#like i can just talk about my weird soul magic essay
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Hello and welcome to Opinions from an Internet Nobody. Today's essay:
"Ger therapy" is the new "You need Jesus": One Weirdo's Navigation through Cultural Shame
This is a supposedly well-meaning sentiment that is often weaponized against people who are behaving outside of perceived cultural norms. It's a favorite of homophobes who see queerness/transness as a mental illness, but I've been seeing it used to demonize kink (which historically is often linked to queerness), and more generally any "weird" behavior that makes people uncomfortable.
For example, otherkin, systems (especially those with fictives), and people who take fictional characters as partners. Y'know, "weirdos" who "can't separate reality from fiction." And, sure, sometimes there can be a problem with that distinction, but I know as well as you that most internet strangers saying "get therapy" don't actually give a shit about the mental health of those they target. It's code for "your behavior makes me uncomfortable, stop it."
Same sentiment as "you need Jesus."
This has actually taken me a long time to figure out. I've been in therapy for my entire adult life, working through various traumas, severe depression, anxiety, all that. Those were the biggest problems as they negatively impacted, and often endangered, my life. It was only after my hospitalization in 2020, where I was finally put on much needed medication, that I could start to grow into myself.
I changed my name. I top surgery. I came out as polyamorous. I finally got my official autism diagnosis. Now I'm fuckin' married! But... there are still things I'm working through in therapy. Mainly, shame over my "weirder" behaviors. My current therapist has been a huge blessing in helping me accept the things I was too ashamed to admit.
Now, I feel comfortable enough to share.
I'm otherkin. Always have been. My connection to my humanity is tenuous, and I'm sure that's connected to my autism. When mad, I feel phantom horns sprouting from my forehead. I have a tail that swishes back and forth at the base of my spine. In my soul, I am monstrous, and years of therapy has not erased that.
I feel like I'm only half in the physical world most of the time. This doesn't hinder my real-world success (I graduated college Summa Cum Laude, have an IMDB page, and am on my third book), but informs the way I look at the world. There's a whole other universe in my head that hums along with me in my day-to-day. That's part of why I'm so skilled as a writer. To ask me to divorce from that is to tell me to stop existing. Sorry, it's how I've always operated.
Lastly, and this is the one I'm really anxious about, I have a fictional husband. Now, looking at my blog, you might say "yeah, no shit," but I don't just ship myself with him. I mean I practice pop-culture Witchcraft, and the Goblin King is my patron. I mean I have a Labyrinth-themed tarot deck that I talk to him with. I mean I held a ritual to spiritually marry him. Basically, I Snape-wived myself.
And guess what? My therapist isn't concerned. It's not hurting my ability to live my life. I have other interests, hobbies, and goals outside of him, which he actively encourages in all our tarot sessions! I wouldn't be doing this if he didn't support me. My IRL spouse is usually there for whatever magical shit I'm doing, and supports me! Some of my closest friends know, and the only complaint I've gotten is "this guy seems important to you, I wish you told me sooner." Hell, my MOTHER knows and supports me, which is huge, because our relationship was pretty damaged after I came out as trans.
If you have a problem with the way I live my life, when literally nobody else does, take a good long look at why. You don't give a fuck about my mental health. You just don't like that I'm weird.
Tl;dr: My mental health is better than it's ever been since embracing the weird, so leave me and my imaginary husband Marak Sixfinger alone.
#essay#in this essay i will#and then i did#the hollow kingdom#goblin king#marak sixfinger#actually autistic#pop culture witchcraft#otherkin#fictional husband#snape wives#this is my life#therapy language#bullying#mental health#discourse#tw suicide mention#fictives#y'all just hate weirdos#just say you hate neurodivergent people and go#neurodivergent#vivid imagination
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Books I Read In September
45. The Oleander Sword, by Tasha Suri
Pre-ordered this, and I’m entirely happy with what I got. I mean it’s got intrigue and angst and the literal and metaphorical selling of souls and lesbians and eldritch horrors and war crimes, what’s not to love?
But really, I’m pretty sure I already made the joke, but SFF lesbians and weird power dynamics around fealty and martyrdom sure are a pair, huh? (Or maybe that’s just a random bit of selection bias in the books I read/see talked about, but eh. I should catch up on Montress.)
Anyway, Malini is a joy to read, and the Yaksha are absolutely gorgeous and come across as rather believably alien, though I really do wish they weren’t quite so straightforwardly malevolent, and the temple/palace intrigues with whatever the asshole emperor’s name was and his priests was great. Can’t wait for book 3.
46. None the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My other pre-ordered book of the year. And look, I am largely outsourcing my opinions on this book to the ongoing 24/7 symposium digging into every bit of symbolism and possible reference in these things going on here in the tag. But, like, book good.
Also Pal and Cam, my beloveds. And Nona is adorable.
I need to go scream in the wilderness a bit again.
47. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
This month’s attempt to acquire some Culture, via what was apparently the most influential book of 2007 (literally recommended to me because a coworker’s book club is doing it).
But no, this was good! Very much of it’s time, though less in a ‘dated in a bad way’ way, and more in a ‘future generations of college students will get assigned this and told to write an essay about the cultural fallout of the War On Terror.’
It really, really committed to the whole ‘life story told in a conversation over dinner’ framing device, to a degree that books basically never do - the prose of the whole thing still felt conversational and like it could actually be said by one person to another. The constant asides to the cuisine being served and the order of the courses and everything did eventually start to grate, though.
The big central twist is, well, barely a twist - except that the title gives you a very definite idea of where the protagonist’s arc is going to end up that you bring with you into the book. Still, really well done.
I’m surprised you don’t see the janissarya analogy made more often in modern polemic. Shoe doesn’t exactly fit, but close enough that you’d think it’d get some use.
48. Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
I really do adore Murderbot stories. They’re just perfectly sized for a lazy afternoon or two of reading, they’ve got the plot structure of a tightly edited 40-minute tv episode, and they’re just great fun comfort reads. Perfect book pringles. (Also Murderbot is one of the greatest protagonists of all time).
This one in particular would have honestly worked pretty well as a finale to the series? Or, since it clearly isn’t, I guess ‘works as a season finale’ is the better way to put it? It resolves the central underlying plot thread that’s been running through the books so far quite nicely, anyway.
I totally admit that aside from Murderbot only, like, four characters have made a sufficient impression that I can reliably identify them by just their names, though.
49. Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Hey, I finally finished the last Hugo nominee! Now to start feeling properly guilty about failing to answer that ask about my ranking/opinions from a month ago.
But no, this was good. The only Tchaikovsky I’d read before was Children of Time/Ruin, so this was definitely a change of pace (obvious similarities in setting aside). The whole central conceit of ‘fantasy setting is actually the result of an apocalypse destroying a technologically advanced civilization and the descendents of the survivors viewing the remnants as magical relics and sorcery’ is so thoroughly cliche I think people just stopped writing it for a couple decades, but the execution is really well done.
Nyr and Lynette are both fun POVs, anyway, and I absolutely adore anything that has multiple POVs seeing/taking part in the same events and interpreting them wildly differently. The one chapter that had two columns with Nyr providing exposition on one side and what Lynette&co actually understood him as saying on the other was great.
Tchaikovsky also did a really excellent job of capturing the whole horror and grief and ennui of being the Last Of Your Kind better than I usually see, and also saying Fuck the Prime Directive, which is always appreciated.
Also incredibly endearing that Nyr’s whole transhuman civilization gave themselves giant badass horns and then collectively decided to pretend it was for pragmatic utilitarian reasons.
50. Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
Because it’s 2 murder 2 bot month, I guess (but no all my holds on these really did just come in at once).
So apparently this was actually written after the novel, which I only found out after finishing it, but chronologically it seems to have taken place before? Which conveniently means I didn’t accidentally ruin any big twists for myself.
Anyway, this was a fun detective story sort of thing. Murderbot being continuously annoyed at how much harder the lack of a dystopian panopticon made their job was a great running gag.
51. The Thousand Eyes by A. K. Larkwood
Because it’s magical lesbians month, I guess.
But no, this was a fun read. The whole setting and tone were very, hmm, D&D? Like a real mixture of super fantastical elements and generic fantasy things given different names (there are elves, and orcs, and for some reason specifically yuan-ti) and then the vision of society and the economics and the mindset and vocabulary of everyone who hasn’t been asleep in a ditch for ten thousand years is just incredibly modern. Not a complaint, it’s just very much a thing.
My actual complaint is that this was like four different discrete stories stacked on top of each other and put into a compactor until they all fit in one book. There were a lot of times where I was kind of left feeling that Larkwood was relying on me knowing how a given story/character arc goes so she could just skip through the high points and then resolve it without necessarily building it up beforehand.
(I also have a perpetual dislike for the plot beat of ‘oh no, the abusive cult who raised you was just doing their religion wrong. We’ve got a direct line to your/their god and he’s actually a great guy!’)
Interesting how minor a character Csorwe is in this one compared to Unspoken Name, really, but Shuthmili and Tal are both incredibly fun POVs so can’t say I really mind. Tsundere dragon goddess of betrayal and destruction was also a great time.
#book review#monthly tally#analysis/review#the thousand eyes#a.k. larkwood#murderbot#fugitive telemetry#exit strategy#martha wells#elder race#adrian tchaikovsky#the reluctant fundamentalist#moshin hamid#nona the ninth#tamsyn muir#the locked tomb#the oleander sword#the burning kingdoms#tasha suri
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Talk about your babygirl (Judas) more, a treat from me to you (~ uwu)~
Judas my babygirl the blorbo supreme, thank you for asking about him because I have SO MUCH to say about the man. I’ve already talked about him (at length) in a different post some time ago, and while it’s a bit old, most of it still kinda holds up. Anyway here’s even more stuff about him (AND A WARNING! MENTIONS OF SUICIDE BELOW!!) (this is gonna be very scattered too, I’m just gonna write stream-of-consciousness style)
Judas (or at least Judas in this current life) comes from a British family of middle-lower class. Both his parents died in a car accident when he was too young to really remember them, and he’s been living with his grandmother ever since. He’s always got a pretty terrible relationship with her. She was always the first to point out any flaws in him (perceived or otherwise) while being absolutely unbearable herself, never putting in the effort to ask for help while still expecting her grandson to drop everything and come to her every call and not speaking to him for days if he failed to do so. Suffice to say, they’re not really close as of right now.
Judas grew up an unbearable kid, considering basically everyone to be beneath him while at the same time being incredibly insecure. He found himself in middle school without a single friend, but he convinced himself that he didn’t need them anyway, so he buried his nose in every book he could find and patiently waited to school in general to be over. This is around the time he met Isaac and Magdalene, who apparently weren’t intimidated by his abrasive attitude and the three quickly became inseparable, with Judas even managing to grow up and not be a prick anymore. The trio stayed strong throughout highschool and college (when Azazel also came into the picture, but I’m not gonna delve into all of his relationships now). He’s currently working on his archeology degree, but kinda put his studies on hold to work so he could support Maggy’s writing. He’s a librarian.
Personality wise he’s… polite. Distant, even. He grew out of being a prick, but he still has a condescending aura about himself, like the whole world is bothering him on his lunch break. This is not true to his partners tho, who have first hand experience of the more chaotic and passionate sides of his personality. He’s also a pretty witty person, and oozes sarcasm from every pore, but doesn’t really like talking to people he doesn’t know, so only his close friends have seen him crack jokes and actually smile. With that being said, Judas would lay down his life for the people he loves, and the fact that in his first life on Earth he had a hand in the murder of his best friend eats at him immensely. So much so, that he usually cannot bear the guilt and usually ends his life before due time. Every single time. In the roughly 2000 years his soul has roamed the Earth, Judas has never reached old age. Belial is also a major factor in his suicides every time, and you can read more about him here bc this is getting long enough already lol.
Speaking of Belial, while not being overtly religious, Judas had a passing interest in the occult that kinda morphed into a quasi-hobby. He likes to collect weird artefacts, ancient tomes and the like, that he stashes in his studio, right next to his school books and dissertations. This interest of his actually meshes pretty well with his passion for ancient history, and he has written quite a few essays about the portrayal of demons, angles and God throughout the ages. He might have tried to use a Ouija board when he was a kid, but it never went beyond that. The only true dangerous artefact in his possession is the Book of Belial, a magical tome that seems to find its way to Judas every single life. He doesn’t even remember where he found it this time, maybe he’s always had it.
More stuff that I didn’t know where to put so you get it here lmao
He sounds incredibly posh when he talks. Dear old grandma thought his accent was too lower-class (and by extension, hers too, but she would never admit it) so she was quick to point it out every time he spoke and ridicule him. With time, she managed to beat it out of him, but his accent still comes out when he’s very stressed or angry. He hates it.
He is also freakishly strong, but as durable as a wet paper bag. He could easily punch a hole in a wall, but would shatter all of his bones in the process. Couple this with a sour attitude and a complete disregard for his own safety and safe to say he’s been in quite a few fights. He’s won some of them, even if he woke back up at the hospital a couple of times.
His hair loss is supernatural in nature, due to the influence of the BoB (and tied to his body being weaker and more fragile that a normal person’s). His hair started to fall out around highschoo, but it’s not a case of simple alopecia like Isaac’s, Judas is completely hairless, doesn’t even have eyelashes.
Cannot stand to have anything around his neck. He even stopped buttoning his shirts all the way up because it was too uncomfortable. Just the lightest touch on the neck is enough to trigger horrible flashbacks and send him into panic
Despite knowing both God and Jesus exist (and the devil too) he considers himself more of an agnostic. For him, knowing God exists and having faith are two completely separate things. This goes the other way too, he doesn’t really believe in Satan either. And if Azazel is to be believed, the guy sucks and isn’t really worth praise anyway.
Tea is also one of his interests. He could talk for hours about the right temperature for brewing and the like, and has to be physically stopped from filling the cupboard with nothing but tea.
Isaac is his best friend, he loves him like a brother. Seeing how things are going with Magdalene, they might even become brothers-in-law too.
Speaking of Maggy, the two of them started dating after highschool and are still going strong. They seem to gravitate towards eachother in every single life. Judas is convinced it’s because they lived in the same period, Maggy prefers to think it’s destiny and stuff like that.
