#she is why poets and artists do what they do

[mask131]

The truth about Medusa and her rape... Mythology breakdown time!

With the recent release of the Percy Jackson television series, Tumblr is bursting with mythological posts, and the apparition of Medusa the Gorgon has been the object of numerous talks throughout this website… Including more and more spreading of misinformation, and more debates about what is the “true” version of Medusa’s backstory.

Already let us make that clear: the idea that Medusa was actually “blessed” or “gifted” by Athena her petrifying gaze/snake-hair curse is to my knowledge not at all part of the Antique world. I still do not know exactly where this comes from, but I am aware of no Greek or Roman texts that talked about this – so it seems definitively a modern invention. After all, the figure of Medusa and her entire myth has been taken part, reinterpreted and modified by numerous modern women, feminist activist, feminist movements or artists engaged in the topic of women’s life and social conditions – most notably Medusa becoming the “symbol of raped women’ wrath and fury”. It is an interesting reading and a fascinating update of the ancient texts, and it is a worthy take on its own time and context – but today we are not talking about the posterity, reinvention and continuity of Medusa as a myth and a symbol. I want to clarify some points about the ACTUAL myth or legend of Medusa – the original tale, as told by the Greeks and then by the Romans.

Most specifically the question: Was Medusa raped?

Step 1: Yes, but no.

The backstory of Medusa you will find very often today, ranging from mythology manuals (vulgarization manuals of course) to Youtube videos, goes as such: Medusa was a priestess of Athena who got raped by Poseidon while in Athena’s temple, and as a result of this, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the monstrous Gorgon.

Some will go even further claiming Athena’s “curse” wasn’t a punishment but a “gift” or blessing – and again, I don’t know where this comes from and nobody seems to be able to give me any reliable source for that, so… Let’s put this out of there.

Now this backstory – famous and popular enough to get into Riodan’s book series for example – is partially true. There are some elements here very wrong – and by wrong I do mean wrong.

The story of Medusa being raped and turned into a monster due to being raped does indeed exist, and it is the most famous and widespread of all the Medusa stories, the one people remembered for the longest time and wrote and illustrated the most about. Hence why Medusa became in the 20th century this very important cultural symbol tied to rape and the abuse of women and victim-blaming. HOWEVER – the origin of this story is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the first century CE or so. Ovid? A Roman poet writing for Roman people. “Metamorphoses”? One of the two fundamental works of Roman literature and one of the two main texts of Roman mythology, alongside Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a purely Roman story belonging to the Roman culture – and not the Greek one. The story of Medusa’s rape does not have Greek precedents to my knowledge, Ovid introduced the element of rape – which is no surprise given Ovid turned half of the romances of Greek mythology into rapes. Note that, on top of all this, Ovid wasn’t even writing for religious purposes, nor was his text an actual mythological effort – he wrote it with pure literary intentions at heart. It is just a piece of poetry and literature taking inspiration from the legends of the Greek world, not some sort of sacred text.

Second big point: The legend I summarized above? It isn’t even the story Ovid wrote, since there are a lot of elements that do not come from Ovid’s retelling of the story (book fourth of the Metamorphoses). For example Ovid never said Medusa was a priestess of Athena – all he said was that she was raped in the temple of Athena. I shouldn’t even be writing Athena since again, this is a Roman text: we are speaking of Minerva here, and of Neptune, not of Athena or Poseidon. Similarly, Minerva’s curse did not involve the petrifying gaze – rather all Ovid wrote about was that Minerva turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, to “punish” her because her hair were very beautiful, and it was what made her have many suitors (none of which she wanted to marry apparently), and it is also implied it is what made Neptune fall in love (or rather fall in lust) with her. I guess it is from this detail that the reading of “Athena’s curse was a gift” comes from – even though this story also clearly does victim-blaming of rape here.

But what is very fascinating is that… we are not definitively sure Neptune raped Medusa in Ovid’s retelling. For sure, the terms used by Ovid in his fourth book of Metamorphoses are clear: this was an action of violating, sexually assaulting, of soiling and corrupting, we are talking about rape. But Ovid refers several other times to Medusa in his other books, sometimes adding details the fourth-book stories does not have (the sixth book for examples evokes how Neptune turned into a bird to seduce Medusa, which is completely absent from the fourth book’s retelling of Medusa’ curse). And in all those other mentions, the terms to designate the relationship between Medusa and Neptune are more ambiguous, evoking seduction and romance rather than physical or sexual assault. (It does not help that Ovid has an habit of constantly confusing consensual and non-consensual sex in his poems, meaning that a rape in one book can turn into a romance in another, or reversal)

But the latter fact makes more sense when you recall that the rape element was invented and added by Ovid. Before, yes Poseidon and Medusa loved each other, but it was a pure romance, or at least a consensual one-night. Heck, if we go back to the oldest records of the love between Poseidon and Medusa, back in Hesiod’s Theogony, we have descriptions of the two of them laying together in a beautiful, flowery meadow – a stereotypical scene of pastoral romances – with no mention of any brutality or violence of any sort. As a result, it makes sense the original “romantic” story would still “leak” or cast a shadow over Ovid’s reinvented and slightly-confused tale.

Step 2: So… no rape?

Well, if we go by Greek texts, no, apparently Medusa was not raped in Greek mythology, and only became a rape victim through Ovid.

The Ancient Greek texts all record Poseidon and Medusa sleeping with each other and having children, but no mention of rape. And the whole “curse of Athena” thing is not present in the oldest records – no temple of Athena soiling, no angry Athena cursing a poor girl… “No curse?” you say “But then how did Medusa got turned into a Gorgon”? Answer: she did not. She was born like that.

As I said before, the oldest record of Medusa’s romance but also of her family comes from Hesiod’s Theogony (Hesiod being one of the two “founding authors” of Greek mythology, alongside Homer – Homer did wrote several times about Medusa, but only as a disembodied head and as a monster already dead, so we don’t have any information about her life). And what do we learn? That Medusa is part of a set of three sisters known as the Gorgons – because oh yes, Ovid did not mention Medusa’s sister now did he? How did Medusa’s sisters ALSO got snake-hair or petrifying-gaze if only Medusa was cursed for sleeping with Neptune? Ovid does not give us any answer because again, it is an “adaptational plot hole”, and the people that try to adapt Ovid’s story have to deal with the slight problem of Stheno and Euryale needing to share their sister’s curse despite seemingly not being involved in the whole Neptune business. Anyway, back to the Greek text.

So, you have those three Gorgon sisters, and Medusa is said to be mortal while her sisters are not. Why is it such a big deal? Because Medusa wasn’t originally some random human or priestess. Oh no! Who were the Gorgons’ parents? Phorcys and Keto/Ceto, aka two sea-gods. Not just two sea-gods – two sea-gods of the ancient, primordial generation of sea-gods, the one that predated Poseidon, and that were cousins to the Titans, the sea-gods born of Gaia mating with Pontos.

So the Gorgons were “divine” of nature – and this is why Medusa being a mortal was considered to be a MASSIVE problem and handicap for her, an abnormal thing for the daughter of two deities. But let’s dig a bit further… Who were Phorcys and Ceto? Long story short: in Greek mythology, they were considered to be sea-equivalents of Typhon and Gaia. They were the parents of many monsters and many sea-horrors: Keto/Ceto herself had her name attributed and equated with any very large creature (like whales) or any terrifying monster (like dragons) from the sea. The Gorgons themselves was a trio of monsters, but their sisters, that directly act as their double in the myth of Perseus? The Graiai – the monstrous trio of old women sharing one eye and one tooth. Hesiod also drops the fact that Ladon (the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperids), and Echidna (the snake-woman that mated with Typhon and became known as the “mother of monsters”) were also children of Phorcys and Ceto, while other authors will add other monster-related characters such as Scylla (of Charybdis and Scylla fame), the sirens, or Thoosa (the mother of Polyphemus the cyclop). Medusa herself is technically a “mother of monsters” since she birthed both Pegasus the flying horse and Chrysaor, a giant. So here is something very important to get: Medusa, and the Gorgons, were part of a family of monsters. Couple that with the absence of any mention of curses in these ancient texts, and everything is clear.

Originally Medusa was not a woman cursed to become a monster: she was born a monster, part of a group of monster siblings, birthed by monster-creating deities, and she belonged to the world of the “primordial abominations from the sea”, and the pre-Olympian threats, the remnants of the primordial chaos. It is no surprise that the Gorgons were said to live at the edge of the very known world, in the last patch of land before the end of the universe – in the most inhuman, primitive and liminal area possible. They were full-on monsters!

