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cinnamonest · 3 years

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Zhongli (Genshin Impact) - Yandere Profile

This man's voice has a POWER over me I SWEAR

tws: yandere, mentions of n/sfw

tws (under the cut): very ddlg-esque vibes, sorta? infantilization, noncon

I'm sorry I get such strong daddy vibes it unintentionally went in this direction, hope that isn't too bad lmao

I’m working on all the prompts I’ve gotten in! I’ve gotten a few so I’ll be working on those.

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What are they generally like? Lucid, aware? Obsessive? How do they behave?

He's one that might be likely to misunderstand his feelings at first, think that he sees himself as a mentor or maybe even an authority figure, someone to guide you and teach you and serve as a dependable partner to your travels. As time goes on, and he begins to recognize how utterly flustered he gets around you, he's forced to acknowledge the actual feelings he has.

While some yanderes with a slight aloofness or pride to them get worse when in love, such as Childe or Kaeya, his drops completely. You bring out a softer side of him, really, one that's protective and tender and loving, so very loving, wanting to be around you, with you. He's certainly an obsessive, protective type, ultimately allowing his protective nature to get the better of him as he demands to know everything you've done, account for your location at every moment, constantly keep track of your habits, inquire about very personal details of your life. If he realizes you're bothered by it, he might draw back a bit, but he's convinced that that's just your perception, that it's necessary, truly, and not at all unusual.

Pet names. Particularly fond of love, darling, and angel. Sweet things that represent what you mean to him -- something precious, something to represent his adoration and idolization.

The primary form of delusion comes from a perception of you. He's obsessive, and idolizes you to an extent. He perceives you as pure, innocent, angelic. The thing is, this applies regardless of whether or not you actually are. If you are, it will solidify the idea, but even if you're not, he will find a way to see you so, anyway. No matter how wise you are, no, you're naive. No matter how capable you are, no, you're weak and fragile. No matter how experienced you may be, no, you're pure. He can always keep this delusion running by bringing into account age and comparison - you'll never be as strong as him, so you might as well be frail and weak. You'll never have lived as long as him, so really, do you think there's that much difference between you and a child, when compared to someone like himself?

How likely are they to kidnap their darling? How quickly will they do so?

Actually highly likely, and pretty quickly. As he observes you, it becomes very clear to him how very fragile you are, how naive you are, you are quite literally too pure, too angelic, to be living in this world with such beings as humans. Fragile, beautiful little things have a place where they belong - protected. Where do we put fragile, beautiful things? We put them behind glass, behind ropes, in pretty cages, in secluded rooms. It's only natural that you, too, need a similar environment.

He's one of the ones that will... Elegantly kidnap you, as odd as it sounds. He's not a brute that would do something horrendous like knocking you out or drugging you, no, he'll find an excuse for you to come to his abode, invite you in, and you'll walk in none the wiser. Only after your in, and the doors close, does he guide you to your new room, calmly explaining that he's come to the realization that you're too fragile to continue your journey, and ought to simply give up on your travels. He knows you'll be upset at first. Like a child being denied, you'll get pouty, moody, you might cry, you might lash out at him. It's predictable. He'll dry your eyes and calm you down, brushing off any harsh words you may have, holding your wrists in his hands when you try to push him away, softly reassuring you that it will all be alright, that you're safe now, and you'll learn to accept this with time.

How difficult is it to escape from them? How do they keep you restrained? How do they deal with attempted escape?

He would want something... elaborate. He's a man with taste for the most beautiful of things, including yourself, and he won't settle for something as simple as a chain or ropes. No, that would be too simple and brutish, and you, one of the finest things in his life, deserve something equally beautiful and delicate.

He's one of the ones that would go to a great deal of preparation for your arrival. He'd have a room prepared just for you, very ornate, beautifully tailored to you -- the walls your favorite color, the bed made of the same material as your old one, and the whole room completely filled with things you're certain you never even told him you liked. Clothes that fit perfectly to your body. It's frightening how perfect it is, because you know he had to go out of his way to acquire the information to achieve such perfection, but you have no idea how.

Everything about it elegant and detailed, right down to the series of ornate locks on the door. They're some of the sturdiest available, made with essentially unbreakable metal alloys and the most intricate lock systems to date. The windows don't open, and he'd certainly find some way to ensure escape through them isn't an option -- perhaps metal bars, perhaps an unbreakable glass substitute, perhaps merely locating your new home right on the edge of one of Liyue's most beautiful mountains, so that if you were to go out the window you'd plummet to the earth below. He's a bit delusional, but he's not stupid, and he will think through every possibility. Every little detail he needs to keep you safe and confined.

He's certain that, perfect as it is, this room is all you will ever need to be happy. Should you desire anything else, he can bring it to you. You'll never have to leave.

So it goes without saying that it would be exceptionally difficult to escape him. You'd have to find a way through the locks, for which your best bet would be to get some hair pins or tiny writing utensils. Even if you managed it, though, which would frankly be a very difficult feat, you'll have to deal with staying free. Zhongli has ties to the people of Liyue as a whole, and needless to say, he has eyes everywhere. You can't risk appearing in the harbor area, there will be far too many people who would immediately report you, and you'd just be walking right to him anyhow. The surrounding areas also have ties to him, so you'd want to try and reach Mondstadt, as far as it is, which is a difficult travel by foot all alone. You won't get far. He's faster, he's wiser, and he will find you long before you could ever hope to make it there.

However, he's not quite as angry as some yanderes would be about it. He doesn't take your escape personally, no, he blames himself, only calculating his own mistakes as to how it happened. He sees you as something like... a little runaway pet, so naive and dull that you don't know any better than to go wandering off. Or perhaps like a child, just sheepishly curious and wanting to explore, not knowing the dangers of the world. Or, perhaps...

"I haven't been giving you enough attention, have I? That's why you pulled this little act of rebellion... you're hurt by my negligence and wanted to be reassured of my care for you. I'm so sorry... I understand now, love. This was my fault. I've been so caught up with work... I'll delegate some tasks to my workers, and I'll be able to spend more time with you from now on, alright? Don't worry, I'm not angry, I'll take full responsibility. I'll be sure to make it up to you... now, let's go home."

How easy are they to trick, deceive, or manipulate?

Much like Childe or Venti or anyone who has been around as long as he has, you really don't stand a chance. He's an incredibly perceptive man. There's not much to say on the matter, as any attempts will be quickly shut down.

He'd find it amusing, really. Like a child trying to lie, but the evidence is all over their face and hands - it's that obvious to him. It's cute enough that he almost hates having to discipline you for it, but, you have to learn.

How lenient are they? What privileges can you have, and what will you be denied?

He wants his little angel to be safe - and unfortunately, you, being so naive and empty headed, don't always know what's best for you. He knows rules can be hard to follow perfectly, but they're there to keep you safe.

Extremely strict, will want to monitor every moment of your life, every little movement you take, and will insist on watching over you in every task. He'll pick out everything you wear, everything you eat.

Occasionally, if you ask very sweetly, he may take you out for walks in Liyue. Honestly, he'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy taking you to what he knows are the finest locations, shops with the highest level of craftsmanship, restaurants with a high price tag and reputable food. He enjoys showing off his refined tastes and discerning selective abilities. And honestly? There's a certain... Powerful feeling to knowing you're made aware of the costs when he makes high purchases in front of you... even if you don't realize he's not always actually the one paying for it, or that he forgot mora again but promises the owner to pay later - but he'll make sure you don't know that. You hear the numbers, and your eyebrows raise, your eyes widen. You'd nearly faint if that total was on your responsibility, and he knows that. Which is why he'll simply smile at you, and tell you you're worth every last Mora. He'll buy you nearly anything you may desire. It seems like leniency, but in reality, it's his subtle way of locking control and dependency over you, making you respect him, making you love him.

"Don't worry, love. It's not a lot... Not to me, at least. Even if it were, my angel only deserves the best, no?"

What kind of rules do they have? What kind of punishment would they use?

Oh dear. Again, he's very strict, and wants to monitor everything you do, every little aspect of your life. He decides what you eat, portioning your meals to make sure you're eating enough, he worries about you going hungry during your travels, but luckily you'll never have to worry about that again. If you have a sweet tooth, he'll sigh and worry about your teeth and health, but he'll make sure to account for a little bit of sugar in your day, and will even pick up little treats from some of the most reputable places in Liyue.

He picks out clothes for you with each day. They're not... Normal clothes, per se. Certainly not what you'd normally wear on your travels. And it's not like anyone will see you except him - which is exactly why you'll have clothes he would never want anyone else to see you in. Frilly, lacey things, somehow both highly sexualized but also incredibly infantile, soft pinks, baby blues, gentle off-whites. They accentuate the curves of your body so perfectly, while just barely letting him see the parts of you normally kept hidden.

You'll have a schedule - a bath time, a bedtime, a wake-up time. He's weak to your requests, though, and may let you stay up a little late every now and then, or sleep in just a bit, if you make that soft pouting face and beg. He'll insist on bathing you, dressing you, so that you don't have to - and can't even if you wanted to - lift a finger even to wash yourself or put your clothes on.

He has a set of rules for you, very simple ones he hopes you can easily follow. No trying to leave. No doing anything dangerous. No talking to strangers when you go out. You must hold his hand whenever you're walking together, don't go wandering off.

He'll feel ashamed of the thought for a while, but eventually he'll cave and give into the desire, no, the security precaution, of a nice little collar for you. It's not too embarrassing, no, he went out of his way to find one that was delicate, almost like a necklace, made with fine materials, the engraving only visible up close. If you look closely, though, it clearly bears his name.

Breaking the rules is expected, he anticipates it. You're not the brightest, he might even view it as a mistake. A benefit is that you can easily pass it off as simply forgotten, or an accident. Hence, he's not too harsh - normally. He'll sigh, forgive you, and pat your head, contemplating how to prevent your access in the future.

Perhaps you wriggled out of his hand and ran off while walking? You were just excited, distracted, like a child. He might be able to procure a small leash, one that wouldn't be immediately obvious or embarrassing, to attach to your collar. Perhaps some cuff-like links to latch your arm to his.

You forgot the rule about not handling the kitchen knives and cut yourself? He'll have to get some kind of lock and simply keep them safely away from you. No big deal. Any measures are worth your safety.

If you push the limits, or have a defiant attitude, he might reach the point of punishment. As for not-unwholesome things, this would usually include taking away privileges, such as walks or sweets, but overall, punishment will mostly come in more impure forms.

How do they deal with rivals, or perceived rivals? Will they get rid of them? Will they kill them themselves, or find another way?

Not too much to say here - he has connections. He doesn't need to dirty his own hands. For all his supposed humility, if he truly dislikes someone, they're no more significant than an insect to him. He has no reservations about ridding the world of people who, in his mind, are obviously trying to deceive you, abuse you, corrupt you.

Thankfully, he is very capable of keeping a neutral face, even when he feels laughter building up. It would probably look strange if he were smiling over the newest body to come into his parlor.

How easy is it to make them mad? What does their anger look like?

It's a slow buildup. He views restraint as a virtue, and looks down upon those who lack control over their own tempers. He's a man who strives to meet his own standards of character, and that very much applies to self control and ability to maintain a controlled demeanor, even when he feels a bit of frustration due to you being intentionally and deliberately defiant.

It's his responsibility to be a good role model for you and make sure you understand how to behave. However, in the end, he's very keen on properness and rules. If you have a tendency towards brattiness and pushing your limits, you may drive him to a boiling point.

However, even when expressing his anger, he's remarkably controlled. It's very mature, really. Nonetheless, he will have you shivering and tearful with his voice alone, booming with that depth that reverberates off the walls, that vibrates against your very core. His true anger is one that can strike fear even in the most courageous individuals - he's terrifying when he wants to be, fierce and intimidating, a sort of power just eminates from him.

Nonetheless, it's quick, he calms down very quickly, wipes the tears from your eyes, and sighs.

"I do hate having to be firm with you... but I can't have you thinking you can just act however you want. You understand that, don't you?"

So they see you as above them, beneath them, or equal to them?

Both? It's difficult to describe. You're an angel to him. You're the finest work of art, the most intricate creation, the kind of person whose body and likeness deserves to be preserved in art and tradition, one of those women who should be renowned for beauty even centuries long after you're gone from the earth. It's almost goddess-like. At the same time, there's a beautiful, tragic duality to your essence, he thinks. A fragility and a dependency that leaves you in need, but an inherent status of perfection that makes you deserve the utmost perfect of care. You need to be coddled, cared for, protected, but you deserve it. Like a deity incarnated into a mere fragile human form, a queen that needs support to retain her grace.

Unlike some, he doesn't view his care and protection as some kind of favor that should be repaid with your gratitude, no, really, he is grateful that he is the one who is even deserving of being your caretaker, your provider, your lover.

Even if he is the one who determined that he deserves that role.

How determined are they for you to love them? How hard will they try to make it happen? Or are they content just having you?

He's convinced that he can show you that he is your protector, your lover, that it's fate itself that has locked you together, not just his own will.

And he is, above all else, patient. One of the most patient you could encounter. You think a year is a long time? It's nothing to him. A century for you? More than a lifetime. For him? Nothing. He can and will wait, as long as it takes, and he will never falter in his continual care. He'll remind you frequently, he'll shower you in affection, but if you don't return it? It's not that bad. He has all the time in the world to fix you.

Bonus: Is there anything that makes them unique, in comparison to other yanderes?

Moraless Sugar daddy

But in all seriousness, he is definitely of the gift-giving love language. He sees beautiful things, and beautiful things make him think of you! It's sweet, he thinks. So many little things he sees throughout his day make him think of you, and he has to have all of them, see your face when he gives them to you. He likes making you happy, for one, but he'd be lying if he said there wasn't a sort of satisfactory pride he gets from the power dynamic of it all. He wants to be the sole source of provision in your life, he wants your dependency.

If we're talking prior to the events of the game, it will be even more extreme. He treats it like it's truly nothing, throwing around massive purchases, seemingly as if he's not thinking about it at all. But he is - rest assured, he's taking it into consideration, at least, that is, how it will affect your attitude and perception of him.

General perverseness: how sexual of a person are they? What’s their drive like? How touchy do they get? Do they have any reservations about sexuality?

On the reserved side. He'd never conduct himself improperly in public, of course. It's out of the question. He cares about proper behavior and public image, and he'd never behave in a vulgar manner.

Even in private, he's certainly one of the ones that struggles with a certain guilt. To some degree, he would feel like you're so innocent and pure that he doesn't want to corrupt you. He goes through stages. First, he'll lie to himself, telling himself that the feelings he has for you are simply protective, platonic, a natural sense of responsibility for you. That becomes more and more difficult to convince himself of, the more excited he becomes around you, the more he finds his eyes drawn to whatever bits of skin are exposed on your body, finding himself drifting off to impure thoughts, trying to push them away.

