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magistralucis · 7 months

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The Lantern Fair [Zultanekh/Djoseras snippet]

(More of the same fic I was writing in this post. After Szarekh imposes peace on their dynasties, the two princes roam a festival together and talk kindly side-by-side. The inspiration for this scene borrows from a flashback Trazyn has in The Infinite and the Divine, a wish-lantern ceremony to hail good health for the new year. Lantern fairs are a very familiar aesthetic to me (I'm Asian), and I wanted to draw something from that mood, that bright and breathless nowhere. More below cut.)

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It was like how he'd claimed, over the peace treaty they signed, that the next time they spoke it would be to greet Djoseras as dynast. In truth, that never came about, because they did meet again shortly afterwards. Szarekh's peace had far-reaching consequences. All the way over in Gheden, at a New Year's festival, did the two princes meet once more - where among the lords of a hundred dynasties, he recognized Djoseras right away.

"Hail to you, fair kynazh! Come alone, then, or with Oltyx in his splendid magnificence?"

It's a miracle what being in neutral territory can do, as haughty as the Nihilakh are and were. Helps to keep things objective.

Here is a catalogue of their last mortal meeting. Zultanekh is portly and handsome, Djoseras slim and graceful. Zultanekh wears rich warm fabrics, Djoseras cool and plain. Zultanekh is fond of the finer things in life, and would never say no to a sparkling goblet of sulphur-wine, while Djoseras is perfectly at home with a glass of tea. ("That's different," he'll protest when Zultanekh inquires if he does not drink with his brother, "Oltyx is my warrior's life.") In the company of others Zultanekh is a mirthful giant, a bold and booming and vivacious fire of a man; Djoseras, on the other hand, is a soft-spoken august creature, dark-haired and dark-eyed like a well kept secret.

Those eyes fix into his now. "Come together, and he is splendid indeed." Djoseras's voice is as stoic as ever, before it sharpens a little and his eyes flash with warning. "But I must tell you now: there's no room for two on the throne of Ithakas, no matter your fox-cunning."

That's his red hair again. The Crown Prince laughs. "Zultanekh gave you his word, did he not? He will not reckon with your brother. It is not Zultanekh you ought to worry about, but the admirers from your coreworlds, which he appears to be accumulating at a rapid pace."

He nods towards the square. He hardly needs to single out Oltyx among the crowd; ever since the younger scion came of age, he has been much wooed and courted, evidenced by the many lords surrounding his person. Standing closest to him is an exceptionally beautiful youth, turning heads by virtue of his existence, yet with eyes for Oltyx alone. ("The heir to the House of Aetis," Djoseras will explain later, betraying the slightest distaste in his tone, "on Sedh. His radiance is well known, though 'tis a pity to shine in a fringeworld.") The prince's sidelock has been cut and he is sturdier than ever, standing proud as a war hero ought to stand.

A fine sight, but a time come and gone for the older ones. "Already it does men our age no good, all this posturing and flattering. Be reassured that Zultanekh prefers a calmer soul. After all, is it not peacetime?"

It ought not to work, this level exchange of words. Peace does not become the necrontyr. Even so, Zultanekh is rewarded when the kynazh's expression softens in response. "Then it is not just you, since a dose of calm will do us all good," he muses, before - finally - a little smile breaks through. "I wish you luck in finding it, Crown Prince."

Not the thin blade-edged smiles of war. A genuine one, soft and slightly modest.

"Oh, I shan't struggle. Ithakas is a rose-garden even in winter."

He wants to see how far he can take this. If Djoseras was being his fastidious self he'd have pointed out that's the Nihilakh, with all the bright lights and vast nocturnal gardens surrounding them at present, but he has not. Zultanekh's eyes hood over with daring, and not a small amount of pleasure, as he steps forwards and offers his hand. "Since this is no place for our aged souls, Kynazh Djoseras, and the youth are content where they are - what say you to a walk?"

Djoseras glances down at it. Looks away, silver robes shimmering as he walks straight past him.

Stops, some eight steps ahead, before turning around.

"For once the Crown Prince would best lead." He says, and grins, sending love's long-lost shock though Zultanekh like a catastrophe.

For a moment he stares, heart stirred to breaking point, before collecting himself. Outwardly it's as if nothing happened. But for once, he feels he can do naught but follow.

Let it be known that Gheden that night was a phantasmagoria of wonders. Along every quarter incense burns sweet upon altars, and the whole place is lit up like the sun, though the winter be cold and dark. As the princes walk through the Lantern Fair they are shined upon like dialectics, turquoise like polar night against Zultanekh's red, the gold mellowed by Djoseras's silver. They spend long stretches of time in silence to take it all in, but spend just as long in deep conversations. Lost between a hundred dynasties, for this one night they might talk man to man - and there's a surprising amount of the world they see alike.

