#which is the culture he was brought up in

[inchidentally]

went truly unhinged and wrote an entire fic summary of mafia!carcar @__@ special thanks to the good ppl over at the carcar discord <3

as usual I worked google's p*ssy tired to put together the details so pls ignore/handwave anything erroneous

Okay, so for regional specifications let’s say that Carlos has worked for years to be vouched for in the mafia. He’s actually a spy and in an extremely dangerous position - he was plucked from law school in Spain to be trained up in the intelligence agency and was assigned to Sicily due to his fluency in Italian. So even though he’s only 26, he’s already highly skilled and has been living and working full-time as a secret agent and translator - as well as liaison for the mafia - in Sicily for years already.

Oscar is fresh off his A-levels and touring Italy with lofty dreams of becoming a race engineer for Ferrari but assuming he’ll end up back in the UK in some bland office where he’ll hope to make enough money to go to F1 races - and maybe one day take his rightful place on that pit wall.

Palermo is at the very end of his trip before he flies back to London and he books a tour of the Norman Palace. He’s enjoying the fusion of cultures in the art and architecture, totally unaware that his name had been noticed by one of the palace’s administration when he’d bought the ticket a week before. An untraceable number of emails and messages had brought his existence to the attention of mafiosi who had until that moment assumed that particular royal line had died out. 

They immediately scour what little exists of Oscar in the public domain and the even less available through government authorities (the boy is barely out of childhood and has done nothing of note except leaving his homeland to attend school in the UK and hasn’t even gotten so much as a speeding ticket). His social media however reveals a hunch that young Oscar is not unaffected by handsome men, possibly with a penchant for Spanish men in particular, and that he is an ardent Ferrari fanboy. A hastily put-together plot to snare the boy into the mafia by establishing him in his rightful royal position has all the promise of strengthening the mafia control of the region. 

Meanwhile, many consiglieri have long been suspicious of Carlos and see this as an opportunity for him to commit his oath for good - or to see him and the Oscar boy easily disposed of if the Spaniard was discovered to be a rat. They will install Carlos as a translator for Ferrari and he will then claim that he is also on holiday in Palermo when he “bumps into” Oscar at the palace. As they are marveling at the Palatine Chapel’s interior and Carlos is using Ferrari and himself to work every charm at his disposal, a royal scholar with ties to the mafia will approach and inform them of his suspicion that Oscar is of royal descent. He will then ask them back to the University of Palermo to confirm his suspicions (which had of course already been confirmed). By that point, Oscar will have been successfully wooed by both Carlos and the promise of taking his rightful place as a prince, so that the mafia can insinuate themselves into his life and eventually his reign.

Only Carlos’ training can prevent his dismay from being revealed to his bosses as the plan is described to him, but he’s horrified at dragging some poor, unwitting kid into all the danger and ruthlessness of organized crime. He decides to defy his bosses back at the intelligence agency and play the long game of making Oscar his husband and strategizing at every turn to keep the boy alive and hopefully at some point extricate him back to his normal life - or at least into a witness protection program. Anything else would certainly risk Oscar’s life and even if Carlos hadn’t become fond of the kid from a distance, he still wouldn’t sacrifice him for a shorter route to cutting off an entire arm of organized crime.

The plan proceeds as expected, with Oscar dazzled and blushing over Carlos’ attentions and the royal scholar having approached them. It all suddenly goes awry when an overzealous nephew of a mafiosi - fresh off a 12-hour drug bender - infiltrates operations, taking Oscar hostage in the chapel and insisting that the government immediately recognize Oscar as royalty and that the church marry them there in the chapel. He then turns the gun to dispatch an unarmed Carlos, only to be knocked unconscious by Oscar wielding an antique censer. 

The royal scholar - Andrea Stella - is a good man who now speaks urgently to Carlos in a peculiar coded language (they both have on wires) informing him that he knows of the mafia’s plans and that he too wants to see Oscar kept safe. Oscar surprises them by not only understanding the code but speaking it back - albeit brokenly - to them. The code is known only within the Ferrari elite and sounds identical to everyday Italian but with a sequenced pattern that carries a second meaning to every other word, something that amateur cryptography genius Oscar picks up on remarkably quickly.

Which is how Oscar learns that his claim to royal status is fully valid, his entanglement with the mafia is very real, but worst of all is that Carlos’ romantic interest in him was all a lie (or so he assumes).

The police and media attention that the hostage situation attracts results in the mafia’s plans proceeding as expected, except for all three men pivotal to their machinations being in cahoots to foil them. Oscar is granted status as a prince but without anointing or coronation by the church due to him taking Carlos for a husband. They are installed in a part of the palace now closed off to the public and begin their work ingratiating Oscar with said public and even winning them over to the idea of him being married to another man (Carlos not being Italian ends up being the biggest hurdle for them to get over). Oscar’s youth, beauty, shyness and sweet giggle work unexpected wonders, as does the promise of a return to all the regal romance of a pre-unified Italy while not actually returning to those times politically. 

Carlos and Oscar have a tense private relationship because Oscar is nursing a wounded heart as well as a stubborn attraction and love for Carlos - while Carlos feels ashamed of having tried to seduce Oscar for duplicitous purposes and is also struggling with an intense attraction and growing affection for him. Andrea is the architect of their whole counter-strategy and is both the heart and the brains: the brains because he has lain in wait for decades for the right opportunity to destroy the mafia’s power, but also the heart because he sees Oscar as a son and can also see the misunderstandings going on between Oscar and Carlos.

Oscar is a complete surprise package in having an iron-clad poker face and an uncanny ability to remain calm even as his life is turned upside down that rivals seasoned operatives. He even manages to dupe his own family when they visit for the wedding. When Carlos asks how he can so easily lie to them about it all, Oscar levels him with “I could do anything just to keep them safe.” To which Carlos replies that he knows what Oscar means and raises Oscar’s hand to kiss over the ring he now wears as prince. Then he kisses Oscar at one of the highest points of the palace with Mount Etna visible in the distance.

