#without me having to remind them that i exist

[newyork-institute]

All I can think about now is the reader being a freshly turned vampire, and Ghost stumbles across you, covered in blood.

"NO! Wait, please, I don't understand-" "Who's blood is that?" "Mine? I think?" "You think?" "I don't know! I was attacked from behind and then all I felt was pain and then I woke up and everything smells so fucking good and-" "Have you attacked anyone?!" "I-"

Turns out you did, in fact, attack someone, the raw hunger of a fresh turn almost impossible to stop yourself.

He becomes your lifeline after, knowing the clan in the area would rather rip you to shreds than have a vampire running around without being told what to do from another.

When he first offered you his blood, the smell called to you like a siren called to shore, hoping to drag someone into the darkness with them.

You couldn’t escape the taste of him constantly in your mouth or the smell of him surrounding you. You craved licking the sweat off his neck and biting in, but in the beginning, you were limited to the blood from his hand.

Ghost was never surprised to come out of his room in the middle of the night to find you sitting by the window in the living room, eyes cast towards the sky. (Vampires don’t sleep because they’re dead, Ghost had to remind himself.)

He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t stop himself from staring at you all the time, wanting to feel your skin under his hands.

Of course, though, other vampires learned of your existence easily, grabbing you like a thief in the night and keeping you sedated with dead man’s blood constantly pumping in your veins.

Ghost was covered in blood when he found you, the smell bitter because it was vampire blood but his presence a balm on your tired and aching body.

“How’d you find me?” You murmured, your head lolling around on Ghosts shoulder. He shushed you, telling you not to talk and to let him take care of you, and you did, closing your eyes and sleeping off the rest of the dead man’s blood.

When you woke up at whatever time later, all you could smell was Simon - the sweat, sweat smell of his musk and the gunpowder that stuck to his skin. You looked at him as you opened your eyes.

The whole turning into a vampire and then being captured and held captive by other vampires caused you to break, a sob slipping past your lips as you buried your head in the pillows.

Strong arms were around you, Simon hauling you into his lap, one hand wrapped around your hip and the other tangling into your hair.

You were shaking as you buried your head into his shoulder, calming yourself down with the smell of him invading your senses.

Then hunger shot through you, brutal and agonizing, a wounded sound passing your lips as you tried to pull away from that intoxicating smell of Simon Riley.

Hands were on your face, a thumb pushing at your brow to get that look off your face. “What is it, love?”

“‘M hungry,” you grit out, letting the wave of devastating hunger pass before you opened your eyes, Simon’s chest now bare as he slid his hand to the back of your neck.

“Here,” he said, tilting his head to the side some, baring his neck to you. You whimpered, not needing anymore convincing to press your lips to his neck, fangs coming through and piercing his skin.

I just like the idea Simon Riley letting himself be the only one to sustain you, gripping you tightly each time as you sink your fangs into his neck.

[draconic-desire]

your yan!neuvi series got me on a chokehold !! I feel so bad for darling but it got me thinking, would neuvillette ever allow them to i dont know, go visit mondt to look at their parents’ grave (?).

Neuvillette meets his (dead) in-laws edition 😂

Ok this idea is simultaneously kinda funny but also makes me cry a bit because I totally think Neuvillette would have ensured your family’s wellbeing in your absence. Despite his flaws, he still maintains his overwhelming sense of duty and justice.

Yandere Neuvillette x Reader

(A Dance with the Dragon Interlude)

Talking about your life four centuries ago has become a bit of a taboo in the household you share with Neuvillette.

Mostly, it only serves to incite an argument, one you are always predestined to lose. The other times, it only reminds you of painful memories. So, you’ve learned to bite your tongue, to keep your past held tightly to your heart. Neuvillette doesn’t seem to mind; in fact, you believe he might prefer if your history were to be wiped from your mind completely, leaving a blank slate for him to carve his essence into.

Which is why you’re so shocked when, on a particularly storming evening, the Chief Justice himself requests, “Tell me about what your parents were like.”

Jolting, you nearly drop the book in your hands. He’s not looking at you—usually, having his gaze on you translates to irritation, concern, or lust. When he’s looking away from you, as he is now, irises trained on the waves battering the cliffs below your home, you know that means he is instead thinking, pondering.

But thinking about what? Your eyes narrow, and your heart accelerates. What is he getting at?

A hand clenches around your heart when you try to picture your mother and father in your head—and fail. Four hundred years without a visit or simple image…of course their features have faded over time. But you’ll never forget the warmth, the knowledge that they loved you until the end and supported your lifelong wish of pursuing marine biology, even when it took you away from them.

You only shake your head. “I don’t want to talk about that, Neuvillette.”

He turns to you, now, eyes filled with calculation. A judge presiding over his court. “I had no parents. I simply…came to exist. Born of the water, the waves, the sea foam, and bestowed with this primordial power.” He glances down at his gloved hand, palm squeezing into a fist. “So the idea of parents is…foreign to me. Though I have a sense of the kind of ceaseless, unconditional love that defines a family.” You know he’s talking about his feelings for you, and your tattoo burns. “Experiencing a loss of that magnitude would be incomprehensible.”

