#and must be cleansed through questionable means

[uglyducklingofthe2000s]

Glitter Bug - Max Verstappen

Summary: Media and fans begin to notice that Max seems to always have a dusting on glitter on him recently. But where is it coming from?

Also for context, this is not based around any real race events of this season or previous season. I'm just making stuff up for excitement.

No part 2 requests please

"Oh Max, you got a bit of-you've got a dusting of glitter on you." The interviewer comments as he walks into the media pen after qualifying.

"Must be from the fan celebrations." Max dismisses seeming to think nothing of it before he speaks up again. "I think I walked through a cloud of glitter from some little fans."

Lies but for now he thinks it'll work as a cover for now.

"You looked great out there, good pace. How did it feel?"

"Good, unexpectedly good. But I'll make the most of it tomorrow and see what results we can get." Max states earning a small nod from the journalist.

He goes through a few questions before heading into the unit to change into something else to get back to the hotel.

"You have glitter on your face." GP comments as Max walks in. "Was that there before?"

"No. Y/n caught me before I got to media." Max states trying not to smile since while he isn't exactly eager to be covered in glitter, the fact it's from his girlfriend means it isn't something he's so bothered about.

"How nice of her." GP laughs before Max disappears into his drivers room where y/n is looking down at her phone, just waiting for her boyfriend.

"Hello, baby." Max smiles moving towards her knowing that one kiss is about to have a new coating of glitter all over his face again. "You glitter is spreading around. A journalist pointed it out in the media pen."

"Oh...I'm sorry, I didn't realise it was so-"

"Don't be sorry, it doesn't bother me. Although, I think I may need to work on explaining why there's glitter on my face."

Y/n is admittedly a bit of a glitter bomb, she uses it as make up and in place of where someone might put fake freckles on their cheeks and nose she dusts glitter. Max has never really thought of asking why, but he would definitely never ask her to change. And on the few occasions in the day time he's seen her without glitter she almost seems incomplete.

Inevitably it means Max gets a cost of glitter whenever he kisses her.

“I think you look nice with glitter.” Y/n smiles lightly earning a smile from Max before he leans down and kisses her.

Their relationship isn’t necessarily something Max is going out his way to keep completely secret but he also doesn’t feel like broadcasting it and sharing it with the world is the right thing to do right now. If only to protect her from the scrutiny he knows she’ll be forced to endure.

A few other drivers he’s closer to and people within the team know about her. He suspects some of the media have noticed her and probably have their theories. But there’s been nothing officially confirmed.

“I think you look beautiful with glitter. You wouldn’t be the same without it.” Max states then moving to get changed.

-

Being back at the hotel, y/n does her usual routine of trying to remove the glitter from her skin. Which Max has to admit, he doesn’t think works in 100% effectiveness.

Though she seems to manage to do a better job with Max in helping him wash his face to get the second-hand glitter from his own skin.

“All clean?” He questions moving up behind her at the sink as she uses a hand towel to pat her face dry from the double cleansing. “Clean but not quite glitter free.”

“I don’t know if I ever want to be completely gli.ter free.” Y/n shrugs smiling at him in their reflection, leaning back on him slightly as she feels his arm hug her and his hand press flat on her tummy just to hold her closer. “Not enough glitter that I’ll be passing it onto you though.”

“Ready for bed?” Max hums knowing she has many more steps in his skincare routine so it’s not a question really worth asking.

“Just a few more things. You can go ahead, I’ll catch up.” Y/n murmurs while seeming to grab one of the little bottles.

If Max tried to guess what she’s putting on her face, he really thinks he’d only get it wrong. She's actually already put it on his face, always dragging him into an involuntary skincare routine. Again, he'd do anything for a smile from her so he never says no.

-

"Oh gosh, that's-a lot is on your face." Y/n gasps rushing to brush her hands at Max's face to wipe his skin as best she can. "Wait, wait. I'll get a cloth, it'll go in your eyes when you're sweating in the car."

Max smiles sort of taking a moment to enjoy y/n's worry. It would definitely be a problem if his sweat got glitter in his eyes, but the fact she thinks about that and considers the risks really just makes him realise how perfect this woman is for him.

"I think I got most of it." Y/n murmurs then frowning as she inspects his skin. "Ok, you should be ok."

"I'll get my share of glitter later at the end of the race?" Max smiles making her nod trying to tone down her smile a little before she clears her throat.

"Ok, I'll see you at the end of the race. I'm going to go just take my seat." Y/n states earning a nod though when he tries to kiss her again she quickly moves back giggling. "No, I just got the fglitter off of you. You'll have to wait for a celebratory kiss."

"What if I don't do well? Do I get a pity kiss?" Max asks making her grin and nod. "And lots of glitter?"

"All the glitter I can manage." Y/n laughs then hugging Max tightly instead of allowing for a kiss. "Ok, go on."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

-

Max DNF'd.

Not necessarily of his own doing, at least the stewards deemed it a racing incident. Probably because him and the other driver both landed themselves out the race.

"I'm sorry baby." Y/n pouts as she walks with Max heading towards the Red Bull unit for him to change after being weighed upon his return to the paddock.

Max is unhappy but he'd managed to get a message to y/n in time for her to rush out of the garage where she'd been watching and to him.

Y/n goes to speak again, only to find herself lifted and carried by the Red Bull driver as he makes the most public display of affection with several kisses that successfully give him his fair share of glitter.

"Max..." Y/n murmurs looking at the driver with a soft sigh, trying to ignore the few cameras around them. "You know what you just did."

"I know." Max shrugs then smiling when he kisses her again. "But I really needed that."

Y/n smiles always happy to hear that she's being a help if only by her presence with him.

"You stay at the unit. I'll come find you after media." Max states finally placing her down on her own feet. "Don't talk to anyone who you don't already know."

"I'm not a child, Max. I know not to speak to media." Y/n laughs earning a hum before he cups her face looking happier than anyone as ever seen him for a DNF. "Go on, I'll be waiting."

Max quickly changes into some less sweaty clothes before moving to the media pen. One of the luxuries of a DNF is really there's not quite the rush to get to media as there is at the end of a race. Though admittedly, they still don't want him to take too long.

When he gets to media it's obvious word is spread about Max's mystery girl and he can tell they're holding off asking because they don't want to come across as unprofessional.

"You have glitter on your face again." The same journalist from yesterday comments making Max smile. "The same kids stage another glitter attack?"

"I think glitter might be a new part of my uniform after races." Max states with a nod. "I was waiting for someone to comment but you have all been very careful about asking. I thought you might change that."

"You seemed very happy out there as soon as we saw you with her." The journalist comments sincerely while Max can't hide his smile. "Usually you're not so happy after a DNF but it's good you have someone who can perk you up a bit more."

"I think it's the glitter too." Max comments jokingly then nodding. "I wasn't happy about the DNF and I don't think I will ever be happy but it was nice to have y/n there afterwards."

The journalists eyes practically twinkle with the tid bit of information that is y/n's name. Before today there had been a mild rumour of him being in a relationship, but really no one expected her to be so suddenly out on the scene.

After finishing up media, Max heads back to do the debrief of his own short-lived race before heading to his driver's room where y/n has relocated herself.

"You told them."

"I told them." Max confirms without an ounce of doubt about it. "Don't worry, I'll protect you if they're mean."

"It's ok, I'll throw glitter in their eyes." Y/n grins making Max laugh. He shouldn't really encourage her to be violent but violence with glitter feels so harmless from y/n he's not sure he can do anything other than laugh. Even if the idea of glitter in someone's eyes is probably enough to blind them.

"I think that might be the cutest but most effective form of self-defence ever." Max comments then checking himself for the amount of glitter he managed to steal from her.

"You know all we need is bows and you're the prettiest driver in the paddock."

"I love you, but not enough for bows." Max laughs earning a grin from the young woman.

"Ok, no bows. But I'm going to start getting more colour with the glitter...maybe I'll get you your own glitter-or I'll wear blue glitter for race day."

"All of those sound amazing." Max nods moving to kiss her again and maybe steal more glitter which is beginning to be his favourite thing.

Taglist: @namgification @hiireadstuff @jsjcue @geniusalpaca @itsjustkhaos @llando4norris

#f1 #fanfic #formula 1 #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen fanfic #max verstappen #max verstappen fic #max verstappen f1 #max verstappen x y/n #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen x you #max verstappen one shot #mv1 fluff #mv1 x reader #mv1 imagine #mv1 fic #mv1 x you #mv1 x y/n #mv1 #mv1 one shot #mv33 x y/n #mv33 #mv33 x reader #mv33 imagine #mv33 fic #mv33 x you #mv33 one shot #red bull racing #red bull f1 #red bull formula 1

[ancientgoddessofegypt]

A READING FOR FEB. 2024 : THEMES OF THE MONTH; WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

Hey, so this is my pile reading for the month of february 2024. If you see this after this could still resonate however my focus was purely for feb. Anyways, I hope you all get the insight you need and enjoy this overall. Have fun!

PILE 1 - 'To give or to receive, that is the question'

Okay so for this group, you have to remember that to receive you also have to give something, but to give you also need to be reciprocated. Most people can only do one, but this causes imbalances over time. You must prepare for acts of service, keep up good boundaries to not be leeched off of, and to be open to receiving from which february is a good time to get what you need/want from others. Don't be afraid to receive because whats for you is for you, got it? Some of you may have to learn how to put in more effort by gift giving and just doing something for somebody you love. For others, your empress energy is kicking in and you can be fed all you desire if you just allow. Hope this helps!

PILE 2 - 'The Union of a Lifetime; Soulmate connections coming thru'

So for this group a very special encounter is coming in for you. Might be before valentines day or could be in the middle, after, etc. But one thing is for certain that the connection between you and them is special. Romance is in the air for some of you so I like that this came up in the reading, with this connection however they'll will be something you will learn from all of this : True Love. To be in love is one thing, to grow into is another. Each moment will be filled with love that grows like a plant. Each seed that was planted will show so much more than what met the eye many moments ago. You will learn to fall into love but in a way where you guys can bounce back up and remember why you guys came together in the first place. It's an energy where your love for one another means something deeper than what the world could describe it. Its something much more than what books you've read could be, it's honest, its raw and its full of power.

PILE 3 - 'Love is a Drug, but it's one worth keeping'

So for this group, Love is significant for you guys. Not just romantic like pile 2 (we'll get into that) but for you guys the idea of self love and community will be big on you too. You have to believe that love can be found anywhere. Not just in romantic partners. This could be something connected to a galentines event, or just simply hanging out with friends, partying and just getting to know new people. It's all about perspective. But for this group love can be around the corner, you just have to let go and believe you deserve it. It can all be yours if you just believe for it to be. Dont pressure yourself to get into a relationship at this time as the focus is mainly about you and not just other people. You have to know how to be a great friend and a lover at the same time, so try to find balance in that.

PILE 4 - 'Seeing is believing, but just make it worthwhile.'

So for this group you guys are connected to the cosmos, love it! What I mean is, you guys have an infinite amount of control of the reality around you. And you are very sensitive to the people and the world at large. For some of you, empathic abilities could be intensified during this time, and you could look to the moon for answers if you just let go and allow your intuition to give you the insight it is that you are seeking. Your mindset is going through transformation, and you are being called to be more open to dreams that can lead you to messages from your spirit guides, angels, the universe etc. This group should focus on practicing meditation and leaning towards cleansing tools for their aura. Doing egg cleanses, saging, sea salt baths, anything that will help cleanse their aura and their space is beneficial at this time. I'd get into that if I we're you ;)

Be more open to what messages you get, be it numbers, be it intuitive, be it from someone talking on television or through conversation.. Just listen out for the signs, you got this.

PILE 5 - ' I'm ready when you are, just let me out of these gates.'

So for this group, you guys are feeling a bit mad here. Could be going through a lot of stress, feeling tired, confused on what to do etc.. But wait, you have to listen out for divine messages (similar to group 4) and a lot of ideas you've had in the past are coming up to be noticed during this time. It's time to decide where all of this might lead, so do the work to figuring out what it is that you want for the rest of 2024 because this isnt the year to be playing any games. Planning and redirection is another theme for this group, because it's time to pick yourself up and put yourself where you've always wanted to be. Got it? Go slow, take your time, and remember you have the abilities to bring in your dreamed reality into fruition. Let go and break a leg! A Support group is coming in and you need to let people in so that you can grow in whatever it is that you're doing. Hope this helps!

#channeled message #divination #oracle cards #pick a card reading #pick a pile #pick a picture #february collective reading #oracle #oracle readings #channeled

[indigo-o]

The Pet clown

Pt 2

I think we know who it's abt lmao

Nikolai gogol x reader PLATONIC

And some fyodor

Reader is a teenager

Tw impatient stuff depression, fyodor drugging, sleep deprivation, those annoying blankets they give at mental hospital even tho it's like -1 degrees Celsius if you know you know, talk of death, yandere fyodor, Manipulation from fyodor, Nikolai gogol, I think that's it so yeah

Angst/fluff

I wish you were here, this room is empty. White walls, heavy doors, thin white blankets, and chained blury windows.

This thin gown can't keep me warm. I know him. He just wants what's best for me. I guess that even means putting me in this room. This room to keep me safe.

Safe from me. No possibility of me hurting. I'm to sick leave this bed and to tired to talk. He says I'm helping him.

Im helping him cleanse the world of evil. So I guess if my pain will save the world I'll stay in this room.

Everybody else deserves to be happy and well so I'll hurt for them. If one death would save the world I'd die.

My body's purple now.

I hear a click at the heavy door. To my surprise it wasn't a anemic rat, it was his pet clown.

"QUIZZZZZ TIMEEEEEE! WHY AM I HERE INSTEAD OF DOS-KUN?! I THINK I HEARD YOU SAY CAUSE HES HAVING FUN! CORRECT!".

I looked at him. My eyes were heavy. But he did bring some color to the room. I smiled at him.

I opened my mouth to talk but I couldn't.

"Oh dove you still can't talk! I forgot! Dos-kun told me to take you outside to have some fun.".

He lied, either were not going to have fun or fyodor didn't tell him anything. Either way I was going to have to walk. I knew I couldn't but I was going to try anyway.

Fyodor knew If I could walk I'd escape from him. So he kept me physically, emotionally and mentally sick. I would have no choice to stay.

As soon as I got to my legs I collapsed, but Nikolai caught me.

"Silly me I forgot you can't walk guess I'll carry you.".

He picked me up as if I were a little kid.

"D-dont dr-rop.". I manged to get out.

"Oh dove I may be crazy but not only do we need you, Dos-kun would kill me, but I want to protect you from harm. Not like you can protect yourself in this state.".

I looked at him. Then laying on him. We proceeded to go through his cape.

We were in what seemed to be his house/apartment.

He went to put me down on his couch but he's so warm.

"Wait w-warm.".

He looked down at me.

"I guess we can go out later.". He picked me back up and took me to his bed. Laying me down cuddled with blankets, pillows and now a pet clown. I shut my eyes and finally went to sleep.

I woke up to Nikolai looking down at me.

"Am I a good pillow?". I realized how I was very much on him.

I nodded my head.

"You want to go outside for a bit dove?". He was using a soft tone.

He wasn't ever like this

Maybe because I'm a teenager but I don't know.

He got up "You slept threw the whole night, but the good thing is we have a whole day today and tomorrow, you know why?".

He leaned in close "I lied Dos-kun is away and he doesn't believe in your freedom so I'm here to show him that you're a good kid who won't run away. You see Dos-kun takes away your warmth so you can't sleep making you so tired that's why you slept for so long he wants you to be weak, weak without freedom. I'm here to give you freedom. To fly like a dove.".

He went to his closet and pulled out some clothes.

"Here's so clothes to wear so we're not caught. That sounds weird. I my dear am a very wanted person so I must look different and you can't really walk let alone the sun should hurt you eyes so if I were to be caught you wouldn't leave be caught up in it.".