They see other things too. Other people. High up on a ziggurat they glimpse their host, the lead archivist of the Nihilakh, playing senet with the famed diviner of the Sautekh. Now that's a pair seething to strike like vipers one moment, yet are as thick as thieves the next, couched in some arcane understanding afforded by mutual experience. The young could stand to learn from them. They trade silent bows with the Overlord of Pyrrhia, who is alone and melancholy as always. Perhaps he will be so until the end of the world. Zultanekh points out on a balcony the nemesor from the East, the one who oversaw their peace treaty, fanning himself slowly as if he's seen it all. Djoseras expresses some misgivings about his commoner vargard, not in that he's present but that he is idle, nestled faithfully by his master's side. "That may well be the nemesor's wish," Zultanekh suggests gently after they've passed by, for it did not escape his notice how content the pair looked. The Crown Prince has a generous heart for enjoyment. "Does heka preclude rest, Djoseras? No, it does not. He has every right to command it as much as he would action, and to do so tonight makes sense."

Djoseras sighs, exasperated. "They are too leisurely out here in the East, it is unorthodox; it shall be their detriment." What follows, however, is no moral judgement on the nemesor nor the vargard, but a surprisingly vulnerable confession. "I have thought... much about this peace of Szarekh's, in the time we have been apart. Doubtless he wishes for us to be at ease. The necrontyr have ever wished for a purpose, and it would not do to carry our many grudges into it. Yet I do worry about where that leaves us, whether in his pursuit of his great purpose he will erase all of ours. Will we remain how we were after this war? Or will we be subsumed - dissolved - vanished into this calling of the Silent King?"

"Might we not change but remain ourselves?" Zultanekh does not give much thought to those things. He's had the privilege of not needing to, it's true - it's not the Ogdobekh who are concerned about their independence, nor how to define themselves - but for most part, it is simply due to his easygoing nature, confident in every course Anathrosis set them upon. "If not for Szarekh's treaties, would Zultanekh have believed that he would one day walk the same road as the prince of Ithakas? To agree on peace was itself a shift in our ways of thought. Who's to say we cannot permit more?"

"But I do not wish to be changed. I should like to remain myself, thank you very much."

It is clear his answer displeases the kynazh, although he does not have the will to pursue it strongly. After all, it will be millions of years before Zultanekh will understand Djoseras envied him this night, and lamented he could not be the same. Djoseras pauses, his cheeks flushed with rare emotion (Zultanekh admires the height and curve of them quietly), before he glances up at Zultanekh and all is calm again. "I apologize, Prince Zultanekh. It's just that we have been shaped by war, my brother and I. Knowing that we go from there to another war, I..."

A lock of hair has fallen across his forehead, disturbing the surface. Zultanekh longs to brush it back for him. "I do not know whether to call that change, meaningfully speaking."

"If it would reassure you, I can say this much: between the old gods and fair Djoseras, Zultanekh knows whom he would rather have as his enemy. Is it not meaningful that the nature of the combatants is different?" Zultanekh smiles then, and bids the kynazh stand closer; there's a group of Nihilakh lords passing by. It's not quite hand-holding, but Djoseras does not refuse him when Zultanekh touches over his shoulder, which feels like victory enough. "Like you, I was forged by war. I am curious to see what follows it. Say that Szarekh has his way, that the Old Ones are defeated - will we choose peace again, or disorder? I do not know, but I am eager to find out."

"Eager?"

"Yes. Perhaps some day, you will see the excitement in it too."

#warhammer 40k #the twice dead king #zultanekh #djoseras #trazyn the infinite #orikan the diviner #oltyx #yenekh #nemesor zahndrekh #vargard obyron #anrakyr the traveller #we live on archipelagos #fanfiction #snippet #a bit of a cast of characters scene this one. it's very brief and not a central part of the fic but it's nice to have #i am falling in love with both zultanekh and djoseras the more i write. i haven't had characters speak so clearly in my head in a while #still haven't decided what to title this overall piece. it'll be a oneshot but very long and hopefully i will finish it by end of oct

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thresholdbb · 7 months

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Let’s talk about some of the problems with Star Trek. There are obviously real-world, behind-the-scenes reasons for many of the things we don’t like about Star Trek, and they’re usually pretty messed up. A very non-comprehensive list includes but certainly is not limited to:

Geordi being bad with women - racism

Geordi and Worf being the people of color on the cast but in heavy make-up - racism/othering

Harry Kim not getting a promotion - racism (see: model minority)

Klingons all being black/dark skinned (pre ~2001 at least cause that’s mostly what I know) but sometimes played by white actors - racism (see: blackface)

Chakotay’s whole deal - racism (see: noble savage)