They begin an all-consuming sexual affair that they both privately claim is beneficial to confirming their relationship to the mafia while conveniently remaining in denial of their real feelings. Carlos pours all of his into kissing every inch of Oscar’s pale skin until he’s pink all over, and Oscar puts all his aching heart into taking Carlos down his throat just out of view of the public or forcing Carlos to handle meetings while Oscar is crouched between his ankles. A few lowly messengers of the mafiosi bring back stories of hearing the prince’s cries punctuated with the banging of furniture against palace walls. Carlos can’t keep his hands off his pretty husband either in public or private conclave with “officials” who are really mafiosi under different titles. 

Meanwhile, Oscar is still presumed by the mafia to be none the wiser about the criminal element of his reign and does such sleek work with his angelic face and adorably unassuming attitude that any lingering discussion of dispatching him is immediately shut down.

Which makes it all the more shocking four years later when a sudden mass assassination frames half the criminal element for the death of the other half and throws the whole of the syndicate in chaos that dissolves their control entirely. The ensuing months see Oscar, Carlos and Andrea sequestered - along with their court - inside the palace which is shut to the public amid fears of another hostage situation, while arrests and investigations take place. 

Tensions across the city are high in the wake of the ensuing widely publicized trials and Oscar insists that a public appearance from him outside the palace would reassure and distract the public - and that it would solidify his position as more than seemingly ceremonial. The palace officials agree to the plan but as they are deciding on the security detail, Carlos realizes his presence alongside Oscar has not been mentioned. 

Later that night in their bedchamber, Carlos raises his concern and states that he will be accompanying his husband during his appearance. Oscar attempts to shut him down by stating that Carlos would only represent a greater threat by seeming to taunt the mafia and encourage retribution. 

They argue until Oscar calmly pulls rank, to which Carlos responds by kissing him fiercely and forcing him onto the bed. They desperately make love and fall asleep in each other’s arms. 

The next morning, Carlos awakens in their room alone and with the sun at a suspicious slant through the windows. He realizes Oscar has stolen Carlos’ phone from its usual place by the bed to ensure that he slept in - clearly hoping Carlos would sleep through Oscar’s public appearance entirely. He realizes the little beast had baited him into fucking him so thoroughly that Carlos was exhausted and woke late.

He pulls on clothes and tears down the stairs to the courtyard with just enough time to compose himself and stand beside one of the guards. Oscar stood out in front with the selected media in a semi-circle and an enormous crowd at barriers set further out, many of whom were calling out affection and support for their prince. He does not see that Carlos has joined them and proceeds with his speech.

Carlos spots the gun at the same time as the guard next to him, but it is aimed at Oscar and not himself. 

As Etna smokes and rumbles what will be called a mild yet deadly eruption in the distance, two shots are fired after Carlos and the guard wrap their bodies around Oscar and force him to safety. The remaining guards - and a few members of the public - detain the gunman (none too gently) and Carlos and Oscar are bundled back to their rooms and the guards take up position outside.

Inside their bedchamber, Oscar frantically paws at Carlos, wildly suspecting that he’s been shot and doesn’t realize it. He tugs Carlos’ jacket and shirt off and gives a heartbreaking cry of relief when he doesn’t see a single mark on his husband’s body.

Oscar breaks down at last, releasing four years of stress and anxiety in a gust of tears and collapsing in Carlos’ arms. He pours out how he had contrived the mass assassination plan mere months after his life was altered forever in the Palatine Chapel - how he brought Andrea into it to help him with things like the details and movements of mafia members, members who would be willing to work against the family and the risk to innocents, even down to developing a seemingly arbitrary fascination with volcanology so that he could be made aware of Etna’s activity far enough in advance to take the admittedly wild final gambit of disposing the remaining members by having them conveniently perish in Etna’s next eruption. He realized that while conspiring half the local mafia against the larger organization would result in a certain amount of mutually assured destruction, as well as concealing forever Oscar’s role in it, he would have some stragglers to deal with who could regroup in retribution. A suggestion was therefore sent down via Oscar’s court officials to the police loyal to the palace, and then to remaining criminals-at-large (also those with the bloodiest histories in the mafia) of escaping arrest by scaling the crater during a period of high activity and therefore remaining undetected by officials, guides and the public. Their treacherous expedition was promised to take them to the other side of the volcano and then to the coast where boats and new identities would take them from their troubles. 

Oscar had reasoned that if Etna hadn’t taken them then their desire for escaping arrest would scatter them and effectively extinguish their power hopefully forever. Andrea had marveled at Oscar’s command over strategizing the whole plan mostly by himself and said that Ferrari would mourn missing out on hiring him if they knew what he was capable of.

Carlos cradles Oscar on the carpet, kissing his sweat-cold brow and begging to know why Oscar didn’t include Carlos in the plan? Does he still not trust him after all this time? Because if so then he wishes the bullet had found him and put an end to playing husband to the man he loves but who will never love him in return.

Oscar looks up into his eyes with a face full of wonder and brings a hand up to lovingly stroke Carlos’ cheek. Because he kept Carlos out of it precisely so that he wouldn’t do anything stupid like sacrifice himself and ruin Oscar’s hopes that when his plan was finished, perhaps they could start over and he could make Carlos love him the way he loves Carlos.

For the first time, they kiss knowing their love is mutual. And while they realize their positions will always involve some element of danger and their lives will never be “normal”, they admit that they’d never choose any other life if it meant not being together.

ENDITO!

[ahamasmiyodhah]

𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐄

𝐈𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐂𝐇; Sivagami messed up real bad.

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: Bhallaladeva x Manjari (OC)

𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘: @mahi-wayy

Devasena huffed as she cradled her swollen belly and swiftly walked towards the Chambers where Bahubali; her Husband and the King of Mahishmati, and Bhallaladeva, her elder brother figure and Commander of Mahishmati's army were planning something.