For the life of you, you cannot figure out his endgame here. Why acknowledge your loss? Why equate his adoration and obsession with you for parental love? Your eyes burn, your breath quickens, you feel the tattoo pulse with energy as you—

“Do you ever wonder about how they lived the rest of their lives?”

Yes. No. Everyday. Somehow, you find your voice, a quiet thing filled with warning. Your skin feels so hot, like your veins are laced with lightning. “And how would you know anything about that?”

Neuvillette’s sharp eyes cut to your frame. “I…made sure that they were fully provided for. They lived happy lives, believing you to be living out your dreams in Fontaine. They are now buried together, in the cathedral cemetery overlooking the Brightcrown Mountains.”

Your breath hitches, and that power in your blood begins to settle. Their favorite place. The Brightcrown Mountains, where your father proposed to your mother. The Favonius Cathedral, where they were married. And the cemetery behind the church, where your grandparents had been entombed, too.

Something falls onto your lap. It’s only when you touch your hands to your face that you realize you’re crying. Neuvillette watches you with concern, one hand raised and poised to reach out to you, but he keeps his distance as he lets you process.

You release a shaky sigh. Was it true? Did they pass with no fear for your safety, in ignorant bliss of your extended life? The thought, although morbid in some ways, actually brings you a sense of peace. Your parents never had to endure the loss of you in the same way you had for them.

You swallow thickly, your voice hoarse with emotion. “Can we…visit them?”

That sets Neuvillette’s back ramrod straight as he blinks. You’ve only been out of the house a handful of times, and he was the one to bring this topic to light, but to venture out of Fontaine entirely? His protective and possessive instincts flare immediately, screaming at him to shut this idea down, to grab you and sink his teeth into your neck, dominant, claiming. But as his silver eyes flick across your face, taking in your tears, the tremble in your hands, the pit of mixed despair and relief in your eyes, he relents.

Slowly, he blinks, taking in a deep breath. You’re expecting an excuse, a verbal slap on this wrist disguised as concern for your safety. Which is why, for the second time tonight, you’re stunned when Neuvillette, rising to his feet, extends his hand. “I’ll take you there.”

~*~

The trip is easy, thanks to the Hydro Dragon’s teleportation abilities. The two of you arrive at the large square in front of the cathedral, the statue of Barbados towering above you. Briefly, you wonder what the Archon of Freedom thinks about your situation, or if he even deigns to care.

Not much has changed about Mondstadt in four hundred years. The streets still possess an older feel, cobblestone streets and stone walls surrounding the city. After seeing the drastic change in Fontaine, the fact envelopes you in a sense of comfort, knowing that at least one aspect of the world has aged alongside you, long-lived but unchanged.

It’s long grown dark, and the heavy downpour persists. Neither of you brought an umbrella as you ascend the stairs and wrap around to the cemetery behind the church. The rain, however, seems to dissolve into your skin rather than chilling you or soaking your clothes, no doubt another consequence of Neuvillette’s magic coursing through your veins.

The Hydro Dragon leads you to a small plot towards the back. Two tombstones are erected side by side, and you fall to your knees as you read: (Mother’s name) and (Father’s name) (L/n). Lives entwined to their last breath, they soar high above the clouds.

You hear a rustle of fabric, and soon Neuvillette has joined you, kneeling by your side. He raises his arm, and tendrils of blue light pool from his palm, forming the shape of beautiful flowers. They surround the graves, a sea of blues to celebrate your loved ones.

The two of you sit there for what could have been minutes or hours. All you know is that this is the most at peace you’ve felt in four hundred years.

[cosmxc-ars3hol3]

Oh, ashes, ashes, Dust to dust

Title - Oh, ashes, ashes, Dust to dust

Rating - General Audiences

Archive Warning - No Archive Warnings Apply

Category - M/M

Fandom - Keeper of the Lost Cities - Shannon Messenger

Relationship - Councillor Bronte/Fintan Pyren

Characters - Fintan Pyren, Councillor Bronte

Additional Tags - Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 03: Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities)

Summary - ‘After Fintan burnt Oblivimyre down during his healing, he sneaks his way into Bronte’s Castle in Eternalia so he has somewhere to stay. Bronte decides to help him stay hidden/keep people thinking he’s dead.’

its gonna be a multi chapter (hopefully) fintante fic that my tumblr mutual kale gave me when i was bitching about the appalling lack of fintante fics on ao3 (thanks kale!)

The fic is also under the cut

Bronte lightleaped back to his castle with a heavy heart; his and the other councillors' castle was luckily not in the section of Eternalia that got burned down by fintans Everblaze. He unlocked the door, his bodyguards trailing in behind him, patrolling the lower levels of the castle. The air was thick with the scent of ash, an unsettling reminder of the chaos that had unfolded, strange but not yet suspicious.