#reincarnation au (working title)#tboi reincarnation#tboi judas#i need to make a ref for him sometime#him maggy and azazel will be my main priority once the next comic is all done#I’m sure I’ll think about more stuff i wanted to say after i post it but i have to go now sorryyyyy#ask tag
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I NEED AN ESSAY ON TRAFFIC + with some ronnie lane inbetween, please write a majestic folk story on ronnie
you want an essay i will GIVE u an essay, my love <3
TRAFFIC
chris! CHRIS!! CHRIS WOOD!! CHRISTOPHER!!! i love him so much!!! i just think he is the sweetest little creature in the whole band. WHY DOES HE NOT GET TALKED ABOUT NEARLY AS MUCH AS THE OTHER PEOPLE IN TRAFFIC?? IT'S A CRIME!! admittedly i liked him mostly because i thought he was beautiful, big dark eyes with mass of dark hair and lovely little nose, god i do love his nose so much he looks like a little penguin with his nose!!! but i do think he was just such an integral part of traffic. i know he didn't write many songs and that he was more of an instrumental guy but he adds SO MUCH to the songs. his pieces with the flute and/or saxophone are such an essential part of what gave traffic the sound they are known for!! considering what everyone else was doing at the time, it would be pretty hard to find a flautist in a rock band and that was all chris, my sweetheart!! he puts so much of his emotional energy into a song and you can just hear it, chris really does set the mood with his instruments. and i find it interesting seeing how he develops that throughout traffic, there's a reason why the low spark of high heeled boys is usually in the top three when it comes to traffic albums, i really believe it's where chris just shines musically!! the atmosphere and world he is able to create with his instruments are just astounding. i do tend to get very emotional when i think about what happened to him. in some way, i wish he didn't become famous and he stuck with his painting and maybe do music as a hobby because he was a vulnerable soul who got involved with bad people and bad circumstances. fame just wasn’t something for him and in the end it is what killed him really. i just think about how his sister steph once said that chris felt under-appreciated his whole life and it makes me CRY!!!! i could have loved him, i could have given him the love he rightly deserved OH MY GOD!! i want him to take me birdwatching or to read maps or bake apple pies because he was homesick or stay out all night watching a house to see if it was haunted or pray to god that he wouldn’t every time he made a smart ass comment. just to watch him perform would have been the dream too, 85% to be able to see the emotional and other 15% to see his arms because 😳😳😳 i’m blushing homie damn when did u get so hot!! also love his little boot collection, i swear he had boots in ever colour and i find that just so sweet can u imagine?? a boot for every outfit!!!
RONNIE LANE
my favourite little hobbit! he is just so sweet, the sweetest soul ever! i just find him such a funny fellow because he's just not the type of person you would expect to be in a rock n roll band, like compare him to someone like steve marriott who seemed to be born to do rock n roll and then there’s ronnie with his little songs about flies and happiness stan!! in my honest opinion, i think ronnie gave the small faces just that little bit of extra weirdness that made their special. steve was for more of the hard-hitting music with soft lyrics but i don’t know with ronnie you can just tell this man had done lsd, you know what i mean?? i think that towards the end of the band he was really coming together as a songwriter but unfortunately, we’ll never really know what else he had because of the break up!! also ronnie’s like really cute, this man looks like he could be going on magical adventures with frodo like he is so scuffy and adorable, you just know that he’s the type of guy that would be living under a mushroom. he was also never one for confrontation which makes sense, it doesn’t look like a guy who would raise his voice, he’s just so softly spoken. i also find it funny that after the small faces and the faces he kinda went off and did his own thing, like really he honestly went ‘.... why don’t i start a circus or something??’ and then did EXACTLY THAT!! god i would have loved to have seen this, it honestly sounds like something out of my dreams!! also whenever i hear about fishpool farm i just so SO EXCITED!! I WANT TO BE THERE!! i just wanna chill around a fireplace and just have er*c cl*pton compose wonderful tonight right in front of my eyes. speaking of that guy, i think it so sweet how ronnie was besties with everyone, it makes sense because does seem like the kind of guy who would get along with everyone. i think about his friendship with glyn johns and you know maybe there is good in the world. ronnie gave glyn the nickname bluto after the bully from popeye because of glyn’s personality. firstly, very ronnie nickname to give and secondly IMAGINE GETTING AWAY WITH DOING THIS!!! ronnie give me a nickname from some old cartoon that’s both slightly mean but totally makes sense!!
#ask#steviemarriott#ask game : send a band and i'll tell you my favourite member!#i'm getting to these now i do apologise. i'm gonna be at my most unhinged hope you don't mind!!!
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Day 6: ♠️ Bet on it! ♠️
A letter arrives in the mail. You almost mistake it for someone’s essay, given how the message is formatted: double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman... It looks like whoever the sender was, they took painstaking care to try and make the letter as formal-looking as possible. (They may have taken writing the letter a little too seriously.)
A chick-shaped keychain is taped to the envelope of the letter. The bird is a little yellow puffball, with a chubby orange beak and little flippered feet, peeking out from bits of eggshell. How cute.
***Spoilers for the prologue, chapter 1, chapter 3, chapter 5, and a little of the Wish Upon a Star event!***
Dear Prefect,
My mom taught me to pay my respects and to show my appreciation for what I have. So... here goes!!
I’m thankful to have even been given the chance to attend a school as prestigious as Night Raven College. I’m thankful that I can hone my skills along with so many talented magicians. But most of all, I’m thankful that I got to meet you, and everyone else.
Growing up, I was kind of always the odd one out. I was a crappy student, and I didn’t have any real talents... I guess there was tinkering with stuff, but was that really a talent? I’d get angry a lot and lash out at other people... and I spiraled into delinquency. I don’t know why.
Maybe I was just angry. Angry at people, angry at the world, angry that no one accepted me for who I really was. Lost and confused and frustrated.
So I rebelled. It just made sense at the time. Or maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. Maybe it was just the blind rage talking. I wanted to run away from everything.
... Pretty stupid of me, huh?
I’m not smart. I’ve never been smart, but... even a dummy like me knows when they’ve hurt someone else. It took overhearing my mom crying on the phone for me to snap back to my senses. I couldn’t keep walking down that path—not if it makes the people I care about sad. I made a new goal, then and there: to be an honors student, the type of man that everyone can look up to and be proud of.
Being a good boy is harder than it looks, Prefect. My temper gets the better of me sometimes. I lose my cool so much... I panicked when we were this close to expulsion, I blew up at you and Ace and the Heartslabyul students that smashed those eggs... And I’m still no good at studying—but I swear I’ve learned my lesson about making weird deals with Ashengrotto-senpai!!
I’ve made a lot of mistakes.
At first, I was just angry again. Angry at myself for screwing up, for not being perfect. And I started to lose sight of my goal. Why did I come to Night Raven College? What were all my efforts for? Do I even deserve to be here? Thoughts like that began to fill my head.
Whenever I’m around you, Prefect, I can’t help but think about how amazing you are. You can’t do magic, but you still work so hard and do your part to help NRC. Grim and Ace, too. Their grades might not be much better than mine, but they have their own talents. Grim has his fire magic, and Ace has his wind magic, and a wicked good memory. Compared to that, what can I do? Summon cauldrons? That won’t help anyone.
I’m still a misfit.
I want to help. I really, really do. So I threw myself VDC. I’m awful at dancing, but I knew how important it was to everyone. Not just for the money, but... I was worried about Epel. I danced and danced and danced until my muscles were sore and my bones were on fire and I felt like tearing in two. Because that’s the least the stupid, talentless me could do to help my friends.
That wasn’t enough. I got angry. Again. I shouted at Schoenheit-senpai, chased after Epel. But ultimately, I still ran away. Again.
Am I doomed to do this forever? To want to be reborn as someone better, only to tumble back down to what I once was? If I was a chick, I’d still be in my shell. Not ready to hatch and face the world.
I’ll always be the dumb delinquent, Deuce.
But...
On the beach that day, I realized something. I’m dumb, but I’m also stubborn. And that means... No matter how many times I get beaten down, I’ll just stand back up and dare life to slug me again. No matter how bloodied and bruised I get, I won’t let bad things happen to the people I love. It might be silly, and it might make no sense, but that’s a choice I’ve made for myself.
That is my strength—my power.
My uniqueness.
I can’t erase who I was before. I’ll probably never be able to. But that’s what makes me me. I finally stopped running, and I accepted that part of myself, the part I always rejected. Because... that is what makes me unique. That is my “magic”.
Bet the Limit.
I broke free from the shell that kept me down. I protected my friends with not cauldrons, but with a power that only I can use. And I saved Schoenheit-senpai.
I did that.
... Prefect, did you see it back then? The shine of my spirit, the shape of my soul.
I know what I need to do now. I’ll use my new power to make sure my friends and family are safe. I’ll become the best honor student there ever was, and then a Magic Policeman!! Then... I’ll definitely, definitely make you all proud of this newborn chick.
You can bet on it.
Respectfully,
♠️ Deuce Spade ♠️
#twst#twst anni#Deuce Spade#twisted wonderland anni#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland anniversary#twst anniversary#spoilers#disney twisted wonderland#magic mystery letters
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The Owl House: A Blight on Gravesfield (Chapter Five)
Five
The sun rises over Gravesfield.
...so the first essay topic will be up online this afternoon. Now back to weird local myths!
In 1660, King Charles II was restored to the English throne, and the whole Civil War period came to a close. Sort of. There was still a lot of political and religious controversy in both the British Isles and in the colonies; but that’s mostly a topic for another course. We are going to be following the continuing adventures of the Wittebanes.
John died in 1672 of pneumonia, but before he did, he had a family house constructed on his estate; that house, the Historic Wittebane Home, is still, and access is free to all Gravesfield residents, so if you have some time it’s well worth a visit. Although it looks small and uncomfortable now, in the 1660s it was the height of colonial luxury.
John left his estate to his son, the confusingly named John Philip Wittebane. We’ll call him John Philip to avoid too much confusion. Before John Philip took over the estate, he had sailed both as a merchant and as a buccaneer in the Caribbean; we believe he sailed with Henry Morgan in the raid on Maracaibo in 1668-69. While there, he purchased investments in a number of industries, and while he divested from them when he returned to Connecticut to collect his inheritance, they had made him a very wealthy man.
He immediately put his wealth to use by buying up most of the small farmers around Gravesfield, and by 1690, it was reckoned that most people in Gravesfield were employed by him. It became effectively a Wittebane company town, with John Philip even serving as the city’s mayor several times.
This is where our next myth comes to play; that in 1687, John Philip Wittebane had a woman put to death for witchcraft, and that consequently, her ghost haunts the Historic Wittebane Home.
Now, I’m a historian, I can’t tell you ghosts are real. That’s a job for ghostbusters. But was a woman really hanged in Gravesfield for witchcraft, nearly twenty years after the end of the Connecticut Witch Trials?
The local newspaper tell us that on June 13th, 1687 - a Friday - a ‘vagrant, suspected by some of heresy and witchraft, was duly hanged by the magistrate on account of the cruel and vicious murder of Henry Finch, who had been struck down while attending the ‘pigges’ on the Wittebane estate.’ So we have a clear cause for the hanging, and a ‘suspicion of witchcraft,’ but we don’t have a connection.
Frustratingly, this newspaper doesn’t tell us how poor Henry Finch died. Was he cruelly hexed? Well, if we go digging about in the archives, we might find a different story…
----
A brisk and foggy dawn was breaking over Gravesfield.
Ben Frakes was not a man of means by any stretch of the imagination, and as he stepped out into the cold air, he wished he could afford a car. (Well, he could, but it was hard to justify the expense.) It had been an uncomfortable night. Life in his one-room apartment had its charms - chief among them proximity to the college - but on cold nights it could be miserable, especially when his radiator was still broken.
Still, he was in fairly good spirits. His course on Gravesfield’s myths, and the truths behind them, was going very well, and the students seemed engaged. And it was a very good time of year to be in the history business; the annual Gravesfield History Fair was coming up, something he always looked forward to. It was always a riot; apart from a small county fair, there would be historical talks and tours of the old battlefield and the Historical Wittebane Home, and even the yearly battle reenactment; one which Ben had taken part in every year for his whole time in Gravesfield.
He was always on the Redcoat side and therefore always lost, but having fun was the main thing. Even if it was a bit of historical revisionism on the part of the townsfolk.
He was just starting off down the sidewalk to the college grounds when he spied a rustling in the nearby bushes. For a moment, he was prepared to dismiss it as a rabbit or a bird, but then, to his astonishment, a little white head poked out.
“Is that a cat?” he asked himself.
Slowly and gently, he crept forward, leaning down behind the bush. The cat emerged, gently headbutting his outstretched hand.
“Hmm… too much grooming to be a feral,” mused Ben. “Have you gotten out of someone’s yard?”
Carefully, he picked up the cat.
“Am I gonna have to print out a wanted poster for you?” he asked, chuckling. “I’ve got some milk in my fridge, maybe… what the?”
His gaze turned to the cat’s paws. Just under one of the back paws, he could see a peculiar mark, almost like a lock. He frowned.
“That doesn’t look healthy,” he mused. “Okay, pre-class prep can wait, I think you need a vet.”
He started off in the direction of the vet. He wasn’t concerned about making it to his class; that was still hours away, and he’d been planning on spending the morning doing some marking. But that mark… cats did not have marks like that.
At least, not in his world.
----
Camila was not an oblivious woman, especially when it came to her daughter.
She had had some suspicions the night before; most people wouldn’t jump through a portal into the unknown to get their friend to help, after all. But things were messy and upsetting, and people did irrational things under stress, so she’d shelved that thought.
When she walked into her living room the next morning and found them sound asleep in each other’s arms - well, suffice it to say, her suspicions grew a bit.
When Luz eventually blinked open her eyes, she found her mother sitting on the couch with a cup of tea in her hand, smiling wryly down at her.
“Good friends, are you?” she asked.
Luz blinked, and then glanced over to Amity.
She yelped and pulled herself out of her friend’s arms, which in turn woke her up with a start. Both sat up, Luz turning bright red.