Things had gone awry when Devasena had took her firm stand up in front of Sivagami Devi, angering the Queen Mother in front of Whole Court. It was surprising, though, to see that Bhallaladeva confessed he didn't wish to marry Devasena anymore, and that Bahubali can marry her.

It would have led to civil war, but Bhallaladeva confronted Sivagami Devi which hurt her sentiments and the big ego she was growing back then, and the woman had declared that Bahubali will be crowned King and Bhallaladeva as Commander, but it came with consequences.

Bijjaladeva disowned his son.

Not that anyone cared, though.

The change in Bhallaladeva surprised both Devasena; who felt he was a snobby arrogant manchild and Bahubali, who was just happy his older brother was back. The two were though confused that who caused this change, and the day they found the answer when the Annual Jagadambika Poojan for nine days started.

The temple amidst intricate carvings and an aura of oil lamps lit up with a rhythmic sound of drums when Bhallaladeva, the fierce and imposing Commander of the Mahishmati Armed Forces, reached the place to join in the auspicious Pooja. There would stand courtiers, priests and noblemen, watching with reverence as the life within the temple, that earthly representative of divine power, the culture surrounding the kingdom.

As Pooja began, his thoughts strayed from rituals and chants toward the grand hall's center where a dancer moved with an entrancing grace. She was Manjari, a dusky-skinned Priestess whose movements turned into poetry, her anklets chiming with every step. She was dressed in red and gold, eyes glittering with a fire that almost matched the flames dancing upon the torches that supported the temple; and so living for the spirit of the goddess she adored. Bhallaladeva, sedate and poised as always, was entranced by Manjari's dance.

He saw each movement unfold as an expression of love and mystery, leading him deep into a trance. Her dance was much more than an art; it was a prayer, a powerful invoking to command every soul there to pay attention. For Bhallaladeva, the man of war and strategy, hardened, it was a profoundly spiritual experience to watch Manjari's ethereal dance.

He was exposed to the emotion-wrenching look in her eyes, the soft yet powerful dance of her figure, and the way that the mere presence of a person seemed to command the space. Amidst the blowing of conch shells and rising smoke of incense, Bhallaladeva came to realize that he was not observing something; but rather he was entranced by thin threads of invisibility connecting him to the divine priestess who danced as if she was calling the gods themselves to bear testimony to her devotion.

Devasena and Bahubali, both were elated that Bhallaladeva loved someone, and even helped him most of the times. Manjari was a Devadasi, hence even Sivagami didn't oppose her coming to Palace to see Devasena as she was pregnant, since a Devadasi is considered auspicious.

But right now, the danger looming over Manjari's head was something which scared Devasena.

The Princess of Kunthala reached the heavy doors and took a deeo breath, commanding the doors to be opened. Once they did, the occupants of room lookes at her. "Devasena? What are you doing here?" Bahubali asked as he and Bhallaladeva ran to her, making her sit on a Couch. Randev, Bahubali's friend brought a tumbler of water and handed it to Devasena.

"Bhalla! You have to run to Shiva Temple right now! Manjari! She's in danger!" Devasena exclaimed, her eyes wide. "What are you saying Devasena? Why will Manjari be in danger?" Bhallaladeva asked. "Rajmata. She wants you to marry the Princess of Simhadhwaja, Princess Yagnika. One of the courtiers told her about you and Manjari, and she has sent Soldiers to.." Bhallaladeva ran out before she could complete her sentence.

.

Manjari was all set to sleep when a shadow outside her hut in Temple sanctum, and the sound of footsteps made her sit straight. Manjari could feel the hammering of her heart in her chest as shadows appeared to move in the faintly lit corners of her room. Then came a whispery rustle of armor; metal faintly glinted, and into this darkness lurked the soldiers, their intent predatory.

Panic ran through her veins. She hastened, those fragile feet not making a sound on the cold marble floor as she slid by the door with her heart pounding with fear and instinct. That temple, once her safe haven, looked now like a trap closing in on her. She ran the maze of temple corridors, taking those ragged, shallow breaths. The soldiers pursued her mercilessly; their footsteps filled the air with an eerie echo of danger nipping at the heels of this poor woman running for life. Her sari fluttered behind her as a banner of defiance yet showed no clear path marked in front. Manjari darted her eyes to and fro searching around for her escape, but every turn took her deeper into the mazes.

Just as she thought she might find her way out, Manjari spun on her heel, the rush of fear fogging her vision, and crashed into something so immovable, so unyielding that it rooted her to the spot. She backpedaled, eyes wide with terror, but when she looked up again she was gazing into Bhallaladeva's face. His towering form filled her entire view, blocking her way out. His gaze, intensive and unreadable, locked onto hers, and the weight of her predicament settled heavily between them.

"Senapathi.." Manjari tearfully hugged him, as The soldiers behind her stopped short, freezing as they saw their doom in Bhallaladeva's eyes.

.

Bhallaladeva's footsteps echoed down the corridors of the palace, hot with indignation. His mind was bubbling over with bitter memories as he moved towards the Shiva Temple to his mother, Sivagami Devi, who was blamed. The Mahishmati kingdom had made her the regal queen mother-words for herself there were law. But to Bhallaladeva, she was a dim silhouette—thick and stern, unforgiving and unsweet. Bhallaladeva recalled how he always wanted his mother's love, even when a child; instead, he would get cold stares and a sharp tongue. Everywhere around him, people went around speaking of his strength and valor, but Sivagami's gaze was always on some fault-finding issue that had never brought across a proud motherly warmth. As he clenched his fists, memories of his childhood rushing back into his mind.

He could still remember all the attempts he had made to win her favor—by mastering the skill of war, performing exceptionally well in his studies, or showcasing his mastery in fights. But all in vain. Sivagami always compared him to his cousin, Amarendra Baahubali, whom she loved like her very son.

Bhallaladeva silently witnessed her when she gushed about everything Baahubali did, offering him that maternal pride Bhallaladeva has always wanted but would never receive. Every smile she threw towards Baahubali felt like a knife twisting deeper into his heart as it reminds him of how he shall always be second in her eyes. Meanwhile, recalling the favours of Sivagami, Bhallaladeva ran toward the temple.

