#though I have a separate interpretation that is nowhere near

[trollocks-in-my-bollocks]

This Wikipedia article about my favourite Mylene Farmer song is

a wild ride

summarizes why I love her so much rip

#je te rends ton amour is revolutional #mylene farmer #though I have a separate interpretation that is nowhere near #the French psychologist's work omg #je te rends ton amour #like this was written by a person who's always asked if she's only famous bc of her nudity in her music videos #and she's singing about giving back all the love because it's too heavy and climbing back to the canvas???? #how can anyone be normal about is? #like this entire song is about how art is based on a nude female body #and what happens when the muse talks back #or god forbid has her own ideas about stuff

[cultofdixon]

Handle with Care

Daryl Dixon • She/Her Pronouns • Witnessing something as scary as that…regardless of your feelings from before…you’ll need to be more gentle • ANGST/SFW/NSFW - Missionary / Hickeys / Grinding • TW: Violence / Anxiety / Minor Injuries

Requested by: Anon

I’ve witnessed a lot of stuff in my life…but this? Oh fuck me

It was a routine run for Alexandria. The two were asked to take a care and try and find anything in near by outdoor shopping centers…when they got in a bit of a pickle.

Y/N was going through one of the stores by herself checking for the usuals when a squatter came out of nowhere and instantly grabbed her. Resulting in her screaming out of initial contact. Thankfully her scream echoed into the next store over where Daryl was, and hearing such made him curse to himself knowing it was a bad idea to separate as he immediately made his way over to her.

The moment Daryl entered the store, he readied his crossbow to take the stranger out. But they were already pinning Y/N to the ground and the way the two were wrestling each other, the shot wasn’t clear. Which led him to drop his crossbow in a hurry and rush over to grab the person by the back of their shirt, practically tossing him into an isle away.

“Y/N are you—“ Daryl stopped himself when he noticed the cut on her cheek and the discarded knife that belonged to the stranger. He was seeing red.

Y/N was a bit taken back already by what happened to her, that when she noticed the stranger start to get up again she retracted and Daryl immediately threw a few punches at the stranger. But it didn’t stop. It was starting to become…a horror movie with the amount of blood that ended up on Daryl’s person.

I should’ve been with her

This never would’ve happened —-it’s just a cut

So much shit has happened, I can’t let anything more happen to her

I won’t let anything happen to her—-even if—

“Daryl!” Her voice cut though his thoughts as he realized that the stranger was dead and on his hands.

The archer dropped the corpse and pulled himself away. He checked his person seeing all the blood and only the worse was brought to his mind. I’m scaring her. Daryl frowns looking over to Y/N after his moment away in his own mind noticing the bit of a shock written on her face. It was a bit unreadable hence why his interpretation was that she feared him in that very moment.

But boy was he wrong.

That was hot—-he literally killed somebody

That shouldn’t have been so fucking hot—-RIGHT

Goddamn it—-HES LOOKING AT YOU

Y/N quickly met his worried expression as she scrambled a bit, only enough to press her back against a few shelves taking a deep breath.

“Uh. You’ve got uh” she gestured to herself where she implied the blood on Daryl’s person.

“Right…yeah uh. Imma clean up before I clean that up to see if it needs stitches” He did the same she did, pointing to his cheek indicating her injury as she completely forgot about it.

“Oh uh I got—-“

“Just to double check. Let me uh. Get somethin’” Daryl left for a brief moment to clean himself up.

Leaving Y/N to audibly exhale, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks when she recalls what she witnessed and what she thought about such. She quickly hid her face in her hands, only to wince to the cut.

“It’ll need stitches. But are you feeling alright? Your face is flushed” Denise asks as she finished cleaning up Y/N’s cut while she was in her own little world. “Y/N?”

Y/N still lost in her train of thought didn’t hear Denise and was immediately snapped out of it when the door to the infirmary opened revealing Daryl.

“How bad is it?”

“Just needs a few stitches but I’m afraid of a head injury if she’s not answering my questions”

As the archer bring himself close resulting in Y/N retracting a bit. Daryl frowns stopping himself.

“Y/N?”

“Yes. Sorry. I heard her. Just. Got lost in my…” Y/N quickly looked into Daryl’s worry filled gaze and covered her face in her hands when her face flushed again. But of course she winced again from the minor pain. “Thoughts” she pulls her hands away turning away from Daryl to give Denise the access she needs to her wound.

“Right…well I’ve got this, Daryl.” Denise reassures. “Won’t take us long”

“Alright. Well, uh. Y/N come find me later?”

But she never did. Y/N started avoiding Daryl because she didn’t want to say how what he did make her feel. Since it was more than a bit of a sexual awakening toward the archer. Something more rooted got pulled out of her that she simply didn’t want to address right away.

Which led Daryl continuing to think the worse.

“Hey, come on a run with me and Glenn”

“Sorry—“ Y/N ran into the door to the Grimes’ residence as she quickly scrambled for the handle. “Watching Jude. Next time?” She asks and didn’t wait for a response as she quickly enters the house.

Even Glenn thought that was a bit weird. But didn’t question it until the two were alone scavenging through an empty neighborhood.

“Did you do something to Y/N?”

“No, I did somethin’ in front of her” Daryl says without thinking as Glenn gave him a confused almost frightened look without being given context right away. “Nothin’…well. I don’t know what’s goin’ on in yer head! I killed somebody in front of ‘er and I scared her”

“So you’ve been trying to talk to her about it?”

“Not even. Or just not yet. I’ve been tryin’ to just…be with her. I don’t know what to do” Daryl sighs following Glenn into a house and doing the usual rummage through.

“You think she’s triggered from the wolves attack? And that you just. Triggered an unpleasant memory? Cuz from what I’ve been told about that invasion, they would kill everyone on sight”

“Shit…So I could’ve hurt her further?” Daryl frowns, only to go into instant annoyance when Glenn shrugs. “You’re very helpful”

“I have a lot on my mind too, man.” Glenn opened a cabinet seeing if there was anything useful. “I would just talk to her. Not exactly corner her but at least somewhere where she feels safe”

The two returned home and Daryl knew Y/N was at the Grimes’s residence last, but when he checked and Carl noticed the archer walking past his open door.

“Dad relieved her of Jude a while ago. Should be back in Carol’s” of course he knows who Daryl was there for.

“Thanks kid”

“Yknow” Carl almost yelled out to get Daryl to stay a second. “I overheard her and Michonne talking. About you”

Daryl brought himself to the doorframe giving the young Grimes a confused look.

“Nothing sound bad if that’s what you’ve been worried about”

“Who says I was worried?”

“Y/N.” Carl sits back in his bed reading his comic book the best he could. “About her obviously. But since you’re already on your way to talk to her, you can get more out of her”

Y/N was in her room in Carol’s reading one of the many books that Daryl has found for her ever since he started doing runs at Alexandria. She was still thinking about that day and not in the way that you’d think of course. She heard the softest knock on the door and looked at her for a moment knowing she was only wearing a bralette and shorts.

Daryl waited for a while thinking she was ignoring him and was about to step away when she quickly opened the door fixing her shirt to finish covering herself. “Hey…you got a second?”

“Mhm. Yeah, come in” Y/N closes the door behind him. “What was it you—-“

“Are you afraid of me?”

“What?”

“Are—-“ Daryl sighs, sitting on the edge of her bed as she remains in front of him crossing her arms giving him a concerned look. “Are you afraid of me after what happened in the store the other day? I lost control…yeah but I’d never—“

“I know you’d never hurt me” Y/N finished for him, bringing herself to sit beside him gripping her knees. “I just. Didn’t know what to say what I really felt there. Because it was like… a bit inappropriate but also not?”

“You lost me there…” He laughs a bit as Y/N tried her best not to just blurt it out. So she tip toed around it…until he connected it for himself.

“Uhhhhh….it was kinda…alarming, yes. And…also hot?”

“Hot?”

“It was just. At first really scary how you let go on this guy…but then remembering you were defending me, just. Me!” Y/N laughs a bit to herself feeling the heat rise in her cheeks. “I just. Mm…never had someone that protective over me. It was nice…a lot more than nice but the words are kinda trapped in me a bit”

“I get that” Daryl assures her. “The words don’t always wanna leave” he subconsciously rubs his knee against hers as he brought his full attention to her. “I was really afraid that I scared yea away”

“You could never scare me away, D. What you did…only made me want you more” and that deceleration led a small moment of no words exchanged between the two…

Then Daryl suddenly presses his lips against hers as she instantly grabbed at his shirt for purchase. Y/N tugged at him gently bringing her back agaisnt the mattress as he followed suit carefully towering her on her bed. The first few kisses was soft and gentle, making sure the other wanted what the other wanted…once it was confirmed, Daryl didn’t hesitate to deepen the kiss as he used his legs to get in between hers as she didn’t hesitate to wrap hers around his torso lowering himself on her. Y/N carefully pushed him back parting the two so she could catch her breath.

“Wow…that uh escalated”

“Yea want me to stop?” Daryl smirks panting a bit himself.

“Fuck no” Y/N brought his face into her hands admiring the man on top of her for a moment before returning her lips on his.

When he pulled away once more, Daryl looked at her flushed state knowing he wants to go further and with the lustful look in her hooded gaze…she wants to as well…and before his mind could return to that doubtful state, he flinched at first contact of her soft hands before easing into her palms.

“If you’re not ready, it’s okay. We can take it as slow as you want” She reassures as he brought himself into her embrace kissing her once more.

“I want you, I’ve always wanted you” Daryl whispers pressing his forehead against hers, feeling her hands gently run through his hair and softly brush against the back of his neck. “I’m done waiting, sunshine”

As the archer brought his lips back to hers for a few kisses, soon bringing his lips to her cheek…being careful with the bandaged one before trailing his kisses down to her jawline and sucking a bit to leave his mark that only started the trail of hickeys from under her chin to her neck and a little bit of her collar bone that he gained access from pulling the collar of her shirt down a bit. Said action led her to push him off a second, suddenly flipping the two as he was left a bit disoriented from how quickly she did such. But didn’t care when Y/N brought her shirt over her head.

“Holy shit…” Daryl exhaled watching Y/N’s blush take over her face. “Can…Can I?” He sat up resting his hands on her hips gesturing with his eyes to her breasts and back to her beautiful E/C eyes.

“Touch me, baby” She relaxed against his touch when his finger tips gently graze her skin from the end of her bralette bringing them underneath such.

The archer was ever so gentle at first with bringing her sensitive bud in between in his fingers. Tugging and pinching enough to draw out the beautiful sounds from her. He pulls his hand away before using both to take her bra off. He found himself staring for a brief moment, admiring really as he brought himself close pressing kisses along her sternum feeling her hands on the back of his neck playing with his hair.

Y/N arched her back slightly when Daryl toyed with her nipple bringing it in between his lips. Sucking gently before biting the sensitive bud drawing out more moans out of her as it was already exciting him, just making it more noticeable. She could feel him getting excited as she didn’t think and just did—by grinding against him listening to his own music while he sucked on the soft pillowy skin of her breasts while returning his hands to her hips guiding her against him.

“Fuck—-Dar” She felt the warmth grow at her core as she struggled to get what she wanted out. Daryl pulled himself back a bit looking up at her bringing his hands to caress the small of her back.

“Tell me what yea want, sunshine” He almost says in a whisper but the way his voice just instantly drew chills down her back when he spoke.

“More. Please god give me more”

Daryl tried to bite back a smirk as he quickly brought her on her back, bringing himself down to her core glancing for any negative signs before getting started with removing the last of her clothing. Tossing her shorts and panties along with the rest of her clothing as he started to feel a bit over dressed. As he was quick to rid himself of his vest he was hesitant with his shirt, Y/N knowing exactly why as she brought herself to sit up after removing her legs from around his torso. She carefully brought her hands onto his face giving him a quick kiss.

“You don’t have to take your shirt off if you’re not comfortable” Y/N reassures with that loving smile of hers that he’d always take into memory every chance he saw it. “I’m okay being the only completely naked individual” she continued to smile when Daryl scoffed at first to such before giving a short lived chuckle.

“I trust you” Daryl says softly returning his lips to hers as the two went from desperately needing the other to more of a tender moment with Y/N starting to pull his shirt over his head taking in the scars she first noticed.

When she started to gently touch them, he flinched at first of course but she didn’t pry or continue when he did. Oh how this woman makes him feel so important and cared for just by her actions. The archer brought his lips to hers enjoying every second even more.

“I need you” Daryl whispers against her lips, as he shifted a bit to bring himself back above her. Sitting up to get his belt off along with his pants and as he did he remembered. “I…I don’t have a condom on me”

“Uh drawer in the nightstand”

“Always prepared for this moment or?” Daryl smirks as he leans to grab it while Y/N hides the blush that grew darker on her cheeks when he said such.

“I would say yes, in the sense that I’ve always wanted this moment with you. But when I first moved in with Carol…it was in there” She exhaled a laugh, listening to Daryl’s escape him a second.

“Really shows what some of these people were before we came along” Daryl adds while he got his pants and briefs off before putting the condom on.

The archer brought himself back in between her legs aligning his cock at her entrance keeping an eye on any change in her expression when he slowly entered her. Y/N tried her best not to be too loud but she couldn’t control herself when she felt how big he was.

“Fuck—-“ Daryl was fully inside of her feeling her squirm beneath him as he leaned over her a bit resting his hands on either side of her face. “God you’re tight. Warm—Shit” He groans letting them both adjust before he started to thrust, slow at first.

Y/N brought her legs back around his torso indicating in one way for him to go faster with also the look in her eyes of wanting more. He was happy to give, bringing his forearms against the bed brushing the hair out of her face and smiling at her. Then suddenly picking up the pace and pulling out the sweet sounding moans out from her, especially the cut short ones when he adjusted to get the perfect angle to hit her sweet spot.

“Daryl—-Baby—Oh god” She moans directly in his ear when he brought his face in the crook of her neck biting slightly to contain his own sounds. But god his sounds shot straight to her core.

They both drew close to climax, Y/N a bit sooner given the way her legs started to shake as Daryl brought one of his hands down to rub circles on her clit to get her there.

“Kiss me—-Please, baby” She begged as he happily obliged firmly pressing his to hers as her hands instantly went into his hair careful when she tugged as that drew out a moan from the archer on top of her. She’ll remember that for later.

Daryl couldn’t hold much longer especially with the way she squeezed around him when she climaxed. He tugged at her bottom lip in between his teeth, releasing as he pressed his forehead against hers bucking inside her a few more times. Giving one last thrust, groaning loud but was quick to shut himself down in case Carol was home. Something neither of them cared about until they were finished.

As he pulls out, Y/N exhales a bit of the exhaustion from her watching his every move as he was very gentle with her. Rubbing her legs as they tiredly rest against him.

“Want me to—“

“Stay” Y/N cut him off knowing where he’d go as Daryl pulls away to rid of the condom and get his boxers back on along with his shirt. “Daryl…”

“I ain’t leavin’. Let me take care of yea” He leans over kissing her once more before grabbing her shirt and shorts helping her back in her clothes.

Once he got her comfortable, Daryl was about to get up and leave for something he didn’t state yet…he wasn’t going to leave her, but her thoughts took her a moment.

“Just…lay with me, please?”

Daryl felt his smile break through even if the poorly lit room couldn’t pick it up well enough. He lifted the blanket, bringing himself right beside her and feeling her get close.

“I won’t be upset if you leave once I’ve fallen asleep…” The archer chuckled to her words.

“I’ll be right here when yea wake up, sunshine”

#cultofdixon #the walking dead #daryl dixon #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon fanfiction

[bijoumikhawal]

The Rebellion of the Waters

On the second day of Creation, God tore the upper waters from the arms of the lower waters amidst great weeping, and the upper waters were suspended in the heavens by word of God. On the third day, when God said, “Let the waters be gathered together” (Gen 1:9), the mountains and hills were raised up and scattered, and deep valleys were dug in the earth, into which the waters rolled. As soon as they had gathered together, the waters be-came rebellious, rising up almost to the Throne of Glory, and covered the face of the earth.But God rebuked the waters and said “Enough!” and subdued them beneath the soles of His feet. He trod down on them so that the air came out of them. When the rest of the waters saw how He had trampled the ocean, and heard its terrible cry, they fled. Even though they were seething, there was nowhere for them to go but to the sea. Therefore God surrounded the sea with sand, and measured it with the hollow of His hand, and made the sea swear that it would not go beyond the boundary He had set, as it is said, Who set the sand as a boundary to the sea (Jer. 5:22). Some say that God not only circled the sea with sand, but caused it to dry up, in accord with the verse He rebukes the sea and dries it up (Nah. 1:4).

This midrash draws a link between God’s separation of the upper and lower waters on the second day (see “The Upper Waters and the Lower Waters,” p. 104) and the gathering of the waters on the third, suggesting that the waters rebelled because of their anger at their recent separation. This midrash also comments on Psalm 93:3: The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their roaring. God’s quelling the rebellion of the waters clearly echoes the struggle between Marduk, the rain god of Babylon, and Tiamat, the personification of primeval waters in the Babylonian epic, Enuma Elish. This epic struggle (also found in other Near Eastern texts) is hinted at in the Genesis creation narrative, where tehom, the deep, echoes Tiamat. The parallels to the Babylonian myth can be seen in the following passage from Enuma Elish, from Near Eastern Mythology by John Gray, 1969, p. 32:

The Lord trod on the legs of Tiamat With his unsparing mace he crushed her skull. When the arteries of her blood he had severed, He split her like a shell-fish into two parts; Half of her he set up and sealed it as sky, Pulled down the bar and posted guards. He bade them not to allow her waters to escape.