Second, once he's forced to acknowledge the true nature of these feelings, he'll simply practice restraint, something he's rather good at in this area. He tries, he really does. He tells himself he can't do something so impure, that it would violate you, that he should be ashamed of himself for it. It becomes more and more and more difficult to restrain himself with time, the feelings rising and the thoughts become more difficult to push away, eventually entertaining the fantasies in his head in an attempt to rid himself of the urge in real life. It doesn't work, no, it only makes the urges worse, and he can't be around you without his body nearly commanding him to do something. And finally, he'll take a different stance entirely, telling himself that, no, it's not going to corrupt you, rather, it's taking care of you. If he really wants to love you, really wants to care for all of your needs, then surely that would include your physical needs, and therefore, really, it would be wrong of him not to help you.

As that shift in viewpoints goes on, he'll become more and more bold, hands lingering just a little longer, face coming just a little closer. It's a slow build of tension, just waiting to boil over.

How forceful are they? Do they care about your willingness?

He understands you're nervous. Again, no matter how experienced you are, somehow in his head he makes it out to be insignificant. Even if you've had other relationships, he convinces himself - and tries to convince you - that they were inadequate, they didn't care about you, not like he does. And he'll treat it as that -- any resistance you put up is nervousness, nothing more, nothing less. He'll reassure you a million times that you won't feel pain, that he'll be gentle, that you'll feel good, even if his size and strength frankly is rather intimidating regardless of experience. He'll keep cooing in your ear, softly whispering reassurance, softly running hands over your skin, holding you in place as the last inch stretches you apart.

What sort of kinks or fetishes do they have, or would they fill?

Infantilization

Again, no matter how smart, experienced, and capable you may be, you're none of those things to him. You're a fragile, little thing. He has to take care of you at all times. It may not be evident at first, and he himself likely doesn't fully realize it, but there is something highly sexual to this for him. Caring for you puts him in a position of dominance, control. It gives him access to your privacy, dressing you up, fingers running over your skin, bathing you, watching your skin glisten. He'll talk to you in this way, too, often softly, remarking every little way in which you need him, and even condescendingly so. He wants you to be his, not only in a sense of love, but of possession.

Oral

Primarily giving. Even on its own, he loves the taste, but the effect it has on you makes it that much better. He loves anything that forces you to depend on him entirely for pleasure, that puts you at his mercy. And he'll be torturous about it too, restraining your arms and legs so you can't control anything, hold your hips down so you can't roll into him, so that only he can determine exactly how much pressure and speed you get. And he won't rush it, no, he'll go so slowly it's torturous, and telling you very simply that if you want any more, you'll have to beg.

Edging

For a variety of reasons. The power trip is as exhilarating as it is pleasurable, but he also loves watching your body writhe. Each little muscle that moves under the flesh when your arms strain against his hand holding your wrists together, the convulsing of your stomach muscles, the way your toes curl and legs spasm and the sweet little whimpers you make when he draws back just short of your high. He's mastered watching your reactions, knowing exactly when to stop, even if you try to mask it. He'll want you to tell him, though, nonetheless, tell him when you're close, if for nothing else but the sense of you obeying his commands.

Collaring

Similarly to infantilization, it gives him something of a sense of control, of possession. He loves seeing his name engraved on it, marking the whole of your being with his ownership. In his somewhat rare moments of roughness, he'll want to pull on it, use it to draw you towards him, in a moment of your defiance, in particular. If you're being mouthy, whiny, disobedient, and you finally make him snap, especially if you try to walk away from him, he'll yank you back with force, pulling you close to him, and when the force of it shuts you up, changes your demeanor, forces you to acknowledge your submission - the satisfaction he'll get from that is incomparable.

How do they feel about pregnancy or babies? Do they want them?

As much as he likes the idea, to him, you're already like a child, naive and fragile. Could your body even handle a pregnancy, a birth? He'd likely try to avoid it, but in the end, if it happened by accident anyway, rest assured you'd be getting the best care of any woman to ever be pregnant in Teyvat, and he'd do everything in his power to ensure you were always comfortable, taking his caretaking to another level, almost never even letting you get up, insisting you stay still and calm and needy.

What kind of (nsfw) punishments would they use?

He'd be one to pull the "it doesn't hurt you as much as it does me" line, but really, even if he refuses to admit it to his own self, having you bent over his lap is just as much for his own enjoyment as it is a disciplinary measure. It's more humiliating than it is painful -- he'd hold back, afraid of hurting you with his strength, but taking in every little flinch and whimper you make as he brings his hand down on your ass, keeping your head pressed down, kneading at the flesh. He'd insist it's the most effective punishment measure, but you can feel the hard-on digging into your stomach. The worse the behavior, the worse the beating, but every time, after it's over, he'll hold you upright, wiping the tears from your eyes and asking you if you learned you lesson, if you intend to do it again, and smiling when you insist you won't.

What body parts of their darling do they like the most?

Your skin. It's beautiful, and he loves the way that light from the moon and sun look on your naked form. He loves the way your skin feels, soft and delicate, smooth, so paper thin and fragile, and so, so deliciously prone to showing marks from the slightest of harm - a simple smack can make the plump flesh darkened and reddened, the lightest suckling will leave beautiful hickeys all down your neck and chest. There are so many ways to mark his property, to stake a visible claim all over you, it's irresistible.

He also will go out of his way, when picking out all the things he wants you to wear, to find colors that best go with your skin tone, in a contrasting sense - particularly lacey, sheer things that contrast very well, so he can see your soft flesh perfectly defined against the little lace patterns.

#yandere x reader #yandere genshin impact #yandere zhongli #tw: noncon #tw: dark content

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grinoir · 3 years

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Religious Medievalism: “Stregheria”, Wicca and History - part 1

[TN: This article will break the Introduction to Stregoneria series for a second, but I believe it’s important to set things into perspective about both Witchcraft and this blog. My goal is to put out content, translated or redacted by me, in order to give people the correct historical information. I see a lot people on TikTok messing with things they don’t know, appropriating and distorting practices and cultures and profiting off of it. The only focus of this blog is the practice and the history behind it, I don’t want to “put people down”, I want to make the information available so you won’t hurt yourselves.

Also, I do not support fa***sm, na**sm or any other movement/ideology that oppresses and discriminates people. I’m specifiying this because I’ve received an anonymous ask about it and it kind of hurt just reading it. I hope this will clarify things and make whoever asked me that more confortable with my blog and my content. I’m a history nerd Strega, nothing more.

This article will be a translation, synthesis and re-elaboration of the following articles

https://tradizioneitaliana.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/medievalismo-religioso-stregheria-wicca-e-storia/

https://medievaleggiando.it/la-legittimazione-storica-della-wicca-margaret-murray-e-la-manipolazione-delle-fonti/

https://medievaleggiando.it/il-vangelo-delle-streghe-e-linizio-della-wicca-il-fascino-di-un-falso-storico/

The first being a rectification of the two that follow.

This article will be divided in two parts because it’s way too long to read and to translate, i’m drained af]

THE DEBUNKING OF MURRAY

Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963) was a British Anthropologist and Egyptologist, well known in the academic environment for her contributions in the studies of folklore. Even if she was very criticized and her reputation as an historian was poor, her work became popular bestsellers from 1940 onward.

The most well-known and controversial one is “The Witch-Cult in the Western Europe” published in 1921. In this book, Murray alleges that there was some sort of secret model of pagan resistance to Christianity spreaded all across Europe, and that the witches’ hunt and the proof presented to the trials were an attempt to eliminate a rival cult.

This book was clearly influenced by “Satanism and Witchcraft” by Jules Michelet, that alleged that Medieval Witchcraft was an act of popular rebellion against the oppression of feudalism and the Roman Catholic church, that took the form of a secret religion inspired by paganism and organized mainly by women.

To support her narrative, Murray chooses to analyze some of the trials that took place during the great hunt and employs 15 primary sources, mostly British or Scottish (not paneuropean, or sources from the european continent), that describe famous trials. Murray’s analysis of the Somerset Trials in 1664 offer a good example of her work ethics; quoting the testimony of Elizabeth Styles:

“At their meeting they have usually Wine or good Beer, Cakes, Meat or the like. They eat and drink really when they meet in their bodies, dance also and have Musick. The Man in black sits at the higher end, and Anne Bishop usually next him. He useth some words before meat, and none after, his voice is audible, but very low.”

Murray conveniently seems to “forget” to quote the immediately preceding phrase:

”That at every meeting before the Spirit vanisheth away, he appoints the next meeting place and time, and at his departure there is a foul smell.”

Other details offered by Styles are omitted, like when she alleges that the Devil presented to her in the shape of a dog or a cat or a fly, that the Devil offered her followers an oinment to use on their heads and wrists that made it possible to move them from a place to another. Or that sometimes the reunion involved only the spirits of the witches, while their bodies stayed at home.

Murray was fully aware of the fantasy element in the testimonies she included in her books, but she was able, by deliberately manipulating historical sources, to make people believe the fake narrative that a Medieval religion of witches with covens, rites and their own beliefs that relentlessy opposed Christianity really existed.

In her “The God of the Witches”, published in 1933 and clearly written for a commercial audience, she further broadened the scope of her claims on the witches’ cult. In this book, she alleges that until the C17th BCE the there was a religion, older than Christianity, that kept existing in all of Western Europe. Said religion, was focused on the worship of a two-faced horned god, known to the Romans ad Diano; this god presided the witches’ gathering and was mistaken by the Inquisition of the Devil, conclusion that made them associate witchcraft with a satanic cult.

Murray claims the existence of a *specific* non-christian organized cult spread all across Europe that worshipped Diano and relentlessly opposed the Roman Catholic church, but the sources she quotes are late and recount the flattening of the various “pagan” cults to the assimilation with the christian Devil, operated by the Church.

In fact, the Devil that the trials report on, depending on the religion, overlapped with different figures: in British and Scottish traditions the Devil was the result of the demonization of the King of Elphame. In the Basque country, the Devil substituted Mari. In Northern Italy it overlapped with the Donna del Buon Gioco. This means that the “Northern Italian Devil” is different from the “British Devil” and the “Basque Devil”.

This “Devil” is a figure that flattens everything and overlapped and substituted so many different figures, depending on the religion and the figure it ended up overlapping with.

Therefore, Murray’s narrative of a paneuropean cult of the Horned God stems from the analysis of late sources and to the false equivalence of the Devil that presided the Ludus (Sabba) in Scotland (where he masks the King of Elphame) and the Devil of other countries (where he masks other entities).

Since the Devil isn’t the same entity in all of Europe, the narrative of a counter-christianity organized paneuropean cult of prehistoric origin falls too. Instead, what we’re dealing with are Medieval, non-christian rielaborations of different remainders of the Religions of the Gentiles that survived in the Christian age and were absorbed in the legend of the Faery Procession/Procession of the Dominae Nocturnae first, and the legend of the Ludus (Sabba) later.

The following quote by Ronald Hutton, English historian who specialises in Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and Contemporary Paganism and professor at the University of Bristol, confirms this:

“Over a quarter of a century ago, I adopted the expression “Pagan survivals” to describe elements of ancient Pagan culture that had persisted in later Christian societies. In doing so, I was drawing a distinction between such survivals, of which there seemed to be many, and “surviving Paganism”; that is the continued self-conscious practice of the older religions, of which there seemed to be none. This point was worth making because even in the 1980s, there was a persisting belief, based on outdated academic texts, that Paganism had survived as a living force among the common people in much of medieval Europe: it was widespread in other scholarly disciplines than history, let alone among the general public. My formula and approach was adopted by other authors in the 1990s. During that decade, however, a reaction set in against it among historians who preferred to stress the comprehensive Christianization of medieval European societies and to relegate elements that had hither to been identifed as of pagan origin to categories of religiously neutral folklore or of lay Christianity. Some emphasized that the undoubted tendency of some Christians at the time to condemn such beliefs and practices as pagan was a hallmark of a highly atypical, reforming, intolerant and evangelical strain of churchman. Michael’s system of classification, in this volume, may be said to take its place in this, apparently now dominant, set of scholarly attitudes. Revisiting the issue myself, I am inclined to meet it halfway. I am startingto agree that to speak of aspects of medieval culture as “Pagan” might indeed be misleading and inadequate. Moreover, it would be especially inappropriate to characterize fgures such as the lady of the night rides, the fairy queen or the Cailleach as “Pagan survivals” when they seem like medieval or post-medieval creations. However, I have equal diffculty in describing them simply and straightforwardly as “Christian” because of their total lack of reference to any aspect of Christianity, including theology, cosmology, scripture and liturgy; all of them would indeed fit far more comfortably into a Pagan world-picture. […] It may be that the old polarized labels are becoming inadequate to describe a medieval and early modern religious and quasi-religious world that is coming to seem even more complex, exciting and interesting than it had seemed to be before.”

Also Michael Ostling, religious studies scholar focusing on the history, historiography, and representation of witches and witchcraft, confirms this in Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits: “Small Gods” at the Margin of Christendom, published in 2018.

“Christians encompass aspects of their prior paganism both by inversion and revaluation. But where traditional spirits remain salient to a Christianized culture in encompassed or inverted form, their ongoing reality ought not to be counted by scholars as a pagan survival—though it is likely to be so construed by Christians themselves. Such “surviving” spirits are not just marginalized or diabolized pagan remnants, they are continually re-performed, recreated through Christian ritual and Christian discourse. We find such re-creation of the small gods throughout Christian history, and throughout this volume: when the Urapmin drive out the motobil by the power of the Holy Spirit, when Andean people frame their propitiation of the yawlu with devotion to the Christian God, when Mami Water appears primarily as a trope of Pentecostal deliverance ministry, when thirteenth-century Frenchwomen see, in an unoffcial Christian saint, their best hope of negotiating the return of their stolen babies from the follets, when the brownie and Robin Goodfellow appear in prayers of protection against them, in assertions of their diabolical status, or in tolerant mention of superstitious old wives who stillbelieve in such “harmless devils,” when cunningwomen insist that they only use “good devils” or that the fairies who facilitate their divination have no fear of the cross, this is because the beings involved have succeeded in taking up a niche within Christian discourse. The “good people” have not departed, have not been driven out by the sound of church-bells or the smell of gasoline. There are no pagan survivals: small gods are Christian creations with which to think the limits of Christianity.”

In essence, Murray’s version of events that describes Paganism as an anti-church, anti-society isn’t backed by any historical evidence.

Sources:

https://tradizioneitaliana.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/medievalismo-religioso-stregheria-wicca-e-storia/

https://medievaleggiando.it/la-legittimazione-storica-della-wicca-margaret-murray-e-la-manipolazione-delle-fonti/

https://medievaleggiando.it/il-vangelo-delle-streghe-e-linizio-della-wicca-il-fascino-di-un-falso-storico/

Michael Ostling. Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits: ‘Small Gods’ at the Margins of Christendom. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

#witchcraft #wicca #reconstructionist traditional witchcraft #traditional witchcraft #stregoneria #stregheria #witch #medieval witchcraft #spirits #familiar #familiars #pantheon #italian witchcraft #sabba #sabbat #strega #streghe

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linkspooky · 3 years

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To be fair, Deku saw his friend's brother trying to kill him, so it's only natural that he doesn't care about Dabi's situation /trauma. Something like "at least Endeavor isn't trying to kill my friend"

Okay, this is an OPINION. Please read it as an opinion.