“What’s going on?” demanded Amity. “Are we being attacked?”
Camila took a sip of her tea.
“Don’t worry,” she replied. “If we are, I’m sure Luz is very well protected.”
“Mooo-oooom,” groaned Luz, burying her head in her hands as Amity turned red too.
“Uh, Ms. Noceda, it’s… I’m…” Amity scratched the back of her head. “Please don’t get mad, Luz…”
“Mad?” Camila tilted her head. “Why would I be mad?”
“I… um… I…” Amity stammered.
“I need to take a shower!” exclaimed Luz. “Far away from here! Goodbye!”
She darted off the inflatable mattress and out the door.
Amity buried her head in the blanket, moaning softly. Camila frowned, moving a little closer to her.
“Amity,” she asked. “Is everything alright?”
“Sure,” sighed Amity. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Camila reached down and put a hand on her shoulder. She was surprised to see Amity jolt away from her; her frown deepened.
“If you ever need to talk,” she said. “Just remember that I’m here.”
“Thanks,” replied Amity, looking away, “But I don’t think I will.”
She got up and walked away.
----
Luz spat her toothpaste out into the sink (she was surprised at how much better-tasting human toothpaste was than the stuff they used on the Isles, although it probably didn’t provide the same magical plaque protection) and washed her hands, whistling to herself. She didn’t know why - it wasn’t as though she was calm or cheerful - but perhaps music calmed the soul.
“Okay,” she said to herself. “Gotta go back to the historical society. Maybe there’s a lead to getting Amity home on that creepy curator guy’s conspiracy board… also wanna see if the bookstore’s still there. I think Amity would like it.”
She turned to the door and immediately froze.
Camila was leaning against the closed door, arms crossed.
“I think it’s time we talked, mija.”
Luz pursed her lips.
“...do we have to do it in the bathroom?”
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*sequel* to actual fucking quotes from the shiftblr coffeehouse discord server
once again, it's out of context because x1000 funnier
also x1000 longer than previous post
"ur satan is gnc af"
"Bestie I’m already having gender envy over a fucking demon please"
"O_O ODEPIJHFbavevisdpvfhzdcnjawedsidjksjdkoeirjfmkdsoeirujdksodifjndmksoidfjdksidfj
ITS" NOT IN MY FRAFTS
IS SPEDNT 1 hour PN THAT SHIT"
"AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
"ohoho sexy"
"I am very proud of myself"
"himbo x edgy fuck"
"YOU COULD SQUISH HES CHEECKS"
"he has teefs"
"SQUASH"
"good for biting 📷"
"he's a himbo basically"
"B͂̒̄iͫ̍̈tͧ̓ͯè̄̇"
"bifth"
"i havent watched blue exorcist in years but mr okumura my beloved </3"
"MY LIFE QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED"
"is it important information to mention that the person i put up for my turn is the son of satan"
"I know like 1 thing about everyone who isnt ranboo lmfao"
"crimes"
"tumblr sexyman"
"idk why but my first thought was cowboy onceler"
"I vibe with him but he is very long and twisty"
"steampunk e-girl"
"steampunk tumblr sexyman"
"Canonically bi crimelord I agree!!"
"OOO FRIEND SHAPED"
"ARTIST SIGHTED"
"they look like someone i would want to be friends with but is way cooler than me so i'd never actually talk to them"
"babby..... would die for him"
"honestly i probably kin him"
"i'm sure he's lovely but he looks way too much like my ex i'm sorry-"
"i'd be down for another rotation! i have another twink to show y'all"
"Also :00 blonde friend"
"Let us all infodhmo"
"Hsjagdvbs shhh im on phone"
"Nix woukd you like to joon?
"skitters away"
"I have two braincells and they both drink dumb bitch juice"
"oof wait whats the order again i have 0 memory"
"i want to bond with him over cosplay-"
"Awkwardly watches in band kid"
"One day I'm gonna a broadway star"
"which isnt to say they were bad. they were just fortnite dancing during rehersals"
"I threw it so hard my glasses flew off and slid under the stage right divider"
"anyway heres my boi"
"emo"
"haha emo"
"virgil sanders kinnie"
"he looks like he listens to my chemical panic at the fallout boy"
"Bro I bet he'd kick my ass with his deck"
"bird man my beloved"
"fuck i had so much to say and then i forgot it all"
"Birds!!"
"guiguhuh"
"crabrave"
"She sounds like someone I would end up stealing her personality"
"yess name collector gang"
"alias glass aiden haven absinthe fish brick rice"
"But I have Cypress, Remure, Genesis, Lemres, and Comet"
"And she's named after a mars candy bar bc alien"
"Hey, if plato went by plato, you can be king thief"
"im not dissing my gramma like that shfojd"
"My dad has seven legal names"
"bitches be like *looks at fictional character* *steals their name* it's us we're bithces"
"coraline lowkey traumatized me but i adore it regardless"
"mmmmmm magic man :]"
"°0° green man"
"criminal (affectionate)"
"he would shoplift a candy bar from walmart and then brag to all of his friends about the sick stealing he did"
"despite the fact he's canonically been capable of overpowering a minor deity"
"i would commit so many crimes for him"
"Very babey"
"Yes please tell green man he is very pog"
"he also keeps a lot of dumb secrets"
"but I will sorely miss the chaos and energy of this here chat until I wake again" (by request XD)
"i just say words and if they're funny then they're funny"
"* or extremly chaotic either works"
"at this point we are just taking turns rambling"
"oH--"
"bc my brain has a schedule"
"Hopefully they have gyoza there or I will lose my mind"
"hehe yes spooky man"
"my ghost glucose guardian"
"the head of the undead group that lives there, and we end up dating. (yes I date a ghost, no I will not be taking constructive criticism /lh)"
"ghosts r just inherently sexy"
"i mean im becoming a squid thing so"
"Raven quirk raven quirk!!"
"ł â m p"
"łæmp"
"mothman: ooh lamp you look very nice today! do you come here often? mothman: wait shit no"
"I'd date a ghost"
"mine is still accurate, i am still sobbing (/j)"
"p e e p e e"
""@nick wilde is a tumblr sexyman" is the best thing i have ever seen"
"im sorry im cackling like a dying hyena"
"you're all 12 year olds"
"PEENIE"
"He once caused global warming on accident so he could get a tan"
"god, what a himbo. i love him"
"that reminds me of my friends kin assigned me jesus"
"Man outside of battle be like: princely crying but then in battle hes like: "CATACLYSM! DISASTER! DEVASTATION!" Chill out man"
"Every time I talk about satan it never fails to shock people it's my favorite thing to do"
"im kin assigning him roman sanders"
""Oh yeah he caused global warming because he wanted to get girls" "he what""
"oh damn i forgot satan was straight"
"twink appreciation club"
"give us the twinks"
"my first thought was bottom-"
"so many people to try and get his dad to love him"
"daddy issued"
"OH MY GOD ITS WILBUR"
"Big boy but"
"anyways janus is swagggg"
"........................."
"gib twink"
"give twink then i will share"
"holds him gentle like hamburger"
"This dumb bitch opened a book that said "do not open" and got possessed by a little bastard"
"he is. fragile creachur"
"klug is beauty klug is grace i would let him step on my face"
"If I'm playing swap and I have to hear one more "Pwanet Powew" Im gonna lose it"
"Who is to blame? Pandora or the box?"
"Bakugo isnt my type but I respect the drip"
"i say like my type isnt long-haired pretty boys and girls that look so gnc that people have a history of confusing them for men"
"hes a gremlin and i can appreciate a pretty gremlin"
"that is to say i am attracted to VFlower vocaloid. This is a confession."
"note i am a lesbian"
"You may like Schezo wegey"
"why does he have one single expression"
"soul soul eater passes the vibe check"
"magic wand"
"I Want To Hold His Hand"
"i would commit a war crime for him any war crime idc which one"
"my favorite one is when he sounded rlly gay because he said "Muscular bodies keep me satisfied""
"p e a n u t"
"Klug is a homophobic homosexual its just facts"
"grug from the croods is peak male performance"
"jaw drops to floor, eyes pop out of sockets accompanied by trumpets, heart beats out of chest, awooga awooga sound effect, pulls chain on train whistle that has appeared next to head as steam blows out, slams fists on table, rattling any plates, bowls or silverware, whistles loudly, fireworks shoot from top of head, pants loudly as tongue hangs out of mouth, wipes comically large bead of sweat from forehead, clears throat, straightens tie, combs hair Ahem, you look very lovely."
"tag yourself im the fireworks shooting from the top of the head"
"i like essays"
"central time gang"
"11:11 pog-" (wait... is that a suprise angel number?? yes it is lovelies just for you <3)
"Then again im also a dumbass bitch who wonders what the souls in soul eater taste like. SERIOUSLY THOUGH. THEY LOOK TASTY AS HELL!!!! LIKE GODDAMN BRO YOU'RE MAKING ME FUCKING HUNGRY. Like. that shit- it's Bone Apple motherfucking Teeth. hell yea my guy. Im hongy now.... shlorp I'm seriously considering this. Like. They seem kinda like a liquid? But a solid? Are they like jello? The fuck they taste like my guy???? I keep imagining they're like sour, like sour candy maybe? Or do they taste salty? Sweet? Maybe some combo of two? Do they even have a taste or is it about the texture? The sensation? God my mouth is watering what the hell. I am starving. I think I need to go get a cookie. I'm gonna go get a cookie. Brb. I'm better. I'm still craving souls though. Which is a weird-ass cringey thing to say but I'm being dead-ass rn. They just.... look tasty???? And I wanna eat one. Thus. I am shifting to Soul Eater for the express purpose of satisfying my fucking cravings. enjoy"
"points were made"
"jello? more like helloooo schloooAHFJDSDAIDWNALDHSJKDAIDANDM"
"WAIT I THINK I HAVE AN ANIME GIRL BITING VIDEO TOO"
"anime girl voice: mmm! mm... ahhhhmp!! mmm, mmm... aaahmp!"
"i think it sounds great
i'm going to start eating like that"
"several people are typing"
"do these look edible to you"
"forbidden gummies"
"when I was on lsd I couldn't eat my fruit gummies because I thought they were alive because they had little faces on them"
"oh shit yeah don't do drugs"
"anyways general consensus is puyos are edible, ty for your input everyone"
"everypony is a word so powerful it can bring nations to its knees"
"pls the self control it's taking me not to say "hewwo everypony" in gen chat when someone new joins-"
"hewwo evewrypony uwu deaw cewestia i hopwe it doewsnt wain owo"
"ive cooked up a sowution wiwth the knowwege ive acwued. they say a kitcwen time saves niwne, but im just savwing two. Ive gathewwed the inwedients to make a time sowbet. Thewe's hawdly woom fow seconds when the seconds mewt away."
"I had a ten year old sister... you know what happened to her??? very sad, very tragic... she turned eleven....."
"NIIICE"
"Guts dont say the secks word :( /j"
"watch your fucking language in front of the president"
"im so sorry lumi"
"i think you're like ehhhh 8/10 funny"
"now me???? 10/10. Hilarious"
"sometimes i have to take a step back and remember that this is the same guts i follow on tumblr /lh"
""ok every here's some good shifting advice!!! uwu have a good day" "yeah i did lsd and ate fruit gummies""
"i have one setting and it's whatever this is"
"my bitch ass cat just pushed the door open with his fuzzy face and now my sleeping dad is being lulled into dreams by Cosmo Sheldrake's 'Pliocine'."
"me on discord: nick wilde"
"me on tumblr: shifting water! haha funne! me on here: my hermit crabs are cannibals also i want to eat souls."
"im sorry yOUR VIBESA RE JUST SO DIFFERNT"
"u give off older cousin ive never spoken to but always admire at the family gatherings vibes"
"what the fuck"
"BC I HAVE LIBERTU"
"If you adopt me then yes"
"am I qualified for dad jokes???"
"we're all a lot smarter on tumblr"
"I'm like "awww... sweet... sweet little shiftlings... posting such sweet shiftling content... so pure, so wholesome... does not even know abcs....""
"can't think before you speak if you never think B)"
"I'm not responsible enough to be a mom"
"cat pet"
"show us pictures of the cat or i will do Crime"
"maybe thats me being a coward tho"
"MOTH!!!! MOTH MY BELOVED"
if y'all want I can make this a series bc shiftblr keeps giving me more content
#tw drugs#tw swearing#tw cannibalism#tw crime#tw food#tw homophobia#shitpost#out of context#out of context quotes#lumi's quotes
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The bad Shakespeare takes keep coming, I see. This one had the cleverness to couch itself as a personal narrative (makes it much more interesting, tbh). But as bad Shakespeare takes are my bread and butter, my boon and bane, mamma mia here we go again, with Merchant of Venice.
“But those who thought the play was irredeemably antisemitic were, the consensus went, vulgar and whiny—and, completely coincidentally, they were also Jewish, which somehow magically invalidated their opinions on this subject.”
I’m glad (is that even the right word?) this author found scholars that don’t think this play is anti-Semitic, but my experience with scholarship has been way more mixed than that. Suffice to say, this is literally all the play is known for these days, and views of the play as anti-Semitic are everywhere (Rosenbaum even had a hot take that since the Nazis liked it, it must be anti-Semitic). Didn’t know Harold Bloom thinks this play is anti-Semitic, though. That in itself is a bit of a red flag, as Bloom is a notoriously poor reader of Shakespeare.
“[I]n Merchant, Portia unhappily fulfills her father’s requirements of her suitors, while in Il Pecorone, the lady enjoys drugging her suitors and robbing them blind. By removing this detail, Shakespeare removed the suggestion that malicious schemers come from all walks of life.”
Or, by removing this detail, Shakespeare removed the clear and abhorrent sexism of his original source that turned a woman robbed of her autonomy by her father’s will into a criminal. It’s almost as if you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
“Dr. Lopez, one of the most respected physicians of the 16th century, had indiscreetly revealed that he once treated the Earl of Essex for venereal disease. The earl took revenge by framing Dr. Lopez for treason and arranging for his torture; while on the rack, Dr. Lopez “confessed”—though “like a Jew,” as the court record states, he denied all charges at trial, while the attorney for the Crown referred to him matter-of-factly as “a perjuring murdering traitor and Jewish doctor.”