Exodus Rabbah 15:22 makes clear that the ocean was not only trampled by God, but slain: “Then God trampled upon the ocean and slew it.” This text is sometimes intepreted to mean that God slew its prince, Rahab. The reference to the hollow of God’s hand comes from Isaiah 60:12. See the following myth, “The Rebellion of Rahab.”

In Likutei Moharan 1:2, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav interprets God’s command of “Enough!” to stop the expansion of the world as referring to the creation of the Sabbath. The Sabbath, in effect, stops the work of the six days of the week.

The Rebellion of Rahab

When God desired to create the world, He said to Rahab, the angel of the sea: “Open your mouth and swallow all the waters of the world.” Rahab replied: “Master of the Universe, I already have enough.” God then kicked Rahab with His foot and killed him. And had not the waters covered him, no creature could have stood his foul odor.

The traditions about God slaying Rahab grows out of Isaiah 51:9, Are you not he who cut Rahab in pieces, and wounded the dragon? and Psalms 89:10, You have trampled upon Rahab; you have scattered your enemies with your strong arm. This midrash is also based on Job 26:12: By His power He stilled the sea; by His skill He struck down Rahab. This myth is another version of “The Rebellion of the Waters,” which describes the struggle between God and tehom, the deep, and thus also echoes the battle between Marduk and Tiamat in the Babylonian epic, Enuma Elish. However, Tiamat is a feminine figure, while Rahab is masculine.

In Enuma Elish Marduk uses Tiamat’s body to build a new world, using half to make the heavens and half to make the earth. He uses considerable violence in defeating Tiamat, as does God in defeating Rahab. Marduk crushes her skull with his club, splits her body in two, and scatters her blood in the wind. In the Hebrew myth, the waters are personified in Rahab, the Prince of the Sea, and instead of trampling the waters, God kicks and kills Rahab. There are hints in rabbinic writings that Rahab once had a great, godlike status. For example, it is stated in Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:28: “Rahab placed God in heaven and upon earth.” Although Rahab is killed in this myth, he reappears in later legends as the Prince of the Sea, and performs various deeds at the command of God or one of the rabbis. See, for example, Y. Sanhedrin 7:25d, where Rabbi Joshua ben Haninah calls upon Rahab to recover a lost charm, so that a spell can be broken.

Midrash Tanhuma tries to explain why God kicked Rahab, the angel of the ocean, who represents the ocean itself: “Why did God kill the angel? The rest of the waters, seeing that God kicked the ocean, and hearing its screams, fled without knowing where to flow, until they reached the place that God had prepared for them.” This violent act is thus explained as a way to force the recalcitrant waters to gather in the right places.See “The Rebellion of the Waters,” p. 105.

An alternate version of the Rahab myth found in the Prologue to the Zohar 56 explains that God’s tears, hot as fire, shed over the exile of the Shekhinah, fall into the Great Sea and sustain Rahab. And Rahab sanctifies God’s Name by swallowing all the waters of the days of Creation—the very act that Rahab refused to do in the other version of the myth, for which God killed him in anger. The moral of the two versions is clear: when Rahab refuses an order from God, he is slain; when he accepts the order, his life is sustained.

Pg 105-107, Tree of Souls by Howard Schwartz

#cipher talk #Jewish mythology

[maiji]

I'll request a reading if you're still doing them! why not. for my little guy Hana. what is he afraid of with regards to... his own history? 🤔 numbers.. 11 and 23. and if you're not still doing readings.. i hope you have a great day regardless!

I am absolutely delighted to do a reading for Hana from the webcomic Kings of Sorts! Hana seems like such a sweetie but from his very first appearance it's clear there's so much more to him than meets the eye. I'm nowhere near caught up on webcomic so this will be interesting, to see whether any patterns/interpretations we pull out manage to touch on anything that readers can already experience, or whether it just veers off into another direction of far-off general speculation. So if there somehow manage to be spoilers in this reading, I'm sorry, I had no idea either. lol

#11 was The Whip (which, by the way, is actually the eleventh card in Lenormand as well, interestingly enough), and #23 was The House. This combination actually made me gasp in light of the question. Kind of an "oh! / ohhh??" gasp. I think there's a lot of potential in terms of delving deeply into creative writing inspiration or character analysis!

The Whip is a card associated with many things that can cause pain: conflict, violence, shame, anger. And The House has already come up before, so we know it's used to represent a lot of things that seem like the exact opposite of The Whip - warmth, stability, things that make you feel cozy and happy and comfortable. But it's also associated with private matters. In other words, the exterior facade presented to the world may be brightness and cheer but there may be something much darker happening behind closed doors. I am reminded of when we first meet Hana in his home, and the scene where he talks about wanting to be able to help the people in his community in some way, any way...

In short, looking for a connection between the two cards that could be a cause for fear in Hana's history seems like we have a plethora of options. If we're being super dark - was there past punishment and suffering that separated him from things he considered home or family? Did they hurt, or were they caused by, people he would consider family? And whips are also things used to control - there's a lot of symbolism for a whip as not only a weapon and instrument of torture, but also a stereotype of a tool used to manage things seen as dangerous, wild and/or "other", like some kind of beast tamer. It has a lot of cruelty associated with it.

We don't have to go down the path of only super dark places, by the way. The Whip doesn't have to be interpreted in an extreme fashion - though I suppose with creative writing/inspiration we can often feel like that's an obvious or exciting and dramatic route to go down. It can also represent an argument, a physical activity (an injury?), something much less overtly traumatic but still play a major role in a core memory/event. Also, this Whip has flags added to it for greater control and sound effects - there's a sense that it can be for show, engineered as part of a performance.

I hope this was helpful! Thank you for the opportunity to read for Hana. Please don't be too mean to him!

---

Thanks for requesting a limited time free reading to celebrate the new edition of the Fortune Lenormand oracle/art deck!

Want to dive deeper?

Fortune Lenormand oracle/art deck - there's a free downloadable overview of card meanings!

humangray.com/lenormand - more info and resources/links!

(Note: these readings are being done with my old card deck from the original printing. There's not much difference with the new edition available in the link above - the biggest one is that the new edition has a custom box ooh ahh!)

#lenormand #readings #fortune lenormand #crabbng #kings of sorts #replies #reply

[crusherthedoctor]

It's only natural that after piles of spinoff media old and new, created by people who either don't understand the games or just changed things for the sake of it. The fans would begin to lose sight of the original interpretations. I agree that it sucks, though. But I also think it was kind of inevitable we'd get to this point.

And yet there are franchises that are far older that somehow don't have this problem, or at least nowhere near to the same extent.

Take Batman for example: Batman's had a lot of different media over the decades, each with their own portrayals and dynamics, and yet for the most part, people are able to separate them from each other instead of treating one like it's another, even if they have their preferred adaptations, characterizations, etc.

Maybe they just aren't trying hard enough when it comes to Sonic.

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion

[scoups4lyfe]

Hebi Anon

Would you believe me if I said I found the "Taro tells his weakness" scene to make little sense, even with Taro's inability to lie?

Because, the show has already shown us he doesn't have to answer questions. IN EPISODE 2

When Sanae (the woman who kept asking how old she looked) asked Taro the final time before turning into the MOTW, she asked "How old do I LOOK". KEY WORD IS LOOK. The first time, Taro tells the truth. Second time with a makeover, I can see how that's still the truth by her looks. The third time however, she objectively LOOKED younger, even an AI designed to approximate age by appearance would have said she looked younger. Taro didn't answer the question she spoke (How old do I look), he told the truthful answer to a question she didn't ask (How old am I). So that episode showed me that Taro can avoid answering questions, which made the weakness scene make little sense and made me angry again.

Another (smaller) thing. Taro knew Sonoi knew his weakness. If that's the case WHY DID HE USE ONITAIJIN!? HE STILL HAS DONZENKAI OH. And unlike other Sentai shows, NOTHING even implies that DonZenkai Oh became "outclassed" or anything. Though I can excuse this one as compulsions to maintain habits even if suboptimal is something I deal with (though nowhere near that extent).

Taro's neurodivergency and my neurodivergency is like trying to connect two completely incompatible gears. Ton of noise and something ends up breaking

I always interpreted the episode two scene as, idk, Tarou being able to see her actual age LOL! Regardless of the hitosuki effects.

But on second thought, rather than having to do with physical appearance, I think maybe it was the fact instead of the visual that had him answering this way.

If Tarou at first guessed her age,and she confirmed it. “Spot on, Tarou.” That would tell Tarou he was right, and she was like 68 or whatever. Which means, if she’s logically 68, then it doesn’t matter how much younger she becomes or looks, because if he knows that she IS 68, therefore she’ll always look 68.

The fact of her actual age changes the objective fact of her “look.”

Most people would just go “wow she looks younger!” But I think for Tarou, because he knows she is 68, then that means her look will always be “68.” Because that’s how old she actually is.

Idk if I’m making much sense. But the definition of “look” is directly impacted by the fact of her age. Basically, the fact determines the answer.

If she is 68. That means she’ll always look 68. Even if other people go “wow she could be 20!” Tarou would instead go, “she’s 68. So even if the dress changes, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s 68. Which mean she looks 68. Because she is 68.”

I really do not know how to explain this better LOL!

Basically he doesn’t look at someone and go “ah they look 20”. He looks at them by the actual fact of their age. So a thirty year old would always look 30, until they become 31. Then they look 31. (Etc. Etc.)

“How old do I look” for him is the same as “how old am I?”

So I don’t think he was avoiding the question. But rather answering the question he thought he was being asked.

For Sonoi, I’m again, going back to “Tarou’s mind works like a dot chart.”

I sincerely do not think he connected A) tell the truth (his weakness) with B) The enemy knows his weakness, or C) The enemy will use his weakness against him.

Especially because, Sonoi was/is his friend.

And they weren’t fighting. Momoi Tarou was Momoi Tarou, not the theatrical mask of “Don Momotarou.” (He sees these things as being separate.) So I’m not surprised he didn’t connect, “I told Sonoi my — Don Momotarou’s —weakness” with “I told my enemy, my weakness.”

That, and (again this is from my Autism research, podcast notes LOL)

Often times there will be a disconnect in “This hurt” and “what hurt me?”

There was an eloquent speaker they had on the podcast, who was (herself) autistic. And she told them that often times she doesn’t have the foresight of realizing “Ah, this (thing) caused a meltdown/me to throw a fit / hurt myself.” And that often she won’t know until the thing caused her distress until she has already punched the wall.

And even THEN, she might not realize the cause until months later.

This helped me realize why Momoi would attempt at lying, even when his first attempt killed him.

“Doesn’t he know that lying hurts him? That it could kill him?”

(This really confused me. ‘Why would he actively do something that would hurt him?’ Which is double compounded by him telling Sonoi his weakness. I just knew in my soul when he answered Sonoi, that this was a man that did NOT understand what he was doing. ) So;

No. I don’t think he’s connected “I tried to lie” with his metaphorical “fist hitting the wall.”

Here’s some really good quotes from that episode of the podcast that really stuck with me for just…ALL of episode 13 (esp how I interpretated it):

“I only realize that I’m out of my depth after I’ve done the dangerous thing —only when the fist hits the wall.”

“I didn’t know I was scared until it was too late.”

“I didn’t know. I had no idea.”

For using Onitaijin—again, I don’t think he realized ‘I told my enemy if I use this thing I have a split few seconds of weakness. And they could take advantage of that to hurt me.’

And, I think Tarou prefers to use Onitaijin, because then it’s not just him fighting, but him and his comrades. Using Zenkai-Oh would’ve just enforced the idea “I don’t need you guys. I can handle it myself.” But by using Onitaijin and calling them (he’s also included in this) “My fools”

—Again, want to double down on this, Tarou is saying ‘obaka’ rather than ‘baka’ so he’s essientially using the cuter, softer/nicer word for ‘fool’ here. Which is why the translator put ‘my’ when there was no actual possessive used, because he was being teasing. “My fools.”

Essentially Tarou is admitting, “I need you guys to fight. We’re a team” (Albeit a team of ‘silly fools.’)

Especially because Onitaijin involves them becoming One. Tarou literally could not do Onitaijin without the help AND support (they’re his arms and legs, wings and shoulders) of his companions.

Uhhh,,, that’s my interpretation of episode 13 😛.

#lol #my heart really broke when I was listening to that podcast #and she said ‘I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.’ #it shows just how out of his depth and vulnerable Tarou actually is #that he can’t even tell when he’s being taken advantage of or being made fun of #or doing something that could hit or kill him 🥺 #my thougts #avataro sentai donbrothers #donbrothers liveblog #donbrothers #13 peach falls #who let delivery boy bring a parade float to a gun fight #sentaisouped #momoi tarou #before harvesting season #hebi anon 🫡💋 #asks #donbrothers analysis

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Here is the second review of the book of Bruce Lincoln Religion, empire, and torture: the case of Achaemenian Persia, with a postscript on Abu Ghraib, this time a very critical one by a “New Achaemenid Historian”. The text is a long one, but it deserves to be read, although I have to say that I have some major objections to it. I have not reproduced its notes, except one which refers to Herodotus’ complex attitudes toward the Persians. But I give of course the link on which this review can be found in its entirety. I will present some thoughts of mine on this debate in a separate post.

“ORIENTALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, AND THE ACHAEMENID EMPIRE: MEDITATIONS ON BRUCE LINCOLN’S RELIGION, EMPIRE, AND TORTURE 1 

                                          HENRY P. COLBURN

Benedetto Croce’s dictum that all history is contemporary history is nowhere better exemplified than in Bruce Lincoln’s 2007 book, Religion, empire, and torture: the case of Achaemenian Persia, with a postscript on Abu Ghraib. This book, despite its foregrounding of an ancient empire, is by Lincoln’s own admission the product of his “anguish and outrage concerning the American imperial adventure in Iraq’.2 But rather than criticizing American actions directly, he does so through an extended case study of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Though Lincoln’s main thesis merits much consideration, this case study is the focus of the present paper, because of the severe methodological flaws that inform it, and their potentially insidious consequences. Indeed, their insidiousness is made all the more worrisome because of the book’s largely uncritical reception. The ten Anglophone reviews known to me appear in a wide range of scholarly journals, many serving academic specialties far outside of classics, ancient history, and Near Eastern studies, and only two of them even recognize some of the methodological issues.3 Even more troubling, this book was the recipient of the 2007 Frank Moore Cross Award given by the American Schools of Oriental Research.4 This organization’s endorsement of such a misinformed and biased study demonstrates that despite the efforts of scholars in the field of Achaemenid studies, outdated and inappropriate ideas about the empire still persist among well informed and well meaning scholars of antiquity. This paper, then, is a series of meditations on Religion, empire, and  torture, intended to elucidate ancient and modern perceptions of the empire, beginning with the methodological flaws that underlie Lincoln’s account, but also including the roles played by orientalism and postcolonialism in Achaemenid historiography. The purposes of this exercise are not only to show what is problematic about Lincoln’s book, but to identify the underlying causes of its problems, and to understand how such problems can be prevented in the future.

Religion and torture 

The bulk of Lincoln’s book is dedicated to a structuralist reading of Achaemenid royal inscriptions.5 In itself this approach is interesting for its novelty, but it is based on the implicit and unproven assumption that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrians. Lincoln claims in the book’s preface that ‘it is relatively inconsequential whether we regard the imperial religion as Zoroastrian in a strict and narrow sense ... or more broadly as Mazdaean’, but this claim belies a heavy reliance on later, specifically Zoroastrian religious texts.6 He uses these texts as parallels to his interpretations of Achaemenid ideology, many of which would otherwise have nothing else to recommend them. For example, he bookends his fifth chapter (‘Microcosms, Wonders, Paradise’) with references to the Zoroastrian creation myths and Pahlavi texts as a means of interpreting, among other things, Achaemenid paradeisoi. He concludes that ‘the paradises that the Achaemenians built on earth were meant to offer a foretaste of the delights awaiting the righteous after death and at history’s end’.7 This function is nowhere attested in any contemporary source, and is derived solely from comparisons with much later Zoroastrian material. It also ignores the extensive scholarship on the various secular functions of paradeisoi.8 Thus, despite his claim to be uncommitted on the point, Lincoln’s argument relies to a significant degree on the Achaemenids being Zoroastrian after all, specifically in a manner consistent with much later Zoroastrianism; otherwise his frequent quotation of these texts serves no meaningful purpose. This view, however, is not universally accepted by scholars of the Achaemenid Empire, and requires supporting on Lincoln’s part.

The question as to whether or not the Achaemenids were Zoroastrians is a vexed one.9 The only direct link between the Achaemenids and Zoroastrianism is the name of the god Auramazda, who is featured in the Achaemenid royal inscriptions. The name is related linguistically to the name of Ahura Mazda, the foremost Zoroastrian god, where it means ‘Wise Lord’. In the past this has been sufficient for many scholars to assume that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrian in a manner familiar to later practice and belief, but this notion is no longer widely accepted on account of the frailties of this link. No Zoroastriantext dates earlier than the Sasanian period (i.e. third to seventh centuries CE), when the Avesta was written, and some of the texts to which Lincoln refers were written even later, in the ninth century. Moreover, the language of the Avesta (Avestan) is an eastern Iranian dialect, meaning that the content of the Avesta is also spatially removed from the Achaemenid homeland in Fars in southwestern Iran. The date of the original composition of these texts varies considerably, and is contingent to some degree on the dates of the lifetime of Zarathustra himself, about which there is also little scholarly consensus. Thus, the use of Zoroastrian texts as evidence for, or illustrations of, Achaemenid religious belief requires continuity from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE down to the third century CE at the earliest. As has been noted, this continuity has been accepted easily by some scholars, most notably Mary Boyce, who has placed particular emphasis on the unbroken continuity of Zoroastrian tradition from the time of Zoroaster to the present, but as a scholarly premise it is difficult to accept uncritically10.