Now you might ask why Poseidon would sleep with a horrible monster, especially when you recall that the Greeks loved to depict the Gorgons as truly bizarre and grotesque. It wasn’t just snake-hair and petrifying gaze: they had boar tusks, and metallic claws, and bloated eyes, and a long tongue that constantly hanged down their bearded chin, and very large heads – some very old depictions even show her with a female centaur body! In fact, the ancient texts imply that it wasn’t so much the Gorgon’s gaze or eyes that had the power to turn people into stone – but that rather the Gorgon was just so hideous and so terrifying to look at people froze in terror – and then literally turned into stone out of fear and disgust. We are talking Lovecraftian level of eldritch horror here. So why would Poseidon, an Olympian god, sleep with one of these horrors? Well… If you know your Poseidon it wouldn’t surprise you too much because Poseidon had a thing for monsters. As a sort of “dark double” of Zeus, whereas Zeus fell in love with beautiful princesses and noble queens and birthed great gods and brave heroes, Poseidon was more about getting freaky with all sorts of unusual and bizarre goddesses, and giving birth to bandits and monsters. A good chunk of the villains of Greek mythology were born out of Poseidon’s loins: Polyphemus, Antaios, Orion, Charybdis, the Aloads… And even his most benevolent offspring has freaky stuff about it – Proteus the shapeshifter or Triton half-man half-fish… So yes, Poseidon sleeping with an abominable Gorgon is not so much out of character.

Step 3: The missing link

Now that we established what Medusa started out as, and what she ended up as… We need to evoke the evolution from point Hesiod to point Ovid, because while people summarized the Medusa debate as “Sea-born monster VS raped and punished woman”, there is a third element needed to understand this whole situation…

Yes Ovid did invent the rape. But he did not invent the idea that Medusa had been cursed by Athena.

The “gorgoneion” – the visual and artistic motif of the Gorgon’s head – was, as I said, a grotesque and monstrous face used to invoke fright into the enemies or to repel any vile influence or wicked spirit by the principle of “What’s the best way to repel bad stuff? Badder stuff”. Your Gorgon was your gargoyle, with all the hideous traits I described before – represented in front (unlike all the other side-portraits of gods and heroes), with the face being very large and flat, a big tongue out of a tusked-mouth, snake-hair, bulging crazy eyes, sometimes a beard or scales… Pure monster. But then… from the fifth century BCE to the second century BCE we see a slow evolution of the “gorgoneion” in art. Slowly the grotesque elements disappear, and the Gorgon’s face becomes… a regular, human face. Even more: it even becomes a pretty woman’s face! But with snakes instead of hair. As such, the idea that Medusa was a gorgeous woman who just had snakes and cursed-eyes DOES come from Ancient Greece – and existed well before Ovid wrote his rape story.

But what was the reason behind this change?

Well, we have to look at the Roman era again. Ovid’s tale of Medusa being cursed for her rape at the hands of Neptune had to rival with another record collected by a Greek author Apollodorus, or Pseudo-Apollodorus, in his Bibliotheca. In this collection of Greek myths, Apollodorus writes that indeed, Medusa was cursed by Athena to have her beautiful hair that seduced everybody be turned into snakes… But it wasn’t because of any rape or forbidden romance, no. It was just because Medusa was a very vain woman who liked to brag about her beauty and hair �� and had the foolish idea of saying her hair looked better than Athena’s. (If you recall tales such as Arachne’s or the Judgement of Paris, you will know that despite Athena being wise and clever, one of her main flaws is her vanity).

“Wait a minute,” you are going to tell me, “The Bibliotheca was created in the second century CE! Well after Greece became part of the Roman Empire, and after Ovid’s Metamorphoses became a huge success! It isn’t a true Greek myth, it is just Ovid’s tale being projected here…” And people did agree for a time… Until it was discovered, in the scholias placed around the texts of Apollonios of Rhodes, that an author of the fifth century BCE named Pherecyde HAD recorded in his time a version of Medusa’s legend where she had been cursed into becoming an ugly monster as punishment for her vanity. We apparently do not have the original text of Pherecyde, but the many scholias referring to this lost piece are very clear about this. This means that the story that Apollodorus recorded isn’t a “novelty”, but rather the latest record of an older tradition going back to the fifth century BCE… THE SAME CENTURY THAT THE GORGONEION STARTED LOSING THEIR GROTESQUE, and that the face of Medusa started becoming more human in art.

[EDIT: I also forgot to add that this evolution of Medusa is also proved by strange literary elements, such as Pindar's mention in a poem of his (around 490 BCE) of "fair-cheeked Medusa". A description which seems strange given how Medusa used to be depicted as the epitome of ugliness... But that makes sense if the "cursed beauty" version of the myth had been going around at the time!]

And thus it is all connected and explained. Ovid did invent the rape yes – but he did not invent the idea of Athena cursing Medusa. It pre-existed as the most “recent” and dominating legend in Ancient Greece, having overshadowed by Ovid’s time the oldest Hesiodic records of Medusa being born a monster. So what Ovid did wasn’t completely create a new story out of nowhere, but twist the Greek traditions of Athena cursing Medusa and Medusa having a relationship with Poseidon, so that the two legends would form one and same story. And this explains in retrospect why Ovid focuses so much on describing Medusa’s beautiful hair, and why Ovid’s Minerva would think turning her hair into snake would be a “punishment fit for the crime”: these are leftovers of the Greek tale where Medusa was punished for her boasting and her vanity.

CONCLUSION

Here is the simplified chronology of how Medusa’s evolution went.

A) Primitive Greek myths, Hesiodic tradition: Born a monster out of a family of sea-monsters and monstrous immortals. Is a grotesque, gargoylesque, eldritch abomination. Athena has only an indirect conflict with her, due to being Perseus’ “fairy godmother”. Has a lovely romance with Poseidon.

B) Slow evolution throughout Classical Greece and further: Medusa becomes a beautiful, human-looking girl that was cursed to have snake for hair and petrifying eyes, instead of being a Lovecraftian horror people could not gaze upon. Her conflict with Athena becomes direct, as it is Athena that cursed her due to being offended by her vain boasting. Her punishment is for her vanity and arrogant comparison to the goddess.

C) Ovid comes in: Medusa’s romance with Poseidon becomes a rape, and she is now punished for having been raped inside Athena’s temple.

[As a final note, I want to insist upon the fact that the story of Medusa being raped is not less "worthy" than any other version of the myth. Due to its enormous popularity, how it shaped the figure of Medusa throughout the centuries, and how it still survives today and echoes current-day problems, to try to deny the valid place of this story in the world of myths and legends would be foolish. HOWEVER it is important to place back things in their context, to recognize that it is not the ONLY tale of Medusa, that it was NOT part of Greek mythology, but rather of Roman legends - and let us all always remember this time Poseidon slept with a Lovecraftian horror because my guy is kinky.]

EDIT:

For illustration, I will place here visuals showing how the Ancient art evolved alongside Medusa's story.

Before the 5th century BCE: Medusa is a full-on monster

From the 5th century to the 2nd century BCE: A slow evolution as Medusa goes from a full-on monster to a human turned into a monster. As a result the two depictions of the grotesque and beautiful gorgoneion coexist.

Post 2nd century BCE: Medusa is now a human with snake hair, and just that

#greek mythology #medusa #gorgon #athena #gorgons #poseidon #neptune #minerva #ovid #rape in mythology #greek monsters #roman mythology

[taasgirl]

lover - oscar piastri

summary: y/n is a songwriter who writes plenty of songs however no one realizes that they're made by her (and about oscar hehe)!

a/n: the outcomes of the races are fictional, and the order in which these songs have been written (assume fearless was written this year ygwim?). also no face claim!!

liked by yukitsunoda, oscarpiastri, and 33, 287 others ynusername romance is not dead if you keep it just yours! lovelovelove being able to come home for race day!! i'm so proud of u osc 🩷

oscarpiastri I'm so lucky 🥰 liked by ynusername

user27633 Y/N IS A SWIFTIE CONFIRMED!?!?!

ynusername of course!!

user16372 u literally take the cutest photos of oscar

user82537 y/n quoting paris... i'm so up

yukitsunoda 😆😆

landonorris You're my favourite wag

ynusername wow how considerate

liked by taylorswift, landonorris, and 1, 287, 387 others oscarpiastri Unwinding before Japan 👊

ynusername tehee we're cute

oscarpiastri You're cuter landonorris Get a room

taylorswift ooooh she's working hard @ ynusername

user62584 WHAT THE FUCK ARE U DOING HERE???

