#without leaving the village

[guardian-of-da-gay]

simpler times

[fisheito]

found a baby yaku amidst the Sketchbook-glitch-corruption wreckage..... wondering if he flipped skin tones between black and red and everything in between until he saw his to-be-grandparents (and started mimicking THEIR skin tone....... )

[themintman]

Maybe Vos and Jack weren't Sammy's only friends.

[quenepacrossing]

inspired my @moshileaf to make a new island moodboard of sorts 𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅

[caitlynmeow]

Modern AU:

When Bela started going to university there was the inevitable question: “why here and not Cambridge or Harvard?”

Many excuses were used to answer the question, but the real answer is Alcina looking at her daughter (this is only done with close family like only Miranda and the other Lords) and saying “She couldn’t handle living on an hour and a half away campus, why do you think she can handle living abroad on her own?”

Because Bela tried. She even has a huge apartment near campus to stay in. She did move there, actually. But on the first night, she drove back to the castle because she felt very homesick and couldn’t possibly spend the night there.

Alcina is a no-pressure mom and also very indulging so she didn’t try to force Bela to tough it out and stay at the apartment. Because she was also having a hard time accepting that one of her babies was old enough to live on her own.

So if Bela feels better staying at home, then she stays at home.

Bela only stayed at the apartment during midterms and finals because she needed the extra time to study and be close to campus (during those times Cass would go with her because wants to keep her sister company and also have access to the university library and all the extra resources that she can use to excel even further in high school). But other than that Bela stayed at the castle and the driver would drive to and back from university every day.

[intni]

imagining anthony’s letter to ian but as an animal crossing postcard. heartbreaking

[cringefaecompilation]

well! i'm glad that people are finally also really wanting the pcs to just talk to each other after getting off Ashton Greymoore's Wild Ride. so i will once again tap my sign of LET FEARNE AND ORYM TALK FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THEY ALMOST LOST EACH OTHER AGAIN

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

AFTERMARE WEEK: day 6- flight or fight

get away from me.

aftermare week is hosted by @bluepallilworld

[raisinchallah]

whatever like three people on planet earth care about xena/callisto so i guess ill just have to keep telling myself complex stories in my head where they were like evil warlords together callisto joining xenas band to try and learn from her and plot her revenge and they have a complex toxic romance while callisto slowly turns xenas army against her as a perfect revenge and tries to kill her but xena gets away so she builds up her army with the remnants of the men she turned from xena the same army that burnt her village and says its all part of the plan and then when she sees xena again years later is even more mad and even more insane and says even weirder things to gabrielle about the fact she sees xena being a better person with a girl she sees as the person she could have become if xena didnt torch her village and it makes everything even more deliciously insane

[kishimotomasashi]

“Civilization is coming. And it means to exterminate us.”

Naruto Shippuden (2007) // Black Sails (2014)

[carnivorous-arboretum]

welcome home.

[theshadowrealmitself]

I feel like Naruto wouldn’t have the entire concept of what makes a missing nin a missing nin, like I feel like he’d think the person would have to make an announcement to publicly denounce their village before leaving

So he wouldn’t see a problem with going to visit Gaara or something without letting anyone know where he’s going first, just heads on out

[mariocki]

Deported (1950)

"Signor Smith, do all of you Americans treat women so, uh... so directly?"

"I wouldn't know. Maybe."

"But why? Have you so little time to spare?"

[saltycharacters]

Can I be livid for a sec? Ive spent all these years in the pandemic being one of the few doin my part, vaccinating as much as possible and social distancing and wearing masks everywhere and not even leaving the house unless absolutely necessary. A sisyphean attempt to do literally anything about the spread of covid, because so few even care to do the bare minimum at this point. So I have to sit and watch while this small group of people on this godforsaken Earth are giving up opportunities and funtimes left and right to protect our loved ones, and the immunocompromised, and ourselves and everyone else, while the selfish majority don't give a shit and literally do whatever they want, passing strains of covid amongst themselves like its a game of hot potato and. Usually I can ignore any pings of jealousy and reassure myself that at LEAST. There's one less vector to spread the illness, and that keeps at least those around me safe, and I continue finding enjoyment in safe and quarantine-approved ways, but.