He recalled the day he was winning the fight in the ground, but she picked Baahubali, making known her decision that the throne would be bagged by him who served people best and not by him who sought power. The words had hurt him, and he recalled them every moment in his life.

He is not a son to her; on the contrary, he was a brutal man with an insatiable will to dominate, unbefitting the prince for which he had striven for his life. Bhallaladeva did not utter the pain, covering it with layers of ambitions and anger within him, and today the facade was crumbling apart. Before him was the temple, its massive structure jarringly contrasting the chaos within his soul.

Bhallaladeva's breath was laboured, his face screwed up in a snarl as he stormed up the steps, his eyes blazing with the fire of years-long pent-up resentment. This place, consecrated to the god of destruction, seemed apt for the storm that brewed inside him.

Today Bhallaladeva was not marching up to a temple; he was marching against the shackles of his whole life left untouched with scorn and negligence, every stride taken as a defiant act against the mother who never did see him for who he was.

Just as he turned in corner, a horrified Manjari ran into him. Looking in her eyes he realised how scared she was. Her dusky cheeks were red with all the crying, her eyes wide in fear and pain. Clutching her sari around her body, Manjari hugged him tightly. "Manjari, I'm here.. do not worry. Just... Close your eyes. You might not want to see." He said softly and Manjari nodded.

.

Thunder cackled in sky as Sivagami Devi sat on her throne, Bahubali and Devasena sitting nearby. The two were concerned as they waited Bhallaladeva's arrival. Soon the thunder cackled aloud, flashing the corridor in which stood a man holding a sword.

Sivagami Devi looked up, a shiver running down her spine as a bloody sight of a furious Bhallaladeva, and noted the flutter of a plain Red saree behind him. Bhallaladeva moved and her eyes widened when she saw Manjari, her hair partition filled with red Sindoor as he grabbed her hand and pulled her in, the girl looking fearful.

"Mother, meet your daughter-in-law, Manjari." He grinned, a grin which scared the three. Sivagami looked appalled, her wide eyes on Manjari as she looked at her from head to toe, her anger returning. "Bhalla!? What is this!?" She screamed.

Sivagami Devi's voice was at once shrill with indignation and robust as she berated Bhallaladeva with a flare in her eyes. "How dare you go against me to marry that temple dancer, Manjari?" she yelled, her speech loaded with scorn. "I wanted you to marry Yagnika, the Princess of Simhadhwaja, and seal an alliance for Mahishmati!" Her voice was robust, but behind it lay a hollow frustration—Bhallaladeva had gone against her wishes again.

Bhallaaladeva snapped. Climbing to his feet, he shouted into her face, "All my life, I've been nothing but a pawn in your schemes!" His voice was shaking with all the anger he felt, festering over the years. "You cared not for what I wanted, only for what you were about- your ambition. I am done living under your shadow," he said, the bitterness in his words as he confronted a mother who would never see him past his utility.

He took a step forward, eyes blazing with defiance. "I love Manjari," he said, his voice carrying through tension. "She sees me for what I am, not what she can get from me. I married her because she is my choice, not yours. I won't let you dictate my life again." Bold, defiant-a challenge flung at the feet of the woman who had always controlled his fate.

And for one moment, she was left speechless by this tirade, losing all her expression. Bhallaladeva's defiance shattered all the rigid expectations she had always imposed upon the world around her and created a chasm between them that seemed impossible to bridge. She could see him not as the son she had shaped but for the first time ever the man he had become, driven by a love that defied her will.

Sivagami soon moulded her expressions back in the cold one as she stood up. "You also are going like someone who once defied me." Bahubali looked away at that.

"Do not blame Bahu, Mother." Bhallaladeva sneered. "Manjari came in my life way before Devasena came in Bahu's life. And I won't let you dictate my life anymore." Bhallaladeva said. Sivagami stared at them for a moment before fleeting her eyes at Manjari, and left.

"Bhalla, you scared us!" Devasena exclaimed as she waddled fastly towards them and hugged Manjari. "Oh dear, you are so scared. Come, I will take you to room so that you can rest." She said and Manjari numbly nodded, before going with Devasena.

Manjari glanced back at Bhallaladeva, her heart pounding as she took in his imposing figure, drenched in blood from the fierce battle he had fought to protect her. His fierce gaze softened as it met hers, revealing a rare tenderness and love in his eyes. Overwhelmed by the realization of her deep feelings for him, she blushed, her cheeks turning a deep crimson. She gave him a small, shy smile before turning away.

.

.

.

.

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@vishnavishivaa @mahi-wayy @yehsahihai @xxdritaxx @houseofbreadpakoda @ramayantika @warnermeadowsgirl @stxrrynxghts @mayakimayahai @chaliyaaa @celestesinsight @sambaridli @desigurlie @hum-suffer @sanskari-kanya @zeherili-ankhein @krsnaradhika @thegleamingmoon @ulaganayagi @voidsteffy @krishna-sangini @nidhi-writes @kaal-naagin @thecrazyinktrovert @koklknthiapsara

[mariacallous]

Lithuania’s Jews and Yiddishists around the world are mourning the passing of Fania Brantsovsky, the last surviving member of the Jewish underground in the Vilna ghetto and a keeper of the flame of the city’s once glorious Yiddish past, who died at the age of 102 on Sunday in Vilnius.

Brantsovsky escaped the ghetto in 1942 and fought against the Nazis and their local collaborators in the Rudninkai forest with a group of Jewish partisans under the command of Abba Kovner. 

In the years after the war, she became a lifelong advocate for the memory of Lithuanian Jewry and their Yiddish language, serving as the librarian and beloved teacher at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute and an ambassador to visitors she brought to view the landmarks, many vanished, of a city that had once been known as the “Jerusalem of Europe” for its rich Jewish culture. 