What ever he said I guess.

I changed and so did he and he look pretty different

He picked me up and took me to wheel chair that he some how got, but I shouldn't question it.

He placed me in the chair and we Leigt looked like sibling going out for fun.

"F-flowers please.". I looked to him.

"You want flowers we will get flowers.".

We went to florist.

"Hi! What flowers are yall looking for!". She sounded very happy.

"What do you want dear?". Nikolai asked

While I could barely see I knew exactly what I want.

"R-rose and Lillys.".

"Of course dear I'll get right to that!".

The rest of day was amazing

I got flowers, yummy pastries and other stuff.

Who knew a deranged clown could be so kind. But at last we came back to his apartment/house.

He made dinner for us and helped me get to the bed. He tucked me in.

"Good night dove.".

I woke up

Back in the room

The room with white walls, a heavy door, thin blanket and blury chains windows. But now there wad a desk but with roses and lily's on top of it.

I heard the door click. An anemic rat with his pet clown walked in.

"You've proven yourself for now, you may keep your roses and lily's. Nikolai may visit you now and then. One thing. You may not regain full energy but.".

He stopped his words and Nikolais smile grew.

"YOU CAN HAVE A NICER BLANKET AND I CAN READ BED TIME STORYS TO YOU ONCE A WEEK!".

He ran over to with a puppy dog smile.

"Don't make regret this.". The anemic rat walked away throwing the key at the pet clown.

That was alot longer than I expected but I hope yall liked it!♡♡

#bsd x reader #bungou stray dogs x reader #fyodor x reader #bsd x you #fluff #nikolai gogol x reader #fyodor dostoevsky x reader #fyodor dostoyevsky bsd #bsd nikolai #nikolai x reader #nikolai gogol #bsd nikolai gogol #angst #yandere #Yandere!fyodor #yandere x reader

[highseas-swede]

So, this response really got me thinking again and turning around some different gears in my head. Crowley's fall started with their meeting. That's huge!

This means Aziraphale caused Crowley to fall, at least indirectly and Aziraphale knows it.

I do quickly want to say that I feel it's likely Crowley would have fallen anyway, that it would have happened because of his nature and his curiosity and his questioning, but Aziraphale must remember that first meeting and blame himself for the eventual outcome. Here was this wonderful, joyful angel out there making nebulas and Aziraphale talked to him for like five minutes and he fell.

Because of Aziraphale.

It also recontextualizes some of Aziraphale's other actions if you think about the Guilt that Aziraphale must have been feeling. He's clearly smitten with Crowley when they first meet while Crowley's an angel, but on the wall at Eden, he's definitely more uncomfortable and his gazes aren't the longing looks from pre-creation. He recognizes Crowley as that angel, he feels guilty about it, far more than he does about giving away the flaming sword. And then when it starts to rain, he protects Crowley because it's the least he can do after what he did to ruin Crowley's life.

I'm betting he felt that same guilt very heavily when Crowley asks him for the Holy Water initially. He's afraid that Hell is so bad that Crowley would destroy himself to escape it. And though Aziraphale has clearly pushed his guilt mostly to the back of his mind, it has to be there in the forefront at that moment.

He's thinking "Crowley is suffering so much he'd rather be destroyed". He's remembering that beautiful, innocent angel Crowley was and how his laughter lit up the stars themselves and now Crowley asks him for the ability to end his existence. No wonder Aziraphale is so reluctant! If Crowley uses the Holy Water on himself, it means Aziraphale will be responsible for Crowley being completely destroyed. He only caves on the matter when he realizes Crowley will do it without his help and realizes he can't make Crowley suffer more to get it, not after everything he's already done to the demon so far.

I've always wondered why Aziraphale seems afraid of Crowley loving him. He's always seemed comfortable in the knowledge that he loves Crowley, but when Crowley tries to confess to him in the S2 finale, he looks terrified. He looks like he's about to have an anxiety attack.

It's not because he doesn't want to be loved by Crowley. He wants that more than anything. It's because this is the /wrong time/. But it was - in Aziraphale's head - so close to being the right time. In Aziraphale's mind, he was so close to finally making up for this horrible thing he did to Crowley, that he could finally accept Crowley's love without this looming over him. It's not just about making Heaven worthy of Crowley, it's about making HIMSELF worthy of Crowley's love.

What Aziraphale doesn't realize is that Crowley has never blamed him. Never. He's just projecting his own guilt and then using it to bludgeon himself into thinking he's not good enough for Crowley. Aziraphale values Crowley more than he values himself, just like he trusts Crowley more than he trusts himself.

It makes me think a bit more on the concept of Grace in Catholicism, how sins must be cleansed to allow the Grace to flow through and fill the body. When you believe that you must be cleansed of sin to accept Grace, it's an easy jump to feel that you cannot also be worthy of love if you have not absolved yourself of sin. But in Aziraphale's mind, there is no way to fix what he did to Crowley. Until there is.

No wonder Aziraphale reacts so excitedly - and so desperately - to the thought of reinstating Crowley as an angel. Yes, he knows Crowley is more than worthy of being an angel, that he never SHOULD have fallen to begin with. But with this added context it's even worse… he blames himself for Crowley falling. Crowley was so happy as an angel and Aziraphale took that away from him. He sees reinstating Crowley both as the Right Thing to Do in a moral sense, but also as a way to finally absolve himself of this guilt he's undoubtedly carried since Crowley Fell.

Aziraphale is so blinded by his guilt and his need to absolve himself and make it right for Crowley that he completely fails to realize both that Crowley doesn't want what he's offering, but he also fails to realize that Crowley doesn't even blame him for the terrible thing he thinks he did. Crowley already loves him without condition.

Trying to make Crowley an angel again is the most tragically selfish, self-centered thing Aziraphale has ever done and even then it comes from a trauma he's been carrying since before the Beginning.

He keeps forgiving Crowley for things that don't need forgiveness, but what Aziraphale really needs - for both of their sakes - is to finally forgive himself.

#good omens meta #good omens s2 #aziraphale #aziraphale meta #religious trama #crowley #Good Omens

[robininthelabyrinth]

The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 30

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

———————————————————————-

“Let us begin,” Lan Zhengquan said. He had a look of mild superiority, as he often did.  “As accuser, you have the right of first statement. What say you?”

Lan Qiren glanced around the room.

“If I am correct, elder, we all know what happened,” he said, then paused. “No, let me be clear: we know what you did in Xixiang, you and Lan Muzhi, your elder brother, and furthermore we know what others here joined in later to do as well, covering up what was done, whether in action or through their silence. Is that agreed?”

No one disagreed.

“In that case, we can skip the preliminaries. I assert that what you did was wrong, that it is a wrong that calls for justice, that justice was not served, that punishment is called for. Beyond that, I yield up the right of first assertion.”

The unhappy ghosts of the Xixiang mine, He Kexin herself – this was a matter involving death, and in such matters, there was no question of reparations, no possibility of mitigation through forgiveness by the victim, as Lan Qiren had accorded Wen Ruohan. Lan Qiren, as accuser, stood in the place of the dead, acting in their name, and it was his duty to bring their resentments into the cleansing light of day so that they could be extinguished.

Yielding the first assertion was a show of faith on Lan Qiren’s part. The first speaker traditionally had the advantage in terms of swaying the audience, setting the stage, and the rules granted that privilege to the accuser, as the person acting on behalf of the sect to enforce the rules. To give it up was to say that Lan Qiren believed that there could be no possible excuse for the conduct, that it was unquestionably wrong – that he thought his own position was so unassailable that he did not require any advantage.

There were murmurs in the audience, and Lan Zhengquan frowned.

Not all the murmurs were disapproving, though. Concerned, perhaps, but not negative, not disagreeing with Lan Qiren. There was also support there.

“Very well,” Lan Zhengquan said. Lan Qiren thought he might look a little more annoyed than he had at the start, but perhaps that was only his illusion; he was far from skilled at reading faces. “I assert that the circumstances in which the conduct at hand was undertaken are exculpatory.”

Lan Qiren had not been expecting that to be Lan Zhengquan’s rebuttal. He only barely resisted gaping at him. “You assert that you did not act wrongly?!”

“No. With such an outcome, it is clear that mistakes were made,” Lan Zhengquan said smoothly, brushing over kidnapping and murder with a politician’s slick gloss. “I mean only that the context justifies our actions. If you know the facts of what happened at the Xixiang mine, Qiren, you must know that we were deceived by others – our error was small, and theirs grave. It was the merchant sect we worked with that gave us assurances on one hand and committed foul deeds with the other. They are the ones that are truly at fault for what took place.”

“Unquestionably they are at fault as well,” Lan Qiren replied, releasing his instinctively clenched fists with an effort. A mistake – after everything that had happened, those innocent cultivators, those lives ruined and then lost, Lan Qiren couldn’t believe Lan Zhengquan had the gall to call all of that a mere mistake. “But I would say that it is wrong to say that they were ‘truly’ at fault, for their fault is no defense to your own conduct. You were the ones who acted in the sect’s name, who enabled them to act. It was for your benefit, as well as their own, that they committed their crimes, and so you, too, bear the burden of answering for them.”

“The punishment applicable to actions taken unknowingly is not of the same severity as for an act committed with knowledge and intent.”

Technically true. But…

“A certain level of recklessness rises to the level of intent, and becomes equivalent to intent,” Lan Qiren said. “You were the ones who put our sect’s name out there, choosing to engage in business, and so you bore the duty to ensure that you took all reasonable efforts to assure yourself that the business was good. In this case, your failure was self-evident: you entered a business that everyone knows to be incredibly unprofitable and obtained an impossible profit – you knew, or should have known, that there was something suspect in what was happening.”

“You say everyone knows the business of mining spiritual iron is unprofitable, but that is not true,” Lan Zhengquan replied, as smooth as ever. “We are cultivators, not businessmen. Our attention is focused on higher duties, not the dirt of the mundane. If they told us that they were acting in good faith, though not necessarily according to custom, how were we to know better? We were reasonably ignorant.”

“Ignorance is no defense. If you were going to go out into the world, to step voluntarily into the mundane, then you had a duty to know what you were getting into. You had a duty to understand what was being done in your name. You should have known, and if you did not know, you should have taken steps to familiarize yourself, to find out.” Lan Qiren shook his head. “You say you are not businessmen: fine, that is true, although I remind you that I too am a cultivator, no more a businessman than you, and yet I know enough to be suspicious of such circumstances. When you are surrounded by signs of danger and look away, you cannot plead mere ignorance.”

Lan Zhengquan pressed his lips together in annoyance. It had been a long time since he had been questioned, and it was starting to tell. “Are you accusing us of willful blindness? On what basis?”

“I am saying that when you step out of the Cloud Recesses to interact with the rest of the world, you bear the sect’s name and weight upon your shoulders,” Lan Qiren said. “And in so doing, it is your duty – your heightened duty – to ensure that your conduct is good, for when you stain your name you also stain ours.”

“You are side-stepping the issue. I assert to you that we were deceived. Are you saying that we must bear the punishment regardless?”

Saying “yes” would be the easy way out. Lan Zhengquan had after all admitted that he’d acted badly, even if he didn’t admit to having done it on purpose – accidental wrongdoing was still wrongdoing, still worthy of punishment, only not to the same degree as intentional wrongdoing. If Lan Qiren agreed with Lan Zhengquan’s statement now, he could end this debate, and everyone would be happy, the whole sect in agreement, feathers unruffled. Those responsible would receive at least some censure, if not exactly the one they deserved.

Do not tell lies.

It would be letting them off too lightly.

“I am saying that you are a sect elder of Gusu Lan, and that being a sect elder gives you great responsibility,” Lan Qiren said. “I am saying that even if you did not know the nature of the business you were entering into, it was your duty not to enter into a questionable agreement without verifying what you were doing. It was your duty not to allow our sect name to be used for evil. I am saying…I am saying that it would be one thing if you were truly deceived, elder, but it is another thing entirely to be deceived because you did not take adequate precautions.”

Lan Zhengquan hummed. “So you are saying our conduct is worthy of censure because we were insufficiently wary.”

He was again downplaying what had happened and what they’d done, making it seem less than it was. He knew that it was hard to condemn someone for merely making a mistake, for being a little careless, for not thinking things through…but that wasn’t what had happened here.

“I am saying you failed to meet even the lowest possible standard of care,” Lan Qiren said. “I am saying that you put our sect’s name out into the world blindly when you could have, and should have, availed yourself of the expertise of others who did know more than you. The sect has resources for precisely that sort of situation. Why not use those?”

Lan Zhengquan blinked.

Under normal circumstances, Lan Qiren might have missed it, the first physical response Lan Zhengquan had given to any of Lan Qiren’s arguments. But his anxiety had narrowed his whole field of vision, focusing on every aspect of Lan Zhengquan to look for clues as to how to continue the argument, studying his posture and his body language, the confined way he held himself, the tension in his shoulders…

Lan Zhengquan was not taking this as lightly as he pretended to be.

And Lan Qiren, intentionally or not, had hit on a good point.

Lan Zhengquan was quiet for a little longer than usual, thinking over what Lan Qiren had said, or else hoping that Lan Qiren would feel awkward in the silence and speak further – unintentionally obfuscating his own argument and allowing Lan Zhengquan to respond to whatever new thing he said, rather than the thing he didn’t want to respond to now.

Lan Qiren had no idea which one it was, but he wasn’t going to give him the victory either way.

He waited.

In the end, Lan Zhengquan said, slowly, “Those resources were not available to us at the time.”

That was what Lan Qiren had thought.

Known, really – but it was so much more effective to force Lan Zhengquan to admit it.

“Those resources were not available to you only because you acted in secret,” Lan Qiren pointed out. “If you had gone through the proper channels to obtain authorization from the sect for your actions, you would have had to submit a copy of the agreement to the records room. While it was being copied, it would have been reviewed by someone familiar with the business to ensure we were not being cheated, even if we had to bring in an expert from the outside to assist us in doing so. We would have had the opportunity to identify suspicious points in the proposal. That way, even if you yourself did not know enough to identify the problems, someone else would have. Disaster could have been averted.”

“Oh, yes, disaster averted if only protocol were followed, very easy, what a solution!” Lan Zhengquan said, shaking his head dolefully as if Lan Qiren had said something very stupid in suggesting that he and his brother had to follow the same rules set out for every person who wanted to use sect funds or the sect name for something. “Ah, Qiren! What you said only reveals the extent of your ignorance.”

Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows when Lan Zhengquan stopped there. “If I am ignorant, then I request that the elder educate me.”

Lan Zhengquan shook his head again. “Qiren – ”

“This is a debate, elder,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “A debate brings out the truth and examines it ruthlessly, without excuse. We are not dealing here in implications and innuendo, and suggesting that I should already know what you mean does not excuse you from explaining yourself when I request it. If you have an argument to make, make it outright.”

Lan Zhengquan sighed, acting as if Lan Qiren were behaving like a petulant child.

“Very well,” he said, and stepped forward, his hands behind his back in a mirror to Lan Qiren’s posture. A reminder, however unintentional, that they were both the same, both of Gusu Lan, raised in the traditions of their sect. “I do not wish to bring up a sore point, Qiren, but if you insist, then you leave me no choice. I remind you, and all those in this room, of a sad fact: the last sect leader, Qiren’s father, gave up on everything after the death of his wife.”

Lan Qiren did not flinch, but it was a close thing.

At least Lan Zhengquan, unlike Lan Qiren’s brother, did not explicitly specify out loud that Lan Qiren’s mother’s death had been caused by the infection she suffered giving birth to Lan Qiren – though the implication was understood all the same.

