I do not mean to be rude or patronising. I agree that we should supporting each others movements after all muslims are diverse and there are black arab muslims too, instead of degrading one cause as being unimportant. I also feel that even with the blm many people were performative activists and are silent on Palestine. Have a good day.

you’re fine for the long ask!!! sorry it took me so long to get to it. thank you for your perspective. my original post was mostly targeted towards people online who are targeting other people online for their silence on palestine and using how they spoke up on blm as some sort of exchange, which i think isn’t fair and is patronizing to both movements. i haven’t really seen much in terms of asking the media to cover it.

but you are right, a lot of people are hesitant because they think it’s a religious war or your average everyday middle eastern terrorism, which also is an issue but that’s for another day. people don’t really know how deep zionism goes in the west and how much the propaganda works. that’s why spreading it on social media is the most important because western media outlets will NEVER cover this honestly. people have to see the dead bodies and destroyed buildings and grieving families to understand that the violence from israel is real and is colonial and is all one-sided. but to spread that online you shouldn’t have an ego and be entitled and say things like “oh you guys were loud for blm where are you for xyz issue??” like many poc do for their own home countries. like why target blm? why not target the white people or influencers who have large platforms? why single out this movement that will almost always stand with oppressed people everywhere anyway?? that was my thing that annoyed me most

[souriisms]

quick facts/headcanons on my portrayal of josh matthews

- due to being the youngest, by the time josh started to grow up, amy and alan were tired. which led to them not devoting as much time to josh as they had with their previous children…

- which led to josh feeling largely ignored by his parents and felt unimportant in their eyes. so, when he struggled with issues and different things, instead of talking to his parents (or anyone for that matter), he kept everything to himself. essentially, he just bottled up all his emotions and let himself suffer… alone.

- he was bullied very heavily all throughout school. for some reason, people found him an easy target. maybe it was because of the fact that he was kind of quiet, didn’t really have many friends. whatever the reason, people were merciful and poor Josh didn’t really get a break until graduation.

- he’s very insecure, like, he totally doesn’t think he’s good enough for anyone, ever. he thinks everyone deserves better than him.

- suffers from ptsd (due to the bullying), anxiety, depression.

- doesn’t deal with the problems in his head in positive ways. i.e. would prefer to get drunk or high, rather than deal with them.

- he acts confident and stuff but it’s all a lie. a show he puts on because he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s suffering. because, he thinks no one would care anyways.

- also, this isn’t angsty, but, it’s important to note that he is hella overprotective. like, don’t mess with the people he loves unless you wanna die. okay?

[raendown]

Pairing: GaaraNaruto Word count: 1587 Summary: The one where soulmates can speak inside each other's minds

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header! 

Chapter 217

He knew that Sakura was trying to get his attention, he wasn’t ignoring her just to be a dick. It was just that the voice in his head was always so much more interesting to listen to than, well, anyone else. Sakura might be one of his best friends but his soulmate was his Best Friend. As in closer than closer, better than best, been there for him through all the lowest parts of his life, only one that’s never gonna leave type of best friend. If not for the fact that they were physically incapable of trading names through their mental link Naruto would have torn the world apart years ago to find the one person who had loved him when no one else had. 

So yeah, he knew Sakura was saying something, he could even hazard a guess that it was probably important, but he willingly gave his attention over the the voice in his mind instead and smiled distantly as he listened to his ephemeral partner exclaim over all the things that were different in the new village they were apparently visiting. In his imagination he pretended it was his own village, that his soulmate could be so close within reach. He’d heard a few rumors about the chunin exams coming up but after all the years of fate dicking him about in life he didn’t have much confidence that it would start giving him breaks now; having his soulmate attend such an important event right here in his own home village was just too much of a coincidence for him to really believe it. Naruto might be filled with endless optimism but he wasn’t actually stupid. 

A sudden explosion of pain in the back of his head brought his thoughts to a screeching halt. Or maybe that was the sound of Sakura yelling in his ear.

“Can you not stay tuned in for one full conversation!?” she demanded. “This is important!” 