This difficulty is compounded by the significant quantity of evidence for Achaemenid religion that is decidedly not Zoroastrian in nature. Foremost among this are the references in the Persepolis Fortification Archive to the provisioning of cults of a wide variety of deities, including Elamite and other Iranian gods, as well as the Mesopotamian god Adad. In a recent study of these texts, Wouter Henkelman has argued convincingly that this pantheon accurately reflects the religion of the Achaemenid Persians.11 Moreover, the provisions allocated to the cult of the Elamite god Humban are significantly greater than those for that of Auramazda. In light of this evidence it is quite difficult to regard Achaemenid religion as monotheistic, let alone exclusively Zoroastrian. Likewise, without recourse to later Zoroastrian texts the Achaemenid imperial inscriptions do not actually reflect any identifiable tenet of Zoroastrianism.12 Indeed, the only contemporary references to Zarathustra himself are Greek ones.13 The end result is that there are more questions than answers about Achaemenid religion, and these uncertainties are reflected in much of the recent scholarship on religion in the empire.14 Lincoln cannot unequivocally link Achaemenid religious ideology with Zoroastrian practice and belief without assuming centuries of unchanged continuity between them, and this assumption can no longer be made without some justification.

Lincoln’s evidence for torture on the part of the Achaemenids is more problematic.The crux of his sixth chapter, with the melodramatic title ‘the Dark Side of Paradise’, is a pair of passages from Plutarch’s Life of Artaxerxes describing the gruesome deaths of a Persian soldier named Mithradates and an unnamed Carian, both for claiming the credit for killing the would-be usurper Cyrus.15 These passages are derived from the Persica written by Ctesias of Cnidus, a Greek doctor who spent time at the courts of Darius II and Artaxerxes II in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE.16 His Persica is now lost, but it is preserved in an epitome by Photius and by references to it in other authors, primarily Nicolaus of Damascus, Diodorus Siculus, and Plutarch.17 In addition to these two incidents, Ctesias also describes the death of the eunuch Masabates, whom Queen Parysatis ordered to be flayed alive for mutilating the corpse of her son Cyrus, and he alludes to the torture and gruesome deaths of several other individuals at the hands of Achaemenid royalty.18 These references to torture form the lynchpin of two important aspects of Lincoln’s argument, namely the use of especially elaborate and grisly forms of torture as public spectacles in the Achaemenid Empire, and the failings of the empire in the fourth century BCE that necessitated their use. But, as will be shown below, in his discussion of Achaemenid torture Lincoln has not interrogated his sources sufficiently, with the result that he draws his conclusions on the basis of a distorted, outmoded, and prejudiced view of the empire.

Outside of Ctesias the only evidence for any torture of this kind is provided by the Bisitun Inscription, Herodotus, and Valerius Maximus.19 Valerius may be dismissed altogether, as his work dates to the first century CE, and is quite confused about Achaemenid history. Herodotus does refer to instances of gruesome executions or other corporal punishments meted out by Achaemenid kings, but they are much less cruel and unusual than those referred to by Ctesias. They are also, as Robert Rollinger has noted, attested in other Near Eastern textual sources, albeit ones from the second and earlier first millennium BCE, whereas most of those mentioned by Ctesias do not appear in any other  source.20 In fact torture is not attested in Near Eastern legal texts until the later Hellenistic period, when the use of a ‘rack of interrogation’ appears.21 The mutilation of Smerdis on the orders of Cambyses, specifically the removal of his ears, was probably a Greek invention, and it has been argued that the mutilation of Masistes’ wife on the orders of Amestris actually predates the historical personages involved and originated in earlier oral tradition, the nuances of which were unclear to Herodotus by the time he encountered the story.22 Certainly there are literary features to this story that need to be given their due weight before it can be read as a straightforward historical account. Finally, in Darius’ monumental trilingual inscription at Bisitun there are references to the mutilation and execution of only two of the nine rebel leaders, and it is worth noting that these are cases of high treason, which in most societies carry a penalty of the utmost severity.23 The Assyrians, for example, treated rebels in a similar manner, and in mediaeval and early modern England traitors were typically hanged, drawn, and quartered, or executed publicly in some other grisly manner.24 This does not pardon such actions on the part of Darius by any means, but it does indicate that his treatment of the rebel leaders was not exceptionally extreme by contemporary standards.

Thus Lincoln relies almost entirely on Ctesias for the elaborate and outlandish tortures that figure in his argument. This is troubling because Ctesias is not a straightforward historical source by any means. In antiquity he enjoyed a poor reputation as a historian; Plutarch, for example, accused him of being a self-aggrandizing liar.25 Many modern historians have shared this view. Felix Jacoby regarded his work as Skandalgeschichte and Arnaldo Momigliano (snidely) remarked ‘There is excitement in reading Ctesias. One never knows when he will tell the truth for a change’.26 Recent attempts to revive his reputation have emphasized the literary rather than historical merits  of Ctesias’ work, suggesting it was meant to be novelistic rather than historical.27 The reason for this opprobrium is his lurid, trivial, and often fantastical subject matter and, insome cases, unfavourable comparisons with Herodotus. Certainly there are some real howlers in the Persica, such as his statement that the battle of Plataea preceded the one at Salamis, but there are also instances in which his information is accurate even in its details, such as in his description of the struggle for the throne between Sogdianus and Darius II, in which many of the actors named by Ctesias are also attested in contemporary Babylonian documents.28 The luridness of his subject matter may have as much to do with the nature of royal courts, or more precisely with the sorts of stories told about royal courts. In a study of the early Principate Jeremy Paterson notes ‘there is no single correct account of the court: there are many narratives from many points of view, all of which have validity’.29 To wit, in the absence of an authoritative version various stories of this sort are invariably told about any royal court. Furthermore, nearly all of the material from Ctesias is preserved only in the extracts chosen by his epitomizers, especially Plutarch and Photius, whose interests affected their choices and thus the overall impression of the nature and content of Ctesias’ work.30 At any rate, regardless of the ancient or modern opinions of Ctesias’ merits as a historian, it is clear that his work cannot be read literally as a straightforward historical account that faithfully and accurately reproduces the events, including instances of torture, and personalities of the Achaemenid court in the early fourth century.

There is a further potential source of distortion in Ctesias’ account of the Achaemenid court which needs to be identified. Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, in an important deconstruction of Ctesias’ text, makes an interesting observation: his Persica contains one of the earliest conceptualizations of a stereotyped and essentialized Orient, in particular an effeminate Orient, constructed in specific contrast to the Greek world.31 The acts of savagery carried out by various Achaemenid royal women demonstrate the baseness of the Persians, and the fact that women rather than men are taking actions such as these indicate that gender roles, as seen in the Greek perspective, are reversed in the Achaemenid court. It is not the first such conceptualization, and it fits a pattern of Greek (particularly Athenian) self-definition versus a barbarian ‘other’, which gained significant currency after the Persian Wars and is especially vivid in Aeschylus’ Persians.32 As such it tells us more about the Greeks and Ctesias than it does about the Persians. Ctesias’ work exhibits two tropes that are particularly characteristic of this proto-orientalism, namely a focus on the inherent savagery of the Persians (as exemplified by the incidents of torture he reports) and a view that after the time of Darius I, the empire entered a state of irreversible decline brought on by decadence.33 Even if his work was informed by firsthand experience, Ctesias still belonged to a Greek intellectual milieu (the Persica was composed after his return to Cnidus), and this milieu also informed how he viewed the Persians and what he wrote about them for a Greek audience.34 Moreover, as Edward Said pointed out, many of the modern orientalist authors based their written work on periods of residency in the East, but this residency did not necessarily alter or mitigate their authorial biases, and in many cases may have contributed to them.35 And even if Ctesias’ portrayal of the decadence of the court of Artaxerxes II was informed by the negative propaganda of his brother, as has been suggested, Ctesias’ willingness to believe it says as much about his own perceptions of the Persians as it does about the actual conditions at Persepolis or Susa.36

Both of these proto-orientalist tropes play important roles in Lincoln’s argument: the role of savagery is already clear in his discussion of torture, but decline is important too, since, as he states in his denouement, in later periods the empire found it ‘increasinglydifficult to contain the contradiction between its discourse and its practice’.37 In other words, the empire’s decline is tantamount to the pursuit of paradise being stalled indefinitely, and according to Lincoln this leads to acts of enormous barbarity, such as the treatment of Mithradates. But not only is this equation not necessarily accurate (there is, as Kozuh observes in his review, always some contradiction between an empire’s discourse and its practice),38 it is based on a literary trope informed by ancient Greek cultural bias rather than on historical evidence. In fact, the trope of a great founding ruler whose legacy is progressively ruined by his lesser successors is a somewhat common one in the ancient world, as exemplified by the kingdom of Israel under David, Solomon, and Rehoboam respectively, and by the Julio-Claudians and the Flavians in Rome. As such its appearance in Ctesias’ Persica is yet one more reason why this author needs to be treated with caution as a historical source.

It is important to emphasize here that none of this discussion should be taken to suggest that torture was unheard of or even uncommon in the Achaemenid Empire. Even if the references to torture in Ctesias are uncertain, violence of various sorts surely must have occurred. But this is equally true of all empires, especially in antiquity. One need not look far to find instances of savagery in the Roman Empire, many of which were even sanctioned by Roman law.39 That is not at issue here. Rather, the issue is whether or not the Achaemenid Empire was characterized by an extraordinary level of savagery and gruesomeness in its punishments. This characterization is necessary to Lincoln’s argument, but it relies on the historicity of Ctesias’ account of incidents of torture, and given the difficulties surrounding the interpretation of Ctesias’ work outlined above, this historicity cannot be compellingly established. It is certainly appropriate to be sceptical about the human capacity for cruelty, but there is also good reason to be sceptical about Greek representations of the Persians

Lincoln’s discussion of the Achaemenid Empire relies on the assumptions that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrian and that Ctesias’ accounts of Achaemenid torture can be understood in a straightforward and literal manner. Neither of these are assumptions that scholars of the Achaemenid Empire can make unequivocally, nor do they. The consequence of their use is that Lincoln depicts the Achaemenid Empire as immutable and savage, with its noble beginnings quickly subverted by decadence and decline. This impression is at best outmoded, and at worst insidious, because these two assumptions resurrect orientalist stereotypes that scholars of the empire have long worked to overcome. Indeed, immutability and barbarity are two of the characteristics of orientalism identified by Edward Said in his famous critique, and Lincoln’s use of them, however unwitting, implicates him in an orientalist agenda.

Orientalism 

The study of the role of orientalism in ancient history and historiography may be something of a tired subject for many students of antiquity, but Lincoln’s book demonstrates clearly its continuing relevance for contemporary scholarship, especially scholarship on the Achaemenid Empire. In Said’s own words, orientalism is ‘the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’.40 This is not the place to reexamine this multifaceted and highly controversial concept in any detail, but its salient characteristics are straightforward enough. Put simply, orientalism accentuates the differences between East and West while emphasizing the civilized, dynamic nature of the West in contrast to the savage, decadent, and static nature of the East. Said argued that this contrast is socially constructed rather than inherent, andt hat its purpose has been to naturalize, justify, and explain the West’s domination of the East. It informs a broad range of Western thought about the East, including academic study and artistic representation, and the ethnic stereotypes and prejudices generated by it find their way, often unintentionally, into a wide variety of media and venues. Criticism of Said’s thesis has been vehement and varied. In addition to cataloguing his historical errors this criticism contends that Said made undiscriminating use of literary evidence, that he was unable to demonstrate a chronological link between European imperialism and orientalism, that he essentialized the West in the same manner as, he argued, that the West had essentialized the Orient, and that his personal agenda clouded his objectivity.41 But none of this criticism actually counters Said’s thesis in any meaningful way, and though many of his critics have cited various counterexamples, they represent exceptions rathert han disproof. Likewise, claims that orientalism has been ‘overcome’ are equally invalid,even if orientalist stereotyping in its broadest form is now generally frowned upon.42 For example, Jack Goody has recently broached a similar topic in a study of what he perceives as the systematic attribution of historically significant innovations to periods of European history exclusively.43 The result, he argues, is a teleological approach to history whereby Europe’s ascendancy is depicted as the result of a natural and inevitable progression.Though he does not refer to this as orientalism per se its effect is largely the same.

Said associated orientalism with the advent of European overseas colonization, but he also noted that it had antecedents in classical antiquity.44 Most notable is Aeschylus’ Persians, first produced in 472 BCE, not long after the Persian Wars. Taking her lead from Said, Edith Hall has demonstrated that Aeschylus’ portrayal of the Persians is one ofthe first examples of a sort of proto-orientalism.45 Aeschylus depicts the Persians as slavish, decadent, and emotional in stark contrast to the free and rational Greeks. Hall argues that this depiction is the construction of an ‘other’ that serves Greek self-identification rather than accurately reflecting the lived reality of the Persians themselves. Because the Persians is tragedy rather than history this stereotyping may not raise many eyebrows, but it was not written in a vacuum and presumably had some resonance with its audience.46 Indeed, given that Athenian playwrights competed for awards it is not unreasonable to expect that the content of these plays was at least partly congruent with prevailing popular opinion. Moreover, in subsequent years historians such as Ctesias exhibited these same proto-orientalist tendencies in describing the Persians. The epilogue to Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is a good example of this.47 In this section the author (whomay or may not be Xenophon himself) describes how far the Persians have declined as a  people and an empire since the heyday of Cyrus the Great. Likewise, the Hippocratic treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places includes a discussion of the reasons for the ‘mental flabbiness’ and ‘cowardice’ of the Asiatic; they are attributed partly to climate and partly to the despotic form of their government.48 Aristotle expresses a similar sentiment in his Politics.49 More recently Rachel Kousser has argued that the Periclean reconstruction of the Athenian Acropolis drew heavily on the stereotype of oriental savagery in its decorative programme.50 Contemporary prejudices such as these were then incorporated into the works of later writers like Plutarch, and thus permeate the Greek sources for the Achaemenid Empire.51 [Note 51:  Herodotus’ view of the Persians is considerably more complex than this. At times he seems to reflect this sort of prejudice, and at others he expresses clear admiration for the Persians. This is not the proper venue to considerthe matter in detail; for a recent, succinct overview see E. S. Gruen, ‘Herodotus and Persia’, in E. S. Gruen (ed.),Cultural identity in the ancient Mediterranean (Los Angeles 2011) 67-85]

The proto-orientalist prejudices of the Greeks have informed modern scholarship on the Achaemenids because until recently Greek sources were the primary evidence used for the study of the empire. Although Near Eastern sources such as the Bisitun Inscription and the Persepolis Archives have provided some counterweight to the Greek sources they provide evidence of a very different kind, and in the case of the latter they have only become available for study recently. Thus, throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries Achaemenid history was written from a Hellenocentric viewpoint.52 Scholars from Grote and Rawlinson onwards made use of these Greek sources without recognizing the prejudices inherent in them, and as a result these prejudices became part of modern historical narratives of the empire.53 It is important to note here that the orientalism of these modern scholars was not caused by ancient prejudices; one of the key points of Said’s argument is that the conceptions of East and West are contemporary social constructions rather than timeless categories. Rather, because these scholars were operating within the milieu of modern orientalism, they found the ancient prejudice to be in line with their own ideas about the differences between East and West. As Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg put it, ‘it is rather a case where two tendencies, the undefined but implicit “Orientalism” of the fourth century Greek literature and the prevalent mental attitudes of Europe-centrism in the 19th century mutually reinforce each other’.54 Though Said’s critique was originally aimed at scholars of the mediaeval and modern Middle East,  it has had clear applicability to those studying the Achaemenid Empire as well. Lincoln’s book is a case in point: he recognizes explicitly the bias inherent in many of the Greek sources, yet he ends up reproducing that same bias himself.55

It is worth noting here that the role played by classics in the formation, validation, and maintenance of European colonialism, especially in the nineteenth century, has also affected significantly modern scholarly views of Achaemenid imperialism. Just as orientalism served to naturalize Western domination of the East, classics privileged the study of Greece and Rome, both of which engaged in colonization and imperialism of various sorts, making them exemplars for contemporary states and empires.56 European (and American) colonizers saw themselves as the successors to the Greeks and Romans, not only culturally and linguistically, but also politically. But, because of the ancient and modern prejudices articulated above, the Achaemenid Empire was rarely viewed as exemplary in this manner. It was sometimes viewed as a great empire in comparison with a decadent and corrupt modern Iranian shahdom, and, although the figure of Cyrus the Great was much admired at various points in time, this admiration was due as much to the reception of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia in Renaissance Italy and later periods as it was to any aspect of the historical figure.57 This preference for Greco-Roman imperialism resulted in the creation of a double standard that persists even in some modern scholarship, according to which this classical imperialism can be a sign of achievement, whereas Achaemenid imperialism is necessarily oppressive and loathsome. For example, Lincoln and other scholars have no compunctions about describing Achaemenid torture in gruesome detail, despite the unreliable nature of the evidence for it.58 At the same time the most egregious act of Athenian imperialism, the slaughter to a man of the Melians in 416/15 BCE, has elicited bewilderment and confusion on the part of many classicists, and in at least one (somewhat disturbing) case even an apology for Athenian behaviour.59 Nor is this double standard exclusive to the field of classical studies. Egyptologists have long regarded Egyptian imperial expansion in the New Kingdom with interest and favour; at the same time their attitudes towards the period of Achaemenid rule in Egypt range from hostile to dismissive. Studies of this period tend to take the somewhat contradictory view that on the one hand this rule was oppressive and harsh, and that all Egyptians with few exceptions (who are labelled ‘collaborators’, a distinctly pejorative and largely anachronistic term) were ready to revolt at a moment’s notice, and, on the other, that the Egyptians were largely unaffected by it.60 These views are not completely mutually exclusive, but they do require some effort to reconcile, and the evidence for each is generally scant and circular. Moreover, it has been pointed out that Egyptologists typically only date material remains to the Achaemenid period if compelled to do so by epigraphic evidence.61 This tendency in turn furthers notions about the oppressive yet ephemeral nature of Achaemenid imperialism in Egypt. This Egypto-centrism is informed by the same factors that create similar distortions in the work of classicists.