The goblins conducted a thorough search that ended with them telling Bronte it was safe, yet Bronte couldn't shake a feeling of unease. It must be leftover nerves from what happened at Oblivimyre. Going alone, he went to the more familiar and comforting parts of his castle. Weary both emotionally and physically, he went to his lounge room, intending to calm down and eventually sleep, if he could, for the night. But as he got into the room, a prickling sensation told him he was not alone.

"Who's there?" Bronte's voice cut through the silence, betraying a mixture of weariness and apprehension. He could tell there was someone there. Today had taken its toll on him, and now the break in felt like a cruel twist of fate. The scene of earlier in the evening rushed back to him: the council’s idiotic decision to entrust Sophie, a mere 13-year-old, with the responsibility of bringing Fintan back to sanity. to fix what used to be impossible.

Sophie is the only currently existing telepath with the ability to bring back a broken mind. He would say skill, but she didn't work for it; she was handed it on a silver platter by her creators, the Black Swan.

The Black Swan were a group of law-breaking rebels that, although they aren't totally law-abiding, they're also not as evil as everyone originally thought. They used to be the only known rebel group, but through a fiasco a few months ago, when Sophie was kidnapped, it was revealed that there was another rebel group, one that had everyone pinning their actions and crimes onto the Black Swan. It was then revealed that Fintan, an old friend to many of the current and past councillors, was a part of this newly discovered rebel group. The council decided to break Fintan's mind in an attempt to get more information out of him—information that he was refusing to give up willingly.

The break ended with many things going wrong, all of which are public knowledge and heavily talked about amongst people. Alden's mind broke, and with the help of the black swan, Sophie realised that she could heal him, something previously thought to be impossible.

The council decided, against Bronte’s better wishes, to heal Fintan's mind and try to get the same information that they previously failed to extract. It was a gamble that Bronte had foolishly hoped the council wouldn't take.

Bronte knew what his old friend? enemy? Bronte didn't know how to describe him; he knew what he is like. was like.

As he predicted, the healing went wrong—so much more wrong than he could have ever predicted himself.

Sophie, without a hitch, healed fintan’s broken mind.

That's where it went wrong. Bronte knew that it would be stupid to bring back Fintan's sanity, he was already too far gone from how he used to be.

Bronte looks back to those days with fondness and love.

Fintan used to be so good, so caring. Bronte knew that the person his old friend used to be was dead. and now his old friend has died.

In an attempt at something, while they were all in that building, all glittering and seemingly perfect, he called down Everblaze.

He's dead now, as is Kenric. and Bronte has to cope with losses.

Kenric, a trusted ally, was among the casualties, leaving Bronte to deal with the loss, although he didn't have it as hard as Oralie did. Kenric's death hurt because it was avoidable; Fintan’s hurt because Bronte was mourning the person his friend used to be.

‘Whoever is here, you better show yourself before I get my bodyguards,’ Bronte's voice held a steely edge, a futile attempt to mask his trepidation. The intruder remained hidden, refusing to reveal themselves despite Bronte's threats. With a resigned sigh, he shed his supposedly "fireproof" cape, not that it worked when faced with Everblaze, the sun’s fire on earth, only able to be summoned by the most powerful of pyrokinetics. Fintan did it in absolute zero conditions with a still-healing mind.

As much as Bronte hated to admit it, Fintan scared him.

‘If you don't come out now, I will be calling them in to find you,’ he warned. ‘I'm sure you're aware that goblins have excellent senses. They will find you in no time. So either show yourself or risk my bodyguards and jail,’ he finished. sitting down on one of the chairs lying around his lounge room, where he knew the perpetrator was hiding, waiting for them to emerge from their hiding spot to show themselves so Bronte could finally go to bed and try to process that evening.

‘I'm sure I can handle the goblins. Im sure I could take you out too,’ said the intruder.

‘Show yourself now, or I will send the full force of my inflicting your way. Responding tells me where in the room you are.’ said bronte with an eerily calm voice when compared to his threatening words.

‘alright, alright. I will show myself IF you agree to hear me out, not call for your goblins, or arrest me,’ replied the stranger. Although Bronte recognised his voice from somewhere, he couldn't place it, but the voice felt really familiar.

And why would I agree to that? Chances are, you're a member of a rebel group, probably the same one Fintan was working with. You're a criminal, a big one at that, because you chose to break into a councillor's office.’ Bronte stated, ‘You should be glad I didn't immediately get my goblins to sniff you off here and into a jail cell,’ he threatened, even though he knew it was pointless.

The ashy smell he picked up on entry to his castle that he mistook for his own clothes wasn't him. The intruder was a part of the same rebel group that fintan was a leader to.

He waited a moment before adding, ‘But I'm curious, so I'll agree.’

‘Hopefully curiosity won't kill the cat.' replied the intruder, about to finally reveal himself, ‘Hey bronte.’

It was Fintan. somehow it was Fintan.

‘You’re supposed to be dead,’ said Bronte in shock.

He punches Fintan.