“Everything you say is important,” he responded without thinking. 

He didn’t realize his mistake until he saw Sasuke rolling his eyes on the other side of Sakura. What he’d actually meant was that after a childhood of being entirely alone but for the voice in his head Naruto considered his friends very important to him. Unfortunately whenever he tried to express things like that he usually ended up muddling his words, giving rise to the widely accepted rumors that he had a massive crush on his teammate. He didn’t but once the gossip had spread there was little he could do to fight it. 

“What were you saying?” He tried for an apologetic smile, though it didn’t sway her annoyance very much. 

“Ugh, I’ll tell you later. Look! Those three coming towards us, they’re wearing Suna headbands. I bet they’re here for the chunin exams!” 

“Guess so. What else would they be here for?” Despite his attempt at sounding nonchalant and cool Naruto still craned his neck as subtly as he could to get a better look at the trio walking towards them. 

As Sakura had noted, they all wore the Suna crest rather than the stylized leaf he had grown up surrounded by. None of them were really wearing it as a headband, though, even though one of them did have it stitched on the forehead of his spiky-eared hood. The girl of the group wore hers on a sash around her waist while the boy in the middle had wrapped his around the heavy strap holding a large gourd on his back. Naruto observed them all one by one, wondering if he would look as cool as them if he started wearing his headband someone different. Maybe he could stitch it in to his jacket somehow. 

He floated the suggestion by his soulmate even as he continued inspecting these three strangers. They were all fairly young but he would bet the one in the middle was closest to his own age. Since he looked the coolest out of the three Naruto was sure that meant they would definitely be fast friends. He was pretty cool himself. Just as his soulmate was answering him, asking why he wanted to wear the mark of his accomplishments somewhere different after fighting for so long to wear it in the first place, he and his teammates drew abreast of the foreign shinobi. 

Sakura was the first to introduce herself. Out of the three of them she was generally the most socially qualified to talk to strangers, no matter how enthusiastically Naruto often tried to interact with people. The girl from Suna introduced herself as Temari and then waved vaguely at the other two. The boy with the hood said his name was Kankuro. 

“Gaara,” the boy in the middle grunted. 

It was only a single word, two syllables, not exactly a lot to go on. But Naruto had known that voice his entire life. 

When he suddenly began screaming a small part of him did notice Sakura looking around for what had set him off while Sasuke clapped both hands over his face with embarrassment. Two of the Suna kids immediately dropped in to battle stances, a reaction he couldn’t really blame them for, but he had eyes only for Gaara. A name he’d never heard for a boy he had always known. He moved without thinking of the consequences. So caught up was he in this incredible discovery he’d just made that no other thoughts could possibly have wriggled their way in just then, let alone the idea that he should maybe proceed with a little caution.

His legs coiled to launch him forward but just as quickly he found himself tackled out of the air by a massive - and very solid - wooden construction. Sakura’s voice screamed on one side while metal flashed on his other. It took a few moments to orientate himself again, to see past the joy rushing through his veins like a raiton out of control, and when he did he was utterly baffled to see Sasuke crossing kunai with the girl Temari while the Sakura held her fists up to Kankuro, his fingers spread out in some very strange configurations. 

“The hell?” Naruto muttered under his breath. Then he kicked the wooden construction off of himself and cried, “Cut it out, you guys! What are you doing?” 

“Us!? You’re the one who attacked my brother!” Temari sniffed at him with a look that suggested he wasn’t all there in the head. It was a familiar look, although hers carried a more distant malice than he’d grown used to from his fellow villagers. 

“I wasn’t attacking anyone!��� 

Kankuro snorted. At the flick of his fingers the wooden thing leapt back to his side. From farther away it was easier to see that it was a puppet of some sort, oddly jointed but clearly meant for battle judging by the assorted blades and the way it stood in just the right spot to leap to his defense. 

“Ah come on, just get out of my way. Gaara! Hi Gaara! Hi! My name’s Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo!” 

“...hello Naruto.” 