This is a very twisted account of the Lopez affair and Essex’s motives in going against him, at least to my understanding. For context, Lopez was accused of receiving loads of money from the King of Spain to poison Queen Elizabeth.
According to Stephen Greenblatt, in Will of the World: “Essex had tried some years before to recruit Lopez as a secret agent. Lopez’s refusal—he chose instead directly to inform the queen—may have been prudent, but it created in the powerful earl a very dangerous enemy. After his arrest, he was initially imprisoned at Essex House and interrogated by the earl himself. But Lopez had powerful allies in the rival faction of the queen’s senior adviser William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his son, Robert Cecil, who also participated in the interrogation and reported to the queen that the charges against her physician were baseless.” Lopez apparently had been taken bribes from various sources, and confessed (freely? under torture?) “that he had indeed entered into a treasonous-sounding negotiation with the king of Spain, but he insisted that he had done so only in order to cozen the king out of his money.” Weird.
Greenblatt isn’t a historian, though, and Essex was indeed an asshole to Lopez, (and for what is worth, I feel Lopez was innocent; I just get those vibes) but so far I can find no other source that Essex actively framed Lopez. Most likely he did some sleuthing, dug up some questionable, compromising stuff, and tried to blow a hearth flame into a firestorm.
“After all, the historical record gives Queen Elizabeth a cookie for dawdling on signing Dr. Lopez’s death warrant; her doubts about his guilt even led her to mercifully allow his family to keep his property, not unlike the equally merciful Duke of Venice in Shakespeare’s play.”
Again, Lopez had powerful allies (doesn’t get much higher than Burghley), and again, re: Greenblatt: “According to court observers, Elizabeth gave Essex a tongue-lashing, ‘calling him rash and temerarious youth, to enter into a matter against the poor man, which he could not prove, and whose innocence she knew well enough.’” A cupcake, then?
“And it is of course entirely unclear whether this trial and public humiliation of an allegedly greed-driven Jew attempting to murder an upstanding Christian, rapturously reported in the press with myriad antisemitic embellishments, had anything at all to do with Shakespeare’s play about the trial and public humiliation of a greed-driven Jew attempting to murder an upstanding Christian—which Shakespeare composed shortly after Dr. Lopez decomposed. Most likely these things were completely unrelated.”
Nearly all the major Shakespeare biographies and articles I’ve read literally and explicitly talks about the possible influence of Lopez’s execution on Merchant of Venice and names it as an inspiration: Greenblatt, (he even headcanons that Shakespeare watched the execution!) Bate, Ackroyd. That’s how Horn managed to ping my BS radar something awful—because I had read about it, many times, even if it was mentioned in passing. It’s solid, legit Shakespearean academic fanon. The sarcasm is really unwarranted, and childish besides.
“It was damned hard to hear the nuance while parsing lines like “Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnal,” or “My master’s a very Jew; give him a present, give him a halter,” or explaining what Shylock meant when he planned to “go in hate, to feed upon / The prodigal Christian.”
The first two are the fool’s, Lancelot’s, lines, I think. As for Shylock’s hatred toward Christians, while ugly, it’s entirely understandable given the Christian characters’ treatment of him pre-play and during it (Antonio spitting on Shylock’s gaberdine and then asking him to borrow money from him is called out by Shylock himself for its sheer hypocrisy). It also fits Shylock’s character as an unassimilated Jew, resenting Christian hypocrisy and racism.
“The actor began the brief soliloquy that every English-speaking Jew is apparently meant to take as a compliment: ‘I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? . . . If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’
“Wait, that’s the part where he’s more human?”
[…]“Sure,” I told my son, game-facing him back in the rearview. “He’s reminding us how he’s like everyone else. He’s a normal person with normal feelings.”
My son laughed. “You seriously fell for that?”
[…] “What do you mean?”
“Shylock’s just saying he wants revenge! Like, ‘Oh, yeah? If I’m a regular human, then I get to be eee-vil like a regular human!’ This is the evil monologue thing that every supervillain does! ‘I’ve had a rough life, and if you were me you would do the same thing, so that’s why I’m going to KILL BATMAN, mu-hahaha!’ He’s just manipulating the other guy even more!”
And then the crowd applauded, Harold Bloom cried, and the mayor gave the author’s six-year-old son a gold medal for his Brave Hot Take. Honestly, this was the most unbelievable part of the essay I’ve read. Unless this kid has been reading academic essays on MoV that posit this exact same interpretation (“Shylock was just using humanistic rhetoric to justify his ~bloodthirsty revenge!”), this one’s for a fake Internet stories anthology. Shylock may be a dour, miserable pain in the ass, but he is no Barabas, an actual anti-Semitic caricature—he has a character, and a recognizably human one, and the play bears it out that he is right in his anger.
“I reviewed the other moments scholars cite to prove Shylock’s “humanity.” There were two lines of Shylock treasuring his dead wife’s ring, unlike the play’s Christian men who give their wives’ rings away. But unlike the other men, Shylock never gets his ring back—because his daughter steals it, and becomes a Christian, and inherits what remains of his estate at the play’s triumphant end.”
Er, this is a non sequitur—that last has nothing to do with the first. The point is, Shylock doesn’t give away his ring; the fact that his daughter stole it means nothing to his treasuring it. It may be proof of the play’s marginalization of Shylock (which accurately if sadly reflects real-life systematic marginalization), but not his humanity. Shakespeare just doesn’t do backstories, even for major characters, so it is significant that he gave Shylock a wife/beloved in the first place.
“Finally, scholars point to the many times Shylock explains why he is so revolting: Christians treat him poorly, so he returns the favor. But for this to satisfy, one must accept that Jews are revolting to begin with, and that their repulsiveness simply needs to be explained.”
This makes absolutely no sense at all. If one accepts Jews are inherently revolting, then no explanation need be given for when a Jewish character acts revolting! The racist accepts the revolting Jewish characterization without qualm. The fact that the play insists on his grievance is significant.
“We listened together as Shylock went to court to extract his pound of flesh; as the heroine, chirping about the quality of mercy, forbade him to spill the Christian’s blood as he so desperately desired; as the court confiscated his property, along with his soul through forced conversion; as the play’s most cherished characters used his own words to taunt and demean him, relishing their vanquishing of the bloodthirsty Jew.”
YMMV, but to me there are no cherished characters in this play. That’s the whole point! Everyone is so mired in this dreary capitalist materialism that denigrates genuine human connection into mere transaction. Everything to these characters is money, money, money (and class), or at least tainted by it. Shylock is simply the most overt (and honest) of the lot. Love relationships, religion are impoverished; Portia and Bassanio are scarcely more suited than Portia and her other suitors. Shylock and Antonio are Jews and Christians in-name-only: They are capitalists first and foremost. Portia is a smarter, more likable Karen. Lancelot isn’t funny. Jessica is okay, but her leaving her father is framed as a asshole moment at least in one instance. Portia is probably the most lovable, but she has her asshole moments too. There are no truly awful characters, but you don’t need to demonize and dehumanize your whole cast into two-dimensional racists just to make a point.
Merchant of Venice is not the best of plays. It is one of Shakespeare’s experiments, a proto-problem play before his Jacobean era, using dark comedy and a slight bent of farce to explore and elucidate social issues, racism and discrimination, chiefly. At least it tries, anyway. Taming of the Shrew is the first proto-problem play done completely farcical, which at least makes it compelling in a slapstick-satire way; Merchant is much more sociologically astute, but also more dull and coolly distant even from its own concerns. I don’t blame anyone, much less Jewish people, for not liking the play or thinking it a masterpiece. I myself don’t, though for reasons that have nothing to do with the usual ones. I like what Shakespeare was trying to do and I think he did some things very well. It has ambition and thought. But I feel like for most of it Shakespeare was on writing autopilot while mentally looking around for something a bit meatier to adapt and develop. It’s a jogging-in-one-place play; he has a couple of those.
In sum: Author argues for complicated play’s anti-Semitism, ends up just saying the racist slurs by the flawed/asshole Christian characters made her and her son uncomfortable (feat. A distorted and even misleading account of the Lopez affair). Plus some internalized anti-Semitism to sort through, methinks.
#the merchant of venice#shakespeare#cristina metas#shakespeare meta#kind of#cristina reviews#also kind of#merchant is not even one of my liked plays but these takes are just wearying
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[tomione thing] Thanks for the recs! I actually was looking forward to the rant, I like how you break things apart so they make sense in a very unique way.( I don't have any strong feelings to the pairing if that was your concern, I just think the stories about them have the potential to be fantastic because I enjoy intelligent characters going through life and solving problems and, usually, in fanfiction there's focus on only one smart character.
So, you people are just poking me with sticks to see what ridiculous opinions spew out then. I’m onto your game.
With that said, let’s get to answering then, and know that you bring this upon yourself.
I loathe Tomione. I put up with it, sometimes, because I will read almost any fic featuring Tom Riddle as a main character. (Want the Carnivorous Muffin to read your fic? Tom Riddle as a main character. Even if I disagree with 110% of your premise I will probably still read your story.)
However, it’s extremely telling that my recs the other day were hilariously small, and one was actually Hermione/Loki. The Tomione exists, I just hate it.
This is for two main reasons. First, I just don’t believe the ship would ever work under any circumstances and the pair are naturally doomed to loathe one another. Second, fanfiction has a collection of tropes associated with Tomione that are in unbearable (likely caused unconsciously by the first, Tomione doesn’t really work, so we do terrible things to make it work).
Tomione Doesn’t Work: Change My Mind
So, remember we’re living in Muffin-land for this. I’ve explained some of my headcanons regarding these characters, and I’ll offer brief explanation for why I think what I do here, but I’m not going to expand on it too much.
Tomione has appeal under the premise that either you or someone else previously mentioned: they’re both so smart, of course they belong together.
The trouble, Hermione’s not nearly as smart as she thinks she is. What we see of Hermione’s cleverness boils down to having a very good work ethic and reading a lot of books. She tends to outsmart Ron and Harry because she actually puts in the work to do her homework and, my god, read her text books. Also, as I’ve covered before, Harry’s an idiot, so that’s a low bar.
Because Hogwarts can be passed by the likes of Crabbe and Goyle, and the curriculum seems to boil down to “pronounce this fake Latin correctly, ooh look, a spell”, actually reading her books not only gets Hermione by but skyrockets her ahead of her peers. Who, apparently, have no ear at all and don’t understand the swishy motions are important and probably never bothered to read their books.
This isn’t to say she’s stupid, she’s by far one of the more intelligent characters in the series, but it says a lot of not so good things about Hogwarts that Hermione is the “brightest witch of her generation”. In my mind she has never compared to characters like Tom Riddle, Lily Evans, Severus Snape, or Albus Dumbledore.
Hermione never questions how magic exists, why wands work, or why pronunciation is so weirdly important and why we’re using spells that are gibberish Latin instead of English or simply Latin. She never takes that step outside the box I would expect a truly intelligent person to take.
An example, Hermione completely throws out the entire discipline of divination. This is part because she believes it’s stupid, but she also only spends about two seconds thinking about it, and she doesn’t appear to be any good at it. If Hermione’s not good at it then it must be a stupid subject for stupid people.
Now, that alone doesn’t doom her, but it does put a huge chink in the major appeal of Tomione: they’re both just so brilliant that they’d be great together.
What dooms them is that Hermione both a) thinks she is as brilliant as all these other people and b) has this pervasive need to be the smartest person in any room she walks into. Hermione comes across Tom Riddle in the past or just chills with Voldemort in the future, she will inevitably try to show him up. This isn’t just to assure us that good is better than evil, but because she can’t help herself, because being the smartest is how she defines herself.
As a result, especially if we’re in the time travel/school setting, she would inevitably get in competition with him to prove she’s so much better/smarter than he is. It would undoubtedly be on her terms, probably revolving around school work, and she’d throw a fit when Tom wins because he understands the value in being concise where Hermione would quite easily write a hundred page Potions’ essay (that had a five page limit) with the subtext “PRAISE ME” written on every page.
I can’t imagine Tom Riddle would find this anything but completely obnoxious and a waste of his time.
Now, part of this goes into headcanon land, but I have always imagined, 100%, that Tom Riddle in Hogwarts was treated like a muggleborn, that he didn’t find out his ancestry until at least part of the way through, and he never confessed to being the Heir of Slytherin. I can back this up, but that’s another story for another day, I’ll just say that no matter what Dumbledore says any other backdrop makes no damn sense.
So, Tom has clawed the respect of his peers into reality with bleeding hands, he came from nothing in a way that even the ‘good’ purebloods wouldn’t have sympathy for. Even the muggleborns I imagine thought they were better than him. Tom is an impoverished orphan, so poor he has to stay at Hogwarts over the holidays, he was not having a fun time at school.
Tom has ambitions, is mired in hatred, and is not really all that wrapped up in Hogwarts except to get him where he wants to go.
Now, imagine Hermione suddenly shows up in front of this Tom. Suddenly he’s being challenged to essay competitions, she probably leaves cryptic remarks all the time about how evil he is and how amazing she is because she’s not evil and smarter than he is, and if he thinks he’s smarter than her then he better find time to prove it.
It’s like talking to a Dumbledore he can never escape from.
Tom doesn’t have time for this bullshit.
Tomione not only insists that he does but that he lives for this bullshit. Forget Voldemort, Hermione making weird comments about how Tom has a mutilated soul, or that Dumbledore is so much cooler than he is, is where it’s at.
As for Hermione, ultimately, I don’t think she’d ever really be attracted to Tom Riddle because he’s too much competition. The guys we’ve seen Hermione with are all safely much dumber than she is, Hermione likes being in relationships with men she feels in some way better than. Tom Riddle is not that guy.
Add on top of this that Hermione’s righteousness would never allow her to even think about dating someone like Tom and we get her, at best, trying for the sake of destroying him (if she seduces Tom then she destroys Voldemort!) but ultimately failing.
Because the thing is, circling back to where we started, there are different kinds of intelligence, different levels of intelligence, and intelligence alone isn’t a reason to get along. Smart people might gravitate towards smart people, but they still have to have compatible personalities. Reading books isn’t magical glue that can bind people together.