It was not Lan Qiren’s fault, of course. He had not chosen to be born. He understood that now, in a way he hadn’t when he was just a child. And yet the fact of it was still there, lingering in the background, ruining everything. It had been why Lan Qiren’s brother had initially disliked him, before his dislike turned to resentment and envy, and then through madness into jealousy and rage and hatred, and it had been the reason why a number of his teachers had remained distant and a little cold towards him no matter how well he performed. Whether deserved or not, for many of the older generation in the Cloud Recesses, Lan Qiren’s birth and therefore presence was directly correlated with not just the death of his mother, but the breaking of his father’s spirit, and the ensuing decline of their sect.

“Your father lived for nearly twenty years more, yes, but we all know that he did not really survive it,” Lan Zhengquan said, speaking as much to the room as to Lan Qiren. “He was lifeless, dead but still alive, as much a walking corpse as the evil spirits we fight on night-hunts, and yet he was sect leader, refusing to resign or retreat into seclusion. To get anything approved under his supervision verged on the impossible! He would respond only slowly, if at all, and often forgot that you had even asked. Under his watch, our sect missed out time and again on valuable opportunities, whether for honor or glory or even necessities, food and drink and cloth. It became necessary for us, in our role as sect elders, to go out to the world and start making agreements for the sect’s benefit…even though it was without authorization.”

And that was probably how it started, Lan Qiren thought to himself. Lan Muzhi had gone out and made one deal, and everything had gone fine, everyone doing well, benefits all around. So he had done it again, and again, and it accrued to both the sect’s benefit and his own personal benefit, and so he had forgiven himself for the violation of the rules. He had convinced himself that his behavior was fine. He’d convinced himself that everything was fine.

By the time he reached the disaster of the mine, he had grown too sure of himself – Do not be haughty and complacent. He had run into a situation he did not understand, and he had chosen to act regardless. He had not asked for help. He had not felt it was necessary…and then the situation had surpassed him.

“This is fault, yes; this is wrongdoing, yes,” Lan Zhengquan said. “But I put to you, Qiren, that the fault was minor, and the intent was good.”

And so, he implicitly suggested, the whole thing ought to be forgiven and overlooked.

“Even if the intent was good, the fault cannot be excused, and it was not minor,” Lan Qiren said fiercely. “Intent can start good, and become bad. Recklessness can become intent; good intent, with negligence, can become wrongful. To start a course of action that is unwise is a mistake, but to continue in it once you have gained knowledge that what you are doing is wrong is to turn that mistake into a misdeed.”

That was the core of it.

Anyone could make a mistake. Anyone could choose to trust the wrong person, look away from the wrong thing, follow their heart down a path they should not follow – and there was no limit on the magnitude of the mistake, either, although obviously mistakes that caused greater harm deserved greater punishment. But to persist in what you were doing, to insist that you were right when you knew you were doing wrong…

That was no longer just a mistake.

Such conduct was sanctionable even if it had initially been well-intentioned. Such conduct was sanctionable even if it was justifiable, even if it was understandable, even if what you had done had started out as only good. That was the misdeed, that was the hole in the boat they all shared, the behavior that had to be punished in order for their community to continue with righteousness and without hypocrisy.

If you truly believed you had acted correctly, you had to defend your actions. You had to be able to explain why your actions were the right ones. If you could not stand by what you had done, genuinely and truly, you had to accept that, and accept punishment.

That was what it meant to break a rule.

That was what rules were.

Like Lan Qiren, rules were rigid and inflexible. They were not principles, to be twisted and applied as the situation warranted. They had to be applied as they were, or they had to be changed – but they could not be avoided. You could not conceal the truth of your conduct from the light of day to avoid getting into trouble. You could not act wrongly, knowingly act wrongly, and then refuse to accept the consequences.

No matter who did it.

If it was Wen Ruohan, or even if it were one of his beloved nephews, that did the wrong thing, then Lan Qiren would ask them if they believed in what they were doing, if they thought they could defend it, and if not, he would ask them to accept punishment. If they could not, or would not, accept punishment, and Lan Qiren nevertheless determined in his own judgment that their conduct constituted a wrong, then he had only two choices: to condemn them and require them to pay the price, or else defend them and submit himself to the sect’s punishment. Because separate and apart from anything his loved ones did, he had to look to his own conduct, and if he couldn’t defend his conduct to himself, then he, too, would need to account for it.

No matter the reason, you had to pay your own debts.

Those were the rules.

Maintain your own discipline.

Now it was Lan Qiren’s turn to take a step forward, keeping an eye on Lan Zhengquan as he did.

“Let us concede for the moment, elder, that you and your brother entered into that initial agreement in good faith, although in ignorance,” he said. “Let us accept, for the sake of argument, that your initial recklessness was more akin to negligence, driven by the circumstances, than it was to malintent. But that only explains the beginning. What, then, of what happened later?

“Surely you became suspicious when you began to receive unreasonable profits, which no one else could obtain. Surely, when you became aware that there were cultivators working in the mines, when you looked around and saw that there was no war, no famine, nothing that would explain why they would take on such difficult and dishonorable roles for such low wages when there were other options available, you must have realized that something had to be happening that was not right.

“At that point, you either knew, or had the duty to find out what was going on, what was being done in your name. To refuse to find out when faced with obvious signs of something wrong is to be willfully blind. Yet even that understates the issue here. Here…I say that you knew, elder. You knew what was happening, and yet you continued to do nothing, even as people were suffering. Why not act then? Why not submit the matter to the sect then?”

The answer was pride, of course. Pride and arrogance, an unwillingness to admit fault, to accept punishment for what they had done wrong.

Lan Zhengquan’s eyes narrowed.

Another point to Lan Qiren.

“At the time, my elder brother believed that it was a matter he could handle on his own,” Lan Zhengquan finally said. It was a weak defense, and he knew it. “He was wary of staining the sect’s face with his mistakes, particularly when he thought he had the chance to correct them. He did not want to draw away the resources of the sect to something he believed, even if incorrectly, was under control.”

“That goes well beyond being merely incorrect, elder,” Lan Qiren said. “Your brother was wrong.”

Lan Zhengquan bristled. “Is that not what I said? He made a mistake in judgment.”

“There is a difference between a mistake and a crime, elder. Innocent life is paramount. Your brother found out that innocent cultivators were being forced into labor to satisfy his own greed, and he did nothing. The moment he found that out, the moment he found out what was being done in our sect’s name, that was when mistake became crime! When he put profit and gain over doing the right thing, despite having found out that our sect, our Gusu Lan, had been used to justify kidnapping and enslavement – ”

“Do not exaggerate!”

“I am not exaggerating! How else should I describe cultivators taken from their homes and forced to labor, not permitted to leave or refuse, and for no reason other than another’s profit? There is no indication that those cultivators were criminals condemned to labor, no indication that they had willingly sold themselves and traded labor for shelter, no indication that they were willing at all. To stand aside when you see such a thing is bad enough, but to enable it, and find that you had enabled it, and then to still do nothing is a crime. It is not a mistake, and there is no excuse.”

Lan Zhengquan was shaking his head, but Lan Qiren barreled onwards.

“When your brother found out what was happening, he should have known he had gone too far, and he should have taken immediate action to rectify it, even if it meant submitting the matter to the sect and seeking aid – but he did not. Whatever excuses you make for him, you cannot defend that, elder! Your brother compromised his values and closed his eyes for the sake of salvaging his own pride, for the sake of refusing to admit he had erred. I tell you, it was that which enabled everything that happened later – everything that happened, happened because Lan Muzhi valued covering his tracks over seeking justice.”

“He was protecting the sect!” Lan Zhengquan snapped. “Do not speak of what you do not understand, Qiren. The compromises he made were reasonable in light of the circumstances at the time. We cannot all be pristine and perfect, and neither should we be expected to be.”

“No one is demanding perfection. There are places where one must compromise, to be sure, but after a certain point, you have not merely compromised your values, you have given them away.”

The two of them locked eyes, each glaring at the other.

“Our sect rules guide us all to the right path and show us how to walk, but only we can decide to follow it,” Lan Qiren reminded Lan Zhengquan. “It is not a crime to go astray, although it still calls for punishment. But if we wander astray, it is our duty to return to the right path. To go astray and then to keep going…that is wrong. I put it to you, elder, that our ancestors would not have put up our Wall of Discipline and laid out the rules if they believed that we could make compromises as great as this.”

Lan Zhengquan was silent.

This time, Lan Qiren chose to interpret it as him giving up his right to reply, and so he continued: “This is the crime I assert: with such rules as we have, upon discovering what was going on, Lan Muzhi could not in good conscience have refrained from immediate action to stop what was happening, even if it meant revealing what he had done. He was obligated to do that, but he did not. He did nothing – but in doing nothing, he acted. He allowed and condoned the kidnapping of cultivators for the sake of satisfying greed, he countenanced forced labor, he permitted it to continue, and in the end, it resulted not only in suffering, but in death. The death of innocents, which call for justice. Lan Zhengquan: I put it to you that this is the case. Do you admit it?”

Lan Zhengquan would not admit it. Lan Qiren could tell, just from looking at him, that he wouldn’t.

He hadn’t gotten through to him.

This wasn’t working. Lan Qiren was not enough; his words, though well-meant and earnest, were too clumsy, too weak, too monotonous and too convoluted. He was arguing, trying his best, but he wasn’t succeeding, he wasn’t making his point.

Lan Zhengquan would not admit that he and his brother had been wrong.

Lan Qiren could only hope that the other sect elders, silent witnesses all, were more open-minded.

“I grant to you that my brother made mistakes,” Lan Zhengquan finally said, sounding begrudging, but in fact making no real concession. It was the same place he had started the debate, willing to admit to a mistake but not to a crime, downplaying what they had done, downplaying the direct causation between their actions and inaction and the results of what happened. “Perhaps you are right, and he should have submitted the matter to the sect earlier, and perhaps if he had done so, disaster might have been averted at the time. We will never know. But…even if that is so, he is dead, and the dead cannot be punished, not even in the name of justice.”

“He is dead, but you yet live, elder,” Lan Qiren countered. “You, and all those who acted with you, whether affirmatively or passively, to help cover up your brother’s crimes. Tell me, elder: even if it was your brother’s order to clean up the mine, did you not have a duty yourself to act at that time to stop it? Did you not equally bear the weight of responsibility to undertake justice and uphold morality? Is that not a burden we all bear, to act as soon as we know a wrong has been committed and to seek to right it?”

Suddenly the room was full of whispers.

It was startling, knocking Lan Qiren out of his intense focus on Lan Zhengquan alone. Everyone had been so silent until now, as they rightfully should be under the rules of the debate, and now they were all talking, although not loud enough to fully interrupt…why now?

Had they not realized what it meant, when Lan Qiren had called for punishment?

Had they not realized that the subject of this trial was not merely the actions taken ten years ago by Lan Muzhi, who was indeed far past the reach of justice, but the actions subsequent to that: the deaths that had been caused and not remedied, the laying down of suppression arrays, the conspiracy of silence that had protected them all?

Did they not realize that what was on trial here was their own conduct? Their own complicity?

Lan Zhengquan’s eyes glittered, but his composure did not break.

“Permit me a question before I answer you, Qiren,” he said, slow and steady, calm as ever. He had always been an excellent politician, far better than the often-tempestuous Lan Qiren. “From whom did you hear the story of what happened? How did they know about it? Was their information first-hand, or second?”

Lan Qiren paused, wondering at the nature of the question. It felt almost like some sort of trap.

“I am not sure,” he said, though he supposed it was technically second-hand: with the merchant sect dead, with the victims dead and their ghosts banished, the only real witness left alive was likely Lan Zhengquan. Lan Zhengquan…and He Kexin, who was now dead, and from whom Lan Qiren’s brother had undoubtedly heard the majority of the facts. “But no matter whatever else is between us, I do not doubt my brother’s word.”

Silence again.

He’d played a strong hand there, or so he thought. The Lan sect believed in hierarchy, and the sect leader stood at the top of that hierarchy, above even the sect elders, worthy of respect and of deference. Moreover, Lan Qiren’s brother, of all people, had lost so much on a personal level to the events of the mine and its sequelae – He Kexin’s forced confinement, his own seclusion, his giving up of sect leadership, not ever knowing his children, and perhaps even his madness – that it was difficult to doubt that he would convey the facts as best he knew them.

Surely no one would question the facts as he had presented them. Surely…

And then Lan Zhengquan smiled.

“You have it just right,” he said. “You do not doubt your brother’s word – and neither did I doubt mine.”

Lan Qiren had made a mistake.

He could see nods starting around the room. People were being drawn over to Lan Zhengquan’s side, agreeing with him, everyone thinking of Do not disrespect the elder and Do not fight with family and all the rules around familial harmony. Harmony is the value…

It felt like an excuse, and it was an excuse. But it was a good excuse: Do not blame me, they were all thinking, because I only did what I was asked to do, asked by someone I trusted. Surely you cannot hold that against me.

Lan Qiren could.

Lan Qiren would.

He Kexin’s main flaw was always that she trusted her friends too much, He Zhong had said. She never looked, never questioned, no matter what signs there were that something was off.

Should she have had to pay for her trust, while his sect could be excused for doing the same?

That would be unfair.

Yet it was a good argument, or at minimum a compelling one. It was very much like Lan Zhengquan’s initial claim that he and his brother had been deceived, that their intent was good and their actions only misguided, not wrong, but where there was an obvious need to distrust strangers, one could not say the same for family. You were supposed to be able to listen to family, to trust family, to have faith in family.

To be deceived by family was terrible, yes, but it was not a crime. It was justifiable.

Now it was Lan Qiren who was forced into what felt like the weaker argument: “The instinct may be to obey family, and to trust in their good faith, but the circumstances were too dire for that. They were such that you had an overriding duty to righteousness,” he said. “When the moral obligation to act is clear-cut, to act righteously is a stronger rule than those dictating obedience.”

“Ah, but it is precisely that which is the issue! The conjunction of the rules is such that we are encouraged to err in favor of obedience when matters are unclear,” Lan Zhengquan countered. “Hierarchy begets order and maintains it. You say that the moral obligation was clear-cut, but you speak with the clarity brought about by hindsight. You were not there at the time. At the time it was all unclear. In such unclear circumstances, would you not yourself follow your brother…?”

“No,” Lan Qiren said honestly, and for whatever reason that seemed to cut through Lan Zhengquan’s smugness.

It seemed to cut through the room, too, and suddenly Lan Qiren knew what he had to say.

“I do not trust my brother,” he said, and Lan Zhengquan stared at him, incredulous. Perhaps he hadn’t expected Lan Qiren to admit to his feud with his brother – or perhaps not so calmly, without anger or rancor, not losing his composure or flinching. “I do not trust him, but that is because he has forfeited the right to my trust. It is my duty as a junior to follow in the steps of my elders, to listen to their guidance, but only when their guidance directs me on a path that is right. It is the duty of the elder brother to protect and guide the younger, to show the right path, to act righteously and to ask only righteous things. My brother failed in that duty to me. And so too, it seems, did your brother fail in that duty to you.

“Elder, our rules are about moderation, about balance. Do not disrespect the elder is only valid provided that the elder also fulfills do not disrespect the younger. Your brother, in instructing you to condone or carry out such obviously wrongful acts, abjured his duty to you. He perverted the responsibility that we have, all of us, as teachers and guides to those who are junior to us. But while the sins of the student may be the fault of the teacher, fault does not absolve the sin. Even if you were only following your brother’s orders, you still did what you did. You still committed the wrongful act.”

Lan Zhengquan didn’t like that. Lan Qiren hadn’t expected him to. It was just like his own brother had behaved, denying his own culpability because he had someone else to blame, unwilling to cast off his delusions and admit the truth that he had been the one to wield the blade that ended He Kexin’s life, that it was him and no one else.

In the same way, Lan Zhengquan was naturally reluctant to concede the truth that it had been his order that had led to those deaths. His brother’s by genesis, perhaps, but carried out by him.