user98274 OSCAR IS FRIENDS WITH TAYLOR HUH

user61192 i did not expect to see taylor in the comments of oscar's post tagging y/n!

user92898 no fr like what is going on

user93829 Everyone shut up about taylor look at the beauty that is y/n omd

view ynusername's story...

liked by jackantonoff, phoebebridgers, and 55, 918, 278 others taylorswift In honour of my album 'The Tortured Poets Department' release a week ago, I wanted to thank my biggest musical inspirations! Thank you Jack, Lana, and Y/N for helping me the best artist I could possibly be, without you'd guys I'd be nowhere (thank you y/n for writing the cheesiest, cutest, sexiest songs ever)!!

user51862 who is y/n

user01827 She's dating f1 driver oscar piastri but also now apparently a songwriter idk...

user72973 Wdym thanks y/n for writing?? you're telling me the twitter stans were right??

user62863 y/n is singlehandedly uniting f1 and the swifties

ynusername thank u tay 💓💓

user52868 Girl has been living a double life

user51929 ohhh so this is why taylor was commenting on oscar's post😭

liked by oscarpiastri, taylorswift, and 108, 276 others ynusername well now that the cat is out of the bag, who wants to hear a story? i assume u all said yes.

on one of our first dates, oscar made me a bracelet (yes that one) and i thought (and still think) that it was one of the most romantic gestures. so obviouslyyy i wrote 'lover' about him hehe. yes we only knew each other for at most three months when i wrote it, but i love him so much, he's my forever.

oscarpiastri I love having a singer for a girlfriend (wife one day)

ynusername hello cat boy

user18739 You're telling me that taylor's most romantic song is literally written by my favourite wag about my favourite driver?? i might pass out

ynusername haha yes! i write a lot of songs for tay

landonorris So this song is basically about ur delusions liked by ynusername

user52863 oh now i need to know exactly what songs you've written

user20939 AND PLEASE RECORD COVERS OF THEM TOO

lilymhe wait so you've been friends with taylor the whole time...

lilymhe AND THE SONG THAT I WANT PLAYED AT MY WEDDING IS WRITTEN ABOUT OSCAR?? ynusername oh my god lily HAHA

let me know if you liked this!! i know it's super short but i'm seriously lacking inspo and ideas omd. also i literally love oscar so much.

i'm also working on a few reqs, so if you have a suggestion or request, let me know because i'd love to do it!!

#oscar piastri #oscar piastri x reader #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri imagine #oscar piastri fanfic #oscar piastri fluff #oscar piastri smau #op81 #op81 x reader #op81 imagine #op81 fluff #op81 fic #formula 1 x you #formula 1 fanfic #formula 1 x reader #formula 1 imagine #formula 1 fic #formula 1 #formula one #formula 1 x y/n #formula 1 x oc #formula one x reader #formula one imagine #formula one x you #formula one x y/n #formula one x oc #mclaren #mclaren f1 #f1 #f1 x reader

[misty-thecat]

Is it just me or the songs on The Tortured Poets Department sound the same? It's like they all blend together at some point....at first listen there is not one song stuck in my head. And this is coming from someone who genuinely enjoys her music ...Red is one of my faves. You could swap the songs from Midnights and TTPD and I wouldn't be able to tell. I think she should start working with a new producer. Although I stopped being a fan since the breakup, I was still looking forward to new music .... I was excited for what new sound she would explore but it was disappointing to hear the same old repetitive Jack Antonoff synth pop genre.

She probably needs a break .... all this hyper production in the past few years with so many albums and their multiple versions must have had an impact on her creativity and quality...also a lot of lyrics are just......eh I don't know the right words, but she can do better for an artist of her magnitude and caliber.

Also, I feel like the aesthetic for the album does not match the music...like the dark academia/old books thing doesn't really go with the songs for me. Again, they sound a lot like something from Midnights due to the production so probably that's why I feel like that.

Another thing, the album seems to be mostly about the 1975 dude, but the marketing pointed to Joe Alwyn which led to him being harassed by her fans and she did nothing. That was horrible of her. It's these kinds of things that led me to leave that fandom. Even Ariana put out a statement when she released her new album.

Overall, I expected a better album from her. She really needs to take a break. The overexposure and overproduction are not looking good.

#anti taylor swift #taylor swift #joe alwyn #the tortured poets department #the tortured poets society #she needs therapy #I'm so serious #She does not seem well to me #I'm legit concerned for her

[wildfloweronwheels]

the more I sit with the tortured poets department, the more it makes perfect sense as a body of work taylor would create/release especially when you consider the fact she operates much more closely to an indie artist artistically than a lot of her contemporaries.

so honest it's catching people off guard? she's been doing that her whole career from the minute she put people's real names in her songs. lyrically sharp and slightly alarming? may I present "and you come away with a great little story about a mess of a dreamer to adore you" or "you made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter." bold and sonically strange? she's been blurring the lines of genre since her earliest albums, regularly blending country, pop, folk and even rock. 1989 has been her only traditionally dare I say 'sonically cohesive' album and the only reason its palate is so clean is because of the risk a pure pop album posed to her successful country career. if she hadn't nailed the landing then, she wouldn't be where she is now. *it also feels worth noting her most adventurous 'weird' but music has come AFTER she thought she'd had her last chance at mainstream success (lover) and as a result, thrown away the checklist because she thought she had nothing to lose. she was just making music for herself with no expectation of success*

'there's too many metaphors and characters/the muses are murky and I can't tell what's real. does she have to write so much fiction now?' this is the girl who immortalised her neighbours love story, who rewrote romeo and juliet, dreamed about crashing a wedding and was inspired by bob + ethel kennedy for god's sake. she's always written stories and imagined.

'I just can't understand why she'd make this and take this risk when we all liked her so much?' my friend, have we been paying attention to the same artist all these years? taylor swift not taking creative and honestly quite punk career risks would be like christopher nolan films without cillian murphy. she walked away from a development deal at age 14, took a chance on an independent label she built from the ground up and then bet on her future when they held her past hostage. took a genre they said wasn't for teenage girls and transformed it. wrote an album on her own after her songwriting was questioned. took a 10 minute song to #1, directed music videos and a short film worthy of oscar buzz, stretched her muscles and is directing a feature film AND re-recorded all her old work in arguably the biggest potential interruption to her career not for any perceived gain but for the statement of an artist's worth. but the world doesn't view them as risks because they worked

tldr; the tortured poets department is the most taylor swift thing taylor swift has ever made.

#taylor swift #hannah post™️ #the tortured poets department #ttpd #ts ttpd

[comradekatara]

Can you share any thoughts/headcannons about Ty Lee's sisters?

i’ve talked before about how i think that aang would date one of ty lee’s sisters and it would really freak katara out because she’s terrified of ty lee and she thinks that nothing good can come from involving himself in that family. but aang is actually like best friends with her whole family because of their air nomad ancestry and he’s trying to get them all into embracing their culture more and teaching them about their heritage. and maybe even one of her sisters does have latent airbending powers (ty lee has like, very minimal airbending ability, but her sister can actually move the air and all that) so he’s just overjoyed to help her hone that skill.

also this isn’t really about her sisters but i think that the chi-blocking girl from the legacy of yangchen who gets relocated to yangchen’s air temple for her own safety is a distant ancestor of ty lee’s. not because ty lee like epigenetically discovered the ability to chi-block (if anything i think ty lee discovered it on her own) but because i just think that’s a fun intersection and i do feel like fc yee incorporated it deliberately. anyway back to her sisters.

one of them dates aang, one of them is an airbender (possibly the same one?), at least one of them is also gay (just, statistically speaking), and unlike what the stupid comics will tell you, just because they all look identical does not mean that they wear matching hairstyles and outfits. they definitely each have their own sense of style and a complex about being unique and distinguished in their individual field. if anything i think ty lee incorporates their insecurities into her persona during her confession on the beach because she knows firsthand that the desire to distinguish oneself runs rampant in their family. like she’s clearly exaggerating as a deliberate performance of vulnerability, but it does come from a real place, if only through borrowing the anxieties of her sisters.

one is an accomplished musician, one is an accomplished mathematician, one is an accomplished engineer, one in an accomplished artist, one is an accomplished poet, one is an accomplished architect, and ty lee is the accomplished performer(/acrobat/fighter/liar). she could also probably be good at all those things too if she put her mind to it, but they all tacitly respect one another’s boundaries.

they come from a family that cares about nothing more than entrenching themselves within the fire nation aristocracy, and so their parents never really cared about their wellbeing as long as they were excelling. and ty lee was particularly favored because she’s excessively charming and knows how to get her way in any situation, and also, of course, because she’s the chosen playmate of the princess.