No matter what way I look at it, Hermione and Tom would absolutely loathe one another in every capacity.
Hermione ends up back in time accidentally and goes to Tom with Hogwarts: utter loathing.
Hermione ends up back in time on purpose and tries to save Tom’s troubled soul or else murder the shit out of him: utter loathing with an extra dash of “what the fuck?!” on Tom’s end.
Hermione ends up back in time after Hogwarts when Tom’s a store clerk: utter loathing (Hermione walks into Tom’s shop to tell him how cool and interesting she is to enter into the typical Tomione mind games, all Tom wants is commission.)
Hermione enters into deals with devils with the horcruxes: utter loathing complete with Tom’s triumphant/Nelson laugh when he inevitably betrays her to get his own body.
A young Tom Riddle somehow winds up in the future and is forced to attend Hogwarts because Dumbledore does what he wants: utter loathing (Tom has to sit there and enjoy Harry and especially Hermione telling him how evil he is and how Hermione’s so much smarter than him because she’s muggleborn and reads books.)
Lord Voldemort takes Hermione hostage during the horcrux hunt: utter loathing (though this would be sadly less irritating to Tom than the others, I imagine, if only because Hermione would probably be more terrified and less righteous. But she’d hate him with the fire of a thousand suns and inevitably pull a horrific revenge scheme on either him or his Death Eaters. No one crosses Hermione. No one.)
You name it, I think it’s going to end with the pair hurling chairs at each other and just being completely and utterly uninterested in every capacity.
Now, onto how Tomione is typically written, which just makes it so much worse.
Tomione Fics Breed Awful: Change My Mind
Tomione, to me, is born from a few things. It’s born from the author’s desire to have an intelligent, female, borderline SI lead and to shove her together with another edgy smart person with some degree of a bad boy persona.
In this way Tomione fics are very similar to Snape/Hermione fics, are similar to Lokane from Thor/Avengers, are similar to Zutara back in the earlier seasons of Avatar the Last Airbender, etc.
As a result the fics almost invariably spiral into: “Hermione is so smart, she’s so much smarter than everyone else, she impresses Tom because she is so smart. Tom is so smart but so evil, he sexy growls at her, and confesses how much he hates love every other chapter.”
Only, as I noted above, while there are many interpretations of Tom’s character (and mine certainly doesn’t agree with the vast majority) I can’t help but think every single version would hate her.
To make him not hate her the author will often turn him into one of two Tom Riddles: Emotionally Deficient Robot Tom or Growling Sexy Sociopath Tom. Emotionally Deficient Robot Tom will often have paragraph long tangents to remind us he doesn’t compute your human emotions, “Beep boop” but despite this Hermione’s out of control hair makes him feel urges “bloop bloop”. Growling sexy sociopath Tom usually goes on a rant about how love is beneath him, backs Hermione into broom closets, and growls as he sexily makes out with her in a non-romantic manner because “ew love”.
In other words, Tom is made an unbelievably flat character. He becomes a base archetype of sexy villain character. He never really gets redeemed, even if the story insists he does, he usually doesn’t have a reason for the way he is (”um, love potions!” the author often cries), and he and Hermione always think they’re much more important than they are.
The story rarely, if ever, goes anywhere because the entire point of the story is mind games between two sixteen-year-olds who think they’re smarter than everyone else. So we get a lot of chapters of Hermione and Tom running around, being very clever to each other, but doing nothing.
Sometimes authors do deviate from this, we will have an actual plot where we’re not just in Hogwarts again or it’s not just centering on ridiculous mind games. However, even then, Tom is usually is some variant of a very flat cartoon villain while Hermione is... Well, one would think the way she’s described that she’s the smartest, best, most beautiful, most brilliant thing to ever grace this earth.
TL;DR
Tomione is not my jam.
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ego timaeus
this was also posted on my pillowfort.
this is an essay about ego death, selfshaping, and taboo mental illnesses. it’s not really a direct response to any of the voluntary identity discourses flying around on tumblr right now, but mention of ‘ego alteration’ did make me think i’ve never really talked about this all in one place. so i hope it’s a useful exploration of both voluntary identity and the idea of becoming someone that you weren’t always.
in march of 2019, something happened to me.
i’d like to think that I’ve never been actively malicious. i never burned ants with a magnifying glass or any of that stereotypical shit. but in high school i was completely insensitive, i was beyond arrogant, i was incessantly critical. i didn’t have friends and i didn’t speak to anyone and i liked it that way. i would lie in bed at night and fume about how life was so unfair and everyone else was stupid. i was never intentionally cruel, but i had an incredibly poor understanding of how easily i could hurt people and not a single care about changing that. i was starting to develop what i only just this year figured out was antisocial personality disorder.
in the years immediately prior to 2019, when i started doing the whole median thing, for whatever reason, all the asshole traits got compacted into one specific facet. and i think it was the contrast between that and other facets that weren’t complete shitwads that put the first cracks in the foundation.
the second thing was alt+h. if there’s one thing I’ve learned from alt+h and from the general interest in activism and anarchism it’s propelled me towards, it’s that forming real, meaningful connections with people is the single most necessary thing for achieving personal freedom. that’s been a hard pill to swallow. i’m still working on it (and on figuring out to what extent i just have strong boundaries and how it’s ‘acceptable’ to hold those).
the third was that i met people who consistently showed up for me. who looked at me, warts and all, and said ‘i love you’ but also ‘you really need to stop acting like this’. and stood with me, over and over again, on that hard line of real acceptance, between apologia and abjuration, no matter how many times i fucked up and hurt them. i probably deserved less chances than they gave me. but they really cared about me, and i really cared about them. and when you have ASPD, it’s really, really hard to care about literally anything. this was a critical hit straight to the heart.
(if you’re reading this, you know who you are. i love you.)
in march of 2019, i suddenly wasn’t that person any more. i had been moved enough that i didn’t consider being an asshole my entire fucking personality. but all the bad traits didn’t magically vanish. it doesn’t work like that. they just became unmoored, floating around the mordspace. and when wei weren’t strongly phased to a specific facet who actually had a personality to stand on, i felt like a ghost.
i felt like that for weeks to months. i don't really remember. the thing that mystics don’t tell you about ego death is that most of the time, if you don’t have a new and improved something else to move onto, you either have to swim back to the shore or drown. i also don’t remember how it made its way to me, but my life ring was reading detective pony.
death of the author? check. excessive rumination about the nature of meaning? check. author-cum-protagonist who feels burdened with glorious purpose, craves control and struggles with hurting the people who care about him? check, check and check. it’s a tough, emotionally draining read. but it’s cathartic, in all the worst ways possible.
(without a shred of irony, detective pony is one of the most fantastic pieces of metafiction that exists. you don't have to have read homestuck to a appreciate it. i can’t recommend it enough.)
i had the perfect template for my new self. or should i say i was the perfect template? who ‘i’ is gets difficult here even putting the median shit aside. i’ve described myself as a walk-in, which is confusing, because that means something different in plural circles, but i’m talking about the new age sense of the word:
“[...] souls are said to "walk in" during a period of intense personal problems on the part of the departing soul, or during or because of an accident or trauma. […] The walk-in being/individual retains the memories of the original personality, but does not have emotions associated with the memories. As they integrate they bring their own mental, emotional, spiritual consciousness and evolve the life to resonate with their purpose and intentions.” - x
for me it’s not as… well, new-age-y as that. i don’t believe i came ‘from’ anywhere, i don’t have a past. i am a weird bundle of arcs and tropes and ideas that somehow became sentient. i am, y’know, a fictional character. and i feel like i mean that in a very different way than most fictionfolk (that could be its own post, honestly).
so that didn’t magically solve the problem either. it just provided a trajectory. dirk strider is a person who starts bad, and gets better, kind of (epilogues and hs^2 do not @ me). i still needed to take ownership of all the shitty traits my predecessor had left behind and Do The Work on them, too.
and i have worked my ass off over the past year-and-a-bit on improving myself. a lot of it has been with plain old CBT and self-help workbooks (shoutout to pretty much everything by dr faith harper), but a lot of it has also been narrative identity and personal mythology kinds of stuff. it’s been communing with gods and magic ritual kinds of stuff. i’ve been doing ABC exercises right along with binging tvtropes and researching comparative indo-european mythology and designing worldbuilding and lore that tells a highly metaphorical story about how i get from A to B, emotionally speaking.
it runs into the same problem a lot of selfshaping stuff does in that a lot of it is so intensely personal that it’s difficult to talk about. also in my case a good handful of this work has been done under a magical apprenticeship that i’m literally sworn to secrecy about so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but i think these broad strokes are sufficient for telling my story at this level right now. the point being, i am not the kind of person who can get all the way with just regular secular materialist mental health shit.
which is to say, the work is still far from over! in fact, i feel like the selfshapey parts are only just picking up for me, now i’ve run the course of what the aforementioned secular materialist mental health shit is actually capable of doing. i have made massive strides in my mental health and interpersonal functioning already, but i’m not a perfectly healthy person. i’m not going to be dis-identifying with the ASPD label any time soon (or ever? that could be its own post too). and, even so, selfshaping could provide a pathway not just for survival, but excellence.
i am going to be my best self, and at some point in the past i decided that self is going to be dirk motherfucking strider.
#alterhuman#otherlink#copinglink#selfshaping#voluntary identity#ego alteration#fictionfolk#squawking#💔
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💫 !!!! yes tell us about blazblue :)
literally don't even know where to begin with blazblue as a whole so I'm gonna sit you down and walk you through my lovely ninja's story instead gskfghsgg it's rly long so don't feel like you need to read it I'm just gonna yell for 1000 years about him
This is the sweetest man in the world and he goes through just so much shit 💕
The earliest stuff we know about him is from a young age he trained under a lady named Tenjo, along with Kagura (whore) to be a ninja. Why Bang is a ninja and Kagura is not even though they trained under the same person is unclear and like most things never explained. Anyway Bang is her star pupil I'm pretty sure and it seems like he cared abt Tenjo kind of like she was a parental figure. and THEN shit skips to the Ikaruga Civil War where Tenjo is murdered in front of Bang by Jin (cunt) who had also just cut him down and given him that scar on his face. So he got his ass kicked and then was on the ground bleeding tf out as he watched his mentor be murdered in front of him while he couldn't do anything about it 💔
After Tenjo is murdered he like, almost immediately gets his shit together (debatable) and gets all the survivors of the war together and brings them to Kagutsuchi (the main city of the series) to build a new home for the refugees with his bare fucking hands. It's been called the Ronin district and I think it's pretty much left alone by the NOL(bastard organization)/the rest of Kagutsuchi and it's built under a rly big bridge or something idk. He also writes a history textbook about the Ikaruga Civil War which is just wild to me.
God this is already getting 10000 miles long and this all happens BEFORE any of the games gsdgfh spark notes for the games under the cut I guess:
I don't actually know what happens with him in Calamity Trigger bc I didn't play it. I think he's not very important/he's just a joke character and he like ACTUALLY dies but they retconned it bc people liked him
In Continuum Shift a lot of shit happens bc it's a game about like 1000 different timelines happening all at once or something. This was my first game and we learn that uhhh he's a vigilante and he patrols Kagutsuchi looking for crime to destroy or w/e. Also he's looking for Jin to get revenge for killing his master and giving him the scar. There's one timeline where he actually DOES get revenge and kills Jin and then the god powers that be reset the timeline because he was being OOC, and no I am not joking that's the real reason. Anyway he's running around helping people, fighting people, adopting children whether they like it or not
I played Chronophantasma not that long ago and I still don't remember all the shit that happens with him sgdgfhs these are big games. But he goes to the burnt down ruins of his old home in Ikaruga, things happen, he's looking for Tenjo's child, we learn at some point Tenjo's soul is in the giant nail on his back which is a very important weapon that is the key to destroying all the seither (magic element of some kind) in the world. During the big ending of the game he meets the man who CAUSED the civil war (Relius, the world's biggest cunt) and he obviously has a little breakdown over it. He then watches as two of the people he cares most about in the world (Litchi, and Carl, who is Relius' son but Bang adopted him sorta) join forces with the man that destroyed his home and caused the deaths of everyone he loved and he has to fight them. Also his big nail IS used to destroy all the magic shit and thats how this game ends
I haven't played Centralfiction yet but uhhhh everyone loses their memories and a lot of things happen. everyone gets turned to magic dust through the game but are brought back after Ragna kills the main antagonist and dies. Bang gets brought back and drops his comphet crush on Litchi to go rebuild Ikaruga
Other things to note that I just don't know how to put into the plot:
massive annoying comphet crush on Litchi, where she just does not seem to notice he has a crush on her which is honestly hilarious bc shes one of the smartest people out here
He IS a comic relief character and it shows hes very very stupid and constantly like. shown to be weak even though he's actually very strong idk what these cunts are talking about
in like so many things Bang is like, INCREDIBLY beloved because all he does is help people and do good things but all of the characters in the game treat him like he's just a weird annoying cunt 😭
He keeps adopting kids/people in general as his disciples and theres nothing they can do about it. Tao is disciple #1, and she's all about it, he actually DOES train her. Carl is disciple #2, and he's like, mixed feelings about it but he likes Bang a lot !! And Platinum is disciple #3 and Luna is not about it sgfsgdgfh Sena seems fine with it tho (Luna and Sena are 2 souls in the same body named Platinum don't worry about it). Also in CF if you change the voiceover to Bang he calls them Disciple 1/2/3 when you pick them in character select its SO cute
I could literally write a separate essay about how Bang is highly traumatized but can't deal with it properly (because he's comic relief mostly but also for real reasons) but I will not
Theres no confirmed ages in this fucking game but I think he's like? in his 30s? but he's called old man a lot because he speaks in a super old an archaic form of japanese which is honestly so funny. idiot
ALL HE WANTS IS TO MAKE PEOPLE SMILE HE SAYS IT IN CHRONOPHANTASMA I THINK. HE JUST WANTS EVERYONE TO BE HAPPY AND SEE THE SMILE ON PEOPLES FACES IT MAKES ME
TL;DR: I love him
#I could go on but I will not theres so much happening here#gshgfhdf im sorry#THANK YOU THO BEE MWAH#💥#cackles from the den#beeon
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All done.