He sought to rally: “Again, you speak without understanding. The circumstances were as I said unclear, the balance weighing towards obedience – ”

“But you still did it,” Lan Qiren interjected. It was improper debate technique to interrupt, but he thought the point he had to make was worth it. “In the end, you did it. The decision to act may have been influenced by your obedience to your elders, but the decision in the end was yours. The act was yours, and so too is the crime, and the punishment as well. You were no child, elder, to be excused because you lacked knowledge and understanding of what you did. This all happened only ten years ago; by then, even I, the youngest of all of you here, was already a man full grown. You were an elder of the sect. You bore the heaviest burden to act righteously…you all did.”

“Do you condemn us all, then?” Lan Zhengquan asked. He was scowling. “You said before that all those who acted in concert to carry out what happened, or who passively acted to cover it up, are implicated in the wrongdoing. What of those whose only actions were far later, when everything was already done? Those whose actions were taken to protect the sect from revelations that would only bring us all harm…? By that brush, you would paint us all as involved, every one of us. We rise and fall together.”

“Punishment should be doled out in proportion to fault,” Lan Qiren said, and Lan Zhengquan looked almost shocked when he realized that Lan Qiren was agreeing with him, that he did mean to condemn them all. “Light to those least involved, harshest to the worst offender. But punishment must still be meted out, to each their own measure, each one owning what they did…but surely you must realize that your own fault is compounded by the involvement of others? It was you, elder, that brought in the rest, implicating them. You were the one who took steps to cover up what was done. You were the one who got people involved, staining their own hands, before they found out the full truth of what they had gotten involved with. You were the one who led the rest into complicity, step by step.”

“You condemn me first, then, above all the others.”

“I do. You were the one who mixed private and public interests, you who used your position as sect elder to lead the others. Do not sow discord; do not cause damage. Elder, please, look at everything that has happened, everything that resulted. Do you not see what you have done to our sect?”

“I have helped our sect,” Lan Zhengquan said. He seemed offended. “How can you say I mixed private and public interests? In this case, they were one and the same, but that is not my fault…I have served our Gusu Lan faithfully for so many years. You claim I am due punishment for what I did, Qiren, but even if we accept all your arguments, even if you condemn us all, then can you truly say that I escaped punishment? Surely you know what I have given up. I have not left the Cloud Recesses in so long…”

“Do you think you did wrong?”

Lan Zhengquan stopped and frowned at him.

“You refer to accepting my arguments, you refer to me condemning you,” Lan Qiren said. “You say that your brother made a mistake, as if such horrible things can be papered over as a mere mistake. You say that it was not your fault that your interests happened to coincide with the sect, you say that you were merely obeying instructions, you say that your brother had good intent, that his actions and yours were justifiable…Lan Zhengquan, to be justifiable is not to be just.”

He took a step forward.

Lan Zhengquan, startled, took a step back.

“Let us speak bluntly as to what is at issue here. Cultivators were taken away from their homes and forced into labor, and then killed. That was not a mistake, elder. Once you acted knowingly to enable it, it was a crime.” Lan Qiren shook his head. “You were involved in – no, you committed a crime, elder. You say you accepted punishment, but it was one that did not impede your life in the slightest. It did not impinge on your ability to act as sect elder or to guide our sect. Your restriction kept you from causing future harm in the same manner, yes, but only by preventing you from ever being asked the same question again. And that matters, because if you were asked the same question…would you not give the same answer?”

Lan Zhengquan’s face was ugly.

“You would,” Lan Qiren concluded. “Because you still think you were right.”

Silence.

Lan Zhengquan didn’t deny it.

He didn’t deny it.

Lan Qiren shook his head, almost disbelieving. “How can you think such a thing?” he asked, and meant the question genuinely. “How? How can you think that you acted rightly? With everything that it cost…”

“You are one to speak of cost,” Lan Zhengquan growled, his voice tight and angry. All those arguments, that haughty sneer of the politician, always above it all – it was breaking now, his fury cutting through his cool demeanor and revealing the self-righteousness lay beneath. “You come here to call for punishment, call for justice. You look down at us all for not having done enough, even though we have already given up so much to atone for those mistakes. We have suffered so much. Not just me, with my restriction, but the sect itself…think of your own brother, Qiren! The finest light of our sect, snuffed years before his time, who because of that event was forced into seclusion, a confinement that broke him – ”

“Yes, let us speak of that,” Lan Qiren said, his own ire riled. “Let us speak of seclusion, and confinement. Let us speak of He Kexin, who you imprisoned without a trial – ”

“She didn’t deserve a trial!” Lan Zhengquan roared. “She killed my brother!”

“Ridiculous,” Lan Qiren snapped. “That’s not the truth, and you know it! Your brother died of a qi deviation, brought on by his own misdeeds!”

“She aggravated it, she caused it,” Lan Zhengquan insisted. “My brother was trying to do the right thing, to fix it all with minimal harm, preserving the sect’s reputation. Yes, perhaps he had gotten too involved, perhaps he had let it go too far, let the circumstances get beyond him – yes, maybe even he was culpable for not having raised the alert and confessing when perhaps he should have. But that is only a mistake, not a crime! He was going to fix it.If she hadn’t tormented him, it would have all been resolved. If he hadn’t died, if I hadn’t been summoned away, those cultivators wouldn’t have all died, they would have been paid and sent on their way, and it would all be over. It was her fault, and so she rightfully bore the punishment for it!”

(No, you did it. You killed her, not me. It wasn’t me…)

“You cannot use a punishment inflicted on an outsider to absolve crimes committed by our sect,” Lan Qiren said coldly. “He Kexin was not surnamed Lan, she was not an outside disciple of our sect, she never submitted voluntarily to be bound by our rules. Even if she paid for her own crimes, that would be a completely different thing from our sect paying for ours. For what the sect did through you, what you and your brother did in our Gusu Lan sect’s name. For kidnapping, for forced labor, for enslavement and for murder – ”

“It wasn’t – ”

“It was! Unlawful and unjust, it was murder, slaughter pure and simple, and it was at your command! He Kexin may have been far from guiltless, but she did not do that. She participated, she shut her eyes, willfully blind, but she did not kill. She did not kill those cultivators in the mine, and she did not kill your brother, either. Her punishment should have been in proportion to her crime! It should have been imposed following a proper trial – a trial you never gave her, because you weren’t punishing her for what she did! You were punishing her for being a witness!”

They were shouting now, both of them, standing right in front of each other. Decorum had long been forgotten, propriety set aside, the subject too sore for either of them to maintain their composures.

“That’s not what happened!” Lan Zhengquan insisted. “You don’t understand, you weren’t there! It was complex, it was complicated, it was murky. Once we realized we had gone too far, we were trapped in a mire with no light, no reason, no guide. We did the best we could with what we knew, I did the best I could, and there was nothing better I could have done!”

“You could have told the sect! You could have submitted yourself to punishment back then, you could have both submitted, and the sect would have acted at that time to solve it. You did not do so. You refused, because to do that would be to admit that you erred, that you were wrong. You refused, and you still refuse today. You still think you are right! How can you claim that punishment has been imposed when you have not accepted the truth?”

“Because the truth is that I was right!” Lan Zhengquan shouted, finally breaking. “The truth is that the sect comes first, our Gusu Lan sect comes first, before anything else, before all other considerations – and yes, before the lives of those other cultivators, rogue cultivators and small sects, meaningless in comparison to our great Gusu Lan. If my brother’s actions were found out, it would have shamed us all! It was right to do what we could to erase the evidence. The rules do not demand the truth!”

“But they do demand justice! To say that the reputation of the sect is what is at issue is a lie, for what you were really trying to protect was your own reputation. The sect might have been embarrassed, yes, but it would have been excused if we had tried to stop it as soon as we learned of it; if you had only come and confessed to the sect, the sect’s reputation could have been salvaged. But coming forward would have cost you your own, and so you didn’t. Elder, you put your desire to be right above the rules and used it to justify ordering the death of innocent cultivators, to justify the deliberate implication of the other elders in helping you cover it up, the unlawful imprisonment of He Kexin without a trial, even letting my brother give up his future and go mad in seclusion. All that, because of what you did, and you still say it was justified – ”

“How dare you! You, Qiren, who know nothing! How dare you come to judge? You were not there, you do not understand! You, you who put yourself above us all, you who alone claim to be innocent, to wash your hands of the whole matter – ”

“I do not need to wash my hands!” Lan Qiren shouted. “I have no need, because I was not there, because I did not know, because no one told me. Tell me, Lan Zhengquan: if you were so sure that what you did was right, then why did none of you tell me about it?!”

Lan Zhengquan –

Lan Zhengquan opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“I – ” he said, trying to say something, but tripping over his words, stuttering in a way he had not done in all the years Lan Qiren had known him. “I – that is – it was because of you, of course! Because of who you are, because of what you are, the way you behave, the way you’ve always behaved. You’ve always been the worst sort of stick in the mud, rigid, inflexible, unable to compromise, incapable even of understanding – ”

“We didn’t tell you because we knew you would condemn us.”

Lan Qiren startled, having not expected someone else in the room to speak.

It was old Lan Jinyan who had spoken. He was still leaning heavily on his cane – heavier now, somehow seeming to be older and more tired than he had been before, as if merely listening to the argument had aged him another ten years.

“That’s the truth,” he said, his voice flat and quiet, but somehow still ringing in the sudden silence of the room, a stark contrast from the yelling from only a few moments earlier. “That’s the truth, and there is no avoiding it. You would have condemned us, and you would have been right to do so, as you are right to do so now. You have always been rigid, Qiren, rigid but true. You have always tried to live up to the rules, to speak for righteousness, no matter the cost.

“Even those of us who were only involved in this matter tangentially, whether those of us who made the arrays for suppressing the ghosts or those of who did not speak up against He Kexin’s continued confinement even once we discovered that Muzhi died of a qi deviation…we told ourselves that telling you would only cause a fuss, a disturbance, that it would make our sect lose face. That’s what we told ourselves. But we were lying, and the rules say do not tell lies. Every time we chose not to tell you, we lied. We were not acting as sect elders should, prioritizing the sect’s benefit over our own. We were choosing easy silence over the difficult truth. Be hard on yourself. Maintain your own discipline. We had a duty, and we failed it.”

“That’s not the case,” Lan Zhengquan protested, finally over his own startlement at an interruption from outside the debate, which neither of them had declared was concluded. “Elder – ”

Lan Yuanbai reached out and put his hand on his arm. “Enough,” he said. “Enough, Zhengquan. Do not say more.”

“I am not done. I have more to say.”

“No, you do not.” And that was Lan Bocheng, stepping forward, shaking his head. “Zhengquan, it’s over. You lost.”

“I refuse to acknowledge it!”

“The sect acknowledges it,” Lan Bocheng said gravely, and when Lan Qiren looked around the room, he saw that people were nodding in agreement, shame and acceptance writ on all their grim faces. “If you do not…Qiren is right, Zhengquan. You mixed public and private interests, equated your interests and your brother’s with those of the sect, and put all that above our principles, thinking that preserving your reputation was more important than the loss of innocent lives. We followed you this far, Zhengquan, because we believed in you…but in the light of debate, we saw our self-deceit for what it was.”

He inclined his head to Lan Qiren, who stared at him blankly for a couple of moments before inclining his head back, barely able to believe what was happening.

It had worked?

The sect elders – they had accepted what he had to say? They had listened?

I am myself, and that is enough, Lan Qiren had said at the start of this, even though he hadn’t really believed it. But somehow, despite it all, against all the odds…it really had been. He had been enough.

A crime of ten years’ standing was going to be resolved.

His sect –

His sect was going to change.

He’d changed his sect. Using his words, his best efforts, Lan Qiren had changed the minds of his sect elders, and they were going to change in response. He had shown them the truth, and they had accepted it, they had agreed with him, and they were finally, finally going to do what was right.

It was change. Change of the sort he had always hated, that had never been good for him. But for once, for once, it was a good change, a necessary change. A change he himself had authored, rather than suffered – a change for the good, for the better, rather than for the worse.

Lan Qiren put a hand up to his chest, struck by the sensation of suddenly falling out of his mind and back into his body. That part was normal, after a fierce debate, but he noticed that he felt lighter, somehow, fresher and brighter – stronger.

At first he thought it was merely an illusion brought on by his joy, but upon a closer inspection he realized that it wasn’t, that he was actually stronger than he had been before. It seemed that all that extra power from his dual cultivation with Wen Ruohan had been processed and absorbed by his golden core during the debate. It made sense, of a sort, since the Lan sect’s cultivation style was not merely swords and music, but also encompassed philosophical contemplation. By some standards, debate could be considered a type of contemplation…

At least he wasn’t glowing again.

(He hoped he wasn’t glowing again. Surely someone would have said something…?)

“There is of course the matter of the nature of the punishment that is yet to be determined,” Lan Jinyan said mildly, and the others in the room were nodding along. “Now that fault has been settled, and all are agreed, we must decide what must be done – ”

“I should think that obvious,” someone said – Lan Yiran, maybe, or Lan Yichi, Lan Qiren thought. It was difficult to tell the twins apart. “This is a matter that resulted in death. There can be no reparations made for death, only punishment, and so the punishment must be increased as a result of that. As the leader and primary perpetrator of what occurred, as well as someone who is unwilling to admit his fault, Lan Zhengquan must be confined, or else…”

He trailed off, but they all knew what he meant.

Lan Zhengquan did, too.

“Or else killed,” he spat out, mouth twisted into a grimace full of bitterness, seeming to still not believe he had lost. His eyes looked wild, now, and reddened at the edges in a way that warned that he might himself not be too far from risking a qi deviation himself. Was this what had lain beneath his cool composure this entire time? “Diseased flesh cut away to save the rest, is that it? The thorn has dug so deep, it can only be excised by being destroyed?”

“Death is a serious penalty,” Lan Qiren said with a frown. “It would not and should not be imposed without considerable thought and consideration. Just as He Kexin deserved a trial, so too do you. You must not be held accountable for your brother’s actions, only your own, and all mitigating elements must also be counted. It has not yet been decided – ”

“It will be that way in the end,” Lan Zhengquan spat at him. “I will not accept any other punishment! I will make you own your decision, Qiren, all of you, the whole lot of you – I’ll make you carry it even if it costs me my life to do it! I will not enter seclusion voluntarily or involuntarily, I will not let you confine me, let you lock me away to appease your own conscience, so that you can all laugh at me behind your backs for everything you were willing to consent to up till now…!”

Someone did him the mercy of knocking him out.

Unnerved, Lan Qiren looked at Lan Zhengquan as he was caught by the arms of his peers and gently moved over to one of the benches to be laid down. Was that how Lan Zhengquan had seen his brother’s seclusion? As some sort of farce, a mistake, a decision by the sect rather than the sect leader? Did he see that as the price of appeasing his conscience for the mine? Had he been laughing at Lan Qiren’s brother’s foolish willingness to sacrifice his own future to keep He Kexin alive, to keep the sect from executing her for a crime she had not committed?

“What of the rest of us?” someone asked, and Lan Qiren tore his attention away and back to the ongoing conversation. “We, too, are deserving in punishment, for what we did. Passivity in the face of crime is not as great a sin, but it is still complicity…”

Agreement all around, most of it shamed and guilty.

“We must reflect on what we did and why we did it,” Lan Jinyan announced. “We thought we were acting for the sect, but in truth we were acting for ourselves, for our own reputations and to preserve our own moral influence as sect elders – surely, for the punishment to fit the crime, it must involve yielding up the power that led us astray. Seclusion, for some, to contemplate what we have done; good deeds for others, night-hunts and other actions to improve the world…”

“That’s ridiculous,” someone else protested, and even Lan Qiren was staring, wide-eyed and shocked, at the sheer boldness of such a proposition. It did fit the crime, to be sure, but…all of them? “We can’t all give up our positions! Who would be left to run the sect?”

That was a very good point.

“Running the sect isn’t the duty of the sect elders, it’s the duty of the sect leader,” Lan Jinyan said. “Sect elders are meant to advise, to teach, to support – to offer the weight of their experience and knowledge. But if we have lost our own ways, we cannot offer that guidance with good faith and unburdened heart. It would not break the sect to be without us for a year or two.”