It was a role that brought her world-wide acclaim and eventually local hostility, when Lithuanian nationalists began to equate her Soviet liberators with the Nazis, and tried to discredit partisans like her who had once considered the Russians their allies.

For all these roles, Brantsovsky was hailed by Yiddishists around the world who consider her death the end of an era.

“She lived so long that she came from a completely different universe than ours, like out of a history book,” Alec “Leyzer” Burko, a Warsaw-based Yiddish teacher, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“We’ve lost the last exemplar of interwar Yiddish Vilna, someone who could impart the spirit of the Yiddishist movement of interwar Vilna and its secular circles. We lost our last active veteran of the Vilna ghetto and the Jewish partisans,” said Dovid Katz, an American-born Yiddishist and co-founder of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute.

“And on a personal level,” he added, “we’ve lost a dear friend whose warmth, enthusiasm, encouragement, and desire to help, show and teach was a huge inspiration.”

Brantsovsky was born Feige Jocheles in 1922, in the then-Lithuanian capital of Kaunas but her family moved to Vilnius, then a part of Poland, when she was just five years old. 

As a young girl, she was active in the rich Jewish life of Vilnius. At the time, Vilnius was home to more than 60,000 Jews and boasted over 100 synagogues, the largest of which had seating for more than 2,000. With a Jewish community that had been flourishing when Napoleon passed through the city in the 18th century, Vilnius was more than just a religious center. It was home to a rich cultural and political scene, all in the Yiddish language. 

While she hailed from a secular family, which Brantsovsky noted kept neither kosher nor Shabbat, she completed her entire traditional education in Yiddish-speaking schools, and as a teenager was active in Jewish political youth movements

That world was shattered in 1941, when Vilnius fell under the control of the Germans and Brantsovsky, along with Vilnius’s tens of thousands of other Jews, were herded into the cramped conditions of the Vilna ghetto. 

From the first days of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, they began taking Jews from Vilnius to be killed in the nearby Ponar forest. Over 100,000 people would be killed there, including 70,000 Lithuanian Jews and 8,000 Roma, making it the second-largest mass grave in Europe after Babyn Yar in Ukraine.  

“Our life was more of existence, really,” Brantsovsky once described the ghetto in an interview with Centropa, a European Holocaust memorial organization. Every day was a struggle for survival, and one slip-up or turn of fate could mean starvation, or deportation to Ponar.

Brantsovsky recalled hearing of a resistance movement forming in the ghetto and quickly requested to join. 

“The underground organization of the ghetto united all parties and trends such as communists, revisionists, Bund etc. Their common goal was to fight against fascists,” she told Centropa. 

That group would be remembered as the United Partizan Organization, or by its Yiddish initials, FPO. 

The FPO had considered instigating an uprising in the ghetto, as would later take place in Warsaw. After the capture and execution of it’s leader Yitzhak Wittenberg by the Gestapo, the movement’s leadership decided instead to take its fighters out of the ghetto and into the nearby forests where Soviet-backed partisans were harrying the rear and supply lines of the German army. 

Brantsovsky bid farewell to her family and was smuggled out of the ghetto on Sept. 23, 1943. She would later learn that on the same night, the Germans began their final liquidation of the ghetto, killing most of its inhabitants. None of her family would survive the Holocaust.

In the Rudninkai forest, which has been immortalized in partisan literature under its Yiddish name, Der Rudnitzker Vald, she joined up with a partisan unit composed of Jews under the command of Abba Kovner, known as the Nokmim or Avengers.  

In the forest she trained with weapons and explosives and took part in military operations against the Nazi occupation. 

“We blasted trains and placed explosives in the enemy’s equipment. We shot and killed them,” she told Centropa. “Yes, I did, I killed them and did so with ease. I knew that my dear ones were dead and I took my revenge for them and thousands of others with each and every shot.”

In the forest, she also met her future husband Mikhail Brantsovsky. Nearly a year after fleeing the ghetto, Fania returned, rifle in hand, as the Soviet Red Army captured the city. 

Less than a month after returning she and Mikhail married. 

“We were intoxicated by the victory, our youth and love,” she recalled. 

After the war, her commander Abba Kovner would gain fame as one of Israel’s poet laureates, and infamy for an aborted plot to kill 6 million Germans in vengeance for the Holocaust. 

Brantsovsky took part in none of that: She stayed in Vilnius where she and Mikhail built a life together and had two children. 

In the years after the war, it quickly became clear to Brantsovsky that the world of her youth had been lost. 

“There were hardly any Jews left in Vilnius. When I saw older Jews, or they looked old to me considering how young I was, I felt like kneeling before them to kiss their hands.” she once recalled. 

Fania quickly went to work, helping to document what had been lost, and assisted Soviet Jewish writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman in the “Black Book of Soviet Jewry,” a 500-page document that recorded the Nazis’ crimes in the occupied regions of the Soviet Union. 

While it was first published in the USSR by Der Emes, the Yiddish-language arm of Pravda, the book would later be suppressed as the Soviet policy towards the Holocaust shifted to present the genocide as solely an atrocity against Soviet citizens, not one that specifically targeted Jews.  

Though Mikhail and Fania had been present and honored in Moscow’s Red Square during the victory parades of 1945, their enthusiasm towards the Soviet regime dulled after experiencing the antisemitism of Stalin’s later years. 

Mikhail passed away in 1985, and Fania retired from her job as a teacher in 1990 just before Lithuania gained its independence. 

In retirement, Fania found a new purpose: In an independent Lithuania, there was renewed interest in recording Vilnius’s Jewish past and studying the Yiddish language of its Jews. 

In the early 1990s, Fania and a group of other survivors, including another former partisan, Rachel Margolis, worked to establish a Holocaust museum in Vilnius known as the Green House. 

In 2001, Katz, a professor of Yiddish who had previously worked at Oxford, relocated to Vilnius and established a Yiddish institute at Vilnius University. 

“When I founded the Vilnius Yiddish Institute in 2001 my first executive act was to hire Fania as librarian and that choice was a success from day one,” Katz told JTA.