the pressure to always be perfect and provide an “in” for her family gets to be too much for her so she runs away to the join the circus, and she kind of assumes that they won’t even notice because she left behind six identical copies, but they get really worried because what will happen to their family now that they no longer have a direct link to the palace? so they’re really relieved to hear that ty lee is once again working with azula after news of the coup on ba sing se reaches the fire nation. and then they hear that she betrayed azula and got herself imprisoned and they’re furious. they actively consider disowning her, but then they figure if she’s already in prison for life, why bother. but then a few months later, they learn that now she’s friends with the avatar and the new firelord, which is even better than being friends with the princess, so they accept her back.

not that she wants to go home, but aang has suspicions about her ancestry that he wants to confirm so he makes her take him to her house and introduces him to all her sisters and her parents. they all show off their various talents to aang because they’re so nervous to be meeting the avatar, but he’s literally impressed by every single one of them. any time any of them do anything he’s just like “wow that’s awesome!!!” completely sincerely. he thinks ty lee’s family is so cool and has dinner with them whenever he can.

after the war aang gets really intent on finding all the remnants of the air nomad legacy through tracking down the air nomad refugees whose families assimilated into other nations over the past century. and he and ty lee (and her sisters) embark on this really in-depth archival project to collect all the traces of her family and families like hers as a way to honor and commemorate their cultural heritage. ty lee learns a lot about her family and what they had to do to survive (and how that mirrors her own life). and even though it’s nothing like it was before, aang finds a community of people who want to reconnect with their heritage and piece by piece, he slowly rebuilds what was lost.

#the-wright #asks #ty lee #aang #aang&tylee #postwargaang #sorry this turned into aang central #but in my mind ty lee and aang are like this 🤞 #which katara HATES btw #she’s like ‘couldn’t the air nomad heritage belong to anyone other than THE WORST GIRL ALIVE?????????’ #and aang’s just like awww no she’s nice #to which katara is like that’s just what she WANTS you to think . #she’s fine w aang dating just NOT IN THAT FAMILY

[levis-nut-dump]

~Break Away~

Description: Drug dealer ex boyfriend Connie tries to make you jealous.

TW: Drugs, gang, fluff, cursing

You never liked Connie Springer much. Since you were thirteen he was trouble in a small package and now you're twenty and he's trouble in a bigger package, which is why you weren't surprised when your six-month relationship was cut short because of his line of 'work'. You weren't too fond of being around a bunch of guns, drugs, and gangbangers every time you want to hang out with your boyfriend, you weren't cut out for that life. Not even two weeks later, Connie found someone who was.

You found the news out through a mutual friend of yours, Sasha Braus, she also hated Connie's work but knowing him as long as you have she knows just as well there's no pulling him from it.

"Already?!" you yelled.

Sasha jumped. "I mean, yeah. But that's ok, right? Your relationship was mainly physical and you don't like him that much anyway."

The truth is, you have grown to like Connie as a partner over the last six to seven months. You also found him sexy as you did dangerous. "Well... Whatever! Just how can he move on so quickly?! With Jackie nonetheless!" You grabbed your car keys and slammed your apartment door open.

Sasha jumped from the couch. "(Y/N) Where are you going?! He's around his people and Jackie's just as dangerous as he is! Don't do anything rash!" she begged.

"Fuck Jackie and FUCK Connie. I'm giving that prematurely grey jackass a piece of my mind!"

"Jackie?!"

"She can get in my way if she wants to. She doesn't mean shit to him. Connie's wanted me for years he didn't move on that fast. Jackie is just to make me jealous and it's not working." you say getting into your car.

Sasha crouched to talk to you in the passenger side window. "Are you sure about that?" she giggled.

"Are you coming or not?" you say with aggravation filling your body.

"Yes but only so I can keep my two best friends from killing each other. This is why we don't date in the friend group." Sasha said getting into the car.

You start the car on the way to Connie's corner. "You're dating Jean, who is in the same friend group." you point out.

"Jean who's not a gangbanger."

You flip Sasha off.

Finally, you get to Connie's corner hideaway. An old building he and his guys use to plan their moves. "Ok, so what's the plan? Do you have like a weapon or something or are we gonna take the sneaky app-" Sasha started.

You turned the car off and got out, slamming the door which alerted Connie around the corner as he smirked.

"Connie Springer!" you yelled turning the corner to Connie, his guys, and Jackie sitting on his lap. In front of them was a table full of guns, large bags of weed, and a white substance you didn't even want to know about, but you weren't scared, your ego was bruised. You weren't the violent belligerent type but when your pride was hurt no one was safe from your temper.

"Hey Connie." Sasha smiled and waved from behind you, fearful of the table that possessed at least three charges. Maybe Sasha's the only one exempt from your temper.

"Hey Sasha. (Y/N)." Connie grinned.

"Fuck he's so sexy." you thought. "You're kidding me, right? Jackie?"

Connie sighed. "We broke up babe. I moved on." he said cocking his head to the side.

"Yeah right. It would be more believable if it were with anyone but Jackie Fletcher." you scoffed.

Jackie got up and Sasha backed up. "And what's that supposed to mean? What's wrong with me?" Jackie asked putting her shoulder-length blonde hair into a ponytail and taking her earrings out.

"It means you have more STDs than Connie has warrants." you grit through your teeth.

Connie's boys laughed and this set Jackie off. "Bitch you better have the hands to back that mouth up." she said stepping closer

"My mouth isn't as 'trained' as yours but I bet my fucking hands are just as good hoe."

Jackie ran up and you don't know what happened but the next thing you knew you were on top of her punching her over and over.

"Guys take Sasha upstairs I'll take care of this." Connie ordered. As the guys were carrying out his command Connie went to pull you off Jackie. "Alright. Alright Tyson she's out!" he said finally getting you to your feet. You quickly turn around and push him. "The fuck (Y/N)?!" he yelled.

"What you want some too?" you asked, pushing him again.

"I'm not gonna put my hands on you (Y/N)." Connie said softly.

You push him again. "Why not?" You pushed him against the wall "Fucking pussy. Fight back." You slap him on his left cheek.

Connie stared at you with a hazel deadly glare that snapped you back to reality. Sometimes you forget just how scary he could be as he towers over you weighing two hundred all muscle. "You want me to put my hands on you (Y/N)?" he growled switching you against the wall faster than you can blink. "You come in here, yell at me in front of my guys, insult my girlfriend, then beat her unconscious. After that, you have the nerve to come at me?" He put your chin between his fingers and made you look him in the eyes. "You're so fucking sexy." Your lips smashed together in a sloppy kiss. You run your fingers through his short grey hair as he undoes your pants and drops them to the ground. With a small bite of your lip, Connie breaks from the kiss and peppers your neck.

For an hour, years of pent-up hatred and anger were released against that wall.

#aot #aot x reader #attack on titan #fluff #levi ackerman #levi aot #smut #anime and manga #anime art #jean kirstein #connie x black reader #connie springer #aot connie #Spotify

[smolvenger]

Also, I can't say no to blurbs and especially not to something extraordinarily fluffy like "Touch her and you die", tehehe... Perhaps with Henry V? 🤭

Hiiii bestie! I'm going to make the blurbs shorter and simpler if you don't mind!

His Queen (Henry V x fem! Reader blurb)

Your boat docked right on the shores of France. So while your husband, the king, was determined to fight there- you had to see him.

Henry had waited with his whole army on the shore of a cliff. Then he dismounted his horse and ran up. It was a reminder of his youth- the young, firey, springy king. He easily bounded through the little beach and the plank right as you stepped up to get off the boat. Before his army and the guards, he embraced you passionately and you back.

"How are you, my sweet wife?"

"Weary from the journey though it was smooth," you confessed.

"For such a lady as you, even the seas and winds themselves would still and become gentle for you to cross," he said.

He hugged you again, peppering a kiss onto your cheek as you laughed, feeling the tickle of his facial hair and re-acquainting yourself with his lips.

He gestured to one of the lords. The Lord of York brought forth a beautiful white mare and you gasped.

"A gift for you, my lady," he offered.

You thanked him and he helped you to mount her. She accepted you- gentle was her demeanor and what a good companion she would make here in France.

"Why, the seas were quite misty- I should call her Mist, for she reminds me a little of it," you cooed, petting her mane.

"A noble, strong, yet sweet and beautiful thing, much like my dearest queen and lady," Henry said.

"My, what words roll off your tongue now! They shall call you a poet, not a ruler," you teased.

"Then it means I am an artist, and you are the muse then for such words. And if I must continue my pen, then my muse shouldn't be kept too long from me," he bantered back lightly.