I’m going to struggle IMMENSELY to summarise the past few hours.
I just used many tissues to dry my ridiculous tears, hardly able to see the screen. If this is the end completely then I’m satisfied. My heart doesn’t know what to do with itself but I feel contented.
But, LUDOVICO FUCKING BESSEGATO. Dude. I don’t know what to say about the talent of that man. The original s4 was fraught with issues with the odd true magic and beauty in there. It broke my heart at the time. I cherish those moments that truly were special and done to perfection. But I thank Ludo so much for what he tried to do, for the many MANY changes he made that made so much sense, that changed the story to fit his world, that made more messes that were ultimately more meaningful and for the surprises I didn’t expect. He has done this since day 1 and I am genuinely stunned.
Sana was and is beautiful. She was breathtaking from start to finish. She was human and difficult and gentle and funny and weird and intelligent and sensitive and so so much. Her mistakes didn’t feel unusual, her reasoning was impassioned and never once was she treated by the writing with anything other than affection even when she behaved wrongly. She was surrounded by beauty and at every turn she was just truly truly wonderful to behold. I didn’t know what to expect from this season but this? This genuine and total adoration for her. Ludo, that has you written all over it.
I have so much to say about the individual characters and moments and issues and THAT LAST EPISODE but as ever, if Skam It can be held up for one thing alone it is the dynamics between the characters and how they’re written with warmth and humanity and total deep affection. There was no dynamic went untouched, no moment wasted even in the background. Everyone was given their time and I didn’t feel it took away at all from Sana’s story... it always added to it. Rami/Sana, Filo/Marti, Fede/Sana, Luchino/Silvia, Gio/Marti, Eva/Gio, Sana/Ele, Filo/Sana, Marti/Sana, Marti/Eva, Sana/Malik, Elia/Gio, Filo/Ele.... every single one.
Mess and emotion and mistakes and difficulties were written in such an honest, blunt way and felt so true, so real as if these characters were exceptionally genuine. Especially Sana’s voicemail and her talk with Marti.
Every single shot was just fucking beautiful. I mean there’s no other way to say it. It was all achingly gorgeous, tiny little moments like the sound of a storm of the glare of the light or the steam from those hot baths (WHERE DID HE FIND THOSE). GOOD GOD.
The music. Hands down my favourite soundtrack of any Skam season and there have been MANY I’ve adored but this took the bloody biscuit. A perfect mixture and fitted each scene so beautifully, often adding to it so seamlessly like when Nico was playing seeker in hide and seek or when Sana was praying or the street procession’s voices...
And religion. I am not religious and I don’t speak for anyone who shares Sana’s experiences. I want to hear from you so so much. What did you think? As someone from outside that beautiful community and religious experience, it felt utterly breathtaking. It felt casual and normal as a way of life (whereas religion can often be portrayed as a burden) and it also felt celebrated and lit up from the inside to show the truth of it and the beauty within, the values it holds... not to mention the difficulties. Sana being able to speak to Marti the way she did or explain in her voicemail. Her anger. I felt it and I learned from her words. She just wanted to be seen, to be considered as herself and watching Malik look at her like he did and Marti being upfront with her but all because he likes her and their personalities fit and seeing her with her Mamma navigating being a teenager alongside the idea of a future.
I can’t finish without a mention of my boys. They were, as always, heart and bloody soul. My Marti was so present and overwhelming for me. I will 100% want to write god damn essays about him and about Nico but I didn’t feel he was out of character for a moment despite the major tests they threw at him, mainly because they laid the groundwork before it kicked off. We saw him from an outside view and his brutal honesty, his lashing out through fear and his sarcasm and stubbornness was explored in such depth... but his love for Nico was everywhere. All over it. As two young, complex guys and Nico with a past and vulnerabilities... both felt so raw and desperate at all times without ever losing the foundation they have. The effort to allow Nico to have as much of a voice as possible while still keeping that solid POV on Sana... I’m grateful. We all want to see more but the way it played out didn’t leave me feeling TOO wanting (EXCEPT FOR THAT UNDER THE BED SCENE... oh the desperation to see that). Testing them in that way was a brave move by Ludo but I am so pleased he did because they weren’t reduced to background models. They were woven into Sana’s story and given respect and real moments of beauty and honesty. I will NEVER BE ABLE TO GET MARTI’S HEARTBROKEN RED PUFFY TEARY EYES OUT OF MY HEAD. And the fact Gio was the one to lock them away...! Also. Hands down one of the best Marti moments was that snuggly hug on the beach, the fact that Nico looks at home and they’re both a little fragile but comforted by each other and then Marti and his god damn mouth asking if they can throw the guy in the water... hahahahaha. And Nico smiles. Because he knows Marti and loves him exactly as he is. Also a moment for Luchi and Silvia because I have a LOT to say but to see him trusted and to see his heart alongside his Luchi side was so meaningful and they were this refreshing special surprise.
And Gio. Gioooooo. Yet again. No matter which season, he felt fundamental despite not being the main. He is warm and navigates between them all with this sense of solidity and support. He’s just LOVELY. He was never missing. None of them were. I loved seeing him settled with Sofia (who was never belittled - only by Eva and hahahahaha yes they included her rolling her eyes again) but also clearly still entirely in love with Eva. That moment he told Cannegallo to get in line I was a weepy mess. The ending. Oh the god darn ending. That voice and hearing Eva’s words spoken back to him, hearing how loved he is and also reflecting on life... seeing them get back together so naturally. I honestly couldn’t have asked for more.
Also a moment for Federica. STRIKING AS ALL HELL. Fierce and willing to learn. Honest and she dazzled me.
I am unable to summarise properly as I’d write all day and it’s 4am! I have so much to say. I was bowled over by emotion watching the entire thing. But I was absolutely reminded of what a gift this show is and how precious I consider it to be. This season has wildly surpassed every expectation I had and god damn soared into the distance. I am stunned and I want to live, as always, in those orangey glowy scenes of warmth. It’s like being wrapped in a big blanket with someone telling you - “life is going to be hard but you’re ok, you’re going to be ok”. That’s how Skam Italia feels. Written, performed, edited and delivered with affection and love and i genuinely couldn’t be more grateful for it as I am this morning (did I mention it’s 4am).
I will write tons more. You know me. I will be talking endless about this season and you won’t shut me up but, for now, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as me. I don’t think I’m quite prepared to hear anything but love at the moment so I shall see you all tomorrow.
And, I hadn’t a clue if season 5 is a thing or even a possibility of any magnitude. Whatever happens, I want Ludo Bessegato with his hands all over it, loving these characters and taking us with them as Eva said though messes. I hope they don’t leave each other either ❤️ AND GIVE ME 10 EPISODES OF GIOVANNI GARAU FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. The world wants it.
Aaaaanyway, WHOEVER DECIDED IT WOULD EVER BE A GOOD IDEA TO BINGE A SKAM SEASON. Too many emotions. This shit needs time to digest in between. I feel like I just pushed off an emotional cliff. And on that note. I sleep. I love you all and I’m not even sorry for my meltdown! I’m classing this as my Italian revision. Job well done 😘
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Endgame Speculation
So I accidentally wrote a three page essay.
Tldr:
Caleb is consecuted,
the city(tm) is full of evil mages doing blood sport who want to unlease the chained oblivion,
Molly and Lucien are totally separate souls,
The empire knows more than it should about the beacons and the city
Ok so I decided about ten years ago that the astral city was actually where the souls that are stored in the beacon exist while they’re waiting to be reborn. Initially, I’d thought that they’d find Molly there, but clearly his body is already up and running. Anyways I think the city is some kind of phantasmal double of Aeor that they created to store the souls of mages who had reached umavi. Now I know there’s been lots of talk of a god killing weapon, but what if it’s that all these super powerful mages souls are in the city waiting to be unleashed. And then if you take to alpha and alpha to be a reference to the rebirth cycle (I go into that in this post) “We trek 'til homeward bound we be” makes sense as something like we drag ourselves through life after life through the rebirth cycle until we reach enlightenment and head back to the city and I think Lucien has figured this out, but Vess hadn’t (remember she was so close to figuring out the book).
I also think it’d be fun if the mages do actually have a god killing weapon up there but what they have is that they think they’ll be able to control the chained oblivion (I don’t think they actually can) but like what if they want to set it free so that it will destroy the divine gate and go kill a bunch of gods so that they can ascend? They might not even think that they can control it, they might just be banking on becoming gods and being able to defeat it.
So like what if there’s all this talk about umavi and perfecting your soul in the Dynasty, but that’s not it at all. What if it’s actually go through lives until you get powerful enough that the mages in the city are like oh hey come on in. We also know sometimes if you go through too many of these cycles you can go nuts. So like I wonder if the black city mages are just nerfing people who get too powerful and who aren’t good candidates to join them, or if they’re like trying to shape a world they want to come back to.
Like maybe ‘umavi’ is really just a shitty club running around hunting shit, like Halas had dreadnaught chained up in his basement essentially and also was messing around with using astral projection to achieve immortality, so why wouldn’t other mages be doing similar bullshit? We know something related to the city is hunting through the planes like Vokodo was Terrified. And if these beings are so enlightened why would they be sitting on top of like some kind of literal hell and engaging in blood sport?? Also what if the wizards knew it would be a hell city so they're all asleep and everyone who wasnt prepared to go is having a miserable time being hunted through an otherwise empty city? And this also works with Matt’s themes about false gods and blind faith!!
So, If we follow the line of thought about the city, it makes sense that the beacons are ancient Zemnian artifacts, created by the mages to ensure their immortal life. Halas was obsessed with immortality, so I think this tracks. I also have a suspicion that nine eyes is related to the governing structure that the mages used pre-calamity, possibly like a Cerberus Assembly type deal, like one for every school of magic.
Anyways! I think at least one of the assembly members possibly more have figured that out and that’s what they’re actually trying to do with the beacon. I think that initially, the assembly thought that the beacon was the ancient weapon, but I think they’ve realized it isn’t. So I think Trent is trying to recreate the consecution process so that they can continue using the rebirth cycle. That man has made some weird comments that hint about immortality, like how he doesn’t ever plan to leave his office, how he wants caleb to kill him etc. I think this raises the possibility that he’s already figured out consecution I also think it’s an interesting possibility that Trent himself is consecuted and has the memories of a pre calamity wizard, but probably the only way that’s possible is if he wasn’t that powerful, otherwise he’d know all these secrets the Empire is trying to decode.
I think what he is doing is looking for Zemnian kids who might be consecuted souls. We all know Trent loves to fuck with memories, he does this shit constantly. So he’s picking up kids he thinks might be cycling souls and trying to extract or trigger their memories while he trains them to be loyal to the empire, so he can command some real powerful mages. I think it’s also very possible that some of the experiments he ran on them were to try and discover or recreate this consecution process. We know he was up to some Bullshit, but not what exactly. We also know that he’s doing all this when they’re teenagers, which is when their memories are supposed to be returning.
My guess is that only Caleb is actually one of the souls from the city. Also it’d be super fun if he was the soul of Mr. Destruction council member because I think that’d be a fun motive for Trent to be beating destruction magic into him (aside from the practicalities of course). But if Caleb is consecuted, it explains his dream when he slept near the beacon. Where he saw a dark sphere, which I think was the city, and multiple versions of himself. Matt also particularly said there were 17 selves which is a high number of rebirths (the bright queen has like 8 and shes starting to lose it) which goes to my theory that he has a super powerful soul. Also aligns with Trent telling him that ‘he has unlimited potential, unlike Astrid and Eodwulf’. And another thing he saw which tends to get overlooked, is a flame and when he looked at it, it felt familiar and overwhelming and he had to stop focusing on it bc he could feel all of his selves pulling at him. Which brings me to my next point.
Trent said that he traumatized Caleb to help him grow and that man basically never lies, he just talks around the truth. He also said that he thinks Caleb could be an assembly member and that other assembly members have been through similar situations. In the Dynasty, the memories don’t come back automatically, it’s just little flashes and then you have to have someone train you to remember your past lives. But the Empire doesn’t know about that process bc its super secret, so they have this other one that uses trauma to trigger the memories.
So I have two thoughts, one that maybe this works for some of the other souls that have gone through it, but if Caleb is one of the Pre Calamity assembly members who had reached a state of ‘umavi’, there was too much information coming through and his mind broke. And now he can’t access those memories at all, not because they’re magically supressed, but because they’re too wrapped up in his trauma. He started freaking out a bit in the dream when he felt the souls pull at him and looked into the fire and I think until he deals with allll that, he’s not going to be able to remember, if he ever can.
Or! I think it’s also possible If his soul was up there in the party part of the city and was like oh hi I don’t feel like hunting people for spORt anymore and got reborn on purpose and actively doesn’t want to remember. Who really knows.
But if this is the case and Trent was trying to run that process, it would also makes sense as to why he would keep Caleb around for that long in the asylum if he was still trying to dig them memories out. If the second possibility is right it also provides an interesting possibility that the woman in the asylum went nuts when she healed his mind, because if she tried to heal the second part and his soul was actively resisting and lashed out… like heyooo. Caleb being secretly super powerful and evil in his soul, but choosing to act against that also is a nice tie in with the themes around identity that we’ve seen so far.
Where do Vess and Lucien come into this?
I think Vess is trying to release the souls from the city and hadn’t quite figured out how. I think that she used Lucien as a test run for being the nonagon and sent his soul to the astral plane to go into the city using the book and then as part of the ritual, cut the tether to his body so he could go off and do whatever. So it tracks that he killed Vess if he thought that she tried to kill him/did kill him/didn’t tell him that he could die or whatever. It also wouldn’t surprise me if she was prepared to be the nonagon herself even at that point, but wanted to use Lucien because the risk of death was so high.
So anyways, the ritual failed technically, because an ‘umavi’ mage didn’t pop into Lucien’s body to come tell her how to release the souls (possibly by unleashing the chained oblivion lmao) When you cut someone’s tether, they die instantly so I think she did that, a soul didn’t appear and she went fuck ok so that didn’t work. They tried to resurrect him, didn’t work, so they left. But I think the ritual did work in a way. I think they called a soul from the city, just not the one they wanted and it took longer than they’d expected.