Fania, who worked as a teacher much of her adult life, originally trained to do so in Yiddish for students in the city’s Jewish school system. The Nazis shattered that future, but decades later, the Vilnius Yiddish Institute represented a return to her roots. 

“She understood that she was the carrier of so much of the living Yiddish culture of the interwar period, especially its secular Yiddishist incarnation,” Katz explained.  

The Institute lasted for 17 years, until it ultimately closed down in 2018. Every year it ran a summer program attended by students from around the world, and Fania became a fixture of the experience, telling students about the city of her youth, the experience of the ghetto and bringing them out to the remains of her partisan camp in the Rudninkai forest well into her nineties. 

She is remembered fondly by nearly everyone who passed through.

“I feel really blessed to have had an opportunity to work with her,” Indre Joffyte, who helped run the program, told JTA. “Fania’s energy, determination and passion in everything she did was an inspiration to everyone around her. I will always remember her caring nature, our girly conversations, her preparedness to help, and her inner youth despite her age and tragic life experiences.”

In independent Lithuania, Fania became a prominent figure in its Jewish community as well as in diplomatic circles, guiding visiting leaders on tours of the former ghetto and Ponar where so many of her relatives were killed.

But the increased attention also invited trouble. 

In the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, a nationalist narrative arose in the Baltic states that equated the actions of the Soviets with the Nazis.  

Known as the “double genocide” theory, it has been largely rejected by Jewish and western Holocaust institutions, but has become the standard presented in Lithuania and the other Baltic states. 

It resulted in a smear campaign directed against Brantsovsky and other surviving Jewish partisans, such as Margolis and Yitzhak Arad who was the director of Yad Vashem from 1972 to 1993. 

For fighting in units allied with the Soviets, they were accused of being war criminals on the same level as Lithuanians who collaborated with the Nazis. 

“I agree completely with all the anti-Communist pronouncements. What I disagree with is, of course, the equalization of the people who committed the genocide at Auschwitz and the people who liberated Auschwitz. They’re simply not the same.” said Katz.  “As much as one should hate the Stalinist Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945, we were in the American-Anglo-Soviet alliance, and the Soviet Union was the only force fighting Hitler in Eastern Europe. So of course, Fania’s partisan union was aligned with the Soviet partisans in the forest who were fighting.”

For Brantsovsky, the issue came to head in 2008, when Lithuania’s chief prosecutor publicly demanded that she be questioned over her alleged connections to a massacre of Lithuanian civilians during the war. 

Katz believes that the demand was in retaliation for increased pressure from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish institutions for Lithuania to investigate its own wartime collaborators.

The charges were dropped that same year, but the incident had a notable effect on Brantsovsky, resulting in her receding somewhat from public life in Lithuania. 

She didn’t stop teaching Yiddish, however, and was active in working with students and guiding tours until her 99th year, when she had a fall on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

With her passing, another thread connecting Eastern Europe’s Jewish past and rich Yiddish culture has been severed. 

“She was one of the last witnesses of prewar Jewish life in Vilna, a proud graduate of its Yiddish school system where everything from chemistry to Latin and Shakespeare was studied in the Jewish community’s native language,” Jordan Kutzik, a former deputy Yiddish editor at The Forward, said in a memorial post on Facebook.

“After nearly her entire family and cultural milieu were murdered and then her native language suppressed for 50 years, she wasn’t wasting any time in helping to document her city’s history and encouraging others to explore it.”

[feralgodmothers]

Not sure what exactly brought this thought on, but I wanted to put it out there anyway.

I was thinking about how people make fun of Austin for “acting like Elvis” and “acting like James Dean” every time his voice goes a little deeper or he stares a little harder.

And that got me thinking even further about pop culture, and how people’s impression on both Elvis AND James Dean don’t really line up with what the men are actually like, or what truly made them influential.

Of course, yes - they’re both undeniably cool. And they’re rightfully considered to be cool icons. But the aspects of them that have been idolized are very two-dimensional when you compare them to everything they have to offer, and it strips away a lot of their depth.

Take Elvis. True, he was a cool, rebel rockstar (and that’s awesome), but when you only focus on that, you get the pop culture trickle-down effect, where “definitive” things associated with him, such as this moment in Grease

indirectly paints a portrait of him that has nothing to do with the man himself (like, come on - you can’t tell me Elvis was afraid of hugs).

And same with James Dean (Now, truth be told - I don’t know much about the actual man, but I’ve seen him in a couple of his film roles, and I think that’s probably where a lot of his “cool guy” appeal comes from anyway). In his case, sure - there’s a lot of ‘cool guy’ brooding, slouching, posing, and aloofness. But along with that - there’s also some (if not a larger fraction of) real, raw emotion.

For every scene where he’s cool, calm, and collected, there’s a bigger, more character-defining scene where he’s… not any of those things. His characters go through a lot of emotional turmoil and pain, almost to the point of being pathetic. And yet, what he’s most known for is essentially the Rebel Without a Cause poster.

It’s just very fascinating to me to watch people cherrypick the most shallow bits, define these men by them, and proceed to mock others with them - when really, there’s a whole spectrum of humanity there, which even includes some wholesome masculinity.

So yeah - in that sense, I think Austin IS like Elvis and James Dean, and that’s a genuinely marvelous thing. He’s charismatic, sympathetic, deep, and he contains multitudes.

Thank you, and goodnight.

[curetapwater]

Y'know the part in PMMM where Kyubey says that in his species of hivemind aliens, emotion is considered a mental disorder?

And y'know how Eclipse is inordinately emotional compared to other Black Arms? Even the lead ones like Doom and Death who are capable of independent thought and feelings aren't nearly so emotional as to shed tears at Shadow's continued rejection of his kind, nor cry out in distress when his fellow Black Arms are threatened.

My point is that Eclipse is neurodivergent by the standards of the species and culture in which he was raised and I think that's neat.

[julijbee]

girlbossing too close to the sun.