[sith-shenanigans]

For the ask game where we send you an NPC, Talos Drellik? (I am totally not jumping up and down at the thought of following up on some tags/replies you left a while ago about Ahene and Talos, not at all)

aaaa it makes me so happy that you liked the tags and were not annoyed by the tags (let me put this under a readmore because it’s going to be extremely long)

Okay! So! Bearing in mind that this is a living work and Hoth is a long way away and I don’t know all of what will change—

There is a very not-entirely-normal dynamic here because it doesn’t progress in intensity so much as progress in what, precisely, the intensity is made up of.

Ahene’s first introduction to Talos is along the lines of “do you really want to talk to that guy? He’s strange,” and this endears him to her immediately. Ahene’s second introduction to Talos is walking into a Reclamation Service camp and not feeling like she’s home.

(She does, in fact, think of the camp outside the Rakatan ruin where she largely grew up as being “home.” She also often thinks of herself as not having a home. Or of the ruin itself being home, and the camp not.)

It is important to know, here, that Ahene’s relationship to her trauma is much more in the “continues to be attracted back to it and to things that remind her of it” category rather than the “avoid all reminders forever on pain of flashbacks” category. She actively enforces these reminders on herself whenever she feels she’s acting too much like she’s free—early on, it’s because she believes she isn’t, even if she and her master are the only ones who know that. Later on, it’s because a lot of her self-image is tied up in not being a “typical Sith,” and in her mind, her ability to treat herself harshly is proof she isn’t one (isn’t Like The Others). She hasn’t forgotten who—or what—she really is.

By and large, she feels safer in unsafe situations. She understands hierarchical relationships better than equal ones. She doesn’t know how to be a person, and she’s terrified she’ll forget how to not be. Obviously, this makes her kind of hate being a Sith, but it also makes her kind of prefer being a Sith—the social dynamics are very, very easy for her, even if she doesn’t feel she deserves the loyalty she gets for it.

Back on Tatooine, she worked with a Reclamation Service crew, and it was the most familiar thing she’s done since Korriban, except that this time she was a Sith to them. Which was simultaneously awful and “hey, the terrible thing that happened to you? You’re going to exist in proximity to it forever but it can’t hurt you anymore.” (Which, to someone who keeps trying to yank on her own trauma to prove it can’t hurt her…) Then everything went terribly wrong and Silthar got very badly injured, and they were depending on her, and she has never been able to avoid feeling responsible under those circumstances.

But there’s still this given hanging over it that the responsibility is unrequited. People will be grateful to her as a Sith that helps and protects them—more grateful than she thinks she deserves for doing what she perceives as bare-minimum decency towards anyone she has power over—but if she had been below them, they wouldn’t have treated her the way she treats those below her. She wouldn’t have been one of their people. She would have been one of their tools.

(The greatest exercise in loyalty, in her mind, is to give it without caring if it’s returned. She still loathes the Empire for not returning it towards its people, almost as much or even more than she hates it for what it did to her planet, because if it took care of them then she wouldn’t have to do it—but that’s because Imperials believe they’re doing something good. She doesn’t. She just takes care of them anyway, because it may not be the right thing to do, but it still makes the galaxy a little more just.)

By the time she gets to Hoth, though, she’s just having an awful time. The inquisitor story in the game only has things get really bad at the start of Act III, and before that you’re kind of fine? But Ahene is not fine. Ahene is also aware that she’s not fine. It might have started subtly, but at this point she’s just trying to sell herself on the idea that she can handle it until Thanaton is dealt with and then she can let the ghosts go and everything will be, if not fine, relatively fixed enough that she can spend about a week curled into a little ball in the corner of her ship until she can function normally again.

But, you know, for the most part, the ways she’s Not Fine aren’t externally visible yet. There was an incident on Quesh where she used the ghosts’ power and kind of halfway lost control and partly life-drained Cineratus, but because she didn’t stop at the station to get anybody inoculated, the only one who actually saw that was Khem. And she didn’t really… explain that. She hasn’t told anyone that she feels hollow all the time and barely gets physically hungry and hears the ghosts talking to her even when she isn’t alone. She can hide it. She can handle it. She doesn’t have enough of an advantage yet. This is enough this will be enough she can still put a stop to it.

So she arrives on Hoth, and she shows up at a Reclamation Service camp expecting for it to feel normal again—enough that it’s easy to slot into the proper role, that she doesn’t have to think about it. She knows the responsibility and the resentment, the fact that something about it always seems safer than anywhere else she’s been.

It doesn’t feel normal. It feels just a little bit like she hates everyone there.

(Or, more accurately, like somebody does. Ahene hates like hell freezes over—rarely, slowly, and with a sort of cold contempt that burns mostly in how impersonal it can be. But the spirits in the back of her mind know how to hate, and they’re much too happy to share.)

Talos looks at this Sith Lord, who appears to be unusually scruffy and looks like she’s developed dark side corruption without the glowing eyes, and—unlike Andronikos, unlike Silthar, unlike Sarnova, unlike Zaril—doesn’t come to the conclusion that someone needs to parent her. She’s moved a bit past giving off that energy. Instead he comes to the conclusion that she’s about to deliver the most fascinating problem he’s encountered this year, which is (because Talos is Talos) really what he finds ideal in a Sith.

