#what happens after death to the dead themselves is a philosophical question. what happens to the family is a whole different ballpark

[memestockpile]

the passion (1987) feel free to change as needed.

odd to be so governed by an appetite.

he liked me because i am short.

i can manage.

the others call me a dandy.

i'm telling you stories. trust me.

do it from the heart or not at all.

we're a lukewarm people for all our feast days and hard work.

will you kill people, [name]?

new to it, lad? don't be afraid.

what is luck but the ability to exploit accidents?

perhaps all romance is like that.

help me, you bitch.

what happened to your head?

you're like i was.

christ said he came not to bring peace but a sword, remember that.

i have a way with priests.

do you ever think of your childhood?

never talk happiness with a philosopher.

dinner's ready.

i like my anonymity.

time is a great deadener.

i don't care about the facts, [name], i care about how i feel.

i take what there is and i've stopped asking questions about where it comes from.

walking in the dark is like swimming underwater, except you can’t come up for air.

aristocrats are not relevant.

i'd never take a woman without giving her time to comb her hair.

then you'll come as my friend.

this year is slipping away and it will never return.

they say that every snowflake is different.

there is only the present and nothing to remember.

wherever love is, i want to be.

found it behind the altar. they always keep a good drop for themselves.

the body shuts down when it has too much to bear.

rumor has it that the inhabitants of this city walk on water.

with faith, all things are possible.

there's no knife can get through that.

i don't hate the french. i ignore them.

beware the dice and games of chance.

i come from a hairy family.

it suits you.

darkness and death are not the same. the one is temporary, the other is not.

you see, i am no stranger to love.

my heart is a reliable organ.

there are stranger things.

religion is somewhere between fear and sex.

bridges join but they also separate.

i never go to confession.

god doesn't want us to confess, he wants us to challenge him.

anything now to relieve the ache.

learn to look after yourself. don't rely on the good natures of others.

how intimate would you like to be with god?

lovers are not at their best when it matters.

i can't make love to you, but i can kiss you.

i'm surprised at myself talking in this way.

i never take off my boots away from home.

gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness.

in spite of what the monks say, you can meet god without getting up early.

you belonged. i envied you that.

i never tell a lie, but i don't tell the truth to everyone.

if you should leave me, my heart will turn to water and flood away.

there's no such thing as a limited victory.

watching my comrades die was not the worst thing about that war, it was watching them live.

not much touches us, but we long to be touched.

only then can you begin to survive.

not all men are as fortunate as ulysses.

what you risk reveals what you value.

i was bored.

such games are better not played at all.

the world is surely wide enough to walk without fear.

what are you running away from?

this is the price we agreed.

the women, they're always the clever ones.

love can survive.

death in battle seems glorious when you are not in battle.

beware of old enemies in new disguises.

you can stay with us.

men are violent. that’s all there is to it.

what's paris? just a few boulevards and some expensive shops.

don't tempt the spirits.

there are stories i could tell you that would make your hair stand on end.

i keep it for luck.

you can do that when you're dead.

i want to make my own mistakes. die in my own time.

greatness is hard to be sensible about.

saints love to be whipped.

i don't want anything to do with you.

it's none of your business.

it will be easier if you come with me now.

you must protect what you have won.

no sane man would live like that.

you must stay here until i am ready for you.

do you know what you're doing?

you've grown up.

will you stay?

i have heard that when a duckling opens its eyes, it will attach itself to whatever it first sees, duck or not.

i stay here by choice.

i find the air much the same in every country.

one battlefield is very like another.

you don't believe me? go and see for yourself.

#askbox meme #roleplay #inbox meme #ask meme #inbox rp meme #askbox #meme #roleplay meme #ask #rp meme #rp sentence meme #sentence starters #sentence meme #sentence starter meme #roleplay sentence meme #tumblr roleplay #historical roleplay #rp inbox meme #tumblr rp #rp #askbox rp

[a-weird-writer]

I like how you sometimes write in a past tense, like the reader fucken died and then got brought back. which gives me an idea for a fanfic… a Uranus x reader where he looses the reader to whatever death but they come back to life and act like nothing happened and they start to slowly decay until they’re a puddle of zombie mass, and then reincarnate, then the cycle repeats like Groundhog Day.

Reminds me of "Life After Beth", which is a hilariously great movie by the way.

Something as completely ridiculous as this would just throw Uranus off his ass more than once,

you are human? Truly?

You are all he expects first but nothing he ever expects later, despite being so obviously human. You maintain little difference in normal Earth society, you walk hand in hand along the humans, a lower lifeform; fragile and condescending, human in every other way but this one.

Uranus has never been so stumped in all his countless centuries of touring and destroying galaxies. He has seen his fair share of shit, but you take it to another level entirely. He is very confused, slightly but still weirdly intrigued at your peculiarly unique "circumstances".

This goes against everything he has ever known about humans and the natural cycle of death in general. Humans are pathetic; they live and die than nothing. You spin that in a whole other direction and, he won't lie, is oddly tempted to learn more about your condition, as strange as it is. You're some kind of exception to how death's affairs work, to how humans normally function in their impending demise, which only pulls him deeper in an extremely confused spiral.

He kind of wants to witness your reincarnation process up close and personally. Mostly to answer his own questions with his own eyes and ears. Seeing is believing, purely in an educational manner of course; observe, experience and learn. He is keen and pays close attention to all details in his line of work. Ironically, he is a strange type of philosophical than what you'd normally predict. Fitting you suppose, given who and what Uranus is, he won't bother to hide his true intensity.

Fascinating honestly, how determined this alien is to pry in your life. Seems to stem right off his straightforward and rock-hard attitude, he hungers, an endless thirst for battle and conflict. An eagerness to conquer and destroy. To ruin his foes in ways they will never recover from. As his lordship says, "they were made to fight". He was the definition of a destroyer, and he effortlessly broke down all your walls with the sheer force of his will. Wrathful, a brute.

With his weight, he easily sways you with not even 10% of the full gravity of his mass, you fall prey to his gentle touches just as effortlessly. His short temper is a bomb waiting to explode but is endearing in its own strange way. There is personality hiding in the shadows of his intimidation. More than just a weapon, a dead-weight to crush his lord's foes under. He is also more philosophical than what you would ever give him credit for, his timeless memory and experiences far outreach yours, a reach beyond the stars themselves and further than that. You see quickly that he often likes sharing his travels with you, his heart is as big as he is, if not larger. As your one of the few that actually breathes in his physical direction you learn after.

He is feared. Understandably so.

With his curiosity and your...potential "provide", together it adds fuel to the fire.

You never want to add fuel to any "fire" any of the Stardroids light, regardless of the relationship.

This puts both of you in an interesting position, more so Uranus then you, there are a lot of things he considers doing with you. And that isn't something he dwells on often. Theoretically, while you currently die-if your decaying corpse is any indication of that-that certainly doesn't stop your brand-new awakening. You outlive you own current life, falling into the next one in the blink of an eye. You live running on a timer, but while common humans have merely one, your life has multiple. Limitless perhaps.

In this case, you do not have a life, not one nor two. You have lives. You respawn, fit as a fiddle to live out your next one, to then die once more and to yet again, return bright as ever. The flesh fresh, your breath healthy and lively. Like it never fell apart to begin with. So human.

Your cycle repeats. Again and again, your lives end but your time doesn't; not permanently, only temporality.

You prove more than what you originally appear, quite literally I might add. To think, someone like you living aimlessly, so at peace on this damned rock the lower lifeforms dare call a planet. It's a waste, there is much more out there then what even Uranus realizes. Your technically immortal and will outlive any and all pain you encounter. And I don't know about you, but that is intraileally intriguing to a lot of people. Weaklings are worthless, but you have merit.

Potential.

That may be too little for some, but for Uranus its absolutely perfect. That is all the convincing Uranus needs to create more serious conclusions about yourself. Consider more...

let's say 'possibilities'.

You could perhaps, be of use to his lord.

#ask #anon #anonymous #uranus #stardroids #uranus x reader #zombie reader #classic megaman #megaman #will prob edit later im tired

[timeclonemike]

Religion, Faith, and Mythology in the Wikke Archipellago

Magic and Myth: In the same way that different cultures on different islands developed their own magical frameworks that didn't necessarily mesh with each other, so too did different cultures come up with answers to the big philosophical questions of Where Did We Come From and Where Are We Going. Untangling different versions of the same stories that have made the rounds from island to island for centuries being changed in the retelling is a complex anthropological task at the best of times, especially when different islands had different attitudes about what stories were Right and what were Wrong.

Consolidation of Conviction: Trying to consolidate so many different mythological conventions and folkloric traditions from the top down would have been an uphill battle at the best of times, so the vast majority of religious groups that survived to the present day never made the attempt; such groups largely devote themselves not the big questions of past or future, but rather the practical realities of the present. Many of these religious practices started as a means of preserving and teaching practical spellcasting in some form, which had an immediate application in one or more key areas of life, and any overarching ur-mythos grew out of the organization as different members tried to reconcile competing versions of folk tales, with various degrees of success.

Heart Of Earth Temple: The Temple is devoted largely to the questions and nuances of life, death, and undeath. The practical applications of that kind of magic were the growth and general health of agriculture and livestock, diagnosis and treatment of illness, and the managing of grief and death both individually and socially. Earth Priests are trained not only in magic but counseling and ecology; the ethos that has grown (pun intended) around the Temple is that undeath is a natural part of the life cycle, in the same way that mushrooms grow from dead wood and scavengers are drawn to carrion. What is commonly felt most keenly as a loss is actually a transformation or transition, though the feelings of loss are completely legitimate in the face of such a dramatic change. Most Earth Priests profess a belief that the world and all in it grew from some primal seed, and has been growing, pollinating, dying back, and regrowing with the seasons for as long as time has any meaning; a circle has no beginning or end after all.

Order of the Sacred Flame: The Order's fire symbolism takes a back seat to their emphasis on creation and transformation in their mythology, as their day-to-day activities are defined by actual work done and leave little time for abstraction. As befitting a religious order of crafters and tradespeople, the Sacred Flame has cultivated a literal creation myth that operates outside of the various origin stories known throughout the island, one where the entire world was the product of a deity, but significantly this deity was an apprentice or journeyman as opposed to a master. Thus, the world and all which dwells within it are rife with flaws, and yet much of the world does function adequately despite not being perfect; this is an important lesson about the nature of creation, the usefulness of even flawed instruments, and how perfectionism is a dead end trap that prevents the development of further skill. Trying to reconcile different competing myths is sidestepped by removing the conflict one degree; the apprentice creator god goofed when creating time itself so all these different myths concurrently happened in different pasts that got awkwardly welded together into the common present.

Alchemical Society: The nature of Alchemy requires a detailed understanding of astronomy and astral influences, so it is no surprise that the Society has some of the most advanced cosmological knowledge in the islands, and indeed the world. There is no overarching theory, rather three competing theories that are frequently debated and amended with new telescopic sightings and measurements; the Grand Cycle theory, the Singularity theory, and the Imbalance theory, each with their own implications for the central Alchemical premise of "As Above, So Below". The Grand Cycle theory holds that, much like the orbits of astral bodies in the sky and the progression of the seasons, everything exists in an eternal recurrence or oscillation, and as such had no true "origin" in the classic meaning of the word. The Singularity theory holds that there had to be some sort of cosmological prime mover that set the universe in motion, which is generally expressed as some sort of enormous explosion that eventually gave way to self organizing behaviors. The Imbalance theory broadly follows the Grand Cycle theory but postulates a great calamity that knocked the heavens out of alignment, explaining why Alchemists must go to considerable effort to concentrate magical energy to create Elixirs or perform the Great Work, rather than such energy cascading through the environment in a chain reaction of perfect transformation and evolution.

Confraternity of Eternity: Paradoxically, the semi-monastic organization dedicated to introspection and self development that eventually became the Confraternity holds considerable stock in the various folkloric tales and traditions of the Archipelago - for the specific reason of deconstructing them and picking them apart. The rationale is two fold. First, tearing apart old and beloved stories is a way of finding personal convictions and contentions that aren't necessarily obvious to outside view, and once a member of the Confraternity is aware of the emotional vestment they can start working on overcoming it. Second, the critical analysis of folklore acts as a springboard to critical analysis of more personal stories that people tell themselves, which acts as a further obstruction towards self development. Confraternity monks do not endorse any particular creation myth, but they do not disbelieve them either - they take them apart simply because anything that CAN be taken apart was put together by somebody else, but clothes, tools, and houses are put together by people and that does not make them any less real.

The Last Great Adventure: The treatment of the dead and the earthly remains of a person are the strongest convictions of many different religious and social groups, simply for the reason that death is a subject that drastic ramifications for the individual and for society at large. Grief and mourning are strong emotions which color the entire experience of losing someone close, while socially there are questions of inherited legal assets and liabilities, and finally the improper handling of a corpse can be a serious public health problem. Differences in creation myths, daily rituals, and holidays can and have been mediated and moderated between different religious orders with a minimum of friction, but those religious practices surrounding death, and dying are at best an "agree to disagree" truce between all parties and at worst have resulted in the ongoing low-level religious clash in part of the nation of Veck. The Heart of Earth Temple requires burial in some form to either preserve the body or advance its decomposition for various forms of undeath, while the Order of the Sacred Flame mandates cremation so that people rejoin the primal fire that created the world and their bodies become fuel for further transformation. Likewise the Alchemical Order has no mandate for burial at sea, but considers that to be the easiest way to restore the alchemical energy from the body back to the natural world, since water is the key medium for alchemical influence. The Confraternity believes that the spirit reincarnates in a new body after the old one fails so the body can be handled in any way that prevents the spread of disease, but there are complex funereal rites intended to aid the spirit in maintaining as much self awareness and therefore developmental progress as possible between bodies. All of these practices are practically and philosophically opposed to each other, and common ground is impossible.

#mystery project #game design notes #game design ideas #mythology #funereal rites #unreality #so far

[jakeshanley]

Reflections From Auschwitz

Where is God in all of this?

In the summer of 2016, I had the chance to travel to Europe for two weeks on a Christian pilgrimage. Every 3 years, 2.5 million young Catholic Christians (usually between 15 to 25 years old) travel to a designated place in the world for an event called “World Youth Day.” In the summer of 2016, the destination was Krakow, Poland. While there are many things I could talk about, I want to discuss my time in Auschwitz and where God might be in all of it.

The concentration camp Auschwitz is located two or so hours outside of Krakow. I’ll attempt to describe our moment there. As you walk into the camp of Auschwitz, the foreboding sign “Arbeit macht frei” hangs over the archway. It’s an obvious lie—“work sets you free”—used by the Nazis to coerce Jewish and other religious and ethnic prisoners to work until their deaths. While walking around one can read signs describing the function of certain buildings. “This was a gas chamber,” or “this was where the Jewish prisoners lived.”

There’s a sign on the corner of a bare wall on one of the buildings, with a picture of a Catholic priest, named Maximilian Kolbe. He had been captured by the Nazis and taken to Auschwitz, and ministered to other prisoners with spiritual help during their occupation. One day, a prisoner escaped, and the concentration camp staff decided to execute twelve Jewish prisoners in his place. One man started weeping, crying out that he had a wife and kids, and they would be fatherless and have no way of support for themselves. Maximilian Kolbe stepped out of a group watching the execution, and volunteered to take the man’s place instead. For two weeks, Kolbe and the prisoners were sent to a “starving room,” where they would be starved out until their deaths. Kolbe was the last one to survive, and was injected by the guards with a lethal injection of carbolic acid to finish him off.

Seeing the site of his martyrdom, and all of the other one million Jewish prisoners, raised multiple questions. Reflecting years later after the pilgrimage, I think the most pressing existential question is this: can any answer adequately respond to the absolutely meaningless and absurd amount of suffering that happened at Auschwitz? It seems that any answer, no matter how deep or profound, cannot shed light on the black hole of meaninglessness that happened there. Camus put it best when he said in The Myth of Sisyphus that in response to such a situation, one is either faced with an answer is "philosophical suicide" and does not address the immensity of such suffering, or an affirmative nihilism that life simply moves on like Sisyphus pushing his endless boulder after such events.

However, is there an answer that can absorb the seemingly infinite absurdity and meaninglessness without resorting to nihilism? G.K. Chesterton once wrote that when Christ died on the cross, and uttered the words "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", that it was the one moment in history when God had become an Atheist. God did not even believe in God; he had reached the depths of despair, and his mission and body would simply decay in the ground along with everyone else in human history. It would have been the ultimate contradiction, had not something miraculous occurred just a few days later.

For Christians, Easter Sunday marks the event of Christ's resurrection: when God simply "woke up" and removed the boulder in front of the entrance to his tomb, and walked out. God, in the person of Christ, took on what could be considered the most amount of suffering a human could possibly handle within himself, even to the point of denying God. Incorporating all of this suffering into himself, he rose from the dead, and thus gave an answer to all of this meaninglessness: that suffering in this life will result in something much greater in the next life. While this answer may not stop genocides, war, and the great tragedy of human suffering from continuing on, it will at least give personal meaning to those involved within it.