Today I got a text message from my dad, which is not unusal in itself, but opening it I realized it was a photo of my abuela. Sitting across the table from my dad in her rustic little house in spain, in the rustic little village that I've visited every summer for most of my childhood. The place I've considered my favorite on earth for most of my life and that I've held in my heart so fondly that nearly every night, I dream about being there again. The place I haven't been to in years as part of the many sacrifices I've taken to combat the pandemic. And yet my dad, part of the selfish and skeptical majority, took the risk without a second thought and unceremoniously come into contact with the disease-spreading, equally uncatious masses at the airport, sat in a largely un-masked airplane for 11 hours and is now having supper with family I've been trying to protect this whole tine. He doesn't consider whether he'll bring covid to them first before bringing it to his family back in the US, he doesn't think about the likleyhood of grandma, nearing her 90's, being able to survive such an ailment, and I just know that he will not give the fact that he couldve spread covid more to the hundreds of other people a second thought. He'll sleep soundly in my favorite room, he'll have fun in my favorite places, and he'll see my favorite people all while being so in-denial about the pandemic that his conciousness will remain clean the entire trip. And this time I'm dizzy with jealousy and rage, I'm sad and homesick and frustrated and worst of all, I can't express any of my feelings to my dad or mom or any family because they'll just laugh at me for being so paranoid and tell me to come over anyway. I'm not sure I'll ever see my beloved Requena ever again, nor any of my family nor resident friends because it seems that almost everyone in the world has forgotten that we're still in a pandemic, yet those self-entitled enough to participate in this collective amnesia can have fun and do whatever without a thought for the consequences they bring. I'll be huddled at home with thise large, gaping, emotional hole in my chest while people like Dad continue on like nothing's ever happened and we all have to suffer for it. It's not fair. I'm so close to tears, I'm just. So devistated and heartbroken. If you don't do your part to quarantine to the best of your ability and practice basic pandemic saftey when out, I hate you. You're awful and I hate you.

[bestworstcase]

ok everybody. tin hats ON.

in his commentary on ‘the grimm child,’ ozpin mentions but does not name a second fairytale about a “white witch in the woods.” he implies that this tale is the original source for white skin/hair and dark eyes of the chill’s victims in his rendition of ‘the grimm child,’ although note that his rendition portrays the victims with red veins as well, and ozpin specifically does not remark on these as non-traditional elements of ‘the grimm child.’ so, it seems the red veins are a traditional element of ‘the grimm child’ and only the white skin, white hair, and dark eyes originated from this fairytale involving the white witch—which tracks with the latter tale probably originating before ozma’s first reincarnation, making it probably one of the tales ozma heard about “a terrifying sorceress who commanded dark powers in the wilds among the beasts and monsters.” ozpin doesn’t provide any other information, but everything checks out. it’s just an old legend about salem, yeah?

so why isn’t it in the book?

think about it. ozpin’s commentary on ‘the grimm child’ makes it explicitly clear that he altered the traditional details of the story to match salem’s present-day appearance, and he specifically cites an old folktale, dating back to a time when frightened rumors about salem were everywhere, to justify this choice. his commentary on the girl in the tower is a screed about propaganda in which he blames the girl for orchestrating the deaths of everyone who tried to rescue her. this book OVERTLY flags to the reader that ozpin wrote it as anti-salem propaganda.

why didn’t he include one of those terrifying stories about the witch in the wilderness, surrounded by beasts and monsters?

i submit to you that he actually did.

he just chose a later version of it that conflated the witch with unrelated folklore about warriors with silver eyes.

EXHIBIT A: STRIKING RESEMBLANCES

the tale about the witch evidently has several similarities with ‘the grimm child’ which, according to ozpin, caused “some versions” of the latter tale to be conflated with the story about the witch. he does not, however, elaborate on what these similarities are.

but.

‘the grimm child’ takes place in a village at the outskirts of a forest, which the children in the story are forbidden to enter. two children disobey these instructions, go into the woods, and encounter a grimm—the chill—which they unwittingly lead back home. it massacres the village that night, and the elder child, the one who initiated the venture, discovers the carnage before succumbing herself.

in ‘the warrior in the woods,’ the main character is a young boy who lives in a village on the outskirts of a charmed forest, which the villagers believe has magic will keep them safe as long as they do not enter the woods. the village children do not heed these warnings, and the boy ventures even further than most, eventually encounters a grimm, and is rescued by the titular warrior. despite her repeated warnings not to come back, he does so once a year, bringing gifts and learning more about her past… until one day, when the grimm set upon the village again, and he fights his way through a horde of them to find the warrior’s cottage wrecked. presuming her dead, he returns to the village and tells her story.

the chief difference between these tales is the nature of what the disobedient children encounter—a powerful, malevolent grimm on the one hand, or an aloof, powerful warrior who can make the grimm flee with a glance on the other. even so, the basic beats of the stories are similar: a child breaks the rule not to enter the woods and learns a secret, one evil and one good, that alters the course of their fate; and by the end of the story the village is either wiped out or in serious danger, and the child is the witness to the true nature of the threat.

one is a warning to children not to disobey their parents or wander off. the other is a warning not to believe in simple, magical answers because the world is complicated and dangerous—and according to ozpin, it’s also often told with the same moral as the first.