To be fair, anon. I don’t think anybody is criticizing Deku for trying to save his friend. Obviously, at the moment Deku’s first response would be to stop Dabi from trying to kill Shoto because he knows Shoto personally and cares about him.

This is just my reading and interaction with fandom, but the two 2 complaints with Deku’s remark seem to be this.

1) It’s incredibly tone-deaf. In the same vein as Best Jeanist’s argument. Best Jeanist is arguing that Dabi shouldn’t go public with his accusations because faith in heroes is already wavering. Deku is arguing that Enji is doing better right now, so he Dabi shouldn’t bring up the past again. Both of them are essentially trying to silence Dabi without even addressing what his actual argument is. Yes, Dabi is a villain who murders people but let’s imagine this is a normal situation. Let’s say that Endeavor was a film producer who had used his money and position in society to beat up a woman. That woman came clean about how the film producer was beating her. You’d want to see them at least fired, right? Dabi isn’t saying that Endeavor’s abuse of him gives him liscense to kill whoever he wants, he’s saying that Endeavor shouldn’t be held up as a hero after what he did, and the society that tries to silence his abuse is also complicit in that same abuse.

The reason to make that case of abuse a matter of public opinion, in that case, is to PREVENT that person from using their money and power to both commit and get away with abuse. Dabi’s argument isn’t that Endeavor abused him so he should get to murder people. That’s not even close to what Dabi’s arguing. Dabi is arguing that Endeavor should not have a position and status in society as a hero considering that he’s used his wealth and connections in the past to abuse his own family. It doesn’t really matter if Endeavor is acting better now. You don’t re-elect a politician who was arrested for taking bribes. Endeavor’s current position as the number one hero requires the silence of all of his victims.

What Dabi is saying is that the current hero system protects it’s own. If Endeavor is number one, if he has all of that power, then he should be held to a standard above others. But he’s not. The primary interest of the hero system as it is currently is keeping heros in power and in the dominant force in society. Do you know why we know this? It’s literally what Best Jeanist says. We can’t afford to hear this expose on endeavor right now because society is doubting heroes already. Hero society will put protecting heroes high in priority than even protecting the families, or victims of said heroes.

Dabi’s not actually just talking about his personal case, he’s making a systemic argument. The argument he brings up is, if heroes are given so much power in society then shouldn’t they have an equal amount of regulation? Shouldn’t there be someone holding them responsible for all the power they wield? If there was someone holding them responsible, then what happened to Dabi never would have even happened. Enji intentionally manipulated the system in his own favor, to get his way. He didn’t get away with it because he was a good hero, he got away with it because he used money and power to hush it up. It’s a systemic argument and Deku responds with a personal one.

Deku responds with: Well, he was a good mentor to me.

Yes, that’s your personal experience with him. However, that’s not really even on topic to what Dabi is saying. Dabi is saying people who use the system in an abusive way shouldn’t even be allowed to be heroes.

To be fair again, I don’t think Deku is making this from an angle of “I think Dabi should just shut up about his abuse for the good of society.” I think when it comes to Deku’s characterization he doesn’t have the lived experience of that kind of abuse. If Deku is fifteen and therefore a kid, it makes sense he would only judge the world from his point of view. If his experiences of Endeavor are mostly positive ones it makes sense he wouldn’t really comprehend the bulk of what both Shoto and Dabi have been through.

2) Deku is a fictional character. Deku only acts as a realistic teenager as far as the author wants him to. I mean if you want to extend the argument of realism farther, then you could say it’s not realistic that a fifteen-year-old would be willing to break the bones in his body, or that it’s not realistic he’s not losing his mind from the pain of having all his limbs broken. I mean, what do fifteen-year-olds do these days sit around all day vaping? Skateboarding? Anyway, realism only extends so far. Basically, as much as Deku is his own character, he’s also a mouthpiece for the author. He’s written by someone, to say things. Therefore, the things he says have meaning.

Deku’s point of view might be mistaken. We might see him called out in later chapters. However, it’s odd to see the main character say something like “Enji is trying to be better, and you’re not” because it sounds like the author is trying to use Deku to tell us to sympathize with Enji over Dabi. I’m not even going to call it bad writing, it’s just tone-deaf. It just muddies things. We’re constantly told Deku is a character who will try to save anyone. A character with an extraordinary drive to save people against all logic.

We’ve seen in the past Deku to be completely unforgiving to abusers. He’s been also shown to have an extreme reaction to abuse. This is how he reacts to the idea of what Chisaki was doing to Eri. Using a child to experiment on her quirk again and again. That’s... a pretty strong parallel to what Enji did to his entire family. Enji’s actions even directly resulted in the death, either by suicide or training accident of his child Toya.

So it’s not just like “of course Deku would want to save his friend from his murderous older brother”, beyond that it’s just written in a way that muddles Deku’s character motivation. Like just for example, does Deku consider Dabi worthy of the second chance he’s willing to offer Enji? What’s different in that case? What is forgivable and not forgivable? And before any of you say Enji shows a desire to improve himself while Dabi wallows in his own guilt, Dabi’s been like... legally dead and probably homeless for about ten years while Endeavor was rich and secure in his position in society. They’re not... they’re not at the same starting line. Either way, it’s weird, Deku would sympathize with Endeavor and cut off all sympathy for Dabi, considering he at least has taken a strong stance against abuse before. There’s either an in-character reason behind why he’s doing this, which means it’s written as an intentional character flaw or the framing is sloppy.

(Framing being, using characters and their reactions to events in the story as a guide to show how we’re supposed to react to an event in the story. For example if a character does a bad, often their friends will call them out or say ‘you did a bad thing’ to make it clear we’re not supposed to sympathize with that character at the moment. A story is a painting, and the frame around it draws attention to certain aspects. The frame emphasizes.).

Dabi even says it’s weird not to pity him. Dabi is the direct action of Endeavor’s abuse. Isn’t it sad, that this little kid who just wanted to be a hero was burned alive at some point?

Just to talk about how it’s written in this case, I think Jujutsu Kaisen does a better job of showing the main character thinking t’s not okay to just lash out at random people and trying to stop them from that behavior, while at the same time recognizing the person they’re dealing with is in pain and that pain deserves to be recognized.

Junpei is a bullied kid. He starts using his powers to get back at his bullies, and also harm innocent people along the way. Yuji’s first reaction is to try to stop him.

However, in trying to learn his reasoning behind attacking both the people at his school and also his bullies, Yuji recognizes an important fact: Yuta is in pain because his mother just died yesterday. Yuji and Junpei were both fighting each other before this moment, and yes Yuji doesn’t have to listen to or understand Junpei’s reason why, but Yuji like Deku is characterized as somebody who saves people against all logic. In that moment after it becomes clear that Yuji isn’t just doing this for no good reason, but lashing out in pain, Yuji’s priorities shift. His first priority was to stop the lashing out, now his second one is to offer him a way out. He shows him that there’s a way to deal with his problems besides lashing out.

There are people willing to listen to you, there are people who can help you. Yuji doesn’t fix Junpei’s problem for him, he just shows him that there’s another way. He acknowledges that Junpei is right to want justice for whoever killed his mom, but the way he’s going about it is wrong, and he can find a better way with them together. Junpei acted this way in the first place, because he believed he couldn’t trust anybody else. He lashed out because he was dealing with the feelings of having lost his only mother literally twelve hours ago all by himself, and trying to pursue justice for her alone too.

Yuji’s response also tells Junpei he has to stop randomly lashing out at whoever he thought killed his mom, and whoever hurt him. However, he doesn’t tell Junpei that he’s wrong for feeling hurt. He doesn’t dismiss any of Junpei’s problems.

Junpei’s pain is recognized by Yuji, and he’s treated as a person and offered a way out.

Dabi is instead shut down continually by basically every hero around him, Deku, and Best Jeanist as well. He’s not offered as a way out, everyone’s response is just to try to put him down.

Yuji actually seriously thinks about how Junpei is feeling and makes a decision on how he should handle him based on those internal feelings. Yuji changes his mind a little bit midway through the fight. We don’t really see the internal reasons for why Deku thinks it’s okay to give Enji a second chance, but not extend the same chance to Dabi. To be clear I think the character of Deku is just fine, however, I would also like the story to dig deeper into his motivations. I would like to see WHY he thinks the things he does or acts the way he does. We see Yuji constantly thinking about the things Deku doesn’t think about, and my response isn’t to hate Deku. I just think Deku would be a better character if we got into his head more.

#anonymous #askspookies

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Note

for mermay, 12 ot4 nsfw?

Here you go! 12 was “captured.” Barclay’s design is based on a basking shark, Indrid’s on a flying fish.

They’ve done it.

The crew of the Washington has captured a live mermaid; not the remains of one, not the stories of drunk or scared sailors, but a genuine, breathing, swimming mermaid.

Joseph keeps pointing out that, technically, they’ve caught a merman. One with a smooth, almost black tail, coppery hair and beard, and a human torso that puts sculptors to shame.

Not that Josephs attention to those details is for any reason other than scientific curiosity. He, Captain Hayes, several officers, and Duck Newton, the botanist joining them for this mission, are all regarding the merman in the tank constructed for just this purpose. Their guest is pressed to the far side of the glass, watching them with frightened eyes.

The only person who looks less comfortable than him with this scenario is Duck.

“I still say there’s no reason to keep the fella cooped up in here. Look at him, he’s terrified. And I don’t buy for one second the crew was gentle when they hauled him up. He fought at all, they probably got rough with him.”

“It is a good thing, then, Mr. Newton that you are not in charge of this endeavor.” Hayes says with a disapproving glance at the scientist. Duck frowns the instant the captain looks elsewhere. Joseph is more on Duck’s side, the mans willingness to speak up when he sees something unkind one of Joseph’s favorite traits. But he’s certain there’s room for compromise between the two views; after all, that’s why he’s here.

--------------------------------------------------------------

This is the worst day of Barclay’s life.

One minute he’s searching for urchins near shore, the next he’s being pulled towards the surface in a net. The last thing he sees under the waves is Indrid rounding the rocks, his red eyes widening in anger and sorrow as Barclay is heaved into a longboat.

Barclay wishes he could tell him it isn’t his fault; the other mer has done so much to look out for him, but you can’t stay ahead of danger forever. Instead he’s huddled in the far corner of his prison, wanting to know what’s happening but terrified of drawing the human’s attention back to him. A parade of them come and go, some pointing at him or talking in circles while looking his way. One, black haired and tall, is in the room the most, writing at a desk and pulling books from a short set of shelves. His most frequent companion is another dark-haired man, shorter and stouter who keeps glancing at the first man whenever he thinks he’s not looking, then turning away with a pink color in his cheeks.

The moon is up now, and only the tall human remains, writing by the light of a lantern. Cautiously, Barclay rises so his head is out of the water. At the splash, the human turns.

“Oh, good evening. I, um, I’m sorry for not introducing myself sooner, but I decided it would probably be less frightening if I let you come to me in your own time. I’m Joseph Stern.”

“Barclay. Uh, are, are you the one who had them catch me?”

Joseph shakes his head, “No. I’m one of two scientists aboard this vessel. Her primary goal is to find new valuable riches for trade, but a secondary one is to collect knowledge of rare and exotic creatures, so that we might broaden our understanding of the world. I specialize in animals and my colleague, Duck, is an expert in plants.”

“...That doesn’t explain why I’m here. I’m neither of those things.”

The human sighs, “I know, but most of the sailors and officers view you as an animal.”

“But not you?” He narrows his eyes, swimming backwards.

“Not at all. In all my research, I’ve found nothing to suggest merfolk are any less men than myself. The way you and I are talking now confirms that.”

“So I can go now?”

“No” he must notice the alarm in Barclay’s face because he sets his hands on the rim and the tank and adds, hurriedly, “but you’ll get to eventually. My job is to learn all I can from you, about your kind, your numbers, things like that. I’d prefer to do it in a more comfortable setting but I was, um, overruled.” He gives Barclay a reassuring smile, eyes bluer than open sea on a summer day, “You’ll be a free man in no time, I promise.”

Barclay nods, sinks back under the water, and eventually falls asleep. When wakes up at dawn, Joseph is still there, asleep in his chair. When Barclay asks if that’s how humans sleep, the man shakes his head, “No, we have beds. I just didn’t want to leave you alone your first night here, in case there was something you needed.”

His stomach growls as another human arrives with a tray of food and a pot of something that smells very, very good. He leans out of the tank, startling Joseph when he turns around.

“Oh! Um, I asked them to bring fish for your breakfast but you can try some of mine if you like. Assuming it won’t make you sick?”

“I’ve had human food before. But that’s new” he points at the pot, “Ma-, uh, the humans I know only drink tea.”

Joseph hands him the cup of what he soon learns is coffee and he sips it with a sigh; it’s bitter, but woody and dark in a way he enjoys. The human leaves, returns a few minutes later with a second cup, slides the tray within arms reach of Barclay and pulls a notebook from his desk, “Do you mind if we talk over breakfast?”

Barclay doesn’t mind at all. In fact, as the days go by he minds his captivity less and less. He and Joseph talk for hours, not only about mer society but about humans and their lives as well. About myths and stories, and a great deal about food, which Joseph brings him in abundance. Some of it gets soggy when Barclay tries to hold it, and they settle on Joseph keeping it between his fingers or in his palm while Barclay samples it. The first few times they do this the human blushes and looks away. When he finally meets Barclay’s eyes, the mer grins at him and licks his palm clean.

Joseph also takes great care to ensure Barclay isn’t bored. Barclay learns some chess and card games by watching Joseph and Duck play after dinner. In exchange he teaches Joseph how to play Five Shells High. When Joseph isn’t around, Barclay talks to Duck, and finds him good company, funny but also happy to let Barclay think in peace.

He still longs for his freedom, for the ability to dive and swim in an endless sea. However, as Joseph sits beside his tank in the evenings, reading to him and smiling whenever Barclay reaches out to toy with his hair, he’s not in much of a hurry to get home as he should be.

----------------------------------------------

Any other time, Duck would tease Joe for mooning over a merman and reading him bedtime stories. Trouble is, he’s not much better.

The night they brought Barclay aboard, Duck was halfway to bed when someone threw a crab through his open window. Peering out revealed another merman, silver haired and wary.

“Duck Newton?”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, that is a relief. I was afraid I’d alerted the wrong human to my presence.”

“You threw this into my room on purpose?”

“Indeed. I, ah, foresaw you being both sympathetic to my plight and disinclined to tell others of my being here.” He stays close to the hull, voice a lilting whisper.

“The fella we caught today a friend of yours?”

“Yes, a close one. Is he alright? I, my visions show he is safe and that the human looking after him is kind but I, I am” his red eyes look sadly down at the water, “I am worried all the same.”