Just those two words froze his companions in their place for some reason. Naruto decided why was unimportant for now so long as they stopped interfering with him getting to the most important person in his whole life. Dusting himself off was put aside as a problem for later as well. The moment he was able to properly regain his feet Naruto beamed as wide as his face would let him and dove through the air again. This time no one stood in his way. 

Gaara didn’t exactly catch him in a big hug but that wasn’t really a surprise, if he were honest. After everything the boy had been through and how it had all affected him Naruto would have honestly been surprised if the other had gone straight for a hug. He was just grateful to be allowed to throw his arms around Gaara’s shoulders and hold as tightly as he could, determined to squeeze all the love he carried through their clothing and press it inside the other boy’s heart where it had always belonged. For several long moments no one said anything. There was nothing but the sheer bliss of finally being together. Finally having a solid warm body to house the voice so precious to him. 

Then, of course, someone had to go and ruin it. 

“Are you seeing this!?” Temari screeched. 

“He’s hugging him! And he’s letting him!” 

“Gaara, since when do you have friends!?” 

The two other siblings continued to scream and jibber while Naruto’s teammates lent their voices to the cacophony as well, demanding to know what the hell was going on. Ignoring them was as easy as letting himself sink in to the mindspace that had brought him comfort in the darkest of times, listening to the raspy voice of the one who held his sanity in strangely gentle hands. 

“It’s so good to finally meet you,” he murmured out loud.

“Yes,” Gaara agreed. “It is...good to know that I truly do have a soulmate.” 

Around them the screaming grew more violent and confused than ever and it wasn’t that Naruto was intentionally ignoring them. He knew Sakura and Sasuke were both shouting for his attention. It was just that meeting the source of the voice in his head that had always been there was so much more interesting. Gaara had always - and would always - hold his attention before anything else.

[bichlordstories]

3: class 1b

“...We will be seeing you at UA, (L/n)-san!” The white stoat/rat thing said before the projector shut off.

As expected, you passed UA’s exams, coming in at number 1 with 88 villain points and 0 rescue points. You did okay on the written exams, and you were the best one in the physical exam, but what bothered you was the rescue points.

Sure, you showed that you were great in combat, but rescuing people? Apparently not.

You’ll have to do better.

Your mother was thrilled, to say the least. Nervous but proud.

You stopped by the hospital to donate blood, briefly mentioning that you got in, which earned you a bunch of happy nurses, doctors, and patients congratulating you.

All in all, that day was pretty uneventful, and you were content with that. That day, you just quietly went on a walk, pet a few dogs that you met on your stroll, and best of all?

No green haired brat plaguing your thoughts.

It was the calm before the storm. The storm being the first day of UA.

Oh god.

You were admittedly a little nervous, but you were fine otherwise.

Until you weren’t.

In front of a large door with an A on it stood him. The green haired Bitch.

How did he get into UA????

You wanted to beat the kid here and now, but you didn’t wish to be late, so instead you walked his way and purposely bumped into him. He let out grunt in surprise and looked your way, wide-eyed.

“Move it, prick!” You said while continuing down the hallway.

You didn’t look back, but you knew he was staring at you. Either in anger or fear, you didn’t know, nor did you fucking care.

All you could tell yourself to calm your nerves was that you both weren’t in the same class, so you won’t be in the same room with him for the next 3 years.

“1B...” you said to yourself once coming across the classroom you were supposed to be in.

It was another big door with a large B instead of an A. You could hear chattering inside, mostly calm with some loud voices. Taking a slow, deep breathe, you slid the door open, quieting the room a bit. Seeing as you weren’t the teacher, everyone went back to chatting with some eyes lingering on your intimidating form.

A girl with orange hair got up from her chair and walked towards you with a friendly smile that held no malicious intent and waved her hand a bit.

“Hi there! My name is Kendo Itsuba, nice to meet you!” The girl said with a respectful bow.

You gripped your bag tightly for some unknown reason and forced your name out because you had manners.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you looked a bit nervous and want to help you settle in, you know, since you’re new and all?” She tilted her head as if to see if you could understand what she meant.