[britneyshakespeare]

not to be “oh you all have to know about my life” w my followers but it looks like my grandmother is finally going to pass away

#she's had an incredibly scary couple of months so in a way it's just sort of a relief #i know from being my grandfather's caretaker in his last month how it can be easier once someone has gone #just because they don't have to suffer anymore. they can pass on to... whatever lies beyond. #if that's dirt or heaven or something in between i don't really know. i don't care to even ponder my opinion on the subject when it comes #to things like this bc the immediate thing that concerns us mortals is how to fill the gap left behind by that person. #what happens after death to the dead themselves is a philosophical question. what happens to the family is a whole different ballpark #and im up next to bat. #she had a good life. she had everything she could've wanted. she really did. #raised 7 beautiful children into adulthood. 19 grandchildren. many great-grands (w only more to come on the way) #all of her children had her into their 50s and 60s. some of her grandchildren had her into their 40s. #as the youngest grandchild im incredibly privileged to have gotten to know her as a grownup and spend time w her at 21. #my dad got a text a couple of hours ago. he went down to their nursing home. he hasn't been allowed since bc of covid but it's hospice care. #that's his mother. he got word she was getting cold. and that was around noontime. i don't even know what's going on now. #i'm kind of hanging by a thread. i almost wonder 'what if this isnt it?' bc she's had so many scares even in the past few weeks. #it sucks. it all sucks. it's necessary and beautiful and fair but it sucks and it makes me wanna cry. my poor little father. #my poor little grandfather. he's been married to this woman since he was 23 and he's 92. #idk i have a lot of feelings. i don't really need to talk about it WITH someone if you're worried about me (if anything it might make it #harder for me to explain everything about her that i wanna get off my chest to someone who didnt know her. but i love you all.) #i just need to say this all here. in the tags as is my usual mode of contemplation. #tales from diana #i talked to my brother on the phone for a second. that was nice. i didn't really have anything to say. #he called mom when she got home from work (well. mom called him but he told her to call him when she could) #i asked if i could speak to jon. i didnt really have anything to say i just wanted to hear his voice and tell him i love him. #i kind of forgot to when she handed the phone over. i said 'hi jon.' 'hi.' and then there was a silence over the phone bc i was thinking #and he said i love you and i was like 'oh yeah i love you too.' 'how are you?' 'oh... you know. same as you.' #and he laughed the saddest little laugh and said 'yeah.' cuz that's his grammy too. i love my brothers. i hope theyre okay #i gotta check on dan. i also can't wait for kaily to come home. she's been at work and not to snitch on her but she was having a bad day #from when she woke up this morning. i love my sister everyone be nice to my sister. #i love my siblings... and my family... alright goodbye have a nice day

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Hey, you once mentioned something about Tom Riddle being a little suicidal. Your new post reminded of that and I wonder why you think that. It’s the complete opposite of what the books want you to think.

Alright, it’s time, let’s do this.

My standard disclaimer whenever we venture into the dark pit that is my thoughts on Tom Riddle: I’m going to say a lot of controversial stuff that fandom generally doesn’t agree with, I will say so much of this shit that I simply do not have time to explain it all, I expect 99% of you to disagree with me and the other 1% to be so horrifyingly offended that I dare to contemplate a world in which Tom isn’t always an overly competent psychopath that they leave me notes telling me to take this trash out of their character tags.

We good? Alright.

So, when I say a little suicidal, I mean that he is suicidal.

Not on the level that he’s going to kill himself tomorrow, or even has plans to kill himself, but in that he makes very strange decisions for someone who desperately wants to live.

And yes, I realize I speak blasphemy given that Tom Riddle’s entire m.o. is supposed to be his crippling fear of death.

Oh man, this one’s going to be so long.

So, my reasoning comes down to a few things:

The location of the horcruxes and the nature of their protections.

The events of Deathly Hallows and Tom’s final actions in the novel

The nature of horcruxes and what it means to not only be able to create one but what it does to you (caveat that I am going to headcanon hard here and speak utter blasphemy)

So, let’s start in order this time, because I think the first two are actually far easier for me to explain.

The Location and Nature of the Horcrux Protections and the Trouble with Backdoors in Security

So, first, the horcruxes are all conveniently located in Great Britain. Not even just in Great Britain, all in places that Albus Dumbledore and later Harry Potter can track down with relative ease, all fairly close to each other.

Now, part of this is undoubtedly attributable to Tom’s overly romantic nature. 

Yes, Tom Riddle is a giant romantic, though not necessarily in the traditional sense everyone thinks of. The film “Patton” and its treatment of Patton comes to mind. Tom Riddle is a man enamored by a sense of greatness, of being remembered in this world rather than fading into oblivion, by the significance of places and times in history not only of the world but of himself. He creates an entire, grand, persona for himself because to live an ordinary life for him is to be worthy of nothing.

So, given that, of course Tom places the horcruxes in sentimental locations that have personal meaning to him.

However, it also makes them perilously easy to find and collect.

By itself, this wouldn’t spark my notice.

The ability to destroy horcruxes are not easy to come by. There’s only one basilisk and it’s by chance/Lucius fucking up that Harry gains access to the necessary basilisk venom. Using Fyendfire is an incredibly dangerous thing to do and just as likely to blow up you and the next three towns over as it is to destroy a horcrux. And if there are other means of destroying a horcrux they’re just as hard to come by or just as dangerous.

It’s not quite throwing it into the fires of Mt. Doom from which it was forged but it’s pretty damn close.

So, really, without JKR’s convenient Deus Ex Machina giving both him and Dumbledore the means to actually destroy these things, Tom Riddle’s horcruxes are pretty damn safe no matter where we put them. As we see from the locket, which Regulus manages to collect but Kreacher cannot destroy even after several decades.

However, what does spark my notice, is that the horcruxes can be collected by someone other than Tom Riddle when it appears as if they were never intended to be. What do I mean by this?

From what we see, there’s no benefit to Tom if the original horcruxes are found by anyone. He doesn’t seek them out to restore his original body, they’re just anchor points that should be hidden at all costs. So, he’ll never need a Death Eater to go collect them for him should he be indisposed (indeed, to do so would require a tremendous amount of trust in people he has very little trust in). 

So, why hide them in such a way that others can access them? There are canon based options which would have prevented anyone else from reaching them. Given the existence of age lines, I imagine Tom Riddle could make some arbitrary barrier keyed only to himself. There are mokeskin pouches, such as the one Harry is given in the seventh book, which we know can only be accessed by whoever they’re keyed to. There’s the Fidelius Charm which, true requires a secret keeper which Tom would be very meh on, but options exist.

Tom Riddle could wipe the locations of his horcruxes off the face of the map. He chooses not to. Which leads me to believe that, at least on some unconscious level, he wants the horcruxes to be found.

Then we have the protections.

Specifically, I’m thinking of the locket here.

Yes, the protections are very formidable, but they’re also goddamn weird. 

Rather than make the horcrux simply inaccessible, kill all those intruding, instead the intruder has to go through a very “Saw” like puzzle in which they drown themselves in despair until they finally get the locket, at which point they likely suicide by zombie.

More, there’s no hint that there’s any other way to retrieve the locket. 

Backdoors in security are a very bad idea. What they do is weaken the security as a whole and, if you can take a short cut is, it means that someone who is clever enough and motivated enough can to. Dumbledore is both clever and motivated enough, and I imagine if there was a way to get the horcrux that involved not doing this ridiculous task he would have done it.

More, we’d be back to the land of Tom making sure only he can access the horcrux by requiring a password, keying it to his magical signature, or something so that no one else could get it.

Which means, that’s right, if Tom wants to get the locket he’s drinking the goddamn despair juice just like the rest of us.

What kind of a person would do any of this?

I’ve gone over this before, but I don’t think Tom Riddle’s crazy. Rather, in this case, I think he’s driven by an unbelievable amount of nihilist rage and is also quite depressed.

Tom goes to collect his horcrux, “Ah, it’s time to remember what a miserable life I’ve led and the sheer awfulness of my own existence. Good, I was starting to feel a little too happy. Let’s see if I get eaten by my undead, vengeful, victims today.” 

The Events of Deathly Hallows and Tom Riddle’s Death

I think Tom Riddle’s final death in the books was suicide.

Tom takes over the Wizarding World, finally, and it’s as miserable as ever.

He’s trapped in this sham, barely functional, probably very painful body. His Death Eaters are completely out of control and for all that he wanted society to burn it’s now burning and no one’s even learned anything from this. Children in Hogwarts are being routinely tortured and have now staged a rebellion in which he’s having to slaughter them (I have reasons to believe that this is not what Tom Riddle wanted, at all, but that’s best saved for another post), and then he learns his horcruxes have all been destroyed without him even noticing.

There’s so little left of him, he has accomplished nothing, and there’s Harry Potter back from the dead yet again, gloating at him that love conquers all and Tom Riddle will never understand.

And Harry’s right, Tom Riddle will never understand, the world is meaningless and flat to him now and he finally understand that there’s no point to it. I think Tom Riddle decides he’s done. He’s just done.

He enters in a duel with Harry Potter knowing the weird nature of their wands. Now, it can be assumed he used the Elder Wand, but we know they get locked in Priori Incatatum , and that makes no damn sense with the Elder Wand (well, wandlore in general is silly, but I’m working with what JKR gave me here). So I choose to take JKR at her somewhat established canon and say that, no matter what Harry thought, Voldemort was using his original wand.

He throws out the killing curse, despite having now witnessed Harry resurrecting twice to this thing, and within two seconds it rebounds and kills him.

Voldemort’s death is a lot like this scene from the recent, terrible, 2020 live action Mulan (10/10 do not recommend).  Now, we’re supposed to think that this scene is the witch saving Mulan’s life and thus showing her hope for the next generation. In actuality, the witch literally flies into an arrow she could have easily deflected from Mulan’s path. It’s a suicide that Mulan is too stupid to notice.

Tom chooses suicide in the most ridiculous, flamboyant, and easily written off manner one can and no one even notices. Instead Harry crows that he has personally defeated Voldemort, with the power of love no less, HUZZAH!

And the castle parties.

The Nature of Horcruxes

I almost don’t want to include this because it’s so... well, I’m really drifting far from canon and fandom now.

However, with horcruxes, there’s always an overriding question of why Tom is able to make so many when we don’t see anyone else with these things around (especially as it’s clear that murder doesn’t simply happen for those that now have horcruxes).

Usually, you have fic authors just sort of shrug and go, “Well, he’s that evil, I guess.” Sometimes you have them go, “No one else is crazy enough to keep going, and that’s why Voldemort’s cuckoo bananas.” 

One very good explanation I’ve seen is that it’s because most people, when they murder, feel remorse immediately. The soul split happens, but they’re haunted by the murder for the rest of their life, and thus the horcrux isn’t made. Voldemort, feeling nothing when he kills anyone, is thus able to make them even for when he’s only indirectly associated with the death in question.

However, to me that never really jived philosophically.

Mostly, I simply cannot imagine that tearing apart your very soul is an act of indifference. Here’s how I see it: to do something like that to yourself, you must care, you must care beyond all imagine and human endurance. Your soul literally cannot abide it and saws itself in half, purging what you cannot stand about yourself the most. 

The remorse part is, yes, remorse for the act and the victim but more to the point it is the ability to forgive and reaccept the worst part of yourself. That part of yourself that you purged and destroyed, which is nearly impossible to do and might very well destroy the fabric of who you are). 

In other words, while creating a horcrux is an abominable act of hatred, it is also one of profound self-hatred.

Tom Riddle loathes himself so much that he is able to do this over and over and over again. 

As Tom Riddle goes on he makes himself into less and less and less of himself until he probably doesn’t even know who he is anymore. He just knows, whatever is left of him, he loathes that too. 

And then, of course, he gives up, runs into the nearest flying arrow, and dies.

TL;DR: Tom Riddle’s is a miserable existence that ended in a miserable if unintentionally hilarious manner

#ask #anon #tom riddle #voldemort

[hpalways]

Spice and Tea || Zhongli

EVERYTHING seemed to be much grander in the city of Liyue Harbor. The tall, towering structures were built from an endless budget of mora, glistening in the darkness. Golden-amber lights shown from each building, they were nearly blinding, but so beautiful. It were these very details that made the city so popular with the tourists... though it was a rather different matter for those who resided here. Besides the fact, these colors reminded you of something — no, someone. 

This someone was currently in front of you, his tall figure leading you through the streets. His long, ebony hair swishing in a ponytail behind him, the soft-looking strands almost slapped you in the face several times. He then glanced back at you, his golden hues digging into your soul. “Are you alright? You look quite out of it,” he observed. 

Blinking for a few seconds, you cleared your throat and quickly nodded. “I am? I didn’t realize.”

Actually, it wasn’t too surprising that you were. The memory of Zhongli telling you that he was the Geo God was resurfacing. No matter how much time you had to process all of this, you could never truly grasp it. A god? How could someone like him... be something so impressive? But the evidence was there. From the way he looked to the way he acted, his entire being symbolized the city. 

You first acquainted him when you found him lingering around your stall, curious of the herbs and spices that were laid out for sale. Dressed in exquisite clothing in multiple shades of brown, you assumed he was someone of high status. Intimidated by him immediately, you steered clear of him and only spoke when he had any inquires. His voice low and calm, he turned out to be really philosophical. His knowledge of the herbs you tended to was profound, and you couldn't help but be in awe. When he finally decided to buy something, it left you dumbstruck. He didn't have mora on himself. How could someone not have mora on themselves?! He was a mystery to you. 

Chasing him away for making a fool out of yourself, you couldn't believe you wasted time on him. However, that wasn't the last time you saw him. He visited a few times a week, coming without mora as always. To this, you were supposed to kick him out, for he provided no business. But deep down inside, you had no heart to do so, not when he looked so passionate talking about mundane things like herbs. Listening to him speak left you at ease, so a smile would take place on your lips more often. 

So here you were now. The two of you developed a closer relationship throughout the weeks. Yet, the news of Zhongli as a god seemingly complicated things. Why would he spend time with a mere mortal being like you? You were nothing compared to him, a speck of dust within his years. In no time, he would forget you... and the thought of that hurt.

Brushing those thoughts away, you decided it was best to enjoy this moment with him. The future was unknown, concerning the two of you, but worrying would only add wrinkles onto your face. Speeding up your pace, you were side by side with the consultant of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor. He rose his eyebrows, sending you a soft smile that left you flustered. 

"Why do we have to go to a teahouse when I already have herbs to make tea out of?" you complained. "I'll be the one spending my mora too."

He blinked in surprise. He always did this when someone brought up the currency, as if he didn't realize mora existed. "Oh, that's right. The tea is going to cost pretty expensive," he said, humming. He looked unbothered, knowing he was a total parasite to you. Damn, if he was a god, couldn't he at least create some mora and have you become rich?

The teahouse was coming into view, the homely building wide and spacious. Strolling through the front door, you were led to a table for two. Sitting yourself down in front of Zhongli, you watched as he professionally scanned through the menu. 

"Do you have any preferences?" he asked you. "If not, I know a good one. It's refreshing and has this distinct taste that never fails to reduce stress. After all, a lot happened today, did it not?"

He was correct in that. Today, the newest stocks for your spices didn't deliver on time, because the wagon fell into the ditch. This was a great annoyance to your day, but you decided to go check on it, in exchange that you would get your products safely. What you didn't know was that the wagon had ran into hilichurls earlier, who still lingered there when you arrived at the scene of crime. Ambushed by the creatures, it was thought you were to meet your end when someone saved you in time. It was no other than the Geo God himself, the very one sitting across from you at this moment. 

This encounter had struck more doubts within you. The difference in strength and power between you and Zhongli was out of this world. You were so weak, but he slashed those monsters dead with a few hits. It made you wonder if it was better if he didn't need know you; you were such a nuisance for him, someone not worth of his time. 

"Thank you for saving me back then," you said for the millionth time already. "I guess paying for the tea shouldn't be a big deal, since I wouldn't even be here if it weren't for you."

"It was a pleasure saving you. You are my favorite merchant, after all." He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned on the back of the chair, looking pleased with himself. A staff member approached the table and he went to order tea. Once they were gone, the consultant leaned forward, gazing intently at you. His gloved hand lifted from beneath and was placed on top of your head. Stroking your [h/c] locks endearingly, he was throwing you off drastically. He was never this affectionate. "Go get some rest after this. Don't go back to the market -- it should be closing soon anyway."

Much to your disappointment, he removed his hand when a teapot was set in the middle. Porcelain tea cups were stacked beside it, ready to be used. Elegantly reaching for them, he poured the steamy liquid into the fragile cups, handing one to you and keeping the other for himself.

Patiently blowing into the tea, you took a sip and melted at the taste of it. He was right; this was almost enough to erase all your worries away. 

"This citrus and honey scent stemming from it... it reminds me of you, [Y/N]," he said softly. His lashes lowered, showcasing how long and dark they were. Beautiful. Why was he so beautiful? "Soothing and warm. You allowed me at your stall when no else did. You became a haven, if I dare say." He sipped his tea and let out a content sigh. "Most relationships I've had with others were bounded through contracts. Although, with you, there is none and I still find myself returning to see you. Is this the meaning of sentiment then?"

You were thoroughly unprepared with his words. He kept surprising you today. Was he somehow affected by the near death experience you had today? That couldn't possibly be true. "I-I don't know," you choked out.

It was silent for the next few minutes. Averting your eyes away from him, you buried your face into your cup, gulping down the rest of its contents. Now empty, you hurried to pour in more tea, hoping you didn't look as awkward as you felt. Meanwhile, his features were passive to the point it was unreadable. What was he thinking about? 

"Am I making you uncomfortable?" he asked bluntly. Your shoulders stiffening, you quickly shook your head in denial. "I see. And yes, to see you almost dying, it frightened me. I couldn't bear to lose you." Your mouth parted in shock. Did he somehow read your mind? 

But his words... they touched you, making tears prickle the corners of your eyes. Blinking them away, you gulped and fixed your posture self-consciously. He truly cared about you. 

Before you could stop yourself, you summoned up the courage to voice the question that had been on your mind all night long. "Will you forget me someday?"

He chuckled in amusement, shaking his head afterwards. Reaching for your hand, he guided it to the side of his face. His skin soft and smooth under your fingertips, the feeling of it sent your heart racing. His crimson bangs brushed you, tingles erupting on your tender skin. He nuzzled himself into the crook of your palm, fluttering his eyes shut. "Never. You will be thought of during every tea I drink, every herb I analyze, every merchant I meet, and every hilichurl I fight. Memories with you will be cherished forever... so don't go forgetting me either."