He got up on his own horse- a white stallion quoting yours. You felt like a fairy queen, not a mortal one, as she trotted over the grass.

And you were led to ride and sit on your horse before the army. Dressed in their greys and blacks and scraps of leather, their eyes were big.

"This here, is Her Majesty, the Queen of England," announced Henry.

You smiled, though part of you went stiff. A few looks seemed to be borderline leers. How long have these men been deprived of a woman's presence?

Henry noticed, and his voice turned a darker tone, a fiercer one.

"She is both your ruler and a lady, and you must respect her as you do both. She is also my wife, I must remind you..."

His eyes darkened. The army stiffened, turning pale and attentive like naughty schoolboys caught by their teacher.

"You must guard her and listen to and follow her as you do Harry of England. She is England's Woman and it's most precious jewel. And should any miscreant or bully among you dare lay a finger on that precious jewel, I shall condemn you at once to hang. Remember the fate of Bardolph- one of your own who greedily robbed a poor church of its dearest sacraments- and she here is the greatest sacrament of England. And if none of you want to share worse than his fate, then cool your lust elsewhere...or I shall execute you myself." Henry threatened all of them.

The soldiers bowed their heads and complied. You gave him a smile. Though the only woman there, you were unafraid.

You were ready to join your husband and support him without fear.

A03//My Ko-Fi//My Etsy Shop//Masterlist//Wattpad

Taglist: @asgards-princess-of-mischief @jennyggggrrr @five-miles-over @fictive-sl0th @ladycamillewrites @villainousshakespeare @holdmytesseract @eleniblue @twhxhck @lokisgoodgirl @lovelysizzlingbluebird @raqnarokr @holymultiplefandomsbatman @michelleleewise @wolfsmom1 @cheekyscamp @mochie85 @fandxmslxt69 @skittslackoffilter @mischief2sarawr

#prince hal x reader #tom hiddleston #carrie writes #angst with a happy ending #prince hal #the hollow crown #king henry v #william shakespeare #henry iv part ii #henry iv part 2 #prince hal imagine #prince hal fanfiction #tom hiddleston characters #fanfiction #fic writing #fanfics #birthday blurbs #touch her and you die #prince hal x you #prince hal x fem! reader #prince hal x y/n #prince hal x fem! y/n #henry v #henry v x fem! reader #henry v x reader #henry v x y/n #henry v x you #henry v x fem! y/n

[fayrobertsuk]

Poetry for ALL

Some personal anecdotes and a plea follow...

As quite a few of you know, I’ve been engaged in disability awareness and rights campaigning and other work since sometime in the 90s, so when I was given an opportunity to support and host an event dedicated to making performance poetry as accessible as possible in 2018, I jumped on it.

(image description in alt text)

Poetry for All is the brainchild (and heartchild, and soulchild) of Rose Drew, who I first met through one of Richard Tyrone Jones’s Utter events in London. She’s an extraordinary writer and performer, and a powerhouse of an events host and organiser. Within about 30 seconds of watching her on stage, I knew I wanted to be like her when I grew up as an artist. When she got in touch three years later to ask if I’d like to help out with what turned out to be the inaugural event, I threw myself into providing as much support as possible with enthusiastic abandon, and we pulled together a line-up which included the extraordinary performers Raymond Antrobus and DL Williams (“DeafFirefly”), both of whom I’d performed with before and was keen to see again. 

Now, there’s a whole section on our new website about the history of the events where you can read the facts, but I want to say here that, personally, that first event in March 2018 (coincidentally on my birthday!) was an absolute eye-opener – seeing how poetry events could expand and develop the ideal of accessibility in ways I hadn’t considered. It was also extremely inspirational as I realised that, well, I was allowed to write about my disabilities. Seeing and hearing artist after artist sharing so much and so eloquently unlocked something in me that I didn’t even know I’d been repressing:

I’m allowed to be an openly disabled poet. I’m allowed to express my neurodivergence. I can tell my truth. 😱🤯

Bit of a culture-shock, but I owe so much to the poets and to Rose (and to Dave Wycherley, BSL interpreter extraordinaire – that’s a hard and physically/ mentally taxing job as it is, but to do that with poetry? on the fly?! breathtaking...) for helping me get to that starting point, knocking down the walls of my own internalised ableism.

So, apart from a paean to self-expression and why representation and finding tribe matters, and a screed of gratitude for new friends made and old friendships strengthened through the course of these events, why am I writing this? What’s with the hashtag? “Plea...?”

Well, so far, since you ask, all of our events have had local funding in York, where they’ve taken place exclusively so far. Rose applied for Arts Council England funding for this and next year for a tour comprising several venues and a host more disabled artists and BSL interpreters from various parts of the UK (all getting paid properly!), but we found out last week that we’d not got the money. Any of it. So our forthcoming event on 24th November in the gorgeous National Centre for Early Music is in jeopardy and, since the thought of Rose (herself a disabled artist on low wages) having to pay for this out of her own pocket was not to be supported, I threw myself at a plan of creating a (somewhat last-minute) Crowdfunder, so that we can at least pay for the venue, the artists’ and interpreters’ fees, the travel and accommodation expenses of those of us coming from out of town, and the costs of producing merchandise to sell. We’ll be producing an anthology in print and ebook form, as a joint publication between indie publishers Stairwell Books and Allographic Press. And, if we exceed our funding goal, there’ll be video and audio available of the event to boot!

We’ve created a frankly very exciting range of pledge rewards for people wanting to support us (all the way from £1 and £2 options, since money is tight, especially for disabled folk, right now, to more chunky ones like private mentoring, workshops, and a publishing package), and we’ve got three weeks(!) to raise our £1,500 to cover the shortfall from ticket and merch sales. Eeep! So, if you’re able to and would like to help us, we’d be ever so grateful. The campaign is here:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/poetry-for-all-2023-fundraiser

And if you have absolutely no funds to share with us at all, we’d be incredibly grateful if you shared on social media, with friends, on blogs, all of that!

Thanks for reading all this, and have a great day!

#fay speaks #image #image description #disability #disability awareness #accessibility #fundraiser #crowdfunder #poetry for all #I am going to be posting about this a LOT! #accessible events #accessibility matters #respresentation matters #fundraising

[rey-jake-therapist]

I was reading @tickldpnk8 's excellent meta about Desire, when something they said about Dream disapproving of Destruction's relationship with Ishtar the goddess of love planted a series of questions in my mind...

First question: how their function influences the Endless' love life? Why was Destruction drawn to a goddess symbolizing Love? Why did Dream disapprove it? Why did Dream neglect Calliope after she gave birth to Orpheus and why did he really severe his connection with them both?

Was it all just..... personal?

When I read that Destruction had a romance with the goddess of Love, my first reaction was to find it.... weird. What do Destruction and Love have in commun? At first view, not much even nothing... except maybe that destruction Can happen because of deceived love?

Dream is the romantic of the family, it's Destruction himself who states it in Song of Orpheus when he tells Orpheus he's just like his father. Dreams inspire the artists and the poets, so his union with Calliope, the poet's muse, probably made sense to everyone (except her sisters, who thought in their great wisdom that Dream was an asshole 😂). But Destruction and Love? Yeah I can totally see why it raised a few eyebrows in the Endless family. I mean, we know Dream in particular disapproved the relationship but Ishtar told her friend that her romance with Destruction ended because of "his family" not just her brother in law, so my guess is that she had to deal with vehement hostility, from everyone not just Dream.

Why would be that? My headcanon's now that the Endless feared that Love would be a bad influence on Destruction, because he would be less kin to do his job right since he would start seeing things differently, about humans, the love they can have for each other and the beauty of it. And I actually suspect that his relationship with Ishtar may have had him question his function indeed, and its necessity. Maybe it's really because he knew Love (he sort of dated it!) that he walked away from the Endless family and didn't choose anyone to succeed him? He knew that love would always end up destroyed but he didn't want this responsibility anymore?

(Please notice I'm mostly talking out loud here.... these are just some random thoughts and questionings....)

Now, Dream and Calliope. In the Wake, Calliope says Dream was basically the perfect husband until she became pregnant. It's often thought that their relationship was damaged by what happened to Orpheus, but the fact is that they started drifting apart long before that. Of course as humans it's tempting to think that Dream lost interest in his wife because she became a mother and he looked at her differently: that's what men often do, right? But Dream isn't a man and Calliope is a goddess; the product of their union was Orpheus, who represented "the supreme power of poetry and music to enchant all natural things". If I look at the evolution of Dream and Calliope's marriage purely on their respective function, the fact that 1. they had separate lives even when they were in love and happy 2. They drifted apart once Orpheus was conceived, both things make perfect sense!