“But there isn’t a sect leader right now! He’s still missing! And even if he returns, what sort of sect leader will he be? He already led us into war…”

“Not just war,” Lan Qiren said heavily, and reached up to rub his eyes. “I say this to you, sect elders, in the privacy of the Hall of Serenity, and it must not go any further beyond these walls, but my brother has gone mad with grief. He did not merely start a war and then lose it. He never intended to win it. He lured the cultivation world to Xixiang, and then deliberately incited the destruction of the mountain there in order to release the ghosts that were trapped in the mine, seeking public punishment for our Gusu Lan sect’s actions.”

The room was full of talking as people digested that, but no one doubted him. He’d earned that much respect from them, at least.

And as for the fact that his brother had been trying to use those ghosts to destroy the sect itself, to make them all complicit and guilty so that they would break their own rules…well, for all that Lan Qiren felt guilty for hoping for his brother’s death, he couldn’t help but admit everything would be much, much easier if Wen Ruohan successfully carried out his promise to kill him while Lan Qiren was away.

If his brother was dead, he couldn’t reveal what he had done, and his reputation could be preserved, even if only a little – for the sake of Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji, at least, who as his sons would bear the burden of that reputation. Theirs was a sect that understood the madness of being in love, and the grief that came with the death of that love; it would be easy enough to explain his brother’s actions as the lashing out of a man who had given up his future for his wife, and then lived long enough to see his wife die a premature death, apparently at her own hand. He would be seen as a tragic figure, yes, but not a monster.

No one would need to know that he had been the one to kill her.

No one would need to know that he had decided to take the sect down, either. Not even the elders. His actions could be excused as seeking public punishment, wanting to unveil the truth to the world as an act of justice, shining a light to destroy the dark; that would be understandable, even a little admirable. No one would need to know that that had not been what he had really intended. No one would need to know that he had wanted to destroy their heart and kill many of their disciples, just for the chance to maintain his own power after getting his revenge.

Maybe they could even find some way to explain away what had happened with the coins…

That was the rational reason, and a good one. But on a more personal and perhaps even somewhat selfish note, Lan Qiren had also concluded that he would be very happy simply never to see his brother again. But there was no point in speculating – what would be, would be.

What needed to be done, Lan Qiren would do.

“Well, that’s just all the more reason that we cannot resign our positions!” someone finally exclaimed. One of the more ruthlessly practical ones, given that he was willing to take advantage of the polite moment of silence the rest of them were giving to Lan Qiren’s announcement to state his views. “Without a sect leader, who will make decisions and manage affairs?”

“Well, there’s always Qiren – ”

“There is not,” Lan Qiren interrupted hastily, distracted from his thoughts by his alarm at the suggestion. “I married out, remember? I’m no longer qualified.”

“I don’t suppose there is any hope of annulment…”

“There is not. And none of divorce, either, thank you. I am very happy with my wife.”

“Even if you’re married out, that doesn’t necessarily exclude you,” Lan Yichi, or possibly Lan Yiran, pointed out. “As you yourself said, you are still by birth and blood a member of the main line clan. There are both rights and responsibilities that come with that, with being the main clan entrusted by our ancestors with authority over the sect…”

“I live in the Nightless City,” Lan Qiren stressed. “You cannot expect me to manage the sect from there! At any rate, even if I could, think of the implications of such a thing. I’m not blind, and neither should you be! Let me remind you that I am now part of the Wen sect. One must admit, of all possible sects – ”

Someone pounded on the door, requesting entry.

“Qiren, there isn’t anyone else! Your brother is unfit, you have no other siblings – will someone answer the door already and stop that awful noise? It’s not as if we’re discussing anything secret any longer – and everyone else is further out of the main line and either disqualified or inappropriate, unable to act as sect leader while holding the place for the next generation…and for that matter, we don’t even know where your nephews are!”

Oh, that.

Right.

He’d never officially confirmed that they were safe, though he was certain that the sect elders must have figured it out – they knew him best, after all, even if Lan Qiren’s brother hadn’t. Even if Lan Qiren’s brother had not himself cared about Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji, the elders knew that Lan Qiren did, and that he would never have prioritized anything over that.

Still, there was suspecting, and there was knowing.

“Xichen and Wangji are safe,” Lan Qiren assured them. “They are with me – ”

“With you?” Lan Yiran looked surprised. “I had assumed you’d gotten confirmation of their location, but – are you saying they’re in the Nightless City? You didn’t take them yourself, someone would have noticed that. So how did that happen?”

“I arranged for them to be taken there by a safe courier – ”

“Madam Wen!”

The room fell silent.

Lan Qiren’s eye twitched.

He turned around to see who had said that. It turned out that the person who had been rudely pounding on the door to the Hall of Serenity had been a Wen sect disciple, with a Lan sect token hanging at his belt. Apparently the debate had taken long enough that he’d managed to get one – though that didn’t excuse the way he’d referred to Lan Qiren.

“That title is inappropriate,” he scolded sharply. “I may have married in, but I am not Madam Wen. By Wen Ruohan’s own agreement, I am the husband, not the wife – ”

“Senior Lan, this is urgent,” the Wen disciple said quickly, interrupting and dropping into a salute. “There’s a message for you, just arrived, from Sect Leader Wen. He says you need to return to Lanling City at once.”

Lan Qiren promptly forgot to be angry. Wen Ruohan summoning him like that, insisting on urgency – he couldn’t tell if it was ominous or promising, or both. Was his brother dead? Was Wen Ruohan hurt? Had they managed to collect all the coins? Had something else happened…?

“I will go at once,” he said, and turned to glare at the sect elders who were making sounds of protests.

Well, most of them. The rest of them were still grinning at him in a way that suggested that they were not going to forget the ‘Madam Wen’ nonsense as quickly as he might have preferred.

“You do not require me for this debate,” he said. “I brought the subject to light, but you are still sect elders, capable of designing and implementing your own discipline. Maintain your own discipline is a rule. I expect you to resolve this and have a proposed punishment for me to review when I return, is that understood?”

“We’re not your students, Qiren,” Lan Jinyan said, sounding long-suffering but somehow a little amused. “Go be with your beloved.”

“Beloved?” someone else asked before Lan Qiren could thank him and go. “He’s married to Wen Ruohan, remember? It was arranged as well, a political match. What on earth makes you say that he of all people is Qiren’s beloved?”

“Pssh, what a ridiculous question. Just look at Qiren. He’s glowing!”

Oh no.

“Hey, Qiren, what say you? Is he your beloved? Wen Ruohan, really?”

“He is,” Lan Qiren said, immediately irritated, and also perhaps desperately trying to use the irritation to overcome his horrible embarrassment. “He is my beloved, and my wife, and you will all pay him the respect due to him as such, regardless of whatever else you may think of him.”

Someone in the room laughed. Several more made sounds that sounded a little like smothered laughs.

“We will, Qiren, we will, we will,” Lan Suiying said. He was one of the ones who was grinning. “Go already. We will continue this debate amongst ourselves, and come to a consensus on the proposed punishment.”

“We will,” Lan Jinyan said. “And I promise you, Qiren, this time, it will satisfy even you.”

His tone had a sense of finality, like the ringing of a funeral bell.

Lan Qiren didn’t have time to worry about that, though he was sure he’d puzzle over it the entirety of the flight from the Cloud Recesses to Jinlin Tower. But for the moment, he had to go.

Wen Ruohan – he hoped he was all right.

After all, if he was, Lan Qiren was going to smack himover this whole glowing nonsense!

#mdzs #lan qiren #wen ruohan #Megafic #my fic #my fics

[secteel]

Why was Yamamura locked up?

Back to lore digging because I had so many questions, and so many personal headcanons without actually sharing them to see if some people agreed, but the League's been on my mind for the most part! I always wondered why Yamamura was locked up in the dungeons (going mad/blood-drunk usually meant the Hunter of Hunters would come for you rather than getting imprisoned I assumed), if he had been locked up in the living world at all. So far, we just see him in such state in the Nightmare, but considering Maria spent the later half of her life in the Research Hall, and that it is where we find her in the Nightmare, I had reasons to believe that Yamamura got locked up at some point, and died in his cell like Gracia did. ''Shrouded by night, but with steady stride. Colored by blood, but always clear of mind. Proud hunter of the church. Beasts are a curse, and a curse is a shackle. Only ye are the true blades of the church.'' That chant sounded more like a mantra when I first heard it, and upon the thought of people imprisoning Hunters who had gone mad or gone against the Healing Church's dogma (like Gracia in her own cell who is found in a praying position), I suspect that Yamamura was probably tormented over and over again, most likely through torture, to the point of not being capable of any form of speech rather than reciting the same chant over and over again. After all, when we find him, he keeps on bashing his head against the wall- ''There shall be no sympathy for those engaged in the bloody mission of the League. No matter that an oath must be taken to uphold the illusion.'' - League Staff

Now with that in mind, we already know that Yamamura went mad after years and years working for the League, and that he eventually died. That description kinda gives off the impression that the Church did not really like the League as a whole (considering you find Valtr in the woods and that he seems rather disgusted by the 'mad doctors'). We know the Healing Church isn't so keen on sharing much of their knowledge with Yharnamites, let alone foreigners who take up arms to fight against beasts without seeking their support (I mean Valtr, Yamamura, and Madaras cannot really be considered Yharnamites, and we know that Gascoigne parted from the Church at some point). Therefore, it could be somewhat plausible for Church Hunters to have locked up Yams under the intention of "fixing the madman by reminding him who is in charge of Yharnam". ''A standard hunter's hat, worn by Yamamura the Wanderer. This hat and staff were given to him when he became a hunter and confederate of the League.'' - Yamamura Hunter Hat Also! He's not wearing his hat in the cells when we find him! It's a very interesting detail considering Fromsoft games do not do things randomly. Maybe he abandoned his oath when he went mad? Maybe the Church took it away from him to truly strip him from any attachment he had in the past? Maybe the Church was twisted enough at that point for their Hunters to truly believe that tormenting a poor foreign man with nothing to lose would bring him salvation and cleanse his soul.

"Perhaps there is some mercy in the madness. Those who wish to see vermin can, and those who choose to are provided with boundless purpose.'' - Vermin All in all, I'm not so sure as to why exactly Yamamura was locked up, but I'm certain it has something to do with more than just going mad from working for so long for the League. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts though!

#bloodborne #soulsborne #the old hunters #yamamura the wanderer #old hunter yamamura #bloodborne lore #the league #bloodborne league #valtr master of the league #younger madaras twin #fromsoftware #the healing church

[agp]

started flipping tables in my head again like those old rage comics cause cbc published another article on solidarity with palestinians that presents 'from the river to the sea' as a call for the ethnic cleansing of jewish people, but that 'its meaning and use is more complicated'. ill click the link on the part of the sentence that says 'experts told cbc' (its complicated) when i feel like flipping tables again but in the meantime lets try working with one instead of dropping the whole thing.

from the river to the sea palestine will be free from jews is an antisemitic position, one that is no different from the same calls for the ethnic cleansing of jewish people antisemites around the world call for in their own countries. a problem arises in that israel benefits from antisemitism in what it maintains as diasporas, antisemites and zionists have worked together for over a century to tie jewish people to this particular colony in palestine, and the notion of jewish people as necessarily foreigners wherever they may be maintains its legitimacy specifically through the exception that is israel.

to belong somewhere is too often not to belong elsewhere, and in the case of zionism, belonging is employed in a way that existentially ties the struggle against antisemitism, the ongoing genocidal process that targets jewish people, with zionism, the ongoing settler colonial process that targets palestinian land and produces a genocidal relationship between its settlers and indigenous people. for jewish people not to belong 'here' and not to 'belong nowhere', they must 'belong somewhere', and for them to 'truly belong' (the american way), they must put into question the belonging of everyone only to fall back on settler bourgeois property relations. that is why the right to return of palestinians is something zionists refuse to concede to, and fundamentally can not: because the unbelonging of palestinians from their land is a necessary function of israeli sovereignty, through the colonial establishment of bourgeois property rights.

the violence capital has wrought on the body of the earth has been given a special attribution to jewish people for a long time. so called socialists have historically tempted to solve the contradictions of capital by means of scapegoating jewish people. the violence committed in the name of israel is not uniquely jewish in character: it is colonial, imperialist, capitalist violence being committed by people who are jewish. even though israel is a product of global antisemitism and a pervasive cultivated desire in the west to expel jews, the israeli economy and its settler bourgeois property relations is its material raison d'etre, and this, again, is not uniquely jewish, it is simply another segment of the bourgeoisie being bourgeois. what one calls a national bourgeoisie

from the river to the sea palestine will be free. from apartheid. from genocide. from settler colonialism. from imperialism. from capitalism. but right now it is not. the sun will set on israel one day, just like canada and the us, just like the so called thousand year reich that only lasted a handful of years because of its imperialist colonial and genocidal relationship to its volk, lebensraum, and whoever and whatever was next door.

to fill the gap of 'what does freedom involve' with 'the ethnic cleansing of jewish people' shouldnt be considered more reasonable when the topic is israel and palestine. it should be rejected as an antisemitic position, and yet it is so often being presented not only as a reasonable conclusion but as the only way it could be. as common sense. of course freedom means kill the jews, and to question this is the real antisemitism. of course this is all the palestinians could ever mean by freedom

when mel gibson was screaming about freedom in that movie do you think it was about getting back to committing pogroms? that jewish presence was his characters real problem with the english? idk ive never seen it but why would it necessarily be the case with israel and palestine? there being a greater need to expel jews because there are a higher proportion of jews is just antisemitic reasoning. it being a colony that is so jewish it explicitly considers itself as such shouldnt be a reason for us to implicate every jewish person globally as a collective in punishment and further buy into and reproduce zionist propaganda.

to abolish israel would not only liberate palestinians, it would also liberate jewish people from zionist claims of an existential relationship to apartheid in palestine. to believe that without zionism jewish people could not culturally or biologically survive is to take the zionist claim regarding existentiality and colonialism to those degrees.

the liberation of palestine is historically inevitable. it will happen. this process necessarily involving the ethnic cleansing of jewish people is an antisemitic lie that serves a dual function: rejection of palestinian resistance based on essentialist claims of antisemitism and rejection of antisemitism based on essentialist claims of zionist interest. zionism puts the interests of jews and palestinians in conflict, and only a free palestine can allow for actual jewish safety there.

from the river to the sea palestine will be free from collective punishment. but right now it is not. palestinians are experiencing genocide at the hands of israel and its supporters. the end of apartheid is a historical necessity: it will eventually happen. you cannot stop it from collapsing, only delay it. israels days are numbered, just like canada and the us. every day without a ceasefire is another particular form of breath of existence for israel, and another set of breaths taken away from palestinians. ceasefire now.