The Kazon not assimilated by the Borg - anti-black racism

Deanna Troi not wearing a uniform - sexism

Seven of Nine not wearing a uniform - sexism

Jadzia getting killed off - sexism

Ezri’s poor reception - sexism again

Miles/Keiko/Kira’s baby situation - theres a post going around calling it misogynistic and it’s a pretty good take

B’Elanna being reduced to angry Klingon - Racism and sexism double whammy (see: spicy Latina)

Keiko being perceptually reduced to nagging wife even though that’s not what her actions necessarily portray - racism and sexism double whammy again

Beverly Crusher’s trill episode - homophobia

DS9 flirting with different expressions of sexuality (many characters) but barely committing - homophobia

Pike’s fate - ableism

DS9 Augments - ableism

Later iterations of Spock losing the Jewish coding - antisemitism

I’ll stop the list there since we can keep pulling examples out as nauseam and find examples of any of the -isms, any of the -phobias either within the media itself or behind the scenes but especially in some of the fan spaces. There’s plenty of ethnic/religious/gender/sexuality coding, erasure, contradictions, and many other things that can be pulled out and dissected in ~900 hours of a franchise made over 6 decades. (Keep adding examples if you want, since mine do not cover the whole spectrum of the franchise and barely even touch alien species that also have issues.)

Star Trek is undeniably made in a capitalist Hollywood production company, so white supremacy, heteronormativity, and dominant cultural tendencies usually end up dictating what gets put on air. Hollywood has a dominant thread of white supremacy throughout its history, so even intentionally trying to diversify staff and talent is difficult because of the systems feeding into Hollywood or other industries/institutions. There can also be a great deal of privilege working in the favor of successful artists - not always but something to consider.

Additionally, Trek presents itself as a post-scarcity, futuristic utopia, and sometimes things stick out to us if they don’t meld with our personal understanding of what that would look like.

I’m sure we’ve all heard a little about the old production schedules, long days, demanding schedules, rotating writers, rotating directors, etc etc. It has been proven that implicit bias can drive decisions, especially when people are busy. Even if the production isn’t explicitly motivated by these things, they seep into the work. The -isms and -phobias are sometimes reduced to characteristics of a person/piece of media, but it’s sometimes more useful to characterize actions instead of people since it allows better conversation about the topics. Sometimes it is intentional and explicit, sometimes it’s not. The intention does not affect the impact, so how a storyline or message lands on the audience/viewer is important. Science fiction in particular is a genre that makes social commentary, so by design it lends itself to deeper analysis.

We also can’t forget that the shows are products of their respective times, and a lot of what was shown was pushing against cultural boundaries. For the most part, the franchise has tried to explicitly be diverse, but they are bound to make missteps in other areas, intentional or not. No piece of media is perfect or above scrutiny.

Now, all of that said, there are many schools of thought for how to analyze media. I’m not gonna give a whole crash course in literary criticism but we can look at it from a continuum of different perspectives. We can wonder what the production meant when they made it/what happened off camera (author intentionality), we can draw from the piece itself (in universe), we can focus on how the media was received either in its cultural context or outside (reader response), or we can do some combination of the three. No media exists in a vacuum, so they all end up working together to make the work.

My main point is this: it is ok to pick your analytical perspective. You can chose to ignore the real-world contributions and intentionality when analyzing media. If people want to stay strictly in universe to come up with reasons why something did or did not happen, that’s ok. If people want to focus on what happened behind the scenes and how that affected the work, fine. If people are just focused on how it made them feel, also great. Just maybe don’t get all worked up because someone is analyzing media from a different viewpoint or someone has a different take than you do.

#Star Trek #long post #infinite diversity in infinite combinations #I could put more in the bullets if I thought about it #there are plenty of examples floating around #a lot of the -ism tropes are so common they have names #I don’t remember all of them cause I lent that book out and never got it back #I am not defending the production for making bigoted decisions #the issue is nuanced #i like to stay in universe because it was hammered into me not to look to hard into author intentionality #intentional fallacy #like I’m not a Russian formalist or anything #I can acknowledge that behind the scenes and what resulted is far from perfect and may even perpetuate stereotypes #we contain multitudes #sure we can find plenty of white saviors too #I know I didn’t hit all the possible isms sorry #I have a lot of thoughts on the augment situation though #like yes x happened because whatever person was sexist racist etc but we can look deeper if we want #idk if this is a rant or what but I’m sorry I decided to go off on a million tangents today #a post no one asked for #just gonna keep writing long posts and tags people probably won’t read #meta

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rubyiiiusions · 2 years

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“Why won’t you die?!”

“Hmph. Thought I was pathetic.”

from my fic!