It's often assumed that Dream "gets tired" of his lovers once the thrills is gone aka once the seduction phase is over. But I think it's oversimplifying and again, forgetting that Dream isn't human, he doesn't think like one. My current headcanons regarding Dream and Calliope are that,

They got married first because it seemed to be the perfect union regarding their respective functions. It doesn't mean they didn't love each other, but Dream has loved others before and after Calliope... she's the only one he married, and I don't think it's a coincidence.

They didn't live at the same place, Calliope visited Dream' realm only when she wanted: doesn't it reflect perfectly what inspiration does to us? Coming and going through our dreams, being absent sometimes for months even years....

Once Orpheus was conceived, it's possible that Dream's interest in the relationship faded because... His union with Calliope had filled its purpose. Yeah, I'm aware of how bleak it sounds, but again I'm thinking strictly in terms of concepts, which Dream and Calliope are.

The fact that Dream severed his connection with both Orpheus and Calliope is of course explained within the story told in the comics, but it also can find its roots in the humans'world: the vision that humans have of art, dreams and gods HAVE changed. They don't seem as intrinsically connected as (maybe?) they used to be, at some point science took over and humans kept believing in dreams, but in gods and mythology in general? Not so much. The divorce between Dream and Calliope, I think, symbolizes this dissociation.

I can't NOT also tag @writing-for-life and @poobtato on this big subject ;)

#the sandman #dream of the endless #sandman meta #the sandman spoilers #The sandman song or Orpheus #destruction of the endless #The sandman Calliope

[in-a-mountain-pool]

Supermassive Black Hole Ch1

Ettore x Reader 

pronouns: She/her (afab)

rating: Explicit/18+

warnings: NSFW/Minors DNI, masturbation, jealous!Ettore, 

word count: 1761

summary: Ettore found prison terribly boring, that is until the day that you showed up. When Monte takes a shine to you, Ettore finds a new way to pass the time, and he plans to drag it out just as long as he possibly can...

A/N: Yeah, yeah I know, Ettore is awful... Feel free to imagine Ewan Mitchell’s lovely Derbyshire burr whenever the f-bomb is dropped. Have that on me! I’m planning this to be around a 6 chapter short story so watch this space. Next Chapter

Masterlist

If Ettore was educated, a poet, or an artist, he'd describe his time on the prison ship by talking about the bleakness of space, the ever-looming presence of the black hole outside, the loneliness, the lack of humanity... but the thing he thought about most, was just how fucking boring it was.

If you didn’t kick up the occasional fight what else was there to even do? Wank off in a cup? Jack off in the box? Play favourites with Doctor Dibs? All of it fucking boring after a while. But his favourite thing of all, his favourite way to pass the time, was people watching.

The one good thing about the prison ship was just how weird and mixed up the group of people were, people of all kinds, all shapes, and sizes, all with their own ticks, and their own stories to tell. Not that he ever wanted to ever talk to these people, why the fuck would he waste his time on criminals in here? But it sure was fun to imagine. Especially with the girls.

And that was where he had found himself today, wiping the floors outside the canteen, sweaty, tired, and bored out of his mind. The AC on the ship had broken again earlier that week, so he had taken to walking around without his shirt, something that had made Dibs smirk and give him a few extra pills to pass the time. 

As he scrubbed the floor, he found his eyes wandering to the canteen door to watch the inmates go about their day. Boyse was sat against the wall on the floor playing a game with a piece of string, making shapes and whispering to herself. She was reciting some sort of kid’s playground song whilst Mink braided her hair behind her. Tcherney was sat at the table, he had brought some of his plants in from the garden and was getting soil bloody everywhere potting up some tomatoes... but amongst all of this, the most interesting thing of all, was Monte. He usually sat alone and kept to himself, and when he was not, he was usually being fawned over by Dibs, but today he was sat with her, the new girl, Y/N.

She was the newest inmate on the ship and to Ettore she was a pretty blank slate. She never said a peep, even if the food was bad, or at the shitty prison duties she was given, and not even when he would openly stare at her... and honestly, it was easy to stare at her.

Y/N was a small woman, just a little mousey thing with brown shoulder length hair, and these big green eyes which would peer at him from time to time. People seemed to like her, mostly because she kept out of their business, but every now and then he'd catch her picking things up after people, helping Tcherny carry his gardening tools around, or helping Boyse with her duties when she'd lose track of time. She just seemed incredibly nice. Far too nice for a place like this.

So, it was a surprise when he heard her laugh out loud for the first time on the ship, and an even bigger surprise when it was Monte who had made her do it. The two were sat side by side eating lunch, her resting her shoulder against his as he leaned down to tell her a story, her eyes lightning up, all animated and excited. She looked like he had hung the stars in the fucking sky or something, so taken in by him, it was almost cute just how melodic her laugh was.

Ettore just shook his head smirking to himself and going back to his cleaning. She was just another woman in a long line chasing after Monte like he was some kind of white fucking knight... until something caught his eye, something only he could see at this angle.

Underneath the table, Y/N was running her foot up the back of Monte's leg under his trousers, whilst her hand had dipped under the table to rub a path ever so gently from his knee to his thigh. Ettore was transfixed, pretending to pay extra special attention to a particular spot on the floor so he could continue to watch the secret exchange. Y/N continued to snake her hand closer and closer to Monte's inner thigh, all the while playing the part of the innocent girl, all doe eyed and sweet listening to Monte's stories so intently.

Who was this girl he was watching!?

Fraternising between inmates was strictly forbidden and would ruin the experiments Dibs was conducting, yet here she was having the gall to try it on with Monte out in the open for anyone and everyone to see. Ettore's throat went dry, and his trousers grew tighter just watching her small hand delicately stroke at Monte's thigh, drawing small circles with her index finger as she travelled closer and closer to her destination.

In the end Ettore just couldn't help himself, slowly starting to grind his hips against the hard surface beneath him, trying his best to pretend to scrub the filthy floor beneath him whilst he edged himself, imagining just how soft her dainty fingers would feel wrapped around his hard, weeping cock. He'd make her do it right there in the canteen, sliding her hand underneath the waistband of his tented boxers, whilst everyone else went on about their day.

He imagined how she'd stroke the pad of her thumb across his pink and swollen head, swirling around the wetness there before sliding down his shaft and gripping him tight. Just the thought of it made him groan out loud, muffling the pathetic sound into his shoulder as he rocked his hips, humping the floor like an animal.

The sweaty heat of the ship only made it headier, and he was pretty sure he must be soaking the front of his pants, precum already seeping out of his heavy cock. She just looked like such a good good girl... with some apparently very naughty tendencies. He could only imagine what that pretty little mouth of hers would feel like, what those inviting rosy lips might look like as she sucked-

Until Monte's hand shot underneath the table and swotted her hand away from his thigh just before she could graze his bulge.

What. the. fuck.

Monte's face was stern and passive under the harsh white light of the canteen as he suddenly stood up, his plastic chair screeching along the floor harshly behind him. For a moment, Ettore thought he'd been caught, and his rocking faltered, although the prospect of conflict only served to make him even harder.

But there was something else going on here, something odd. He continued to watch them, his lips parted slightly and panting as he strained against the seam of his boxers. Her face had dropped and she looked almost crestfallen for a moment, but when Monte finally whispered to her, something shifted, and she almost became …submissive. Y/N crossed her legs tightly, squirming in her seat as she forced a tight smile onto her rosy, pink face. She looked pissed to say the least, and after a short exchange she went back to her meal in a huff.

Monte sulked out of the room and past Ettore, almost slipping on the wet floor he had been so hurried and flustered. It was interesting, to say the least. All these women chasing after him and Monte clearly didn't know the first thing about what to do with a girl like her. She was really something, practically gagging for it... and yet he'd literally batted her away.

Fucking tease.

Ettore practically snorted with laughter when he saw how clean the floor was beneath him after her little show, and just how dirty the crotch of his pants had become from his activities. He'd definitely need to visit the box tonight, and that was exactly where he'd found himself a few hours later.

Somehow, an hour in the box was not enough to scratch the itch that watching Y/N had provided earlier that day. Ettore sauntered out of the box and leaned against the wall, exhaling as the air hit his bare chest and the sweat on his skin started to cool. He just couldn't get her perfect little hands out of his mind. The way that her eyes had flashed when she had realised Monte was breathing heavier, how her foot had crept higher and higher up his calf... 

Monte just didn't fucking deserve her. What exactly was the situation between them, anyway? Were they a couple? Were they even fucking each other? …Would Monte mind if he shared her?