The end result of this historical political baggage is that orientalist stereotypes continue to underlie many studies of the Achaemenid Empire, of which Lincoln’s is a prime example.The persistence of these stereotypes demonstrates the continuing relevance and importance of orientalism as an interpretive framework for Achaemenid historiography. As has been noted above, orientalism cannot be overcome; it can only be recognized in such a way that its impact on the study of the empire can be understood and mitigated as well as possible. But given that such biases exist in both ancient and modern scholarship on the empire (despite recent apologies for both) they will never actually disappear.62 The paradox of Lincoln’s book is that his objective is clearly anti-imperial and postcolonial in nature, yet in making his point, which is to condemn modern American imperialism, he ends up reifying the orientalist stereotypes that inform such imperialism. He makes the Achaemenids out to be oriental savages whose religious ideology contributed to their savagery. In essence he puts orientalism in the service of postcolonialism. This paradox suggests that it was not at all Lincoln’s goal to bolster and reiterate these stereotypes, but he has nevertheless done so, and in doing so has undermined the thesis of his book (since his depiction of the Persians is unsettlingly analogous to certain representations of the targets of American military activity).63 He has also undermined some thirty years of scholarship on the Achaemenid Empire by scholars who have worked assiduously to counter these stereotypes.

Postcolonialism 

The tension between orientalist stereotyping and the postcolonial critique of imperialism that characterizes Lincoln’s book demonstrates a fundamental paradox in the study of the Achaemenid Empire. On the one hand the work of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg and the other participants in the Achaemenid History Workshops in the 1980s to overcome orientalist prejudices in previous scholarship were (in most cases implicitly) postcolonial in nature.64 After all, Said’s critique of orientalism is one of the founding texts of academic postcolonialism.65 On the other hand, one of the recent intellectual currents in the study of Roman imperialism is the recognition that such imperialism was potentially traumatic and harmful to the subjects of the empire, an approach in keeping with postcolonial thought.66 Both of these positions are important for the study of the empire (and for all non-European empires). The question, then, is how we might study the Achaemenid Empire in a manner that rehabilitates it in the face of the biases of previous and current scholarship but at the same time recognizes the potentially harmful effects of imperialism. One answer to this question is that, since earlier modern scholarship on the empire emphasized its oppressive and despotic nature, such postcolonial concerns have already been addressed. To some degree this is the approach taken implicitly in Lincoln’s book.67 It is, however, inadequate, because it is based as much on bias as on any sort of evidence. As such it does both a disservice to the Achaemenids themselves, and to the subjects of the empire, since it misrepresents the experiences of both.

A second answer is to recognize that Achaemenid imperialism was experienced differently by everyone in the empire. David Mattingly refers to the ‘discrepant experiences’ of people living throughout the Roman Empire, arguing that ‘we need to break free from the tendency to see the colonial world as one of rulers and ruled (Romans and natives) and explore the full spectrum of discrepancy between these binary oppositions’.68 In the simplest terms this means that the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in any colonial situation do not necessarily divide evenly along ethnic, national, or racial lines. Sometimes there were tangible benefits to being part of an empire, such as the economic growth in Roman North Africa, and sometimes the experience of the colonisers was not a positive one, ranging from the disastrous, such as at Isandlwana or in the Teutoberg Forest, to the pathetic, as encapsulated by George Orwell’s experience as a police officer in Burma and recounted in his classic essay ‘Shooting an elephant’.69 This distinction between winners and losers was not a fixed one. These statuses were no doubt changeable according to circumstances, and were at times anyway constructed actively to achieve specific goals.

This approach can be illustrated by some examples from Egypt during the period of Achaemenid rule there (c. 525-404 BCE, Manetho’s 27th Dynasty). Perhaps the most famous example of an Egyptian winner is Udjahorresnet, known from his naophorous statue in the Vatican and his shaft tomb at Abusir. In the autobiographical inscription on his statue he lists his various positions under the Saite pharaohs, namely naval commander of some kind, and under the successive Achaemenid rulers, primarily chief physician.70 He also claims to have composed the royal titulary for Cambyses, to have been resident at the court of Darius for a time, and to have received gold ornaments as marks of royal favour (and there are bracelets of Achaemenid type on the statue’s wrists). If this biography is accurate, Udjahorresnet seems to have been quite successful as a result of Achaemenid rule. After serving both Cambyses and Darius he returned to his hometown of Sais a man of great local importance. Yet it is interesting to note that in this same inscription he refers to how he saved the people of Sais from ‘the very great disaster, which befell the entire land. There was not its like in this land’. This disaster is typically interpreted as being Cambyses’ invasion. If so, Udjahorresnet’s inscription is a good example of the range of discrepant experiences in Achaemenid Egypt: some people, like Udjahorresnet, had access to new opportunities, while others simply endured the trauma of invasion and conquest. Udjahorresnet’s assistance to the people of Sais suggests he had (or was at least cognisant of) both experiences. Similarly, there were clear beneficiaries of Achaemenid imperialism amongst the residents of Ayn Manawir in the Kharga Oasis. The town was founded on a previously uninhabited site in the first half of the fifth century BCE. Its establishment was made possible by the construction of a system of qanats, an Iranian irrigation technology whose spread is typically associated with the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire. The temple’s archives still await full publication, but preliminary research suggests a thriving local economy, one with sufficient links to the Mediterranean that some transactions were recorded using a Greek rather than anEgyptian weight standard for silver.71 Yet at the same time it is important to note that these oases of the western desert served as places of exile throughout Egyptian history.72 It is not known whether these farmers were pioneers in search of new opportunities in the oasis or deportees forcibly relocated from the Nile Valley, but some of them, either the farmers themselves or the priests at the temple, did benefit from Egypt’s new position as a part of the Achaemenid Empire.

It is also important to recognize that imperialism is not necessary for oppression and other unpleasant situations to exist. In the case of Egypt this is nicely illustrated by the so-called Petition of Petiese, a Demotic document found at El-Hibeh. In it the elderly priest Petiese relates the abuses he suffered at the hands of his fellow priests and the failure oft he royal bureaucracy in Memphis to take action on his behalf.73 The date of this narration is 513 BCE,i.e. during the period of Achaemenid rule, but the events he relates all occurred during the preceding native Egyptian Saite dynasty. The historicity of this document is difficult to assess, since it includes various literary features, including hymns. But it was found with other, non-literary documents that refer to other members of Petiese’s family; thus presumably it makes reference to actual people, if not actual events.74 The ostensible purpose of the document is to record the abuses against Petiese so that he could attempt once again to seek redress for them from the court at Memphis, this time from the Achaemenid satrap. This suggests that the document’s author, whether it was Petiese himself or an unknown writer, found it plausible that the Achaemenid rulers of Egypt would be receptive to such an appeal. Or perhaps he observed no meaningful difference between the administrators and bureaucrats of the 26th Dynasty and those of the 27th. At any rate the abuses suffered by Petiese in P. Ryl. Dem. 9 are indicative of the power imbalances that exist in all places and times. We need to be wary of painting too rosy a picture of any political system or institution, whether it is the result of foreign imperialism or native rule.

A third answer is to place the empire in a broader comparative perspective. This helps to elucidate implicit assumptions about the nature of the empire by setting them up in comparison with better known examples and identifying commensurable aspects. For example, in a forthcoming study I develop an estimate for communication speed in the Achaemenid Empire based on comparative data from the American Pony Express.75 This estimate suggests that under ideal conditions communication was notably faster in the Achaemenid Empire than in the Roman. Communication speed can be used as a proxy for interconnectivity, and as such is an important precursor for understanding the potential impact of Achaemenid rule on local populations. If, for example, the empire was highly decentralized its ability to exploit and oppress its subjects was presumably limited. In this respect comparison with other empires such as Rome provides an important benchmarkwhich can be used to develop parameters for understanding the nature of the Achaemenid Empire. Another example is provided by the recent Cambridge economic history of theGreco-Roman world . In the chapter on the Achaemenid Empire, an estimate of 8% is given for the tax rate in Mesopotamia. This estimate is tenuous, but it nevertheless permits comparison with other empires. In the same volume a tax rate of about 10% is suggested for the Roman Empire, a rate which scholars agree must have been low so as to not compete too much with private rents.76 If it was indeed the case that the tax rate was lower in the Achaemenid than in the Roman Empire, the assumption that the former was oppressive (at least financially) requires reassessment. These numbers are of course very much subject to debate, but the point is that, so long as their intellectual underpinnings are made explicit, estimates of this sort can help undermine orientalist stereotyping, and also provide a sound basis for considering how oppressive or lenient any particular empire may have been.

These three answers are only suggestions about how to accommodate postcolonial concerns in Achaemenid historiography. Their purpose is not only to help avoid the problems presented by Lincoln’s book, but also to put the study of the empire more in line with the scholarship on other ancient empires, most notably Rome. In doing so we need to be careful not to obscure the empire’s uniqueness. Its ideology of inclusion was a clear departure from that of earlier Near Eastern empires, and though the degree to which this ideology aligned with actual conditions is unclear it is important that the possibility that this was a different sort of empire should not be ruled out a priori. But it is clear that the application of postcolonial theory to the study of the Achaemenid Empire has the potential to be profitable and stimulating, and Lincoln’s book is a clear example of why it needs to be done, and why it needs to be done judiciously.

Contemporary history

As Lincoln himself admits, his book is really about recent American activities in Iraq.77 The extended discussion of the Achaemenid Empire is only meant to be a lengthy ancient case study that illustrates Lincoln’s real point, which is the subject of the postscript on Abu Ghraib. This raises the question of how the past can and should be used to comment on the present. This is, of course, an enormous topic, and its treatment here cannot consist of anything more than personal reflections; it has no pretensions to comprehensiveness. But it is nevertheless worth considering the role of contemporary events in the study of antiquity, since such events so clearly informed the writing of this book. On the one hand, Lincoln’s premise that a historical case study can have important resonances for the present is an important one. Few students of ancient history (I assume) would contend that the past is entirely irrelevant to the present, even if there are major differences between them. But studies that make that relevance explicit are often regarded as unsettling or unreliable, because the author’s apparent scholarly objectivity has been compromised in favour of an ulterior motive. To my mind the view that the past should never be utilized to comment on the present is a decidedly naïve one. First, it already happens all the time, often on the part of people who are not experts in the relevant field. Secondly, the concep tof scholarly objectivity is not a straightforward one. It relies on a Rankean notion of historical objectivity, one that is increasingly criticized as untenable and unrealistic.78 A sa result scholars need to be up front about what informs any particular study, regardless of whether the goal of that study is to make a point about the past or about the present. Indeed, in many respects scholars who do use the past to comment on the present are much more transparent in this way. Certainly this is the case in Lincoln’s book; his frankness about his agenda makes the ideas, preconceptions, and motives that inform his work clear for the reader. To some degree I am even grateful to him for pointing out in so public a venue the continuing importance of the subject of my own research. The sheer variety of journals in which this book was reviewed demonstrates how much it resonated with people across a broad spectrum of academic subfields, and even if the book itself is problematic, Lincoln’s attempt to show the importance of the past for the present, not to mention his condemnation of American torture in Iraq, is highly praiseworthy.

But there is (to commandeer the title of one of Lincoln’s chapters) a ‘dark side of paradise’. Since the contemporary is (by definition) fleeting, there is an added onus on scholars using the past to comment on the present to do so in a manner that is intellectually robust and methodologically transparent. This is because once the topical parts of such a study become outdated all that remains is the discussion of the past. In Lincoln’s case once the incidents of Abu Ghraib are no longer so vividly fixed in the public consciousness, only his flawed discussion of the Achaemenid Empire will leave a lasting impression with most readers. For example, one reviewer claims: ‘but it would be far too easy to dismiss Lincoln’s strategy of using Achaemenian [sic] Persia as a strawman to disguise a critical analysis of the foreign policy of the Bush administration. Fort his would not do justice to the insightful discussion of Achaemenian religious politics that Lincoln unfolds’.79 This remark exemplifies perfectly the danger posed by this book, even for bona fide academics specializing in adjacent fields, let alone for general readers. Lincoln’s book is especially problematic because it requires a savage, decadent, and declining Achaemenid Empire in order to make its point about America, one which is simply not supported by the evidence he musters. Yet it is this vision of the empire that will be this book’s legacy. In the end Religion, empire, and torture, despite the power and relevance of its thesis for the present, does a disservice to the past and to the future.

University of Michigan”

Source: https://www.academia.edu/1032274/Orientalism_Postcolonialism_and_the_Achaemenid_Empire_Meditations_on_Bruce_Lincolns_Religion_Empire_and_Torture

Henry Colburn earned a PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan and holds a M.A. in Classics, from the University of Colorado and a M.A. (Hons.) in Classics, from the University of St. Andrews. His research focuses on the art and archaeology of ancient Iran, and on the regions of the Near East, Eastern Mediterranean, and Central Asia that interacted with Iran prior to the advent of Islam. His interests range from seals, coins and drinking vessels to questions of historiography, identity, and globalization. He has held fellowships at the Harvard Art Museums, the Getty Research Institute and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and teaching positions at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Southern California. He currently serves on the advisory committee for the reinstallation of the Ancient Near Eastern galleries at the Met, and he is also a research associate of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan.

His first book, Archaeology of Empire in Achaemenid Egypt, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020. His current projects include the publication of the seals of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, excavated by Ernst Herzfeld in 1931, and a study of a 19thcentury illustrated Persian manuscript in the Metropolitan Museum of Art recording Louise de la Marinierre’s (1781-1840) journey to visit Achaemenid and Sasanian sites in Fars in the 1830s.

Source: https://cooper.edu/academics/people/henry-colburn-0

#persian empire #abu ghraib #bruce lincoln #henry colburn #herodotus

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

[rommahh]

Enough For You

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Word Count: 4.8k

{This is my first peter fic and theres more to come. I may make a part two of this- it depends though. This work is a complete work of fiction and doesnt follow the mcus storyline of peter parker at all. Just the characters. Anyways enjoy. Much love, R.}

Peter, as smart as he can be, was a complete and utter idiot. He could read an entire textbook on quantum physics, take a test on said textbook, and ace it like it was nothing. That's how intelligent he was. But when it came to the obvious things that didn't take place in the academic world- he was an oblivious idiot.

Y/N has had a crush on Peter since they were in elementary school. Everyone in Peter and Y/N’s inner circle saw how deep in love Y/N was with Peter- except for Peter. Y/N has spent years trying to tell him how she feels but he always just interprets it as Y/N telling him how much she loves their friendship- like the idiot he is.

As senior prom slowly approached Y/N waited for the moment where Peter would ask her to the dance. They both were not dance people but senior prom was so different. Y/N just wanted to spend the night with her closest friends before they all went their separate ways for college. Normally Y/N and Peter went to every dance together, but as prom got closer, Y/N started to worry that he wouldn't even ask her. And unfortunately, she was right to think that.

Ned, Peter, MJ, and Y/N all sat at a round table on their school's campus during their lunch period talking and eating. The conversation of prom came up making Y/N’s ears perk up hoping to hear the words she's been waiting for from Peter.

“So Peter, what are your prom plans?” MJ asked, chewing on some of Y/N’s carrots from her lunch. Y/N looked at Peter waiting for his answer. He blushed, rubbing the back of his neck to ease his nerves.

“I'm actually going to prom with Liz. I asked her yesterday after school and she said yes.” He smiled happily of the thought of him and Liz dancing at prom. Y/N on the other hand felt her heart clench uncomfortably. MJ looked just as shocked as Y/N hearing Peter's words. Ned looked up from his comic book as an uncomfortable silence filled the table.

Quickly, Y/N packed her lunch back into her lunch bag and slung her bookbag haphazardly over her shoulder. Her face was scrunched up as she tried to contain her tears. “Sorry guys, I completely forgot that I have to help Mrs. Anderson with some...thing.”

Rushing away, the group was left to watch Y/N’s figure scurry away from the table. Tom looked at her in confusion before looking at his other best friends trying to figure out what had just happened.

“What just happened? Is she Ok?” He asked getting his stuff ready so he could go and follow the girl. MJ put a hand on his arm to stop him from packing up.

“I think you should just let her be alone for a minute… So you and Liz huh?”

“I- yeah I've had a crush on her for years now. I thought I told you guys this.” Peter’s hands fiddled with the book in front of him. Ned shared a look with MJ making Peter look at them confused again. “Guys, what aren't you telling me? What's going on?”

“Sorry dude, it's not our place to say. You should probably talk to her after school.” Ned replied, patting Peter on the back trying to comfort him. The bell interrupted any further conversation from happening. The trio went their separate ways to class after saying an awkward goodbye.

Peter spent the whole day with his mind clouded with thoughts. He racked his brain for any possible reason as to why Y/N were so upset.

After school, Peter showed up to a Y/N’s house hoping to talk to the girl and figure out why his best friend was so upset. Y/N’s mom gave Peter a small smile when he approached the house, nodding her head to where the backyard was located to say where Y/N was at.

Y/N sat on a quilt made by her grandmother on the soft gras of her backyard. A large tree covered her from the sun that was slowly beginning its descent into the night. She looked up from the book she was reading hearing the sound of footsteps coming towards her. Peter stood there, backpack on one shoulder, hands in both sweater pockets just waiting.

“Hey.” Peter said, setting his backpack down before sitting across from the girl on the soft quilt.

“Hi Peter.” She quietly replied, keeping her head low so she couldn't meet his eyes.