Ahene looks at this strange, mostly fearless little archaeologist, and discovers that she is not immune to being treated like a totally reasonable and decent individual who is here for the love of history despite every indication otherwise. Many people make this discovery around Talos.

Their early interactions are still… fascinating. His aura of “everyone I talk to is fundamentally a decent fellow” can only do so much, especially since his version of “rationalizing” all the terrible things about the Empire is sweeping them all into a bucket of “things I can’t do anything about” to hyperfixate on archaeology. Ahene keeps him at arm’s length like she’s learned to do with most people. Ahene gets sucked into talking shop with him. They discover, to Talos’s delight and Ahene’s pleased-despite-herself annoyance, that they share a sense of humor. He treats his probe droids better than some people treated her, and exactly the same way that other people treated her. She gets attached to them too.

Somewhere in there—either before they find Horak-Mul or after, though I’m leaning towards before—he asks about her first dig.

She tells him it was the Verios ruin. The face he makes tells her everything she would have needed to know about Darth Kelshrin’s reputation with the Service, if she hadn’t already been aware.

Delicately, like someone trying to thread a conversational needle with as few actual words as possible, Talos suggests that you hear things about that dig, and they aren’t very good. People don’t like to talk about it, if they manage to get reassigned.

She says that she’s one of the reasons that people don’t like to talk about it, and watches him struggle to reconcile that with her entire demeanor for a moment, then clarifies that she was one of the children they had—probably still have—doing probe-work.

Because of course it does, this horrifies him. She shrugs and comments that she hadn’t realized Kelshrin was that much of an outlier; haven’t there ever been slaves on any of your digs? Talos starts to protest that yes, but none of them were children, and comes to the mid-sentence conclusion that actually, she doesn’t care.

His mouth clicks shut. They sit in silence for a little bit.

When he next speaks, he tells her that he’s sorry he wasn’t there.

She says that most people would have put an ‘and’ in the middle of that sentence. They would have found it absolving, that they weren’t there. And he makes a face, and says that yes, that’s true, but still—he wishes he’d been there. That perhaps he could have done something, if he had been. That at least he could have been—better than the others.

I’m sure you would have been, she says, touching his shoulder, in a voice that would be a threat if any of the bitterness were directed at him. It isn’t a threat. It’s just that half of her doesn’t believe him, and doesn’t blame him, and the other half wants to believe him—and hates so very much that someone like him existed this whole time, and never came for her.

They don’t talk very much about that part of her background, after that. She never makes a secret of what she was—it’s the first thing anyone knows about her anyway, the trash apprentice who brought back the Dark Temple expedition—but while she’ll talk about the ruin like it’s simultaneously a deathtrap and a lost home, she doesn’t tell him about the Service camp. It’s their armistice; it wouldn’t be fair.

She doesn’t blame him for what happened to her childhood. He doesn’t look at her like he’s afraid of her when she loses control of the ghosts’ power, when he walks in on her having snapping arguments with thin air, when the ghosts’ memories and personalities start leaking in and she reacts to something he said about the Great Hyperspace War like she was there.

It’s difficult not to care deeply about someone who sees you at your absolute, utter worst—half-dead, half-possessed, still suffering from a Horror Hunger despite knowing that there are few things she needs less than other people’s life energy—and treats it like it’s simply something that’s happening, and no more terrifying than any other serious illness.

He’s the one she goes to one night, when she needs to tell someone how terrified she is to die. He’s the only member of her crew she doesn’t feel some need to be strong for.

(He is, maybe, the person she tells that she thinks she could exorcise the ghosts. That she hasn’t tried, because she’s scared that it would work.)

It’s important that—by this point—he doesn’t feel like he has to be strong with her, either. He doesn’t have to pretend that he doesn’t notice how bad things are, or keep up a cheerful front through it, the way he nearly always does. It’s not that his cheerful front is insincere—it’s not that he’s lying—but that’s how he’s always dealt with his emotions, the same as Ahene deals with them by scrunching them up into a little ball and taking another step no matter what. They aren’t people who know how to seek comfort in other people, most of the time. Talos doesn’t have childhood trauma the way she has childhood trauma, but he did very much grow up in an abusive environment that he generally dismisses as “not so bad as all that” with a wave of his hand. So it’s… something, that they can be scared together of what’s going to come.

(This could so easily be read as romantic. It is not remotely. It’s also not remotely parental on Talos’s part. It’s just a very unlikely bordering-on-queerplatonic friendship.)

When Ahene walks out of the Dark Council chambers on Korriban with Thanaton’s body (Teneb Kel’s body) in her arms and a title she didn’t ask for or want, Talos makes sure the body ends up in a cryostasis tube until it can be properly entombed. When they head for Dromund Kaas right after, because the planet is being invaded, when she makes for the Dark Temple immediately when they arrive in the aftermath—Talos waits for her at the Dark Temple approach.