Duck wants to reach out to him, stroke that moonlight hair and tell him not to worry, “Ain’t no shame in carin about a friend. He’s safe, and he won’t be stuck on this boat forever. And the man stayin with him is a decent, honorable sort.”

The mer sighs, rests his head on the side of the ship, “Thank goodness.” When he turns his face to Duck, it steals the breath from his lungs, “may I come to you again for news of him?”

Duck smiles, “Sure.”

Indrid, as the mer calls himself, comes back every night. Luckily, Joe spends his nights in the cargo room with Barclay instead of in his and Duck’s quarters, so there’s no one to witness their conversations. It’s not that the other man would react badly; as much as Duck likes him, Joe is a little too inclined to defer to authority, and might put Indrid in danger without meaning to.

Better still, when Duck is ashore searching for specimens, Indrid keeps him company. The mer swims parallel to his path in the sand, or follows him up briny tributaries to show him rare plants.

Unlike Barclay, Indrid has visible fins beside the one on his back; two he can extend from his sides. All are the same silver-blue shade that colors Duck’s dreams these days.

Tonight they’re talking at the window about Duck’s travels when Indrid goes still. Then he sinks under the waves as the door behind Duck opens.

“Mr.Newton, who are you talking to? The men said they saw a creature off the side of the ship.”

“Uhhhhhhhh”

----------------------------------------------------------

“I despise you.” Indrid glares over the edge of his tank.

“I said I was sorry! Ain’t my fault I can’t lie for shit.”

“No, but you could have told me about that issue before it got me imprisoned on a ship!”

“Hey, you’re the one who can see the future, you coulda warned me they were comin.”

Joseph and Barclay trade a concerned look; after an initial chirp of joy at seeing Barclay, Indrid directed all his focus to glaring at Duck while Woodbridge gave them their orders.

“Um, Indrid, right? I’m sure Duck didn’t mean for you to be caught. And we’ll both make sure you’re comfortable while you’re here.”

Indrid spares a dagger filled glance for Joseph, then swims to the side of the tank closest to Barclay’s enclosure, popping up and leaning over to his friend, the two of them trading clicks and trills. The conversation calms Indrid some. Barclay explains later that he assured his friend the stay was only temporary and, while the conditions were not ideal, the company was good.

All the same, any time Duck sits near Indrid’s tank, a silver tail splashes him with water. The botanist takes it in stride, seeming to accept it as a deserved penalty for getting Indrid trapped.

Several days later, as they’re both working, the botanist sets down his pen, stands, and sets his back against Indrid’s tank.

“Joe, gimme a hand please.”

Joseph pushes as hard as he can, and the tank scrapes across the floor.

“I can still splash you from here.”

“That’s not why I’m doin it. You and Barclay keep starin at each other all sad; seems mighty cruel to keep you where you can see each other but can’t touch.”

Indrid falls silent until they get the tanks side by side. Then he rises from the water and leans out to rub his cheek against Duck’s own with a trill of thanks. The research room is more peaceful (and much drier) after that.

Three nights later, dinner stops by the hold to see if either of the mers needs anything from him. He opens and then immediately shuts the door and backs away; he’s learned that mers are demonstrative, but heated, frantic kissing and moaning suggests something they’d rather not have him present for. Lord, why did it look like Barclay had two…

The hall is hotter than a furnace, and as he walks down it as fast as dignity will allow, Duck steps from the officers dining room. Wordlessly, Joseph grabs him and pulls him the rest of the way to their room.

“Everythin okay JoeOHfuck” Duck’s heads thuds back against the door as Joseph palms him through his trousers, “what’s gotten into you huh?”

“I, I need, I saw, um” he rests his forehead on the door, hands gripping Duck’s hips, “Barclay and Indrid making use of their rare chance at privacy.”

“Uh huh” Duck kisses along his jaw, “and here I’ve been wonderin how to get you back into my bed since that night in Port Royal, when it turns out I just need to find some mermen and pay ‘em to fuck in front of you.”

“It’s not just that” Joseph looks down at him earnestly, “it’s you too. It’s so hard to keep my hands to myself, to maintain decorum and poise and not beg for your kisses every minute we’re at work. Seeing them together snapped the rest of my control, I need release but more than that I need you.”

“Right here, darlin” Duck pulls him down into a kiss, leaves a trail of them across his face, “so show me just how much you need me.”

He thuds to his knees, the two of them tugging and tossing at clothing until Duck’s legs are bare and Joseph can bury his face between them. He loves doing this, loves feeling enveloped by the perfection that’s Duck;s body. His hands grope and circle, relishing the muscle and fat beneath his hands as Duck holds him by the hair and tells him how good it feels, how well he’s doing, the grip tightening the closer his orgasm gets, until Joseph can barely breathe from how hard he’s pressed against him.

He barely gets a chance to kiss his thigh in thanks before Duck hauls him up by his coat to kiss and spin him to the nearest bed. Black hair streaked with grey falls across green eyes as Duck grins down at him.

“My turn.”

-------------------------------------------------

Barclay can’t look at Indrid without blushing; it’d been so long since they fucked and he’d forgotten just how nice it felt, how teasing and playful Indrid was as a mate. Case in point: as their kisses deepened, he whispered in Barclay’s ear that Joseph had seen them and was, as he spoke, pawing Duck in their room. Barclay moaned at the words and Indrid laughed, spread his side fins, and leapt into Barclay’s tank to lick and bite at the sensitive patch of tail that hid his cock.

“My, my dearest, it seems Joseph is skilled with his tongue as well. Perhaps if you ask nicely we will use our mouths on you at the same time.”

Indrid is currently sighing as Duck combs his hair. Barclay takes a moment to watch the scene unfold: Indrid’s made no secret of his attraction to Duck (or Joseph for that matter), and Barclay likes seeing his friend happy, likes the way Duck touches him with the tenderness he deserves but will often deny himself.

Joseph opens the door and calls, “Duck? Hayes wants to speak with us.”

The human departs and Indrid blows a kiss when his back is turned, then winks at Barclay. Barclay is about to ask if they have time to trade kisses of their own when Indrid freezes.

“Oh no.”

Indrid cocks his head and Barclay follows suit, voices reaching him from the hall.

“Captain Hayes, I must object to this plan. We can get all the information we need from my interviews with Barclay and Indrid, there’s no need to take them away from their home.”

“This is not about information, Mr. Stern. The company that funded this mission did so in the hopes that we would return with mermaids to sell. Which we have, and the two them alone will make not only the company but all of us rich men indeed.”

“Who gives a damn about riches? They ain’t fuckin treasure to be traded.”

“Mr. Newton-”

“Duck’s right, this is completely inhumane. If I’d known this was your goal, I’d never have agreed to this voyage.”

“The decision is final. And I’d advise you both to tread carefully from how you speak to me from here on; men of science or no, this is my ship, and what I say is the law.”

Indrid flicks his tail, swimming back and forth in agitation as Barclay curls his arms around himself; he doesn’t want to be taken away from home, and he certainly doesn’t want to be someone’s prized possession. Worse, Joseph doesn’t return, and so there’s no one to comfort him as he worries and Indrid sorts through unhelpful futures.

He’s half-asleep when the door opens, gasps as a hand touches his shoulder.

“Can you heave yourself out of the tank?” Joseph whispers

Barclay nods, pushes himself up, out, and then into the human’s embrace. Across from him, Duck manages to carry Indrid in his arms on the first try.

“What are you doing?”

Joseph touches his face, “I promised you that you’d get to go free. I keep my promises.”

With that they struggle out the door and up stairs, Indrid helping them determine when the coast is clear to reach the edge of the deck. He’s already dizzy, breath coming in gasps. Indrid wastes no time, launches himself into the sea with a graceful splash.

“What, what will happen to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Joseph smiles sadly. Barclay kisses him to the thunder of footsteps, then falls into the sea.

The last thing he hears is Duck muttering, “Well...fuck.”

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“Pirates would have at least given us a pistol.” Joseph lays on his back in the sand as Duck tosses rocks into the sea, The Washington disappearing on the horizon.

“Yeah. That’s why Hayes ain’t one; he’d have to be too damn nice.”

Joseph chuckles, “True.”

Duck’s certain this is not even remotely what was supposed to happen, and it’s certainly not what either of them expected. Flogging, being thrown in the brig, brought up on charges when they arrived home all crossed their minds. Not being marooned on a small, deserted island with only the clothes on their backs.

He doesn’t regret his choice. Joe doesn’t either. All the same, they spend a few hours on the beach bemoaning their fate or silently considering how to mitigate it. By evening, they determine it could be far worse. They’re study of the plants and animals of the region means they know what’s edible and what’s poisonous, there are fish in the shallows and a small spring hidden in the rocks and trees towards the center of the island. Duck suggests building signal fires when they can in case other ships are near, and they set up a rough lean-to as shelter from the sun. They spend the next few days figuring out how to survive, and Duck discovers just how charming Joe looks when he’s unshaven.

(His budding facial hair also leads to the discovery that Duck;s thighs are incredibly ticklish).

They’re alright for now. Duck’s just worried about how long their luck will hold.

----------------------------------------------------

Joseph is making a new spear, eyeing the storm clouds on the horizon, when Duck’s voice catches his attention.

“Uh, you might not wanna wade out just yet. Looks like there’s a shark.” The other man points to a dark fin sticking slicing the water.

“That doesn’t look like-”

“AHJESUS” Duck is knocked back onto the sand by shape with silvery fins and hair. His further commentary on the matter is cut off by Indrid kissing him, tail wiggling happily as he does.

“I did not get to do that when we fled, there was no time, but oh how I wanted to.”

“Seriously, he kept saying I was smart to kiss you when I could.” Barclay’s entrance onto the beach is more graceful, using the surf to slide up the sand and settle at Joseph's feet.

“Oh yes, that reminds me” Indrid rolls off Duck, grabs Joseph’s shirt, and pulls him down into a kiss.

“Y’all hunt us down just for some kisses?” Duck scoots over to join them, draping an arm over Indrid.

“Nope. When Indrid’s visions showed us what they were gonna do to you, we knew we had to come get you. You, you’re here because you saved us-”

“It was the right thing to do” Joseph strokes the dark brown of his hair as Barclay rests his head on his stomach/

“And neither of us could stand the thought of losing you, especially not like this.”

“We would have arrived sooner, but we had to make arrangements for your rescue and get permission from the mer whose territory we’re technically in.

“Fascinating. Are there borders, or identification or-”

“All in good time” Indrid purrs, nipping his ear. He shudders down to his toes as Barclay begins kissing his hips and belly.

“Like the way you think, ‘Drid.”

“You will like how I do other things as well. Now come here” Indrid pulls Duck into his arms as Barclay crawls up Joseph’s body to kiss him properly. There’s salt on his lips, sweetness on his tongue, and Joseph sighs as he wraps his legs around the smooth, cool texture of his tail. Barclay smiles into the kiss, rolls his hips as Joseph teases his fingers up and down his sides.

“I missed you so much.” Barclay murmurs, “nights aren’t the same without you keeping me company.”

“I missed you too.” He nudges his hips up, letting the mer know he’s heading in the right direction.

“Holyfuck, you have-”

“Two, yes, is that not what humans have?” Indrid cocks his head at Duck.

Joseph hides a smile, “See, Duck, I’m not the only one who finds you irresistible.”

“That and when Indrid gets going, he gets going fast.” Barclay adds. Indrid flicks water at him with his tail.

“No kiddin. Joe, you gotta see this.” Duck climbs off Indrid, revealing two cocks protruding from the upper part of his tail. Joseph’s brain fails to supply any thoughts other than yes

Indrid preens under the attention, lazily stroking one shaft, “Are you all going to just gawk at me, or will one of you come and attend to the situation?”

“May, um, may I?” Joseph looks between the three of them, unsure whose permission he’s asking or what he’s asking it for.

“Heh, oughta tell you two that Joe needs someone to order him around in bed.” Duck smirks as he crawls through the surf to kiss Joseph’s shoulders.

“Is that so? In that case, be a good human and come ride my cock.” Indrid gestures to said cock with a flourish.

“But I was gonna go down on him.” Barclay mock pouts.

“We can do both at once. If he will hurry up and get his trousers off. Honestly, why do humans insist on so much clothing?”

“Because our dicks don’t stay nice and hidden until we need ‘em.” Duck disrobes along with Joseph.

Red eyes rove across Duck hungrily, “I see. A lovely sight all the same. Now Joseph, come face away from me.”

He straddles Indrid’s hips on shaking knees, warm sand the perfect counterpoint to cool scales.

“Do not worry about taking both, my foresight suggests it will be too much right now. AHhnnn yes” he wriggles when Joseph strokes the shaft, bringing it into position.

“The ridges are intriguing.” They also feel incredible on his hand, and he rushes to feel them inside him.

“Do humans not have those either? Honestly, what do you haveAHahhhoh, oh nevermind, oh you’re so tight and warm, oh this is wonderful, Barclay, you have to try this.” The ridged cock bumps and thrusts into him, and Joseph tips his head back to moan.

“I will. Got other things to do right now.” Barclay lays along Indrid’s tail, kissing both it and Joseph's legs before closing his lips around Joseph’s swollen cock.

“Lord, ohlord that’s good, Barclay, Indrid, fuckplease.”

“Please what, Joseph?” Indrid thrusts more roughly.

“Just please, please don’t stop, it’s incredible, you both are.” His mind is going blank, his whole being thrumming with a singular desire; to be good, to filled and used and wanted.

“Fuck, Joe” Duck paints kisses along his back and shoulder, “you look damn good like this, takin it two ways at once.”

He pets Duck’s thigh, kisses him messily “You, someone should take care of you.”

“Yes they should” Indrid “come, sweet one, let me show you what I can do with my tongue.”

“Hell yeah” Duck scrambles away, and a moment later his moans fill the air, underscored by Indrid’s pleased laughter.

Barclay hums, making Joseph jolt and squirm. The merman pulls back, winks at him, then drags his tongue along the cock not buried to the hilt in the human.

“MMMPHHmmmmmm” Indrid’s garbled shout of delight makes the other three laugh.

“Jesusfuck, Barclay can you do that again, his mouth gets even better when you do.”

Barclay obliges and another moaning trill washes over the beach.

“God, it’s so fucking hot, watching him fuck you, wanna see it everyday” Barclay dives back down and soon Joseph’s orgasm crashes into him, his whole body twitching as pleasure overwhelms his nerves. Behind him, Duck lets out the singularly charming groan he always makes when he cums. Indrid is close behind him, spilling sticky and cool inside Joseph and across his thighs and Barclays chest. The other mer growls, roughly pulling Joseph off or Indrid and into the sand with him, the particles burning his knees as the merman grinds him roughly back and forth across his cock, not pushing in but not needing to, cumming in a few short seconds with a howl of ecstasy.

They rearrange themselves, panting, so the mers are mostly in the surf and the humans mostly on the sand, he and Duck pulling their clothes back on to avoid sunburns in the worst possible places.