[icegoddessrukia]

You know, so much of the fandom bashes Katara harshly for one harsh comment she made in The Southern Raiders to Sokka, when she was highly upset about her mother's death and she felt Sokka was dismissive of her feelings (which he kind of was, to be honest) and they go on about how unfair it is that Sokka didn't get an apology. Meanwhile, I've never seen any fans complain about how Zuko literally says the most disrespectful thing about Aang's culture (the "this isn't air temple preschool" comment) when he's literally the prince of the imperial nation that wiped out Aang's entire culture in the first place. Aang is just supposed to let that slide and no one in the Gaang defends him either. He never gets an apology for his culture and religion being mocked by an imperialist. Zuko is two years older than Katara here and this is after he went through the Day of Black Sun development when he realized that the Fire Nation were horrible to the other nations. There's no excuse for Zuko being such an asshole to Aang but I guess because he's Zuko, he gets a free pass while Katara has to be bashed forever for saying something unfair when she was traumatized and no one was really listening to her.

[mabaris]

also. tbh. a little disappointed it seems like taash is Also going to be from the qun, or at least a very recent defect. i was hoping we’d get to see more vashoth characters

[fortheturnstiles]

had an absolute whirlwind of an afternoon in class today finding out my film professor is not only a neil young fan but a monkees fan. and like a real die hard michael nesmith guy . isn’t that wild. and i never would have known if i hadn’t brought up the monkees in a conversation that was not about them because i’m a crazy person. he also brought up chrome dreams which completely sent me into the stratosphere i just love music and i love people who love music and that we can share that together as people . isn’t it wonderful. that’s why we’re all here isn’t it

[alexjcrowley]

Hey I just want to know something: am I the stupidest person on the planet or the f1 fandom is built differently?

Everytime I go on a social media to look up f1 content I see cute/horny (let's be honest) edits and everybody calling the drivers pookie or making memes. And that's alright, I guess.

I most definitely know that a bunch of (mostly white) men in a very competitive male-dominated sport rooted more than many others in capitalism are probably going to have scandals around them. I am not that dumb. I also know that because probably none of them is scandal-free and people who get crushes/hyperfixation on them just learn to live with them, but I didn't think they just...ignored them? Swept them under the rug? Let me explain.

When I so much as stumble on a TikTok with a song by The 1975 or McCafferty- or hell even Lovejoy recently- I see comments flooding with "bUt DoN't YoU kNoW tHeY'rE pRoBlEmAtIC?". Same happened with content about cinema or books. And on Tumblr happens less but still happens. As soon as you mention something that has ties with sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. people will soon point it out to you. Maybe because they're some of those people with the obsession of only consuming "morally pure" content, maybe they genuinely want to inform you, maybe they fucking hate that song/book/movie and want to give YOU a reason to dislike it.

But can someone tell me if I'm fucking dumb and I managed to stumble in the wrong part of instagram/tumblr/TikTok or NOBODY fucking talks about the shit some drivers have done? Because I am stumbling on a LOT of shit done by drivers I really liked lately even though I have been interested in F1 for a while now. Not too long, but enough that I think I would have heard some stuff.

Like, if I spent like 6 months on the hashtag of Guy Who Drives, why am I now finding out that they said something really discriminatory? I am just confused, I simply thought it would have popped out sooner, but apparently it was buried under 500+ posts about their abs? Like what?

I get that anyway it's not like you can cancel a driver, no matter what shit they say they'll probably still going to be racing the next weekend, but why people don't talk about it? Was my socials' fault for showing me horny posts everytime I simply looked up the name of a guy or do people don't talk about this stuff in the f1 community because "what are you gonna do anyway"?

I am leaning towards the second option because there are a few things that happened while I was already watching f1 (not in order: Lando's comments about, Trump, Hornergate, most drivers saying Hornergate was just noise) and at first people were talking about it but then they just...stopped? Like, I don't know, personally the words of disenterest many drivers expressed about Hornergate made me change my opinion about them at least a little and people seemed so outraged at first but now...it's like it never happened. Everybody back thirsting on main for Ricciardo, Norris, etc.

Genuine question, is the general response of the f1 community to these behaviours "forgive and forget in time of the next gp"? Am I missing something? I don't think they should be crucified but why I have not seen more people talking about this stuff? The "serious sport bunch" seems to be uninterested in "gossip" or whatever happens outsid the tracks, the good old fashioned fandom is writing fanfiction/making edits/funny posts, who keeps tracks of this stuff?

I have never been interested in a sport before. In the artistic world (cinema, literature, etc.) some scandals can get you out of a job and a long lasting hatred from the community. In motorsports, because the success of a driver does not depend from his fans' engagement but can be "objectively proved" by results and victories, do people just...make peace with the fact that some athletes are pieces of shit?

I want to specify it one more time, I am NOT saying LET'S CANCEL ALL THE DRIVERS AND BOO THEM BECAUSE THEY HAVE DONE SOMETHING QRONG AT SOME POINT, I am asking:

how do you deal when an athlete you cheer for does something really fucked up, and you know other athletes in the same field are no saints?

[void-tiger]

Headcanon:

It’s less that Dream dislikes Mortal Food (he just doesn’t bother with it since he usually doesn’t “need” food or can just eat dreams-of-food), and moreso he isn’t a fan of the look and smell of the english food he saw at the White Horse when meeting up once a century with Hob Gadling. Then assumes All Mortal Food must be just as ghastly without the barrier of “this is what the dreamer dreams it tastes like nostalgically, or might taste like if they could ever have it.”

Which. To be fair. A lot of english food I’ve seen in like. Vlogs and such made by common blokes verses experienced cooks and chefs. Is just this brownish grey swimming in gravy mush. (I wouldn’t trust waking food either, Dream.)

[fairyzar]

the older i get the more confused i become in regards to my identity.