“Can you tell me what happened today? You seemed upset. Did something happen in class?” He asked, his hand reaching out to tilt her face to look at him. She looked at his face, seeing his furrowed eyebrows and watching as his eyes searched her face for any clue as to what was wrong.

“You're taking Liz to prom.” She finally spoke after a moment of silence.

“I'm taking Liz to prom.” He confirmed still sitting there in confusion.

“I wanted you to ask me to prom.”

“Oh.” Y/N stopped looking at Peter, her hands playing with the frayed edges of her ripped jeans.

“Oh? You always ask me to school dances and I just thought…”

“Thought what? Y/N I dont get what you're saying. We did go to past dances together but this is prom you know. I really like Liz so I asked her.” He said still not putting two and two together to understand the issue.

“To be the smartest boy in our school, you are the biggest idiot ever.” Peter scoffed, offended by her comment. “Peter, I love you.”

“What?” Peter was shocked by her statement.

“I've liked you since the 4th grade and I guess I assumed you had started to like me too. I thought you were going to ask me to prom because you- you liked me too?” She looked at him again, face flushed and shoulders tense with anxiety.

“Y/N...I'm sorry but I- I dont like you like that. I didn't know that you did like me like that.” He watched as her shoulder dropped in defeat. Tears pooled in her eyes spilling onto her cheeks. She quickly wiped her face off with her hands. “Please don't cry, i'm so sorry. I still want to be friends though.”

She chuckled at his words. “I don't think we can be friends, Peter. I think it would be best for myself if we weren't friends.”

Her words cut like knives through his heart. He stood up abruptly as anger flooded through his body.

“So we can't be friends now? We've been friends since kindergarten. You are my best friend Y/N and you're going to throw it away over this?” His voice rose as he spoke. Y/N stood as well, anger taking over her as she listened to Peter raise his voice at her.

“Do you know what it feels like to watch someone you love not love you back?” She yelled at him, Peter’s eyes widened in shock having never heard his best friend speak like this before. “Do you know what it's like to watch the person you love have crushes on everybody but you? Do you know what it's like to not be enough? What is it about Liz that I don't have? You don't even know her!”

“You're mad at me for not liking you back? I can't control my feelings Y/N and I'm sorry for that but I don't want to lose our friendship. Please don't do this.” He held her face in his hands brushing the stray tears from her face. She shook her head free, backing away from him. Her hands clutched her arms, folding on top of her chest.

“I'm sorry Peter that I couldn't be good enough for you.” She gave him a small heartbroken smile before grabbing the book she was reading and went inside of her house. Peter watched as his best friend walked away from him for the second time that day. His chest felt tight, hands shaking as he thought about the ending of friendship he held dear to his heart.

Peter dreaded going to school. He spent the whole night being forced awake by panic attacks and non-stop crying. He had never felt a heartbreak like this. He's heard people say that friendship breakups are harder than relationship breakups and Peter can attest to that. Granted he's never been in a relationship, but he's going through a heartbreak he's never felt before.

He got ready for school slowly, relishing in the comfort of his room before exiting out into the living room of the apartment. He gathered his backpack that had been thrown carelessly in the living room out of anger as Aunt May watched him from the hallway before her bedroom. She decided against asking him what was wrong because she didn't want him to become even more upset on his way to school. Her heart aches as she watches her boy frown and wander around with sadness looming on his face.

At school, Ned and Mj waited for Peter at his locker like the group normally does. This time, Y/N was nowhere to be seen. Peter walked up to his locker, unlocking it and grabbing his things from inside of it for class.

“Did you guys know she liked me?” Peter asked after standing in silence with the group for a few moments. They looked at Peter in pity before nodding yes. Peter shook his head, upset with himself for never noticing the obvious feelings coming from his best friend.

The group walked to their first period class, Ned and Mj making small talk whereas Peter walking listening in on the conversation. Sitting in their normal seats, they waited for the first bell to ring that determined when the first period would begin.

The door of the classroom opened showing Y/N with arms filled with her textbooks and backpack slipping off of her arms. MJ thought Peter looked bad but Y/N probably looked worse. Her eyes were puffy carrying bags of sleeplessness and her overall appearance looked tired. The Y/N the group knew would come to school always dressed for success wearing the cutest outfits and makeup done to perfection. She wasn't over the top with it but she always looked so well put together. Today, she was wearing leggings and a ratty hoodie. Her hair didn't look like it normally did, her face was bare of makeup.

She moved slowly looking for an open table in the classroom. She saw one in the back of the room near the window and walked over to claim it as her own. Her friend group watched in shock as she walked past them and towards the empty table. Peter’s chest hurt so bad watching her walk past them. Mj and Ned were upset too but they had spoken to her before school and understood her want for space.

“She doesn't have to sit all the way over there.” Peter whispered still staring at Y/N as she settled into her seat in the back of the room.

“It's ok, she just wants space and that's ok.” Mj reassured him, rubbing his shoulder as he laid his head down on the table. He didn't know how he would cope without his best friend or lack thereof.

Lunchtime came sound and normally the friend group would sit outside together if the weather was nice. They've always done this since freshman year. They would sit at the wood tables and share their lunch with each other. Y/N would normally share her fruits and vegetables knowing that her friends packed unhealthy junk food.

Today was different though. Mj, Peter, and Ned sat at the table without her. Her spot at the table is empty leaving an uncomfortable gap at the round table. Y/N found herself seated inside of the library by the window that looked out on the wooden tables she would normally sit at.

Y/N sat in the quiet library crying her eyes out as she watched her friends comfort Peter. She was hurting so bad knowing that she ruined her friendship. She wishes that she never said anything. That she just let Peter be happy with his newfound relationship with Liz. She wanted to be happy for him but she had some resentment towards him. She understood he couldn't control his feelings but she hurt knowing that he never in the years they've known each other he's never looked at her more than a friend.

She wiped her tears from her face, pulling her neatly packed lunch box out of her backpack. She stared down at her lunch, sad that she had no one to share with anymore.

“Hey, do you mind if I sit here?” A voice said from above Y/N. Looking up she saw Bryant, another senior in her class, standing with his lunch.

“Oh- yeah, sure, of course.” Y/N stuttered making room at the table for his things. The table was large enough for the two of them so there was no real reason for her to say that he couldn't sit with her. Bryant was the captain of the baseball team at their highschool. He wasn't like the cliche popular kids at school who stayed within their cliques but he was very sweet and attentive to anyone he crossed paths with.

“Thank you! I saw you sitting by yourself and it kinda looked like you needed a friend.” He commented setting his salad from the cafeteria down along with his backpack that seemed too empty for a highschool seniors backpack. “So, how's today going for you?”

Y/N was taken aback by the boy's boldness. This was her first time ever talking to him and he wants to know about her day? She was baffled.

“I-It's been slow I guess. I'm ready to go home honestly.” He nodded, chewing on his salad.

“I feel that. I wish I could go home after school. I've got prom preparation after school, so annoying.” He rolled his eyes at the thought. “I don't know if you know but my name is Bryant, it's real nice to meet you.”

Sticking his hand out to shake, Y/N grasped it hesitantly.

“I'm Y/N, I think we had english together last year.”

“Yeah we did didn't we. I hated that class, you were awesome in it though.” She blushed at the compliment. “But yeah, I know who you are. You're apart of Peter’s little group.”

“Oh yeah, I was.” She shrugged emotions overwhelming her again.

“Was? You obviously don't have to tell me, but I hope you're ok.” Bryant smiled at Y/N and Y/N was blown away by his kindness.

“Peter and I aren't friends anymore. He's going to prom with Liz and I just thought that maybe he would have asked me.” Bryant felt bad for Y/N. He could see how hurt she was despite her wearing a smile on her face. Y/N wasn't a stranger in this school. She played a large role in academics and actively participated in multiple clubs. The Y/N Bryant saw before wasn't present today and it was sad.

“I know we've just met but I don't have a date to prom either...if you would like to go with me. I wanted to go with Jordan but it turns out he is not actually into very beautiful and athletic boys.” Y/N laughed along with Bryant.

“I would love to go to prom with you as long as we can coordinate outfits.” Bryant laughed some more agreeing with her. Y/N looked down at the lunch before sliding over a few snacks toward Bryant. Y/N still felt the sadness of letting go of her best friend lingering with her but it felt nice to meet someone new. Not someone to replace her Peter but someone to remind her that life goes on and that she'd be ok in the long run.

Weeks have passed since Peter and Y/N’s fallout and it was a weird few weeks. School was coming to an end, cap and gowns were slowly being handed out for graduation and prom posters were posted everywhere.

Y/N was still avoiding Peter at all costs but she apologized to Ned and Mj for ignoring their feelings. She didn't want them to feel like they had to be in the middle of this mess. She didn't want them to feel like she also ditched them too. They understood her, they knew how hard it was for her to remove herself from their friend group for the sake of her mental health.

Y/N and Bryant continued to grow closer. He was a good distraction from her current problems. She also learned that he was bisexual and that Jordan was also on the baseball team who was too scared to come out and go to prom with Bryant. Bryant was someone Y/N didn't expect to befriend her. His kindness made her feel so much better after what had happened.

Peter struggled badly. He had been so happy to finally get the girl he had been pining after for years but seeing Y/N cry because of him hurt so much. It made him rethink his whole friendship with her. Did he really only think of her as a friend?

Peter watched everyday as Y/N grew closer to Bryant, a warm feeling entered his belly every time he saw the two together. It wasn't a pleasant warm feeling, it was a feeling that made him overthink everything he did. It was a feeling that made his face scrunch up and his head fill with sickness. His thoughts became muddled, words not making sense as he watched the two. He was jealous. Did he recognize it as jealousy, no, because Peter was an idiot.

Prom season was hectic and fun all at the same time. People were hardcore prepping for the dance. Money was being saved for the before dance dinner and the stretch limo that would provide a chariot to the dance.

The mall was beyond crowded, Bryant led the way with Y/N pushing through crowds of people to reach the small dress shop they had been dying to go to all day. The small dress shop was locally owned by a hispanic couple who hand made the dresses in the shop. The dresses they had were beautiful, all arraying from different colors, sizes, and silhouettes. Y/N tried on almost every dress in the store that was in her size.

“This is useless, these dresses are gorgeous but I feel like I look so stupid.” Y/N huffed sitting next to Bryant on the velvet loveseat that sat in front of the dressing room. Y/N was near tears out of pure frustration.

“Stop it, I thought you looked amazing in every single one of those dresses. I think you're just too into your own head. What's up girl?” He put an arm around her shoulders laying his head on top of hers.

“I just want to look good. Good like Liz…” She whispered the last part out of embarrassment. Bryant scoffed.

“You're joking right? You two are incomparable people. She's pretty in her own ways just as you are. Are you comparing yourself to her because of Peter?” Bryant exclaimed loudly, catching the attention of the woman who owns the shop.

“Peter likes Liz.” Was all that Y/N could muster, pouting at her own words.

“Here mija.” The woman who owned the shop came walking over to Y/N with a beautiful pink dress in her hands. “I made this a week ago but havent even put it on the floor yet.”

Y/N shook her head furiously, “No I couldn't.”

“No, please try it on and if you like it, it's yours.” The woman insisted on a bright smile playing on her face.

“Its-Its mine?”

“Yes honey, you obviously need this dress more than I do. You need a dress that will make you feel beautiful and I think this will do.”

Y/N tried on the dress watching it flow down to the floor. It was a pretty pink color with flowers at the top. Buttons adorned the middle of the dress cinching the waist and the bottom of the dress flowed to the floor in bunches.

Stepping out of the dressing room, dressed clad on her body, Bryants mouth dropped in shock at the sight of her.

“Holy….” He was at a loss for words. Y/N blushed, turning to look at herself in the mirror, her own mouth dropping in shock.

“...Shit” She finished.

“You look amazing mija. It's all yours, please, you have to wear that to your dance.” The woman begged Y/N. Y/N nodded, smiling at herself in the mirror. It had been weeks since she felt like her normal self. She had spent so many days pondering about why Peter liked Liz more than her. Why Liz got Peter versus Y/N getting peter. But now it wasn't about Peter.

The woman walked with Y/N up to the front of the store, carefully wrapping the dress in a delicate box.

“No boy should ever determine his worth.” The woman said, handing the box over. “You are beautiful and I'm sure Liz is too but you, you are a gorgeous young woman who will encounter many men or women or people in general who will want to be in your life simply because you are you.”

Y/N thought about the shop owner's words as both Bryant and her maneuvered through the mall's crowds. Y/N grasped the corner of Bryants elbow as he carried their shopping bags. He made small jokes making Y/N laugh. He kissed her on the cheek endearingly as she laughed some more.

Unknown to Y/N, Peter stood a few feet away from the couple as they walked by holding onto each other looking like...a couple. That warm feeling reentered Peter's belly, sickness looming over his head making him feel lightheaded. Peter watched the couple walk away with sadness filling his heart. He missed being Y/N’s best friend. He missed their walks through the mall where he would buy her all the pretzels she wanted while holding her bags of useless junk she spent hundreds on. He missed her.

Prom night came quickly after finals finished on campus. Y/N put on her dress and had her hair and makeup done by her mom. Standing in front of her mirror she made sure she was ready to go. Her mother called her to the front door signalling Bryant was there to pick her up.

Bryant showered Y/N in compliments, getting his matching pink tie tied by Y/N’s dad. They both exchanged corsages and boutineers that were adorned by pretty white flowers. They took pictures in the backyard by Y/N’s tree posing in silly poses and in your typical prom poses.

Peter stood outside of Liz’s house filled with dread. He realized that this was not the place that he wanted to be. He wanted to be at Y/N’s house taking pictures, eating her parents food, and laughing about the stupid things they normally joke about. He wanted to watch as Y/N showed off her dress to him. He wanted to be the one to bring her a bouquet of flowers that she would dry up in her journal for safe keeping. But instead he was here, in front of Liz’s mansion, hurting.

The dance was at full blast when Y/N and Bryant arrived- late because Bryant believed being fashionably late was the best type of late. They walked around the venue hand in hand as Bryant showed off all of the things he contributed to the dance. Bryant left Y/N in the flower photo room having been called away to help fix something for the dance. Y/N admired the walls covered in small and large flowers.

“Woah.” Someone gasped from behind Y/N. Turning around she came face to face to a red faced peter. “You look…ethereal, is that even the right word?”

Peter couldn't stop staring at how beautiful Y/N looked. Her dress made her stand out from the rest. Butterflies erupted in his stomach replacing the warm feeling of jealousy he had been previously feeling.

“Oh, hi Peter.” Y/N was filled with nerves as he slowly walked towards her. “How are you?”

“I don't feel too good honestly. I messed up a really good thing I think and I want to fix it. I never realized how much you meant to my life until I lost you. I know that's cheesy but it's true.” He quietly uttered, staring into her eyes. “I don't want us to stop being friends and I think I do like you.”

“You think?” She questioned looking at him hopefully.

“I- yeah I think.”

He thinks. He doesn't know if he likes her but he thinks he does. Y/N shook her head disappointed.

“Peter, I've spent the last three weeks wondering why I wasn't good enough for you to like me. I only just realized that I was good enough maybe not for you but for other people. Since we were kids I always did things in hopes of catching your attention. I joined the debate team because you did. I joined the academic team because you became the captain. I even tried to apply to be an intern at stark industries so I could work with you without even realizing that stark industries didn't have internships. And that spiderman started appearing a lot more after said internship appeared.” She had a knowing smile on her face.

“Oh so you know.” He looked down at the ground embarrassed to be exposed.

“Peter, I know so much about you. I know you better than Mj and Ned that's the whole reason why we are best friends. I know how you like your sandwiches- breakfast and lunch. I know how you organize your school work. I know that you like to specifically request time in the lab in the morning because all of the equipment is freshly washed and you like to first pick at the goggles and coats. Peter, I know you don't like me. You feel bad and miss me but you don't like me.” She walked to him, placing her hands on his cheeks. He melted into her hands.

“But I think I do Y/N.”

“Ok so say you think you like me, I would prefer to have you when you know you like me not when you have only developed small feelings after not having me for a few weeks. Peter, I'm in love with you. I'm in a lot deeper than a few small feelings. I don't want to make you be in a relationship when we are in two very different places.” She sniffled a little one hand coming to stop the tears from ruining her makeup.

“I want nothing more than to be your best friend again but I can't.” He couldn't stop his tears from falling at those words. “I can't go back to being the girl who did nothing for herself and everything for the boy she loves. I need more for myself. I'm going to college and I don't even know how to just be me without you and I need to learn how.”

He absorbed her words, crying free flowing tears.

“I want you to be happy Y/N.” He nodded, she swiped her thumbs under his eyes. She smiled sweetly at him. Placing a sweet kiss on his lips, Y/N  gave him one last smile before walking away from him.

Y/N walked away with her heart feeling light. She felt like a burden had been lifted off of her shoulders. Her intent wasn't to hurt Peter but she needed to say what had been in her mind for weeks. She knew he would eventually move on from his slight crush on her and so would she. She would move on eventually, it would be a slow and hard process but it would happen. And she would never fully get over him. She's been in love with him since they were kids- it's all she's ever known. But for right now she was focusing on loving herself and growing into the person she was meant to be- without Peter.