#the term settler bourgeois is redundant imo like saying a rectangular square #but i dont think most ppl read bourgeois to necessarily imply settlement even when its the etymology of the word #ngl i was thinking of marc labreche flipping tables because im rewatching le coeur a ses raisons #specifically deleuzes notion of a table #or particular kind of table ppl consider unsavoury #a loosely organized stack of ideas

[hatosaur]

Quick question: with your expression on the current Palestine and Israel conflict, why do you still draw/repost Dina, an openly Jewish character?

i'm gonna do the kind thing here and assume you're just wildly misinformed/under-educated on the subject.

supporting the state of israel absolutely does not equate to the support or allyship with jewish people nor the indulgence in jewish characters (the batshit latter of which i'll be addressing later). these two things have fuck-all to do with one another, and the conflation of the two is fucking offensive. to assume that me being anti-israel and pro-palestine must mean that i'm antisemitic, or that me drawing dina is somehow contradictory to my support of palestine, is incredibly illogical, because what does dina being jewish have to do with the fascists nuking children and cutting off electricity, wifi and water from the numerous victims so that they can keep killing them with as little coverage as possible. like, really. tell me.

the simple state of being jewish sure as hell does not equate to supporting israel, i cannot stress this enough.

many, many, many jewish people are against israel and what it is doing to the palestinian people, and there are holocaust survivors who have come forward and stated that what israel is doing is very much akin to what was done to jewish people in wwii. it is genocide. it is ethnic cleansing. it is a government receiving funds, aid, and support to enact violence upon a native people. THE DEATH COUNT IS UP TO TEN FUCKING THOUSAND. i don't know how this hasn't clicked yet.

not to mention, why the fuck are we viewing the very real humanitarian crisis through the lens of liking a fictional character? or liking a media franchise? like, the druckmann shit be damned, why are we doing this right now? does no one realize how fucking INSANE it is we're even somehow relating a fictional character to a GENOCIDE?

as an addendum: if you're a zionist or a fence-sitter asking this question as a "gotcha" because i made a clear pro-palestine stance, it's got to be the most braindead, idiotic, simple-minded gotcha in the fucking world.

#i genuinely apologize to my jewish/palestinian folks if this is me speaking out of turn as someone who's neither but holy fuck #if ppl want me debating whether or not dina supports this or that fuck off #SHE'S NOT REAL. WHO CARES. IS THIS SUCH A TRIVIAL TOPIC THAT YOU CAN ASSIGN CHARACTERS TO IT. #IN WHAT WAY IS THIS PRODUCTIVE.

[newtie-patootie-bootie]

Masquerade (Chapter 5)

Summary: This is your third season and your aspirations on finding love are dwindling but news on Lady Whistledown’s society pages say that there is to be a foreign royal in attendance to the season. Could this royal dignitary be the one you’ve been waiting for, or could there be a mysterious stranger lurking in the shadows, waiting to pluck your heart for his?

Disclaimer: I do not own Bridgerton nor The Mandalorian- all rights go to the owners and creators of their separate stories.

Warnings: Descriptions of violence and minor blood and wounds- nothing too major. (I tell you, we’re getting into it, I promise!)

|| Please do not repost or plagiarise my work ||

If you’d like to read more of my works, please visit my Masterlist!

| Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2  | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 6 |

Tags: @technicallykawaiisoul @call-me-soap @the-feckless-wonder @elinedjarin @bluevxnus @literallydontlook @sm0l-0ne @1am9root6 @ems-alexandra @notsosecretspy

(If I have forgotten anyone who wished to be tagged, please do remind me~!)

This work is also cross-posted on Ao3 at: pleasehelpmeimstuckinthefandoms

Din rarely lost his composure, mostly maintaining a calm demeanor even when faced with overwhelming trials and tribulations.

This one was one of those times where he had to show the most restraint.

His jaw ticked in irritation as dark eyes stayed pinned on his general and he leant over his desk, hands curled into fists as they rested atop the oak surface. Important documents crinkled under his twisting knuckles as Paz relayed the day’s earlier events. “There was no correspondence ahead of time to warn us of any vessel of ours sailing on international waters. We are lucky that we have not been questioned but I suspect it will not be overlooked so easily the next time.”

“There will not be a next time, Paz. Not if I can help it.” Gravelly and cold, the voice of the true man beneath the royal title and gold-enlaced armour bled through. “What the kriff was she thinking?”

"We were not informed that there was any ship scheduled to sail. As such, I have had no reports from our staff or any correspondence from our Naval officers ahead of time that would suggest we are in need of supplies which means-” 

“-this was planned and executed in secret.” Din growled, teeth grinding together as he untied the cravat constricting his throat and tossed it into the corner of his office without a second thought, resuming his previous position as he desperately tried to calm his breath. “I am growing tired of secrets and hidden plots hatching right under my nose.”

“That’s not all, Manda’lor.” Din tensed at Paz’s apprehensive tone, clicking his tongue as he inhaled sharply through his nose, “apparently the other clans are doubting your actions. They question why you did not choose one of our own to be your riduur.”

He exhaled sharply, slamming a fist against the wood. “You mean that my inferior birth must somehow be cleansed with a true Mandalorian? How many of those are out there, Paz?” Din questioned hotly, dark eyes meeting with his vod’s blue and Paz remained silent as his King let out his frustrations, “truly? If they wish for a true Mandalorian, I sincerely hope they enjoy living through another civil war. After The Great Purge and The Night of a Thousand Tears, I can count how many true Mandalorians remain on one hand.” Anger flamed deep within his chest as he continued, “not many of those of true blood remain amongst our people anymore. I did not see any one of those clan members raise their swords to fight the Imperial rule that they allowed to be wreaked upon them.”

“I admit when you first took the throne, I shared their opinions. I shared their doubts. I even issued a challenge because I believed you could not uphold the traditions of our culture and land.” Din remained silent, allowing Paz to speak his mind, “but you taught me that bloodline means little when one is to rule a kingdom.” Paz moved forward and set a strong hand on Din’s shoulder. “You proved your worth to be Manda'lor when you obtained the Darksaber and used it to liberate us from the Imps. This time, I shall fight for you if the need arises."

"Thank you, vod." Din straightened from his hunched position and sighed deeply through his nose, "it seems I must make appearances at more social gatherings to dissuade the lieutenant. I will not allow her to hurt Lady Dalton."

Paz's hardened expression softened to something akin to pride, "you care for her, don't you?"

Another sigh and the King of Mandalore raised his gaze to his clan-brother, voice barely above a whisper, "more than I am willing to admit."

“I believe we must make a statement.” Paz spoke, “the Manda’lor must make a statement.” 

“What kind of statement, Paz? That my affection for Lady Dalton exceeds two personalities that I have been forced to craft, no thanks to my impertinent General?” Din raised his eyebrows while Paz simply rolled his eyes in response.

“I mean, di’kut,” the familiar insult curled Din’s lips into a familiar smile and he gestured for Paz to finish, taking the seat opposite his desk and he leant back, “that we should hold a ball. Open the estate to the masses and allow them to see our culture and our ways.” 

Din sucked on his bottom lip as he pondered the notion. “This could only go one of two ways.” 

“Well, then we make it go our way.” Paz answered simply, “the Manda’lor is still a shadow to most of the ton. It is time they understand the strength and valour he represents. That they understand the reason you are here.” Paz sighed, looking down at his vod with as much softness as he could muster. “You are here to sample western culture and to take one of their daughters for your bride. They must see you for who you are, they must understand the man beneath the helm and the crown. They must see you.”

Din took in Paz’s words, a harsh sigh expelling from his lips and he stood up, moving toward his small cart topped with various alcohols and picked up a tumbler before allowing a large pour of Mandalorian brewed cognac. 

He passed one to Paz before pouring himself one as well. With one hand in his pants pocket, he turned to face Paz and took a sip of his beverage. “Send a message to Karga to prepare himself to sail. I will require his assistance.” 

“Of course, Manda’lor.” Paz pressed a fist to his chest, over his heart before straightening up. “And what will you do?” 

“I will attend the Vauxhall Gardens.” He raised a finger from his glass to Paz and immediately silenced his General’s next words. Din swallowed softly, taking his pen and he took out a fresh piece of parchment before taking his seat once again and placed his cognac beside the stack of paperwork. “You are right. The Manda’lor can no longer hide.”

You basked in the sunlight, standing just off to the side of the lake, your delicate umbrella resting on the base of your shoulder as you twirled it lazily in thought.

The latest Whisteldown had been released and somehow, the details of the Manda'lor’s special attention toward you had caught her unnerving gaze. It didn’t take long for the hoards of mama’s and daughters to make plans to cast Mando’s gaze from you. Little did they know that you did not care for his gaze. 

However, the dream your mind produced last night disproved those feelings:

Your garments piled atop each other in an undignified heap.

You lay on your back, clinging to him amongst the silk sheets. A gentle stream of light beamed across his back from between the gossamer curtains. 

Your hips bucked into his body as his fingertips traced invisible patterns along the sensitive flesh of the back of your thighs. A chuckle rumbled against the shell of your ear as he lifted your legs and made you curl them around his narrow hips, “cross your ankles together, Sarad.” You immediately took to his instruction and locked them together at the base of his back, your core flush with his. “That’s it. Just like that.”

His hands slid from your naked thighs, curling around your hips and waist. He pinched and pulled at the ties of your smallclothes before burying his aching touch into the mussed bedding by your head. His lips began to trail a line of hot, needy kisses along your naked shoulder and throat- tongue curling against your thumping pulse point and your eyes rolled back as his teeth gently pulled at the soft skin before he soothed and suckled around the faint marks he left behind.

He didn’t allow you to feel the bashfulness associated with this moment; this life-changing event that you had been raised for. The moment you’d been unconsciously preparing for with all those years of lessons to be a proper young lady and three whole seasons spent with little to no thought of any suitor that vied for your hand.

Your hands slowly traced the contours of his arms, curling into the dip of his shoulders before slowly coming to frame his jaw and pushed him back slightly to take in his features.

His face mingled between the stoic beskar helmet and Din’s carnal grin.

Din and Mando’s voice melded into one as they both whispered, “Sarad.” 

A loud squeal tore you from your sinful musings and you turned to witness the commotion just as you spotted your youngest siblings chasing each other just ahead of where your family had set their picnic for the morning. 

Ryder lounged on his garden chair, nose deep in the morning’s paper as your mother sat beside him, idly perusing through the latest Whistledown for the third time today.

“Is something troubling you, owlet?” Your father’s voice murmured from beside you and you sighed deeply.

Turning back to the shimmering waters of the lake, you pondered your whirlwind thoughts before shaking your head, “simply reflecting on these weeks past, father. Nothing of import.” 

Thomas’ sigh was a copy of yours and he turned to face the lake. “I understand that the unorthodox amount of attention placed upon you must feel so overwhelming,” he began quietly, “when I had attended my first season I couldn’t even speak to any of the ladies also promenading for suitors.” 

That got your attention and you looked up at your father who sported a small, amused smile. “You, the Duke of Wintere were too shy to socialise with the women of the ton?” 

Thomas simply smiled, “I could not even attend their residence to leave them gifts to even be recognised as a proper suitor.” 

You giggled at the thought of your father stuttering in front of the women of the town expecting the Duke of Wintere to be a suave and confident gentleman. “I can’t imagine you being so anxious, Papa.” Then a thought struck you. “Didn’t you marry Mama in your first season?”

“Your mother brought a side out of me I wasn’t aware existed.” Thomas turned his head to face his beloved wife as she conversed with her eldest son and cradled her youngest child in her lap while their second son sat on the blanket, munching on grapes. “She made me the man I am today.” He slowly turned back to you and raised his hand, gently cupping your cheek, “follow your heart, my dear. It will never steer you wrong.”

You watched your father, a soft smile curling your lips as his words seared themselves in the chambers of your heart. “Yes, Papa.”

He smiled, his thumb caressing the soft skin of your cheek before leaning forward and he placed a soft kiss to your forehead, “that’s my beautiful girl. Never settle for less than what you deserve.”

“Thank you, Papa.” He nodded once before taking his leave and walked back to your family and you turned back to face the water. One hand moved from the stem of the umbrella to curl around the silver locket that delicately hung around your throat. 

You were not familiar with the metal, but the intricate design resembled a hellebore. If it had not been accompanied by a letter then you would not have known who would have been so thoughtful.

At this point, you could memorise the letter word for word, recognise the penmanship almost immediately.

“Sarad,

I apologise for not replying to your recent letters, there have been some pressing matters that required my attention. However, I admit that most of my thoughts have been consumed by you.

Consequently, I hope this small token of my appreciation will win me back in your favour.

I am unsure if I have ever mentioned this, however Mandalore is rich in metals. More specifically, it’s called beskar. It is a highly profitable metal, incredibly durable and nigh impossible to destroy. I will no longer bore you with the scientific discoveries of a metal that I am sure you are no more interested in than those scandal papers you lament over.

I appointed my head blacksmith for this task. I trust her implicitly and I pray you do not find my forwardness too distasteful. I hoped you would enjoy something with a little more familiarity than a simple design that would hold no meaning for you.

However, I would be most appreciative to hear your thoughts in person rather than a scribed letter.

I will make an appearance at the Vauxhall Gardens tonight, I hope to see you there. I have heard it shall be an affair to remember.

Yours,

Mando.”

The smile threatening to split your cheeks hurt but there was nothing that could dim your happiness. 

However, the knot beginning to tighten in the base of your belly refused to loosen considering the event at the Vauxhall Gardens tonight. With Mando in attendance, it would be the first time you’d seen him since he’d walked with you in the park.

Perhaps, the soiree at the Gardens would alleviate some of your anxiety.

#din djarin #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian au #the mandalorian x bridgerton #bridgerton au #Bridgerton #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian x you #Pedro Pascal #pedro pascal x reader #Jose Pedro Balmaceda Pascal #pedro x reader

[drarryspecificrecs]

2022.12 ~ Top 10 longest fics posted on AO3

1. The Change Over Spell by Minzsanh --- translated by @zoooooey0610 [E, 128k]

►It’s a story about Harry hit Malfoy with the Half-Blood Prince's "Change Over" Spell, but he read the spell as "Change Ever", which not only turned Malfoy into a girl, but also made him think he and Harry were on a date. /// If the spell Harry saw was not the Sectumsempra.

2. Yes, Boss by lord_oberon2 [E, 102k]

►Rumors of Harry Potter being cursed circulate the wizarding community. He hasn't been seen in public for months. Bored, Alchemist Draco Malfoy hires him when Potter interviews for a security guard job. He has no idea that the wild, golden glint in Potter's eyes spells nothing but trouble.

3. Tapestry by @kbrick [E, 91k]

►[...] This is a love story that isn't perfect, about two people whose timing is never quite right, and all the moments that come together to make something extraordinarily beautiful anyway.

4. The Dustless Mirrors by @sugarplum-senpai [M, 90k]

►When Hogwarts reopens its gates after the war, Draco returns with weakened powers and memories of fire impairing his life. As he tries to gain his footing in the midst of far too many Gryffindors, exam preparations, and his place in the magical world, he must learn that dropping grudges can be easy, yet staying true to oneself, oh so very hard.

5. Sagehaven by Thunderbird587 [E, 89k]

►After his death and resurrection, Harry Potter gained the ability to communicate with the dead. He now works as a medium and “ghost detective” with his business partner: magical theorist Draco Malfoy. When they’re hired to cleanse a haunted manor by a desperate young couple, Harry and Draco stumble across a haunting unlike anything they’ve ever seen. As they work to uncover the dark and painful history of the home, they also uncover the feelings they’ve been hiding from each other for years, just in time to face the most dangerous case of their career.

6. red and green are complimentary colours by ace_0fhearts [T, 87k]

►After the war Hermione manages to convince Harry to go back to Hogwarts for his eighth year. Expecting an uneventful year of classes and rooming with the other Gryffindor boys, he’s surprised when McGonagall tells him he’ll be sharing a room with Draco Malfoy. Now Harry has to get through a year of arguments and awkward silences. Or he would, if Malfoy would stop ignoring him and moping around the castle alone.

7. The Silence of Your Love by malfoypolix [T, 76k]

►People refuse to believe Voldemort’s back, even though Harry seems to be living proof of it, with Cedric’s death, and his loss of hearing. Why won’t anyone believe him, though? Draco doesn’t buy it - and he’s trying to catch him in the act to make a fool of Harry. Breaking his things, shouting his name, learning sign language to make fun of him - you name it. But suddenly, Draco's put in a position where he needs to learn sign language. And when the bloody Chosen One is the only one who knows it, you have to take what you can get. Despite their differences, they both have one thing in common now.