#zhongli #genshin #genshin x y/n #genshin x reader #zhongli x reader #reader insert #liyueharbor #romance #fluff #oneshot #OneShots #genshin impact #tea #writing #love #angst #childe #tartaglia #lumine #xiao #diluc #kaeya

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Chapter 57: Gatto’s Keep

Becoming The Mask

Trollish and -text messages-

I hope we all enjoy the movie when it comes out this Wednesday! Remember, today’s the last day to start binge-watching and still have enough time to watch every episode of all three shows before the movie airs!

+=+

Four humans, one Changeling, and two unaltered trolls were scatted around an underground library, researching notable locations around the world.

"Whoa, listen to this," said Jim. "Surrounding the Hero's Forge of Heartstone Trollmarket is a chasm known as The Deep, which was enchanted through unknown means by the Trollhunter Kanjigar the Courageous."

They were hoping to find notable mountains, in particular, but 'caverns deep' had also been mentioned in the riddle, and hey, maybe Strickler had been wrong about where the Eye was before the Changelings got it.

"Anyone cast into The Deep will suffer death at the hands of their greatest fear. It has since been used as a means of execution for particularly heinous criminals. No troll is known to have entered The Deep and lived."

Jim frowned and traced over that last sentence with his fingertip.

"How does anybody know it works if no one has ever come back?" he said. "Maybe they just die on impact after getting dropped off a cliff. Or maybe there's, like, a little society down there now and they're just choosing not to leave."

"I saw a cartoon like that once," said Toby.

"Also," Jim continued, "I understand why, if you think somebody deserves to be tortured to death, you would use magical means to get them to come up with a customized torture for themselves to maximize their suffering; but why would you kill someone, who you definitely want executed, in a way that makes it impossible to check and confirm they're dead?"

"Isn't that how oubliettes work?" said Mary.

"Good point."

"You understand torturing people to death?" said Darci.

"I understand trying to do a thing a thoroughly as it can possibly be done."

"Maybe Kanjigar pretended to enchant the place so he could have a spot no one would bother him if he wanted to get away from his job for a while," said Toby.

"Surrounded by the bodies of executed criminals?" said Darci.

"Depending on how hard they landed, they might already be gravel," said Jim. "It's a little unsettling when you know that used to be a troll, but you get used to it. Besides, Kanjigar was only Trollhunter for … what, just under a hundred and seventy years? How many 'particularly heinous criminals' could there have been down here in that time?" He turned to Blinky. "No, really, I'm asking."

"Offhand I can only think of three cases, all involving treason. Perhaps Kanjigar can explain the enchantment next time you visit the Void. Ah!"

Blinky turned his book so everyone else could see the illustrated mountain.

"Gatto's Keep! Deep in the realm of the Volcanic Trolls, in what you humans call 'Argentina', under the volcano Ojos del Salado."

"The eye of the salty?" said Claire.

"Believed to be named for the many salt deposits found on its glaciers, forming eye-like lagoons of meltwater," said Blinky, brushing the interruption off.

"Salt gets expelled through volcanic ash," said Toby. "Or chlorine gas that fuses to nitrogen later. Underwater volcanic activity is part of why the ocean is salty."

"Fortunately, this particular site is not underwater," said Blinky. "Gatto's Keep, a vault of treasures untold – treasures deemed too powerful for the underworld to possess, and kept locked up by Gatto himself."

"Have you ever met this Gatto?" asked Jim.

"Uh … no. Truth be told, I've done everything in my power to avoid him. Very few ever return from his keep."

"I see." Jim frowned down at the book in his lap. "Then maybe you guys shouldn't come."

"What?"

"Are you kidding?"

"The last time we went on a Triumbric Stone quest, a supposedly mostly safe quest, we ended up in the middle of a violent revolution!" Jim reminded them. "I'm not leading a bunch of kids somewhere I know in advance is going to be dangerous!"

"He makes a fair point," conceded Blinky.

"But you can't just go on your own!" Toby protested.

"Of course I won't. Blinky's got to drive the Gyre, and I'll bring Draal for muscle, and –" Jim cut himself off, looking quickly around the room. "Maybe someone else, but I'll have to ask. And if she can, it'll have to work around her schedule."

"You're bringing your mom?" Darci asked.

"No!" Jim recoiled from the idea. "I – Look, there's a Changeling I know who might be able and willing to help, especially for a chance at a legendary vault of forbidden treasure, but I have to ask."

Toby got out his phone and texted Jim rather than asking out loud.

-It's the museum lady, isn't it?-

Jim just glared at him. Both boys deleted the message.

+=+

"Have you ever heard of Gatto's Keep?"

Nomura raised her eyebrow at the Trollhunter.

"Not much. It was one of the places we suspected a piece of the Bridge might be hidden, but considering it had a reputation of no one ever coming back from it, we weren't actually sure if it was real."

It was just as likely to have been an old story that got passed down until it became a figure of speech. The Janus Order’s references to it were all from before Nomura was even stationed on the surface – she'd happened upon them while on archive duty decades ago.

"Blinky says it's real." Jim shrugged. "Or at least Gatto is real, and lives in Argentina. We're planning to go see him about an artifact he might have."

"You're not looking for the Triumphant Stones, are you?" she asked. "Draal's told me that story." Years ago, back when he'd first tried to convince her to change sides. It was the closest he'd ever been to philosophical. "Building a weapon is one thing, but chasing prophecies is another."

Jim shrugged again. "If I'm going to do this, I might as well take every advantage I can. The Triumbric Stones might not be the key their reputation says, but they'll still help."

"Assuming the stones aren't just a trap that will put the Amulet under Gunmar's control."

He snorted. "Oh, come on. If they worked that way, Bular would've been the one to bring them up."

"Not if the conspiracy went deep enough." She snorted as well. "Sure, I'll help loot the place."

"If diplomacy fails," said Jim insistently. "I want to at least try cutting a deal first. When do you have time?"

"I don't work Wednesday or Thursday."

"Great. I'll text. Oh, also," he suddenly looked much more shy, "this comes with a risk of a human or several finding out about you. Still in?"

Nomura leveled a glare at Jim, letting him squirm while she thought it over. (He didn't squirm at all, the shameless wretch. Just looked at her with that stupid timid hopeful expression.)

"For a chance at a legendary treasure trove like that, I might transform in public."

Human public, where they could make up some excuse about hidden cameras and movie costumes and practical special effects, not Trollmarket public, but most Changelings wouldn't need to clarify that.

+=+

Nomura had a duffle bag slung over her shoulder and was wearing a wide-brimmed brown fedora.

"Isn't that Stricklander's hat?"

"It's traditional garb for archeological expeditions."

"You stole it, didn't you?" His inflection made it clear this was not really a question.

"I'm going to send him a selfie and see how long it takes him to realize it's his." Nomura held her phone out and snapped a picture.

"Hi, museum lady!" Toby greeted. They were meeting in the canal. "I brought tacos!"

"… Why are we bringing him?"

Jim sighed. He hadn't wanted to, but Toby made a good argument.

"Diversity of perspective. A human might notice something a troll or Changeling would miss, just like vice versa. We don't know how organized this Gatto guy's collection is. We might have to go looking for the Birthstone."

Thankfully Claire had a 'family thing', Darci had an 'extracurricular commitment', and Mary had a date, all on Wednesday, and he had been able to get that information without revealing Thursday was also an option.

Inside, Nomura shifted to her troll form, keeping the hat showing. Toby gasped.

"You're so tall …"

"Toby, Nomura," introduced Jim. They started climbing down the glowing staircase. "Officially, she's one of Draal's old sparring buddies who's agreed to come on this mission for extra muscle."

So please do not address her as 'museum lady' where anyone can hear you.

"Isn't Draal coming too?" asked Toby.

"Which is how she got invited."

"I don't get it."

"She's going to meet Draal while you and I go to the library, and then we're all meeting up at the Gyre station."

"Why didn't she just –" Toby stopped and readdressed the question to Nomura. "Why didn't you just meet up with Draal at Jim's place?"

"I'm avoiding the chance Barbara will try asking me for life advice again," said Nomura lightly.

Jim's eyebrows went up. He hadn't questioned her suggestion to meet in the canal, but now he really wanted the story there …

"When did that happen?" asked Toby.

"We're in the same krav maga class."

Which did not completely answer the question, but Toby seemed to think it did, and Jim didn't want to push when Nomura was arguably doing him a favour.

On the one hand, he could claim to be doing her a favour, taking her along on a treasure hunt where she could sneak out an artifact or two for herself, but on the other hand, she was loaning her experience in identifying and handling ancient artifacts and dealing with stuffy curators. The situation was roughly neutral and Jim didn't want to tip it.

The walk to the library, and to the Gyre station after that, were peaceful. AAARRRGGHH accompanied them as far as the station entrance.

"Good luck," he said, tapping his horns against Blinky's, rubbing the top of Jim's helmeted head like he was fluffing his hair, and giving Toby a very gentle pat on the back.

"I will look after them," Draal promised, arriving with Nomura. "We will all return from Gatto's Keep."

"Well, now that you've said that," Nomura teased.

+=+

Jim's first impression was that Ojos del Salado looked like a construction project was underway. Or, maybe a mining operation? The mountain was hollowed out, with another mountain inside, and the inner mountain was covered with ladders and scaffolding.

"Ugh, it's so hot," Toby complained. "I know it's a volcano, but still." He pulled at his sweater vest but didn't take it off.

The local trolls wore what looked like welding masks over their faces, and had faintly glowing orange lines carved into their skin. Two appeared to be standing guard near the Gyre station – but facing in, towards the complex, rather than outwards to new arrivals.

Very few ever return, rang loudly through Jim's mind.

"Excuse me," said Blinky to one of the sentries. "We would most graciously request an audience with Gatto."

The troll wordlessly pointed them to the top.

"Ah … thank you, kind friend."

Toby was groaning after the first few ladders. By the time they neared the top, he had stopped, probably to conserve energy – but he managed another when they realized the platform was empty.

"Where is he? They pointed 'up' but there's no more 'up' to go … Did he leave while we were climbing up here?"

Jim eyed the stone the scaffold was built by. It might be climbable. There was a long but narrow ledge about level with the platform, and a tall, V-shaped protrusion probably taller than AAARRRGGHH, and – the ledge split apart. It glowed inside.

"Who has awakened Gatto?"

The mountain-in-a-mountain opened two glowing yellow eyes. A chuckle made the platform shake.

"A human Trollhunter?" the mountain-in-a-mountain said. "How interesting. How … unique. To what do I owe this … pleasure?"

Jim cleared his throat and leaned back a little so he could look Gatto in the eye. "We've come to ask –"

One of the masked trolls arrived, pushing a wooden cart of rocks. The delivery-troll darted away just in time to avoid a massive tongue, and ran back off the platform into the lower scaffolding. Jim reflexively summoned his knives. It was difficult to will them away.

"You must excuse me," said Gatto. "I never talk business without something to eat. Go on."

"We've come for the Birthstone."

"Birthstone of Gunmar?" The mountain troll chuckled again. "Very powerful. Tell me … why should I give it to you?"

"Of course we don't expect you to just give it to us."

Jim ignored Draal's quiet, "We don't?" He took off his backpack, handed it to Blinky, and unzipped the top.

"We've come prepared to trade."

"We did?"

The first thing Jim got out was black and rectangular. Its cord was plugged into a crystal array which some trolls used to substitute for electrical outlets, to power the neon signs and Christmas lights and televisions down in Trollmarket. Blinky had one for his phone charger.

"This is an uncommon human device. You activate and deactivate it with this button here." Jim pushed the button twice, demonstrating. "By turning these knobs, it's possible to generate a custom frequency of audible static."

He put the white noise generator back in his bag, and got out a lumpy object wrapped in a towel. He draped the cloth over his shoulder and held the item where Gatto could see it.

"This is the head of Bular, son of Gunmar, taken as proof that he was slain. Proof that Gunmar's line is not unkillable."

Gatto looked intrigued. Jim rewrapped the head in the towel and switched it for a book. Blinky grimaced during the exchange.

"And this is a document stolen from a Janus Order base; an unfinished medical study of foods that provide nutrition to both humans and trolls."

He flipped through a few pages so the text was visible, proof he wasn't scamming Gatto with a blank notebook, and put it away.

"Seller's choice. Rare artifacts that carry entertainment, power, and knowledge. Which of those would you accept as payment for the Birthstone?"

"Hmm …" The mountain troll pondered the selection. "I think I will have all three. Along with the answer to a little riddle. Answer it correctly – the Birthstone is yours. Answer it incorrectly – I eat you all."

"WHAT?" Toby yelped. "Did I understand that right? Did he say 'eat'? He said 'eat'!"

"Breathe, Tobes." The Sword of Daylight was in Jim's hand. His first instinct was to pick Toby up and bolt for the Gyre. He should be strong enough for that if he switched to troll form, right?

But they needed the Birthstone …

"Master Jim, we must not enter into this binding agreement," Blinky hissed in English. "I'm beginning to catch on why so few trolls ever leave this domicile."

"We'll play!"

"Nomura?!"

"It's simple – either we figure out the riddle and he gives us the stone, or we refuse to answer, which is not technically answering incorrectly, and fight our way out."

"… When you're right, you're right," Jim agreed.

"You think you are clever," said Gatto. "So answer me this. What begins and has no end, and ends all that which begins?"

Blinky blinked, in full unison for once, all six eyes together. "… I have absolutely no idea. Those words mean nothing! Indecipherable!"

"Begins and has no end," Jim repeated to himself quietly, "and ends all that begins."

"I … don't think I can help," said Draal reluctantly. "Rocks for brains, remember?"

"Well, that attitude's not helping, for sure. Begins with no end, ends what begins …"

"School bus?" Toby guessed, switching back to English. "Uh, meatloaf? Hair?"

"Let's think logically," said Nomura, also in English. "In these situations, the answer is almost always one of four things: death, nothing, eternity, or a riddle itself." She counted them off on her fingers. "The answer to a riddle is its end. Eternity by definition doesn't have a beginning or an end. So it's either death or nothing."

"Ten more seconds," said Gatto ominously.

"You didn't tell us we were on the clock!" Blinky protested.

"What begins and has no end, but doesn't end when it begins –?" Jim punched his hand. "Shoot, that's not it! Could you repeat the question?"

"Kangaroo! Golf! Socks! Magic! Warhammer! Baby deer!"

"DEATH!" shouted Nomura. "The answer is death!"

"What?" Gatto gasped. "No one has ever answered that before … and lived to tell about it."

The celebration at getting the correct answer ended immediately.

"And that's the hazard of riddle games where the answer is death," said Nomura. "Most riddle-givers pick that answer because it's what they plan to give the riddle-solvers anyway."

The group was surrounded by four masked trolls, all armed with axes about twice the size of the hammer Toby carried.

"Your entire keep is a trap!" Blinky accused Gatto. "You hoard treasures as nothing but bait!"

"Oh, come now. A mountain has to eat, you know." He opened his mouth, like he expected them to just obediently walk in.

Jim summoned Daylight. The volcano trolls all flinched back from the burst of light.

Nomura lunged at the guard nearest to the ladder. She caught the axe between her swords and twisted it out of the masked troll's grip, flinging the weapon into Gatto's mouth – he yelped when it caught his tongue – and in the same spin she kicked the masked troll off the platform.

Draal punched a masked troll, then grabbed them and another one and bashed their heads together.

Blinky swung Jim's backpack like a flail at anyone who got too close to him. Jim heard a cracking noise, either from the head or the white noise generator, but that wasn't important.

Jim swiped a masked troll across the belly, leaving a shallow cut and causing them to bellow in pain. He threw a knife at another one that was going after Toby, who was doing his best to parry their axe strikes.

Nomura kicked another one off the platform, and Draal threw a third, but more were climbing up, and driving the group back towards Gatto's mouth.

"Get them!" Gatto egged the smaller trolls on. "Prepare the chimichurri!"

A masked troll landed a punch on Nomura and knocked her backwards into Toby. Gatto's tongue flicked out and tossed them both into his mouth.

"I don't want to be food!" Toby howled, before Gatto's jaws snapped shut around them and the mountain gulped.

"Toby! Nomura!" Jim screamed. "TOBY!"

"RAH!" Draal charged Gatto –

"Draal, no!" Blinky shouted.

– and Gatto simply opened his mouth again and swallowed the rolling troll.

Jim's helmet sealed as he switched to troll shape. He threw a volley of knives at their attackers, who backed off for the few seconds he needed to shove Blinky to the ladder.

"Get to the Gyre!" he roared. At one level down, below that horrid mouth, he turned and lunged at Gatto.

Swallowing wasn't instant. If he could get the throat open, he could still save them. He didn't know if he could gut a mountain but he'd find out if that was what it took to get Toby back –

Daylight was a sword, not a pickaxe. Jim slashed and stabbed, and scratched with his now-clawed gauntlets and boots, and made barely any headway.

"Jim!" Blinky was now several levels of scaffolding lower, and fending off more of the smaller volcano trolls with an axe he must have grabbed from one of them. "Were we not attempting to vacate?"

Jim let go of Gatto and slid down the mountainside, and with another roar he stabbed the troll nearest to Blinky through the eye with one of his daggers, shattering the lens on that side. The troll bellowed in pain and clutched their face, dropping their axe. The dagger vanished, leaving an open wound, and reappeared in Jim's hand. He sliced into the arm of another attacker.

The troll with the injured eye staggered and, between the pain and the sudden loss of depth perception, knocked the other masked trolls off the platform. Blinky threw the ladder after them, reducing pursuit from above.

Jim turned to start burrowing through Gatto's hide again.

"Jim!" said Blinky again. "We must leave!"

He barely heard Blinky. He certainly didn't hear his phone, chiming the alert for an incoming text.

+=+

The stomach was even hotter than the 'outside' had been. Toby had gone through both his water bottles during the climb up to meet Gatto and didn't have any left. Not that this was his primary concern at the moment, considering –

"We just got eaten!"

"I noticed," said Nomura scathingly.

"Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh, this isn't happening, this isn't happening –"

"Do you have an international plan?" she said, interrupting his entirely justified freak-out.