#infinidow #shadinfinite #shadow #shadow the hedgehog #infinite #infinite the jackal #sonic forces #sonic the hedgehog #sth #sth fanart #this is a scene from my fic ‘life gets short our teeth grow long’ go read it #I am in infinidow hell

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kingleedo · 2 years

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Favorite MVs of all time 2/∞

INFINITE - Paradise

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bejeweledmp3 · 3 months

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tell me why i'm considering opening the doc and writing fanfiction during my lunch break. ON MY PHONE

#talking tag;#totp tag;#i've been meaning to make a tag for the fic so. there #ok if anyone is curious (probably not but like. i like talking about these things) i split the fic in sections in my head #so every ''kimberly finds her father in blah blah'' is a section and that's how i keep track of them #so chapter 1 had sections 1-3 and chapter 2 had sections 4-5 #and chapter 3 will have sections 6-7. it has to. for structure reasons #but section 6 is a very important one and she's at like. 8.5k words at the moment???? and i still haven't gotten to the last scene #OF THE SECTION. THEN THERE'S ANOTHER SECTION #which should hopefully be shorter (around 5k or less is my guess) because fewer things happen but. god #we're looking at a 15+k word chapter. if you're reading the fic hopefully you like long chapters cause!!! it'll be a long one!!!!!#also i am once again pointing out that if you're reading the fic and have absolutely anything to say about it PLEASE tell me #i love talking about this fic she's my child that i created. she's like a clay sculpture to me #i do mean to reply to ao3 comments but i'm shy 😭😭😭😭 but i reread them all a billion times and cry about them every time #i'm still thinking about the lengend that dropped that page long comment on chapter one. king (gn) if you see this i love you #when i reply to comments yours will be first. know that you have me and nat's infinite love forever and always.#truly i hope you like it and cand find peace in it. lord knows we all need it #well. anyways! i think i might edit the doc i'll see

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colorful-horses · 2 years

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I've only got 4 episodes left in season 4 of ML, and I'm feeling like this show is going through a bit of an identity crisis. It started as a simple monster-of-the-week superhero show with small hints at plot here and there, but now in season 4 it really feels like they're trying to focus a LOT more on the plot aspects and it's kind of collapsing in on itself lol

I understand it's not uncommon for modern cartoons to start with a simple premise and then start building up a plot later on, but with Ladybug, it feels like they want to have a big story but aren't willing to break away from the base formula of the show. Which is kind of an issue, because the base formula includes having a character press the "revert everything to the status quo" button; aka, if anything of consequence happens, it doesn't actually matter because it'll always be fixed/reversed by the end of the episode. There's essentially little to no plot development , because the forumla literally does not allow for it.

Ladybug doesnt need to have a huge overarching storyline (I honestly enjoyed it more when they weren't so focused on the plot), but it just feels kinda lame for them to dangle all of these different plot threads in front of the audience only to immediately say "just kidding!" and then pretend they never happened. It can come off as very fanfiction-y at times (Oblivio and Chat Blanc come to mind), and they've done the identity reveal fakeout so many times now that when it actually happens, I'm not sure I'm gonna have much of a reaction other than "finally lol". Their lack of dedication to letting anything change in the status quo is SUPER obvious with Chloe.

Chloe has a full redemption arc set up in seasons 2&3 (making her sympathetic, giving her a sad backstory that explains why she is the way she is, making her have moments of lucidation where she admits she's a bad person), only to have her turn evil in the season 3 finale because... she's the mean girl. I'm not even saying Chloe HAD to be redeemed; the idea of having an antagonist try to redeem themselves, only for them to fall even farther, is super enticing to me! The problem is, the show very clearly set up a normal redemption story, and then just changed its mind last second because "she's the Mean one". It's really jarring!

Its like the show has all of these ideas for dramatic storylines, but instead of picking one plotline and focusing on that, they just decided to do all of them and have none of them matter lol

#rabbit miraculous is bullshit btw. whats the point of the snake if the bunny is infinitely better #do not send spoilers about the end of season 4 pls btw. im finishing it later today #im hoping itll make me eat my words about the lack of anything happening in the plot #WHICH B T W. im not saying NOTHING has happened in the plot #when mari told alya that she was ladybug? s tier scene. when they did that at the END of the episode and i realized it was permanent #i was like #miraculous ladybug #sorry for the long post lol. season 4 has been very weird #im almost done mieaculous posting and then we can go back to our regularly scheduled pony programming uwu #not art #i just really need to clarify that im not expecting like. super deep dark storylines from this show #but the show is really suffering from its lack of dedication to ANY of its ideas and its really weird to watch #idk anything about supposed drama around the creator of the show or whatever. im just forming my opinions on the show itself #if youve read this far: i am gonna kiss you on the lips. mwah #didnt meant to post a full essay on this show for 9 year olds but here we are #despite everything ive said here i still really enjoy the show lol. its good junkfood #ill still give the show like a 6 or 7/10 lol i dont care. i enjoy it a lot #:0!!!#every dramtic episode of the show is pretty much always reversed via time travel. theyre just making their own aus lol

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