[exopelagic]

talking to him more very much achieved. we just talked for like 4 hours in the kitchen holy shit I need to sleep

[llycaons]

trying to listen to ancillary sword but it's going excruciatingly slow bc it's a sequel, and in fact I think the first sequel I'm listening to on audiobook. even very good sequels (which I expect this will be) will pepper in exposition and background info in the first chapter to catch up readers, which tend to take place in between lines of dialogue. I wouldn't mind except I always forget what was just said and have to go back and check, and it's comparatively much more difficult to rewind an audiobook to the right place than to glance back over a page. so I've been listening very very slowly aha. but I've finally gotten to ch2 and I'm glad I'm reading the sequel right away bc the story picks right up from the finale of the first book and I'm already intrigued by the new characters and entertained by the new plot direction

[jewishvitya]

A pro-Palestine Jew on tiktok asked those of us who were raised pro-Israel, what got us to change our minds on Palestine. I made a video to answer (with my voice, not my face), and a few people watched it and found some value in it. I'm putting this here too. I communicate through text better than voice.

So I feel repetitive for saying this at this point, but I grew up in the West Bank settlements. I wrote this post to give an example of the extent to which Palestinians are dehumanized there.

Where I live now, I meet Palestinians in day to day life. Israeli Arab citizens living their lives. In the West Bank, it was nothing like that. Over there, I only saw them through the electric fence, and the hostility between us and Palestinians was tangible.

When you're a child being brought into the situation, you don't experience the context, you don't experience the history, you don't know why they're hostile to you. You just feel "these people hate me, they don't want me to exist." And that bubble was my reality. So when I was taught in school that everything we did was in self defense, that our military is special and uniquely ethical because it's the only defensive military in the world - that made sense to me. It slotted neatly into the reality I knew.

One of the first things to burst the bubble for me was when I spoke to an old Israeli man and he was talking about his trauma from battle. I don't remember what he said, but it hit me wrong. It conflicted with the history as I understood it. So I was a bit desperate to make it make sense again, and I said, "But everything we did was in self defense, right?"

He kinda looked at me, couldn't understand at all why I was upset, and he went, "We destroyed whole villages. Of course we did. It was war, that's what you do."

And that casual "of course" stuck with me. I had to look into it more.

I couldn't look at more accurate history, and not at accounts by Palestinians, I was too primed against these sources to trust them. The community I grew up in had an anti-intellectual element to it where scholars weren't trusted about things like this.

So what really solidified this for me, was seeing Palestinian culture.

Because part of the story that Israel tells us to justify everything, is that Palestinians are not a distinct group of people, they're just Arabs. They belong to the nations around us. They insist on being here because they want to deny us a homeland. The Palestinian identity exists to hurt us. This, because the idea of displacing them and taking over their lands doesn't sound like stealing, if this was never theirs and they're only pretending because they want to deprive us.

But then foods, dances, clothing, embroidery, the Palestinian dialect. These things are history. They don't pop into existence just because you hate Jews and they're trying to move here. How gorgeous is the Palestinian thobe? How stunning is tatreez in general? And when I saw specific patterns belonging to different regions of Palestine?

All of these painted for me a rich shared life of a group of people, and countered the narrative that the Palestininian identity was fabricated to hurt us. It taught me that, whatever we call them, whatever they call themselves, they have a history in this land, they have a right to it, they have a connection to it that we can't override with our own.

I started having conversations with leftist friends. Confronting the fact that the borders of the occupied territories are arbitrary and every Israeli city was taken from them. In one of those conversations, I was encouraged to rethink how I imagine peace.

This also goes back to schooling. Because they drilled into us, we're the ones who want peace, they're the ones who keep fighting, they're just so dedicated to death and killing and they won't leave us alone.

In high school, we had a stadium event with a speaker who was telling us about a person who defected from Hamas, converted to Christianity and became a Shin Bet agent. Pretty sure you can read this in the book "Son of Hamas." A lot of my friends read the book, I didn't read it, I only know what I was told in that lecture. I guess they couldn't risk us missing out on the indoctrination if we chose not to read it.

One of the things they told us was how he thought, we've been fighting with them for so long, Israelis must have a culture around the glorification of violence. And he looked for that in music. He looked for songs about war. And for a while he just couldn't find any, but when he did, he translated it more fully, and he found out the song was about an end to wars. And this, according to the story as I was told it, was one of the things that convinced him. If you know know the current trending Israeli "war anthem," you know this flimsy reasoning doesn't work.

Back then, my friend encouraged me to think more critically about how we as Israelis envision peace, as the absence of resistance. And how self-centered it is. They can be suffering under our occupation, but as long as it doesn't reach us, that's called peace. So of course we want it and they don't.

Unless we're willing to work to change the situation entirely, our calls for peace are just "please stop fighting back against the harm we cause you."

In this video, Shlomo Yitzchak shares how he changed his mind. His story is much more interesting than mine, and he's much more eloquent telling it. He mentions how he was taught to fear Palestinians. An automatic thought, "If I go with you, you'll kill me." I was taught this too. I was taught that, if I'm in a taxi, I should be looking at the driver's name. And if that name is Arab, I should watch the road and the route he's taking, to be prepared in case he wants to take me somewhere to kill me. Just a random person trying to work. For years it stayed a habit, I'd automatically look at the driver's name. Even after knowing that I want to align myself with liberation, justice, and equality. It was a process of unlearning.

On October, not long after the current escalation of violence, I had to take a taxi again. A Jewish driver stopped and told me he'll take me, "so an Arab doesn't get you." Israeli Jews are so comfortable saying things like this to each other. My neighbors discussed a Palestinian employee, with one saying "We should tell him not to come anymore, that we want to hire a Jew." The second answered, "No, he'll say it's discrimination," like it would be so ridiculous of him. And the first just shrugged, "So we don't have to tell him why." They didn't go through with it, but they were so casual about this conversation.

In the Torah, we're told to treat those who are foreign to us well, because we know what it's like to be the foreigner. Fighting back against oppression is the natural human thing to do. We know it because we lived it. And as soon as I looked at things from this angle, it wasn't really a choice of what to support.

[neverendingford]

.