"What?" asked Toby. "What does that have to do with anything? We're in a stomach! It doesn't matter what country the stomach's in!"

"Ugh. I'll take that as a no." She got her phone out of the duffle bag she carried and shoved the device into Toby's hand. "Text Jim. We're alive, Gatto's Keep is Gatto's gut," gesturing at the gold and artefacts around them, "and we're going for the Birthstone."

Assuming the lava-acid, which was rising, didn't get them first.

Draal came down the tunnel, fast enough he shot over their heads and over pool of lava-acid, skipping once (with a roar of pain) and landing on the other side.

"Draal! Are you okay?" It was a stupid question that Toby asked without any conscious thought.

Draal uncurled and growled. He gingerly touched his right arm, which looked shinier than usual and must have been what touched the lava.

"Where are we?"

"Gatto's Keep," said Nomura. "I guess that's one way to deter theft. Find the Birthstone. And be careful what else you touch, some of this might be cursed." She put a triangular thing with green gems on it into her bag. "We'll crawl up his throat and choke him or something once we've got it."

Wow, Nomura was not a detailed texter. Toby saw the last few messages she'd exchanged with Jim while he was typing.

Jim: -Today still works to check that collection?-

Nomura: -16:30- -canal-

Jim: -Okay, see you there!-

Toby, on Nomura's phone: -still alive- -gatto's keep in stomach- -going for birthstone-

Toby put her phone in his pocket and started digging through the piles of gold.

Curses or no curses, if Nomura got to take souvenirs, Toby was totally stealing some of these gold coins.

And maybe that glowy purple rock –

Wait –

"I think I found it!"

+=+

Jim – Jim couldn't do it, he couldn't stab deep enough to cut Gatto open and protect himself and Blinky at the same time –

He kept having to abandon his spot and climb down a few levels, and start over at an even thicker part of the mountain's hide –

Blinky kept urging him to the Gyre, but they couldn't leave, not yet, they had to get Toby back, they had to get Nomura and Draal, they couldn't just leave them behind –

Jim drew one of his poisoned knives. He carried more varieties on him than just Creeper's Sun. Gatto couldn't get away with this. Jim was the Trollhunter, he wasn't going to let some troll eat a human right in front of him. He wasn't going to let some troll eat Toby and live.

He drove the knife into a cut he'd already started with his sword, and left it there while fending off the masked trolls again, then ripped it out.

If Jim didn't manage to kill Gatto today, the troll would suffer a much slower death.

+=+

Draal had been favouring his burned arm. He looked up the steep tunnel of Gatto's throat and tried to lift his burned arm, and grunted in pain.

"I … I can't climb out. You'll have to leave me behind."

"What is wrong with you today?" Nomura demanded. "You've never been this – this fatalistic before."

"Guys," Toby interrupted. "There's another way out, but you're not gonna like it. If this is his stomach, then there's a 'back door', and if we upset the stomach," he tossed a nearby crystal into the acid, where it dissolved with a flatulent sound, "then we might have a chance to be passed through."

Nomura grimaced. "We're going out that way eventually." She started tossing things into the acid as well. "I'd rather go out alive."

"What are you both –? Oh." Draal's eyes widened and he looked like he might have an upset stomach himself. "That's – ugh. The shame of being remembered for that."

"There's no shame in survival," said Nomura.

Draal grabbed an entire shelving unit of bottles and threw it into the acid, where the potions exploded with blue light. He fell back and began coughing.

"Draal?!" Toby cried.

"I'm alright, I'm – is that my voice? Is that my" – he coughed again – "voice?" The high squeak had gone back to its normal gravelly depth. Draal shook his head and helped Nomura shove a heavy crate into the acid.

Toby started coughing too. It was so hot and smoky …

The troll, the Changeling, and the human climbed onto a boulder that hadn't melted yet. The lava continued to rise. They balanced precariously. Draal and Nomura were both forced to duck as they got closer to the ceiling.

"I guess this is my last chance to eat these," Toby lamented, taking out a taco. Nomura's eyes widened. Toby had only taken a single bite when she snatched the food and the bag out of his hands and threw them into the gut-lava. "What –? No! Those were Diablo Maximus!"

"And if this doesn't work, you'll die with that taste in your mouth."

The acid level started to drop – spiraling like it was going down a drain. Draal wrapped his arms tight around his two smaller companions.

"The back door!" cried Toby. "It's open! I gotta text Jimbo!"

All three of them screamed as they surfed on the boulder through Gatto's volcanic intestines.

+=+

Blinky kept an eye on Jim as they climbed and ran and fought and climbed some more. It had taken until they were nearly halfway down Gatto's sides to convince Jim to flee instead of continuing to attack. Blinky was ready to physically pull the boy along if he tried it again.

This was awful. Horrible. And all Blinky's fault, besides. Coming to Gatto's Keep had been his suggestion, and it had cost three lives already, and if they died here as well, the Amulet would become another part of Gatto's collection, no good to anyone.

But there would be time for blame and grief and stewing over what else might have gone wrong once Jim and Blinky were out of there and no longer in mortal peril.

Gatto tried to grab them with his craggy hand. Jim roared and nearly deprived the mountain troll of a finger.

Gatto said something, but his head was too far away now for Blinky to make it out. It might have been 'nachos'?

Another taunt about how he intended to eat them, no doubt.

"No more guards?" said Jim. They were off the scaffolding now, and it looked like a straight shot to the Gyre station.

The ground started to crack and rumble ominously. There were spurts of lava, and a smell Blinky hadn't expected but regretfully recognized. They ran faster.

Someone screamed behind them.

"Start it up! Start it up! START IT UP!"

"Toby!" Jim yelled.

Tobias, Nomura, and Draal erupted out of a rock wall nearby. They all cried out when they crash landed, and then ran for the Gyre just as Blinky and Jim were doing. Draal grabbed the Gyre's outer wheel and, with a bellow, set it spinning to jumpstart the vehicle. They piled in, and zoomed away.

It was a miraculous escape. Blinky would have to record this for the history books.

"I am – so sorry," he said to them all. Even at the Gyre's speed, it would take some time to get to Arcadia from Ojos del Salado. "If I had realized the nature of Gatto's Keep, I never would have brought us there."

"He did have the Birthstone," said Nomura. Blinky turned just enough to see her with his outermost eye. She seemed unscathed, and was still wearing a hat. Her bag was now bulging with whatever else she'd … claimed as recompense for the trauma of today's experience.

Blinky turned the other way to check as best he could on Jim and Toby. Draal was in the centre of the Gyre bench and hardest to see without turning around, though Blinky could at least tell he was there.

Jim was wrapped around Toby. His helmet was open again, and his eyes were glowing. Toby was clinging to Jim as well, and breathing hard.

"I saved us," Tobias bragged. "My tacos were the key to our grand escape." Jim tightened his grip.

He didn't let go of Toby until they reached Trollmarket. AAARRRGGHH was waiting for them at the Gyre station. (And oh, that made Blinky's gut twist, to think AAARRRGGHH had been sitting there awaiting their return and they might not have come back because Blinky had led them into danger.) AAARRRGGHH reached into the basket to help Toby and Jim disembark.

Jim let go of Tobias and swiped at AAARRRGGHH with Daylight.

AAARRRGGHH recoiled, unhurt physically – Blinky had seen the distance between his hand and the sword – but wounded all the same.

"Jim?" said Toby. "Dude, calm down."

"Red eyes," said AAARRRGGHH. Jim's eyes were still glowing. "Hurt?"

Draal, who had been climbing down the other side of the Gyre, grunted and lost his balance. When he got up, Blinky finally got a proper look at him.

"Great Gronka Morka, Draal, what's happened to your arm?!"

His right arm was half grey, with pits starting to form where the dead stone had cracked, and the patches that were still blue were far glossier than was natural, like he'd spent a month buffing and polishing his hide.

"Gut-lava," said Draal. His eyes were out of focus. "And straining. And that fall, just now."

"He used his arms to shield us while we were – getting out," said Toby, giving a sideways look to Jim before finishing that sentence. "And he landed badly coming in."

"Need Vendel," AAARRRGGHH decided. He offered his open hand to Jim and Toby again. Jim growled and readied his sword.

"You two take him," Nomura said. "Jim can't go through the market with his eyes like that, and he's not going to calm down until he stops thinking he has to protect his human from another troll any second."

Blinky and AAARRRGGHH looked at each other. Blinky split his focus to look at AAARRRGGHH, Jim, and Draal at the same time. AAARRRGGHH looked from Blinky, to Jim, to Draal, then back to Blinky, and nodded.

AAARRRGGHH moved to stand on Draal's injured side. Blinky climbed out of the Gyre – Jim turned the sword towards him for the moment it took to get to the steps, moving closer to the human and Changeling than he'd been whilst at the controls – and stood at Draal's other side.

He was loath to leave, but Draal needed medical attention, and Nomura was right that proximity to larger trolls seem to be increasing Jim's distress.

Blinky turned an eye back to Nomura.

"What about you?"

"I'll stand guard and make sure no one else walks in on this." She sat on the floor and opened the bag she'd been carrying. "I can get started on cataloguing while I wait."

"And will you be alright, Tobias?" Blinky asked.

"I think so?" The boy looked at Jim uncertainly. "Dude, it's Blinky and AAARRRGGHH. They're not gonna hurt us. Shouldn't it be my turn to be freaking out right now?"

+=+

"I'm sorry," said Vendel to Draal, as gently as the brusque elder was able. "The damage is … severe. I suspect your arm cannot be saved. I advise that we amputate, to keep the cracks from spreading higher, so your shoulder can be fitted with a prosthetic."

Draal grimaced. He stared at his cracked, pitted arm and flexed his fingers with a wince. A few more chips came loose. He touched one of the worst with his uninjured hand.

For the examination, the leather strip that usually wrapped around his right wrist was removed, showing the scarred crack that extended onto his hand. Vendel remembered treating that wound – he'd been worried Draal would lose his hand then as well.

"What if we used metal packing?" asked Draal.

"You lost some mobility in your wrist last time," Vendel reminded him. "If we tried that now, with your more extensive injuries, the amount of metal necessary and immobilization while you healed would likely lock the joints in place for good. And we would need to clear out the dead stone before we begin. Depending on the depth of damage," which was already and obviously deep, "your arm might come off in any case."

"… Can I have some time to think about it?"

In a sense, no, because the longer he went without treatment (beyond the painkillers Vendel had already given him), the worse his injuries would get, and the more likely it was the decision would be made for him.

"If you can remain still while you decide, I can give you a few hours."

"Thank you."

Vendel was not a prayerful troll, but he prayed he wasn't just giving Draal false hope.

+=+

"Hey, your eyes are blue again!" Toby cheered. "That's a good sign, right?"

"Maybe."

"And you're using words!" He patted Jim on the shoulder. "Think maybe we can get off the Gyre now?"

Jim looked at Nomura, still sitting on the station floor in troll form with her stolen treasures spread around her, and shook his head.

Early on in her sorting process, she'd propped up one of her treasures next to the Gyre – a trident with a red gem set on a ring below the fork. The red gem had started glowing when she'd turned the ring and seemed to be sucking all the heat from the room, which was an incredible relief for Toby's overheated skin.

"Dude, come on. I thought she was, like, your friend?"

Nomura laughed. "Oh, we go way back."

"… I can't tell if that was sarcasm or not."

"It wasn't," said Jim.

"So why is she scary to you?"

"Excuse me, are you not intimidated by me?" she asked, casually running her finger along the length of one of her cool swords. Which seemed like kind of the opposite of helping Jim calm down.

"You helped us," Toby reminded her.

"And we're all richer for it," she agreed.

Seriously, was she being sarcastic or not? Or, maybe not sarcastic, but … teasing? Was that it?

"You got eaten," said Jim, as though Toby could possibly have forgotten this. "By a troll. You getting eaten by a troll is literally one of my worst nightmares. I can't … I can't let you be in Trollmarket right now. There's too many trolls I don't know. I probably shouldn't fight them all, but I'm going to want to."

Toby sighed and turned back to his phone. He loved Go-Go Sushi, but there were only so many times he could play it in a day.

Oh, hey, wait, phones.

"Here, you should take your phone back." He put it as far down the Gyre's foldaway steps as he could reach without getting off the boat and having Jim grab him again. Nomura waited until he was back in the boat before standing to get it.

"Why do you have Nomura's phone?"

"From when we texted you we were alive. She's got an international plan and I don't."

"I didn't notice the text come in," Jim admitted.

"That's fair. You would've been pretty distracted."

+=+

Draal didn't want to lose his arm.

He had no regrets about what he'd done – if he hadn't been there, Nomura or Tobias would have been the ones hurt, or might even have fallen off the boulder and died – but he would rather have been able to save them without ending up in this position.

Draal liked his body. He liked his arms. He liked his strength and agility, and his reach, and how easy most weapons were to use, and how easy it was to switch between going on two legs, all fours, or a roll.

Whatever happened now would change that. Patch job or prosthetic, he'd have to restart his training to compensate for the change in balance. He wouldn't have the same reach or flexibility anymore. His grip on two-handed weapons would change.

It would have been easier, in a way, if he'd been hurt badly enough for the arm to come off on its own. Then at least he wouldn't have to decide whether to have what was left of it cut off, or to try and salvage it and risk seeing it crumble away in any case.

He wished his mother still lived in Trollmarket. Ballustra was a weaponsmith, but she had done prosthetic work as well, and helped with injuries that needed metal packing. He trusted Vendel to give him good advice, but … Draal wanted his mother.

(She'd gone back to the Old World a few centuries ago, after she and Kanjigar had divorced. Draal hadn't actually seen her in person for almost twenty years now. He hadn't realized how much he missed her until he started thinking about her.)

He sighed heavily. The movement of his chest caused his arm to move on the table. A few more pieces flaked off. Had they been already broken and sitting there, or had they just broken away? Was it his imagination, or did some of the cracks just get a little bit longer?

With the depth and spread of the fissures, metal packing would noticeably increase the weight of his arm. Draal would be fit to return to the field far sooner if he accepted a prosthetic, which could be graded to a compatible weight. He'd have use of two hands again more quickly, too.

Draal's blue hide had been nearly seared off in some places, exposing the veins of purplish crystal underneath. He couldn't stop himself from rubbing some of it. So smooth; a bit itchy at the edges.

Vendel had not simply left him alone. The Elder was looking through his supplies, giving Draal an illusion of privacy while keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn't aggravate his wounds.

"Vendel. If … If we try to save it. What are the odds it'll work?"

"Very low, I'm afraid. We can keep it attached, if that's your wish, but it would likely not be functional."

"Meaning?"

"In the worst case scenario, it would be like an immobile prosthesis with bits of your living stone embedded in it. In the best case, you would recover about half the mobility you had before."

Draal grimaced. He studied what was left of his arm again. Gorgus, some of the pits were so deep they nearly went halfway through.

"Cut it off."

+=+

"Then we all reached the Gyre, and Draal worsened his injuries to start the mechanism."

They were waiting outside the Gyre station. Blinky had just finished reciting the day's events to AAARRRGGHH.

"This is my doing. I knew Gatto held a place on the Tribunal, but never even thought to ask Vendel's assessment of his character. So now Jim is terrified of us all, Tobias is probably also mentally scarred, and Draal is grievously injured for my failure as a researcher."

AAARRRGGHH, always a troll of few words, had no words that could make Blinky feel less responsible for what had happened. He tried anyway.

"Attacking was Gatto's choice, not Blinky's."

"He didn't attack us, AAARRRGGHH! He made his terms clear, and I knew better than to accept but I did anyway, and now –" He flailed his arms. "I can only be thankful Jim didn't actually hurt you, and no one actually died."

"I'm sorry about that."

They both jumped, and turned to see Jim and Toby. Jim's helmet was sealed, and he was between them and Toby, but he was unarmed.

"I shouldn't have agreed to the riddle game either," said Jim. "That was a stupid gamble. I should've just stabbed him in the face the second he started talking about eating us."

"I feel like that's not the lesson we should take from this, but at the same time I can't argue," said Toby.

"I wanted to say, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let my fears get the better of me when I – I trust you. I know you would never."

"Forgiven," AAARRRGGHH assured him at once.

Blinky looked passed the boys, into the Gyre station. It stood empty.

"Where has Nomura gone?" And how had he not noticed her leaving? She would have had to go right past them.

"She wanted to see Draal before we left," said Jim.

+=+

"Hey," said Nomura.

"Hey." Draal lifted his new prosthetic hand in greeting. It made a faint clanking sound.

"… I came to show off all the stuff I took," she claimed, rather than admit she'd been concerned and wanted to check on him. Draal leaned forward.

"Show me."

+=+

Previous Chapter (Otto keeps unintentionally sabotaging his own coup.)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (As though Draal hasn’t been through enough, he turns human.)

This was the longest chapter yet! Helped along by how I had a few hundred words already prepped from the early days of fic writing, back when I thought they would be doing to search for the Triumbric Stones in canonical order and Blinky was still going to be the troll who turned human. How far we've come, eh?

There are two non-Tales of Arcadia cartoon references in this chapter, one to a show and one to a movie. Spot them for imaginary prizes! I'll reveal them in the notes for the next chapter.

I do not know what regular lava would do to a troll, but since Gatto digests that poor unfortunate troll in his introductory episode (seen sinking into the gut-lava when Toby and Blinky arrive in the stomach), I assume that particular type of lava can mess stone-flesh up. The term 'gut-lava' was used in one of the spinoff comics.

Out of curiosity, I looked up 'Ojos del Salado', which is a real place. Some fun facts: It is the highest active volcano in the world, and the second-highest mountain in both the Western Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. It's actually on the Argentina-Chile border, and the mountain has two summits, one in each country. There is a crater lake on the eastern side that is believed to be the highest lake in the world.