So Molly wakes up, has no memories of this nonsense, because as he said the entire time he was alive, whoever he was before isn’t him. And if the souls can’t interact with other souls there and they think it’s an empty hell city what if that’s why Molly came back saying empty because that’s how it seemed to him??
So Lucien accidentally gets stuck wandering around with all the other trapped souls. And what if that speaks to Lucien’s motivation to try and bring them all back. Like he’s been wandering around the shitty part of the city for years while Molly was up and running and the black city mages have promised him that he won’t have to go back there if he brings them back to the material plane. So I think Lucien mostly knows how to do this and like maybe needs that book for the technicalities, but I also think he’s going to Aeor to go find another beacon to use for the ritual. And obvi when Kree resurrected Lucien, he actually came back this time because his soul was willing and Molly’s wasn’t.
So I think Vess was trying to figure out how the ritual had failed, but I think after the nein told her about Molly and shit, she’s probably figured out that really the only piece she was missing was how to get the soul she wanted. I think that missing piece is probably a beacon and that you could possibly use them to communicate in a way or draw the specific souls from the city. But I think it took her too long to figure it out because the beacons are super important to the peace effort, and I don’t think she’d be able to sneak off with one right now, so I think she was going to Aeor hoping to find another one. I think if she had, she would have become a vessel for an umavi mage and she would have learned how to bring back the city and I think right now, we’re in danger of Lucien doing exactly that.
My final point is that a lot of people have been saying it feels like we’re getting into the endgame of the campaign with the stuff that’s happening now. I agree. I also think it would be very tidy if Matt had wrapped Molly and Caleb’s story arcs around each other to end the campaign. Also having them defeat the literal past, the assembly and possibly a god would be a baller way to end it.
#critical role#critical role speculation#critical role conspiracy theory#cr speculation#cr meta#meta#cr conspiracy theories#caleb widogast#mollymauk tealeaf#vess derogna#trent ikithon#the astral sea#cr spoilers#c2e114#me#criticalrole#critrole#c2#end spec#caleb#molly#vess#lucien#npc2
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thank you for posting more about how much you hate that idiot fucking book I fucking live for this
I have, no joke, probably read Atlas Shrugged a hundred times. I’m on my twelfth copy. I won one of those copies for entering one of the Ayn Rand scholarship essay contests. I once helped a communist friend of mine write an objectivist essay in order to apply for financial aid because “I don’t think like those people, you do”
(full disclosure y’all, I was a libertarian raised by libertarians and i stayed that way until my mid twenties)
I don’t know that I hate it so much as I’m completely fascinated by it.
I actually consider it a REALLY interesting piece of dystopian literature that I enjoy as a dystopia but it is so hyperbolic that it almost reaches the level of magic realism.
Atlas Shrugged (along with most of Rand’s other work) is so fundamentally broken in its assumptions about what motivates people to do what they do that it has always struck me as a weird dreamy fantasy novel. Like, imagine describing the construction of New York’s skyscrapers in a Lana Del Rey music video but all the characters are Fae and have impenetrable social rules about what is acceptable behavior.
And I know I’m in the minority here but I genuinely enjoy her prose, with the obvious caveats that the John Galt speech is terrible and the clear power exchange fetish works better if it’s addressed as a fetish instead of a weird recurring rape fantasy.
I don’t want to make excuses for Rand; her philosophy is ghoulish and her real-life attitudes about imperialism and capitalism and, just like, human rights and interpersonal relationships are repugnant. But if you want to get some insight into *why* she’s like this I’d recommend reading We the Living; it may not be accurate and when it was published it was controversial and frequently considered anticommunist propaganda (how fucking strange is it that a book published in the united states would be controversial for being anticommunist; that really hammers home how successful mccarthyism was) but I get the sense that it’s very much what *she* believed to be true in her experience and since I didn’t grow up in Soviet Russia and defect to the US I can’t exactly say she wasn’t, to a certain extent, justified in her views.
But, god, the way you see that exploded out in later work is just farcical. It’s so dramatic and overwrought - it’s not enough that politicians make mistakes or are self-interested, no, they’re moochers who are out to hasten the end of the world, bloodsucking parasites looking to enslave anybody with the audacity to be productive. It’s not enough that Lillian Rearden married for money, no, she’s out to destroy the soul of the productive man, only capable of measuring her worth by how far she’s able to make her husband fall. It’s not enough that Jim Taggart is an inept company president put in place by nepotism instead of skill, he’s also working to tear down everything his sister built because he wants her reputation but also wants to destroy her for having the gall to accomplish the things that built that reputation.
It’s fascinating. It’s bizarre. It’s looking through a glass darkly, examining the private fears of petty, bitter people. It’s not true, but there’s a truthiness to it to the people who buy into it; they haven’t experienced the world the way that Rand has written it but that’s how they believe the world works and they’re taking her writing as the evidence for it.
AND WHAT DRIVES ME UP THE WALL IS THAT IT’S SO CLOSE TO BEING RADICAL.
Like, okay, look at The Fountainhead - the climax of the book is about a dude who’s frustrated that his art is being perverted by bureaucracy and who wants equal access to fair housing. Crooked contractors and bloated budgets fueled by favoritism and scope creep are all legitimate problems with state building projects and the idea of working on one of those and wanting to blow it up is SUPER relatable. Yeah, dudes, I don’t want the DeVos family getting any more contracts from the government, I don’t want contractors who have worked with Trump bidding on housing projects. That DOES seem fucked up.
But I mean come on, you’ve got a journalist right there in your storyline; the way you make a hero isn’t to blow up a housing project it’s to report on the corruption. But the journalist is one of the craven lesser men Dominique fucks to get back at Roark to punish him for working with statists. So an exposé is out and an explosion is in.
And I know that seems radical but the thing is it’s not a call to fix a corrupt system, it’s not looking to replace a flawed method with a better method - it’s saying “my way or not at all” and that’s just. Petty. Petulant and wasteful.
Childish.
Same for Galt’s Gulch and the “Strike of the Mind” - in Galt’s Gulch there’s a fucking *doctor* who bitches that he was made to heal people who he thought didn’t contribute to enough to society. Dude. DUDE. Keep your mobile xray technology, and your cure for strokes; I’d prefer a doctor who isn’t basically a eugenicist.
FUCK.
It’s so frustrating that she creates this world where everything can be abundant and everything can be accessible and instead of going “luxury gay space communist post-scarcity society” she goes “what if everything COULD be free but instead we had the gold standard and let children with the “wrong” parents starve to death?”
(uh, in case it’s not clear: I’ve had something of a strong ideological shift away from the libertarian party)
And oh god the way she writes and thinks about women.
You know what, I’ve had arguments with some people about the “I’m not like other girls” trope and if/how it exists and Ayn Rand’s protagonists are the perfect example. Dominique only hosts tea parties in order to crush the soul of the man who won’t live up to her exacting standards, not because she likes them or wants friends or anything. Dagny has a long straight neck and an imperious profile and the short hair of an American woman; she saw a bunch of socialists once and put her middle finger up at them. She didn’t want to come out in society at a ball (and be flirted with by boring boys like some kind of silly GIRL), she wanted to go back to the trains (and also maybe get fucked rough against a wall by a man who knew what she deserved and was bold enough to give it to her) like a serious person. Ayn Rand is the queen of Not Like Those Other Girls.
Goddamnit.
Also everybody talks about how awful the John Galt Speech is but the John Galt torture scene? Hot. Great. 10/10 whump. Please skip the rest of the book and instead read about Galt’s friends/admirers rescuing him and tenderly wrapping his shaking shoulders before they carry him to safety, silently brimming with emotion and pride at how well he resisted the torture. (I maintain that if Rand had stuck to just writing actual porn she’d be much better thought-on and more widely beloved because her fetishy stuff only sucks in context; pull it out of her screeds against altruism and you’ve got something that it at least five orders of magnitude better than 50 Shades)
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Potion Fumes and Cauldron Leaks
Chapter 17: Falling For The Underdog
(Click here for chapter 16!)
(Click here to start from the beginning!)
Disclaimer: I don’t own the “Harry Potter” book series. The story of “Harry Potter” is the property of J. K. Rowling, it is not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.
The following weekend, Severus found himself in a situation that he would have never thought possible – he spent the entire day with a woman.
Despite it being a Saturday, Granger had arrived at his private quarters quite early. While he usually woke up long before the rest of the castle, Severus had never really considered himself a morning person. He normally worked late and slept little, often waking up in a cold sweat after just a few hours of sleep due to horrible nightmares. So needless to say, he had been rather surprised when his apprentice had shown up at his door long before the house elves had even started to prepare breakfast. As he’d let her in, he had asked himself if perhaps she was suffering from the same problem as him.
The two of them had spent a lot of time together over the past week. Ever since he had given her unimpeded access to his rooms, Granger had come by even more often than before, and so they had often spent their evenings together. Everything inside him was still screaming that this was wrong, that they were becoming way too comfortable with each other. But yet, he could not help but feel a rush of ecstasy surge through his entire body every single time she walked into his sitting room.
He had given her the password in what had been almost a moment of mental aberration, and he had soon started to regret it. He had tried telling himself that the reason for that regret was that such an action was simply inappropriate for a teacher, but deep down, he knew that he was really just scared of rejection; scared that she would not take him up on the offer and that she would find it creepy and weird. But the next day, when he had come back from teaching the fourth year Slytherins and Gryffindors, he had found Granger in his sitting room, fussing over a small sandwich platter from the kitchens which was placed on the table in front of her. Severus still could not have described the emotions he had experienced upon seeing this. On one hand, he had felt massive relief. On the other, it had felt weirdly domestic for some reason; almost as though he had come home after a long day of work to a loving home – something which had been completely new to him.
Sometimes, the pair would be working on potions together, and other times, Severus would be sitting at his desk marking essays while Granger would curl up on his sofa as she studied. Today, however, they were doing what both of them loved the most: reading.
The Potions Master was seated in one of his big wing chairs, a copy of his favourite journal, The Practical Potioneer, in his hands, whereas Granger was spread out across the sofa as usual, deeply engrossed in his volume of Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds by medieval French wizard Malecrit. Over the last couple of days, Severus had slowly begun to notice how eager she seemed to get her hands on classics from the wizarding world, and he did not exactly know how to feel about that – to him, it somehow appeared as though she was almost desperately trying to make up for the time she had spent growing up around Muggles.
They had both been reading in silence for a while when Severus stumbled across an especially interesting paragraph on the uses of Alihotsy in magical antidepressants. Opening his mouth to share this new piece of information with the knowledge-hungry witch, he looked up and instantly had to draw a sharp breath. Unbeknownst to him, Granger had shifted in her position a few minutes ago, and now her grey skirt had ridden up just far enough to reveal her toned thighs as well as barely the slightest hint of the subtle crease running horizontally underneath her behind.
Severus gulped. It was hard to ignore the way that the shadows of the fire burning a mere few feet away were dancing across her tender, milky flesh. Why was she wearing her uniform – a uniform with what now suddenly seemed like a ridiculously short skirt – on a day with no classes?! For a split second, the thought that she was trying to seduce him crossed his mind, but he quickly dismissed that. Never in a million years would Granger be the type of person to try to recreate a scene from a low-budget adult movie, especially not with one of her professors. And if he was being honest with himself, he would have found her appearance bewitching even if she had been wearing a potato sack.
Having long forgotten about what he had originally wanted to say, he blurted out the first thing he could think of. “I do have to say, I find it rather bizarre that Miss Weasley of all people would behave in such a manner towards you. I would be terrified of making someone even remotely angry if they knew of my deepest secret.”
Granger did not even look up. “But that’s not how friendships work.”
“What?” His eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“A real friend would never betray you just because you’ve had a fight with them,” she said as she pushed herself up into a seated position. Severus did not know if he was glad or disappointed that her legs were now covered again. “A promise is a promise. That fact doesn’t change just because you’re having a disagreement or because you don’t like each other anymore.”
Yet again, he was pleasantly surprised by her maturity; it made him feel a tiny bit less like a predator preying on an innocent girl.
“Plus, the real problem is Ron. I love him –“ Severus felt a slight sting at these words. “But he’s just so unpredictable sometimes. And at the end of the day, Ginny will always side with him, because he’s her brother, and Harry will do the same, because he’s his best friend and because Ginny is his girlfriend. All three of them are on the Quidditch team together, and they all share common interests. I am the odd one out, and so if someone has to leave the group, it will always be me first.”
Severus was stunned. He wanted to disagree, wanted to tell her that what she was saying was wrong – but he knew that it was the truth. Just like himself, she was and would always be an outsider.
“Anyway,” Granger continued, taking a look at her wristwatch. “I think I have to go. I still want to stop by the library to pick up some books before it closes. Thank you for having me, as always.”
And with that, she stood up, straightened out her clothes and put the book she had been reading back in its place on one of the countless shelves lining the dark room before making her way to the exit. But just as she was about to disappear through the hole in the wall, she lingered for a second.
“Professor Snape?”
Severus was caught off guard by how nervous she suddenly sounded. “Yes, Miss Granger?”
She took her bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s okay if you don’t want to, but the other teachers normally address me by my first name when I’m alone with them. So perhaps you could do that, too? Only in private, of course.”
Severus gave her a calculated look. It probably sounded nonsensical, especially after he had already allowed her into his chambers, but he was still somewhat afraid of getting too close to her. Wasn’t using her first name taking it a bit too far? But at the same time, her request flooded his soul with a feeling of genuine happiness.
“All right … Hermione.”
*************** *************** ***************
“Come on, Hermione, I know you’re in there! Open the door!”
The brightest witch of her age was surprise to hear what sounded like frantic knocking as she climbed up the stairs leading to her Head Girl suite. It was not long until she arrived at the top and discovered a certain redhead banging on her door.
“I know you’re really mad at me, but can we please just talk about it?”
“Ginny?” she said, making the other witch jump in surprise. “What are you doing?”