EXHIBIT B: THE WARRIOR HERSELF

note that—despite ostensibly being a story about a silver-eyed warrior—the color of the warrior’s eyes is mentioned only once, at the very end, when the boy declares that he “fell in love with her the moment [he] saw her silver eyes.” think about that for a moment, in the context of how symbolically important traits are usually described in a fairytale—for example, the “skin white as snow, lips red as blood” motif. fairytales of remnant is absolutely riffing on the classic style and structure of european fairytales, and that is a form in which important colors and symbolic traits are introduced early and repeated often.

doesn’t that make a last-minute “i fell in love with her silver eyes” feel just a tad tacked on? like it might, perhaps, be a later addition? food for thought!

now check the way the warrior is described throughout the fairytale:

“a tall, fair woman in a flowing black cape […] as beautiful as she was fierce […] her black cloak was threadbare, its hem tattered, tears throughout it mended with fraying red thread […] hair almost as dark as the grimm’s, white standing out as brightly as bone”

“more white strands in her hair […] but she was still proud and strong, and even more beautiful than he remembered”

“black skirt, sturdy boots, and a dark green cloak […] hair pulled back into a ponytail […] the end of the [billhook’s] broken handle crisscrossed with red ribbon”

now—this rendition of the tale is accredited to glynda goodwitch, and the descriptions of the style of clothing the warrior wears is, um, pretty clearly informed by glynda’s own taste in fashion, which a) is hilarious and b) dilutes the similarity somewhat.

but the colors. look at the colors. every single time the warrior is described in narration, it’s black and white and red—and the first time, her physical appearance is explicitly compared to that of a grimm, and before the boy brings her new clothes, she specifically wears a worn black cloak mended with red thread.

the fourth and final time the warrior appears, she herself is not described, but the “homely hut” she lives in, deep in the woods, is noted to have a small table with two seats out in front of it—innocuous enough a detail on its own, but in conjunction with the warrior’s, again, explicitly grimm-like appearance it does rather jump out.

further, the first time the warrior appears, she shoves the boy out of the path of a charging boarbatusk, and the grimm stops dead in its tracks, turns around, and runs away from her. now, when qrow tells ruby about the myths of silver-eyed warriors in 3.11, he does say that the grimm are said to be afraid of them—but while we’ve seen grimm flinch and draw away from ruby’s glare, we’ve never seen a grimm behave as though it’s afraid of her.

we have, however, seen grimm stop cold mid-charge, spin around, and run the fuck away.

from the hound. from salem’s creature.

a silver-eyed warrior isn’t scary enough to make the grimm run away—but salem is.

the third time the warrior appears, she’s preceded by a flash of bright white light that makes a grimm vanish, which of course is an accurate description of a fully-fledged glare; but it’s also not at all something that would be beyond salem’s power to achieve given that she can a) crunch giant grimm to dust with a snap of her fingers and b) make magical light shows like nobody’s business, so a vague (and easily embellished or subtly altered or conflated with other stories about magical silver eyes!) description of a magical blast that destroys the grimm in no way rules out the possibility of salem being the original basis for this tale.

and then there is… this: “I live here alone because I am alone. And as a general rule, I don’t like people. Most of my own people were killed long ago. My family, everyone I’ve ever known is dead, and if there are other survivors like me, they’re scattered all over Remnant.”

an entirely believable statement coming from the mouth of a silver-eyed warrior given that salem does appear to have been hunting them down for quite some time but also a statement that would have been entirely true coming from salem’s mouth prior to ozma’s return.