“That was exquisite” Indrid sighs, resting between the humans with his silver tail draped across Barclay’s dark one.

“No kiddin.”

“And we finished not a moment too soon.” Indrid points out to sea.

Rounding the side of the island is a small sailing boat bearing the words Amnesty.

“Man, I cannot wait to get us all home” Barclay smiles, kissing Joseph’s hand.

The human leans down and kisses him back, “Me neither.”

#OT4: Government Men and Their Cryptid Boyfriends #Indruck #agent stern/barclay #duck newton/agent stern #trans agent stern #trans duck newton #mermay fills #mermay

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ryqoshay · 3 years

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Promptober-2021: How to Handle a Nico: How to Handle Possessiveness

Primary Pairing: NicoMaki Rating: G Words: 629 Prompt: Possessive Parent Fic: How to Handle a Nico Time Frame: Shortly after Nico resumes idol activities after establishing Egao. Maki is still in medical school

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Author’s Note: 3rd entry for Oct 24th’s prompt

Summary: Maki may be a bit possessive. Maybe...

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“Nico-ni, I love you!”

“Sign! Sign!”

“Nico Nico Ni~!”

“She looked at me!”

Endless.

The sea of gawking, giggling, giddy girls was endless.

And they were all here for one reason. Nico.

Her Nico.

Maki sighed as she watched her girlfriend shine like a lighthouse amid the waves of adoring fans, drawing them in.

No, that was the wrong metaphor. Nico was a lovely lantern attracting moths. If only she was actually the lighthouse, warning the fleet of ships away from rocky shores.

Rocks like the ones churning in the pit of Maki’s stomach. Gods, she hated feeling like this.

Maki hated wanting to keep Nico to herself. She knew full well, long before they even started dating officially, that this was what Nico lived for. It went deeper than the vain surface need for the lights, applause and attention. Nico needed to know she was leaving her mark on the world, spreading smiles far and wide as she had promised her father she would do so many years ago.

Maki had witnessed firsthand what Nico was like when deprived of her fans. And she never wanted to see her like that again.

The Nico she knew and loved was an idol, through and through. And that meant Maki could never have all of her.

Nico had assured her that Nico-ni, her stage persona, was what truly belonged to everyone, but Nico herself, the woman behind the idol, belonged solely to Maki. But part of Maki remained unconvinced.

And it was that part of Maki that responded to the magnetic pull toward her girlfriend.

“Eh?” Nico jolted as arms wrapped around her from behind. “Maki-chan?”

Ooo’s and aah’s rippled through the gathered fans.

Despite the heat building in her cheeks, Maki was thankful the fans knew she and Nico were dating. No more hiding their relationship. Egao Jōshō, the production company started by Nico and Tsubasa, had no rule forbidding their idols from dating. And Maki was grateful for the fact that her current actions would not create a scandal.

“Maki-chan is being surprisingly bold today.” Nico teased. “Maybe she’s jealous?”

Maki pouted. Nico laughed.

“Sorry, everyone, Maki-chan’s just being a little possessive today.” Nico explained to those gathered. “One sec.” She twisted within Maki’s embrace, reached up to her cheek and guided her girlfriend down into a kiss.

Maki could feel her blush spread as another wave of adoring sounds reached her ears.

A younger Maki would have pulled away immediately, and possibly even run away and hid. But the Maki of today decided to push past her embarrassment and show everyone that Nico was hers.

They could have Nico’s autograph. They could have a picture. They could listen to her songs on repeat as many times as they wanted.

But Nico, the real Nico, the one kissing her now, belonged to Maki. And she was going to show them that.

Click!

The digitally emulated sound of a shutter snapping similarly snapped Maki back to reality. What the heck was she doing? In front of so many people, no less.

“Got a good one, did you?” Nico spoke up. “Can I see?”

The fan in question turned her phone screen around. Oh gods…

“Perfect!” Nico practically cheered. “Tell ya what, if you send that to Nico-ni’s email, I’ll print it and have it waiting for you at Egao where I’ll sign it when you come visit.”

The fan looked like she was ready to die and go to heaven. Maki felt like she was ready to die and go somewhere else.

Maki’s facial temperature hit a boiling point. “I’m going home.” She stated and turned to walk away.

“See you back at the hotel, Maki-chan.” Nico called after her. “Now, where were we?” She addressed her fans again.

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Author’s Note Continued: I had fun with this one, to be honest. I like possessive Maki trying to balance her desire to keep Nico for herself while letting the woman she loves be, well, the woman she loves. And Nico is an idol.

This may be among the few chapters I drop straight into the parent fic without modifying, as I believe it says all I want to say already. Not saying I won’t follow up with a sequel chapter that focuses on how Nico handles her jealous Maki afterward, of course.

#NicoMaki #Nishikino Maki #Yazawa Nico #How to Handle a Nico #Love Live #fanfic #Promptober-2021

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k7l4d4 · 3 years

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Revamping Near-forgotten Retro Cartoons!!

Hey all, today, I decided to revisit some of the cartoon reruns I saw on TV back when I was like, wow, six or seven I think? How the time flies! Well, I decided to look some of them up, and decided, why not give them a revamp for the modern era? Everybody clap your hands!!

When Cartoons first started getting serious, beyond just shorts and whatnot, anything even remotely successful was milked to the bone, copied and cloned to hell and back, and just rung out all together. This is me attempting to find those old shows and make them a little more unique. Enjoy!

Jabberjaw: You would expect a show about a band travelling an aquatic world with a frequently disrespected and harassed shark to be a pretty unique concept, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, of all the clones of Scooby-Doo, this, to me, was one of the laziest, even though I loved the show. NO effort in the slightest was made to give it any original flavor beyond the setting, like, at all.

My version, would have the friends still be a band, but, instead of being native to the fantastic, setting, would be struggling local performers of a sea-side town who, despite being acknowledged as some of the best in the state talent-wise, are frequently the subject of local mockery and disdain, as they can never seem to stick to a theme or style. The band consists of Buford “Biff” Brisk, the lead guitar, Charlie “Clamhead” Wilter on the Trumpet, Wendy Bubbles on Keyboard and occasionally Keytar, and Shelly Swanson on Bass.

For all there skill, in an effort to find a theme they can work with and stick with, the band attempt to practice in a local cove. After a few hours of jamming and experimentation, the tide comes in, and, just as they believe they are going to drown, they wake up to find themselves in a strange, almost futuristic aquatic world, inhabited by Fishfolk and Merfolk, with themselves being some of the incredibly few Mammals in existence. While they initially panic over the lack of air, they rapidly calm down as they realize they can still breath.

The band’s near unique status has them pegged as a side-show attraction, granting them no small amount of fame, and plenty of gigs. However, the lack of a drummer, something they have always struggled with, and their inconsistent theme, causes them to lose both gigs and crowds, their primary source of income as they try to find a way back home. While wandering the local waters, searching for a drummer, they eventually discover some of the impressive drumming any of them have ever heard, but when they go to investigate, who do they encounter but a shark!?

After the initial bout of panic, the shark manages to calm them down and introduce himself. Enter Joebar Jawkowski, also known locally as Jabberjaw. In this world, sharks are highly prejudiced against and ostracized, seen as thugs and bullies at best and vicious monsters and killers at worst. Jabberjaw has always tried to bridge the gap between sharks and the rest of the water-dwellers, yet his efforts are always rebuffed; every time he tried to hang out with others, he was either chased away for being a shark, or used as a scapegoat to avoid getting in trouble. After all, who would belief that the local guppies would splatter ink all over someone’s house as opposed to the “dangerous and brutal shark!” His efforts to hang and bond have often resulted in him accidentally blabbing about his fellow sharks, revealing local hangouts and meeting places, causing many of the local sharks to be harassed and persecuted by abusive authority, losing him the trust of others.

However, despite his bad rep and numerous screwups, Jabberjaw is a sweetheart to his core, always willing to help and be there for his friends, and he still wants to make friends with others. After they hear his story, the band tentatively, but genuinely offer him the role of their drummer; he’s done so much and gotten himself nothing but grief, so why not? Of course, Jabberjaw accepted.

Biff is the leader of the band, always being the first one to show up to practice, and the one who always insists on staying after to clean up. Passionate and upbeat, Biff is the driving force behind the band, always pushing forward to have the band succeed, and always ready to listen, to be a shoulder to cry on, and just be there for his friends. He isn’t perfect though. For all his claims about being all about the music, Biff is usually always the one getting caught up in whatever fame the band has managed to accrue at any given moment, much to the annoyance and occasionally concern of the others. Biff comes from a pretty conservative family, and while they love him, they do not approve of or respect his decision to be a musician, often wondering when he’s going to “Stop all that nonsense and get a real job.”

Clamhead doesn’t say much, but when he does start talking, it usually means something is going down. Clamhead was frequently bullied as a child due to his constant use of made-up words when he got excited, as well as his strange turns of phrases and his near exclusively seafood diet. Due to this harassment, Clamhead became something of a self-imposed mute, often using the bare minimum of words, when he managed to talk at all. Music quickly became a strong outlet for his feelings, allowing him to express himself more effectively. Clamhead rapidly formed a strong bond with Jabberjaw, due to their shared diet and the ire it earned them from the locals.

Bubbles, she prefers to go by her last name, is a sweetheart to her core, often going out of her way to help even people who everyone would agree are self-absorbed jerks, themselves included. Bubbles, for all her ditzy demeanor and simplistic language, has always been a true genius. Even as far back as Elementary School, she took high school and college classes in her free time, having racked up an intimidating number of degrees and diplomas before she ever even Officially graduated. Bubbles was routinely bullied into submission as a child, as her spacey demeanor caused many to look down on her and not take her seriously, mocking her whenever she tried to help with, well, anything!

Shelly is a cynical introvert, bitter and detached from the world, not that you’d know it by looking at her. Shelly has always been extraordinarily beautiful, attracting attention from a wide variety of sources, including those that are... creepy. This attention unnerved and confused her as a child, leading to her closing herself off, and later to biting back with viciousness, and in some cases cruelty, as she got older. She genuinely enjoys her time with the band and considers them all her best friends, yet occasionally feels like an outsider looking in, in comparison to her gloomier attitude and behavior in relation to the others. Much to her surprise and disgust, the odd attractive quality that draws others to her is even stronger in the new world, leading to all sorts of... unwanted attention.

#jabberjaw #cartoon rewrite #classic cartoon #reboot #feel free to ignore

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ichabodcranemills · 3 years

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re: D*rklina

@musical-chick-13 I’m putting this under a read more, because I have additions and, yes, it is long 😂

So, as far as I can tell from what show-watchers have told me, yes, he is definitely worse in the books. And specifically, the general idea in said books seems to be that just because someone is charismatic and attractive and “gets” parts of you doesn’t mean that they’re a good partner or even worth your time, which is a message I have waited FOREVER to see. Beauty (and to a lesser extent, magnetism) does not equal goodness. The Dark/ling (I have no idea if the names will show up in the tags so I’ll put slashes in the middle of them, wow this website’s features need revamping) always seemed…very entitled to Al/ina. There wasn’t any desire for them to become equals (even in a moral sense by dragging her down to his moral level or raising himself up to hers). His behavior and pursuit of her seems much more motivated by the idea of being able to congratulate himself on the fact that he’s “won” her. She’s more of like…a conquest to him? And maybe that’s a huge misread of his character on my part, but the Leigh, the author, HAS said in the past that some of the Dark/ling’s dialogue and actions were written as a way for her to make sense of and deal with an irl toxic relationship she was in during part of the writing period, so I…don’t think it’s a completely unreasonable interpretation? And that’s not to say that power imbalance ships should Never Be Shipped (because they can be genuinely compelling or even fun to watch under the right writer), and Leigh has even said that she Gets The Appeal herself.

But I think the reasons Tho/schei works for me where D*rklina doesn’t are because 1) Tho/schei have genuinely known each other for a long time (and even been on good terms for some of it) but the Dark/ling decides, despite being this all-powerful charismatic force who is hundreds of years old, to get pettily involved in a teenage love triangle in very little time which is a choice that makes absolutely no sense to me at all, 2) The Doctor is an extremely morally grey character, in a way that if they aren’t careful could easily match the destructiveness of The Master. They both are aware of this, and both of them believe themselves (in their own ways) to be “above” morality (The Doctor in the sense of “I know what’s best and my choices are law” and The Master in the sense of “My choices are law and I deserve to cause destruction and have complete control”. There are…not equal, but similar enough levels of moral ambiguity that it makes sense to me that they still Get™ each other. The Doctor also likes Intellectual Challenges and Foiling Grand Plots, to the point where it’s often the Most Important Thing, and The Master not only provides those, but enjoys the conflict as well, and 3) They actually are close to being equals. They’re both very smart, powerful, immortal. Obviously The Doctor has Much More Life Experience and a more extraordinary legacy because of the Timeless Child thing, but Missy’s primary goal was simply “I want my friend back” and Dhawan!Master freaked out because it was impossible to see them as equals anymore. The Doctor, as per Twelve, wants the Master to be good because they’re alike in a way no one else in either of their lives are. They kind of…want the same thing but in different ways, whereas The Dark/ling, while understanding The Burden Of Power, doesn’t actually want the same thing Al/ina does.

And that relationship between D*rklina could still make for a fascinating dynamic, and one that in another life I might even be into myself if not for the whole “reducing it to Good Girl Saves Bad Boy” trope that I keep seeing within a good deal of the fandom. Not that a general fandom reaction or misread should prevent anyone from enjoying something, but I’m so tired that it’s nearly impossible for me to separate them at this point, lol. Ultimately it boils down to the fact that they seem like such fundamentally different people that I don’t personally see how they could ever truly find common ground or genuinely appreciate their similarities. I think the most interesting exploration of a romantic bent to their dynamic would be in a context where they are so different and recognize that they’re so different, and they might want to focus on their similarities, but it’s not enough. There could be this undeniable pull between them, but what does that really mean when held up against who they are and how they choose to interact with the world? And then having to deal with the necessary antagonism that results. I guess I see the existence of this ship as like…more of a thought exercise than anything I would ever want to happen in any way other than a one-sided attraction on his part, or that could ever truly be narratively justified. But also like…I hate him, so that makes it kind of hard for me to want to explore it in any way at all. Which that’s a personal thing. Other people like this character, and I’m genuinely happy for them that they can see something I don’t.

UGH, I’m sorry this got so long. This is what happens when I have an urge to Share my Thoughts.

I totally understand your feelings and I think the show did a good job on not only humanizing the D*rkling, but also making the relationship more palatable. I, mean, I’m sure we can partially blame Mr. Barnes’ soulful eyes, but I definitely got the impression that, while the D*rkling wants to use Alina for his own gains, he is very drawn to her as THE Sun Summoner, as in “we are linked and will inevitably be the only one for the other”, he basically tells Mal as much.