When she calls him and asks him to get another stasis chamber and never breathe a word of it to anyone, he does it, because they would trust each other with anything.

Up to and including the body of the Emperor’s Voice.

(The next couple months, she barely remembers, because she was under so much pressure and so much of the same kind of pressure that her dissociative memory issues cropped up again and turned it into a soup of events that 2V had to record and summarize for her. But Talos quite frequently knew what she was doing better than she did, at least when it came to the fact that she suddenly had to run the Reclamation Service. This has always been a team effort. Between her and all her crew, but still especially between the two of them.)

[npc opinions]

[redroomrecord]

[crescentfool]

having the hc that minato is ace is incredibly funny sometimes when you think about how ryoji is oh so very bi because it's like. "ah. death stole my ability to be attracted to people," in the same way that ryoji stole minato's eye color and energy level. like wow, thanks ryoji, you just keep finding things to steal from minato!

[b4kuch1n]

tdov was like a week ago already but I just wanna say when I came over to vacation slash help my sworn brother move flat he told me, "ever since you said you wanted to get top surgery I've been thinking about it. it's straight up number two on my bucket list"

[journeyman-tier-fibercraft]

I have 4 (50 gram) skeins of this bright ass teal (Cloudborn Fibers Superwash Sock Twist in Lagoon) and I want to be darker and more blue (how it looks in photos basically, irl it's more green). To have fun with it, my plan is to make each skein progressively darker and knit an ombre shawl/scarf with them.

I'm going to document here in case anything goes really well (or really poorly).

Unfortunately I don't know the name of the foodcolour drops I'm using and they don't even list the colourants. However I did do a break test. The bottom and right are "Black" food colouring, the left is "Navy Blue" and the top is "Sky Blue".

Presoaked in 16 cups of water and 5 tablespoons of white vinegar (which was enough to soak the yarn and fill up every jar with 1-2 cups of water extra)

Each jar got progressively darker with 12-14 drops of food colouring in each. In order from lightest to darkest

Jar 1 had 12 drops Sky Blue Jar 2 had 9 drops Sky Blue, 3 drops Navy Blue Jar 3 had 6 drops Sky Blue, 6 drops Navy Blue Jar 4 had 2 drops Sky Blue, 8 drops Navy Blue, 2 drops Black

Once the yarn got in the jars they all pretty much looked the same. I'm going to leave them out for at least the rest of today and see how much dye is left in the water.

[bunnihearted]

.

[loyalhorror]

as always. thinking about BS has me in agony.

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

Les Misérables is written about three or four different time periods depending on the given chapter and the level on which you're reading it (literally versus historically versus philosophically, etc.). I don't think I appreciated until episode 7.13 of Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast when he broke down how intensely all of the political factions involved in the 1848 revolutions were influenced by their opinions of the French Revolution, however, how much Les Mis talks about 1848.

I'm gonna be making a post later with a theory about Hugo's characters and structure they pertain to this history and these factions and most especially Cosette's future, but in the meantime, I've transcribed from around 13:10 to nearly the end of the episode so that you all can also appreciate how many levels were involved and have it in writing to refer to and research as you like, because I think it also summarizes pretty well the non-Bonapartist political forces in play at any point in the bricc.

(I also cannot recommend this podcast highly enough for jumping into not just the world of French Revolutions but also Western Revolutions in general.)

So at one end of the spectrum, we have those who looked back at the French Revolution with nothing but horror and disgust and who believed that above all and no matter what the cost, Europe must be kept free of the menace of revolution.  But this category of anti-revolutionaries divided up into three broad groups who agreed on practically nothing but the fact that revolution was abhorrent.

First and most obviously, we had the conservative absolutists who returned to power after the Congress of Vienna. The chief leading light of this group was Metternich, and the spectre of the French Revolution haunted no man so much as Metternich. Men like Metternich were so opposed to revolution that they were even opposed to reform. King Louis XVI had invited reform in 1789, and look what had happened to him. So across Europe in 1848 there were conservative writers and members of the clergy and major landowners who believed that you could not even let three guys sit down for a drink or they'd start plotting revolution. You certainly couldn't have a free press. You had to be stubborn, unfair, and ruthless. It was simply too dangerous to be anything less. And this extended to things even as seemingly banal as allowing a kingdom to have a nominal constitution, because in the conservative mind, once you granted the premise that rights came up from the people, rather than down from God through the king, you could just kiss the whole thing goodbye. These conservatives still pined for the days before 1789, and they hated the memory of even the most moderate of French revolutionaries, whose seemingly innocent and earnest appeals for reform had simply been the thin end of the wedge.