“We’re all new here, are we not?” You asked in a more rhetorical way.

She blinked at you in surprise, trying to process your bluntness.

“Ah, well, I mean everyone else is well acquainted with each other and you just seem-“

“Lonely? I’m sorry, but I’m not here because I felt lonely, I’m here because I’m going to become a hero. You can keep your friendship to yourself.” You stated bluntly and walked over to an empty seat in the back.

“Oi! What’s the hell is up with you punk!? She was just being nice!” A guy with what you assumed was some sort of crazy eye-lash/mask mix yelled at you.

You ignored him, simply sitting down in your desk and staring forward. The guy, not liking your silence, walked over to your desk and slammed his hands down, catching everybody else’s attention.

“TetsuTetsu-san, please don’t-“ Kendo started but was interrupted by the silver haired kid.

“Listen to me when I’m talking to you- AYE!!!! Do you think you’re better than me!?” He yelled in your face, spit flying.

Now this pissed you off, so you reacted.

You grabbed the guy’s index finger and pulled it really far back, earning a high pitched shriek from the guy. You grabbed his wrist once it lifted off the desk and held it in place while holding his finger back in an uncomfortable and threatening position. He fell to his knees, whimpering quietly and grabbing onto your arm with his free hand helplessly.

You leaned into his face, breathe tickling his nose and spoke in an eerily calm voice, eyes soulless and locked onto his own.

“I am not here to make friends nor enemies, but if you start something with me, I will end it. Am I understood?” You said.

When he didn’t respond, you pushed his finger back, earning a groan and a whine.

“Y-yes, yes! Please!” He almost cried out before you released, letting him drop onto the floor.

“T-TetsuTetsu!” Kendo said and rushed over to help him up along with two other kids.

One of them, a brown haired kid, muttered something to the effect of ‘psycho bastard’ to which he earned a side glance from you. The other one was a completely black kid, like, vantablack with white hair who elbowed the guy in the side to shut him up.

The guy, TetsuTetsu, didn’t take any of their help, opting to get up and speed walk away with his head down. Every single student in the classroom avoided eye contact with you after that and left you alone until the teacher came in.

It was a large man, I mean, large as in Endeavour large. The man wore a rather tasteless skin tight suit, which gave you the indication that he was a super hero. He stood behind the desk at the front and placed a hand onto the desk, seeming to glare into the souls of everyone.

“I am Sekijiro Kan, your homeroom teacher for this year.” He said in a gruff but calm voice before turning towards the door of the room.

“You all can leave your stuff here for the orientation, it won’t take an hour.” He said.

The rest was mostly unimportant Bs to you. It was just some sort of welcoming ceremony, something that took up 30 important minutes of your first year of UA.

Luckily, to make up for sitting and doing nothing, your teacher had you all go out to do a quirk apprehension test after lunch that day.

“(L/n)-san, you’re up.” He said, resetting the timer.

Before you walked toward the man, Kendo gave you a thumbs up and smiled brightly, acting as though you two were acquaintances.

“Good luck, (L/n)-san!” She said.

You side glanced her, wondering just what the hell she wanted from you before grunting in response.

You stood on the line where you seemingly would race some hairy kid that looked like a werewolf if anything. When Sekijiro told you both to start, he wasn’t exactly expecting a large sandy dust cloud to explode and engulf the both of you, er, well, Shishiba.

At the end of the line stood you, veins and muscles popping out more than usual. The whites of your eyes were red, as though all the veins burst inside your eyes, leaving just your strikingly (e/c) irises to stand out.

Blood trailed down your nose and you wiped it away, awaiting your results.

“0.5 seconds.” Sekijiro stated, hiding the fact that he was impressed.

“Eeeeeh!?” The class yelled out.

“That- that was too fast!”

“Is their quirk super speed!?”

“Their eyes! Why are they all red all of the sudden!?”

They would soon realize that you weren’t just fast...

You beat everyone in just about every test, making some of them question their own worth as a hero. The kid, Tetsutetsu look as though he could piss himself any minute just watching you crush the machine to death with just your left hand.