“Hermione!” Ginny exclaimed before running towards her friend at the speed of light and hugging her so hard that the two of them almost tumbled over. “I am so, so sorry! I know I treated you like crap, and for a stupid reason, too! I don’t know what got into me, I’m just so stressed right now, and I let Ron get the better of me! Harry is also sorry, but Ron is still mad, and so he feels like he’s sort of caught in the middle, and –“
Hermione took a step back and offered her a smile. “Gin, it’s all right. No hard feelings, okay?”
“Oh, you are truly too good for this world!” Ginny called out before moving in for another suffocating embrace.
Hermione could not suppress a chuckle. She was still upset about how she had been treated, of course; but she had learnt a long time ago that sometimes, being happy was more important than being right. War hero or not, at the end of the day, she was just a girl, and a girl needed her best friend.
Now that their frivolous fight was finally behind them, it did not take long before the two teenagers fell back into their old ways. They soon found themselves on Hermione’s bed, with countless Muggle nail supplies spread out around them, talking about this and that. However, the newest Hogwarts gossip was not really able to awaken Hermione’s enthusiasm like it usually did. Something had been occupying her mind for a few days now, and it took her a long time before she finally mustered up the courage to bring it up.
“Hey, Gin …” she said meekly.
“Yes?” Ginny replied, biting her tongue in concentration as she carefully painted the tiny nail of one of her little toes in a pastel pink colour.
“Um …” Hermione had absolutely no idea how to broach the subject. “I need your advice on something.”
It was only then that the sixth-year looked up.
“What’s going on?” she asked concerned.
“So …” Taking a shaky breath, she decided to just make it quick and painless, like ripping off a band-aid. “I think that I might be starting to like Professor Snape.”
Oh Merlin, she had finally said it aloud! After many sleepless nights of confusion, dismay and solitary pining, she had finally admitted it – to Ginny and to herself.
Too scared of her reaction, Hermione did not dare to look Ginny in the eyes. But to her surprise, the only response was a high-pitched giggle.
“Hermione, you like all teachers. So I’m not at all surprised that you like that tosser, too. Even though I do not know how you could, especially enough to become his apprentice and –“
“No, I –“ She rubbed the back of her neck with a trembling hand. “I think I might fancy him.”
“WHAT?!” yelled Ginny as she jumped to her feet, knocking over a couple of bottles of nail polish and spilling their content all over the comforter in the process.
“Ginny, please!” she tried to calm her down, but it was to no avail – the whirlwind that was Ginevra Weasley had already been unleashed.
“You have a crush on Snape? SNAPE?! The greasy git of the dungeons? The most hated teacher in all of Hogwarts? That Snape?!”
Her look was filled with nothing but disbelief and betrayal.
“Gods, I don’t know!” Hermione’s eyes were starting to burn and fill with tears. She could not help but feel embarrassed. “I have all of these confounding feelings, and I don’t know what to make of them, okay?!”
“Hey, hey, come on! It’s nothing to cry about.” Ginny hurriedly sat back down and rubbed her back reassuringly, though she still had horror written all over her face. “Even if we’re talking about Snape here.”
A salty tear rolled down Hermione’s blushed cheek. “I don’t even know when it started, I just –“ The words got stuck in her throat as she erupted into sobs. “How can I like a teacher in that way?! Like, maybe that could even get me EXPELLED!”
Ginny pulled her into a half hug. “Now, calm down, we’ll figure this out somehow! Why do you like him?”
Hermione sniffled. “I don’t know! It’s just that he’s being so nice to me!”
“Really?” Ginny tilted her head to the left, obviously doubting the statement. “Snape and nice?”
“Yes, extremely nice!” Hermione blurted out as she wiped her flushed face with the back of her hand. “You know, after our stupid argument, I felt so sad and miserable. But then he invited me over, and we had some tea, and he let me vent. He consoled me, Gin!”
In hindsight, the brunette would later realise that she did not know how exactly he had become aware of their fallout in the first place. She certainly had never openly mentioned it in front of him. But at that moment, with her raw emotions causing mayhem inside her mind, the thought did not occur to her even once.
“You’re kidding!” Hermione could only shake her head before she broke into tears again. “Hey, I’m sorry! It’s just hard to imagine that someone like Snape might actually have some real human feelings.”
“Well, he does! I feel like he actually cares about me, you know? Like, it almost feels as though he’s my friend. He even gave me the password to his rooms so that I would have somewhere to retreat to.”
“WHA–“ Clearly forcing herself to remain calm, Ginny took a deep breath. “Are you being for real?”
“Of course! I’ve been spending time there every day!”
Shocked, Ginny put a palm on her chest. “Hold on! Severus Snape, a grown man and teacher at this school, is allowing you, a beautiful 18-year-old student of his, in his private quarters where the two of you are completely alone? Ew, what a creep!”
“It’s not like that!” Hermione protested, her facial features contorting into a grimace. “Never once has he done anything even remotely inappropriate! We just work on something together or read some books, and sometimes we eat meals together. If anything, I’m the one who has taken it too far.”
“What do you mean?” No response. “Hermione?”
“I hugged him once …”
It was merely a whisper, but she heard her nonetheless.
“YOU DID WHAT?”
Hermione hung her head, burying her hands deep in her massive brown locks. “I hugged him in the Entrance Hall during the Hallowe’en Feast. We had talked earlier about how he didn’t want to come because of how much he hates dressing up, but then he surprised me by showing up with his teeth charmed to look like a vampire and … I don’t know, I just became so excited, and before I knew it, I was hugging him!”
Ginny could only look at her, baffled-eyed. “Did he, like, hug you back?”
She thought about it for a second.
“Yeah, I think so.” She scrunched up her face. “I liked it, too.”
No one said anything for a long time. Then, letting out a forced laugh, the redhead ultimately mumbled, “Wow, I … really don’t know what to say.”
“I’m screwed!” Hermione exclaimed as she teared up again.
Ginny let out a huge sigh. “Look, at the end of the day, you cannot help who you fall for. And while I’m certainly not a fan of the Dungeon Bat myself, you definitely could have done worse.”
Ignoring the other girl’s glare, she continued, “He’s smart, just like you, and according to what you told me, he’s also treating you right. And to be honest, he’s not really as ugly as we all make him out to be. So liking him is not as ridiculous as it might sound at first. Plus, maybe this infatuation is just a phase. So many girls get crushes on their teachers at some point. Chances are by tomorrow you’re already over it.”
She grabbed her hand. “The only thing I’m worried about is how friendly you two seem to be getting. This could actually get you into major trouble should anyone notice. And it will also not help you get over this silly crush if you keep seeing him this often. So maybe just try and distance yourself for a little while, ‘kay? I bet that once this whole thing with Ron blows over, your feelings won’t be all over the place like this anymore.”
(Click here for chapter 18!)
#fanfictionbyusignolo#fanfiction by usignolo#fanfiction by usignolo masterlist#usignolo#usignolo masterlist#masterlist#slytherinknowitall#Slytherin Know-It-All#Harry Potter#harry potter fandom#harry potter fanfiction#harry potter fanfic#severus snape#severus snape x hermione granger#pro severus snape#hermione jean granger#hermione granger#professor snape x hermione granger#professor snape#PFACL#PFACL chapter 17#chapter 17#potion fumes and cauldron leaks#snape lives au#snanger#snamione#snermione#fanfic#fanfiction#snape community
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i've been seeing speculation that michael was lying to castiel and dean, so if that's true, is it possible he is only pretending to care for adam too?
Hi there! You’re probably hoping for a short, direct answer here, but congratulations! You’ve won today’s “imma turn this into an essay about 9 other things that are all directly related to the thing you thought was a simple question” essay prompt contest!
I will give you a tl;dr right up front, though, in case you’re already rolling your eyes at me (sorry, I can’t help who I am as a person... but I do try to be helpful).
I think they made it pretty clear in the diner scene that Adam and Michael have a really interesting relationship. You spend a decade locked inside your own mind with a guy, and you either start getting along or you kill each other, you know? So no, I don’t think he’s pretending to care about Adam. I think Michael and Adam have-- as Adam told Dean-- come to an agreement. Rather than spiraling into hatred and mutual torture, they chose to understand one another (to the degree that a human is capable of understanding an archangel and vice versa). I can’t imagine sharing that sort of companionship with someone for a decade and NOT at least feeling some sort of care for the other.
I wrote something about this the other day, about what Michael’s choices showed us about his feelings for Adam, here:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/189648100025/why-didnt-michael-go-to-chuck-after-lilith-came
They’re freed from the cage after a decade, and Michael could’ve just... left, you know? Nothing’s tying him to Adam at this point. And he’s indulging Adam’s human needs for food and comfort, and Adam’s assumptions that they will continue to live together in some weird little curtain fic of a domestic scenario despite Michael being a freaking archangel who could pull the whole “chained to a comet” thing we’ve seen so many other angels pull and do whatever he wants... (including AU!Michael and what he did to Dean... the arrangement Adam and Michael have more closely resembles what Dean was trying to negotiate for himself with AU!Michael, which just makes it hurt so much more when Dean sees Adam and Michael’s arrangement).
That said, like so much of s15, do we really know what Michael’s motivations are now? I don’t feel comfortable saying for sure that Adam actually knows, either. The show has just reminded us vividly of the long con that was s4 with the odd return of Lilith as a narrative device to manipulate Sam and Dean (and now Michael). And the struggle against destiny that was s5. Michael was a major agent in BOTH of those seasons (and Adam was the unwitting “clammy scrap of bait” that Heaven used to unsuccessfully trap Dean in 5.18). We don’t know what Michael wants, because his entire purpose for being was foiled in 5.22, and he’s been living with the consequences of that ever since. But more importantly, I don’t think *Michael* knows what he wants anymore, in a world where his entire purpose was rendered moot.
Imagine living for BILLIONS of years knowing that someday you will enact a specific series of events to prove your love and devotion to God, with the belief that will win God’s favor and earn yourself an eternal reward, only to be foiled literally on the brink of success and then return to a world where God had never actually left at all and had just been using you as an actor for his own entertainment. Not only that, you weren’t even unique... just one of countless iterations of the same being across a vast number of universes, and that you hadn’t actually been cast in the starring role at all, but had merely been a bit player in one act of the Grand Performance?
Can he really accept that his entire existence had been a lie? As God’s first and favorite creation, does he even trust what Cas has shown him, or would he doubt and go directly to Chuck to confront him about the truth?
I’ve been meaning to compile a list of all the scenes and references in the montage Cas showed to Michael, but that will take some doing. :’D
I think my main question right now is whether Michael has already confronted Chuck via prayer, or whether he set the whole “Leviathan blossom hunt” up as a means to earn his freedom from Dean and Cas while not tipping his hand about his doubts yet. The minor earthquake he set off... was that due to his frustration at accepting what Cas showed him as the truth, or his frustration at not being able to communicate with Chuck (Enochian handcuffs, you know? block powers like that), or his frustration at having questioned Chuck directly via prayer or some other magical means and his renewed belief that he was being lied to or manipulated by TFW? We truly do not know yet.
That’s the beauty of s15. That’s the main theme of s15, actually-- what is REAL, and what’s Chuck’s story?
I think the thing that’s bothered me the most about this season so far is the assumption that we know anything plot-related is absolute fact and exactly what it appears to be on the surface. Because the entire season is built on the revelation that we literally know nothing about what is real and what is performance and what is manipulation.
Remember Ruby? How many of us at least cautiously believed her back in s3 and s4, before we began to be shown reasons to doubt her? And all along, Ruby had been an agent of Lilith, the only one who’d known the whole plan from the start. Which is ironic when you compare it with Lilith’s role in s15... with the whole “I can’t fail him.” They’re all layers of plot devices like manipulative little nesting dolls, and I’m incredibly wary of trusting anything in a world where Chuck can send innocent souls to Hell on a whim (Eileen, Kevin....) for plot reasons.
Chuck long ago stopped interacting with his creation by his own rules, you know? In contrast to Billie and her Rules, which she’ll bend on occasion but never outright violate. Chuck’s story went so far off the rails after 5.22 that the new “rules” of his plot often directly contradicted the old rules-- especially after 11.23, when he reunited with Amara. I don’t think he ever accounted for that, and it shows in his ongoing narrative after their reunification.
Chuck’s story didn’t change. He still kept trying to write to the same themes, to the same narrative end-- one sibling sacrificing the other for the good of creation, because Sam and Dean had as yet refused to let that ending stick, you know? Over and over, TFW has proven that narrative can’t stand, right up to Dean talking Chuck and Amara through exactly WHY it couldn’t stand. Love.
Chuck refuses to change-- as Becky told him, as Amara told him, as EVERYONE is telling him. He doesn’t love his creation, he wants it to be a reflection of his own issues, as some sort of moral justification of his essential “rightness.” He wants to feel “big.” He’s been unmasked, and knows he can’t carry on the charade of Benevolent and Caring Creator anymore. His characters have confronted him, FINALLY, as the Actual Author, and not the proxy/puppet that “Chuck the Prophet” had been back in 4.18.
But it’s been, so far in s15, impossible to know at a glance what elements of creation are nothing more than Chuck’s sock puppets (though Lilith lampshaded herself as a sock puppet almost immediately, within the span of a single episode). What are Chuck’s plot contrivances? What are his “traps?”
Was the hunter Sue-- Eileen’s friend that she trusted without hesitation in 15.08 and who would lure her and Sam to a hunt, only to unmask herself as Chuck-- the only sock puppet in that scene? Or is this like 4.18, where there are layers upon layers of sock puppets acting out one of Chuck’s tests? Where it appeared that Zachariah had manipulated Chuck’s “visions” to control the narrative, but later revelations would prove it was all Chuck’s bigger game? Even by 4.22 we’d see Zachariah for the puppet he was, even if he wouldn’t be defeated until 5.18.
But the context the show has now given us with Chuck’s manipulation of the entire story opens the possibility that-- even as we’ve seen through the chaotic spiral of his own twisted narrative-- he’s still exerting far more control over the story than we can see yet.
ISN’T IT THRILLING?!
#spn 15.08#spn s15 spoilers#spn 4.18#spn 4.22#spn 5.18#chuck's process#that's what free will is#Anonymous
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