Draal's mom Ballustra was named in the spinoff novels. I have not yet decided how much of the novels' depiction I will use, beyond the name and the job and the bit about her and Kanjigar being divorced. Or separated? The novel does not actually use the word 'divorced', but it does say they were married when Draal was born, and heavily implies they were not married anymore by the time Kanjigar died without providing a word for how the end of a marriage is described in troll society.

#Trollhunters #Changeling Jim #Becoming The Mask chapters #Tales of Arcadia #canon divergence #tw: loss of limb #Draal #Nomura #Tobias Domzalski #Blinkous Galadrigal #Vendel #AAARRRGGHH #Claire Nuñez #Darci Scott #Mary Wang #My Fanfiction #Monday is fanfic day!

[princess-of-the-corner]

Human After All: I'd like to know more about A) Lust realizing that Hohenheim had an actual life in Resembool and B) everyone's reactions to Ed and Al sneaking off to do the human transmutation and the aftermath.

Oh boy here we fuckin go!!!!!

Lust realizing that Hohenheim had a life in Resembool:

Oh boy. Okay so this has some setup.

When Lust first meets Ed and Al, she assumes the situation is a lot different. Basically They're close enough to be mistaken for twins, so she thought it was more "one night stand and disappeared from town but their mom remembered the name and told the kids". Because... Why would he stay?

But then Lust babysits Ed and Al on a trip back to Resembool to visit Winry and her grandma. And like.

Lust gets curious about some things. And she happens to see a photo album out that she can't help but look through.

Of course Granny finds her snooping but just lets her look through it and explains that it's from Winry's parents' wedding. And Lust eventually flips to a page where Hohenheim is in the photo.

Lust pauses on it because it's so strange. First in general, of how Hohenheim looks just like Father but also nothing like him at the same time. Physically identical, but the way they carry themselves is.. Entirely different.

Especially as this picture is kinda goofy. Granny tells her how everyone was hinting to Hohenheim that he should marry Trisha since they were already "basically married". And the newly married Sarah Rockbell had given up pn subtly, and chucked her boquet right at Hohenheim's face with a "sorry I was aiming for Trisha!"(which no one belives because she has incredible aim).

Lust asks more on that. And Granny mentions how Hohenheim and Trisha had been together for a bit amd were already living in the same home. And that pretty much immediatly after that whole "lack of subtly" the pair decided "despite not going through legal paperwork we are married now fuck you' and also bonus pregnancy announcement. Which has Lust relize Ed and Al aren't twins.

But it's weird to her. Because like. Hohenheim had a life here? He was with this woman for a few years and essentially got married (clearly the "don't go through the paperwork" is because he doesn't legally exist). But like. He had a wife and kids. One of the kids seems to have been actually planned. Why would he do that? And why did he leave? No one has answers on that, but Granny says that if he did leave, it was for good reasons. Not whatever the town gossips make up for fun.

Granny is a little sus about Lust's interests in all this because like. I kiiinda mentioned this before on my artblog but he way I draw Lust she actually looks a lot like "if Ed was a girl" and considering how much Ed looks like Hohenheim... They basically look somewhat related. Granny points that out and kinda pulls some Gaslight Girlboss Gatekeep of "nope no relation whatsoever my father just worked with him long ago but it's totally not relevant to anything!"

Anyway!

Later, Lust is wandering around Ed and Al's home because that fucker hasn't burned yet. And she just... Sees more of it.

True. It's been just the boys for years but there's still things like his clothes in the bedroom closet or something casually put on a shelf too high for Trisha to have reached.

The two rooms that really hit are the bedroom and the study.

Tbe bedroom is mostly untouched. But she sees a shelf of little statues. It's strange to her, but she realizes all the statutes are made from Alchemy. About half of them have very obvious marks, a sign of a talented but inexperienced maker. Seeing two distinct styles, she cam guess Ed and Al made those.

The rest are perfect. Intricate and flawless. If they weren't on the shelf with the others, she would've thought they were made by some master clay artist.

Alchemically made trinkets as gifts for someone they love.

The study is another beast altogether. A whole library on Alchemical texts. Some even older than Lust. All marked up with someone's notes in the margins. The same person's notes, as the handwriting doesn't differ. Clearly all these are important. So why leave them?

The real hard hitter is a journal Hohenheim left. Of course Lust reads it. The fact that the journal is written in Xerxian is just another punch to the gut, but thankfully Lust can read it.

It has a lot of things but the main info she reads is an entry from when Ed was just born and Hohenheim is discussing worries over how his whole "Philosophers Stone in Human Form" deal might be effecting Ed in terms of like. Genetics and stuff.

But the main thing Lust focuses on is that Hohenheim mentions discussing those fears with Trisha. That he told her what he was and his whole history and everything.

It's... Confusing to Lust. Why did Hohenheim just settle down here in this small ass rural town with a normal woman? What was it about her that compelled him to stay in one place so long? To settle down after years and have a kid? Having a second kid? And telling her about... Everything?

She finds no answer because, from all accounts, it seems like Trisha was just a normal, small-town girl. She didn't even have an interest in Alchemy! Just gardening. Why her? Why not someone at least... Great and powerful to match what he was? Even if no one could truly compare to what he was.

Everyone's reactions to Ed and Al sneaking off to do Human Transmutation:

Oh boy. This is a big plot point.

So the boys had quite a plan to trick the adults. Lust has gone on trips out of town for weekends(reporting back to Father), and she's also babysat the boys on a trip to Resembool before. So the boys wait until one of her trips and tell Roy and Riza that she's taking them on a different trip to Resembool. None of the adults know this until Lust comes back without them and has no idea where they were.

They put it together real fast and all three book it to the train station. Several hours of worried pacing of what could've happened.

Roy and Riza are entirely in the dark of what might happen. Lust though... She knows how the Gate works. And what could have happened.

She knows that There's a Price to pay. And while she was planning on encouraging the boys to go through the Gate anyway, she was supposed to be involved with it so she could trade a part of her Philosopher's Stone for their safety. Obviously just so they don't loose a Sacrifice to blood loss or later infection! Not because she cares or anything! But yeah without her, who knows what the Price may be?

They check the boys house first. They see plenty of blood, which is a terrifying sight. But they also see a trail leading out. And that if the boys are still alive, they probably went to the Rockbell place.

Which yeah. Granny's already waiting for them. She wants to yell at them for failing, but it would be hypocritical sinve she didn't notice the first time around.

She tells them the boys are alive but fucked up. Ed lost a couple limbs and Al is... Hard to explain.

Lust is the first to notice the suit of armor in the living room. The way it's arranged like a child, curled up and hiding, barely peeking out from behind the "arms". Light in it's "eyes", like someone's in there watching her.

She remembers the experiments done on the death row inmates. Puttin Souls in suits of armor. She's horrified, but not surprised, when it moves.

That is a whole conversation. Lust has to pretend she doesn't know how that works(while also questioning how the boys managed it). Al tells them what he remembers, which is just everythiny going wrong and then being in the armor and Ed missing some limbs.

We have a long emotional scene when Roy goes to talk to Ed.

Ed is very much not okay at this point and he's trying to be angry but it's just not really there. And he just asks why Roy is still there. He failed to keep them from fucking up why does he still care? Just go back home and leave them so he doesn't have to deal with them anymore.

Well that's just heartbreaking. Roy just talks to him about a lot of things. And the main thing was that this wasn't just "I'm gonna try and stop you but whoops failed that bye bitch" situation. He's not just going to drop the kids because he failed once. He's not even going ti drop them after months of pushing him away and being stubborn about the whole situation. They're a family now damn it.

And Ed kinda feels like that might be worse, because he threw that away ti go fuck up. But Roy tells him it's not "thrown away". They're still going to be here for him. And figure things out.

Later at night, Roy, Riza and Lust all kinda sneaknout individually. Which does lead to some comedy until Granny catches them and calls them idiots. But all of them were thinking of going to the boy's house and looking over their notes.

Roy and Lust are the only ones who can make heads or tails of the notes. Riza can follow some but gets lost and Granny never was an Alchemy person. Roy's looking more for "what went wrong" while Lust is focused more on "what went right". And Lust does find that though they came very close to making a Homunculus, they did do everything pretty right. She accidentally comments on that, which leads to a horrifying theoretical of "what if the boys managed to make a fake Trisha that looked and acted like her but wasn't her?". This also leads to the more disturbing question of "what was it they did manage to make"?

This is a thing that came up in Canon, but here they get answers of the thing that they made wasn't their mom, and you can't bring back the dead. Ed and Al take that news about as well as they did in Canon as well.

The "possible homunculus" thing comes up too with the others wondering if Al really is Al and not just... Something vaguely like him that Ed accidentally created. (Lust knows but can't tell how she knows rip!). Riza to the rescue on this one by asking Al about something Ed shouldn't know about. So that existential crisis is averted!

Of course there's discussion of what to do to help Ed and Al. Which... Does lead to getting back toward Canon of "have Ed become a State Alchemist". It's debated a lot because ya know. Sure it's the best option to help them have the freedom and access to stuff tk find shit but. Ya know. Roy already feels like he failed to protect these kids once already this is not helping.

Anyway! One more fun scene!

Please imagine once Ed gets the automail arm and just does the clap-slap Alchemy. And Roy and Riza are like "yo what the FUCK???"

#human after all #haa au

[in-love-with-darth-vader]

Memories of Yesterday

The first time he held the one he loved most in his arms only for them to die, he gained trauma that shaped who he was today. 

The second time that he clutched onto the one he loved most as they died in his arms, he was left with broken pieces of himself, except for the piece that died with her. 

Obi-Wan hadn’t slept in days. His thoughts lingering only on the Duchess and the words she said in her last moments of life.

I’ve always loved you. And I always will. 

The thing he regretted most was never saying it back. At least, never to her face. 

He told her he loved her indirectly in his own ways as often as he said her name. 

If you had said the word, I would have left the Jedi order. 

My dear. 

You look more beautiful than ever.

He hasn’t been to a council meeting since he’s gotten back. Anakin didn’t expect him to. 

The council did. 

Because Obi-Wan Kenobi never missed a meeting. Not unless he wasn’t supposed to be there. Not unless he was off planet and not expected to be there. 

But here he was. Laying in his dark quarters on Coruscant. 

Eyes red and soaked from tears as well as strained from lack of sleep. 

He needed to sleep. Logically, he knew this. 

But every time he closed his eyes he saw her again, taking her last breath in his arms. 

So he couldn’t sleep. No matter how much he wanted to. No matter how much he knew he needed to. 

That’s the thing about Satine. She always defied logic in his mind. 

It was times like these that Obi-Wan began to doubt the Jedi code. 

When fellow Jedi were asked what they knew about Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, the common consensus was that he was a very remarkable and honorable warrior who followed the Jedi code to the letter. 

That’s what they thought, at least. 

Because that’s the front Obi-Wan put up. 

That’s what those who didn’t know him personally thought. 

Obi-Wan respected and followed the code, but he learned from life experience and from his master that there are many contradictions and ridiculous restrictions in the life of a Jedi. 

Qui-Gon always was a troublemaker. Mostly as a child. 

But Master Qui-Gon carried some of that trouble into adulthood. 

Unlike his peers’ masters, Qui-Gon never chastised him for questioning the code. In fact, he encouraged it. 

But he didn’t encourage breaking it. 

Well, at least not completely. 

Qui-Gon advised against him falling in love in order to avoid great pain in his life. 

Obi-Wan tried to listen. 

He failed. 

~~~~

“Master Qui-Gon?”

“Yes, Obi-Wan?”

“Could I ask you something? Something regarding the Jedi Code?”

“Of course, my Padawan.”

“I greatly respect the code, master, but I find there to be some contradictions. Like how we’re supposed to be peacemakers, yet we fight to the death. We’re told to protect and care for everyone, but we cannot form attachments. Why is that, master?”

“Hmm, yes, my Padawan. The Jedi live by a very contradictory code. Someone as smart as you was sure to pick up on that sooner or later.”

“So then how can we follow the code completely if it contradicts itself?”

“That’s a great question. Come, sit. It’s true, Obi-Wan. We are supposed to care for everyone. The difference between attachments and general care is the difference between selfishness and selflessness. To truly be a peacemaker who would protect everyone, we must not attach to anyone. Love doesn’t make us weak, in fact, it makes us strong. However, love makes us put someone else before humanity. And while normally that’s okay, our role makes that impossible to achieve.”

“Master?”

“Yes?”

“What do you do-hypothetically-if you were to start to succumb to these sorts of feelings?”

“A great question. Honestly? It’s very hard to put them aside without causing yourself and someone else pain. But if you wish to become a Jedi Master, then it is what you must do. Hypothetically, of course.”

“Of course. Thank you master.”

~~~~

Obi-Wan awoke suddenly, realizing that he had been asleep. 

He must have finally crashed, he thought, after so long without sleep. 

When he looked at the clock, however, it told a different story. 

It had only been five minutes.

He tried to fall back asleep, but he saw her face on her limp, dead body and forced his eyes open. 

Master Yoda always told him that death wasn’t a bad thing. That death only brought us all closer to the force. 

That death was a peaceful and natural thing. 

Obi-Wan logically knew that death was natural. 

But he also knew that murder shouldn’t be considered a natural way to go. 

She wanted to do so much more. She could have. But one man decided to take that chance away from her. He decided to pull the strings on her life. 

The same man who killed his master. 

Obi-Wan now fully understood why Jedi weren’t supposed to form attachments. 

It had awoken a terrible feeling inside of him. 

Rage. 

And he already knew this. He knew this was the reason. 

But now he had first hand experience. And now a part of him wanted revenge.

~~~~

“Obi-Wan?”

“Yes, Duchess?”

“Could you tell me about the Jedi?”

“What would you like to know?”

“Anything. Everything. Why do you have that braid? What’s the code you live by? And more importantly why do you live by it? Do you ever think of leaving? Do you think it’s morally okay for children to be taken from their families for this?”

“That’s...those are some good questions. This braid represents my status as a Padawan. The Jedi Code is….extremely complicated. And to the rest of your questions, I don’t really know. Those are very hard to think about.”

“Then tell me more about this code of yours, hmm? No more philosophical questions.”

“It’s like a book of rules and morals. We just live by it. I don’t know why, but we do. Most of it is basic stuff that isn’t that different from other societal norms. There’s also a lot about Masters and their Padawans. I guess the weirdest thing is that we’re not allowed to have attachments.”

“At all?”

“At all.”

“So, do you not love Qui-Gon? Does he not love you?”

“I love Qui-Gon in a different way than you think. I care deeply for him, but due to our code, I cannot sacrifice everyone else for him. I cannot be selfish because of how much I care for him.”

“That seems very restrictive.”

“Indeed it is. A lot of people break that one. A lot of my fellow Padawans already have.”

“Tell me, Obi-Wan Kenobi: would you defy the code for the right person?”

“Perhaps, Duchess. For the right person? Perhaps.”

~~~~

This time it had been seven minutes of rest. 

His mind was filled with memories of years ago, and yet he always woke to her lifeless face. 

He wished he had someone to talk to about this. 

He could always go to Anakin, but he did not want this leading to letting Anakin know that he knows about his not-so-secret relationship with Senator Amidala. He’s not quite ready for that conversation yet. 

Especially not now. 

It reminds him too much of days long gone. 

A Jedi and a politician running around in secret, keeping their love only to themselves. Forgetting about the rest of the war-ridden world. 

Having to eventually break each other’s hearts due to a situation that’s uncontrollable to both of them. 

The only difference is that Anakin never had the respect for the code that Obi-Wan did. 

Not that he blames him. 

He’s a stubborn person, and he always has been. 

He was taken away from his mother with no explanation but an ancient code. Of course he would deviate from it. 

Obi-Wan wished that he could have done the same. 

But he loved being a Jedi. 

Not more than her. 

Not less than her. 

But he loved it nonetheless. 

After almost two decades of living life with the Jedi at that point, he couldn’t give up on it. 

Not on his own. Not unless she asked. 

He knew she never would. She cared too much for him to hold him back. 

~~~~

“Obi?”

“Yes, Satine?”

“Do you think I’ll ever be safe again?”

“I don’t know. I want to say yes, but I won’t make you a promise that I can’t guarantee will happen. But I hope so.”

“I hate being on the run, but I might hate not having you around even more.”

“Don’t worry, Satine. I’ll never stop protecting you. Not until the day I die.”

“That’s very sweet of you to say. Do you know if Qui-Gon is coming back yet?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t feel him coming any closer.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Yes. When he comes back I’ll have to go back to my room. So, good.”

“You know, I’ll miss having you around too. Will you ever come visit Coruscant?”

“Only if you promise to visit Mandalore.”

~~~~

He did visit Mandalore. He went as often as he could.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t able to happen as often as he wanted it to so as to not raise suspicion. 

She came to Coruscant whenever she could.

They met up and reminisced every time.

He yearned for those days.

He wished he could see her one more time.

~~~~

“I don’t want to leave you, Satine.”

“I don’t either. But we have to.”

“Do we?”

“You’re a Jedi, Obi. It’s what you were born to do. You need to go protect the galaxy.”

“And you need to go and change it for the better.”

“I’ll try my best. Goodbye, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Goodbye, Duchess.”

~~~~

A knock at his door was what interrupted his dreams this time.

He knew it was Anakin.

He pretended he didn’t.

“Master? It’s me. Can I come in?”

No reply.

“I brought you some food from Dex’s.”

Still nothing.

The door opened.

He felt the mattress shift as Anakin sat down next to him.

“I know you probably don’t want to talk right now. I understand why. You have to eat though, okay? I just wanted you to know that I’m here for you, and that I love you.”

Anakin then shifted over and wrapped him in a hug.

And, for the first time, Obi-Wan hugged him back.

Love may have been what led to breaking him, but love was also the only thing that would be able to put him back together. 