It didn’t help that you were covered in crimson, soaking your blue UA PE uniform in your own blood.

‘Damn it, this is definitely gonna stain.’ You thought in irritation and breathed in, only to cough out some liquid in surprise.

You realized that you couldn’t breathe right, your lungs were heavier than normal, and every breathe you tried to take, it felt as though there was water gurgling inside of your chest.

Instead of panicking from being unable to breathe properly, you simply got on your hands and pushed your bottom half off the ground, placing you into a hand stand. You closed your mouth, feeling metallic liquid gush down into your mouth due to gravity. While you did this, everyone around you stared at your odd display.

Vlad, although was impressed by your handstand, was confused as to why you were doing such a thing until you opened your mouth.

A waterfall of blood rushed out of your mouth and onto the ground below, forming a small puddle beneath you. After the last of the blood left your lungs, you slammed your legs back down, putting you in a bear crawl position and then got up.

You spat blood to your side and rubbed your bloody nose to relieve an itch while your classmates stood there, stunned, horrified, and disgusted.

Vlad almost went slack jawed before you looked over to him.

“I apologize, I had too much blood in my lungs.” You stated while brushing the sand off of your hands onto your blood soaked jeans.

“Heh!?” The class yelled once more.

At the end of apprehension test, you were placed at number 1, unsurprisingly. You wanted nothing more than to shower the sticky layers of blood off of you, and nobody stopped you.

That didn’t stop the class from talking about you however.

“Did you see what that kid did??? They are totally fucking metal!” A guy with his teeth showing, Honenuki, exclaimed to his new friend group.

“Yeah, too bad they got a shitty attitude to match.” The vantablack kid, Kuroiro said.

“You think they’re a tsundere?” A kid with a speech bubble for a head said.

“Tsundere??? Like as in an asshole that’s secretly a blushy school girl on the inside?” A blonde, Monoma, butted in.

The group began chuckling at the thought of you blushing and squealing “Baka!” While wearing some girly clothing.

“Guys.” Shiozaki said with her arms crossed.

They turned to the plant girl with eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, Shiozaki-Chan?” Honenuki asked.

“They’re sitting right behind you.” She said simply.

She was right. You were sitting right behind them in your spot, staring right at them with an unreadable expression, hands held together and elbows on the table.

Needless to say, the small group shut up for the rest of the day.

[aegonbeingfakeisracist]

I really hate the way people insist upon acting like Arianne is just some impulsive fuck up that’s “bad at the game of thrones” and doesn’t know anything. Like, they keep saying she’s just like Sansa, except her mistakes aren’t as excusable because she’s older and they act as if a whole range of other characters are more mature than she is, but it’s just. Not. True. Honestly, it’s so not true, that I genuinely don’t understand how people can read the character that way.

Smarter people than me have expressed this before, but...Arianne isn’t a stupid little girl that needs to be taught patience, she’s a grown woman who knows damn well when she’s made a mistake. Her problem isn’t stupidity or immaturity or impulsivity - definitely not that last one - it’s a lack of information. The broader problem isn’t Arianne’s actions, it’s Doran underestimating her intelligence and maturity. Doran spent years thinking of Arianne as that same little girl who ran to him when she skinned her knee and trusted him instinctively. That meant not realizing that of course she was going to be hurt and offended by him suggesting she marry Walder Frey! Not realizing that her telling Tyene everything when it came to trivial things didn’t mean she would automatically spill important secrets! Not realizing that she is too smart to be completely ignorant of what’s happening in her own homeland and so it would be better to tell her than risk her drawing the wrong conclusions from limited information.