And I don’t blame you for losing interest in them because of the fandom, it can be very frustrating, especially if one of the characters didn’t appeal to you in the first place (I mean, I’ve been there, hello R*ylo, lmao)

I think I get what you’re saying about how this works out in the books and how what draws me to D*rklina isn’t necessarily textual. And I think I might have went in a little biased when I watched the show, because, before I did, a friend told me she was getting Thoschei vibes from it, but didn’t especify where, So I watched and there it was: M*lina… okay, school best friends, us against the world, but in general, eh, they were too “perfect” (as in, no real conflict between them). And then D*rklina with everything I said on my original post. I mean, I was looking for a thoschei-like dynamic and I found one 😂.

I’ve read some spoilers for the book, so I know my whole “200 years later” fantasy doesn’t happen, so I agree with you, this ship is more of a thought exercise. But I think the show sets it up in a way that is Just My Thing, whereas the book is more straightforward with how incompatible these two are, romantically. But the fandom will ship away, even in kinda blergh ways, it’s how it is 🤷

#thank you for sharing your thoughts #this is fun! :D

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n1ghtcrwler · 4 years

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So there is a post that I recently saw that I just don’t want to add notes to for a number of reasons, not least of which being that I’m about to go on a significant tangent, so I’ll just say what I needed to say about it here.

The post is screenshots of a tweet thread about how bad “Cuties” actually is, from someone who claims to have watched it, and that’s fine. I haven’t seen the movie, I have no input to give on that matter. My concern arises in a reply offered by one user, who goes into more detail about how disturbing it is to consider that someone had to, at minimum, be comfortable putting the underage actresses in the situations depicted for the sake of filming them for the movie, and again, that is probably a valid point. But they ended their tirade with this:

“If you didn’t believe it before, the fact that this movie was even released and is being defended by the elite is proof that there is a deliberate plan to normalize and eventually legalize pedophilia and child porn.”

And that, my friends, is some QAnon bullshit.

See, this is a great example of how conspiracy theories work. We tend to only think of them in terms of their major propositions and the implications of those propositions--that the Earth is hollow, your average garden-variety antisemitic caricature of a shadowy society controlling you, that sort of thing--instead of talking much about how people fall into that hole in the first place. And, in our day-to-day lives, it’s really where the theories start that we need to be vigilant about more than where they end. Where they end is important, obviously, but no one buys the end product immediately. They get there through a process. And the user who posted the above quote is playing into that process.

Here’s the process that I want you to see in that paragraph, and to look out for elsewhere:

0: ‘Facts’ that are viable, and possibly even true

Step Zero is not to lie or even to introduce new information. I call it Step Zero because it isn’t automatically part of a conspiracy theory; obviously, if we’re going to talk about the impact of anything on the world, we have to talk about what is actually happening. But I point it out because conspiracy theories always start with a premise that you can accept. Always. Every time. You cannot assume that you will recognize a nonsense theory based on immediate nonsense. No one starts there. They start in the real world. As above, where they are describing very real or at least realistic consideration for the ways filming such a movie can groom young actresses and audiences.

1: Framing facts through key concepts

A good conspiracy theory begins not in the facts provided, but in the way they are provided.

Consider the bit of the paragraph I copied where it said, “the fact that this movie was even released and is being defended by the elite.” Who are the ‘elite?’ See, the use of that wording is intentional. What the user has done is frame the delivery of the fact or near-fact (that the movie and its mode of production are abhorrent) in a way that an elusive enemy is embedded in the fact or near-fact itself (that the elite are defending the abhorrent thing, making ‘them,’ whoever they are, also abhorrent) such that it is difficult to separate that idea from the rest of the fact or near-fact. In fact, I expect that if anyone wishes to argue with me about this post, they will do so by framing my dismissal of a mythical elite with being part of their work; that is, the primary means of arguing against this post, based on the way people have argued with me about similar things in the past, will be to hold that if I doubt that part of the sentence I must doubt the whole sentence and doubting the whole sentence means not finding pedophilia abhorrent and that, by extension, must make me either a pedophile myself or a man comfortable with pedophiles.

I’m sure you’ve seen that play out before in some context or another. This is why it plays out that way: the fact or near-fact has been married, unsuitably, to a claim that sets up Step Two.

2: Using the altered fact or near-fact to demand a pre-determined conclusion

Here’s the thing. If there is an elite who are actively trying to make and promote and defend “Cuties” (which is a highly suspect claim already), then the logical question is why they are doing so. Well, by golly, our friendly neighborhood conspiracy theorist has an answer! See, it’s “proof that there is a deliberate plan to normalize and eventually legalize pedophilia and child porn.”

That conclusion is not demanded by the agreed-upon facts. That is, if I agree with the theorist that the movie is, indeed, a work that grooms actresses and audiences, there are actually a variety of conclusions we can draw about why the movie was made. Maybe it was filmed with entirely different intentions and the end result is because of editing, or license taken by questionable cameramen. Maybe the version shown at Sundance or whatever was not actually the version currently on Netflix, so the people defending it were defending something other than what the twitter thread author saw. Maybe the producer really did have terrible motives but managed to convince someone at Netflix that that was not what was happening. Some or all of these may be false. I have no idea. But here’s the thing: neither does the person who posted the paragraph in question. The facts given in the post are actually pretty sparse as far as coming to a certain conclusion about intent are concerned. You need more information to know what is really going on here.

But see, that’s why they added information in Step One. By making it a behavior of that conspiracy’s boogeyman, they can easily come to a conclusion. The facts or fact-adjacent statements made in the body of the post, paired with a conspiracy-based understanding of who the elite are and what they want, is enough information to come to a conclusion. And it’s a conclusion that is only reasonable if the elite are real and are who the conspiracy says they are. See, the goal of getting you to believe the bigger conspiracy isn’t by telling you who the elite are, but by getting you to accept something that requires them. Which is why

3. Frame the delivery in a way that hides the conspiracy

The post leading up to the quoted paragraph is actually fairly long (admittedly, not as long as this post), and every part of it fits the conversation that has been had about the movie and is presented in a way that makes sense. So while the average tumblr user is scrolling along, if they read through, they’re being hit with a lot of sensible discourse about a movie they probably haven’t seen but have seen more discourse about, and then that bit of QAnon is just kinda slipped in without any major change to wording and presentation. It’s bolded for effect, but the content itself seems to flow naturally from the rest of the post. It’s only in stopping and thinking seriously about what has been said that the diversion away from a discussion of facts gets noticed.

The point is to be distinct enough to set up the conspiracy theory, but subtle enough that you accept it as part of the rest of the post’s claims. See, because, what happens there is that if the rest of the post makes sense to you, and you aren’t thinking about the fact that the post has taken a left turn, you accept the conclusion being given as a natural part of the post. And accepting the conclusion requires that you have, maybe without realizing it, accepted the claims about the ‘elite.’ And that sets you up.

4. Go Deeper

Because once you have accepted the conspiracy’s claims about the elite, preferably without recognizing that there was a claim about the elite, you are ready to accept other things that connect to that. Someone comes along and says something that also sounds plausible, and also ties into the conclusion that the elite are trying to legalize pedophilia. Well, because you’ve already accepted that this was a reasonable conclusion elsewhere, and it seems reasonable enough here, you accept it here as well. And this is solidifying in your mind the idea that it is known that there is an elite working toward that goal. But the questions remains of who the elite are. So, when someone finally comes along and ties the ‘elite’ to a specific person or group of people that you do recognize (usually Jewish people or some caricature thereof), and offers some evidence that is pretty flimsy but plays very nicely with claims you’ve already accepted, you buy it. Or you don’t, but you’re so deep now that you have to provide an alternative if you want to reject the answer you’ve been given, and so you start to spin your own theory.

Either way, the end result is the same: you are convinced of a claim that would have sounded crazy to you a year ago, and your family is trying to tell you how crazy it sounds to them now, but they just don’t know! They haven’t seen all the facts! You should probably show them the facts. Ideally, by starting with something they already know to be true. And the cycle continues.

Please. Be careful out there, folks. Don’t be that guy.

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wondersofdreaming · 4 years

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Anger

Characters: Henry Cavill x female reader

Word count: 1.436

Warnings: Cussing. Rage. Anger. Fury. Angst. Violence. Crying.

Author’s note: This is going to be my new series of emotion flash fiction/short stories. I am using Robert Plutchik’s eight primary emotions, where ‘anger’ is the first on my list. Stay tuned for the other seven emotions. Each flash fiction/short story can be read as a standalone.

I do not own any of the characters in this short story besides the reader and her dog, who are figments of my imagination.

Definition [anger]: “A strong feeling that makes you want to hurt someone or be unpleasant because of something unfair or unkind that has happened.” - Cambridge Dictionary

The other emotions: [Fear] [Joy] [Disgust] [Anticipation] [Surprise] [Trust] [Sadness]

Tag: @littlefreya

MASTERLIST

Feedback is appreciated.

You dropped your phone on the sofa. Well, it was more like you threw the phone across the living room and it landed on a pillow, which was on the sofa. The phone call you had just received, had not gone as planned. You were angry, furious even. Rage was filling every cell in your body. You felt like throwing more things, you wanted to break something, to punch something, to scream and yell.

Your mind reeled back to the conversation:

“I’m sorry… I can’t come…” Your father had started saying. “I can’t come to your wedding.”

“What? Why?” You asked. Tears were forming in your eyes, the anger slowly building in your chest. Your heart rate steadily climbing higher and higher.

“I… I just can’t. I’m sorry.” He breathed.

“That is no excuse! I am your only fucking daughter! How can you do this to me?!” Your voice rising to a yell by each sentence.

“It’s too much.” He whispered. He knew that you were disappointed. He was supposed to give you away. Instead, he was bailing on you.

“I should have foreseen this. You’ve never wanted to be part of my life.” You whispered back. You took a deep breath, sighed, and continued with a firm voice: “Now, you listen very closely, so-called father. If you ever contact me ever again, I will get a restraining order. I will make the rest of your miserable life a living hell if you ever come anywhere near me again. I hope you’ve listened well, father, because this is the last time we will ever speak again.”

Then you had thrown the phone. The front door opened, and two massive dogs came running towards you but stopped as they felt the eerie feeling you had let steam out of you. Your dog, a black Labrador retriever, walked slowly over to you and nudged your hand. He whimpered, wanting to comfort you. You were just too angry and didn’t want to let it out on him. Henry walked past the living room with a paper bag of groceries.

“Honey, they didn’t have the raspberry lemonade you wanted, so I got you the next best thing, rhubarb.” He said loudly from the kitchen. He walked into the living room when you didn’t answer him. You stood in the middle of the room. Hands were balled into first at your sides, shaking violently. You needed to punch something.

“Babe? Are you alright?” He asked cautiously. He had never seen you this angry before. You had been angry many times before in your five years of being in a relationship, but you had never oozed rage. The entire room was filled with negative energy, he could feel it.

“Love, you are scaring me. Talk to me, what’s the matter?”

He walked over to you, bending so he could meet your eyes. He was almost knocked over by the pure devilish fire burning behind them. He wrapped his arms around you, but you remained stiff, not wanting to be comforted at that moment.

“I need to break something.” You told him.

“Don’t you want to talk about it?”

“I need to punch something. If you don’t move away, I will hurt you.”

Henry moved away. He knew you could hurt him badly. You could run faster than him, swing a sword better than him, even ride a horse more graciously than him. You were, after all, a professional trainer in medieval fighting styles. Your mother had been a costume designer on various medieval movies and tv-shows, while her father had been a bladesmith, making swords for the actors. He had taught you sword fighting and different combat styles at an early age, wanting you to be able to protect yourself.

“The world isn’t as safe a place as you think, princess. I want you to be prepared.”

Your grandfather had meant for you to protect yourself from men like your father, who had abandoned your mother, when he had found out she was pregnant with you. He had sent you presents every year for your birthday and Christmas, sometimes he would call and promise you the world, but always broke them in the end.

When your mother had passed away, he had the nerve not to show up at her funeral. He had called a few days later saying he had been busy with work.

You had called to ask him to give you away on your wedding day, which was a month away, a year ago, after Henry had proposed to you in the most romantic setting you could dream of, on top of a sandy hill overlooking the ocean, the sun setting, wind blowing your hair onto your face, but it was the happiest day of your life. The two dogs running on the beach playing with the seagulls. Henry on one knee in front of you, talking about all the things he loved about you, what he wanted for the both of you in the future, how many kids he hoped you’d have, but most of all, how he was the luckiest bloke on earth to have you, hoping you wanted to marry him as much as he wanted to marry you.

Even that day couldn’t stop the anger from taking over your body that was wrapped in Henry’s strong arms. You started shaking. Pushing Henry away, you went to put on your trainers.

“Babe, let’s talk about this.” He pleaded.

“I really need to hit something. I am so infuriated right now I’m afraid I’ll hurt you. So please, help me find something to break.” You told him while putting on a jacket.

He pondered for a minute. Then an idea came to his mind.

“I have the perfect place. Let’s go.”

He practically ran to a tennis court not far from your house. He paid for an hour, rolled a ball machine to one end and handed you a racket.

“Hit the balls. I can turn the speed up if you need it.”

“Set it on max.”

Henry nodded and went to set the speed. The first ball nearly hit you, but you moved out of the way just in the nick of time. The next you hit back.

“This is for my mother!” You yelled as you hit the third ball. “This is for my lost childhood!”

“Talking about your father?” Henry asked.

“This is for my 10th birthday! Yes!”

“What has he done?”

“This is for all the promises you broke!”

You hit another three balls.

“He’s not coming to our wedding.” You said.

“What is his excuse this time?”

SMASH!

“He doesn’t want to attend.”

THWAK!

“That is his loss.”

POCK!

“I told him never to contact me again.”

THUNK!

“Maybe it’s for the best, darling.”

WHOOSH!

“I told him that I will get a restraining order if he ever comes near me again.”

POW!

“Whatever you need to do. I will back you up, 120%.”

WHAM!

“I might have to break his arm, if I ever see him again.”

BANG!

“Isn’t that a little extreme?”

SWOOSH!

“No.”

The last ball came flying at you, and you sent it flying across the course. Henry turned off the ball machine. You dropped the racket. Exhaustion finally caught up to you. Your legs were shaking badly, and finally, your knees gave out. Henry caught you in his arms as you collapsed.

You bawled your eyes out into his hoodie, leaving a large wet patch. He hummed a soft tune, the vibration from his chest soothed you, calming your racing heart. As your tears dried up, you started to stand, but Henry kept you down in his arms. He rocked you slowly side to side. After a short amount of time, he gently picked you up and carried you home. Drawing you a relaxing bath with your favourite essential oils.

“What do I do now, Henry?” You asked as you sunk into the warm water.

“Do what, love?” He asked. He rubbed your aching shoulders, kneading out the knots and kinks.

“Who is going to walk me down the aisle?” You said quietly.

“Do you need someone to walk you?”

You thought about it for a minute. Then realized that you didn’t need someone to walk you down the damn aisle, you were an independent woman, you could walk by yourself.

“No, I don’t.”

“Good, are you ready to go have some dinner?”

“Yeah, I’m starving, and my arms are sore.”