#obitine #obi wan kenobi #satine kryze #obi wan x satine #star wars #The Clone Wars #Star Wars Fic #fanfic

[omnicat]

A Brief Summary of More Seasons of “Timeless” (Inevitably Leading Up to Gladiator!Flynn)

Hey @ununpredictableme, here’s that thing I promised to show you! :D (Again with a delay, but better late than never, right? /o\ )

The thing about time travel was, it was just too damn tempting for its own good. The whole “doubling back over your own lifetime will kill you” thing was an effective deterrent to whims like “that date was a disaster, let’s go give my past self some tips to improve the experience” and “we’re going to try this specific evil plan over and over until it succeeds, dammit!”, but as it turned out, that still left plenty of bigger ambitions.

First, of course, there was Rittenhouse and its covert world domination schemes: the very reason time travel managed to be invented in the first place. Briefly interrupted by Garcia Flynn’s roaring rampage of burning Rittenhouse to the ground and/or saving the wife and daughter they’d murdered. (Preferably both at the same time, but when push came to shove he would’ve settled for going down in a blaze of martyrdom, survivor’s guilt soothed by the knowledge that he’d at least tried.)

/S1; Flynn

Then back to Rittenhouse, their plans by that point out of the development phase and being implemented by a visionary with more flair and philosophy than common sense, but plenty of dangerous ideas either way. Though it didn’t take long for Rittenhouse’s deplorable recruitment practices to come back and bite them in the ass, resulting in a coup by one of its lowest-esteemed members.

/S2; Rittenhouse

Emma Whitmore, driven by nothing but a bitter desire to thrive over the backs of anyone who had ever harmed or held her back with even so much as their mere existence, but no longer knowing what thriving meant after the decades of pressure and manipulation and isolation Rittenhouse had subjected her to, turned the time machine into her personal pirate ship. She looted and pillaged her way through history, taking treasures and torching everything that pissed her off. And there wasn’t much that didn’t piss her off. If Flynn’s strategy had been to blow up especially fishy-smelling rocks and see what Rittenhouse filth came scurrying out from underneath, and Nicholas Keynes’ had been to repaint history in his own image in intricate and meticulously crafted brush strokes, Emma’s was to punish those in history who disadvantaged her and twist the arms of those who could elevate her in the cruelest ways she could think of. It was no wonder Jessica Logan had turned on her, in the end. It had only been a matter of time before Emma would have turned on her – and her baby.

/S3; Emma

For a short while, they thought Jessica’s change of heart was the end of it; Rittenhouse was in ruins, Emma dead, and Flynn mostly well-behaved as part of the Lifeboat crew. The antagonist bench was empty, the heroes no longer constantly preoccupied with defending themselves. The team finally had the time and opportunity to piece their timetravel-mangled lives and families back together. Lucy un-erased Amy, and their parents along with her; Flynn found a way to save Iris and Lorena without erasing all the victories their deaths had led to. Wyatt and Jessica took the Lifeboat to the 1400’s to raise their little family and clear their heads for a while. That while turned into forever. In the end, instead of disposing of the Lifeboat somewhere no modern villain would ever find it, as the initial plan had been, their grandson returned the ship to the 21st century, to a date mere weeks from the day they’d departed from. Sherwin was a bright, eager young man with Jessica’s eyes, Wyatt’s smile, an insatiable desire to see everything the past and future had to show him – and his best friend, Willard, in tow... who proved startlingly quick to be corrupted by the power of time travel.

Willard stole the ApocaLifeboat (thanks, Lucy Croft and Bearded Wyatt, that autopilot was just what they’d needed to make time travel even more of a crapshoot) and jumped from time period to time period, looking for a place and moment where he could install himself as the next best coming since Jesus, and revealing future technology and knowledge everywhere he went. He altered history with reckless abandon and relocated dozens upon dozens of bamboozled followers to eras they had no business being in.

While the team struggled to deal with Willard, Sherwin got attached to the 21th century, Lucy figured out how to deal with her restored family now that she’d uncovered the sordid truth of their ancestry, and Flynn wrestled with the self-hatred and guilt that threatened to tear his own newly-reunited family apart. And after the team returned from a jump with a damaged ship to a timeline where Connor was dead of a disease that didn’t exist before they left, taking his vital expertise and resources to the grave with him, Jiya and Rufus had to A: figure out how to undo his death, and B: develop a way to keep anybody else they cared about but who couldn’t come on a jump from being lost or critically changed by random divergences to their personal history, poofing out of existence because of family tree disruptions like Amy, or being hijacked by the enemy like Jessica. Objective A was accomplished with another jump, and objective B with what Rufus, who had the crucial eureka moment, got to dub the Wellsaday Cage (a portmanteau of Faraday Cage and H.G. Wells, the author of the first ever time machine story). The Cage ensured that everybody inside it shared in the temporal bubble that made it so the team didn’t get swept up by the effects of their actions while they were on a jump and always came back to the altered present as their old selves. BOOM. So many problems and four-dimensional puzzle induced-headaches solved.

/S4; Willard from the 14th Century

No sooner did the team stop Willard and start bickering among themselves about how – if at all – to fix the mess he’d made of history, than the remnants of Rittenhouse (their cult annoyingly unscathed by what Willard’s had wrought) reared its ugly head again. The remaining followers, a motley bunch who had rearranged the once unassailable hierarchy with blood and backstabbing in the wake of the purge of all Rittenhouse’s biggest and most actually influential figures, fought with a zeal only found in true believers who had seen their cult’s long-awaited judgement day pass by without so much as a lightning strike and doubled down on their faith regardless. Nothing the Time Team did could stop them – until finally, after an inexplicable delay of four seasons, they returned to David Rittenhouse and smothered the entire organization in the bud by killing him before he could start spreading his ideology in the first place.

/S5; Rittenhouse Redux

Preventing the birth of the Rittenhouse cult altered the history of the USA beyond recognition and, since it was Rittenhouse’s relentless urging and unlimited funds that made time travel possible, erased everything that had occurred because of it in the previous seasons. The team made a number of jumps to win some lotteries and make some jackpot investments to help themselves and the loved ones they’d saved with the Wellsaday Cage start over, and everybody set themselves to the task of adjusting to their new reality and dealing with the scars left by erased timelines only they now remembered.

Then time-travelers from centuries into the future started showed up. The team hadn’t had to wonder who the good guys and the bad guys were or what side they should be on since they cottoned on to the truth of what Flynn kept saying in S1. Now they were left questioning everything again. Who were these people from the future? What did they want, and could they be trusted to tell the truth about that? When they started contradicting each other and the cracks in their initially united front started to show, who could the team believe? And what would happen when the team fractured along long-dormant fault lines of trust (among themselves, and toward the future travelers) and philosophical disagreements over what time travel should or shouldn’t be used for and allowed to cause??

Much tension, very suspense. Wow. They figured it out eventually, though. And hey, guess what? Flynn’s inexplicable inability to come up with a sensible Plan B to kill David Rittenhouse all the way back in S1 wasn’t so inexplicable after all! Turns out it was a remote intervention by a distant-future scumbag – let’s call him Gabmucs – who read about the dude’s many different deaths in a history book about the Time War Era and the development of the tech that would come to shield The Future He Comes From from being affected by all that temporal chaos from the past. (Based on Jiya & Rufus’s Wellsaday Cage, but applied to the whole solar system past a certain point in time.)

Gabmucs thought all those ideas about oppression and suppression and world domination sounded right up his alley, and set up some kind of outcome enforcer tech (derivative from the Temporal Shield just like the Temporal Shield was a derivative of the Wellsaday Cage) around David R’s life to ensure only one specific fate from the many timelines centered around him would come to pass, and so his ideas would come to fruition no matter what. When the team first discovered David’s existence, Gabmucs’s technology had detected Flynn’s intentions and befuddled his senses until he just couldn’t think straight enough to kill the guy anymore. The eventual failure of this tech was what prompted Gabmucs to manipulate a team from his own time to go back and help him intervene in person. And while he was there, he might as well take some crucial steps toward disabling the Temporal Shield, so he could go home afterwards to a world steeped in glorious Rittenhouse-flavored evil tailor-made to his tastes.

He just wasn’t very honest to most of his team about the motives or objectives of their mission, and they didn’t take kindly to finding out the truth. Especially when one of them (let’s call her... uh... Niwrehs? /o\ I hate character names almost as much as fic titles) had fallen in love with Sherwin. (In the end, Niwhrehs stayed in the 21st century. And my wish of having both a distant past and a far future member on the team was fulfilled! Also, this season definitely has the modern team visiting the future AT LEAST once!!)

/S6; The Future

And just when they thought that was finally the end of it, Stanley Fisher arose from his ever-worsening stupor of visions and turned out to have become a temporal eldritch demi-god. A bored temporal eldritch demigod. Having seen literally everything there ever was to see, in every timeline that had ever been, he started changing things with the biggest impact possible, purely so he could experience something truly new again. And he didn’t need a time machine to transport himself to the past.

Which is what finally brings us to antiquity, and the massive, unimaginable changes he could cause by knocking history off course that far back... AND GLADIATOR FLYNN! :D The special effects budget goes through the roof! Old Rome! Ancient Egypt! The Aztecs! Atilla the Hun! Cavemen and Medieval knights and pirates and samurai and and and... WOOLY MAMMOTHS!! Good thing the far future guys left universal translator tech behind!

Wait, wait, back up, whaaaat?? WELL, you see, because of the accident that gave him his visions, Stanley was never affected by the timeline changing the way the rest of reality around him was. Even though it seemed like he was at first. But actually, every time the timeline changed, he instead absorbed the quantum imprint of the new version of himself and all the memories, visions, viability, and temporal capability that came with it. This slowly drove him crazier and crazier with every edit to the timeline, the human brain utterly unequipped to handle so many realities crammed into one mind – until the last jump of S6. That one tipped him over a critical mass of timelines into near-omniscience, and rearranged his physical and psychic being to finally accommodate it all.

(Look, no time-travel story can be called a real time-travel story unless everything goes batshit insane at some point, okay?)

Jiya had been experiencing the same thing, just on a much, much smaller scale, since she was shielded from most of the timeline changes by either being part of the jump team or being safely ensconced inside a Wellsaday Cage. But when it became clear that the team didn’t stand a chance against Stanley, she made a desperate gamble and told her past self what happened to Stanley... and how she could replicate it in herself. Jiya expected to die when she returned from this jump, but instead of being absorbed by the new timeline’s eldritch Jiya, that Jiya made sure they remained two separate entities. Girl Jiya rejoined her team, Eldritch Jiya transcended into Demi-Goddess Jiya, and between two time machines and a walking force of quantum nature, they kicked Stanley’s ass. Demi-Goddess Jiya absorbed his temporal whatever and became full-blown Time Goddess Jiya, who then merged with the timestream itself and ensured that all the time travel fuckery was finally, FINALLY, fucking over, and this season finale would be the definitive show finale. And everybody lived happily ever after.

EVERYBODY.

Yes, even if they were erased three hundred timelines ago. Yes, even if nobody was supposed to remember them anymore; she’s god now, she can fix that. That and so much more. And she does! Because she’s nice like that. Fuck ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’, the Goddess Jiya’s in charge now, and she makes sure time travel will not continue to or ever newly hurt her friends and family again.

/S7; Temporal Eldritch Demi-God Stanley Fisher

THE END

(Sorry Paulina, your scribbles will never come to anything. Or maybe they will, but your results will be relentlessly trolled by time!Jiya.)

#my creations #thoughts of mine #Timeless

[dobermanprocrastinating]

The French Revolution

(May 5th 1789-November 9th 1799)

Royalty and upper class regularly threw extravagant parties, enjoying high living, and fine dining, while the lower class were barely surviving - the rich used all the tax on their own pleasure while people were literally starving to death! 80% of the population were poor and struggling at this time.

France went to war with Britain and lost. This landed them in financial debt. However, this didn’t stop the upper class from partying, so the peasants were forced to work even harder than before.

The Age of Enlightenment led to great philosophers, who began to question whether this beautiful nation was as great as everyone made out. In May 1774, King Louis XV died and his grandson, Louis XVI, was made king, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the French were beginning to question whether they even needed a king, when all he did was spend their money on parties and himself. The new king was said to be a weak man and barely knew how to rule a country, especially one in a situation as dire as France’s. This led to him being easily manipulated by those around him.

The country grew especially hateful towards the queen, Marie Antoinette, nicknamed “Madame Deficit”, as she spent all of France’s money on her own luxurious lifestyle and fashion. Respect for the monarchy was at an all time low, especially when the royal couple did not immediately produce a heir, and rumours started to fly about the king being “unable to fulfil his marital duty” (basically, he didn’t want to have sex) and the queen being overly sexual with… pretty much everything. As France grew deeper into debt, they decided to tax the poor, who were already struggling to make ends meet. This included giving up some of their harvest and having to work a set number of days unpaid!

The population was about ready to explode with anger, so all it took was one more thing to tip them over the edge. A series of harsh summers and winters left the peasants with poor harvest, which meant that food prices increased. Naturally, the rich had plenty of private stock of grain and wheat, so they were untouched by this crisis. Now the poor were really starving and they started to riot - attacking bakeries and even hanging bakers who were suspected of keeping bread for themselves!

Because the king lived separately from his subjects, he saw no problem with what was happening in France, so a crowd decided to remove that barrier and speak with the king themselves. They marched to the royal palace in Versailles and demanded an audience with the king. Some members of the crowd managed to break into the palace with the intention of killing the queen, who narrowly escaped through a secret passage in her bedroom. The angry mob killed several members of the royal guard and raised their heads on pikes, leaving the king with no choice but to come out and speak with his people. He agreed to go to Paris with the crowd, where his royal powers were slowly stripped away by the revolutionary government. The demands kept growing until the king made the decision to seek help from outside of France - luck for him, he was married to an Austrian. However, the king and his family were stopped before reaching the border, and returned to Paris in disgrace. It was clear that he did not support the revolutionary government, and many called him a traitor for trying to abandon his country. This led to his remaining power being taken away, so that he only served as a figure head.

This didn’t satisfy everyone though, and another protest began, demanding for the king’s removal. Fearing what would happen, the military were sent in and fired on the crowd, leading to a massacre of revolutionaries. This revealed a divide in the country - those who wanted to keep the king as a figure head, and those who wanted him gone, or even better still, executed.

On the 10th August 1792, the tension in Paris exploded and a mob stormed the king’s palace. Fighting broke out and the casualties were in the hundreds. The king was forced to flee once more, his status being removed so that he was just a regular citizen. He was taken to a prison cell where he could be closely watched. Many of the upper class and priests were arrested in the thousands, but when France realized that this was the perfect opportunity for them to conspire against the revolution, citizens broke into the prisons during the brutal September 1792 massacres and executed many of the prisoners. There were over 1600 victims - women and children were not spared. After this, King Louis was trialled and found guilty of treason, but his punishment was uncertain, as many wanted to deport him. Maximilien Robespierre, an influential figure in the revolution, said that the movement could only live if the king was dead - they had a vote, and by one vote, Louis was sentenced to the guillotine.

Robespierre went a little over the top with beheading, and started trialling people for even the most minor crimes. Around 40,000 people were executed because of him. On the 16th October 1793, Queen Marie Antoinette, the most hated woman in French history, met her end and was executed just like her husband before her. The following year, Robespierre made his ultimate slip-up and informed his followers that many of them were on the list of enemies that were to be sent to the guillotine next, which naturally led to them turning against him and sentencing him to death instead - he was the final victim of the reign of terror which he helped to create.

The French Revolution continued even after the king and queen were executed, until eventually, Napoleon Bonaparte took power and so began the Napoleonic Era.

#history #history facts #french revolution #king louis XVI #marie antoinette

[brandyovereager]

The Phoenix Effect - pt. 8

THAT’S RIGHT I FINALLY WROTE IT. YOU THOUGHT I WOULDN’T, BUT I DIIIIIDDD.

I’m not entirely in love with how this turned out, but oh well. I finished it.

On ao3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22195906/chapters/61475764

Summary: Evalin and Rhoe settle into the caravan and Rowan asks Evalin what she needed to warn Aelin about.

As expected, Rhoe and Evalin were well tended to by the members of royal caravan.

Rowan observed the couple while various pages brought them refreshments and made a place for them to sit in the carriage—it was intended for any royals traveling in the caravan but Aedion and Rowan both preferred to walk alongside the others. The reborn royals were far more accustomed to the niceties of royal life than Rowan was, and that fact was quite obvious just from watching them interact with the caravan members.

While Rowan would often pause in discomfort whenever a page brought him water or offered to carry his pack, Rhoe and Evalin accepted any help with grace and a smile. As a result, it seemed the caravan members already liked the reborn couple more than their Fae king. Rowan noted his reborn in-laws seemed to like the caravan members more than him as well.

Rhoe had not warmed to the Fae male after he explained his position earlier. Despite knowing Rowan was no longer pledged to Maeve and had dedicated himself entirely to Aelin, the man still didn’t seem to trust him. Rowan supposed the man could be a bit concerned about his daughter’s attachment to a strange and dangerous Fae male, but Rhoe Galathynius would learn soon enough that Aelin was a grown woman who could make that sort of choice for herself—and likely wouldn’t appreciate anyone thinking otherwise.

He should also know that if Rowan ever crossed her—as impossible as that was—Aelin was more than capable of handing him his ass.

Aedion had followed Rhoe and Evalin to the carriage—obviously happy to have his family back—but did not enter with them. He would sometimes approach the carriage door to speak with them, but mostly stayed outside directing the pages tending to his aunt and uncle.

Sam had been awfully quiet since they found Rhoe and Evalin—he never spoke much to begin with, but he was being especially quiet at the moment. One of the pages had mentioned to the couple that there was another reborn in their caravan, but Sam had not reciprocated their interest in speaking to him. Rowan supposed it might be confusing for him to see Evalin, just as it had been for him to see Aedion. He couldn’t be certain what the boy had put together yet in his head—maybe he assumed all people from Terrasen looked similar—but he had to be doing some thinking as they walked.