But absolutist conservatives were not the only ones who recoiled at the memory of the French Revolution and who wanted to do everything in their power from ever letting it happen again. So this second group of anti-revolutionaries were constitutional liberals who worshiped the rule of law and for whom revolution was anathema to everything they held dear. In France, we would put both Louis Philippe and François Guizot into this category, even if they had oh-so-ironically come to power thanks to the July Revolution [of 1830]. Both men admired the principles that had animated the men of 1789 but who had nonetheless concluded, no less than Metternich, that acquiescing to reform was only the beginning of a very slippery slope. Guizot himself had written a history of France and believed that the king's concessions in the early days of the Estates-General had led directly to the Reign of Terror — and remember, Guizot's father had perished in the Terror, as had King Louis Philippe's [Louis Philippe II, Philippe Égalité]. By the mid-1840s, both men had become stubbornly convinced that everything that needed to be achieved had been achieved and that any further reform would invite that slip into radicalism and the return of Madame la Guillotine. This kind of thinking could also be detected in the minds of rulers over in [modern-day] Germany, where we've discussed that there were these constitutional regimes — Ludwig in Bavaria, Leopold of Baden, and Frederick Augustus in Saxony. Those constitutions existed more as a stopper to prevent revolution than any kind of liberal expressionism.

Finally, there was a third group that cringed at the idea of the French Revolution but who drew the opposite conclusion from Guizot and Metternich: where Guizot and Metternich thought that reform was an invitation to revolution, they felt that reform was a necessary release valve to prevent revolution.  So in this category you would find Odilon Barrot and the dynastic left in France who wanted to save the monarchy by reforming the monarchy.  You would also find in here a guy like Alexis de Tocqueville, who would go on to write his own book on the French Revolution where he would argue that all of the quote-unquote “gains” of the French Revolution had already started under the Ancien Régime and that basically you didn’t need revolution to change society, you just needed continuous, gradual improvement.  We’ve also discussed so far two massively influential reformers in [modern-day] Italy and Hungary who fit this same basic mold.  In Italy, we talked about the Count of Cavour in episode 7.09, and in episode 7.08 I introduced István Széchenyi.  Both of these guys have broad, sweeping visions for the futures of their respective countries.  They believed in liberal constitutional government, economic modernization and social improvement, they simply did not believe revolution was the means of achieving their ends; in fact, this was the very lesson they had drawn from the French Revolution, that the ends had been just, but the means counterproductive.  The attempt to cram a century’s worth of work into a single year had not just had disastrous consequences, but they had upset the whole project of reform.  I would also throw into this group of anti-revolutionary reformers all of the Austrian liberals in Vienna, who we also talked about in episode 7.08. They believed that the stubborn brittleness of Metternich’s government was inviting a revolutionary upheaval that could be headed off by intelligent and necessary reform.

So those are the guys who desperately wanted to avoid another French Revolution, who instantly shuddered at the idea of ever having something like that happen again. But is that how everyone felt? Oh my goodness, no. There were those who had picked up the thesis of Adolphe Thiers and believed that the revolution of 1789 had been a good thing, a project launched for noble reasons and in fact launched because the existing regime was simply too stubborn to change without revolutionary energy. In this telling, men like Lafayette and Mirabeau were heroes to be emulated while you kept on constant guard against villains like Robespierre and Saint-Just. As you can imagine, this was a very attractive thesis among liberals in Germany and the Austrian empire who saw their own situation as analogous to the Ancien Régime of 1789. Their kingdoms were reeling from an economic crisis, their governments were financially shaky, their natural rights were trampled on by tyrants. So the French Revolutionary project that unfolded between 1789 and 1792 was absolutely a model to be emulated. Bring the liberal, educated intellectuals of the country together and force the kings to grant them a constitution and to guarantee basic civil rights. If they were going to be denied a constitutional place in government, if their local assemblies were going to be neutered, if they were not allowed to vote, if the government was unresponsive, then it was perfectly acceptable to look to 1789 and say, “Yes, we want that too. A moment when men of good will and conscience join together to define the rights of man and the citizen.” Now of course, these neo-1789ers knew the lesson of history well, and they knew that they would need to guard against the villains of 1792, but they did not believe that the Reign of Terror was necessarily inevitable. It had simply happened that way in France thanks to a variety of coincidences, mistakes, and bad luck, so liberals across Europe believed that they could forge constitutional governments that defined civil rights and popular sovereignty without falling prey to the Reign of Terror. Thus, the spectre of the French Revolution would loom very large indeed in the minds of these liberal revolutionaries as the course of 1848 rapidly progressed faster than they could keep up with. As we will see, they will all hit a moment of truth where they have to decide whether to keep pushing and join with more radical forces or quit the whole project, reconcile with the old conservative order, and fight against those radical forces that might lead to the new Reign of Terror.

But there were also those who rejected this whole contrived moralizing of the “good” revolution of 1789 and the “bad” revolution of 1792.  They did not recoil from the insurrection of August the 10th, the First French Republic, or the Jacobin Committee of Public Safety.  They idolized not the buffoon Lafayette and hypocritical traitor Mirabeau, but rather, the steely resolve of men like Danton and Robespierre and Saint-Just and Marat.  These had been men who saw the tyrants of Europe for what they were and knew that one must stand up when the going got tough, not go hide in the corner.  These more radical republicans further believed that there was just as much injustice perpetrated by comfortable liberals as conservative absolutists, so they saw the Revolution of 1789 as merely the precursor for the much more important, much more glorious, and much more necessary Revolution of 1792.  So though they were enemies of each other, these radicals actually agreed with Metternich that reform really was just the thin edge of the wedge, that it would lead to a greater revolution that would overthrow the despotic monarchies of Europe.  In their minds, the widespread slandering of the First French Republic and even the portrayal of the Reign of Terror as the most terrible crime in the history of the world was the nefarious propaganda of the comfortable classes, whether of conservative or liberal stripe.  Their propaganda emphasized the dramatic horror of the guillotine in order to cover up the horrors the common people of Europe lived with every day, and the best summation of this argument actually comes from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain. 