“But you feel better, right?”

“Much better. Thanks, babe.”

“I will always be there for you. I will never leave you. I will love you forever.”

#Henry Cavill #This man #Henry Cavill x reader #Henry Cavill x female reader #My story #Fanfiction #Anger #Robert Plutchik #Eight primary emotions #Henry x reader #Henry x female reader #Short Story #henry cavill fanfic

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allthebest20 · 3 years

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Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

8/10. A joy to read and a great debut novel. I think the author has even better work ahead of her. The characters are complex and unique, and the book explores modernity, pain, and generational spirituality in a very readable style. I couldn’t help but make assumptions about the author as I read the book: definitely Nigerian, definitely a cook, definitely spent time in London and Canada, definitely queer, definitely raised in the Church, but also definitely spiritual. The authenticity with which she writes, especially in regards to being queer in the modern world and the cultures of different places, is what makes this book great. The story dances between the gruesome details of reality in the twenty-first century and romanticized views of youth and love. It raises a lot of questions in me about the international class system, wealth, and privilege.

The only real complaint that I have is around one of the main plot points: the rape of Kehinde when she is 12. While this is a turning point in all their lives, I feel as though it is also simultaneously underappreciated, as if the author choose this event simply because it was one of the worst things she could think of. I think this is a common pit fall for authors. A lot of traumatic things happen to this family: Kambi, the mother, is very mental ill, Banji, the twin’s beloved father, is murdered, Taiye, the queer twin, struggles with her own mental health. Yet, the rape is regarded as the primary Bad Thing and all the other traumatic events are hardly discussed. I appreciate how the author takes some time, maybe 1 chapter, to discuss Kehinde’s relationship to sex and her body. Yet, Kehinde’s life seems to be mostly unaffected by this event, except in the way she punishes her family with her silence. She is in a healthy relationship. She does not abuse alcohol or drugs. She has a successful career. Ultimately, it’s not a book about overcoming childhood sexual abuse. It’s a book about mending a family after years of pain, resentment, distance, and silence. I almost feel as though the book could have been stronger if it focused more on the effects of Banji’s death and Kambi’s violence and depression on the twins. Ultimately, though, sexual abuse is just a thing that happens to a lot of kids, and perhaps it serves a purpose to write a book where it happens, it’s horrible, but it doesn’t need to be put under a magnifying glass. It just reverberates.

This book could have been about a lot of things. When I picked it off the shelf at the library, I barely read the entire description, immediately caught by the spiritual nature of Kambi’s being and the brief mention of “reckless hedonism.” I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Taiye was a lesbian, and I saw a lot of myself in her: the serial string of intense relationships, always slated to go nowhere, the indulgence in food and weed and dancing and occasionally other drugs, the loneliness and missing family but not being able to connect with them, the exploration of religion and spirituality and non-monogamy, seeing and feeling things you don’t know are real. I feel like a lot of modern young adults live like Taiye does, unsure what to look for except comfort. I love how the author mentioned the chaotic draw of dating apps. I love how Taiye is a stoner. I love how Taiye loves organic butter and fair trade chocolate and cooking extravagant meals for anyone who will eat it. I LOVE how the author includes recipes for what Taiye is cooking. Although I probably won’t use those recipes, I did want to cook what Taiye was cooking, and it reads just like my brain reads when I am absorbed in a culinary project. This book could have been more about what it means to be a lesbian, but it only barely describes her formative romantic and sexual experiences. The author details the first time Taiye calls her self gay out loud and has queer sex, but this is long after she has had gay feelings and gay experiences. The author does not explore Taiye’s inner turmoil, and it is unclear if Taiye struggles at all with her sexuality in the long term.

I also like how the book explores mental illness. It doesn’t shy away from both the good and the bad parts. It doesn’t shame medication use. It explores the spiritual powers of those who’s brains work differently. Kambi’s voice explores suicide in an interesting way: both from the frequent pull of the voices, asking Kambi to escape the pain of living, and Kambi’s own knowledge that she wants to remain here with her family. Although I have perhaps 0 hard examples of mental illness being spiritual, I still want to believe that those who hear voices, who see things, who feel things, are connected to the spiritual in a way that those who live entirely in reality are not. This book explores one such case. I also found it interesting how Taiye inherits some of Kambi’s crazy (struggles to speak as a young child, depressed, sleep walks) and some of Kambi’s magic (draws people to her, sees and hears beyond). This make Taiye feel closer to her mom as she ages, while Kehinde remains unsure. This book could have been more about generational mental illness and the pain and distance it causes, but instead the author focuses on the magic of it all. It asks, quietly, if the girls should be mad at their mother, can they be mad at her? From the outside, Kehinde knows that Kambi is respoinsible for the scar on Taiye’s face, but yet we, the audience, know that Kambi had to do this to prevent Taiye from killing the rapist, Uncle Earnest. Does Kehinde know this? How can she understand? In a family, we have no choice but to forgive and let live if we cannot understand, or else remain alienated. This is the underlying message of the book.

The book has a complicated timeline: the main story line follows the events of a six month period in which the three main characters are united again in Lagos, after over a decade apart. Slowly, in tangents, the three characters’ backstory is explained.

The book features a few key locations:

Nigeria (specifically Abeokuta, where Kambirinachi is born, Ife, where she spends her youth, and Lagos, where she raises her family),

London (where the twins were born and where Taiye lived for 9 years during and after university),

and Canada (Kehinde lives in Montreal since attending university there and Taiye lives in Halifax after London).

I’ve never been to Nigeria or London, but I love the way the author writes the dialogue and the characters from each place. I cannot say if they are accurate, but they have a clear and unique voice, not homogeneous but also representative of those place-based qualities that unite an area. The characters give me a glimpse into what it feels like to be Nigerian abroad vs. Nigerian at home. She rarely writes about interpersonal incidents of racism: the characters are mostly well liked, treated nicely by the people in their life, given opportunities. I think that contributes to the feeling of romanticism in the story. Racism is discussed on a more systematic level: they have problems at the airport, Taiye learns about the history of racism in Canada. As someone who has been to Canada, knows about the history of Canada, and lives very close to Canada, I enjoyed hearing about Taiye learning about Canada’s dark side, something that is so rarely discussed by the general public. However, for those of us who are interested, the evidence is everywhere. The history is just waiting to be explored by anyone who is interested in looking just slightly beyond the state-issued textbooks. I thought the way the author wrote about Canada was really authentic, which convinces me that the way she writes about London and Nigeria must also be accurate. What it must be like to be Ekwuyasi, so intimately familiar with places so far apart.

There was one line in the book that really stuck with me: as Taiye is traveling home, she passes through the busy streets of Lagos, crowded with street children, and she is reminded of her privilege in a very visual way, something she doesn’t get in Canada or London. This is the view the West wants us to have of Africa: a whole continent made of dirty huts and begging children on busy urban roads. Yes, poverty looks different in Nigeria than it does in Canada, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in Nigeria is somehow poorer. In fact, this family has a beautiful compound and a trust fund. Despite having a trust fund, Taiye still makes decisions on a strict budget and denies herself luxuries to save money, the way I do. I don’t really know a lot of people with trust funds, so I can’t tell if this is an international thing or if there are American kids who act like this. It kind of annoyed me when Taiye wrote to the culinary program saying she didn’t have enough to pay for the program, when in reality she just didn’t want to dip into her trust fund. I don’t know if there were limited spots/funds available for people who couldn’t afford to pay full price, but I hate when rich people forget what it means to actually not have money. Being cheap and being poor are two different things, often way more opposing than people think. Rich people are often the ones who know how to exploit the system to get what they want for less, while the poor are left with less connections and less time to work it.

Still, I refrain from delivering too harsh judgement on Taiye. I do not know the size of the trust fund. I know their family home was a gift, so perhaps the fund is to be saved for medical emergencies and property taxes. I’m not sure how insurance or taxes work in Nigeria, although I know the government is very unstable. How did they pay for international university? Did that come from the trust fund? The whole plot line has me thinking a lot about wealth and class on an international level. While I grew up comfortably, I often felt like my family was poor because of how rich everyone in our town was. I wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a compound and see homeless children often, but also ingest international media that cast your entire country as poor and to know your government is unstable.

All in all, the book touches on many of the central issues of modern life While it only brushes the surfaces of these topics, it had me thinking for days and wanting to know more. Perhaps I will search out an some Nigerian autobiographies / memoirs in the future.

#book #fiction #francesca ekwuyasi #butter honey pig bread #cooking #nigeria #lagos #canada #london #halifax #twins #queer #family #spiritual #religion #wealth #class #mental illness #mental health

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tinkerd · 3 years

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Interview with www.achuka.co.uk

See Original post here: https://www.achuka.co.uk/blog/meet-an-illustrator-14-david-litchfield/

ACHUKA is thrilled to have David Litchfield as the 14th guest on Meet An Illustrator, an informal weekend feature introduced this year.. Do visit the backpages to read the responses from previous guests.

The Bear And The Piano, David’s debut picture book, was published just 5 years ago, but he is already established as one of the UK’s leading illustrators and picture book creators. That debut title won Waterstones Illustrated Book Prize in 2016. Much more recently he has come to attention as the cover illustrator for David Almond’s Bone Music:

The Bear And The Piano became a trilogy with publication in 2019 of The Bear, The Piano, The Dog And The Fiddle and, this year, with the third title The Bear, The Piano And The Little Bear’s Concert.

A particular favourite of ACHUKA’s is Lights On Cotton Rock:

His 2021 publishing year kicked off with illustrations for A Shelter for Sadness by Anne Booth

and the paperback edition of Rainbow Before Rainbows by Smriti Halls is published this coming week:

Next month (May 2021) we can look forward to Pip And Egg written by Alex Latimer:

and, as we hear below, there is lot lots more to come.

As a child, what were the first illustrations you remember being pleased with?

I think that it was a drawing of a panda. It was in primary school and we all had to draw one. We then put them all on the wall and I remember feeling a bit arrogant and quietly smug that my panda was definitely one of the best ones on that wall.

Who/what inspired you when you were young?

Again at primary school our teacher sat us all down and read us Where The Wild Things Are. I remember being absolutely blown away by Maurice Sendak‘s drawings and characters and totally felt transported away from the reading mat in that classroom to that dreamy monster island. Mr Sendak and Albert Uderzo were absolutely the two biggest influences on making me want to draw every day.

Who inspires you today?

Still mainly Sendak and Uderzo. But I love finding out about new illustrators. There are an infinite amount of styles and techniques and approaches to drawing and I love being surprised by how different people create a spread or tell their stories. My current 2 favourites are Sydney Smith and Frances Ives. They both have such a free and natural style. They are amazing.

Did you study art/illustration?

I actually studied Graphic Design at Camberwell College of Art. Graphic Design felt like the most sensible career choice in the art world. I loved the course and I met some great people there. But I was really shocked at how little drawing was involved. I think more than anything that course showed me how much I really loved to draw and that I just wasn’t a Graphic Designer.

What is your favourite artist tool/product?

It sounds obvious but a pencil and a sketchbook. My absolute favourite part of a project is when it’s just me, a pencil and a sketchbook and I am just letting the idea develop by scribbling and experimenting and making a mess.

Where do you buy your art supplies?

I have two favourite shops here in Bedford. One is called the Arc which sells all kinds of incredible arts supplies and exotic paints and brushes etc. I also like Coleman’s which is obviously more of a standard stationary shop. But I don’t know, I like their pens. I spend far too much money on pens.

What software/apps do you use?

I only really use Photoshop. I tried to get my head around Illustrator but I’m just not that technically minded to be honest. I have had a play with Pro Create but my kids keep stealing my iPad so I have not had enough time to learn it yet.

What was your first commission?

My first commission happened when I was 13 years old and I drew a poster for a local comic shop. They paid me in comics. My first proper paid commission was with The Beano comic. I think that it was in 2013 or so when the editor Michael Stirling found my drawings online. For a few weeks I drew the illustrations that accompanied a poetry section in the comic. It was amazing to be drawing for a comic I had been in love with for most of my life. I will forever be grateful to that team for giving me that opportunity.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am just finishing drawing a pretty epic book written by Gregory Maguire. After that I’m so happy to be working on another ‘Earth’ book with Stacy McAnulty. I love drawing these books, and I learn so much about our planet too. After that I’m starting a beautiful book with the writer Nell Cross Beckerman which is going to be a total stunner. Towards the end of the year I’m creating artwork for my next author/illustrator book too.

Which is all very exciting. I always feel like I’m being very vague when I don’t give too much info but I’m never sure how much I’m actually allowed to say. What I can tell you is that my author/illustrator book is going to be a Christmas story set in Victorian times.

Twitter or Instagram? Instagram I think. I love Twitter but Instagram just feels a lot friendlier. Also as an illustrator it is a great, visual medium to share work on. I have also found so many new great artists from this site.

Coffee or tea?

I love coffee. But I have had to cut back a lot. I was getting the jitters because I drank it so much. Now I just have two cups a day. And only in the mornings.

Cat or dog?

Oh my goodness Dog. Dog every time. I always had dogs growing up. They were my best friends. We got a dog last summer. I was adamant that my two boys should have a dog growing up. My wife wasn’t that convinced I don’t think but now that we have one she loves her as much as we do.

Grape or grain?

Hmmm, both good, but I would have to say grape.

Sunrise or sunset?

Sunset. I don’t know if it’s a getting older thing but I love sitting in my garden as the sun starts to go down. It’s like a magic time of the day where everything is winding down and becoming peaceful.

What do you listen to when you are working?

Mainly loud rock music. But I’ve also started to listen to a fair few podcasts. My favourite ones at the moment are ‘Pod Save America‘- helps me get my head around American politics, which I can sometimes find quite baffling from time to time- and The Force Center – which is a massively geeky Star Wars podcast which has none of the snark and negativity of other fandom type discussions. I recommend it if you are a Star Wars nerd like me.

Where can we follow you on social media? I’m on twitter: @dc_litchfield Instagram: @david_c_litchfield

I also have a blog at:

tinkerd.tumblr.com

and a Facebook page at

facebook.com/davidlitchfieldillustration

-but to be honest I do keep forgetting to update that one.

#illustrator #illustrator interview #illustration

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davidfarland · 3 years

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SPECIAL DEAL: Get great deal on writing software: Tuesday on Apex, we had Hayley Milliman speak on “Self-editing like a pro,” and she showed us how to use the popular software, Pro-Writers Aid. If you’re interested in it, please use this link to get a 40% discount on the software: https://prowritingaid.com/en/App/Purchase?pr=kEo0g

*Note, I’m providing this as a courtesy and don’t receive any funds on this sale.

What is rooting interest and why is it important?In the opening of your novel, I've become more and more convinced over the years that one of the most important things that you can do is to begin creating rooting interest in your protagonist(s). The reason for this is simple: the more powerfully sympathetic that a character becomes to a reader, the more eager the reader will be to find out what happens to that character—and the more powerful the climax of your story will be. In short, creating a powerful tale begins by creating sympathy for and rooting interest in your primary characters early on.