Arianne and Doran are so, so similar. Everything that happened in the Dornish storyline during AFFC happened because they’re enormously alike and didn’t understand that. Arianne’s not some impulsive, immature party girl, she’s smart, driven, and way more reliable than she’s given credit for. Doran leaves her with a job, and even though she thinks it’s him shunting her aside to handle something trivial and dismisses it as unimportant, that job is her purview, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t do it well. She’s cautious, waiting and watching and gathering information, not acting until she feels backed into a corner with no other choice. Just as Doran didn’t recognize how smart she is, and how much she’s not the little girl she was anymore, she didn’t realize that his inaction was largely from the same motives as her own, instead seeing him just sitting there, not doing anything. And to her credit...she wasn’t wrong about that part! Where Arianne eventually acted, Doran didn’t, not until Arianne forced his hand.

Doran and Arianne are terrible at talking to each other. And they each have their reasons, very understandable ones. It’s such a human story. It’s not driven by various plot contrivances, it’s about character. And the fact that Doran and Arianne are so similar - more similar than we’ve ever had reason to believe Doran and Quentyn are - enables it all to happen. Arys claims she has more of her uncle in her than her father, and that’s just another demonstration of how he never knew her at all - just like the friends Arianne brought on her journey through the desert, he doesn’t understand her, Doran, or what drives them (which is why Daemon is so cool, because he fundamentally gets her). Arianne waits. She thinks. She observes. And the reason she fails is because she’s operating with incomplete information. She has no way of knowing what she doesn’t know! Once she has more information, her decisions improve dramatically.

Arianne likes pretty much everyone. It’s not an act, it’s that she’s genuinely a people person. But at the same time, she’s really very introverted, most of the time, withdrawing from her friends during their trip through the desert to think on her own; not actually sharing deep emotional stuff with Tyene; refusing Drey’s challenge to tie a knot in the beard of the old guy that fell asleep at a feast...Even when she refuses to marry Lord Grandison, she admits he’s a pleasant enough fellow. So when she doesn’t like someone - Lord Estermont, Darkstar, Lysono Maar - the reader trusts her intution, because she’s not dumb, she’s not prone to overreaction, she’s calm and reasonable and logical.

In this regard, she’s really Cersei’s counterpoint. While Cersei has massive amounts of unearned confidence, Arianne is wracked with self doubt. While Cersei makes dumb decision after dumb decision and dismisses important information before thinking about what it means, Arianne proves herself to be incredibly clever, capable of drawing reasonable conclusions from small scraps of information. And while Cersei was never on equal footing with her father, Arianne is with hers.

After the failure of her plot to crown Myrcella, she’s locked in a tower, she’s been isolated for so long, she’s furious with herself and grieving, and yet...with words alone, she can convince Doran he should stop bullshitting her. Doran is the one that’s explaining himself to her, Doran is the one that came in expecting contrition only to himself be struck with the realization that he really fucked up, Doran is the one that gives her the reassurance she’s been longing for for years.

Doran and Arianne so similar that she has pretty much all of his strengths and a fair number of his weaknesses - specifically the inability to communicate - but she’s also the one that can push him into actually doing something. She’s the one that stops him from crashing and burning. Without her, there would be no salvaging any of his plans after the Queenmaker incident. Sure, her plan failed because she didn’t understand what he was doing, but his plans were already falling apart without her.

Arianne becomes her father’s equal partner in ways we just don’t see with other characters. You could maybe make a case for the Tyrells, but we don’t have much information about that at all - we have no idea how much of that was them being active participants and how much was them doing what they were told. With Arianne and Doran, though, they become a team. He trusts her to represent him. He trusts her intuition and believes in her ability to make the right decision. And they’re two of the only characters in the story to really get that it isn’t a game. It’s war. Being good at cyvasse does not mean you’ll win. That last part is kind of what’s most important to me here - because so many people think Doran is still keeping secrets from Arianne, that he’s still using her as a piece in his game, that Arianne doesn’t have any skills. They’re neglecting the fact that these people understand the human cost of war. These chess game analogies do not work here.

Arianne is just...she’s so much better of a character than she gets credit for, and it frustrates me.

[salmonthestoryteller]

RNM Spec - Long Family

RNM Are the Longs Aliens?

So I have some new Roswell spec. (I know, we have a long wait until season 3. That means you can expect random new thoughts from me that get progressively outlandish, so be prepared.)