8. You Make It Feel Like Christmas by @trash-tears [M, 52k]

►[...] It’s only too bad that when Harry Potter—the youngest Head Auror in a century—happens to need Draco’s help with a case, a string of encounters ensues that turn Draco’s pre-perceptions of him on their head. To make matters even worse, Potter brings Draco tea, and carries his bags, and says things that are much too straightforward for comfort. And if it makes Draco question why he ever hated the speccy git in the first place, well, that’s no one else’s business but Draco’s… right? Will flying South for Christmas spare Draco from heartache? And does it make sense to salvage the dwindling fire with his elusive beau, or will the kindle of a new flame give Christmas a whole new meaning?

9. The house upon the hill by HedgehogWrites [M, 47k]

►Draco has a hard life. His relationship isn’t healthy and he struggles every single day. Until that one day when everything changes and he meets an old… yeah, what exactly? Enemy? Friend?

10. Nobody can't stop me from being happy by Alex_ander_Chansonnette2204 [T, 47k]

►Harry was still a baby when he defeated Voldemort, great, you tell me. Well, you’re wrong, Harry was an orphan and everyone feared him. After all who would take care of a child so powerful to defeat the Dark Lord himself, he would inevitably become like him. And yet one person desired it, and Harry’s fate was completely changed.

※ HONOURABLE MENTIONS :

11. Most Favourite Bedtime Story by SasuNarufan13 [M, 46k]

►Scorpius' most favourite bedtime story? The story of how his parents fell in love. And his grandmother tells it the best!

12. The Nose Room by @feltwrong [T, 42k]

►In which Harry gets divorced, Draco puts a TV room in Malfoy Manor, and Greg proves that he belonged in Slytherin all along.

—

※ Word count: 1k ~ 15k

※ Word count: 15k ~ 40k

Aere Perennius by @onbeinganangel [M, 25k]

Alchemy for idiots by ZiggySnape [E, 27k]

Amantes Visci by paigehawkins [E, 15k]

The Brass Box by kmichee [E, 17k]

Christmas Next Door to You by Eeva21 [T, 29k]

Could have fooled me by suhtmuikkis [T, 19k]

Counter-Curse by Justlikewriting [T, 21k]

Harry Potter And The Cursed Mistletoe by @coffeedrgn87 [M, 17k]

In Plain Sight by swan_lake [M, 37k]

Look-a-like by Nakyrah [M, 17k]

North by masterassassin [M, 25k]

Sexy Surrender by Glitterfanfics [E, 19k]

there will be time, there will be time by @amywaterwings [E, 19k]

Tomorrow is dead to me by @prototype-up77 [E, 20k]

Twelve Moons by @corvuscrowned [T, 27k]

—

Ongoing Fest/Exchange

※ Fics would be listed elsewhere.

25 Days of Draco and Harry 2022 | @slythindor100

Drarropoly '22: Magical Artefact Smugglers edition | @gameofdrarry

H/D Erised 2022 | @hd-erised

Harry/Draco Owlpost 2022 | @hdowlpost

2022 Harry Potter Trans Comfort Fest | @magicaltrans

Harry Potter Shenanigans 2022 Secret Santa

HFPC Holiday Bingo 2022

Thrills 'N Chills 2022

Wheel of Drarry Mini-Exchange 2022 | @drarrymicrofic

#drarry #drarry fanfic #drarry fic rec #harry potter #draco malfoy #monthly review #2022

[intersectionalpraxis]

Hello! I hope this isn't an annoying question (I promise I'm not about to say something horrible or bigoted - I'm just shy and therfore anonymous), but I'd like to have your advice on how to go about informing people about the genocide in Palestine.

Most people that I know in-person have (quite literally) zero information about any of it, and I have no idea where to even start when informing them. It's hard to summarize everything that's been going on without overloading them with tons of information - or even boring them because I explained it poorly. Many of them have that mindset of "oh, this is bad, but there's nothing we can do," and I'd like to inform them as well as motivate them to advocate for Palestine themselves.

Sorry, this was kind of long! Thank you in advance!

Hello! It's definitely not annoying at all, thank you for your questions/inquiry.

subhi is on of the creators I always recommend following on tiktok and on instagram (if you aren't already) -their posts are both educational-based and they cover current events (for other creators on tiktok/all their platforms I'd recommend James Ray, A'isha, Dr. Nahla, fakegyllenhalal, Nuha, as well as anat_international -to name a few).

subhi created a free online crash course on Palestine that you can find here:

you can also find their page here: @/palestine.academy on Instagram:

Lets Talk Palestine on Instagram has a plethora of educational resources, too (I have followed them for years and they have helped me learn A LOT -their content has many 'beginners guides to' on their Instagram page. I also always recommend following them -here is their link tree:

Palipunk also created a Masterlist here, which they pinned on their profile, as well as fairuzfan -they have a list of helpful resources in this post that cover some of what you were worried about/how you can best address people who may not be as receptive or with whom don't know much about what is going on -I will attach it here:

These are great sources here for you to reference and/or share with the people you know in-person who would like to learn more about Palestine, from past to current, but also as a reference for you to feel more confident/comfortable talking about topics that you know about/have learned about. This is by no means extensive, but it is something I can share to give you a starting point.

I can't say I have the perfect response, but letting them know, first and foremost, you don't have to be an expert to understand that what is happening to Palestinian people is mass ethnic cleansing, and that the Israeli Occupational Forces (the IOF) are committing war crimes. If this was happening to any western/European country there would be a global outrage -like even recently Biden referred to what Putin was/is doing to Ukraine was genocide, but the systematic killing of nearly 30,000 Palestinian people is not?

And to emphasize -if they feel like nothing can be done or even after they understand/have acknowledged what is happening, you can encourage them to look into boycotting (as many Palestinian activists and allies have said -it's the least we can do), because it has been working in varying different capacities. Here is a helpful resource to look into and share with them directly if you are taking your time to go through some of the link I directed you to:

I am also nowhere near an expert on these topics, and there are plenty of Palestinian creators here and elsewhere that I follow that make content talking about Palestine that you also can look at as well (some of them are included here).

I hope this offers some more clarity, and I know there may be tough conversations ahead -and it may depend on context, but whenever I'm addressing global issues with people who don't know about what I'm talking about I usually start with "did you know about..." and if they're not receptive to something I say "do you realize what you said can come across as 'x'" and that 'x' being either insensitive, racist, sexist, xenophobic/whatever they said that is problematic. Turning the onus on them to answer for their bigotry of ignorance, and then being able to educate/inform them.

It's also never the responsibility of Palestinian people, or any person/community being oppressed by a settler/imperial/colonial force both* (fixed a typo!) currently and having a history of such to 'explain' their oppression -so please if they do look outside of the recommendations I've made, please tell them no person who has/experiences marginalization/systematic oppression has to educate them about their suffering (there are some exceptions, but my bottom line is if you don't know then do your own research). It's inappropriate and can be traumatizing/re-traumatizing to many. I'm not saying that's the case for you, but learning/unlearning is something we're all doing, and unless we attend a conference/watch a documentary/are engaging with content they create, then please be mindful of this.

Wishing you the best!

And as always, free Palestine.

#feminist #social justice #free palestine #palestine #free gaza #settler violence #freepalastine🇵🇸 #current events #current news #western imperialism #history #learning #education #unlearning #tiktok #instagram #letstalkpalestine #boycotting #boycott #bdsmovement #palestinian history #palestinian liberation #asked #colonial violence #imperialism #colonialism

[noxxha]

Was Izuna anti-peace?

I have seen quite a few takes where Izuna is described as being “anti-peace”, a “warmonger” and a “brat” for talking Madara out of an alliance with the Senju.

In my eyes it is a very simplified view on a concept that is much broader. Izuna is not a deep character if you only look at the source material (and I lament such wholeheartedly). Fill in the gaps and you have a character rich on complexity and contrast to Madara, Hashirama and Tobirama.

The last words we get from Izuna (remember that we see the Uchiha through Hashirama’s perspective) are;

This scene is prolonged slightly in the anime, with Izuna questioning his brother if he has forgotten that these bastards have killed everyone (their kin)?

It is hypocritical of Izuna to ask his brother this on one hand (they are no different in the eyes of the Senju) and yet it is the truth as well; the Senju have slaughtered countless Uchiha.

It can be see as manipulative words from Izuna’s side, as a way for to sway Madara to continue this feud, but Izuna is doing his duty as co-leader as well; reminding Madara of their losses so he does not make a choice out of sentimentality (or from a place of emotional distress from their predicament at hand).

The above could indicate someone who is selfish, prideful and stubborn enough to accept death rather than an alliance with their mortal enemies (peace).

But not necessarily.

There is neither anything that indicates that Izuna would be for peace, nor anything indicating that he is against it either (other than his words, that depend heavily on a context we never got - the side of the Uchiha and a more concrete characterization of Izuna as a character).

Honestly, the only selfish thing was making Madara promise to keep the clan safe. And - in my eyes - the only reason Izuna had him make that oath in the first place was because he knew that Madara would follow him in death if he didn’t.

The databook for Izuna mentions that he is harmonious and devoted - two traits that stand in direct opposition to his actions (perpetuating a cycle of violence). But as is the case with us humans; we can be loved by one person, loathed by another, kind to someone and cruel to someone else.

Izuna talked Madara out of an alliance at the time, that much is true, but that does not mean that Izuna is against peace as a whole.

He was simply wary of the Senju in particular - perhaps he might even have been concerned that his brother’s kind heart was clouding his judgement, and that the history with Hashirama would have him make a choice to the detriment of the clan. He had a more…objective (but still subjective) opinion of Hashirama (and Tobirama) in particular.

The Senju are their nemesis; both sides lost family and kin to the sword of the other.

And all that for generations and further generations…that is a lot of hatred, resentment and pain one must be willing to accept and let go of (as in letting go so it does not compromise your life and destroy you). The desire for peace has to be more import than the desire vengeance…and that is not an easy choice to make.

They have also dehumanized each other to keep this feud alive - and those thoughts must also be cleansed for trust to be cultivated.

Another information we are missing is how exactly Hashirama attempted to negotiate peace (we only see one attempt the moment Izuna is bleeding to death against his brother, and he mentions that he sent a peace treaty sometime after - that is what I assume - Izuna’s passing). How often did he try before that, and how did the Uchiha (namely Madara and Izuna) respond? That, we do not know.

We do not know how discussions for/against an alliance looked like between the brothers; Heated arguments? Calm discussions? Izuna getting his will? Madara getting his? Compromises? Extortion? Their ideologies being opposites or more alike than they might seem at a glance?

Going through the scene in question it honestly appears that Hashirama’s attempt to negotiate peace was offered on the spot, then and there, when it could have been offered at any other time - instead of coinciding with the second-in-command being mortally wounded.

It was a war - kill or be killed - but Hashirama nearly makes it all look like one elaborate scheme, the way Izuna is used against Madara in something close to emotional extortion from the Senju’s side, to get Madara to finally accept his offer of peace. Hashirama also loses no words over the fact that Izuna - the person most dear to Madara’s heart (and sanity) - is bleeding to death as they speak.

No, Hashirama was focused on the peace treaty - anything (or anyone I should perhaps say) else be damned.

Fictional characters, fictional circumstances - but war is war. Just think for a moment how you, yourself, would have responded in such a situation. Think for a moment how much hatred - how many hurtful and contradictory, to downright hypocritical messages - had to be spoken and ingrained for the Uchiha clan and the Senju clan to justify their right to murder one another.

It is easy to say “just put aside your pride and accept peace”, but there are so many factors at play during a conflict as grand and destructive as war.

From petty to justified (if it ever truly is).

Another thing is the fact that slaughtering each other was done out of economical gain. They were hired - paid - to kill one another. It was not only a personal, ideological war between these two, it was a war of economical necessity.

And to blame is the system they lived in. That system is what shaped them and caused bloodshed (as well as a millennial old grudge between two brothers, but that was honestly not necessary…Kishimoto could have just gone a purely psychological route and everything would have still fallen into place…more or less)

We, as the audience, know what happens to the Uchiha clan around three generations later since Konoha’s founding; but Madara did not at the time. When he made his choice he could not anticipate just yet that it would doom his clan.

Izuna - because of his biased views and hatred - saw an alliance between Uchiha and Senju as nothing but a disadvantage for their clan. The victors, the conquerers, write the stories that shape history - not the conquered and oppressed (or slaughtered). He probably had a few well thought out arguments for his view as well I can imagine. They certainly could not be congested into something so broad as “because I hate them”. His arguments probably included their differences (not out of malice or even hatred for them) but the simple differences such as “believing in different deities, a different diet or work ethic” to differences that cause strain if not handled well, such as “different values when it comes to raising children, caring for the community, for the elderly and sick, marriage, integration” etc that make up society’s role in how it should offer support and protection.

The Uchiha and Senju were alike as much as they were different - but Izuna did not want to go down that road and understand them (in a more peaceful, domestic setting he might have, but during war - when humanity is at its absolute worst? It is easier to just focus on survival than anything grander)

In the end he put the wellbeing of their clan above his own survival even.

Breaking Madara’s heart (and his sanity) in so doing.

We also have to remember that Naruto is not influenced by our western values and culture(s). It is fiction influenced by Japanese culture and history (the Warring States Era being not so different from medieval Japan).

Danzō’s thought process here is probably a thought that Izuna had as well during every battle. The gap between their generations is not so vast either, and the one who is Hokage at this point is Tobirama (a man born in the Warring States Era), who probably kept the thinking of that time alive (mixed with the Will of Fire) in the shinobi of the new generation.

Influenced by these values, it makes it easier to understand the possible reasoning that Izuna could have had in the moment he willingly went to his grave (they are also shinobi who value pride and honour, no matter how misguided).

If nothing else he showed loyalty to his beliefs and principles, even if it cost him his life.

The picture is from Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm: Generations. I honestly love how they had Madara hesitate for a moment before shaking Hashirama’s hand (Hashirama reached out his hand without hesitation)

We are not shown Hashirama doing anything to soothe the resentment lingering between Uchiha and Senju (we can only speculate what discussions were had and what actions were taken…if any). But judging from how he handled Tobirama (or not), he probably had the same mentality (more or less) when it came to the clans - that cooperation and living together would solve everything in due time. They had laid down their weapons, that much is true, but that does not erase the emotions of having been at each other’s throats for generations. Trust issues and suspicion reared its ugly head - Tobirama being a prime example of having “forgotten” but not forgiven.

Madara himself was not in the right state of mind at the time the village was founded, weighed down by grief over the loss of Izuna (and reminded of his loss whenever Tobirama showed himself) and his position as leader questioned. Not only that, his political power was probably not on par with the might of the Senju - which creates an imbalance in power (while fueling paranoia and resentment) - and laid the groundwork already for a Senju dominated government while reminding Madara about how the Uchiha were still inferior to the Senju. Be it in war or in this attempt for peace.

Had Izuna survived I imagine the political climate would be drastically different from what is depicted here (if the Uchiha even decided to join Konoha, they could very well have created their own nation to live in peace…if the Senju had allowed such, of course…)

Democracy you say? About that…

And being inferior translates to less influence in this instance. Tobirama mentions that the Hokage will be chosen through democratic means (the people shall decide) and that Konoha is different from the time of “their father” (Which indicates that the leader of the clan was chosen differently during Butsuma and Tajima’s era - the most powerful perhaps?) but have we ever seen a Hokage being chosen by these aforementioned people? The only character mentioned to have been chosen by the people was Hashirama.

What happened to democracy, Tobirama?

Tobirama appointed Hiruzen himself as Hokage (and the lad was what? 15 - 20 years old? That could mean nothing but disaster) and that would continue through the generations. Even worse; every Hokage (while not a direct descendant) has had ties to the Senju clan in one way or another (affirming Madara’s apprehension that, the moment Tobirama became Hokage, the Uchiha clan would be removed from any sort of influential position once and for all).

Then again, democracy as we know it was NOT how it was established in ancient Greece.