With every day that passed on their journey, Rowan questioned more and more his decision to hide Celaena’s true identity from Sam. It was a conversation Aelin deserved to have with the assassin herself, but Sam also deserved to know the truth and not be kept in the dark about all that was happening. With the arrival of Rhoe and Evalin, more questions about Aelin’s life were bound to come up. All three reborns wanted answers, and Rowan wasn’t sure how much longer he could avoid their questions.

This would be the last time he went somewhere without his mate. Never again. He wouldn’t have this problem if they weren't separated.

The decision of what to tell Rhoe and Evalin seemed to be out of his hands, though, as they only really spoke to Aedion and the occasional page. When they settled down to make camp for the night, the couple and their nephew sat close together chatting amicably with the other caravan members, while the Fae and assassin made themselves comfortable a fair distance away. Rowan was curious to see how Aelin reacted to her parents’ cold treatment of her mate.

Whether the in-laws loved him or not wasn’t his main concern, however. What Rowan really wanted to know was what horrible thing Evalin needed to warn Aelin about. If Evalin Ashryver herself thought something was amiss, then they were likely in for it. Deciding that whatever they had to tell Aelin they could tell to him, Rowan made his way towards the reborn royals.

Aedion was the first to notice him approach, acknowledging the other male with a nod. Evalin was next, staring at Rowan with the eyes of a detailed examiner. There was no judgement in her evaluation of him, just the desire to learn a new entity. Evalin was not openly welcoming to Rowan, but she didn’t seem to harbor the same assumptions her husband did. She was waiting, observing him to make her own conclusions. Maybe it was her significant resemblance to his beloved Aelin, but Rowan decided he liked Evalin—if nothing else, he certainly respected her.

When Rhoe finally recognized Rowan’s presence, he tensed slightly. It was nothing major, but it was no longer the relaxed posture of a man laughing with his family—even though Rowan was his family as well. He was not overtly displeased with the male, but Rhoe wasn’t comfortable around him the way he was with Aedion.

It was then Rowan recalled that Aelin’s power was the result of two strong bloodlines mixing, and neither of her parents held such magic. Rhoe Galathynius was helpless against any Fae—even more so a warrior Fae such as himself. For the first time, it occurred to Rowan that Rhoe might actually be afraid of him.

How would he react upon seeing Aelin—his own daughter—had grown into a powerful Fae herself? Rowan recalled the stories Aelin had told him about her childhood, the internalized fear she had of her own magic back when he first trained her. Her parents hadn’t known how to handle her power back then, how would they feel seeing her now?

No matter what they thought, Rowan would not let anything make his Queen doubt herself ever again. His extraordinary mate had battled debilitating fear of her own power, and came out resilient. She was strong enough to not let herself be afraid ever again, but damn him if he didn’t come out seething at anyone who dared suggest otherwise.

Rowan opted not to sit, instead standing at his full height in front of Rhoe. A petty part of him—perhaps the affectionately named ‘territorial Fae bastard’—was quite smug knowing how much of a striking figure he posed. The Fae turned to face Evalin, and his voice might have been a bit gruffer—but his eyes softer as they gazed into Ashryver turquoise—as he spoke.

“You said you had to warn my Queen of something, what is it?”

“Us—being alive—and the others you call ‘reborns’, this should not be.” An obvious statement courtesy of Evalin Ashryver.

“No, it shouldn’t. It goes against the natural order. Why is this cause to warn Aelin, though?” It had been an alarming situation when it first started, but now that governments had a system in place there was no need for warning.

“Because powerful magic is the only thing that could have done this. Something as significant as life and death cannot be changed easily, and such a disruption indicates dark magic.” Her conclusion puzzled the male.

“Why would resurrection indicate dark magic? Life is a blessing, not a curse.” The rebirth of dead loved ones didn’t seem like the beginnings of an evil plan.

“Life is a blessing only in its intended order. It is a blessing because it is so precious. The life I was gifted is over, and I yielded my time to others, to children who will walk this land and live out their gift. While I may wish I had more time here, this land is no longer mine, and I am not meant to take it back.” While that may be how Evalin saw things, Rowan wondered if that might be something for each person to decide themselves. Philosophical musings aside, the powerful magic was the real issue here.

“You think there is a threat out there, someone we need to find and defeat?” So soon after their victory against Maeve and Erawan, Rowan really hoped there wasn’t another villain out there to fight. He was tired. Was it too much to ask that he just spend the rest of his immortal life in peace with his mate?

“The magic used may have been dark magic, but I do not think the wielder has ill intentions. After all, giving life to the dead seems like a miracle. I believe someone has come into possession of great power they do not understand, and that is dangerous in a different way.” Yes, it was. Power is difficult to control when the user is outmatched, and dark power should not be let loose.

Evalin’s words meant more than a fight against evil magic, though. It meant that the entire reborn phenomenon would be reversed. Evalin wished to send back the reborns.

“You mean to undo all this, then? We are to take all the reborns away from families who just welcomed them back? That includes you as well. Are you prepared to make your daughter mourn you once again?” Rowan wasn’t sure he could put Aelin through that again. She would have him and the rest of her court to lean on this time, but no one should lose their parents twice. It was cruel, and the Fae grit his teeth at the fact that Evalin actually wanted this.

“As I said before, this is no blessing. Someone attempted to spare the world grief, but they only gifted us more to suffer.”

@rowaelinforeverworld​

@flowersinvegas​

@aelin-queen-of-terrasen​

@camixd93​

@lord-douglas-the-third​

@montse121296​

@dank-queen7​

@slytheringalathynius​

@rhyswhitethorn​

@jesstargaryenqueen​

@trilogiesrule

#rowan whitethorn #aelin ashryver galathynius #aedion ashryver #sam cortland #rhoe galathynius #evalin ashryver galathynius #lysandra #nehemia ytger #gavriel #rowaelin #rowan x aelin #celaena sardothien #sam x celaena #samlaena #rowaelin fic #rowaelin fanfic #rowaelin fanfiction #tog #throne of glass #tog fic #tog fanfic #tog fanfiction #throne of glass fic #throne of glass fanfic #throne of glass fanfiction #SJM #sjm fic #sjm fanfic #sjm fanfiction #sarah j maas

[a-sleepy-reader]

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo: an Analysis and Review

Foreword

If you want a review free of spoilers, please scroll to the section labelled ‘Conclusion/Review without spoilers.’

Introduction

Few modern novels have been as celebrated in the mainstream media as Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist. It has been praised by Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, and Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

“The story has the comic charm, dramatic tension, and psychological intensity of a fairy tale, but it’s full of specific wisdom as well… a sweetly exotic tale for young and old alike.”

-Publisher’s Weekly

The Alchemist has the tone of a children’s book and the genre of a fable taking place centuries ago, with wisdoms claimed to be as old as its setting. So, does The Alchemist deliver on these high hopes?

Plot synopsis

Santiago seems disheartened by his life as a Shepherd boy in Spain before he meets a wise and likely supernatural king. The king tells Santiago that he must follow his personal legend(life purpose), which is to travel to the Egyptian pyramids in search of treasure. Santiago has dreamt of the pyramids and treasure before and takes this as affirmation that traveling to such a place is his life purpose. The shepherd boy sells his sheep and takes to selling crystals for money before he sets out on his journey and encounters The Englishman. He is an alchemist looking for the wisest practicer in his field, promptly titled ‘The Alchemist.’ The two set out on camels and stop at an oasis, where Santiago instantly falls in love with a woman named Fatima. The Englishman also manages to find his coveted alchemist, who shares many wisdoms with the two, for example, that, in this world, the language of the world is the spiritual communication of all beings, such as omens and body language. The Alchemist urges Santiago to follow his personal legend despite his bond to Fatima and, by proxy, the oasis. Though torn between staying with his love and realizing his personal legend, he sets out to the pyramids with The Alchemist. In the midst of their journey, however, Arabian soldiers capture them; Santiago is only spared his life by The Alchemist convincing the soldiers that Santiago will turn into wind. Santiago is able to communicate with the desert and summons a sandstorm that makes the soldiers let him go. At the pyramids, he is informed of a stranger's dream and personal legend, one of treasure waiting in Spain where Santiago began his journey. Realizing his treasure really required an appreciation not of a place but of given circumstances, Santiago plans to obtain his treasure and return to Fatima. 

Analysis

Coehlo says he is a catholic despite the fact that some of his beliefs do not align with traditional Catholicism. Many of his stances resemble that of spiritualism, such as a belief in omens, existentialism, and prophetic dreams. This explains many of The Alchemist’s themes, being as focused on personal legends and omens as it is. The Alchemist has many morals beyond very individualistic beliefs, however, such as faith in true love and soulmates, of a God, the purpose of life laying not in physical progress but in spiritual acceptance, and a disapproval of those too scared to pursue what they want, amongst others. Overall, however, I believe the book’s message can be boiled-down to ‘learn the language of the universe,’ that is, learn to interact with the spiritual world Coehlo believes in through means of personal legends and communicating with the world through omens.

Review

At first glance, The Alchemist looks like a simply-written yet sophisticated book; it has an understandable plot and writing style yet many morals, so who’s to say that it’s incomparable to works like The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupery(I will be using that comparison often in this review)? Well, I think The Alchemist has the bones of an extraordinary fable like Exupery’s, but its meat is lacking. That is, I believe The Alchemist is a chaotic and underdeveloped mess of a book, The Little Prince but if it were written in a day or two. It had potential that was squandered by the lack of thought put into essential parts of storytelling, from its morals to its writing to its characters and tension. Let’s begin respectively. 

The Alchemist has few qualms with throwing an idea at the reader and presenting it as a conclusion rather than a speculation or the beginning of a well-developed theory for the reader to elaborate on themselves. For example, omens are integral to The Alchemist, and since the novel is advertised as a sort of self-help book with a plot, one would expect Coehlo to try and tie this idea in to the real world somehow or at least provide some reasoning for why he believes this aside from omens only obvious in The Alchemist. No such evidence or support is provided; omens are obviously present in The Alchemist but their validity relies on the nature of their being in the book unfounded or more difficult to find in the real world, and Coehlo never even explains why he believes in omens, so it’s a setup for nothing. This is a common theme throughout The Alchemist, from its support of personal legends to prophetic dreams to love at first sight to the language of the universe, Coehlo relies on the sheer obviousness of the world he made to get his points across and loses their potential support in the process. This harm’s the book’s philosophies regardless of whether they are accurate or not. 

Adding to the novel’s problems, the writing itself(that is, the English translation) is not very good. Now, I want to make something clear: a book doesn’t need to be Nabokovian to have good writing. One can use very common words and simple sentence structures and be better writers than the greats if they write wisely and make the most of its simplicity. The Little Prince has a simple writing style, but it flows with believable dialogue, clever metaphors, and good pacing. Compare those qualities to this excerpt from The Alchemist: 

“The first day passed. There was a major battle nearby, and a number of wounded were brought back to the camp. The dead soldiers were replaced by others, and life went on. Death doesn’t change anything, the boy thought.”

This paragraph is clunky. Sentences that could have led from one to the next in a steady, effortless rhythm instead clash and seem to be thrown together to form a mix of disconnected and boring facts. This could have been written so much more interestingly; does Santiago feel bad for the soldiers? Does he feel guilty for not helping with the battle? What did the wounded look like? How does he feel? A running problem in The Alchemist is how emotionally barren it is. True, I still would have grilled Coehlo if he wrote ‘Santiago is sad,’ but that is because the point could have been gotten across more subtly and believably: ‘The metallic stench of blood weighed on Santiago,’ for example. Expanding on this, let’s see what happens when I add my personal interpretation of how this paragraph could have been more fluent and emotionally powerful;

“The soldiers fought through the day and through the night, only that and the growing stench marking the time. A time-marker of blood, of hope, of death, of the many qualities of the people in the oasis, shattered to sand. Once those grains were gone, more rushed to the battlefield, sandstorm after sandstorm, life after life, gone. In the end, though, it changed nothing. Blood, hope, and death never really do.” 

By no means do I think this is perfect, but I think it goes to show a sliver of how much can be accomplished with relatively simple writing styles; they do not have to be clunky, they do not have to be bland, and they can get a point across and convey emotion at the same time. 

Then again, even if Coehlo’s prose was Nabokovian, this would not erase the blandness, homogeneity and monotony of his characters. Now, I found Santiago’s personality to be enjoyable enough; Coehlo represented his longing for something beyond the fields of Andalusia, his metaphorical mind as well as his determination yet uncertainty in life well enough. I have no problem with Santiago, but it would be very nice if every character in the book weren’t Santiago. What character doesn’t believe in the universal language? Who ever challenges Santiago’s certainties? When is Santiago not only mistaken in the way he goes about pursuing his personal legend but in an integral part of his worldview? I will summarize all three with these words; ‘noone,’ ‘never,’ and, ‘never - again!’ Everyone in this book nods along to Santiago’s beliefs; if the universal language is so rare, why does everyone agree on it? The characters feel less like individuals and more like fourth-wall breaks for Coehlo to dump yet another underdeveloped idea on the reader or pat himself on the back about how everyone in a fictional world he made agrees with him. Maybe if one or two characters opposed Santiago’s beliefs, made him question, realign or maybe even change his worldview, The Alchemist would feel more like the philosophical contemplation it was marketed as and less like a spiritualist self-help book with a plot. Instead, however, Santiago accomplishes his personal legend and has each of his beliefs solidified by every single character in the book. Where’s the internal struggle? Where’s the idea that things may not always be as they seem, that humans make mistakes? Such themes are forgotten in the world of The Alchemist.

I give The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo a 30%. 

Conclusion/Review without spoilers

I had a rough time with this book. The wise, helpful, and insightful self-help it was sold as did not deliver on any of those qualities for me due to its portrayal of very subjective values as universal truths without any evidence or reasoning provided for them outside the universe of the book and poor writing. Despite all this, I understand how this book has helped many, especially those who already had beliefs similar to Coehlo’s. Beyond my relentless criticisms, The Alchemist is a hopeful fable of finding your purpose in the world. It may not have connected to me, but it is no coincidence that celebrities call it a favorite, that it’s a bestseller, and is beloved amongst many. This review evaluated The Alchemist’s objective value, to which I say that it is bad literature. Subjectively, though, it impacted so many people, it motivated, it inspired, and no matter how many bland characters, lazy writings and oversimplified answers it may have, I will forever admire The Alchemist for touching so many people. After all, what is literature but a communication of one’s self, of sharing that self with others for them to internalise and keep a personalised fragment of this person within them?

I recommend The Alchemist to those in need of a meaning in life, who don’t want to wade through dense prose and complex stories or characters. Sometimes, all we really need, all we really should have, is something that keeps us going in life. I’m sure The Alchemist will fulfil that for many, and for that, I am forever grateful.

#books #the alchemist #book review #paulo coelho

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Thanks for bringing the racebending to my attention. I never considered that it was harmful towards the origin culture. I considered that it was kind of strong to claim that sort of race thing in a way, but maybe that comes from the more.. christianity? view of where there isnt a direct way that God looks, except any way the person perceives. That's probably what I thought, too, until just now reading your answer to someone else. So.. it's not okay? 1/?

I honestly want to understand as my perspective on this now changes. It makes total sense why it would be entitled of someone to do such a thing, and how it's inconsiderate of the actual origin culture that the deities come from now that I'm thinking about it in this way. So again thank you for bringing this up and answering that other anon. I have some things to revise in my head on this, as I honor Apollo and Hermes, I want to make sure that I get accurate and do my research.

I really enjoy being able to read your experiences and I think it's important as, someone outside the culture, gets to experience and understand more to be as accurate and non... whats the word... inappropriate with representing such a thing, I guess I can say. If that makes sense.__________________________________________________________

Thank you for sending a message and for listening to the opinion of Greek people. (I am not the only one with that opinion, many of my 500 followers also share the same ideas.) Anyways prepare yourself for a looooooong analysis! So, get under comfy blankets and take your tea/coffee next to you!

To begin with, there are Greeks that don’t mind but those are usually Greeks who have close contact with the American way of thinking through social media. Or some that don’t care because the approach our mythology in a kinda superficial way? I am not saying this to offend any Greeks who don’t mind the racebending. Every Greek has the right to have a relationship with their culture according to their own standards. Those people who think racebending is ok are usually no less patriots than the ones who do. However, those who don’t mind the race bending are extremely rare to find. 

If I go to my 50 y/o aunt and announce to her that foreigners depict Demeter as Black she is gonna lose her mind. I have also asked the opinion of Greeks who are not into social media or groups where Greek mythology is discussed by foreigners. When they were informed of the racebending the first thing they said was “but... why??” and they couldn’t fathom how this could help anyone. The second thing they say is “But the Gods are white!” explaining that our ancestor have depicted them as Caucasian for centuries and we, as Greeks, know no other depiction of them.

I assure you, it has nothing to do with white superiority - which is a myth anyways. Greeks can be perfectly racist to people who are pastry white :P If you racebended the gods into any other race, we would still have a problem. It’s all a matter of respecting iconography and tradition. It would be ignorant of even us Greeks to change the depiction of the gods when our ancestors were very clear in their art about their race. It was also clear in antiquity that the gods had bodies. I am in another computer and I cannot access my files, but I had a file for a philosopher who tried to argue against the public opinion that the gods didn’t have bodies. But the majority of ancient Greeks believed that the gods had a physical presence.

Also, race matters for Greeks as it does for most of other cultures. You expect Nigerian deities to look like the average Nigerian, yes? Because they were created by a homogenous Black population. You think the same for Indian and Chinese deities, yes? It makes sense for deities and public figures from a certain culture to look like the people of that culture. I think it’s common sense. Turning an old Nigerian deity into a Chinese, would’t represent the Nigerian people any more. For similar reasons, we don’t want our important heritage figures changed. (In case a warrior was described as Black African in our ancient texts, then of course we wouldn’t have a problem with keeping that figure Black).

You are correct when saying that the race bending comes from a Christian point of view. I think many hellenic polytheists/pagans/wiccans haven't managed to escape the Christian logic. In Christianity we have accepted for many centuries that saints and important figures would be viewed with different races, so people can come closer to them. For example, there is a Chinese, Native American, Mexican (different tribes), Black Jesus etc. Most of the times they are also dressed in the traditional regalia of the respective culture. It's a thing for the last 200 years at least. 