So tonight I'm bringing you - What if the Long Family is part alien and related to Evil Max/The Stowaway/Mr Jones? (I really can’t keep writing all that out, so for the rest of this, I’ll simply refer to him as The Stowaway.)

I will attempt to render what made me question this into a cohesive meta.

So, a lot of this spec comes down to two factors - the continued importance of The Long Family in the RNM verse and the Alien Symbol that is Max's tattoo.

Let's start with factor one - The Long Family Importance.

From various conversations, apparently I am the only one bothered by there being 3 murder victims in the mystery that started us all off in the RNM universe but only having 2 of the deaths be connected to anything significant in the series. And it does bug me because why have 3 original murder victims at all if one is completely ignored? Why bother to invent Jasmine in the first place and then proceed to completely ignore her existence? She even has a last name - Frederick - but she might as well be Murder Victim #2. Part of the reason this bugs me is because of the Long family importance in the series. If Kate's family was equally unimportant, leaving the focus on Rosa it wouldn't seem strange to me that Jasmine's death is largely ignored. But instead, the Longs are continually brought up throughout the series. In a way, the fact that Jasmine’s family is never brought up accents how important the Longs are made.

We start that by introducing Wyatt Long and revealing he is Kate's brother as early as episode 2. We then are told how rich the family is as early as episode 3 (Actually, that might still be episode 2 now that I think about it). Then Wyatt is used by Noah to kill Grant Green and attempt to kill Liz. Followed by him being the one to draw the symbol so Cam can bring it to Max’s (and the audience's) attention.

Their significance continues to grow in Season 2. Wyatt returns, and then we're Introduced to Forrest. A random banner even shows the audience the family is involved in the town politics, supporting a Mayoral candidate. Then they are even made important in the flashbacks - their barn is what burned down; their farm is where Nora and Louise hid. Neither of which is a true necessity.  What does it matter that it was the Long Farm? Why make Forrest a Long?  Why not simply introduce a different family and have Forrest be their descendant since the family that owns the farm is never shown? It would make no change to the story as we know it so far if it was a different family. So why do they continue to spotlight the Longs?

I feel like all of this has to be leading us somewhere in the plot. Wyatt is a minor antagonist overall, so why is the importance of the Long family in the RNM universe being drilled continuously into the audience?

That brings me to factor #2: The Alien Symbol/Max's (& Michael's now) Tattoo

We end Season 1 believing/knowing these facts:

Max has a tattoo of it on his shoulder

The symbol was on an unknown dead female alien's hand

Michael drew the symbol all over the walls of the group home when they were children

Max makes the symbol appear on Isobel's pod by touching it

A random alien used to leave it in her wake on the reservation

Wyatt Long draws it after being mind-controlled by an alien (who we are later led to believe is Noah)

Noah (controlling Isobel) draws the symbol exactly once while talking to Rosa

Noah claims it's a map

But in Season 2, the meaning of the symbol begins to morph:

Michael never drew the symbol - it was always Max

It was no random alien on the reservation, it was Louise

At no time do we witness the symbol left behind by any other alien in the flashbacks - not even Louise

The symbol is the lock to the prison trapping The Stowaway

It takes three aliens to unlock the lock marked with that symbol

Noah could never have known about that lock - he was sealed in his pod when The Stowaway would have been locked up on Earth

As of the end of Season 2, the symbol that started in Season 1 as merely an alien thing, has grown less connected to all aliens. It has grown more and more connected to Max and The Stowaway.

That brings us to the question of - why was Wyatt Long drawing it? He is the only victim of mind control who does. Neither Isobel nor Maria ever draw the symbol while not controlled. Other than the one moment with Rosa, Noah never draws the symbol either. Nor does he ever create it with his powers. So why would that symbol be left behind by Noah in Wyatt's mind?

Unless it wasn't left by Noah at all. It was something Wyatt himself randomly drew, just like Max once did. And if that's true, then one possible explanation would be there is a connection between Wyatt and The Stowaway. A connection between the Long Family and The Stowaway. Such as Wyatt, and Forrest, being his descendants.