“Athenian Democracy was a system of government where all male citizens could attend and participate in the assembly which governed the city-state. This was a democratic form of government where the people or ‘dēmos’ had real political power. Athens therefore had a direct democracy.” (Source)

Keyword being direct here (which is what Tobirama is…he makes Hiruzen Hokage “directly”). So, to be fair, democracy was most likely in its infancy during Konoha’s founding. The system of democracy probably changed and evolved as time passed, until it was a bit more like the democracy we are familiar with today.

Not that any of this was an advantage for the Uchiha clan. They were still not given a powerful position in Konoha (The elders of Konoha consists of Tobirama’s old team…well, everyone but Uchiha Kagami, who could have been the first Uchiha who gained a political post…but no, he is conveniently dead) and no Uchiha has been Hokage (Fugaku was probably the closest one…had the attack of the Nine-Tailed fox/Kurama not happened he might have made it)

It was probably the above conflict between Iwagakure and Konoha, that disillusioned Madara and returned him to the cold hearted, brutal reality he wanted to change into something better and kinder (for his clan and Izuna).

Madara looks as if he has realized something and it pains him in the moment to admit that he has gone down the wrong path.

Instead he was reminded that his kin before him, that his beloved Izuna, had died for nothing.

Their world had not changed at its core.

Whether they were savages or living more civilized…people still were in conflict with one another, stole from their neighbors and fought for more territory.

In that instance he probably realized that Izuna had been right in his distrust of an alliance, that Konoha would be the death of them - that he had let himself be ‘deceived’ by Hashirama (listening to his words instead of observing his action to follow through on these words).

And he did what he always should have done; honouring Izuna’s last will.

And that he did, if a little too late.

Izuna was not against peace in my eyes - he was against the way Hashirama wanted to go about it. Because, no matter how you look at it, one side in the alliance would end up with the short end of the stick/at a disadvantage.

And we all know how disastrous the consequences would end up becoming for the Uchiha clan (the co-founders that had made Konoha possible in the first place!).

Izuna was the Uchiha that had the greatest influence of swaying Madara to a different path - that could have included that the Uchiha created their own nation, with the clans identifying more with the beliefs and values of the Uchiha. And (if making a darker claim here) what if Hashirama wanted Izuna gone because the former knew that the latter was the person standing in the way of Hashirama having any influence on Madara in their adulthood?

Hashirama’s definition of peace was not the same as Madara’s definition - and the one person that knew that, was Izuna.

#madara uchiha #izuna uchiha #hashirama senju #tobirama senju #thoughts #analysis of the crumbs we got in the manga #did I just overanalyze Izuna who deserved more screentime? #yes - yes I did #and had a lot of fun doing so #naruto analysis #long post #very long post

[fiercynn]

But what all these Western imposters have never understood is that we understand our struggle as a people’s struggle, not the struggle of this or that political faction. Across all our big and sharp differences, we know that we are all together in the end because it is all of the Palestinian people who are under brutal occupation and assault, aspiring for the same freedom and liberation. Palestinians, of course, share their experience of colonial violence with many communities and peoples from across the world, both historically and into the present. But we also understand that we are indeed alone in experiencing the specific structures of Israeli settler-colonial violence, and that we therefore must always stand together and help each other as people. Our collectivity as a people is our support and our guide.   And no one will analyze recent events more critically than Palestinians; the debates will be heated and numerous. Leadership will be questioned both in Hamas and in the Palestinian Authority; political factions and their strategies and tactics will be scrutinized and critiqued on moral, tactical, and strategic grounds. The question of “what are we sacrificing everything for?” will be asked and will torment many, as it did the prisoner in the story. Some of this is already happening privately. But this is not the time to talk about all that. This is the time for survival. This is the time for withstanding a genocidal onslaught against our people, not just from the Israeli state but the entire institutional infrastructure of the West: military, politics, media, culture, and education. Perhaps naively, I still have faith in people across Western states: faith that they are also dissatisfied with their states’ and their institutions’ complicity in ethnic cleansing and murder, that they can also see right through the emperor’s clothing, that they want their own states to serve the people and not primarily elite political and economic classes. The West never tires of telling itself and the whole world that it stands up for and represents the ideals of human rights, democracy, negotiations over the use of violence in resolving our differences, and so on. The unflinching state support for the brutal siege of Gaza should reveal all these voices as imposters, whose only guiding principle is, and has always been, the generation of power and wealth through any and all means available, including genocide. We must never forget that Israel acts as an imperial outpost in the region for the United States, helping it secure access to resources, trade routes, and markets, and expanding the profitability of the financial and weapons industries. These facts are inextricable from support for Israel’s settler-colonial project. [x]

- m. muhannad ayash for the baffler on october 17, 2023

#free palestine

[rileyslibrary]

M’AM. M’AM,

How do you write Ghost so amazingly? How can you capture that science of his, that scent, that aura— Im very intrigued!

Please teach me your ways!

How would you describe Simon? Which taste, which color, which smell, which time of the day, and, if an scenery, which?

Do you feel you know any fictional character besides him, that inspired you to write him the way you do?

Or, which is your method that works so well?

Im just mesmerized by the way you do it, and oh! I need to learn and understand if I see something this good!

Hey, anon? What is that orange comma doing in your ask?

Anyway. What I do is pretty simple, to be honest: I eat, digest, and poop.

Hear me out.

I eat the source material both for the OG Ghost plus the comics and the reboot. I don’t write based on them, but I use them to study his character. Most of the time, I read the Wiki pages, watch some cutscenes or let the entire campaign play in the background to “cleanse my palate”.

I digest them with whatever feelings, imagines, or scenarios I have in mind or requests that might inspire me. If I can’t relate to a request or a scenario and can’t picture Ghost in it, I won’t do it.

And then, though it might sound vile and off-putting, I poop the stories, meaning I use whatever build-up emotion or inspiration I have in mind and put it into something tangible.

As for another fictional character that could have inspired me to write him, the answer is no. I feel it’s a betrayal towards the reader and a great injustice for the character to do such a thing. If, for whatever reason, I see that I drift away from Ghost’s personality, I stop writing, sleep on it and possibly revisit it the next day. Or I go through the wiki and cutscenes again. Though the wiki isn’t official, it helps by relating to the character faster than watching/playing the games. As in “ah, I remember this happened, he must have felt like this” or justify a reaction based on the evidence seen in front of me.

And I know what you might say. “If you were so stuck on the source material, what the fuck is Ghost doing searching for a missing cat or attending a career fair at a school?” The key here is imagination. How would a character like Ghost approach such a scenario if he had no choice but to do that? Fiction allows you to bend some rules and reach beyond the source material to ask the “what if” question. You can play with canon, fool around with it, poke it with a stick, as long as you know what happened in canon. And, don’t think you can fool the readers. They can tell if you abuse that freedom, and they end up with a character that doesn’t feel like him.

So there you go; that’s the gist of it. I think that’s the first time I wrote about how I do things, and I don’t know if that’s exactly what you were asking me for, but I hope I helped!

#writing #the librarian answers

[bleachbleachbleach]

Could regular souls in Soul Society turn into hollows? Like I know most souls get their memories erased when they arrive through Konso but they could still either carry some memories like the Fullbringers did or they get new regrets that lead them to become Hollows?

ippoddity: When regular souls arrive in Soul Society, it’s because either 1) they died and were ready to move on from the Living World so they were transported to Soul Society, or 2) a shinigami konsou’d them and the process of konsou cleanses a soul of their sins, so they get to go to Soul Society. This means that I think just about all souls get to start with a blank slate. I believe there’s a Klub question that Kubo answered at one point, where he said that souls lose the memories of the Living World life over time. All of which is to say, I don’t think any souls are carrying over memories or regrets from past lives. However, the prospect that a soul might get new regrets during their time in Soul Society is a very intriguing notion. 

Hollows are the souls of deceased humans who have lost their heart due to regret/despair, or some kind of unfulfilled business. So the two things we need to make a Hollow are (deceased) human soul + loss of heart.

We know that souls in Soul Society have “hearts.” They can feel regret and guilt. Hisana feels immense regret over abandoning baby Rukia. As far as we know, Hisana didn’t turn into a hollow, but maybe that’s because she trusted Byakuya to do the right thing, so she was able to come to terms with her regret before death. Perhaps if a soul acquires regrets in Soul Society, they aren’t able to “die” until they come to terms with it anyway, so if they can’t die in the afterlife with regret, they can’t turn into a Hollow.

For the other part of the equation, we need to start with a “human soul.” And I’m not entirely sure if a soul is still considered a “human soul” by the time it arrives in Soul Society? Early Bleach tells us that human souls (pluses) and Hollows are opposites, while Shinigami and Quincy are opposites. But I don’t know if the souls in Soul Society are ever referred to as “pluses” by anyone. So maybe they’re just (generic) Souls at that point, and aren’t even the right kind of “stuff” that gets turned into a Hollow.

Or perhaps anything that happens in Soul Society stays in Soul Society. It’s like the neutral zone, so even acts of extreme evil/violence or loss of heart don’t get measured into a soul. Those souls have to be pumped back out into the Living World anyway, so it’s more like a stasis, and the mechanism for turning into a Hollow gets turned off. 

I guess after all this, I must conclude that I don’t think a soul in Soul Society can turn into a Hollow, however, I would really like it if they could?? It’s such a juicy premise to play around with. I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts!

whipplefilter: I hadn't considered it, but I'm also intrigued by the prospect! Kaien is a shinigami rather than a Rukongai soul, sure, but his soul ended up fused with a Hollow. I wonder if the energy required to move a Rukongai soul into a frenzied/Hollowfication-vulnerable state is greater, so is perceived as being less of an issue than lost souls in the Living World. (Which might explain why the Gotei mostly seems to think of souls in Rukongai as data points--part of a stoichiometric equation--moreso than as meaningful entities at the individual level, which seems mostly reserved for human ghosts. Though I don't then know where this would slot in with the process of becoming a shinigami/cultivating the reiryoku level of a shinigami. Maybe that's a different set of existential math equations entirely, though? and unrelated to the energetic potentials/baselines of konpaku in the Living World vs. in Soul Society.) The conversation probably ends up slippery-sloping its way into Aizen's Hollowfication experiments at some point, but WE'LL STOP HERE TONIGHT.

#this was an extreme case of stream of consciousness rambling but it was a thought exercise I enjoyed immensely! #bleach headcanons #rukongai #asks #takibikaen #no brain just bleach

[perpetual-stories]

Dive in Deeper: Motif

Hello everyone! Long time no post!

I must deeply and sincerely apologize for not posting. I won’t create excuses and there are none to be honest (well there are some good excuses but even then lol).

I want to thank all my loyal followers for staying with me despite my inactivity.

So, I will just dive right into it!

Just a reminder these posts are explanations and in-depth conversation to a previous post I had made.

So go check that out!! I am still going down the list of the 22 hehe.

Let’s begin!

What Is a Motif?

is a literary technique that consists of a repeated element that has symbolic significance to a literary work.

Sometimes, a motif is a recurring image. Other times, it’s a repeated word, phrase, or topic expressed in language.

A motif can be a recurring situation or action. It can be a sound or smell, a temperature, even a color.

The key aspect is that a motif repeats, and through this repetition helps to illuminate the dominant ideas, central themes, and deeper meaning of a story

How Motifs Work in Writing

Authors utilize motifs for multiple purposes. Motifs can:

Evoke a mood

Illuminate main themes

Engage the audience on an intuitive level

Create unique symbolic meanings through repetition

Establish a pattern of ideas

What Is the Difference Between Motifs and Themes?

The concepts of motif and theme have some overlap, and occasionally you will hear people use the two literary terms interchangeably. Recognizing the distinction between the two literary devices, however, can enhance your appreciation of the craft of storytelling.

Themes are the main ideas of a work of literature. They represent the meaning or question behind the series of events that make up the narrative.

Motifs are recurring elements that point to these themes. In other words, motif is a tool used to craft theme. While themes are abstract and conceptual, motifs are tangible and concrete.

If a story features repeated images of handwashing, mopping floors, and refreshing rain, then these images of cleansing water are a recurring literary motif. A theme of the story might be “the desire for purification.” The theme is a matter of interpretation, open to debate, but the motif is an indisputable pattern in the text.

What Is the Difference Between Motifs and Symbols?

Motifs frequently incorporate symbols, but a symbol is not always a motif.

A symbol is an object that represents something else. A red rose can represent romance. A crown may represent power. A gold coin represents wealth. A dove represents peace. And a snake, depending on its use, can represent either poison or fertility.

Motifs are often symbols. The famous green light across the water in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is both a symbol — representing what Gatsby desires but can never fully reach — and a motif, reappearing at multiple key moments in the novel.

A symbol can appear just a single time in a story.

To constitute a motif, by contrast, an element must appear repeatedly.

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Yorick’s skull is an obvious symbol of death — or more specifically, as Hamlet discusses aloud, the inevitability of death. But since Yorick’s skull is the only skull to appear in the play, the skull is not a motif.

5 Famous Examples of Motifs

To help you get more familiar with motifs, are a few motif examples from famous works of film and literature:

The Godfather films: In Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather series, oranges are a visual motif. Oranges are repeatedly featured on screen just before a character dies. Outside of these movies, oranges have no established relationship with death—in fact, citrus fruits are more likely to be associated with warmth, sunshine, sweetness, and life. But by repeatedly placing oranges in close proximity to characters’ demises, the films establish oranges as a recurring motif related to the theme of death. This unique motif creates a compelling tension between death and the vitality and energy one ordinarily associates with fruit. The orange motif hints at one of the central ideas of Coppola’s films: that death is inevitable, and can come at any moment, no matter how eagerly one clings to life.

Hamlet: In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the language of decay is a verbal motif, expressed in recurring language. In Act V, while holding Yorick’s skull, Hamlet observes: “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.” Earlier in the play, he comments that both kings and beggars will be eaten by worms, and compares human conception to “breed[ing] maggots in a dead dog.” This repeated language of decay speaks to two of the play’s themes: the mystery of death, and the corruption of institutions.

Jane Eyre: In Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, fire is a motif incorporated in the story’s imagery, language, and key plot incidents. Throughout the book, hearth fires evoke warmth and comfort; candlelight is described as dazzling and energizing; and passionate characters are described as “hot,” like “fire,” and “like Vulcan” (the Roman god of the forge). But fire is also presented as a dangerous force in the novel: fires cause two destructive events, while a major character’s pyromania embodies her mad, uncontrollable fervor. (Ice and coldness also constitute a contrasting motif in the novel, symbolizing the absence of emotion and tenderness.) Taken together, this fire motif represents strong emotion and love—feelings Jane requires for a full life, but which also have the potential for harm. Jane’s efforts to achieve the right balance of such powerful feelings is a major arc of her story.

A Tale of Two Cities: In his epic novel surrounding the French Revolution, Charles Dickens uses duality as a motif. Throughout the book, various characters, settings, and images have doubles or counterparts. For instance, the story takes place across two cities (London and Paris). Charles Darnay has his double in Sydney Carton, with whom he shares a physical resemblance. The two key female characters, Lucie and Madame Defarge, are opposites of one another. Indeed, the famous opening lines of the novel explore the idea of duality (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). This motif highlights the central themes of the book: the fragility of justice, and the possibility of redemption from the forces of darkness.

Slaughterhouse Five: Kurt Vonnegut’s novel employs a repeated phrase as a motif: “So it goes.” Vonnegut adds this phrase as a commentary on each death that occurs in the story, no matter how major or minor. This motif serves to reinforce one of the main themes of this and other works by Vonnegut: that regardless of our class, circumstances, or differences, death comes equally to all people. While this message may feel dark and depressing, Vonnegut interprets it differently, suggesting that by accepting the inevitability of death, we can live fuller lives and find common ground with others.

There you have it everyone! I hope you guys like this post and find it useful!

Please like, reblog and follow if you mind these posts useful!

#writing #writing advice #writing tips #original writing #writers on tumblr #writersconnection #writerscommunity #short story #storytelling #writersupportingwriters