Now the book wasn’t published until 1889, but in it, Twain writes a passage that would have had a lot of radicals nodding their heads in 1848.  He wrote, “There were two reigns of terror, if we would but remember and consider it.  The one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood.  The one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years.  The one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons; the other, upon a hundred million.  But our shudders are all for the horrors of the minor terror, the momentary terror so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of the swift ax compared with lifelong death from cold, hunger, insult, cruelty, and heartbreak?  What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake?  A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror, which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over.  But all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real terror, that unspeakably bitter and awful terror, which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” 

(Sounds an awful lot like like a certain conversation our favorite bishop has with a certain conventionist, no?)

Now granted, I don’t think many of these radicals were actively pursuing a new Reign of Terror, but they were also not planning to settle for a constitutional monarchy bought by and for the richest families of their country.  And as we’ve already seen in France, these guys were not going to let the blood of patriots be spilled simply so they could swap one Bourbon for another and give another hundred thousand bankers and industrialists the right to vote.  What in that represented the nation?  Where in that were the people?  Where was liberty leading the people?  Oh right, that painting was locked now in the attic so it did not offend the forces of order.  In Italy, these radical republican forces who celebrated 1792 rallied around Giuseppe Mazzini and later Garibaldi; in Hungary they would rally around Lajos Kossuth, and when I get back from the book tour, I will introduce you to the radical leaders in Germany, who would not be satisfied by the mere token reforms promised by men who celebrated 1789 but feared 1792, men like Friedrich Hecker, Robert Blum, and Gustav Struve.  Everywhere, they would find their support not solely in the salons and cafés but among artisans and workers and students.  Those who would mount the barricades not just for the right to publish an article or to mildly criticize the government or the right to vote if you made a gargantuan amount of money: they fought to topple the king and to bring power to the people — all of the people.

So, so far we have men who idolize the conservatives of 1788, men who idolize the liberal nobles of 1789, and men who idolize the Jacobin republicans of 1792.  Well, there was also in 1848 also [sic] now emerging a small clique of men for whom even 1792 was not enough.  These guys believed that 1789 had been merely a step to 1792, but also believed that 1792 was simply a step to something greater.  So where did these guys look?  That’s right: they looked to 1796.  “1796?” you say.  “  What are you talking about?  The Directory?  Surely not.  Nobody says, ‘Ah, yes, the good old days of the French Directory, let’s definitely go back to that.’”  And no, of course I’m not talking about the directory, I’m talking about Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals.  With the small but ever-growing, increasingly influential spirit of socialism and communism beginning to take root, men like Louis Blanc and Karl Marx looked to Babeuf and his gang as the first example of what the force of history was aiming to make of humanity.  Communities and nations that shared not just political rights but the wealth of the nation.  How indeed are you going to sit back and say, “Ah, yes, the declaration of the rights of man and the citizen, and one citizen should have one vote,” and then call it a day when so few had so much and so many had so little?  The vote was nothing to an entire family — dad, mom, children, who were all stuck working eighteen hours a day for starvation wages.  It was thus not the spirit of 1789 or the spirit of ‘92 that moved them, but the spirit of 1796; and it was not the name Robespierre that got their hearts thumping, but rather Babeuf.  Babeuf had been among the very first of the socialist revolutionaries who had not stopped short at merely answering the political question, but who wanted to answer the social question as well.  And as we’ll see as we move further down the road on 1848, that the memory of Gracchus Babeuf was not simply a matter of picking some obscure hero out of the historical record: there was actually a direct line of revolutionary succession, because one of Babeuf’s fellow conspirators in the Conspiracy of Equals was an Italian revolutionary socialist named Phillipe Buonarroti [Filippo Buonarroti].  Buonarroti was in prison but later released and would then go onto a long and active career inside the revolutionary secret societies that sprang up after the Congress of Vienna, and we’re gonna talk more about the role that Buonarroti played in kindling and spreading this revolutionary socialism, but for his small cadre of disciples, the revolutions of 1848 would be a chance not to complete the work of Lafayette in 1789 or Robespierre in 1792, but the work of Babeuf in 1796.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

sometimes I think about The Last and want to scream

[strohller27]

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[neopolitan-noir]

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[soldier-poet-king]

. Chompin at the bit today ...

[mejomonster]

Oh no guys I read about adhd symptoms to see if I had it and now I've made myself sad :c dang these things be affecting my life :c