Now, how do you create characters that your readers will care about?

In part, you do it by creating characters who mirror your readers. Usually the most powerful draw for a movie is that it has a character who is roughly the same age and sex as the viewer. It's a subliminal draw, but it is the single most powerful draw.

This means that when you write a story, you will of course be populating it with at least one character who will appeal to your primary market demographic. If you're writing for teenage boys, then your protagonist will be a teenage boy. You might think that you can get away with having a protagonist who is of the wrong age or sex, but you're wrong. Teenage boys want to read about teenage boys—not about teenage girls, not about geriatrics. Unfortunately a lot of writers don't get this. Children and teens are often attracted to people who are slightly older than they are. So a teenage boy, for example, will feel some rooting interest in an older male—up to the late twenties. But once your protagonist begins looking more like the boy's dad than the boy, forget it.

So your characters need to be roughly the same age and the same sex as your target audience.

Next, your character's internal landscape must roughly match your reader's internal landscape. Your protagonist’s hopes need to be your readers' hopes. This means that if you imagine your reader to be noble and idealistic, then your character should probably be so, too.

This is tremendously important. Let's say that you have a reader, a young woman who is 19. What kind of person are you when you're nineteen? Think about it. Give your readers someone that they can relate to, and that will go a long way toward creating rooting interest.

There are some almost universal traits that you might consider giving your protagonist. Give your characters the desire for acceptance or love, the desire to overcome their own weaknesses, a hope for mankind, a love of honor and decency—in short, give them our most common virtues, and you will create rooting interest.

You don't have to express those attributes in positive terms. You can express them as negatives. Instead of a hope for life, you can give them a fear of death. In place of hope for love, you can give them a fear of loneliness. Rather than giving them hope for approval, you might give them a fear of dishonor, of rejection by family and friends.

So all of our most common fears can also be used to create rooting interest for your character.

Many writers in mainstream say that we must give our characters weaknesses in order to make them "more realistic." One popular author suggested that if you have a teenage protagonist, you should give him a masturbation problem and a drug habit, make him despised by friends because of his acne, make him lonely, morose, and lazy. After all, this author will tell you, that's how teenagers really are, aren't they?

But there are some problems with this. "Realism for realism's sake" is as foolish a notion as is "Art for art's sake." We don’t read in order to confront reality, we read to fill needs that reality isn't satisfying. So his argument is fundamentally wrongheaded.

Let me say this as clearly as possible: each time you associate some vileness with your protagonist, you create a barrier between that protagonist and your reader. Your reader may very well not have an acne problem. Some kids never even think of masturbating, and they'd be horrified to learn that others do. I don't think that many people are really lazy. A normal, healthy person naturally works. (Lazy people are usually suffering from a physical ailment—low thyroxin levels, disorders of metabolism (such as diabetes), or from depression.)

If you go too far, you can easily create a protagonist that will eject your reader from the story. You might decide, for example, to create a protagonist who is a racist. Now, I know that there are racists in the world, but I've got to tell you, I don't care if your Nazi wants love. I don't care if he wants respect, a decent job, or to break his drug habit.

In short, take care that you don't make your characters too vile. If you do give your protagonists weaknesses, a couple of them are sufficient; and if the protagonist recognizes those weaknesses and sees them as something to overcome, then your reader will be much more likely to sympathize with him.

You can get away with a lot, if your protagonist hates himself for his weaknesses. Look at the movie Jerry McGuire. In it, Tom Cruise has one moment where in a drunken haze he gropes his co-star. He was really a creep, and as I saw that scene, I thought, "Man, this movie is over for me." But then Cruise did something right—he begged for forgiveness, and he did it so convincingly that, for me, at least, it worked.

Sometimes the technique can be more subtle. Have you seen the James Bond movie Casino Royale? In it, James Bond is a sociopath. He's admirable in ways—inhumanly driven, quick -thinking. But he has a problem—he seems to be incapable of love. So the entire movie revolves around him learning to love a woman—and then losing her. Though the performance is subtle, we as audience members recognize what is going on.

So when you create your character, I'd suggest that you consider ways to make your character someone we want to spend time with.

We develop strong rooting interest and care more about characters who care deeply about something, who are committed to something. Perhaps they care about their families, or have a powerful love for their country. Maybe your character loves his horse, or is uncommonly honest or honorable.

But you there are also other ways to make characters likable. In movies, we tend quite frankly to be drawn to people who are attractive. In novels I don't think it matters much whether your character is physically attractive. As writers we lay our character's hearts bare. It's their hearts that the reader must admire.

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painted-crow · 4 years

Text

Submission time #6

Primary Mess

Hi, I’m having trouble figuring out my primary. Could you please help? Secondary wise, I’m a Lion with a Bird model. My family culture is definitely Snake, which probably has influenced my morals. My mother especially is a VERY loud Snake primary.

Paint: Good to know!

Just a reminder to everyone about how the submission format around here works, the original submission will be indented and my comments/responses will be in blue, like this.

Because this one is structured around the quiz, I'm also going to be coloring the quiz questions in pink, just so they're easier to pick out.

I doubt Badger because I'm not really attached to my community. I was at one point, but I doubt some of their beliefs so I've drawn away. Snake I've been evaluating all my relationships and there's no one I trust that much or who I'm that close to. I don't think it bothers me as much as a snake either. Lion just feels like too much. I'm not that righteous. Bird, I don't think I'm that adaptable. Also I doubt I have a system, Idk tho.

Okay, so you're probably an Idealist! You disconnected from your community because of beliefs/ideals, which is a very Idealist thing to do (although it's less firm if the beliefs that pushed you away were extreme--Loyalists will definitely draw a line if their people start hurting others). Importantly, you don't sound very upset about it, which is also very Idealist.

Remember that Lions don't have to be confident or righteous. Burned Lions in particular distrust their own judgment.

Remember that not all Birds are flexible. Some cling hard to their systems, unwilling to change or adjust even small beliefs. Others have a core to their system that they're very firm about, and everything else is adaptable (I'm one of those). Others are willing to change basically anything given enough time and evidence. Systems aren't flexible by definition.

We can Fall/Burn if an integral/core part of our system collapses, or if we lose our confidence in being able to perceive reality accurately enough and make decisions about it. Fallen Birds aren't what you'd describe as flexible, either.

Sorry in advance for this being so long....

Ambivalent answers: (had trouble with)

If people in your family or community disagree with you, is it hard to act against their wishes?

I don’t care about whether or not my community disagrees with me. I would probably feel judged to some degree, but honestly that makes me feel even more stubborn in my decision. I barely know most of the people in my community, they’re only acquaintances. If I cared about what they thought, I would go crazy.

My family is a different matter. I would listen to them and take their opinions into account, but in the end I need to think my decision is right. I’m the one who has to live with it, so I should agree with it too. Sometimes I’ll bend because I may not care too much about the outcome or I can have the outcome fit what I want by listening to others' advice. I have avoided conflict in the past with family members by just shutting up, but most of the time I have a very vocal opinion. (That may relate to my secondary tho.)

I think out of all the answers, I agree with, “Yes, because I have to live with and around them and they can make my life more difficult with their disapproval.” “It might be hard, but I’ve got to do what I think is right.” and “I don’t care about what the larger community says, but if people really close to me are against something, then I’m less likely to go through with it.” It honestly depends on what the situation is.

This seems like more evidence that you're an Idealist primary. Leaning towards Lion so far.

Would you lie to an acquaintance to save their peace of mind?

The key word in this question is acquaintance. I wouldn’t really feel guilty telling a stranger the straight up truth. Lying just makes your life more complicated. It easier to tell people the truth and no one deserves to be lied to. I think that ties into my Lion secondary. I tend to simply tell the truth at most given opportunities. It's just easier. I will hide the truth though. Lying makes me feel icky but simply choosing not to tell someone something doesn't feel quite as wrong. Sometimes I feel guilty about telling the truth about personal things because, “oh no, now this person has power over me and I don’t know if they’re trustworthy.” However, that doesn’t happen too often anymore. I just don't tell anyone when I'm in pain. It's none of their business and why should they care anyway? They have better things to do.

I am usually more careful with my friends though. I still will tell the truth most of the time. It's too hard to keep up a lie and it makes me feel bad. I think the exception to the no lying thing would be if I think the person will attack me for telling the truth. I don't need that kind of emotional abuse.

So basically I chose, “I would if lying made my life easier and it wouldn’t make me feel bad at all.” I didn't think I wouldn’t lie is precise enough. I wasn’t sure exactly what they meant by acquaintance. Like how well do you know this person? Also can I trust them not to lash out at me for telling them the truth?

Since you said lying makes you feel icky, I don't think that's the answer you want to go for--"I wouldn't lie" seems closer to what you mean.

When you’re making a decision and you’re stuck, what should you do?

Honestly, this question makes me feel weird. I need to find what makes sense, but I also have to be able to agree with my decision feelings wise. I will listen to advice from other people and try to learn at least a little about the topic before making a decision. I would probably also freeze up, especially if it’s a sudden decision or there are too many options to choose from.

I chose the, “I need to take a breath…”

This still has me leaning towards Lion for you.

Does disagreeing with your closest friends about something important to you make you love them less?

No, they’re my friends because of who they are, not what they believe. (which I realize is basically almost the same thing, but idk how else to explain) As long as they don’t believe something horrible that involves hurting people our friendship won’t be affected. Your political views or opinions about certain things aren't going to affect our friendship. I may respect them less but it wouldn’t be over something minor or because of one situation. I don’t think I would have been their friend or even liked them very much if they were “bad” people. It takes time for me to really establish someone as one of my closest friends so by then I know them pretty well so something like this is less likely to happen.

Huh, interesting! You might have some Snake to your Sorting.

Which of these statements is more true for you?

I think I would choose to stand by the people I love. There are always exceptions though. If it was about standing with them for a cause, it depends on the cause. If they’re standing for something wrong, like against basic human rights, I don’t think I could support them. I have to be able to stomach it. I trust that my people wouldn’t do something like that though. If it was against a person, I’m afraid I would be biased towards my people. Once I commit I'll stick by them. You can’t just abandon people you love, what’s the point of loving them if you don’t support them?

If you're a Lion, I think you have a Snake model--or you have Snake ideals coded as "good" in your intuition. This seems like a strong possible Sorting for you.

You might yet be a Snake with a Lion model, though.

Vehement answers: (strongly agree)

What’s your top priority?

Automatically my mind went to a specific goal of mine. I felt guilty immediately because shouldn’t it be family? Making the world a better place didn’t even come close. I ended up choosing my goals and feeling incredibly guilty about it. It just seems selfish to say that, but I wanted to be as honest as possible.

Remember, primaries are aspirational, and your knee-jerk reaction isn't necessarily your truest one/what you really think. (The fact that you think it *is* kind of supports the Lion theory, lol.) It's just surface thoughts, or what you've been conditioned to think.

It'd help the quiz if you picked an answer you don't feel guilty for prioritizing. You should feel right in choosing your answers, even if you don't always live up to them.

Would you feel worse abandoning a stranger in need or turning our back on your closest friend?

This one was easy, my closest friend. If it was a stranger who really really needed me I would feel guilty, but I would feel worse abandoning someone I’ve loved for years.

Again, this is either Snake or Lion with a lot of Snakey loyalty baked in.

Loving people is a lot of trouble.

Agreed. Worth it? Idk.

What if everyone you loved left you? They betrayed you, abandoned you, or died, and you’re hurting. What keeps you moving forward?

This one was easy. I don’t think I would survive that. I lost a friend in the past and was just really upset and angry about being abandoned for a long time. I would just harden up and stop letting people in. I would basically just work. Set goals and throw myself into accomplishing them like a machine.

Huh, I don't really know what to say about this Sorting wise. That sounds rough though, I'm sorry you had to go through that :c

What if you realized that absolutely everything you thought true was wrong? The authorities you’d trusted, the beliefs you’d held, the wrongs you’d fought against?

I chose, “I’d have to go sit by myself in a corner….” That trust being broken would be shattering. I don’t have too much faith in authorities, probably because they’re not close to me. Yes, they affect my lives but I have no personal attachments to them. However, having conflicting beliefs is one of the things that really hurts. You don’t know which belief is right, and what if the one you decide is right is really wrong? If all my beliefs were actually proved wrong I’m not sure I would know what to do with myself.

Not to read too much into this, but the word "trust" here is interesting! What is it you're trusting? You say yourself that it's not trust in authority. Other people are important to you, but it seems like you don't lean on them too heavily for your own morality. It seems like you're talking about trust in yourself, and that's the core of a Lion's primary.

You can’t help everyone in the world who needs it, but you wish you could.

I help people when I can and when I see someone who needs me and I choose to walk away I feel guilty. I don't worry about it enough to choose the "It makes me feel like a bad person sometimes," answer.

Fair enough! This doesn't contradict any previous information, so let's keep moving.

Do you listen to your intuition?

This one was fairly simple? Umm it depends, when I have nothing else to go on, yes. Sometimes it's wrong and sometimes it's right. I can trust it with moral decisions most of the time or about certain people. If I get weird vibes, I’ll usually be more wary. Thinking about it now, I’m realizing that I do tend to avoid things that make me feel wrong, and the decisions I’m most assured in usually feel right. I do like to validate my feeling when I can though. I don't value being overly emotional or acting on pure emotion because it can cloud your judgment. I try to validate my feelings with proof before jumping in to things.

Yep, that's a Lion response! Lions can be cautious and want to back up their intuition with evidence, or give decisions time and consideration, but overall they're going to be most confident and stable-feeling when they follow their intuition.

Someone points out a flaw in your logic. Their argument makes sense, but there’s something about it that just bothers you. Do you change your ways because of what they said?

Not right away, no. I would have to go think about it, but it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll change my mind, especially if it's about a moral viewpoint. When it comes to a moral viewpoint, I have usually had an internal debate with myself already. What do I feel is right about this and what is wrong? Unless it really really bothers me and what they pointed out makes me feel like a bad person, I won't change my mind completely. I very firmly believe there is no one yes or no answer to important moral questions. It depends on the circumstances.

That feels very Lion to me, especially the "unless the dilemma makes me feel like a bad person" bit. You have Snakey values, but the source of your moral decision making seems to mostly come from your internal compass.

I’ve taken the quiz multiple times, and read all the primary posts and the ones I've stuck with longest are Snake and Lion. I have thought I was a Bird or a Badger too though.

Please feel free to ignore this if I'm being annoying.

I can see why you landed with the Internal primaries, yeah--and I'm with you, I think you're almost certainly one of those two and you model the other.

I do think you're a Lion who's modeling Snake, though. Your intuition says that Snake ideals are good and worthy, that it's right to be loyal to those you care for--but it sounds to me like you're thinking and talking about it in a very Idealist flavored way.

It's ultimately up to you to decide, but I hope this helps!

--Paint

#sortinghatchats #gryffindor primary #slytherin primary model #slytherin primary #submission #paint speaks #q #sorting yourself

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