EXHIBIT C: MORE FANTASTICAL VERSIONS

but everything outlined above might be coincidental: salem is far from the only character with a black/white/red color palette, and given that glynda penned this rendition it’s perfectly plausible that she took some inspiration from certain colleagues of hers—a silver-eyed warrior who dressed in black and the black-haired, aloof and prickly woman on her team, perhaps—rather than these being traditional details. and lots of cottages have small tables on their front porches. and just because the grimm don’t run away from silver-eyed people in reality doesn’t mean they wouldn’t in stories.

but this rendition of ‘the warrior in the woods’ is one of several tales—along with ‘grimm child’ and ‘the infinite man’—which ozpin specifically identifies as having been altered from the more traditional telling in some way, and unlike ‘the grimm child’ (with its nontraditional physical description) and ‘the infinite man’ (which strikes a more balanced tone between the more typical portrayals of the titular character as either a hero, a fool, or a villain), ozpin does not clarify what got changed.

all he says is that there are “more fantastical versions of the tale, embellishments which add nothing to its deeper meaning and don’t bear repeating.”

fantastical embellishments that don’t bear repeating, writes the man who wrote an elaborate telling of the “most romantic” variant of the infinite man where all the magic was genuine, and also included stories about a god bringing his chosen ones to a magical island and transforming them into faunus, and a king haunted by a crown that taunts him with visions of a nightmarish future, and two gods fighting over their creations and nearly destroying the world, and a cranky old wizard dividing up his powers to bless four young women with magic out of gratitude for being kind.

fantastical embellishments that don’t bear repeating, writes the man obsessed with fairytales.

the warrior in the woods, as written, is overtly magical—grimm flee before her, she vaporizes them with a mysterious flood of light she refuses to explain, and she is identified at the end as having silver eyes. from what qrow and maria say of silver eyes, all of that is pretty standard as far as legends of them go. in-universe, anyone who reads this rendition of the tale and has even a passing familiarity with the canonically diverse, if a little obscure, folklore regarding silver eyes would immediately clock that this is a tale about a silver-eyed warrior. there’s nothing we’ve been told about the general folklore that is particularly more fantastic than what happens in ‘the warrior in the woods.’ and since qrow mentions that he heard about these stories from ozpin, and ozpin himself takes an interest in ruby because of her silver eyes, we can be fairly sure that ozpin isn’t invested in burying knowledge of the folklore itself, beyond ensuring that its actual existence is kept secret from the general public.

so what are those fantastical embellishments that ozpin dismisses as so silly and meaningless they don’t even bear repeating? (and doylistically, why put such an uncharacteristically disdainful remark into ozpin’s commentary at all, with zero elaboration, if not to flag that something is fishy here?)

what’s more fantastical than a warrior with magic eyes who can strike grimm dead with a mere glare? maybe a lonely grimm sorceress who lives deep in the wilderness, commanding dark powers over the beasts and monsters, protecting a village on the outskirts of her forest because just one of them treated her with kindness—until the village disregarded the one thing she asked in return, that they leave her alone and stay out of her forest, and she withdrew her protection and left them to fend for themselves.

that a) is a very classic fairytale plot (“if a magical benefactor tells you not to do one specific, seemingly trivial thing, don’t fucking do it”), b) ticks both boxes for the traditional morals ozpin mentions (“don’t wander too far from home” and “don’t rely on others to save you”), c) amps up the loose similarities between ‘warrior and the woods’ and ‘grimm child’ considerably, making their eventual conflation more natural, and d) is exactly the kind of story about witch-in-the-woods miserable hermit era salem that ozma would try his damnedest to erase or, failing that, change enough to obscure the connection to salem herself by attaching it to some other, unrelated but plausibly similar bit of folklore.

‘the warrior in the woods’ IS the story about the white witch in the woods, hiding in plain sight with the help of a few trivial tweaks and a perfunctory remark about embellishments so unbelievable they aren’t even worth thinking about.

and if you still don’t believe me, ozpin all but tattles on himself, in the commentaries on ‘warrior’ and ‘girl in the tower’:

“In fact, ‘The Warrior in the Woods’ is often used as a cautionary tale, intended to discourage children from wandering too far from home on their own, or from relying too much on others to save them. But the most enduring, and I think the most inspiring, aspect of this story is one which many have taken to heart: If you can help others, it is your responsibility to do so. […] From each according to their own abilities.”

“This is how propaganda works, of course. Arguably, every fable was originally told for a purpose, either overt or hidden. Some were designed to communicate a moral lesson or instruct children on how to behave, while others were meant as warnings or to persuade people into believing a certain thing.”

[shopcat]

also just for funs bc i'm for the actual first time just taking whoever i LIKE instead of trying for a particular Theme these are my current villagers ^_^ plus tybalt for spacing