Even Greeks depicted Jesus kinda white (he has an olive skin complexionand brown hair, which is closer to the Greek standards). And this happened since the Byzantine Empire. We even call the Virgin Mary "Mother of all Greeks" (apparently Mary has a particular interest in our nation xD) We have made her into a Greek mum. But we kinda have the freedom to do this because Christianity is an international religion which is alive for the last 2.000 years, so these changes come organically.

On the contrary, almost nobody has worshipped the Greek gods since 500 AC. The religion was been dead for almost 2.000 years, until Western classicists made it a popular. Now people who have no actual contact with the Greek culture start worshiping those gods. Don’t get me wrong, I believe any foreigner can worship the Greek gods! The thing is that most of the foreign worshippers don’t see the Greek gods as part of the culture that created them, because of the Americanization of the gods in the media and the complete stripping of the Greek elements from them.

But gods are still part of the Greeks’ heritage. Many ancient traditions and myths have kept from the ancient years, we have the names of gods and the gods are still used as symbols here. Our culture hasn’t died, as many westerners (perhaps subconciously) believe. It is alive and evolving, despite foreigners usually ignoring us. So, the ideas about our ancient religion have been involving with us, becoming part of our national identity in a unique way. 

After 2.000 years of the religion’s “death”, foreigners become enamored with Greece again. But not our Greece. They become enamored with a part of our culture that hasn’t existed in millenia. They study the culture only till the Roman years and then they skip 2.000 years of evolving cultural identity and go straight to the 21st century western (west Europe/America) ideals and societies.

You can only imagine how it seems to us Greeks, when foreigners suddenly remember us again and, on top of that, they don’t become part of our culture but they insist that a part of our culture (in its ancient form) becomes tailored to their own standards. And now foreigners ingore our own point of view, because, as they have done the last 2.000 years, they keep on ignoring us :P (I mean they as a people, greatly generalizing here). Please see that post for how disconnected a Greek feels about the modern Greek religion, and the analysis that comes with it. (Link)

Similarly, imagine if suddenly the Nigerian culture became a trend in Greece and now some Greeks become interesting in the old (almost dead to Nigeria) worship of Orishas. And now they want to depict the Orishas as White, because they, themselves are white and maybe white deities reflect better the racial situation in Greece. Wouldn’t that be disrespectful, though? Not only because the Black becomes White, but because we would take an inactive worship from the Nigerians and add our own politics to it.

Our situation is also kind of special because for the last centuries every country that has become interested in our culture has abused it. They have stolen antiquities from us and northwestern Europe but also in the US have no problem having those stolen artifacts and displaying them. There is a tradition of foreigners claiming to “love” Greece but they are really in love with our ancient aesthetic and they don’t give a shit about the Greeks who preserve the culture and even die to protect their antiquities. 

So we are used to this kind of treatment and it hurts extra when it’s happening again. But we are also desensitized. For some reason a person can be dressed as a Greek deity for Halloween and we won’t bat an eye. At the same time, I see people from other cultures defending the importance of their figures, when foreigners dress up as them for fun. 

I don’t understand how we consider this disrespectful for any other culture but if it’s the Greek we don’t care. Why could this be? Perhaps because many Greeks have come to see their own culture as public property. Perhaps because it is what the prominent international media tells us and maybe because we are used to selling our culture for profit (we are a tourist country) and we only see it as merchandise. 

Let me add I am not only fascinated by my own cultures but also cultures around the world. It makes no sense to me that people want Gods of color and their only solution is to make the Greek gods Black. Have we forgotten the numerous rich cultures of Asia and Africa?? There are a ton of deities there who, if you want to draw Afrocentric art for example, will be great inspiration! It reminds me of a publishing house which put POC in the covers of western classic books (thus kinda turning the white main characters into POC only in the cover) while not promoting books from POC or books featuring POC. I think it’s counterproductive.

I think that’s all I have to say for now! Feel free to ask more questions if I haven’t covered you! And if you have more thoughts you can drop them in my ask box.

Also, one question for you before you leave. You mentioned “I considered that it was kind of strong to claim that sort of race thing in a way”. Can you explain to me why? I would like to understand better people who think this way. Then maybe I could explain more effectively to them that their race bending practice isn’t as helpful as they think it is.

P.S. Even saying “races” of people exist is considered deeply racist in Greece (and Europe). I mention that as potential food of thought. For us there are only hues of skin colors, not races, so our social politics are different. 

#this is probably the longest post i have ever written #Greek Mythology #greek myth #greek gods #ancient greece #hades #Persephone #hera #zeus #athena #Aphrodite #ares #apollo #hestia #pagan #wicca #wiccan #poseidon #hecate #witch #hermes #demeter

[jamiedc-they-them]

All for you (Platonic)

To Daenerys Targaryen, you were the last pure thing on earth that hadn’t been taken from her yet. Her younger (brother/sister). You were one of the things that kept her going throughout her struggles. You were the motivation behind every move she made.

It was all for you. To make a better world for you.

She pretty much raised you. Her older brother was cruel to the two of you. She did what she could to shelter you from harm. And, when she failed, she’d comfort you as best she could.

It was all for you. To make you feel more content. To help you get through the bleakest of days.

You both had a rage within you. A burning fire that could burn down the whole world. Your trauma from your brother only brought you closer. Only allowed her maternal instincts around you grow.

When she tipped the pot full of boiling gold on your older brother. Hearing his screams pierce the air. Before a CLANG! When he fell to the ground, finally gone from your lives forever. It felt good. It felt right.

It was for you. To tell you that you were ok now. That he’d never hurt you again. You were safe now.

Whenever she was targeted, so were you. She lived in fear for herself, of course. But you were her main concern. She couldn’t let anything happen to you. So, when she woke up one time to you screaming in horror and what sounded like pain. She entered the room and found you fighting off an assassin.

He endured a long and painful death. Her soldiers beating him and slicing him. You were allowed to add to the pain as well. While she didn’t notice it. Jorah had. Something awoke in you that day. Something broke within you. A dam, that had been holding back all of your pain. The many walls you had built to shelter yourself from your trauma. He saw the look in your eyes. The regular Targaryen fire was there. But there was something else.

Something darker.

Your older sister only watched you with a passive look. No one spoke, there was no sounds from anyone. The only sounds were of the sands blowing around you, and your breathing.

You plunged the knife into your would be killer. Right where he had aimed for you. Right in the chest. Some blood was coughed from his mouth. It stained your clothes. Daenerys frowned at it. But you didn’t seem to mind.

You stabbed him again, and again. Your rage finally hitting its boiling point. One, two, three. A pattern of stabs. Daenerys still kept her gaze passive. Jorah’s turned concerned.

Daenerys had later explained to the man as to why she hadn’t stopped you. Her explanation was simple. It as your moment to enact some kind of justice in a life that had been filled with nothing by injustice.

It was all for you. To make you feel in control.

As your time passed. Your clothes would become stained with blood more regularly. As much as she hated it, you could fight well. As much as she wanted to preserve your innocence, she knew some things had to be sacrificed for this. So, begrudgingly, she allowed you to fight. But you were watched closely by Jorah and the other fighters under her command.

Jorah didn’t need a command to look out for your wellbeing. He had come to care for you both in different ways. But, still, he cared, You’d found a friend in him.

Now you found someone to train you and help you fight better. To not be that weak little boy that hid behind his sister.

Your sister was proud, in a way. Proud that you were finding your own calling. It was like a mother watching their child grow up and finally be ready to leave them.

After all, the meetings she’d allowed you to always seemed to drain the life out of you. Of course, she didn’t want that.

After all, this was all for you. If fighting was your calling, who was she to stop you from following it?

You were nimble with the blade. Your size helping you fight. Giving you an advantage with the taller enemies. When you had both met Tyrion Lannister, you were both cautious of him. You ultimately let Danny decide his fate. But he still gave you a look. One you couldn’t decipher.

It wasn’t one she liked.

“Is there something wrong about my (brother/sister) being here?” The imp cleared his throat, a small bit embarrassed at being caught and called out on the action.

“No, your grace. It’s just that (he/she) hasn’t said a word since I’ve arrived is all.” She turned to you, her look softening a little as she met your eyes. Tyrion noticed it but chose not to comment on it.

She gave you a silent nod. Permission to speak your mind.

“I just follow her. If she grants you stay, then you would’ve found an ally in both of us.” She smiled a little at your words. Tyrion scrunched his face together in confusion. You were loyal to your sister. That much was known. Just as how, at the end of day, Jaime was to him.

But, one question laid in his head, “Where you loyal to her as a sister, or as a queen?”

Seeing you fight, it seemed he had his answer. You fought without question. There were moments where he’d give up hope on ever seeing a shred of your innocence. Only to be there to witness rare moments where you both seemed to reclaim it. Be it with a glass of wine or just a laugh in conversation.

He couldn’t help but envy you two a little. You were close, that much was obvious. You both seemed to be able to communicate without need of vocalising it. She’d protected you. She still did in subtle ways. When you both looked over Mareen. She’d place a hand on your shoulder. Sometimes, if he happened to be walking by when you were in your room. She’d lean her head on your shoulder.

He never had that type of closeness with his siblings. All of them (bar Jaime) hated him with everything they had. But it brought some light to the world that you two were as close as you were.

You’d both crossed the ocean. Both set your feet back on your home ground. Daenerys turned to you after she stood up. Offering you hand, “Come along, little one. We have work to do.”

That included meeting Jon Snow. Bastard son of the north. Daenerys actually looked to you on this one. Everyone on her side knew that no matter what they said, if you disagreed, she’d go with your judgement.

She trusted you the most. And vice-versa.

So, when she’d left her throne room at the sound of laughter. Or a short burst of it, it warmed her a little to see you both getting along at least somewhat. You both seemed to be emotionally stunted at times. You were never one for long conversations. Although, Tyrion had managed to get a few out of you about some philosophical things. Managed to drag something of a personality out of you.

It seemed that you fancied yourself a bit of existentialist. Deep down, he noticed, you wanted to be free. He saw that all your actions were to achieve just that. A sense of freedom and justice.

Jon (for as much as everyone had told him otherwise) had smarts to him. He noticed you want for it as well. But saw that you covered it up with the lie that supporting your sisters claim would be the way to fix that issue inside of you.

If it were the other way round, he could understand it. Family meant everything to him. Just as much as it did to you. That as what you two bonded over. It was nice to find a new friend. One who had the same values as you.

Daenerys had sat by your bed whilst you healed from your time beyond the wall. Finding you unconscious as Jon carried you and helped you onto your exit ride via dragon pained her. Shook her deeply. The next moment, another one of her dragons had fallen.

She’d nearly lost two of the things she held dearly that day.

After all, if you died. If you had left, her. Then this would’ve been for nothing. It would’ve been a hollow victory.

It was all for you.

Winterfell was a nice change of pace. Even if you weren’t welcome entirely there. You were both judged. You didn’t blame them. But you still felt out of place.

Jon introduced you to his siblings. While, with your sister there was a tense moment. With you, it seemed to be more relaxed. The way Sansa’s smile was genuine. Arya had managed more than a sly one as well. Jon looked between both parties. An actual smile on his face, too.

Arya and you had started a friendship. Both bonding over being similar ages and going through your fair share of issues to get to where you were now. It helped her recover a small amount of the child that still lived inside her. Deep, deep down. Locked away. It allowed itself a moment to come back.

You told her about the east, she told you about the west. Both trading stories about your travels. Sansa, Jon, and Danny all saw you looking happy for once. And found themselves a moment to feel it as well.

Your stomach hit you with anxiety. With fear of the unknown. You felt a presence next to you. Looking, you saw that it was Arya. She was stood next to you, looking out at the dark, the void that held the army of the dead. The restless souls that were coming for yours.

“Do you ever think about it? What happens after death?” Her voice was calm. It helped you for a moment. Distracted you as you turned to her with your answer, “Never really thought about it. Always told myself that those I killed went to a place worse than this. But, never really thought about me.”

She nodded at your admission, “Well, if there’s one thing I know. It’s that there’s one thing we say to the god of death,” She waited until you turned to her again. A sly smile upon her face, “Not today.”

It nearly did, several times in that night. The long night.

The time that light really did collide with dark. Living with dead.

You were pinned down, trying to do what you could. Stabbing the walkers that you could. But you knew that this was most likely it. This was how your story was to end. To see if there was anything beyond.

Arya’s words rang true when she was by your side, killing the walkers that held you and helping you up. The two of you back to back. Fighting like a duo who had been their whole lives.

And, depending on how the rest of the night would go. it could very well of been your life’s end fighting by her side.

Daenerys had pulled you into a hug as soon as she saw you. Holding you tightly. Before having to tell you that you’d lost Jorah. She’d tried to comfort you. Only for you to move away and go off on your own.

She’d called after you, trying to reach you once again. Jon had pulled her back, “Just give (him/her) some time. (He’s/She’s) been through a lot.” She didn’t look happy by it but nodded.

Arya, however, had clocked your look. The way your look went from sad to cold as soon as you had turned away. She’d been used to that look. To lock it all away. To force it down. To, in a way, switch yourself off to world. To be dead to it.

She didn’t want that for you. Not when you’d just fought so hard to live.

She hadn’t managed to say goodbye to you, unfortunately. She was off to Kings Landing to get the final person on their list. That being  Queen Cersei herself.

It was Kings Landing where Daenerys saw how much your journey had damaged you. How much it had taken from you. Despite her best efforts, she’d let you kill. Let you lose yourself to it. She’d lied to herself about it. Telling herself that you were fine. That it was just a thing of the moment. And, the way you acted after the fights helped instil that lie. Helped her believe it.

She believed it, right up until you both sat on the walls, the bells ringing. For her, it was a moment of peace. A sense of victory. It was until she looked at you.

You, her little (brother/sister). You, who this had all been for. You, who had done nothing but keep your feelings at bay when it came to lose. You, who had locked away (his/her) darkness from others.

You, who had, unfortunately, lost that battle.

“(y/n)” Her voice was fearful. You hadn’t heard it. Your dragon kicked off the wall, diving towards the city. She hoped, prayed even. That you weren’t going to do what she thought you were going to.

“NO!” She screamed as you started burning the city to the ground. People be damned.

Queen Daenerys Targaryen. The mother of dragons. Breaker of chains. The same woman who was now forced to walk through the city that you had burned down. To fully see the destruction that you had reigned on the city to get what you thought was right.

You’d gotten your freedom. But only by surrendering to the dark. By crossing the line, she never wanted to cross.

She’d stopped when she saw a burned body of a child. One not much older than you were when you started this journey. The child’s mother trying to protect it, only to fail.

Just as she had. By doing all this for you, she had destroyed you. She had failed you.

She stood with Jon, both of them sharing a look as they proceeded up the stairs as you started your speech. She saw and heard you. She knew you were gone. Your innocence was gone. The sibling she protected and raised. The one she cared for deeply was gone. This was just a hollow shell of (him/her).

You ended your speech, breath turning shaky for a second as you met your sister’s eyes. Her’s held fear. Yours held resolution and completion them. She couldn’t help but also see the lust for more be mixed in there too.

“No --”

“Danny I --”

“I said, no!” Her voice cracked, but her fierce protection and denial of their want remained. Her lip trembled at their suggestion. She looked to Arya. And, despite her best efforts, her eyes held some sadness and hurt within them. Jon’s held far more. He always wore his emotions on his sleeve.

“....Please don’t do this.” She tried one last time. One last time to save you. One last time to protect you. One last time to be the sister figure who loved and cared for you that she had tried to be. Someone who tried to give you the whole world. A world that you seemed intent on just burning down with no issue.

She saw the error in her ways. The day she let you stop being her (brother/sister) and instead just another member of her army. One she trusted deeply, sure. But, one of her army none the less.

She’d gambled with your life so many times. Now, it was time for it to go the way she’d always feared it would.

A tear ran down her face as she knew her begging was in vain. In truth, she knew it needed to be done. She just hated herself more for having to admit it.

She nearly broke down again as she watched you staring at the throne in awe. The thing that all this pain had been building up to. The object of her desire had now became yours. Becoming a soldier had ruined you. She saw that now; her goal had corrupted you.

Power had corrupted you.

She managed to grow a smile. An unstable and shaky one. But, a smile still.

“Little one.” You turned at her voice. Her emotions calming for a moment as you beamed at her with pride. You weren’t mad. No, that was your father. You were just a child who lost himself to the dark as there seemed to be no light left. A light that slowly dimmed as you killed and did whatever you needed for your sister.

It was all for her.

“Danny, look! We made it. We made it. It’s so much different than how it was described to us!” Her smile wobbled at your words. How you had seemed to revert to the innocent version of yourself in this moment.

It almost made her want to back out of the current plan. She was too far in at this point. You were too far gone.

“Come here.” She said gently, holding out her arms. You were quick to run to them. She closed her eyes as she held you close and tight. Planting a long kiss onto your head. She made sure it passed on the truth. That she loved you dearly. You were her (brother/sister) but one that had stopped being that years ago at this point. It was a kiss of grief. One she gave to Jorah.

Now it was your turn.

You gasped, breath trembling. Your eyes wide as you pulled apart from your sister. She still held onto your arms, tears now freely flowing from her face.

“I’m sorry.” She managed to get out before she fully break down. Your legs buckled. She kept her grasp on you. Lowering you gently onto the ground as you slowly shut down. Slowly died. Slowly left her.

Your breathing was wheezing at this point. You met her eyes as your vision blurred. She kept muttering apologies as your vision darkened.

As you let the dark take you fully.

As your sister slayed the monster that had taken you from her. One that she had allowed to take you in her quest.

It was all for you. Now, it was all for nothing.

It wasn’t even a hollow win. It was just hollow.

She let herself let out a cry that echoed throughout the city.

It was hollow. As was your body.

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