So many thoughts were running through his head that it was some time before he even noticed the sound of someone climbing down the ladder into the basement of the ship. Out of the corner of his eye, a flash of orange appeared as another inmate made their way towards the box... it was her.

Y/N had her arms crossed tightly across her chest, with a tight scowl on her face and a flush across her cheeks and down her neck. Her head was craned down as she trudged through the corridor, like she was intensely ashamed and frustrated to even be seen in a place like this. She'd almost entered the box before Ettore finally started to speak.

“Quite the little show from you today, Y/N.”

Her eyes snapped up to his, turning to look at him like a deer in the headlights. She was even cuter when she was like this. All flustered and horny. After a short moment she gathered herself, but only a margin... she was such a little thing. He doubted she could even make her words out at this point, so dickstruck and begging to be fucked.

“... Mind your own business, and I'll mind mine.”

He couldn’t help but snort at her weak retort and got closer to her, leaning his arm just above her on the doorframe.

“I'm just thinking out loud here… but if I was Monte, I wouldn’t let you be seen dead down here... looking for release that he clearly can't give you.”

Ettore continued, Y/N's breath quickening as he leaned closer still to whisper huskily into her ear.

“If I was Monte, you wouldn't need to fuck a machine late into the night to get yourself off... Think about it.”

And with that he backed away throwing her a shit-eating grin over his shoulder as he climbed up the ladder.

He wouldn't have her just yet; he'd bide his time.

… Whoever said that life at the prison was boring?

#Ettore #ettore x reader #ettore smut #high life #Ewan Mitchell #high life fanfiction #Ettore fanfiction #Ettore x you

[torturedartist13]

One moment I haven't been able to get out of my head from The Fall of the House of Usher is when Madeline is talking about her AI-immortality plans and Annabel basically says, "Surely an algorithm can't do everything a person could," and Madeline looks... angry, irritated. I always wondered why Annabel's statement would upset her so much, but now I think I understand why.

Madeline is repeatedly shown to have no empathy or love for those around her, she just sees them as either tools she can use or obstacles to get rid of. Even Roderick, her own brother, is no more than a tool to her. She is constantly plotting and scheming, coming up with the most logical routes to get what she wants. Essentially, she thinks like an algorithm.

Compare that to Annabel and younger Roderick. They both truly loved each other and their kids. Roderick was an artist, a poet, he had an appreciation for things outside of pure success. At least until Madeline fully got her hooks in him, of course.

I think Annabel's statement upset Madeline so much because it drew attention to all the things in the world that she seems incapable of appreciating, of doing. It drew attention to the fact that Madeline is essentially an algorithm, just one operating with blood and flesh rather than wires and circuitry.

#the fall of the house of usher #fall of the house of usher #the house of usher #house of usher #mike flanagan #tfothou #flanaverse #Madeline usher #character analysis #media analysis

[useramor]

honestly as a lifelong fan, I enjoyed the back half more (the bonus tracks). some of the songs were her usual quality and some felt like she was trying too hard to sound poetic idk. will be bopping to at least several of the songs for sure. but idk music sounds really different when you’re entrenched in the artists style vs when you’re not and a lot of lyrics sound dumb out of context for any artist. so short answer yes I liked it as a sad slow music enjoyer but I can understand why others didn’t.

see i am a sad slow music enjoyer and i used to like taylor (folklore and evermore era. i hosted a speak now tv listening party with my cousin. some of the songs on folklore are among my all time favs across artists!) but midnights and now ttpd feel so. cash grabby. she said she felt a need to write this new album but not all art needs to be released. sometimes you can write poetry just for the sake of getting the emotion out, getting the feelings out. it’s too long of an album for all the songs to be genuinely and consistently good especially considering how she’s been favoring quantity over quality recently. more songs = more streams i guess. if she had picked the 12 songs that were genuinely good, that were honest and heart wrenching then maybe every release wouldn’t be so upsetting. i really did like her, i haven’t always been anti taylor but she’s not creating art for the sake of art anymore. she’s creating for the sake of capitalism and you can tell. back to back to back albums all with 20+ mediocre tracks and 1 or 2 that are actually good. taylor swift, who’s been a beloved artist and who’s been known for her writing skills since her debut, is doing to her music what tiktok artists do to theirs, almost. write one good line or chorus or bridge and then that snippet will go viral and people will listen to get to that moment. it’s so cheap i guess. and sad, too. that hitting streaming records and being the biggest artist and collecting those billions became more important than putting out work than means anything.

everyone’s entitled to enjoying whatever they like, but i would be so disappointed as a fan if the quality was consistently dropping the way it is. i mean, i AM disappointed because i WAS a fan. just feels upsetting.

also, i do think she made a major mistake titling the album ‘the tortured poets department’ because that implies hozier level lyricism. ethel cain level lyricism. hell, at the very least evermore level lyricism. but she didn’t deliver, which is why i think people have been side eyeing her lyrics more than normal. big name. tortured poets department is a lot to live up to, and she didn’t. if the album was titled something else maybe i wouldn’t even be so shocked at the writing to be honest because i wouldn’t be actively expecting actually good poetry.

#also even in context ttpd has some of the worst lyrics i’ve heard in. a long time. #bia gets mail #anon #anti taylor swift

[totallylost4you]

"Invisible String" lyrics: Bold was the waitress on our three-year trip. Getting lunch down by the lakes.

Taylor about her song "The lakes" (2020): "I think THE LAKES sort of sounds like a testament of what I’ve wanted to escape from and where I saw myself escaping. We’d gone to the Lake District in England a couple years ago [...]"

"on our three years trip" (by the lakes) + "a couple of years ago" = connected?!

There's no way Joe+Taylor celebrated their three year anniversary "a couple of years ago" in 2020. (2016 + 3 = 2019. It would have been a year ago.)

Who was pictured at a lake in 2017? (2020 - 3 = 2017)

Taylor+Karlie and two loving swans. ❤️

Full speech about "The lakes" in "Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions". Why does she even have a "cottage backup plan"? 🤔👇

"I think “the lakes” sort of sounds like a testament of what I’ve wanted to escape from and where I saw myself escaping. We’d gone to the Lake District in England a couple years ago — In the 19th century, you had a lot of poets, like William Wordsworth and John Keats would spend a lot of time there. There was a poet district, these artists moved there were kind of heckled for it and made fun of for it as being these eccentrics and these kind of odd artists who decided that they just wanted to live there. I remember when we went, I thought, “Man, I could see this. You live in a cottage and you’ve got wisteria growing up the outside of it. Of course they escaped like that, of course they would do that.” And they had their own community of other artists who had done the same thing. In my career, since I was probably about 20, written about this sort of cottage backup plan that I have. “the lakes” is really talking a lot about relating to people who, hundreds of years ago, had the same exit plan and did it. I went to William Wordsworth’s grave, just sat there and I was like, “Wow, you went and did it, you just did it. You just went away and you kept writing, but you didn’t subscribe to the things that were killing you.” And that’s really the overarching thing that I felt when I was writing folklore is, I may not be able to go to the Lakes right now, or to go anywhere, but I’m going there in my head, and this escape plan is working. I thought [this song] would be the perfect way to slot the last puzzle piece in, right when people least expected it. Because “hoax” as the ending song for the record, I thought was interesting for a couple weeks, but then I wanted to actually come in with the real last song of the record, which is “the lakes”, that’s kind of the overarching theme of the whole album, of trying to escape, having something you wanna protect, trying to protect your own sanity, and saying, “Look, they did this hundreds of years ago. I’m not the first person who’s felt this way, they did this.”