#peter parker #peter parker x y/n #peter x you #peter parker oneshot #peter parker imagine #peter parker angst #spider man #spiderman x you #tom holland #tom holland x reader

[everythingisawayoflife]

sooooo, my first post about sickfic tropes just kinda sat collecting dust until recently when it blew up like crazy so, i guess i’m gonna make another one? i might repeat some stuff but here are more tropes that make me gush :) oh and tw for emeto just to let you know.

i saw a post about this earlier but when A has a chest cold and B tenderly rubs their chest to sooth the aches or rubs Vaporub on them like thats very sweet

something about the line “I don’t feel good” or “I don’t feel (very) well” is so adorable (bonus pts if A cuddles up to B while saying so)

when B dotes over a slightly annoyed A but B only does so because they’re worried

when a fever slowly overtakes A and makes them sicker as the hours go on (like they wake up fine but around noon they feel like absolute shit)

When A starts crying over a tiny little thing that frustrates them and when B goes over to comfort them, they realize oh shit they’re really sick

A being carried bridal style to a bed or couch or something when they pass out or if they’re too sick to walk

A being too exhausted to do anything

A apologizing for being sick and B quickly reassuring them it isn’t their fault

BREAKFAST IN BED OR ANY SORT OF MEAL IN BED WHILE B SITS AND CHATS WITH A

When B initally assumes a stand-offish A is just tired but when B sees them asleep on a couch and gets closer to A, B realizes that A is actually very sick

A waking up B in the middle of the night by coughing super hard and not being able to contain it (bonus pts if B rubs their back while they suffer the worst of their coughing fit)

B waking up to realizing A isn’t in bed with them and finding them crouched over the toilet, extremely nauseous

picture this: B is standing besides A’s bed while taking their temperature and A just leans their fevered forehead into B’s stomach while B runs their fingers thru A’s sweaty hair

when A is so congested, they talk funny

when it HURTS TO BREATHE (is that violent)

Let’s say A is crazy delirious and B has been tending to then all day and out of nowhere, A mistakes B for someone else like a mother or father figure and it just tugs on B’s heartstrings seeing A in such a vulnerable position

When A has to steady themselves on something so they don’t fall over

AFFECTIONATE NICKNAMES (baby, honey, my love, my darling, dear, sweetheart, etc)

examples: “oh honey, you don’t look so good” “you’ve got the flu, baby” “Stay in bed, sweetheart, I’ll be right back” “It’s okay, dear. It was just a fever dream” “You look pale, darling, are you sure you’re okay?”

y’all better be taking notes on these

B talking in hushed tones so they don’t make A’s headache or migraine any worse

shivering (bonus pts if the sick person feels freezing but to someone else, they’re on fire)

when A is super pale with the exception of this feverish blush across their face

FLU SEASON

when A is the type to be like “psh no I never get sick” and while that has been true, their streak is broken and they refuse to admit it

or, alternatively, A never gets sick but when they do, it’s very bad

“Will you stay?” “Of course I will.”

When A says “I’m so tired” in a very dry tone before passing out

A has a sore throat and when B looks to check it, their throat is all red and swollen (i’m a squeamish person but I like very good descriptions of someone who is sick)

When B says to a crying and feverish A, “Hey, it’s okay, you’re gonna be okay. Don’t cry, you’re only gonna make yourself sicker.”

B absolutely refusing to leave A’s side while they suffer, even though they’re barely getting any sleep

“You need to lie down.”

“Shh, stay down, your fever is too high.”

If you’ve heard the song “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton, it’s actually a somewhat whumpy song (covering this in the next few bulletpoints)

It’s based on something that happened with Clapton and his wife before going to a party thrown by George Harrison, I believe

The lyrics detail a man telling his wife she looks “wonderful tonight”. First when she’s getting ready, next when she asks him if he’s okay and he says he feels wonderful, and thirdly, he tells her while he is bedridden that she was wonderful tonight

The wife asks him if he feels alright and he responds with that he feels wonderful but later goes home due to an “aching head”—now he could just be drunk but I like to picture it as that he is sick and denies it throughout the night but they go home early because his wife realized how sick he was and drives him home because he’s too ill to do it himself and she later puts him straight to bed

that’s just my interpretation and it’s probably an incorrect one but I like to think that this is the case when I listen to the song

A claiming they are just tired the night before and then waking up the next day feeling and looking horribly

A being covered in a ridiculous amount of layers because they’re so fucking cold

or alternatively, they kick off everything that’s on them because they’re boiling

A deliriously telling B “you take such good care of me” with a dopey smile on their face

B helping A sit upright since they can’t do it themselves

Another picture this: A and B go to this party (separately, they aren’t together yet) and A finds themself feeling worse as the night goes on and eventually decides to take a nap on the thrower of the party’s couch because they’re “just a little tired, that’s all”. B wakes up in a completely different place only to find out A drove them to their place and tended to them through the night

i feel like no one talks about ear infections enough? i had one when i was little and even though i don’t remember much about it, i remember crying because it hurt a lot and i never wanna go through that much pain again

when B initially makes fun of A for being congested and having a funny voice and then becomes more caring and serious when A takes a turn for the worse

“I’b not sick *loud snort*”

when B makes A tea with honey to soothe their sore throat (or chicken noodle soup)

cold washcloths for a hot forehead

“You’re running a temperature”

“You’re burning up”

When B still wants to cuddle and touch A despite A protesting that B will catch whatever A has

When A’s sleeping and B throws a blanket over their shoulders

B forcing A to sit or lie down by pressing on their shoulders

When B’s hands move up from A’s neck to cheeks to forehead when checking for a temperature

i said this before but kissing A’s forehead to check for a fever

A being like “B, I think I’m gonna—” before taking off the find the nearest container to vomit into

or alternatively, not being able to make it in time and throwing up on the floor and feeling really guilty for it

A curling into themselves when they have an upset stomach or just really bad aches and cramps (bonus pts if they’re near tears or are already in tears)

B using homemade remedies to try and make A feel better and not being able to make it like “mom/grandma used to”

A walking around the house, hunched over and dragging a long blanket around the house

#sickfic #whump #fever whump #flu #fever #emeto tw #vomiting #whump community #whump prompts #fainting #nausea #congestion #fanfiction #sickfics #this post is longggg #the way i can write a bunch of prompts but when it comes to actual writing #i cant do shit

[benevolentbirdgal]

“Thirteen″ Tips for Writing About Synagogues / Jewish Writing Advice / Advice for Visiting Synagogues

So your story includes a Jew (or two) and you’ve a got a scene in a synagogue. Maybe there’s a bar mitzvah, maybe your gentile protagonist is visiting their partner’s synagogue. Maybe there’s a wedding or a community meeting being held there. For whatever reason, you want a scene in a shul. I’m here as your friendly (virtual) neighborhood Jewish professional to help you not sound like a gentile who thinks a synagogue is just a church with a Star of David instead of a cross. 

Quick note: The are lots of synagogues around the world, with different specific cultural, local, and denominational practices. The Jewish community is made up of roughly 14 million people worldwide with all sorts of backgrounds, practices, life circumstances, and beliefs. I’m just one American Jew, but I’ve had exposure to Jewishness in many forms after living in 3.5 states (at several different population densities/layouts), attending Jewish day school and youth groups, doing Jewish college stuff, and landing a job at a Jewish non-profit. I’m speaking specifically in an American or Americanish context, though some of this will apply elsewhere as well. I’m also writing from the view of Before Times when gatherings and food and human contact was okay.

Bear in mind as well, in this discussion, the sliding scale of traditional observance to secular/liberal observance in modern denominations: Ultraorthodox (strict tradition), Modern Orthodox (Jewish law matters but we live in a modern world), Conservative (no relation to conservative politics, brands itself middle ground Judaism), Reconstructionist (start with Jewish law and then drop/add bits to choose your own adventure), and Reform (true build your own adventure, start at basically zero and incorporate only as you actively choose).

Synagogue = shul = temple. Mikvah (ritual bath) is its own thing and usually not attached to the shul. Jewish cemeteries are also typically nowhere near the shul, because dead bodies are considered impure.   

A Bar/Bat/Bnai Mitzvah is the Jewish coming of age ceremony. Bar (“son”) for boys at 13+, Bat (“daughter”) at 12+, and Bnai (“children”) for multiples (i.e. twins/triplets/siblings) or non-binary kids (although the use of the phrase “Bnai Mitzvah” this way is pretty new). 12/13 is the minimum, 12-14 the norm but very Reform will sometimes allow 11 and anybody above 12/13 can have theirs. Probably a dedicated post for another time. Generally, however, the following will happen: the kid will lead some parts of services, read from and/or carry the Torah, and make a couple of speeches. 

Attire: think Sunday Best (in this case Saturday), not come as you are. Even at very liberal reconstructionist/reform synagogues you wouldn’t show up in jeans and a t-shirt or work overalls. Unless they are seriously disconnected from their culture, your Jewish character is not coming to Saturday morning services in sneakers and jeans (their gentile guest, however, might come too casual and that’d be awkward).  1a. The more traditional the denomination, the more modest the attire. Outside of orthodoxy woman may wear pants, but dresses/skirts are more common. Tights for anything above knee common for Conservative/Reform/Recon, common for even below knee for orthodox shuls. Men will typically be wearing suits or close to it, except in very Reform spaces.  1b. Really, think business casual or nice dinner is the level of dressiness here for regular services. Some minor holidays or smaller events more casual is fine. Social events and classes casual is fine too.  1c. Even in reform synagogues, modesty is a thing. Get to the knee or close to it. No shoulders (this an obsession in many Jewish religious spaces for whatever reason), midriffs, or excessive cleavage (as I imagine to be the norm in most houses of worship). 

Gendered clothing:  3a. Men and boys wear kippahs (alt kippot, yarmulkes) in synagogues, regardless of whether they’re Jewish or not out of respect to the space. Outside of Jewish spaces it’s saying “I’m a Jew” but inside of Jewish spaces it’s saying “I’m a Jew or a gentile dude who respects the Jewish space.”  Outside of very Reform shuls, it’s a major faux pass to be a dude not wearing one.  3b. There are little buckets of loaner kippahs if you don’t bring your own and commemorative kippahs are given away at events (bar mitzvah, weddings). Your Jewish dude character not bringing or grabbing one is basically shouting “I’m new here.”  3c. Women are permitted to wear kippahs, but the adoption of a the traditionally masculine accessory will likely be interpreted by other Jews as LGBTQ+ presentation, intense feminism, and/or intense but nontraditional devoutness. Nobody will clutch their pearls (outside of ultraorthodoxy) but your character is sending a message.  3d. Tefillin are leather boxes and wrappings with prayers inside them that some Jewish men wrap around their arms (no under bar mitzvah or gentiles). Like with the kippah, a woman doing this is sending a message of feminism and/or nontraditional religious fervor.  3e. Additionally, prayer shawls, known as tallit, are encouraged/lightly expected of Jewish males (over 13) but not as much as Kippahs are. It is more common to have a personal set of tallit than tefillin. Blue and white is traditional, but they come in all sorts of fun colors and patterns now. Mine is purple and pink. It is much more common for women to have tallit and carries much fewer implications about their relationship to Judaism than wearing a kippah does.  3f. Married woman usually cover their hair in synagogues. Orthodox women will have wigs or full hair covers, but most Jewish woman will put a token scarf or doily on their head in the synagogue that doesn’t actually cover their hair. The shul will also have a doily loaner bucket. 

Jewish services are long (like 3-4 hours on a Saturday morning), but most people don’t get there until about the 1-1.5 hour mark. Your disconnected Jewish character or their gentile partner might not know that though. 

Although an active and traditional synagogue will have brief prayers three times every day, Torah services thrice a week, holiday programming, and weekly Friday night and Saturday morning services, the latter is the thing your Jewish character is most likely attending on the reg. A typical Saturday morning service will start with Shacharit (morning prayers) at 8:30-9, your genre savvy not-rabbi not-Bnai mitzvah kid Jewish character will get there around 9:30-10:15. 10:15-10:30 is the Torah service, which is followed by additional prayers. Depending on the day of the Jewish year (holidays, first day of new month, special shabbats), they’ll be done by 12:30 or 1 p.m. Usually.  After that is the oneg, a communal meal. Onegs start with wine and challah, and commence with a full meal. No waiting 4-8 hours to have a covered-dish supper after services. The oneg, outside of very, very, very Reform spaces will be kosher meat or kosher dairy. 

To conduct certain prayers (including the mourner’s prayers and the Torah service) you need a Minyan, which at least 10 Jewish “adults” must be present, defined as post Bar/Bat/Bnai Mitzvah. In Conservative/Reform/Recon, men and women are counted equally. In Ultraorthodox women are not counted. In Modern Orthodox it depends on the congregation, and some congregations will hold women’s-only services as well with at least ten “adult” Jewish women present.

In Conservative and Orthodox shuls, very little English is used outside of speeches and sermons. Prayers are in Hebrew, which many Jews can read the script of but not understand. Transliterations are also a thing.  In Reform synagogues, there’s heavy reliance on the lingua franca (usually English in American congregations). Reconstructionist really varies, but is generally more Hebrew-based than Reform. 

We’re a very inquisitive people. If your character is new to the synagogue, there will be lots of questions at the post-services oneg (meal, typically brunch/lunch). Are you new in town? Have you been here before? Where did you come from? Are you related to my friend from there? How was parking? Do you know my cousin? Are you single? What is your mother’s name? What do you think of the oneg - was there enough cream cheese? What summer camp did you go to? Can you read Hebrew? Have you joined?  A disconnected Jew or gentile might find it overwhelming, but many connected Jews who are used to it would be like “home sweet chaos” because it’s OUR chaos. 

In Orthodox synagogues, men and women have separate seating sections. There may be a balcony or back section, or there may be a divider known as a mechitzah in the middle. Children under 12/13 are permitted on either side, but over 12/13 folks have to stay one section or the other. Yes, this is a problem/challenge for trans and nonbinary Jews.  Mechitzahs are not a thing outside of orthodoxy. Some older Conservative synagogues will have women’s sections, but no longer expect or enforce this arrangement.   

Money. Is. Not. Handled. On. Shabbat. Or. Holidays. Especially. Not. In. The. Synagogue. Seriously, nothing says “goy writing Jews” more than a collection plate in shul. No money plate, no checks being passed around, even over calls for money (as opposed to just talking about all the great stuff they do and upcoming projects) are tacky and forbidden on Shabbat. Synagogues rely on donations and dues, and will solicit from members, but don’t outright request money on holidays and Shabbat. 

Outside of Reform and very nontraditional Conservative spaces, no instruments on Shabbat or holidays. No clapping either. Same goes for phones, cameras, and other electronics outside of microphones (which aren’t permitted in Orthodox services either).  11a. In the now-times an increasing number of shuls have set up cameras ahead of time pre-programmed to record, so they don’t have to actively “make fire” which is “work” (this is the relevant commandment/mitzvah) on Shabbat, so services can be live-streamed. 11b. After someone has completed an honor (reading from the Torah, carrying the Torah, opening the ark, etc), the appropriate response is a handshake after and the words “Yasher Koach” (again, Before-Times).

Jewish services involve a lot of movement. Get up, sit down. Look behind you, look in front of you. Twist left, twist right. A disconnected Jew or gentile visitor would be best off just trying to follow along with what an exchange student we had once termed “Jewish choreography.” Some prayers are standing prayers (if able), some are sitting prayers. It’s just how it is, although a handful of prayers have variations on who stands. 

#jumlbr #jewblr #jewish #jewish writing help #jewish writing #jewish characters #writing jewish characters #jewish representation #writing advice #writeblr #writing jewish spaces #how to write synagogues #another long one sorry not sorry

[edwad]

do u think people (recently mostly on twitter tbf) who say marx & engels mostly can't be theoretically separated are just having like really bad marxology takes? esp people who say this is true after marx died...

i mean the two were obviously close and it's nowhere near as simple as pretending that marx was a genius while engels was his idiot sidekick. a lot of engels' interpretation of marx stemmed from unresolved problems in marxs own texts, so engels was simply falling on particular sides of ambivalences in marxs thought rather than constructing some wholly independent theory out of a misreading or his own stupidity. they were ultimately two different people though with different interests (engels actually knew very little about the critique of political economy marx was working on beyond what was said to him in letters), which i think people tend to underemphasize in order to present some sort of perfect unity between the two.

[writing-wrxngs]

Character Guide!

(Just a little guide to how I personally depict the characters I write about and their roles in my stories.)

Philza

The father of Techno, Wilbur and Tommy. I know a lot of people make Phil just a much older brother, but the Dadza content is just too much for me to ignore

He’s always tried his best for his sons. He’s a good father who tries to balance his sons desires with what’s best for them. His boys mean the world to him.

As a father, he’s firm but never strict. He wants the boys to be their own people, but knows he needs to teach them lessons and give them structure to do so.

He is NOT impartial when the boys fight. He will decide who is in the wrong and give them a lecture. If all parties are in the wrong, everyone is getting sat down and talked to. For some reason this does not deter them from fighting.

He loves seeing the boys flourish. He enjoys being wanted and parenting his sons, but seeing them become independent men is amazing to him. The day that he feels all of his sons are completely self sufficient will be the best day of his life.

His wings are just prt of him. Why he has wings isn’t fully known, he’s just a human with wings. I just like that he has wings. Whether he can fly or not is unknown.

Technoblade

Age has been tweaked to be a year older that Wilbur, give or take. He might be even less than a year older than Wilbur, but he’s older. I chose this for him simply bc Wilbur is far too chaotic to be the eldest. The vibes were off.

He’s simultaneously arrogant and awkward. He loves attention (clout) and being the best but cannot do social interaction.

Likes his chaos and anarchy, but has a line. He knows where to stop and knows when to stop his brothers.

Quite responsible. As responsible and willing to care for his brothers, he still does NOT act like a parent to them. He is nowhere near as gentle with them as Phil, and also often gets in over his head with them.

He’s the most skilled fighter around. He is infamously ruthless, and never holds back, even if his opponent is a loved one. Whether it’s swords, bows, or fists, he will come out on top. He’s had this title for quite a while.

I’ve personally interpreted his mc skin as a pig mask that he wears often. When he’s out or when he’s fighting, he wears it over his face. In company of his family, or very close friends, he wears it up on top of his head.

He played violin when he was younger, his lessons starting when he was young, and he still can play, but does not often.

Wilbur

Extreme middle child energy. He’s his own sort of unstoppable chaos. He can equally be the shitty little brother to Techno and the jerk older brother to Tommy. He also desperately craves validation in spite of how much he’s cared for, and would die for praise.

He’s well known for being well spoken and charismatic. He’s charming and always says the right words. He is amicable and gets along with almost anyone.

He’s still terribly insecure, though, and uses this as a front, putting up walls that sometimes fall if someone, usually his family strike the right place. On the opposite side of the same coin, he still has a big ego at times.

As mean or abrasive as he can be at times, he still genuinely cares about the people he loves. Even as skewed as his morals get at times, he still can be humbled at times and be his true self if something cracks him.

He is also a musician, since he plays guitar and sings, however he also writes songs and places this above performing. Being able to create as compared to Tecnho who simply plays is something he’s very prideful of. Still, writing does stress him at times, especially if he has writer block.

Pogtopia Wilbur is a man who’s lost everything. He’s grasping at straws and no longer cares about who he hurts in achieving his goals, his narcissism shining full through. He’s extremely far gone, but is not yet lost.

Side note, to differentiate between his character and irl, I use Wil for in character and Will for irl.

Tommy

Chaotic youngest sibling to the max. Every day he wakes up and chooses to be a problem. Is a bother, and loves it. Can be overly blunt sometimes and often says the wrong thing or doesn’t read the room properly. His energy never matches the others.

He’s considered the funny one of the family, but slightly dislikes this moniker as he feels like it’s far too one dimensional compared to Wil’s charisma and Techno’s violence. He wants to set himself apart but hasn’t found it yet.

Really wants to be on the same level of his brothers. There’s a significant age gap and Tommy is still just 16, but he’s already chomping at the bit to be independent.

Is fiercely loyal to his family, but especially Wilbur. When they were younger, Tommy was practically Wilbur’s shadow, and honestly, he still idolizes Wil a bit.

Tommy knows how to cut through bullshit like a champ. He is especially good at breaking down Wilbur’s walls and bring him back down to earth when he’s inflated.

Also Tommy is absolutely the main character of the DreamSMP, maybe even in general. Main character energy.

Tubbo

I try to keep my Tubbo usage as little as possible, since I know he’s a bit uncomfortable with fanfic in general. I keep him as a side character. Never about him

He’s Tommy’s best friend and will always stand by him. Tubbo simultaneously matches, increases and dampens Tommy’s chaotic abilities.

He’s a bit smarter than Tommy, and better with things like sympathy and tact.

Canonically has died once. I don’t count deaths that don’t move the plot forward as deaths due to the nature of Minecraft. He was resurrected using some special hand wave magic that I’ve used to explain respawning. It’s not quite healing nor is it necromancy. (Okay, maybe it is necromancy. I had to go check bc I didn’t know off the top of my head. I main paladins it’s not my wheelhouse)

Post festival Tubbo is covered in scars from the burns. They’re mostly on the right side of his body, and sort of start by his torso and stretch like tendrils up his neck/face and down his arm. He’s not insecure about them at all but they are a bit painful.

Tubbo does not have parents. Well, he once did but he can’t remember them. I’ve kept it vague but he likely lived with a family and was separated from them at a young age but was able to take care of himself especially after befriending Tommy some time ago.

Niki

She is incredibly kind, sensitive but equally so is she outspoken and strong willed.

She’s a healer, and is one of the few people capable of resurrecting others, though she is not the most skilled as she only learned how to do this after moving to the SMP.

She’s a bit idealistic and sees the best in everyone, unless they’re completely evil. She believes if she’s seen the good in people, they can be good.

She’s 100% the most level headed in the whole of the SMP. God help you if you cross her, though.

Like I said in my FYI, I don’t ship her with anyone!!! She’s just really sweet and lovey and if you accuse me of making ship content I’ll literally cut you.

Everyone else will probably just make cameos based solely on their SMP characters, but with the way things are looking, I actually might have to get to know more mcyters to write about them.

#dream smp #wilbur soot #gaming #tommyinnit #technoblade #tubbo mcyt #niki nihachu #philza #philza minecraft #mcyters #mcyt #minecraft youtubers #minecraft yt #mcytumblr #mcyt fanfic #mcyt fanfiction #sleepy bois inc #sleepy bois inc fanfiction #sleepy bois inc brothers au #sleepy bois inc family dynamic

[welshoot]

A Love Poem to Skadi Erin’s Winter Analysis: Part 4

Last one! We’ve got Luke and fire. Fire’s kind of a neat choice since it can imply so many different things. It really depends on how you look at it. The rest is under the cut for fear of potential spoilers.

Fire can imply wisdom, fertility, spiritual enlightenment, inspiration, hell, purification, destruction, and even forbidden passions. Wisdom: Luke is wise in his own right. In many ways he’s wiser than the other guys simply because he’s facing death which causes him to take a completely different view of things than the others. In another way, he’s nowhere near as wise as the others because he’s blinded by his impending death. Fertility: Okay, this one is kind of weird and to make my life easy I’m going to interpret this as productiveness. Luke has gotten a lot done considering his age. He’s a top agent/detective and engineering whiz despite being fairly young. Spiritual Enlightenment: Another weird one. I suppose you could argue he’s ‘enlightened’ due to his differing view of things brought about by his constant awareness of the frailty of life. Inspiration: One could argue he’s a source of inspiration for the MC. She often bounces back after having spent time with Luke. He’s a source of inspiration for her to continue on. Hell: You can easily argue Luke is living in a hell of his own making. He loves MC and doesn’t want to be separated from her. But, he doesn’t want to bring her pain via his death and wants to disappear again for her sake. Purification: Interesting since he’s the own that has a condition and is dying. You can argue that he’s fighting to purify the world from the things that harmed him though. Destruction: Luke has very self-destructive behavior and thoughts. He’s constantly dragging himself down to the point he even wished he could disappear once when he was a child. Forbidden Passions: Luke is very passionate. He has denied himself his greatest love though, MC. He has deemed her forbidden and this haunts him frequently.

In terms of the event plot, a lot of the other symbols point towards a tragic romance so maybe there’s a forbidden romance within the plot. There’s also the religious connotations that tie in to the whole cult thing going on.

#Tears of Themis #Luke Pearce #Luke's analysis always make me sad #He's so angsty! #fire symbolism #love poem to skadi #tot events #tot #Mihoyo #He loves MC so much #seriously this one kinda hurt my feelings #Oh well #mywritings #analysis #theory

[sheriff-caitlyn]

I started this blog in 2014, as the first Caitlyn on tumblr, and obviously I’ve been through a lot of retcons and changes myself, not only adapting to Riot’s own public retcons (from the minor, like her aesthetics, to the major, like the removal of the Institute of War as an integral part of their lore) but also to my own. That’s the thing about playing a character as complex as this, is that you learn more as you go. In your interactions with others and the creation of backstory, history, and other bits of worldbuilding to better understand the world you’re in, a character goes from a handful of images and some in-game voicelines to a fully-fledged person with a complex narrative. Sometimes things change, and that’s fine. But there are some changes which... aren’t. 

For all the fingerprints I’ve put on her, she is still not my character. But I care. Sunk-cost fallacy, maybe, but I care about this character I have been involved in and I care about the direction she has been taken. So, without further ado, I’d like to delve into:

The Recent Caitlyn Update In Piltover’s New Context or, We Gotta Fetishise Police Violence, I Mean, Look At Her, She’s So Hot

Back in August 2015, I went, ‘Oh No, they’re going to try to turn Piltover into Gotham City, aren’t they?’, and lo and behold, suddenly we have Poison Ivy now. But I will get back to that, later. In this particular thread, I noted that many of the characters in Piltover seemed destined for a revamp that would rob them of what originally drew us to them in the first place, and that Piltover seemed destined for a rework that would wash out much of their character. Piltover and Zaun were always meant to be polar opposites, but suddenly we were seeing glimpses of Piltover being ‘not as good as everyone thinks’, which hinted that Piltover and Zaun were destined not to be polar opposites in the future, but indistinguishable from each other. It worried me that the only thing telling these two fascinating cities apart would be the sunlight.

So, when we have so much potential for a clash between Zaun and Piltover, between ‘Science No Matter The Cost’ and ‘We Must Advance The World With Care’, why change Piltover to some murky middleground, turning peace and security into wartime capitalism? A world where the people are shitty, where weapons and profit come first, and the only ones making a stand are the ones who are so embittered they have nothing better to do?

Because it has to be ‘interesting’. We’re going to lose bits that we like, that we’re familiar with. And that’s why I’m concerned.

This was before Piltover and Zaun were squished together in an ugly - and utterly ham-fisted - method of showing How Complex The Future Is. There’s layers, guys! Literal layers to this one single city! That means it’s deep! But when I say ‘bits that we like, that we’re familiar with’, I’m not clinging to a fanon interpretation. I’m saying the things that drew us to the world and to the characters to begin with. I could adapt from Caitlyn turning from brown-haired and brown-eyed to black-haired and blue-eyed, because even through I had been doing art, at that point, the change gave me an opportunity to express and discover more about her character (her eye colour being influenced by her mother’s magic, for one). But some of the more stark changes - to family, to job, to personality, to the city of Piltover itself - these result in a character changing completely. I was worried that the cool detective who literally made the world a better place would be chopped and changed into something unrecognisable. I even expounded on my concerns in November 2016, where I could see some of the ways the writers at Rito might make adjustments in the direction of their lore updates.

All this to say, I’ve been working on her for a while, and I was bracing for some bad news. This? This is kind of the worst.

Caitlyn has always been the Sheriff of Piltover, an authority figure, a representative of the law and order that Piltover is famous for. Piltover’s peace and financial prosperity has been directly linked to Caitlyn’s concerted effort to eradicate crime (not criminals, crime! Which, as I have mentioned particularly in this post from 2014, means she upended and reformed the justice system, from the legal process to the prisons to how people are treated as citizens). The city is safe, people have greater access to personal wealth and development, classism is erased, society is flourishing. Zaun, as Piltover’s polar opposite, is a corporate nightmare, with ‘do as thou wilt’, private bodyguards for the rich and powerful while the poor scramble to survive in a system that barely treats them as human. Vi, as a Zaunite, brings a lot of her ‘violence as a problem-solver’ methodology to Piltover’s law-enforcement, though she seems to have no intention of returning to Zaun and seems to have bonded with Caitlyn (‘teamwork!’) to Get Shit Done. And, apparently, there is still shit that needs to be done, though nowhere near as much as there had been in the Bad Old Days.

Vi was, at the time, the awkward-grit-teeth-grin-ha-ha-um-yeah representation of police violence. ‘Resist arrest’, she cries gleefully, as she beats people and breaks down buildings, and we are supposed to go ‘ha, isn’t that funny’ with varying degrees of sincerity. Of course Piltover is going to have problems: anywhere that has wealth and stability is going to be targeted by the envious and the needy. Peace needs to be protected. The problem lies in how that protection is enacted.

So now we have the recent Legends of Runeterra update to Caitlyn, an update which looked at the context of Piltover needing protection, as well as the modern context of Riot’s California location in the Years of Our Lord 2020-2021, and then decided ‘you know what we need? Police violence, everyone loves police violence’.

MAN I thought the stripper-cop skins were bad but here we go!

Her Yordle Snap-Traps (which I envisioned as from the Yordle Military, rather than a racially-profiling weapon as, y’know, they work on human-and-larger-sized people as well) have now been replaced by electroshock grenades, the intent gone from incapacitation and observation to outright paralysis and destruction. Her net-short is now apparently electro-conductive (admittedly, I have had one (1) single RP where that happened, but it came at both a cost to Caitlyn and to her weapon’s efficiency as a result, a last-resort against a dangerous opponent). Caitlyn’s cards in LoR take her from being a detective coordinating ideas and people and putting together a case to a SWAT team leader. This might be the biggest problem in working for a non-combat-oriented character in a MOBA, or in any fighting game: the game needs to find rationalisations for all of their characters being there, being combatants, being able to kill (even if, as Riot says, the lore is separate from the game). We have monsters and soldiers and ancient powers who of course they know how to spill blood and relish in doing so. But pacifists, like Karma or Bard? Explorers like Ezreal? And a sheriff, a peacekeeper, a law-keeper, someone mindful of responsibility and the importance of saving every life possible, like Caitlyn? They’re stripped of that depth and complexity in-game, but there was always the lore that backed them up. But they’ve done away with that completely. Caitlyn was never special operations. She was never military. But now she is, because she had to be changed to fit better into a fighting game. They had to make her violent, and as a result, they have undermined not only everything about the character that made her interesting to begin with - turning her now into a representative of police brutality, but with long hair, pouty lips, and a thigh gap - but they’re also re-writing the context of Piltover. It was bad enough to squish Piltover and Zaun together. But now, Caitlyn’s update is proof that Piltover has gone from a steampunk utopia to a violent, oppressive and cynical post-industrial world. The depiction of Caitlyn as a SWAT team leader (complete with special-forces beret, because hat! Caitlyn wears a hat! Nevermind the fact that she’s no longer wearing a distinctive tophat but instead a symbol of extreme state-sponsored force!) shows us that Piltover’s ‘army’ is not designed as a defence against outsiders, but as an offensive force against their own people. Caitlyn is supposed to be the representation of how peace and order is maintained in one of the largest factions in League of Legends, and if her method of maintaining order is straight-up police violence against their own citizens, then it’s not really peace and order. It’s authoritarianism at best, and facism at worst.

Piltover was different from every other nation in Runeterra because it didn’t have a military. It had defenders, and it had a powerful economy, and it had a democratic political system. But the Piltover update retconned Caitlyn’s hard work. The gangs were back - though now they’re big powerful families like Clan Ferros - and Caitlyn has been de-aged so that she’s still new to the force, that she hasn’t even had her chance to change anything. Her importance to Piltover is minimised... and why is Vi even there? (Oh boy I guess you’re going to have to watch Arcane to find out! Coming to a Netflix near you soon!) With a younger Caitlyn in a violent society, she has no choice but to be violent herself... even if that undermines everything previously established about Piltover and about Caitlyn. This update has made Piltover just as ugly and oppressive as Demacia, Noxus, and Zaun. It’s just another army equipped to do violence, but now that violence is turned inwards. This isn’t protection, it’s control. It’s fear. It’s oppression. Caitlyn is no longer a peacekeeper. She’s a monster. Chopped and changed, as I feared, into something completely unrecognisable from how she began in a world that no longer looks like what it had been... or should be.

It’s hard to tell what came first, the change to Piltover or the change to Caitlyn. Either way, the changes are inextricably linked. Caitlyn was integral to Piltover’s modern state, and Piltover is integral to Caitlyn as a character. Her (original) drive was to make the city and all its people better; Piltover was a utopia because of the effort of Caitlyn, and of people like her, people who wanted a better world. This new iteration of Piltover - full of fear and violence and hypocricy, layered over Zaun in such a way that makes ham-fisted commentary about the wealth/class divide - undermines the value of the individual. It removes agency. It removes hope, which had been integral to Piltover. Piltover is no longer the CIty of Progress... it’s the City of ‘you better be rich and pretty if you want to progress’. And Caitlyn is no longer a force for good or a representative of responsibility, because those things don’t exist in Piltover anymore. Legends of Runeterra has turned Caitlyn into a bitch, someone to hate. She has a marked lack of respect for people, as demonstrated in her new character traits of ‘casually-racist’ (her lines to Veigar), ‘condescending’ (her lines to Viktor), with some added pride in her violence (’here’s my calling card *shoots gun*’ and ‘I aim to win and my aim is excellent’). She is a representative of her city, and she is a terrible person now. Piltover is terrible. Piltover is ugly. 

But Caitlyn avoids that last part. And she’ll get away with it, because she’s a hot twenty-something.

In 2015, I drew Caitlyn-as-Swain, as an AU for what might have been. The overwhelming response at the time was ‘aaa she’s so hot I’d follow that leader of Noxus’, prompting a good friend Swain RPer to comment that Swain - who was, at the time, the withered man in green and gold who needed a cane - was just as smart as Caitlyn if not more so, a proven capable leader, but when it comes down to it, sex-appeal will always trump characterisation and storytelling, and that’s disheartening for someone who puts so much work into stories, to context, to something deeper than ‘Just another MOBA’. And here I am, in 2021, looking at how Caitlyn has been stripped of her fascinating and complex characterisation while maintaining her long legs, long hair, and corsetted figure. Now, I do appreciate the fact they’ve given her a better costume than miniskirt and boobtube. She deserves so much better. I even commissioned back in 2015 for a Better Look for Caitlyn; Tom aka FaerieFountain went on to make her new look canon. But she’s supposed to be a detective. She’s supposed to be careful and methodical and mindful of her status and power. Instead, she’s been made gleefully violent, leaving a lot of depth behind in order to become just Hot Cop With Gun. (As an aside, was anyone else uncomfortable with Caitlyn’s high-school skin? Especially when the writer actually tweeted ‘step on me’? Hello? Ma’am? That is a high school student, that is a CHILD you are talking about? But Caitlyn is hot so it’s fine! Sexualise a child! it’s fine, she’s hot, it’s fine!) Almost everyone who has contacted me about Caitlyn’s LoR cards has been excited to see her. Good! She’s a great character! Or, she was. But the enthusiasm about her is tied to how she’s so violent, how she uses her power to abuse those who don’t conform. But she looks great, smoking hot, you know? And when she’s smoking hot, her dangerous and abusive behaviour and attitude are completely excused. An update to a character needs to take into account characterisation as well as the visuals. Her update, sadly, has focused on the all-too-prevalent problem of the viciousness of state-sponsored violence, rather than the complexity of detective work, of puzzle solving and intellectualism, but because she looks hot and speaks in that British accent, no-one’s going to care. Hot ladies can get away with so much, because legs and pouty lips, but I guess she’s also a cop or whatever.