#The Lakes #Kaylor #Taylor Swift #Karlie Kloss #Three years trip #Gaylor Swift #Folklore

[cherries-in-wine]

A sort of rant/review (mostly negative) of the tortured poets department:

English isn't my first language so apologising in advance for the mistakes <3

I don't think ttpd would've had so much criticism if it wasn't so hyped up by swifties and Taylor herself. Folklore and Evermore are my favourite albums and because Taylor put so much emphasis on how good the songwriting of this album is i thought i was going to love it. So my expectations were a more Lana del rey or the national kind of vibe, orchestral pop or psychedelic rock and it would be like a third sister to folklore and evermore. I've noticed that Taylor's albums are all starting to sound like midnights. 1989 is such a good pop album but 1989 tv sounds midnightified especially the vault tracks sound like they belong on midnights. As much as I love Jack Antonoff as he gave us some great albums i think Taylor desperately needs a new producer. I think the album is definitely "raw" in the sense that unlike the other albums that are super put together, in order and organised, ttpd is messy like a bunch of paragraphs from her notes app thrown together, it isn't essentially a bad thing, but if you're gonna talk about how ttpd required more song writing talent than any other album, it's pretty reasonable for people to be disappointed. I thought name was a reference to joe's group chat name and kind of poking fun at that, but oh no it's an actual fuking asylum and the whole idea makes me very uneasy. The reason why folklore and evermore work is because it's not from the perspective of Taylor but rather the people she's made up in her mind and because she is such a good story teller those albums sound awesome. Something about a straight cis billionaire white woman calling herself a tortured poet in all seriousness and romaticising asylums/electroshock therapy makes me so so so uncomfortable. I understand why swifties are so defensive and protective of Taylor, with all the shit that happened with Kim and Kanye but I feel like they think she's a god that can do no wrong, which is stupid you can like an artist but still call me them out their shitty decisions. The "oh you think her singing writing is not that good why don't you write something better" is such a stupid argument, this random person criticising Taylor isn't constantly referred to as the greatest song writer of our generation, she is. I saw a post saying "the biggest burn is that most songs are about Matty Healy and not Joe Alwyn" like excuse me but if my ex that I dated for many years just starts gushing over a slimy ass Nazi racist sexist pathetic excuse of a man, I'd go "thank god good riddance". What happened to "you are what you love" Taylor?. I really like some songs, but I keep getting disgusted when It clicks who they're about. "But daddy I love him" is a great song but it's about ratty Healy fuck off ew.

I have a lot more to say but my brain isn't braining so I'll update later lol

#Taylor Swift #the tortured poets department #ttpd #anti Taylor Swift #anti matty healy #anti taylor swift #ratty healy

[taylorswiftstylequestions]

“I also personally LOVE the delusion of "Everyone we know understands why we're meant to be" because it's so integral to the entire point of the song” — THIS THIS THIS. Remember, that line comes after she admits that they’ve both told their friends separately that they’ll kill themselves if the other leaves, one of the biggest and most obvious red flags a relationship can have. As someone who’s had a friend say something similar to me in the past, I can guarantee that everyone most certainly did not understand why they’re meant to be — if Jack’s experience was anything like mine, that statement would have gotten an anxious laugh and an internal she doesn’t mean that seriously, right? The relationship described in little ttpd is neither healthy nor romantic. The narrator is trying desperately to convince herself it is, which is why she’s telling herself all their friends are on board with it when it’s not entirely clear if they are (notice that we don’t hear Lucy or Jack’s reactions to these very concerning statements — we have to take Taylor’s word that they understand why they’re meant to be*, and a recurring theme throughout especially the first half of this album is that Taylor isn’t always the most reliable narrator). For that reason I don’t really struggle with the “how could she write this about HIM??” feelings with little ttpd in the same way I do for songs like loml. Little ttpd is just a detailed accounting of what she’s summarizing in icfh(nric) — an unhealthy, rapidly failing relationship built on lovebombing and delusion. And I am totally fine assigning that to Mr. Smallest Man Who Ever Lived (said jokingly — obviously with the paternity test disclaimer and understanding that Taylor’s music is much more than the men who may have potentially inspired it)

*and yes I realize that all of Taylor’s work is technically based on us taking her word for things, and that even if she gave us the full conversation we would still be taking her word that it’s true, but I think even with that she’s still presenting herself as an unreliable narrator in this song and that the choice to leave out her friends’ reactions/responses was an intentional one

This was fantastically said friend and I so agree and I also think that this extra bit of Required Reading is perhaps why Poets might have such a higher barrier to entry for listeners and also why some of its earliest criticisms lose weight once you give the album its due and listen to it the way it was meant to be consumed - over a long period of time and with careful consideration to the context and the intent of the artist.

The album is too long and overly, unnecessarily wordy. Yes.

Some of the lyrics are super cringe and weird and awkward. Yes.

It's really gross that she's romanticizing being in love with someone who's not a good person. Y E S. YES?!?!?!??! YES!!!!!!

THAT'S THE POINT. THAT'S THE POINNNNNNNNNT! THAT'S THE POINT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And yes completely agree that while there's a precedent set that if you're listening to a Taylor Swift song you're getting her *biased* POV as in her version of events (which, tbh, her version of events usually goes reasonably unrefuted by people which I'm led to believe means it's typically close to right even if it's fuelled by her own biased personal emotions). But never elsewhere in her disco as we do on TTPD do we have to confront the fact that her biased POV is also a really fucked up one that she herself does not even necessarily believe but is doing her best to convince herself that it's true and good for her and right. And you have to be actively hearing and discerning and comprehending and analyzing what she is saying and how she is saying it in order to *get that*.

Poets inherently does not reward passive listening. And if you tuned out once you grasped who a song might* be about because you personally dislike them** you miss almost the entire point of what Taylor is trying to communicate.

#tss ttpd party #*paternity testing feminism art matters centralize her emotions not the person etc etc etc etc #**youre also allowed to do this if it gets you through the song / services you - the art belongs to you now! im just saying if ... #... understanding HER intent is the goal you won't get there if you ignore this piece

[metvmorqhoses]

Hi! I never read the original trilogy before watching the show, only the crows books, but I agree with a lot of what you’ve said about Alina & Aleksander. It’s obviously a cruel and poorly fitting match. May I ask what kind of person you think would truly match Aleksander better?

So, here is the deal: while the right answer to this question might appear pretty obvious, since pretty much everyone in the fandom agrees that Aleksander deserves an equal, I have to confess that I've always found a big flaw in this otherwise, well, flawless reasoning.

Albeit I obviously agree with everything you said about Alina's (especially show!Alina) lack of... personality (to express it kindly), I think dismissing the general concept of book!Alina, at least in the way she should have been written had her writer any sense of artistic potential, might actually be a dire mistake in the proverbial grand scheme of literary things.

I'll explain.

It's indeed pretty easy to sketch out Aleksander's ideal match. He himself would tell you he'd need a mirror image of who he is in order to finally, finally, feel complete: someone to match him in power, but above all in his understanding of power; someone to match him in immortality, but above all in his experience with it; someone who shares his predatory eagle-view on existence and therefore sharp-sighted enough to look in his same direction and see the same clash of colors in dawns and sunsets turning morality and philosophy unforgiving black.

In short, Aleksander would need someone who shares his unique condition, but most importantly having already lived through each and every single stage of it (the same despair, the same fear, the same loneliness) and therefore being someone who just gets what it means, what it feels, to be him.

There's no doubt in my mind this is what the Darkling dreamt about in the dead of night, what he prayed for before actually finding the Sun Summoner. He prayed she had been out there all along somehow, each year he himself had existed, going through the same centuries of unforgiveness, of solitude, of horror, through the same desperate quest for an equal, for him, just as he had been looking for her, all that time, all along.

I've seen many amazing people believing this very same thing while exploring the possibility in both meta and fanfiction, and I absolutely get where they are coming from. But I'm afraid I have to disagree. As poets say, there's a huge difference between what someone thinks they need and what they actually do need.

Aleksander's perfect match should indeed be his mirror image, but the mirror image of the boy he once was (the boy who was in love with "all the colors one cannot see in the dark", the one who was moved by the mere idea of companionship and intimacy, who was brave enough to risk his own life for the sake of a little girl he had just met), and not of the eternal and lost creature he had become, no matter how shocking the mere notion would be to him.

Aleksander would need a person who reminds him of the unspoiled self that was torn away from him, of his original unmarred idealism, his profound appreciation for living before he became a mere stubborn and bitter habit, of the humanity he was forced to shed. And, above all, Aleksander would need to be able himself to perform this act of saving, protecting and cherishing this twin heart for the sake of that heart of his no one had cared to save in time.

I think seeing himself, his truer, unspoiled self, in his equal and being able to shield her from everything he endured, as a single beam of light in endless oceans of darkness, would be virtually the only thing able to save him in turn, finally giving his life a meaning no war nor time could steal away from him.

And this is precisely why I think the concept of Alina had real literary potential, had it been used wisely, because Alina was supposed to be exactly that - an Alexander who can still, materially, be protected, saved, someone with the strength of not treding her own humanity for comforting numbness and disillusion, not even while crushed by the weight of eternity, and, in doing so, allowing him to be human and bearably so for the first time in his eternal detached yet still excruciating exististing.

It's a pity, because at fleeting times both books and show did touch on this very topic, almost giving in, only to idiotically shy away from it for reasons that will always be beyond me.

#and instead we had this dumbness galore #darklina #shadow and bone #the darkling #the grisha trilogy #aleksander morozova #sab metas #one and one thousand stories lis told