And, as a momentary aside, why is an eco-terrorist suddenly Caitlyn’s longtime foe? It makes zero sense for Piltover and for Caitlyn that someone who plant-based powers is her biggest rival and the city’s biggest threat. Zero sense, until you take into account that Piltover has been stripped of its character and made into something more aligned with modern authoritarianism than the hopeful vibes of steampunk. Environmentalism? Not on my watch! Deploy the police (the good guys!) to silence the protesters (who are obviously the bad guys becase they’re protesting)! Because Piltover and Zaun are one city now, and therefore indistinguishable, we have a fucking Poison Ivy character causing enough trouble in Piltover to warrant entire fucking SWAT teams opening fire within the city limits and around peoples’ homes! Not Zaun, which is the environmental nightmare, but Piltover! With its fresh air and open skies! Yes, that’s a great place for an eco-terrorist to blame and/or try to fix! The whole thing is honestly so backwards! Like they’ve decided to make a cool character in the form of Corina and just shove her into the story, rather than finding a place in the narrative that suits her. The idea that Corina is C makes no sense. Caitlyn vs C is supposed to be Sherlock versus Moriarty, Ganimard versus Lupin, ACME versus Carmen Sandiego, world’s greatest detective against the world’s greatest thief. It focused on the intellectual battle, the need for self-improvement, and - most importantly! - that this was a fight that didn’t result in gunfire or people being put in bodybags. But we can’t have that in our fighting game! We can’t have people thinking, because that’s not the kind of game we have, it’s left-click-shoot out here on the Rift or in the cards. So now we have a woman with plant powers bombing Piltover, and a policewoman kicking down doors and opening fire. And she’s right there, in Caitlyn’s new splash art, within reaching distance of the sheriff!

She’s right there! In hot pink with a flower in her fucking hair! And Caitlyn doesn’t even notice? Looks like one of my major gripes about Caitlyn being updated - Incompetence - is rearing its ugly head. She cannot even see someone not five feet from her. Oooh, look out, Piltover, no-one can figure out why this single eco-terrorist is causing problems for years, but Caitlyn will figure it out! With her gun! Because she’s a cop with a gun, and cops with guns never cause more problems than they solve, right?

Look... I know. I know she’s not my character. I know that everything I’ve done is fan-interpretation. But I’ve worked for so long and hard and done so much research, and things I’ve done have even been seen by - and used by! - the company itself (not just in the ‘oh what a coincidence’ sense, either, I know my link on Hextech as a form of magic made it to several of the writers, some of whom later contacted me). I might be too jaded by all the disappointment to take it personally anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happen. We know Riot Games could be and should be better. So many people in this community - and people who have since moved on - put so much love and effort into the characters and the world, building up from scraps and guesswork and extrapolation. It wasn’t our world, but we enjoyed playing in it. We enjoyed struggling in it, because it pushed us to be thoughtful, creative, to be engaged and interested. Critical Theory doesn’t have to be negative... but this recent update to Caitlyn’s character and to Piltover as a whole is... it’s a step backwards. They’ve gone for the ‘ooh isn’t this gritty and dark’ approach, and swept away so much of what made the original so interesting, creative, engaging to begin with. They’d rather have controversy than people genuinely enjoying the thing that they’re opening their wallet for. 

Caitlyn was a detective who focused on responsibility, intellectualism, and care. What she is now is not the same Caitlyn they started with, and expresses a set of values that I do not support. This blog will continue to be focusing on the old lore, on what Piltover has been and what it should be: a hopeful utopia, a place for people to grow and be responsible and thoughtful and mindful of their place on the world stage. It’s not going to be perfect, but there’s hope, and there’s people here who want the world, and everyone in it, to be better than it is. I hope you join me, no matter who you are.

#oops I essayed again #Not Your Piltover #caitlyn #riot please #character development #piltover

[twdmusicboxmystery]

The S11 Trailer - Analysis

Okay, let’s talk about the trailer. I’ll go through what I’m seeing shot by shot, and then focus on a couple of things that really stood out to me.

We start with Negan and Father Gabriel, with Negan looking distressed. FG asks him what’s wrong, and he says, “bad memories.” FG says, “of what?” We don’t hear Negan’s answer in the trailer.

Then we see the windmill in Alexandria, followed by horses running by Kelly and (I think) Magna. I think the horses will end up being important, as we see them again later. And this is really interesting. Take a moment to remember Buttons from S5, and I’ll come back to this.

Next, we see what I originally thought were overgrown street signs. But when I lightened this picture, I realized they’re not outdoor street signs. They’re indoor ones. Almost like the kind of thing you’d see at a massive mall or market or airport, directing you where to go. East Market. The “East” is jumping out at me as well.

Then we see Negan with a flashlight and other things in the underground tunnels from the sneak peek.

We see Daryl staring out over what I first thought as a mural. But when I lightened it, he’s really just looking down at a scene below him. If you look closely, below him on the left is a tank. So, at the end of 10x22, Carol said they were going to visit an old military base Daryl had found. I’m assuming this is it.

We see Judith, and then Daryl with mud on his face. This may be important. Keep this in mind. It looks a little like he’s covered himself either in red mud or perhaps walker guts.

Then we see various scenes of people fighting walkers and one person (we don’t see who) being bitten by one.

Then we see Negan dragging Maggie backward while she yells, “no!” I’ve mentioned this recently, but this is really interesting to me. It’s a nearly identical replay of Maggie being held back at the end of AOW (8x16) because Rick declared that Negan would live. Except this time, it’s Negan holding Maggie back from something else. The dynamic has changed. So, it makes me very curious to find out what he’s dragging her back from. It’s almost like he's trying to protect her.

There’s more fighting with walkers, and scenes from the underground subway tunnels. Most of these scenes are fast and it’s nearly impossible to tell exactly who is doing what or what’s going on.

This is also where we hear Daryl say, “I don’t leave anybody behind. Ever.” Because of Beth, we’re definitely side-eyeing that. In a way, it just proves that something happened to make Daryl believe Beth was dead and couldn’t be buried. This is him affirming that he would never have left her behind otherwise.

Then we see Kelly and Magna talking, and Kelly looking at a note that seems to have been written by Connie. It says, “Trapped with the dead. Walked with them for days. No light. No food. Little water.” Yeah, I’m kind of side-eyeing that note. It’s strange that Connie would write it and leave it but be nowhere around when Kelly finds it. (However, based on stuff we see later in the trailer, she does seem to have been kidnapped or taken prisoner.)

But more than that, the note feels thematic. Being trapped with the dead feels like a Beth thing. Walking with the dead is something we’ve seen a lot on the show. Michonne and her pets. The Whisperers, of course. Plenty of examples. And then the “no light, no food, no water” goes well with the drought and famine themes we’ve seen a lot. One of the most notable examples being in 5x10. I’m just saying.

Then more fighting with walkers, and we get the scene where Aaron says, “so you’re going to fight ghosts?” Followed by a teary-eyed Carol saying, “This is a path you don’t want to go down.”

My fellow theorists and I have discussed these a lot and who both Aaron and Carol might be talking to. I think there’s a good possibility that both may be Daryl. I’ve talked before about the possibility of him hearing something of Rick or Rick’s voice and wanting to go find him, but no one else believing him or that Rick is a live. Possibly questioning Daryl’s sanity. Both would go well with that idea.

Of course, that may be a little too convenient. Some people have suggested Carol might be talking to Maggie and trying to keep her from revenge on Negan. Or these could be secondary characters we won’t even care about overly much. No way to know.

Next, we see a person in a mask, with Dog standing near them, apparently watching Daryl. This is one scene that got our fandom very hyped up. I do have some things to say about it, so I’ll come back to it at the end.

We see lots of people running through the woods, a sickle hitting a tree. (I think it’s safe to assume that the sickle is a weapon/symbol of the Reapers.) And then a line of people in masks walking forward aggressively. Again, I’m assuming these are the Reapers. We’ve been told the trailer is misleading, so it may prove untrue, but I think it’s what we’re supposed to assume here.

We see more fighting and houses being broken into. Ezekiel fighting in a house and Eugene with bloodstains on his shirt. Then someone bound and hooded being dragged backward down a dark hallway. I’m thinking that’s Eugene.

Then we get a quick flash of what looks like feminine eyes behind a hood. These are what people assume could be Beth or Leah. And yes, they could be either. We do later see Maggie taking a skin mask off, so I think they could be her as well. It’s so quick, it’s pretty much impossible to identify them for sure.

The next scene is a super-tragic one. I’m pretty sure Dog is dying, guys. We hear what sounds like Dog whining in pain, as dogs do, and see a knife flash. Then Daryl turns around and screams, “no!” From descriptions of the episode, it sounds to me like Dog gets separated from the group and Daryl goes looking for him alone.

Some of us have wondered if this is when Daryl will “see” Leah again. When he’s on his own and it’s just him and her and Dog. That would, once again, suggest her being something only he can see. Just conjecture on our part as we really have no idea how things will play out, but it’s an idea we’ve batted around.

Anyway, it doesn’t look to me like Dog is going to survive. And while that SUCKS (poor Dog, poor Daryl ☹) because Dog is the embodiment of the Sirius symbolism, it does make a certain amount of sense that they might kill him before Beth reappears.

The other big deal about this is that it’s a clear parallel template to Beth. If Dog = Beth, she gets separated from group, Daryl goes searching for her, found her, but she apparently didn’t survive, dying right in front of him. (Or so he understands.) It kind of looks like the exact same thing will happen with Dog.

We then see a blood-covered knife hit the wall just under a frightened-looking Connie’s nose. She seems to be a captive or prisoner somewhere, and clearly her life is in danger. We also hear FG telling someone not to be scared and see what I assume is a Commonwealth soldier in an orange suit.

We also see a very decomposed walker tied to a tree. We’ve seen that pose a few times, and my mind always goes to the blond girl tied to the tree that Aaron and Daryl find in 5x15. So, chances are this will be very symbolic.

Then we see Daryl in front of some burning shipping containers, staring out at people. It’s not clear if the people he’s look at are members of TF, or perhaps enemies, but he doesn’t exactly look carefree.

Remember that in 10x17, he and Maggie and their group stayed in these same kinds of containers. Jadis also kept Rick in a similar once back in S8, so it’s a theme that’s been building.

We then here FG say, “God isn’t here anymore.” We see what looks like a walker but it’s crawling forward in a super creepy fashion, looking almost like a demon. Most walkers don’t move that way unless injured, so it makes me question whether this is a walker or a human pretending to be one.

We also see someone hung upside down by their ankles from an overhead pipe. I’m reminded of the Librarian guy in 6x16/7x01 who was hung over the bridge. Again, it’s just a theme we’ve seen before, but hard to interpret because the trailer gives us so little context.

More from the underground tunnels including what looks like it couple be corpses stuck in dried cement. And we hear an interesting line. “This a damn death march and you’re the pied piper.” So, Pied Piper theme. Something else we’ve seen a lot.

Then we see Connie and Virgil running through rooms. Now, I’d assumed that when Virgil found her, he took her somewhere or took her captive. I guess I didn’t really trust him even after Michonne sort of came to and assumed he was kind of a bad guy. But based on this, it could be that both were taken captive after he found her. They both seem to be running and trying to escape.

We see Maggie lighting a flare inside a subway train. Then, in quick succession, more masked eyes, Maggie looking distressed, and then someone’s fingers slipping from a handgrip, as though they’re trying not to fall but not falling anyway.

Then we see Maggie walking first through a parking lot and then some kind of defunct mall near an escalator. She says, “I lost something. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing that I did.” 

And then we see what I think is Maggie and Negan helping someone who is injured. Because we only see the backs of their heads, it’s hard to tell for sure. But I think the two on the outside are Maggie and Negan. I can’t tell who they’re helping. It doesn’t look like Daryl or Carol, but beyond that, I could say. If you look to the right, you can see department store mannequins, so this still seems to be in the mall.

Things speed up again and we see lots of people in masks, what looks like walkers invading Alexandria, Carol hugging Magna (forgiveness for Connie, perhaps?), people wielding weapons and running different places, etc.

We then see a bunch more of the underground tunnels stuff. People killing walkers in trains and such. We hear Negan say, “this only works if we trust each other.” And then Daryl says, “if you say trust him, I’ll trust him.” No idea who Negan’s line is directed to, as it’s just a voice over here. Chances are Daryl is talking about Negan, but again, no way to be sure.

Then Maggie says, “The woman who lived is not the one standing here now, so keep pushing me Negan. Please.”  When she says the final word, “please” we see her pointing a gun at someone with Daryl standing behind her.

A couple of things here. This is where we see her take off a skin mask, but that’s in daylight in the woods, so clearly, it’s a different scene than the subway with her and Daryl. What I’ll say is that, to me, this line from her feels very stilted, which means it may be spliced together. Remember back in the S5 trailer when it sounded like Gareth wanted to take Eugene to Washington to cure the virus, but in the show, he never said anything remotely close to that? The words really were his, but they just took lines of his dialogue and spliced them together. It was very misleading. I feel like this line from Maggie may be the same way. No way to be sure. I could be wrong. But it just sounds unnatural to me, like different parts of her dialogue have been spliced together. And who knows if the person she’s pointing the gun at is even Negan. We can’t see them.

I’m just saying, take it with a grain of salt.

Then we see the TWD logo. But it’s not over, yet. We see a coda, which is Eugene at the Commonwealth. We see a happy little “welcome to the Commonwealth” promo video, followed by lots of darkness and drama around Eugene.

Why is this important? Beth was the coda of the S5 trailer. For S6, it was Sherry and Dwight capturing Daryl in 6x06, which was replete with Beth symbolism. In the S7 trailer, it was Tara finding Oceanside. I could go on but, while Beth clearly wasn’t in any of the seasons after S5, the codas to the trailers tend to deal with symbolism or storylines that we’ve tied to her in HUGE ways. And we already believe she’ll probably come through Eugene’s story line when we, the viewers, first see her. So, it’s significant that they used Eugene, rather than any other character, as the coda.

I also noticed that in the CW promo vid, we see things like a mall or department store and a train station. Those are the same kinds of places we see Maggie and Daryl and the others exploring, except where they are everything is dark, defunct and overgrown, where in the CW video it all looks happy and functional and vibrant.

Not sure what that means. Are they meant to be the same places? Is there just a duality theme going on here? Are the Reapers and the Commonwealth connected somehow? We just don’t know, but it’s interesting.

I also notice behind the narrator is a monument with the words “The Great War” on them. Practically, the monument is probably referencing WWI, which was often called The Great War at the time it was happening, because it was the first worldwide war up until that point.

But I have no doubt that this monument is purposely placed by the writers and foreshadows the big, coming war, that we won’t truly see until the spinoff.

Okay, that’s pretty much it, but let me go back to that scene with the masked person and Dog staring at Daryl.

I think most people are assuming that it’s Daryl in the foreground (and I concur) and therefore the person watching him, who Dog is so comfortable standing beside, must be Leah. And it’s possible that that’s true. But keep in mind that, especially when Daryl isn’t around, Dog is equally comfortable with Connie and Carol. So, we just can’t know for sure who this is in the mask. I even think it could possibly be Daryl himself. I know that probably doesn’t make any sense to you but let me explain.

The angles and clarity of this shot are very suspicious to me. Let’s start with the angles. Clearly this is meant to be someone Daryl doesn’t see, but he feels he’s being watched, which is why he takes out his knife. But if you look at the angles, he’d only have to turn his head a fraction of an inch to see this person, so why doesn’t he? It just doesn’t feel like realistic positioning for the vibe they’re going for.

Secondly, the line between the right side (Daryl in the foreground) and the left side (Dog and the masked figure) looks a bit blurry and indistinct to me. And there’s a brown pole running down the center of the frame. At first glance, it seems to be a tree trunk, but if you look at it, it’s way too smooth and symmetrical to be one. I think it’s a metal pole. And what would that be doing in the middle of the forest?

Why am I telling you this? Just to show why I don’t think this is a “real” shot from the shot. Could Daryl be hallucinating? Sure. That’s one possibility. But I really wonder if this is just two different shots spliced together to create a creepy vibe for the trailer. So, one is the masked person standing next to Dog, and the other is Daryl in the foreground. And they’ve been put together with a computer.

That’s why I think the hooded figure itself could be Daryl. @wdway pointed out that this hooded figure wears a large knife very close to the center line of their body, and we’ve seen both Beth and Daryl do that in past seasons. Plus, remember that scene from the beginning of the trailer I told you to remember, where Daryl has either red mud or walker guts all over his face? I’m wondering if he’s just taken off a mask there. It would also explain Dog standing so calmly beside him.

And of course I could be totally wrong as well. Maybe it IS a masked person watching him. Maybe it IS Leah. There’s just no way to tell for certain. I guess my point is just to take everything with a grain of salt. We’ve been told this trailer is very misleading, and there’s absolutely no confirmation of who any of the masked people or random eyes are. Just keep that in mind.

Oh, I also said I’d come back to the horses. I didn’t write down exactly where, but at one point, we get a shot of Maggie walking up on dead horses. So, they’ll clearly play a role this season. Maybe it’s a matter of TF seeing some wild horses, and then finding them dead, and realizing this means there are bad people around. 

But remember there was a dead horse near Princess and Eugene’s group last season when they walked through the field of landmines. So, it’s something that’s been foreshadowed. And I can’t help but wonder if clear back in S5, Buttons might be a foreshadow of what’s about to happen in S11. Especially if it leads to Beth, which we think it will, I’m gonna say it was. But of course we’ll have to wait and see what that’s all about. 

Okay, I think that’s all I have for the trailer. Thoughts?

#beth greene #beth greene lies #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl