#like not even to mention she had a long history of being anti Black and harassing Black trans women for calling out racism in the white | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bohemian-nights · 6 months

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https://www.tumblr.com/drakaripykiros130ac/732901209272467456/i-am-just-loving-the-so-called-concern-tg-stans

This is how I find out an anti-nettles tag exists of Tumblr people are so shallow minded and miss the point George's original story people really think just because these dumbass show runner decided the race-bend an entire group of characters for cheap brownie points of representation that it means Nettles no longer matters like no, it may no longer be about race just because the writers are trying to force feminism onto Rhaenyra's character but it's still about class. A low born orphan at just the age of 17 was capable of doing what dozens of well trained knights failed to do. She survived one of the biggest civil wars in Westeros history, she had one of the last surviving dragons of the dance (who cares who's the biggest, oldest, most shiny etc etc it was Nettles and her dragon that outlived them all in the end) AND she was capable if creating an entire culture around herself (the tribes could've easily over powdered her but instead chose to worship and respect her) mind you all she had was a dragon, she had no titles just her name. Also, she's a few of the very few characters in the books that show care and remorse, she mourned Jace someone she barely knew and cried for Driftmark despite having lived a life previously where she was mistreated and starving on the streets. I swear these Dumbnyra stans deserve their names (Dumbnyra), and just because some of us are pro-Nettles, it doesn't automatically make use of team Green, Team Green can kick rocks as well because they are such hypocrites, whining and complaining about how their fav characters were stripped of importance and reduced to a singular thing yet they turn around and strip Nettles's character as a gotcha moment towards to Dumbnyra stans, as if her relationship with Daemon is the only thing important to her character. These stans also need to realize the Nettles is one of George's favorite characters whose stories he'd like to continue.

👆🏽That’s for the fact that this racist(who I should mention I’m blocked by for no reason🤣) actually knows how to tag things properly. I’ll give her that, but who exactly died and made her an authority on Black representation?

Dumbnyra stans this is exactly why people keep calling you people racists:

Do tell me how white a** Alys Rivers(no disrespect, but come on) had more purpose than a girl who shows that Targaryen supremacy is a lie? The girl that shows you don’t need Valyrian blood to claim a dragon.

The girl that George himself said he wanted to write a novella on(never heard him say that about Alys, Addam, Alyn, any of the other dragonseeds, Rhaena, and Baela)🤷🏽‍♀️

They are so blinded by the fact that she “ruins” Dumbnyra(which isn’t what they claim it is which is why they are scared sh*tless of her being on a show they claim doesn’t matter) that they make up lies about Nettles being the most irrelevant character in Fire & Blood.

This can never be irrelevant/unimportant/unnecessary/whatever else you want to say to demean her:

That happened long after the Dance boo boo(when Missy Anne’s a** was long dead 😊).

And if the one who wrote that garbage happens to be reading this(because I know you people are stalking me), f*ck you. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. You've crossed the line.

You’re a bigot. You have no right to speak on Black representation let alone say we are good on representation that doesn’t even affect you and that you have no understanding of.

And you definitely don’t care about representation because if you did you wouldn’t want Rhaena who has her own arc to replace Nettles who according to you wasn’t Daemon’s lover. If she’s just his daughter or his mentee, well then you have nothing to be worried about. Her presence on the show shouldn’t disrupt your putrid little white supremacist ship or make Missy Anne look bad since what happened at Maidenpool was all a big misunderstanding and Mysaria’s fault😊 You shouldn’t give a second thought to her.

Yes, Black people care about this issue(and even if some of us are a part of Team Green because that’s the majority I see from Team Green actually caring about her, then so what🙃).

Do you see how we are portrayed by the media? Do you see what happens to Black characters in TV shows and movies? To Black women characters? Do you see how they are treated by production and the fandom?

What you people are doing isn’t new. Just look at The Bear, Sleepy Hollow, Vampire Diaries, Star Trek, Star Wars, GOT(see how Missandei was done), and Marvel fandoms(there are more than that I’m just too tired to get into it).

The moment there is even a hint of a possibility that a Black woman might be in a relationship with the fandom hottie, hell the moment a Black woman doesn’t have a stereotypical role, all hell breaks loose and you people look for every excuse and spout out the same tired crap on why so and so is irrelevant, is a terrible character, doesn’t need a man, needs to be cut, should be killed off, should be replaced, etc.

So just because you don’t care doesn’t mean we should accept scraps, or our “irrelevant” characters being cut, or swapped out with race-bent characters. Black people aren’t all the same sweetie and we deserve more than what you feel we do.

If that’s too much for your diminutive brain to handle why don’t we just combine Ulf and Hugh? It’s not too late to cut out one of the two’s roles in post-production. After all, they serve the same role and they are both white.

You know what? How about we combine Black Aly and Jeyne Arryn while we are at it😀

Should we view Helaena and Rhaenyra as the same? I have a hard time telling them apart since they are both white and blonde. They should wear name tags that way we don’t get them confused 🙃

Let me stop there.

Sorry for ranting anon, but I’m so tired of the disrespect. Like how does one character who’s supposedly so unimportant cause so much uproar?

I go in on Dumbnyra stans a lot(and that person shows exactly why), but you are right that all sides of this fandom treat Nettles like she’s trash. If it’s not saying she’s a plot device sent to ruin Dumbnyra from Team Black and that anyone Black can replace her it’s how Team Green is so worried about her being abused and how maybe it’s for the best she gets cut.

Their behavior is utterly disgusting. It's anti-Black, but no one takes anti-Blackness and especially not misogynoir seriously.

Nettles may be a secondary character, but she’s the most important secondary character during the Dance. She starts out literally homeless. She claims Sheepstealer by determination, not by blood. She’s the only one to claim a wild dragon. The only non-Valyrian dragonrider that we know of.

She gets the Rogue Prince to fall in love with her to the point where he’s willing to die for her and disobeys his wife’s orders to save her. She survives the Dance with a dragon intake. Becomes a fire witch and is worshipped by a mountain clan in the Mountains of the Moon(she’s still worshipped by them during the main series). Her legacy is cemented.

I love her relationship with Daemon, but she’s so much more than just Daemon’s love. She’s a survivor. She’s the final girl. She would be seen as special as she is if she was white.

A character like her will never not be needed especially in a world where the representation of Black women in media, particularly fantasy stories, is still pretty bleak.

#bnasks #nettles #bnask #anti daemyra stans #pro nettles #just continue to use the anti tag #f*ck 90% of you in this fandom #netty #nettles asoiaf #nettles f&b #hotd fandom misogynoir #yep this is why y’all are called dumbnyra stans

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bellamybellamyblake · 3 months

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When the Sun Sets - Part 4

Adriadne

Characters:

adriadne/morgan winchester (OC), dean winchester, sam winchester

Summary:

adriadne finds out who she was before she went to hell. and the winchesters will not rest until they fix what their sister did all those years ago.

Warnings (for entire story):

SPN typical violence, so so much suppressing of emotions, vague mention of SA, depiction of torture, a very pro-torture main character, murder, vague mention of not eating for a while, parental abuse, slight suicidal ideation, SPN typical alcohol abuse, spoiler warning up to the end of season 10, following canon stops after the end of season 2 but things are sure to be mentioned

Word Total:

4k ~ roughly

A/N:

hi, so sorry its been so long, but i finally got the inspiration to continue writing this little mini series. i'm not convinced anyone is still interested in this story, but here's part 4. there's a little hatred towards blondes in this chapter - guys i actually love blonde hair i think its gorgeous - your girl is just a demon. my search history after writing this chapter, god help me.

this takes place loosely around season 10 and i kind of combined when sam tries to cure crowley with when he cures dean.

let me tell you, writing about a person who has no idea what's real is not easy to make good - its a 0/10 for me and i'm not convinced i even succeeded at that

italics = inner thoughts/memories

dean: 36, morgan: 35 (her body is 27), sam: 32

Adriadne vaguely remembered hating the moon coming up when she was human. For some reason, she detested nighttime and all that came with it. She had wanted to believe she wasn't as bad as the humans when she was one. But as she roamed the street of whatever bumblefuck town she was in, she remembered staring blankly at a street lamp once.

It was the only light she had seen for several miles. It illuminated a small bus stop with a bench and a pay phone attached to it. She was in some loud car, with even louder music playing, with her intolerably quiet family. The faces, names, and details of any of them had been long washed away. Somebody in her family needed to make a call, so they stopped, and she was left alone for a few minutes. The yellow beams that kept that area lit were the only thing keeping her from panicking. She had assumed she was only a child in the memory because, I mean, seriously? An adult scared of the dark?

If she had been an adult, Satan help her if she was, it would have been further proof of how weak humans are. Actually, regardless, it was proof. There was no light in Hell. Everything was dark, and only with the sight of a demon could anyone see. She bristled at the thought. Since being on Earth, she had no desire to go back downstairs.

The darkness of the night did give her a little sense of reminiscence, though. Of home, Alastair, Crowley, her tools. Where she could roam freely without having to cling to that damn sack of flesh. But the daytime was a close second, in her opinion. The sun, as bright and almost blinding as it was, was warm. And it felt…kind of nice.

Turned out, she was a natural blonde, a type of blonde that got even lighter when she lay in the sun. And that rubbed her the wrong way. Like, who was actually blonde nowadays? Every blonde Alastair assigned to her was quickly scalped. And when they were healed, she would do it again. Then, she'd make them drink anti-freeze because many of them had blue eyes. It really had been a fun game.

Watching them die slowly and painfully was always an excellent way to waste an hour. And when they were brought back to life, it was back to her regularly scheduled programming.

It sucked even more that she had blue eyes too. They were so light. Like the human fucking sky or some shit. She liked her black eyes. They were who she was, a dark and malevolent visitor on this planet of fluffy little bunnies.

At the sound of a whistle, a very loud one, she turned to find the source. "Damn, baby." The man said. He was some random guy on the corner of the street, watching her as she walked. "What's your name?"

She planted a demure little smile like she was so flattered by the attention. With a blush, she said, "Mary."

He smirked. "Are you a virgin, too?"

Imbecile, she groaned inside her head. She had heard that joke back home. It was usually the first thing a demon said when assigned someone with that name. After hearing it for the first time, she chuckled. The second time, she grinned. The fifty-seventh? She ignored it.

Come up with something new, people, will you?

She flashed some doe eyes at him and pretended to blush even more. "How did you know?"

"I tend to sense these things."

"Oh, do you?" She asked with a grin, flashing her natural eyes at him. But before he could scream, she was slitting his throat.

When the jugular veins are severed, there is a relatively low spray of dark red blood, accompanied by the sound of escaping air, and the human coughs it up. So, to get a forceful spray of bright red, Adriadne's favorite, she cuts the carotid. And usually aims to sever the trachea so they gasp and wither at her feet. And with this guy? She hit the nail on the head.

It only takes a few minutes, but it's such a satisfying death. Being in the land of the living, slitting throats quickly became one of her favorite forms of sending them exactly where they belonged.

When Sam and Dean Winchester caught wind of a case; six hundred sixty-four bodies across the country with a slit throat and the Latin symbol for "hellhound" carved over their right eyebrow, they got on it. They didn't want to let it get to that magic number.

And when they got to the most recent crime scene, Lena Franklin, a thirty-one-year-old female - mother of three - with the same injuries, they found who they were looking for, taking another victim. Only they weren't expecting to find their sister standing over the body.

After knocking her out and locking her up, they summoned Crowley as soon as possible. It was like their lives depended on it, or really, it was their sister's life that they were worried about.

And when he explained the situation to them, they knew what they had to do.

With a whine, Adriadne awoke in a strange room. Filled with walls of file cabinets and Enochian or Latin symbols. She tried to rub at her head, where that damn vase had been thrown at her, but she noticed she was chained down. Usually, she wouldn't have an issue with chains; she could break through steel, and they were so satisfying when some human tried to escape them. But not only were these not steel chains, they were iron. And they had warding signs carved in them.

Fucking hunters.

Surprisingly, if there was any human she didn't entirely detest, it was hunters. They were more robust than the rest and really knew what the real world was like. But they were after her, so now, they had to die. Slowly, bloody, painfully.

"Welcome back, jackass," A voice she recognized said. The same voice threw the vase at her however many hours ago. It was the shorter of the two, but he had the more resounding voice. They were tall for humans, but the other was way bigger. Gigantor also seemed like he was friendlier, the dumbass.

She had heard of the Winchester brothers in Hell. Sam and Dean, she believed their names were. Two brooding brothers with mommy and daddy issues that jumpstarted the apocalypse. Then they fixed it and sent Lucifer back into his cage with Michael. They'd been in and out of hell themselves a few times. The only humans to ever accomplish such feats.

Clearly, they weren't stupid, but goddamn, were they annoying.

Sam was younger but a bit more book-smart, and Dean was the older but sarcastic one. She vaguely knew they had a thing for dying for each other, but that only made her roll her eyes like she so often did at these creatures.

"Dean," Sam scolded.

"And what a warm one at that. You ever have people over?" She groaned. The boys didn't respond, both just shaking their heads. They started pulling stuff out of a cooler, and she read what it said on it with a scoff. "Human blood? You're seriously gonna try and cure me?"

"Yep," Dean deadpanned.

"Oh, please," Adriadne drawled as her head fell back on her shoulders. "Spare me."

"You're a demon, Mo," The youngest said, like it was the worst thing in the world she could be. "We're not just gonna leave you like this."

"Mo? Who the hell is Mo?"

"Morgan," Dean explained, his voice monotone but somehow angry at the same time. "Our sister. The human that you used to be. So we're doing what we should'a done years ago. And saving you. Even if it is from yourself."

"Your sister?"

"Yeah," Sam quipped, annoyed. "Crowley said you wouldn't remember."

"Crowley's the one that-"

"We know," Dean said. "Just shut up."

I didn't even know the Winchesters had a sister, Adriadne thought. But to hell if she wanted to become a damn human. Why would she even consider it? "Ever think maybe your sister wouldn't wanna be saved?"

"Doesn't matter." The oldest Winchester remarked, his voice flat. "You don't get a choice."

With a huff, Adriadne chuckled darkly. "Just let me go do what I wanna do. I don't bother you; you don't bother me. So what the hell do you care?"

"What do we care?" Sam asked, almost dejectedly. He shook his head, not dignifying her with a response, and started pouring holy water around the devil's trap. Reciting the Latin to start the ritual, he grabbed a needle, loaded it up with human blood, and handed it to Dean.

Adriadne looked at her supposed brothers, she didn't even know their birth order. She knew Dean was the oldest and Sam was the youngest. But where did she fit in the lineup? "You got anything stronger in there? Some heroin? Meth? Maybe it'd really make me feel somethin'."

"Don't worry, honey, you're gonna feel a lot."

And before she could fight it, he put the syringe in her arm and pumped the blood directly into her arm. She could feel it coursing through her veins, traveling through her bones, her arteries, her cells. Weaving its way throughout her body like an itch you can't scratch. Involuntarily, she let out a loud roar, a demonic roar, of pain. This damn human blood did not agree with her.

"Look," Sam said as both brothers backed away from her. "We've got a whole bunch more of these to go. You could make this a lot easier on yourself."

"And just in case some part of you gives a crap, we got your blood type."

"You wanna know something?" Adriadne asked, but a new wave of pain from the human blood cut her off. She groaned but wouldn't let it cut her off too long. She was a demon, after all, and pain had never been something she feared. It was something she admired, longed for, craved. "The part of your sister that cared died a long time ago."

Five times, the Winchester brothers had streamlined her with human blood. They didn't say anything when they came in this time, silently injecting her with round six. Like it was the only thing keeping them from breaking.

Adriadne was a demon; she knew that. But now things were becoming a little muddled. There had been small things, small tidbits of images popping in and out of her brain.

They weren't like dreams or nightmares. They were more like poorly done movies of being beaten by someone she was supposed to call her father. Dreams of fighting with her siblings, where even they'd beaten her - but also when she fought back, and they took the beatings themselves. She won and lost over and over, losing the fight when Sam left them for school, winning when Dean tried to get her to stop seeing her high school boyfriend, losing when Dean took away the knife he gave her, and winning when she eventually stole it back. She remembered watching their so-called father yell and scream, practically torturing who she was told were her brothers. She remembered not being able to do anything about it.

She saw herself hunting other creatures - not humans, but monsters. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, djinns, banshees, rugarus. She saw herself taking beatings from them, nearly dying from her injuries several times. She saw herself lose her virginity to a sweet guy from her high school at the time. She saw herself take that night and turn it into a string of drunken one-night stands.

She saw her father coming home drunk almost every night, beaten up. She saw herself patching him up, giving him stitches when necessary. She'd been the one to set her brother's bones when they were broken or dislocated. She'd have to be the one to reset her own because none of them were as good as she was at it. She saw the woman who was supposed to be her mother burn to death on a ceiling as her older brother - a toddler himself - pulled her and her little brother to safety.

And she remembered her father dying, making a deal with a demon to keep his oldest son alive and breathing. Then she remembered doing the same thing for her younger brother.

"You're the Winchesters," Adriadne drawled. "You're hunters. So am I an idiot to assume what you're gonna do once you realize this won't work? You think you got the stomach for that? Killing the girl you think is your sister?"

"We're not worried," Sam denied. "Because we've done this before."

It had been nine hours, nine injections of human blood in her veins, and she could name nine parts of her body she could barely move. She hadn't felt so useless since she was on the rack, and even then, she had a purpose. To postpone, to make it as long as she could. Alastair had given her a choice. Stay on, deal with the consequences, or get off, and then do it to someone else who deserved it too.

She had been at the end of her rope; her soul was already ripped to shreds. And then they healed her and broke it again.

The humans deserved it - that's what she was taught.

But then, why was I the one on the rack? I'm not human.

Yes, I am. Or...I was.

No. My name is Ad-Adria-

She had been having so many memories over the last several hours. But they had to be dreams; she didn't remember them belonging to her. Of the Winchesters, of growing up on Earth, of being a part of an admittedly screwed-up family.

My name is-

"How you doin', Mo?" That was Sam, her…younger brother, she had remembered. The memories were like a plague, keeping her sedentary in a time she had long forgotten. A time, she didn't know if she wanted to go back to or not. It was a time when she cared about them, about humans in general. A time when she had the ability to care.

Mo. Morgan.

She was confused when they called her that. She didn't know how to describe it. But something was weird about that name. These were people that she knew before she went to Hell. People she loved. People she would've sacrificed everything for. People she did sacrifice everything for.

"It doesn't feel right," She rasped, shaking her head as much as possible. Which, apparently, was not a lot.

"No, shit," And there's Dean.

"When you call me that," She explained, despondent, trying to blink away the new memory attempting to take hold of her reality. "It doesn't feel like my name."

"Well, what is your name?"

She didn't know. Adriadne was supposed to be her name. Morgan was supposed to be her name. How could someone not know their own fucking name? It was the most basic form of identification. Even demons had names. A new wave of pain hits her, and she grips the chair with all her strength. It wasn't a lot; she was so weak. But then another memory took over, and she wasn't even in that room anymore.

"What is your name?" He had asked, his voice cold and unemotional. The girl only shook her head in response, knowing what was coming with her answer. "You will answer me when I speak to you, girl.

"Morgan," She choked out, tears already rolling. "Morgan Winchester."

"You don't deserve my last name." Before she could blink, her cheek was stinging, and she was on the motel room floor. More tears fell involuntarily at the searing pain, at the blood dripping down her face from his ring. She flinched at the hand he rose again, but no hit came. Instead, he laughed - a heartless and calculating laugh. Like it was amusing watching his thirteen-year-old daughter cower at his feet. "You are no Winchester."

He was ready to strike a second time when someone got in the way.

"Get out of the way, Sam."

"No," his little voice announced. She could hear the emotion in his words as he continued. The little ten-year-old was scrawny, even smaller than she was. "She knows what she did. You don't have to hit her again."

Ignoring the boy, her father turned back to Morgan, practically looking through her little brother. "So this is what you've come to? Making little Sammy fight your damn battles for you?"

She looked him straight in the eyes; the green they usually held was almost black in the room's dim lighting. She had seen this so many times when he was angry, when a hunt didn't go his way, when his children disobeyed him. When she did something wrong.

"Boys," Her father called, ordering them to shut up and listen. Dean took his hands away from his face with a wince. Sam winced, too, backing away from his father. Nearly crashing into her. "Take this as a learning opportunity. We fight our own battles in this family. And we don't rely on other people to do it for us."

And with that, Sam was pushed out of the way, and he was on top of her.

"Dad," She gasped, finally back in the present but staring into space. Both brothers' heads shot up at the recall. "He was- he was mean."

"Yeah," Dean agreed, making her eyes lock on his. The whites of his eyes were red like the mention of his father had him holding things back. A storm was brewing behind his eyes, one he wouldn't let come to fruition. "He had his moments."

"He was so mad all the time," The girl croaked, her voice breaking even more. She was lost, not looking at them. Keeping her eyes down, they darted back and forth as she practically stared through the flesh and bone before her. "Watch out for Sammy. Make sure Sam's safe. Don't let anybody touch Sammy. If anything happens to him, I'll know whose fault it is." Her older brother only nodded, but Sam's eyes fluttered back and forth between his siblings. Like he was realizing something he hadn't before. "We were always watching out for Sammy. Who- who watched out for us?"

"Well, for one, Sammy watched out for us. And I watched for both of you, and you took care of us."

"I took care of you?"

"Yeah, Mo, you did," Sam said plainly.

"But I-I went to-" She denied, not entirely believing them. "I went to Hell, and now I don't know anything. You're my brothers? My family? My family tortured me. They-they're the ones that put me on the rack."

"Is that what they told you?" Sam asked, bewildered.

"I saw it!" She roared. Everything came back to her in waves, and not like a movie this time; these were memories. She knew it; she couldn't question it. "You hurt me- you- you touched me." She finally looked up at them, unable to hide the tears. She shook her head, trying to shake away the red, the blood, the screaming, the agony. "You- you- family isn't supposed to do that!"

Sam and Dean stared, their faces pale and drained. They didn't hide their emotions - like she remembered they did so often. They wore it plainly on their faces. Sam was a mixture of deep regret and sorrow. Dean wasn't just angry; he was simmering with rage.

"Now, you listen to me," Dean ordered, and she could almost hear a trace of their father in his voice. He leaned against the arms of her chair - her current prison - and gave her a stare that kept her captive in his gaze. "I went to Hell, too. They did the same thing to me. It. Wasn't. Us. And I know you don't believe that. But you will. Eventually."

When he finished, she nodded. He was wrong. Some part of her did believe him. The conviction in his words, the way he didn't bother to hide the angry tears in his eyes. Some part of her - a minuscule part - hoped he wasn't lying. That her family was still there for her. That maybe, even after everything that had happened, they would hold her when this was all over.

At her slight confirmation, he nodded, too, and stepped back, giving his younger brother room for the next shot. Sam came forward and quickly, without hesitation, put the syringe in her arm and pressed down.

"I don't even know my own name."

Sam didn't balk at her words. He just shook his head and gave her a small, barely there smile.

"You will."

"I don't wanna be human," She cried. Eleven injections in, she could feel the human blood becoming her own. Integrating into her bones, her DNA changed with every second that passed. Her power was draining, and she didn't like it. She was returning to who she was before Hell, the young girl with daddy issues, with two brothers who loved her - but could never get along with.

"Humans are weak, they- their emotions, it's too much," She continued, shuddering. "They feel too much, they don't see how useless they are. How- how small they are. There are eight billion of you, and all of you think you're the most important one. You all think you have some fucked up purpose, that there's something more you can do with your pointless little lives."

"No one here is gonna tell you that being human is a walk in the park," Sam said, his voice calm and steady as if he was expecting her to say this. "But it is better than being a demon. Than killing for no reason. Because even if you don't believe it, I believe we do have a purpose. Maybe it's a tiny one, maybe you're just supposed to be here to make someone else happy. Maybe you're here to teach someone a lesson. Maybe you're here to save the world." His words got light at that, like it was an inside joke, and Dean let out a small laugh. But just because you don't know what it is or can't see it doesn't mean you don't have one."

Before she could respond or give any words to the contrary, he put the needle in her arm and gave her the twelfth shot.

Morgan Winchester opened her eyes. And they were black. She could feel it, feel the remnants of Hell in her eyes. But as quickly as it came, it went. And as they cleared, she groaned. It was a strange feeling, but she felt lighter. Like there wasn't as much weight on her shoulders as before. Her eyes were blue again, like the sky people loved to stare at. Then she remembered she was human again. She was just a young girl again, not a demon, not a monster.

And then the weight returned. Only this time, it was even heavier, as if someone had tied an anvil around her neck and thrown her into the ocean. She remembered everything. Her life, her father, her mother, her brothers, Sam dying, her dad dying, her deal with a demon, Hell, being tortured, then turning around and doing the same, becoming a demon, becoming Adriadne, taking a joyride upstairs, murdering so many innocents. Then, being in here, the crowded but well-protected safe room in some place she had no knowledge of.

She could see her brothers a few feet away. Sam stood in front of Dean, holding a flask - their postures were identical. Tight and reserved, with their brows furrowed and their feet cemented into the floor.

Her face contorted into a question, and she greeted them with their names. She didn't know what else to say. But before she could speak again, Dean threw whatever was in the flask at her face.

Water. Water. Water.

And without needing a second to think about it, Morgan realized it was blessed. Holy water. They were putting her through one final test. To see if their work had paid off. When it didn't burn, sizzle, or boil her skin, her brothers let out a deep exhale of relief. Then, so did she.

"Welcome back, Morgan."

#dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural #dean winchester x reader #sam winchester x reader #dean winchester x sister!reader #sam winchester x sister!reader #dean winchester x ofc #sam winchester x oc #dean winchester imagine #sam winchester imagine #bobby singer #team free will #castiel

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thegreatlibraryfangirl · 6 months

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I keep meaning to make this meta post and then executive dysfunctioning my way out of it because it feels too big. So let's just start and see where it goes. I can always reblog it with additions later.

Khalila is an interesting Muslim to me, because she's not a stereotype. She's devout, and fierce about it, but she seems to choose which hadith she follows. (More on this in a sec)

I like to interpret this as a deliberate, highly reasoned-out decision but partially a reaction to what is either her upbringing, or the influence of certain family members. To explain my thoughts:

She's from Riyadh, which as we may remember from her hilarious put-down to Dario being racist/Orientalist/anti-Arab, whatever your buzzword is, is a modern, technologically developed city. This indicates certain things about history, which are backed up by the later discovery that the country name is still Saudi Arabia. So its history has been very close to that of our own, which in an absolutely tiny nutshell means that it was unified in 1932 by a member of the Al Saud family. The family had long been in alliance with the Wahhabi/Salafi movement, a reactionary movement largely against European colonialism/imposition of values, which leant hard into things like perfect adherence to the hadiths judged authentic and forbidding reasoning/logic being applied to which of these should be followed.

This is how we got to Saudi Arabia pre about 2017, with its incredibly powerful religious police, separation of men and women, women can't drive/travel anywhere alone/wear anything other than (black) abayas&niqabs or even burkas, stoning, etc etc.

Now, I don't know about you but when I first came across this information, my brain went straight to one particular scene: Khalila's Ink and Bone introduction.

In it, Khalila is being vigorously chaperoned by her uncle, Nasir:

"...when a man moved over to take a seat next to her. He was a rounded fellow, older, expensively dressed in traditional Arab robes ...The uncle gave Jess a warm smile, rose, and gave him a bow in return. It was all very civil, but he wasn't leaving the girl's side, that much was obvious ... the departure of Khalila's uncle. He clearly didn't like leaving his girl to the unwashed masses, but he went with good grace."

(This is also, through sheer elimination, probably the uncle who was a Library inventory for 30 years who she apprentices with, mentioned in S&I)

Khalila is not only chaperoned (the only one to be so) but is wearing a black hijab. Jess not mentioning any other colour makes me convinced that Khalila is actually wearing all black here. I think that she is doing this against her will, as in the entire series we never see her wearing black again after this (apart from adopting the explicitly English mourning custom for Morgan).

Adding this comment that Khalila makes about her uncle -

"Rough company," said Dario. "Unsuitable for an innocent flower like you." "You sound like my uncle. One can be innocent and not be ignorant, after all."

-- and I am claiming that at the very least, Khalila's uncle is a Salafi Muslim. I dither over whether the rest of Khalila's family is the same, since there's no evidence either way. Given that in our real life history, there has been a huge loosening of restrictions in Saudi Arabia from about 2017, I like the idea that her family in general are more progressive/lenient/different school of thought, and it's just Nasir who is a strict Salafi still. (Poor guy having fucking Rafa for a son.)

Other things that Khalila very quickly goes against that are mentioned or inferred here: being alone with unrelated men and touching the opposite gender. (Having a Christian boyfriend, even chastely, is ... that's a big can of cultural worms lol I'm talking about her being alone with, for example, Jess, and also freely doling out hugs and other physical affection). Hadiths and customs that Khalila does still adhere in the series to include the five prayers, wearing hijab, and calling both tattoos and alcohol haram.)

Anyway. I forgot my point. Basically, freed from the restrictions of her uncle and a religious movement that she clearly does not agree with, Khalila chooses her own way to be a devout and proud independent Muslim woman. Idk. I just love her.

#the great library #Khalila Seif

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ingek73 · 1 year

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Kate Middleton the slave liberator by proxy. Are you serious?

Article in the Daily Mail

The British press — and specifically the Mail titles — have outdone themselves again. This morning we learnt that contrary to what the Sussexes may have implied about racism in the British Royal Family, it simply cannot be true. This is because an “ancestor” of Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, was the ‘greatest American abolitionist’.

Of course the Daily Mail’s brilliant writer neglects to mention that Harriet Martineau, an Englishwoman who only visited America for a few months in the 1830s, never married nor had children. The Mail itself says she’s Kate’s “great-great-great-great-great-aunt”, so how she came be an “ancestor” and an American is a mystery.

Nevertheless, this woman I’d never heard of was so powerful that it was through her lobbying of Presidents Monroe and Jackson that the slaves were freed. Including, the Mail points out helpfully, “the Duchess of Sussex’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, Stephen Ragland”. So clearly the Duchess of Sussex is beholden to the Princess of Wales for not being a slave today.

The Mail details the ‘connection’ between Kate’s ‘ancestor’ and Meghan Markle

It’s not even funny. It is deeply offensive to me, a descendant of slaves, whose ancestors fought the British like hell for over two centuries for our freedom.

It is offensive to the memory of all the freedom fighters of the Americas, from Toussaint Louverture, to Nanny of the Maroons, to Frederick Douglass, to Harriet Tubman, to John Brown — to everyone in the emancipation movement — to assert that all it took was some lobbying from one white British visitor in America to free the slaves.

The movement to abolish slavery was global, hard fought and hard won. That the writers and editors of the Daily Mail think differently is an indictment on Britain’s entire system of education. History is clearly not taught. Not the history of Britain, slavery, and the slave trade, and certainly not the history of British racism.

Another offensive part of this story is the idea that an abolitionist couldn’t be a racist. Go back and read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist. (See what I wrote about Harriet some years ago, below.)

Many people felt that slaves should be freed in the same way they felt people shouldn’t be cruel to animals. But they didn’t think Black people were their equals. Abraham Lincoln was notoriously racist. So, an abolitionist is not automatically absolved of racism.

Whatever Kate Middleton’s distant relative’s actual feeling about Black people, it is ludicrous to posit that therefore the Royal Family can’t be racist. It’s not just the fact that Kate is only a royal by marriage, it is that you cannot inherit anti-racism by blood.

If one could, as opposed to being anti-racist because of an aunt-in-law lost in the mists of time, how much more likely would it be that Kate’s husband Prince William and her father-in-law King Charles III would have inherited racism from the long line of documented slavery profiteers and racists in the British Royal family?

Prince William’s namesake William IV, when he was Duke of Clarence, actually spoke in the House Lords in favour of maintaining the slave trade, and outlined nicely how the British Royal Family had been involved in it for centuries.

And we don’t have to go that far back to see evidence of how Black and other ethnic minorities are treated by the British Royal Family. They were banned from employment in Buckingham Palace up to the late 1960’s and probably later — since they are exempt from fair labour laws.

In 2021, Prince William and Kate declined to publish diversity figures for their Kensington Palace office, though his grandmother’s Buckingham Palace and his father’s Clarence House did. We suspect because they had no diversity to report.

So have done. No matter how much you want to exalt Kate at the expense of Meghan, please stop the foolishness. We see right through you, and you are offensive and not very bright.

Meghan Markle is probably as astonished as we feel (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Why I’m not celebrating Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Episcopal Church celebrates Harriet Beecher Stowe on July 1. While appreciating the efforts Stowe and her brother Henry Ward Beecher made in the cause of the abolition of slavery in America, in my opinion, she was not an unmixed blessing to the ‘Negro Race’, as she’d have called us.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was highly, highly influential. It was the best selling book of the 19th century apart from the Bible. It was the principal vehicle Stowe used to open the eyes of the good people of the US to the evils of slavery.

However, its picture of the childlike African, to be pitied and made an object of gracious condescension, has had lasting effects. The image of the good and humble Uncle Tom, who was too Christian to even dream of fighting back when he was whipped to death by Simon Legree, made white folks believe that is the quintessential good negro.

There was more. The ‘good’ woman on the plantation, who gave her master’s white child her children’s food before she fed her children. All the good Black people who put the white people first, since first is the proper place for white people.

And, the paler the black people were — the closer to white — the closer they were to human. The mulatto slave woman who drowned herself rather than be sold into slavery contrasted with the Black people who were less sensitive. Topsy, the lying child, who didn’t cry when she was whipped, because she didn’t feel it much, was very dark-skinned.

Then there were the last two mulattos, a man who could pass for white, and his very pale wife, who were so bright and articulate, who escaped slavery and went north to Canada. But eventually they realized their proper place was in Africa.

Stowe pitied the plight of the black slaves, and she thought they were inhumanely treated, but she didn’t think they were ‘equal’.

Their proper place was to be grateful for the benevolence of the good white people, but the negroes really didn’t belong in the Americas. She clearly thought they should have been returned to their native habitat — Africa — so white people would be clean from the stain of slavery.

#kate middleton #slavery #daily fail #karriet tubman

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opinated-user · 1 year

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the new video of LO...

-claims that every trans woman (trans men and non binary people don't count) always hated Rocky Horror Picture Show. show no record of this. while doing so she makes a joke about "i know you all know that trans women existed during this time period because you all think one was the one who started Stonewall" while flashing a picture of Marsha... according to her own word, Marsha didn't threw the first brick but she was there resisting the police and she did plenty of activist work for the trans youth of NY. this is the first time that i remember her even mentioning Marsha's name so it feels... dismissive and kinda gross make a direct reference to her just to diminish her role on LGBT+ history without further context of her other accomplishments that only recently got any recognition at all. LO already throws to the trash the work of LGBT+ black activists of the past on a regular basis when she goes on her queerphobic rants so this doesn't make it any better.

-at 3:14 LO says at the time RHPS came out cis gay men didn't cared for what trans women had to say (who "didn't really cared much about"? LO really needs an editor) because the movie "it's a film that had all the decandent fucking around and rape they could want, dancing to shitty songs because that is the only thing some of us still care about apparently" (while showing a picture of a character in SU sampling "Other Friends"... and heather the musical for some reason.).

if you were wondering it, that was indeed a homophobic mask off moment. to insist that gay men (which i don't know if LO realizes includes MOC) enjoy rape more than any other demographic is homophobia. make a direct connection between enjoyment of rape and cis gay, or any kind of gay man, is homophobia given the long, long history of gay men as predators. LO seems to be under the assumption that only trans women have been accused of such a thing but that can't be further from the truth. at some point everyone on the community had that accusation thrown to their face, but before bigoted people concerned themselves about "bathroom laws", they concerned themselves about gay men being teachers or becoming parents or being around children on any capacity because to some gay men were all pedophiles, all predators, all rapists. to some they still are. that's why gay characters existing is considered "grooming" for them.

LO's basically whistleblowing decades old homophobia. racism too if we take into account how many black cis gay men also enjoyed the film.

this is disgusting.

-LO claims that the only trans people she has seen defending/liking the film are millenials calling it an icon without ever explaining why does it deserve that status besides the "terrible music and fucking." this is because she has barely actually researched on this or she actively refuses to concede that the movie could have done anything positive beside being about rape and music.

-LO compares an old anime called Hibari with "Quagmire Dad" episode. at least now she brings out that Hibari also had some racist elements (over anti-blackness actually) that she "forgot" to mention before because of her bad flu.

only now she tries to say that both those pieces of media portrayed very real transphobia that trans women are at risk for as jokes, which makes them less able to be taken seriously by the public, and... that is the only criticism she thinks that episode deserves. many trans people have criticized the show for many reasons and this is the first time ever she recognizes the slightest negative point about it, but she's still under the (unjustified) idea that the episode is actually trans positive because "it's mocking the bigots."

how convenient that the only trans people worth listening are those that LO agrees with in order to defend her favourite show.

-at 6:23 she blames people calling her out for being a creep and a predator with receipts on why her last video was so bad.

"fickle patronage" means more fans abandoning her because they didn't find anything on her content worth supporting with their money, and that it's their fault and not LO's because she has never done anything wrong.

that "right wing pickme" is a trans femme youtuber who continuesly makes videos calling out transphobia from a leftist perspective. who LO has misgendered multiple times, admitted to it and justified it anyway when said trans femme youtuber called her out on being openly a creep with her audience, some of them minors.

-at 6:45 she says that only the opinion of trans women count on RHPS... with the implication being that opinion is always going to be negative, because she certainly didn't made any mention about how Laverne Cox acted on the reboot or how other trans women had positive opinions about the film.

none of this is to say that there can't be issues with the movie or reboot still or that anyone who doesn't like it is wrong for doing so. but LO's actually advocating for sucking all the nuance out from the whole topic to have one unified, one single opinion that erases or leaves on the dust the experience of many other queer people.

-at 7:34 LO "jokingly" imitates what she thinks is a souther accent where she "jokingly" uses the n-word but it's censored.

-a cheapshot to "fandom racism", something we have discussed before LO either doesn't really understand or only uses to weaponize against character she doesn't like, given how much she ignores actual examples of it in fandom or happily engages on it herself by holding a POC protagonist to unfair standards she doesn't hold for the rest of the cast.

-LO insist that "a problem with LGBT+ white spaces" is that they don't know that the right way to deal with problematic media is to do it critically... said the white passing Cherokee appropiating woman who can't even accept criticism for Disney actively sabotaging their first movie where the queerness of a main character is actually part of the plot and not easily edited it out.

-at 9: 17 LO engages way too gleefuly on a fantasy where she grabs two writers of WOW and the woman who writes novels about Sylvannas to "beat them to death with a fucking rock because they're vile human beings who get off to the suffering of women and non white people." reminder that LO has barely said anything about the actual real harassment that the real women employees suffered at the company... no, she only has an issue with the writers and the direction of the story of WOW has taken.

she cares more about how Sylvannas, a fictional blonde white woman, was treated than how real women were actually traumatized.

-at 9:32 she add that she'd beat Rowling with the same rock.

-at 10: 46 she "jokingly" says the n-word again but it's censored, without the bad accent. it wasn't funny the first time, it isn't funny now.

-the conclusion is not terrible... but coming from LO's so full of double standards, bad arguments and contradictions that it's hard to ignore.

#lily orchard

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imperiuswrecked · 2 years

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Tenoch has got me curious about Namor. Like a good curious. Yes he is a beautiful man, but now I wanna learn about Namor. I had a co worker say Aquaman and Namor came out at the same time, comics wise

Hello Anon! I can definitely talk about Namor XD it's my favorite subject.

Namor was actually created in April 1939 by Bill Everett, his first comic was in Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly which was a promotional thing to be given out in theaters his first story was then later reprinted and expanded in Marvel Comics (1939) #1 (November 1939). So he was actually created one month before Batman, and two years before Aquaman (November 1941).

So a lot of people compare Namor and Aquaman but they are actually different; Namor has always been born of human father/atlantean mother, his father is a Sea Captain, Leonard McKenzie, and his mother is Princess Fen.

Meanwhile Aquaman was totally human at first, his dad did some experiments on him to give him the ability to breath underwater, etc. (More Fun Comics (1941) #73) However later Aquaman would change to have the same backstory as Namor, human father/royal atlantean mother.

Marvel Comics (1939) #1

Namor is the first superhero in comics to fly, even before Hawkman, Shazam (captain marvel) and Superman, he is also the first comic anti-hero. Namor is also the first Marvel Mutant before the X-Men's creation. Fantastic Four (1961) Annual 1 published July 1963, that is still a couple of months before Uncanny X-Men (in September 1963)

Namor’s character is really interesting and unique, he is seen as a villain by the surface world, and a hero to his people. He is the protector of his people, Atlantis, and the seas. He has the blood of Neptune and is a descendant of him. Namor is a Prince who was caught between two worlds and never belonging to either world, his people saw him as too human, and humans saw him as too atlantean. So he is often mistrusted and betrayed by both the Atlanteans and the Humans.

Rise of the Black Panther (2018) #2

Not to mention that Namor and Aquaman both have very different personalities and morals, Namor tends to operate in a more gray area than Arthur does.

Sub-Mariner (2007) #4

Namor used to be a very popular character in the Golden and Silver age of comics but due to Marvel not handling his character well and canceling his comics, etc., he has been in a steady decline until recent MCU Namor news, although Namor has always had a small loyal fan following.

Origins of Marvel Comics: X-Men (2010)

In addition to being on several teams/starring in several books in the Marvel Universe, both hero and villain; X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Cabal, Avengers, Super Villain Team Up. He also co-founded some teams; Invaders, The Illuminati, The Defenders.

The Defenders art by Jorge Molina

Namor has a very long history, he fought in WWll against the Nazis. In fact he was the first Marvel character to be featured fighting against Nazis on the cover of Marvel Mystery Comics (1939) #4 even before Captain America was created. Aquaman’s first appearance years later would also feature him fighting Nazis, but Namor did it first.

Namor canonically has Mental Health Issues, his PTSD was finally acknowledged in Marvel’s Snapshot: Sub-Mariner (2020)

Namor has always been coded as biracial man in the comics. His first enemies were white people who harmed his people, the subamariners (what the Atlanteans were called in the Golden Age) are also coded as a indigenous sea people. Namor means “Avenging Son” in Atlantean. (Bill Everett wanted a cool sounding name so he wrote a bunch of names backwards and settled on Roman > Namor.)

Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly (1939)/Marvel Comics (1939) #1

Namor has had three major love interests in his life:

Betty Dean - a Human cop who was the first surface friend Namor ever had. They split up after the war as Namor had to return to Atlantis. She grows old while Namor stays young, but they reconnect as friends again later in life. Betty becomes the foster mother to Nita (Namor’s little cousin) and then later she dies after trying to protect Namor.

Lady Dorma - Namor’s first wife, an Atlantean Noble Woman who had been friends with Namor since they were young, both growing up in Atlantis. Dorma had been in love with Namor for years before he realized he had feelings for her too. She was murdered on their wedding day by Empress Llyra, when she tried to save Namor, she dies in Namor’s arms.

I had this gorgeous art of Namor/Dorma on their wedding day commissioned from @pointdotiozao

Marrina Smallwood - an Aquatic Alien who was raised by humans. She and Namor meet many years after Dorma’s death and Namor falls in love. They were married and lived happily for a time until Marrina began to turn into a sea monster. She begs Namor to end her life before she takes another life as she was a very good kind person who could not stand the thought of hurting people.

If you want to read up more about Namor then I have a reading guide here

Namor is a very arrogant, proud, and emotional flawed character and under all his salty bitchiness he has a good heart. He isn’t afraid to stand up for people who can’t defend themselves and is often conflicted with his human and atlantean sides.

Art by Nick Robles

Also his catchphrase is IMPERIUS REX!

#namor #namor mckenzie #namor the sub mariner #long post #imp answers #if you have any specific questions then please let me know

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savedpeople · 10 months

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thoughts about tonight’s episode:

we got confirmation that maggie didn’t burn ginny’s dino, but is hiding it from negan and is planning to continue hiding it. and the fact that she tells ginny to her face that she can’t have negan knowing she’s there... she was completely planning on keeping ginny away from him and what, try to force her to go back to the community knowing that maggie is lying to him?

she had absolutely no business calling negan a monster in front of ginny, telling her she “doesn’t know him” and that she’d find out he’s a monster if she sticks around long enough. whatever negan’s done in the past is not what he’s doing now, and using crimes from 15 years ago to tell a little girl that the only person she has left in her life, who has been caring for her, is a monster, is uncalled for. the continued flip flopping between “i know you’ve changed/are trying to be better” and “you’re a MONSTER” is still old

the people hating on ginny for caring about negan and calling out maggie’s lies are weird. maggie both directly lied and hid things from negan. that is fact. ginny isn’t a horrible person deserving of death for saying the truth

maggie refusing oxygen for what reason??

was the weird wall of baby doll limbs supposed to shock us or something bc that is extremely tame in the world of twd lmao

tommaso lowkey looking like shane in this episode

i hate that they killed off both tommaso and amaia, and in such a weird anti-climatic way too? i liked them. they’re killing off nearly every character they introduce us to

also the fact that tommaso was apparently not bit or anything during last episode’s fight against the walkers? he really got out of that completely unscathed?

“out of my way, bitch” LOL

the “walker king” looked cool, but the entire “fight” just being maggie on her back stabbing each walker head also felt anti-climatic, given how often they were teasing the walker king in trailers

i saw people who watched it early making fun of negan for “finding any reason to mention he’s a gym teacher” but he only mentioned it bc armstrong literally asked? i don’t see the problem lol. negan’s only mentioned being a gym teacher/working with kids maybe 2 or 3 times total in the entire twdu.

years ago i’d written a headcanon about negan knowing first aid and how to treat a number of various injuries due to being a gym teacher/sports coach. and while everyone at this point in the apocalypse undoubtedly knows how to administer first aid to some degree, i still liked the small nod to/confirmation of my hc in the way negan knew where to find first aid in the school bus and immediately started treating armstong’s injury

so it took armstrong 15+ years into the apocalypse to realize that the world isn’t all black and white?

I’m really worried about this whole thing with the croat and the dama. why do they “need” negan. how does the dama know who negan is. it feels like they want him to help them run nyc or something and if that’s the case i really worry about the writers making him “go bad” again and join them?? like i don’t think they will. but i remember one reviewer mentioning a “plot twist” in the finale that would break the pattern of maggie needing negan’s help and them working together so i am Worried

i really don’t want the dama to be yet another character we’ve never met yet somehow already knows/has worked with negan, bc this spin off is already oversaturated with characters having past connections with him/magically knowing details about his savior era

the croat was acting unbothered about missing an ear last episode in front of negan, but wore a cap to hide it when visiting the dama

I don’t understand how croat knew about maggie’s history with negan well enough to demand she bring negan to him, or how he even knew her at all. he was already gone by season 7. he never met maggie. she and negan hadn’t seen each other in like 5 years and never worked together until long after all the other saviors were gone (meaning no one there to witness it and then later tell the croat, in the way someone told him about the war.) she wasn’t even at the old hilltop location when he took hershel iirc so it’s not like he went back to an old community that he knew had once been under negan’s rule. like how did he have enough information to do this? it doesn’t make sense and i’m tired of characters just magically gaining knowledge related to negan for plot reasons. if i missed something please let me know because i’m lost lol

i... don’t see why maggie had to lie to negan about her situation. why not be honest with him from the start, and try to make a plan together to get hershel back without actually handing negan over to the croat.

overall i was kind of “meh” about this episode; it’s probably my least favorite one of the season. i feel like the plot didn’t move forward much and i’m having doubts about the story wrapping up in the finale in a satisfying way. I have a feeling it’s going to end on a cliffhanger of sorts in hopes of it getting a second season. and it does bug me that if it does get another season, that the bulk of the characters we were introduced to are already dead

#don't r.eblog #jenwatchestwd #✘ || Excuse the shit out of my goddamn french ( ooc )

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creolesasuke · 2 years

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AUTHORS, fuck not books maybe i can't even read

Since I also got your last message (I'm assuming that's you anyways) that asked for book recs I'll give both authors and books that I think you should read from them. Note that I will be including some...umm....Questionable writers here since there are some whose work I still feel can be incredibly relevant and powerful, but I'll nevertheless still add disclaimers so that you can avoid them if you'd prefer. I hope I don't have to say that reading and engaging with an author's work critically is not an endorsement of their politics. But ANYWAYS:

Toni Morrison: Toni Morrison writes with such power, grace, and wisdom that it's hard to imagine anyone disliking her work. What's interesting to me about her is that even though she's from Ohio, her novels have such southern gothic sensibilities that I sometime consider her a southern writer. But I think was makes her distinct from say Faulkner, O'Connor, and other southern writers is her optimism, very different from the southern modernist's tendency towards cynicism. Sula, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eyes (huge cw for csa and abuse), and Beloved (a book about the generational trauma of U.S. slavery so once again read with caution) are my personal favorites.

Virginia Woolf: Reading To the Lighthouse was a transformative experience for 17 y/o me. I had never read a novel that so perfectly captured existential longing and ennui. And after reading Mrs. Dalloway, I soon regarded Woolf as my favorite writer. Until I learned she was a huge anti-semite and racist. Yet I unfortunately can't discount the massive impact she had on me as a writer, and for that reason I have to mention her.

James Baldwin: I love James Baldwin even though I can only read his novels only once and never again bc they make me want to die. Giovanni's Room is literally the saddest novel I've ever read. James Baldwin was famously a bit MESSY she was a MESSY GIRL, but I still love this man so much honestly. Even though thinking about Giovanni's Room makes me pass out

Alice Walker: I've only read The Color Purple, and I probably will not read more of her since she's a raging anti-semite, but even so I can't deny how much this book affected me the first time I read it. It's funny bc The Color Purple film is such a staple of Black American culture and yet so few people know that in the book the main character is explicitly a lesbian. The novel is epistolary, being entirely composed of letter between Celie and her sister Nettie, and this depiction of black sisterhood is one of most authentic and endearing in literature. Cw for csa, racism, misogyny, lesbophobia, abuse.

Zora Neale Hurston: the mother of African American literature. Curiously enough, she was relatively unknown until 1975 when Alice Walker published an essay on her in Ms. magazine. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a landmark work of black southern fiction.

Suzan-Lori Parks: Postmodernism has become less and less appealing to me as I grow older, but something about how Parks deconstructs the black experience (boy do I hate that term) and presents history as like a collage of fragmentary signs and symbols keeps drawing me back. She can be so opaque and cryptic and yet it never comes across as pretentious or contrived. The America Play and Topdop/Underdog are my favorites. A lot of her plays depict racism but almost in a comedic way. If you aren't a fan of dark humor/shock humor then steer clear.

Derek Walcott: Omeros is the only thing I've read but it's still one of my favorite long poems of all time. I don't know much about him as a person but I love love love his use of language. One of the most inventive writers on this list.

William Faulkner: William Faulkner was just about every genre of bigot you could imagine but because of that he presents one of the most authentic depictions of the southern experience you'll ever read. As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury are my favorites, but I'm planning on reading Absalom, Absalom next so who knows. His short story A Rose for Emily changed my life. Cw for just about every act of violence imaginable, especially antiblack racism.

Tennessee Williams: A gay neurotic mess of a man whose plays essentially introduced the southern gothic style to American theater. Also a huge racist. The Glass Menagerie perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being gay and misunderstood understood in the south, even if the main character isn't explicitly gay. A Streetcar Named Desire probably needs no introduction, though I once again must warn you that there is an (infamous) rape scene (it's not explicitly shown but heavily implied). An extremely disturbing, almost expressionist depiction of masculinity vs. femininity

James Joyce: My favorite writer (unfortunately). I really cannot explain to you why I love this man so other than him being Irish and Make Pretty Word. Read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners before Ulysses. In A Portrait of the Artist there's technically a brief mention of statutory rape between the narrator and a sex worker but it's very brief and written in a highly metaphoric manner. I don't know much about him as a person other than him being a drunk and chronically ill. Perpetual virgin also. So catholic it'll make your bones ache.

Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude sophomore year of high school was another formative literary experience, and was actually the first Latin American work of literature I'd ever read. To this day whenever I try my hand at writer I always veer towards magical realism, so influential this book was. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is my favorite short story. I'm currently trying to read El Amor en los tiempos del cólera and El Colonel no tiene quien le escriba in the original Spanish. Failing spectacularly ❤️

Clarice Lispector: BASED. BASED. Lispector was a Ukrainian Jewish woman whose family fled to Brazil during WWI, and thus a lot of her novels relate to her experiences as a Jewish woman. The Passion According to G.H. is almost a feminist reimagining of The Metamorphosis by Kafka and it absolutely will haunt you for the rest of your life. Extremely high on my list of favorite writers, alongside Joyce, Woolf, Morrison, and Shakespeare, and that's only after having read one of her books. Incredible woman.

Jean Genet: I'm still reading Notre-Dame-Des-Fleurs but, and I normally don't do this, learning about Jean Genet personal history has intrigued me almost more than the novel itself. He was just such a fascinating man and from what I can tell was a massive ally to black people. I haven't finished the novel yet but from what I've read he has a very interesting conception of gender and sexuality, although I'm literally only like 10 pages in. He almost reminds me a bit of John Waters in that his writing explores transgressive sexual and gender, but different from Waters is Genet's aestheticism. He's a very lyrical writer. I don't know if I recommend him so much as I'm interested in seeing that y'all think about him.

#long post #anonyme #i purposefully didn't include earlier writers since that would make this post even longer #BUT if for whatever reason y'all want to know my opinions on pre-modern lit lemme know

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mangodestroyer · 28 days

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I hope the doctor takes me seriously about getting checked for gallstones.

Not that it seems to be much of a problem yet. It's just that I have the family history and seem to have some of the symptoms. Despite still being pretty young and never having been pregnant (which seems to cause gallbladders to go bad for some AFAB individuals).

I just hate getting so nauseous and having mild cramps just cause I ate a shit diet for a bit. And yes, I know that's normal to an extent. But I'm less resilient to binges these days. And even if I'm doing fine, the thought of eating something like a fish fry just makes me so irrationally ill because the aversion to super greasy foods is strong. No joke, my reaction to a discussion over fish fry prompted someone to ask if I have a bad gallbladder (someone who had theirs taken out).

Sometimes, all I ever want to do is drink a fuck ton of water or only eat vegetables. Idk, the idea of having gallstones has also made me feel "dirty." Like, I just need to flush my system out. Maybe I'm just traumatized from seeing how much my mother suffers because she nearly died from an attack and the removal was botched (doctors misdiagnosed her and messed with her in a way that caused bile to go places it shouldn't/took too long to figure out they needed to remove the damn thing). She had a pretty bad attack in her early 20's and had hers removed in her early 30's. So I'm doing a bit better comparatively since I haven't yet (yet) had an attack that sent me to the ER (mid-20's). But we share similar struggles.

Oh, and the drop in blood pressure I sometimes get. Because my body is actually too good at getting rid of cholesterol from my blood stream. And yes, I've done some research and having this health problem can lead to a longer lifespan on average (that does show in the family history). The trade off is a higher tendency for stones. But also, needing to eat enough so that I don't pass out. So I have to be careful not to over or under eat.

And again, it does suck because it's not the kind of thing doctors seem to acknowledge or take seriously. Not with young people. And no, they've never taken my low blood pressure seriously either. Not even if I pass out right in front of them in the waiting room. Actually, I remember being conscious enough to hear the receptionist laugh about it and ask if I was just playing around. I mean, yes. Maybe it was a little weird to witness me take a random right turn into a dark, empty room after being instructed to walk down the hallway (after they were informed that I was light-headed and had collapsed earlier). It was weird for me too. A part of me knew I was going the wrong way, but I couldn't stop. I was also sort of confused and thought I was going forward/kept trying to, but ended up going right no matter what. It took me being physically directed to start going forward. Until I had to sit down after a few more steps because I became too dizzy and my vision went black. And I am still baffled that the receptionist just laughed about it and thought I was just sitting on the dirty ass floor (in a freaking hospital of all places) for the hell of it. Not an, "Are they okay?" or anything. Just immediately jumped to a very strange/horrible conclusion (I totally believe the studies about hospital staff scoring higher for n*rcissistic and anti-s*cial tendencies). Until my brother reiterated what was going on, ofc. Then the c*nt took it a little more seriously (probably a dumb m*le-centered woman or something) and let me sit in a wheel chair for a bit. Since it was settling into people's heads a little more that I was struggling to do basic tasks at that moment because I was unwell. I say a little bit because they still sort of acted like I was playing and smirked when I was still out of it. I should also mention that, before this visit, I had a visit to the ER for a CONFIRMED non-epileptic seizure. Again, caused by a huge drop in blood pressure. It's not like there hadn't been readings or anything. And there were tests run after the fact and everything? And it's in my medical records because it still gets brought up during regular check ups?

They didn't take it seriously either when they got a reading that is in the stroke zone (yes, you can get a stroke from low blood pressure). Apparently, it's just "normal" for women to randomly collapse and I just need to "eat more and stay hydrated." So at least I was upgraded to being a silly women who forgot to eat that day (but I did)? Rather than just being some stupid child messing around for attention?

I'm just glad that more people are talking about not having weird health problems taken seriously. Especially women. Again, not that this is the worst thing in the world (and as I mentioned before, it has benefits too). But yeah, many of us have probably had some invalidating experiences. Outside of a hospital setting, I've just had some people in general act like me feeling sick or feeling light-headed was just be messing around/trying to get out of shit/looking for attention. It's led me to gaslight myself about health problems.

And also, I sometimes want to check medical records to see if there's just something negative about me on there. You never know. It only takes one medical professional in a bad mood to ruin it for you and leave a nasty note. It sounds crazy, but it took my mother working in medical billing to wake me up to that sketchiness. And also becoming more educated on misogyny. Looking back, I've started having much worse experiences with doctors after getting a couple p*lvic exams at 16 (maybe I was paranoid but I just wasn't sure about something and I was suddenly having awful periods for about a year, which is very unusual for me). You see, I was a teen who obviously still didn't know my own body well, and it's not normal to be in a bright ass, uncomfortable room with a random stranger shoving a cold piece of metal into you. I just remember that shit being extremely painful. So much that I ended up screaming. And then being shamed for not being able to handle it because "it's not supposed to be painful and I can control myself and just relax/should just know how to relax down there." I mean, the nurse seemed pretty fucking pissed off with me right then and there. And since then, that's just been the default with medical professionals whenever I got to appointments (and it's pretty much caused me to put shit off because I'm fed up with them).

I do sometimes wonder if some discomfort over a freaking p*lvic exam was enough to get me a BPD diagnosis or something. If so, no one told me that's on my record/informed me about "having" that condition (quotes because it's way over diagnosed in AFAB individuals and might as well just be modern day hysteria). And I don't understand why that warrants such a stigmatized diagnosis either. I mean, I would have been too young to receive a diagnosis like that because PDs are not something you're supposed to diagnose minors with. Also, that was a nurse, not a psychologist/psychiatrist. And she only interacted with me for... ten minutes? But for some reason, she had the authority to just do that within that time frame? Well, even if it isn't BPD, it could also just be in my record that I'm a "difficult" patient or whatever. And idk how you find that out or get rid of that association.

Long rant. Ig I'm just a little nervous because I have tons of overdue medical procedures I need to get done. And as someone who was once very good at the doctor's/dentist as a child (would literally get praised for how well I took vaccines/and having a fucking tooth pulled at 6), I now fucking hate going to the doctor's. Even if they aren't being dismissive and shit over medical problems, it never seems to fail to be a place full of other judgements as well. I mean, one example off the top of my head is when a dentist asked me what I was doing in college, and then got snarky as hell over my answer (math, at the time, which is now just going to be a minor). Who is hiring these people? Why are so many of them too socially inept to have a normal ass conversation/not show extreme judgment? Why are there so many people like this interested in the medical field? You know how most people respond to what I'm doing in college? Either "okay, cool." or "Wow, STEM! You'll probably find lots of high paying jobs." or "Gross! I could never do college level math!" Honestly, I kick myself for just being defensive about it and snarking back, "I don't know." When she asked, "Well, what can you do with that!!!??" (as if it was the most appalling, fucked up thing ever that someone would choose to major in math), I should have said, "Idk, study calculus?" Probably would have flown over her head.

But in all seriousness, math is not a bad major. Lots of careers that can easily pay 100K if you specialize in something involving lots of coding or applied math. Finishing up calc III and will soon be making a move into studying data science. For health informatics. How ironic because it turns out I have always had an interest in health. But have been deterred from clinical work. I hear it's way more chill in health informatics tho and I already have some of the skills for it with the math background.

But yeah, pure math would be much more tricky to find work for. Sure.

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king-maven-calore · 2 years

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ayo as a poc, Mare’s poc status seems very iffy in my eyes idk 😭😭

To me it feels like Victoria rlly said “yk what I feel like avoiding some controversy” *vigorously tries to call Mare a poc without giving her any ethnic features or even mentioning it at all in the 1st book*

I had to read the RQ for school so no, I didn’t miss it, I took heavy annotations on it. Mare is honestly my least favorite character because of how WHITE she’s written from a poc standpoint.

It’s this very common thing with yt writers where they darken a characters skin tone and think that’s all it means to be a person of color. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect Victoria to make insightful commentary as she IS a white woman, and since it’s fantasy and our ideas of race in this world aren’t supposed to exist. But representation isn’t just “wow she also has dark skin” it’s more the features. Mare is consistently described as having Eurocentric features.

And then white people always try to talk over us like “oh well it doesn’t matter she’s just written that-“ like shush omfg. People calling Mare Latina is hella disrespectful 💀 like what the actual fuck Latin countries don’t even exist in their world. Her last name is fucking Barrow. Her middle name is Molly. That’s so European I had a seizure. Just randomly saying “yuh girlie this character is Latina” seems fucked up.

Not directed @ you but just in general this shit sucks because it gets us further and further away from actual helpful representation in media.

I get you're upset about this. Maybe you've read too much of this type of character and you're fed up with it. I feel you. I agree Mare's skin color being barely described in canon (it got better as the books went by, but it was too little too late🎵) when the Calore boys' skin color was mentioned every two sentences was not great. I don't think Mare was described as having Eurocentric features tho... she simply wasn't described all that much 🤷‍♀️

My personal take on white writers making characters random ethnicities in fantasy/sci-fi and that not having any relevance whatsoever on the plot is that I freaking love it. I find it refreshing, a good step toward diversity in fiction as long as they don't bring up real-life stereotypes into the page 🤡. Why does the character having X skin color have to affect their journey if the plot has nothing to do with it? It's like the issue with the S&B adaptation: in their effort to be more "woke" and shoving fictional anti-Asian racism into the show, they alienated Asian viewers. I'm a brown, indigenous Latina. I like reading stories where people who I can imagine looking like me are getting the magical stone and their skin color doesn't matter. When I want to read stories where racial/gender/sexual orientation issues are central topics, I'll simply go read authors who have an actual say in the matter bc of their lived experience.

About Mare having a European name. I say this with all the love in my heart: please stop thinking of us Latines as brown-skinned, brown-eyed people with the last name Torres or Rodriguez. That's not what our demographic looks like (I do look like that tho). There have been so many immigration movements all through history, there are black ppl with European last names, there are blond-whiter-that-mayo ppl with Torres last name. We mixed around these places. I kindly invite you to watch a video on the topic (reading statistics on Wikipedia is no fun).

And finally, you won't catch me defending a white writer lady in my house, but VA only said Mare would be of latine descent after being asked about it by fans. Her reply and explanation made sense with the RQ world-building. Now it became of relevance bc of fancasts and for me personally bc I write modern AUs where Latin America is very much still around geographically speaking 🥴.

That's my personal stance on the matter, but I respect your frustration and the points you brought up about the lack of description of Mare's physical appearance.

#ask #anon #RQ discussion #Mare Barrow

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captainsway · 3 years

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Satine Kryze, the New Mandalorians, and Fandom Misconception of Mandalorian Culture

If you’re a fan of Mandalorians and like to read fanfiction, you’ve probably read at some point that the New Mandalorians have committed ‘cultural genocide’. That Satine Kryze is a fanatic who is doing everything she can to destroy Mandalorian culture and that she has a watered down version of what it means to be a Mandalorian. And I’m here to tell you that this simply isn’t true.

This is going to be a long read. I will go into the history of Mandalore, what it means to be Mandalorian, as well as how it relates to our own history, so please, buckle in. Also, I will state that there are spoilers for The Clone Wars and season 2 of The Mandalorian.

Most of what we know about Mandalorians is from Karen Traviss and her Mandalorian books - she wrote many books about Boba Fett and even about a lot of clone troopers during and after the war. She’s also well known for starting the creation of Mando’a, the spoken Mandalorian language. However, Karen Traviss is also well known for hating the New Mandalorians and even the Jedi. She has (TW here) equated Jedi ‘apologists’ to slave owners and N*zis. She has been a big name for Star Wars for going into Mandalorian history and culture, however, she has a lot of discourse surrounding her and how she interacts with fans including the fact that she apparently doesn’t even read other Star Wars books that aren’t her own. A lot of people have seemed to have taken her rhetoric about Jedi and Mandalorians as fact, even though she is one author and has written from an extremely biased position of refusing to understand Jedi beliefs and the fact Palpatine, the Separatists, and the Senate were to blame for a lot of what happened in the clone wars. The Jedi were conscripted and refusing to understand that is what leads to ‘Jedi were slave owners’ rhetoric. However, that is a completely different conversation and not relevant to this post about Mandalore.

A lot of Mandalorian culture is from the Legends books. They have a long standing history of war, conquering, and allying themselves with the Sith. They started out as a group from Coruscant called the Taungs who were driven out by the native humans and became nomadic until conquering the planet they called Mandalore after their warlord. They continued their Mandalorian empire until the Sith wars and the Mandalorian wars, the latter of which was the time of Revan and the KOTOR games. I personally haven’t played KOTOR and don’t know enough about that point in Mandalorian history, but I do know that there were many wars, genocides, and violence. It was after the planet Mandalore was devastated by the Jedi Order and the Republic and turned into a barren desert that couldn’t sustain life, that the cultures began to shift and the major factions known as the True Mandalorians, Death Watch, and the New Mandalorians came to be.

(Mandalore after the Mandalorian Excision at the hands of the Republic (Legends) or their own civil wars (TCW). The Mandalorians used biodomes to sustain life on the planet.)

According to Wookiepedia from the Legends (ie, not canon) era, the Republic established a government, but the New Mandalorians were a break off of that. They didn’t follow the Republic nor did they love it, but they did believe in non-violence and peace. They followed the Kryze family who maintained the Duchy in Sundari on the planet Mandalore. Sundari was the capitol alongside Keldabe, the former being for the New Mandalorians while Keldabe was for the planet Mandalore. Many people had left the planet after the devastation to more lush planets or moons, such as Concord Dawn. Satine Kryze herself was from Kalevala, another toxic desert planet in the Mandalorian sector who relocated to Sundari. She was born to a warrior clan and grew up in the culture, but wished to move past that for peace. There was another person from Kalevala who maintained the royalty and also became a senator for the Republic, but he mostly represented the planet itself.

Again, a lot of this history and the ‘New Mandalorians stemming from the Republic installed government’ is from Legends; some of which Karen Traviss wrote, some of which is written from Boba Fett’s perspective (for example, calling the New Mandalorians ‘Faithless’ was from The Bounty Hunter Code and written from the perspective of Boba Fett. This should be taken with a grain of salt from an unreliable narrator viewpoint.) The Clone Wars show, which is where the New Mandalorians first physically appeared, states that they formed after the civil war to rebuild Mandalore, without interference from the Republic. Any violent Mandalorians were exiled to Concordia except the Protectors who were sworn to protect the Concord Dawn system. How anti-Mandalorian can Satine truly be if the Protectors swore to also protect her and the New Mandalorians? Also, any Mandalorian was free to leave Concordia as ‘Old Mandalorians’, but they had no desire for revenge because there was no reason to do so. They were free to maintain their beliefs and practices as long as it wasn’t on the planet Mandalore where the New Mandalorians kept their main city.

There’s a severe misconception as to what it means to be Mandalorian. I’ve heard arguments that you must follow the Resol’nare, the Six Actions, in order to be Mandalorian. However, I argue that there are many ways to be Mandalorian, that it’s a difference with species/race/ethnicity, religion, and culture. You can be born into Mandalorian space and be Mandalorian. You can follow a specific culture or creed and be Mandalorian. You can be adopted by a Mandalorian and raised by then and be Mandalorian. Just as there’s no one way to be a certain ethnicity or race in our world, there’s no one true way to be a Mandalorian. Jango Fett was born on Concord Dawn, in Mandalorian space. His parents were farmers. Even if he never was adopted by Jaster Mereel and became the Mand’alor of the True Mandalorians, he still would’ve been Mandalorian, just like his family. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘no true Scotsman’ and I believe it applies to Mandalorians as well.

However, let’s go with the argument that the Resol’nare makes someone a Mandalorian. The argument is that Satine Kryze doesn’t follow this and that is what makes her an agent of cultural genocide. The Resol’nare states:

Education and armor, self-defense, our tribe, our language, our leader.

Reminder that the Resol’nare was created by Karen Traviss, who we spoke about earlier. Also, the Wookiepedia Legends page for the New Mandalorians states that they’ve broken from the Resol’nare (again, thank you Traviss), but it’s more that they don’t follow a Mand’alor, rather than none of the actions. Let’s break this down and see how Satine Kryze does follow the Resol’nare.

The first one is easy: Education. In one of the episodes of The Clone Wars, it focused on the school in Sundari:

Satine’s own nephew, Korkie Kryze, attended and the main focus was to raise new leaders for Mandalore. The entire episode revolved around the students and Ahsoka Tano uncovering a corruption plot to destabilise the New Mandalorians by Almec, who later joined forces with Death Watch. Also, one of the forefronts of the New Mandalorians is technological advancement. They put their studies and trade into engineering and technology as well as transportation (Legends, established by Traviss).

The second, armour. This is a sticking point for a lot of anti-New Mandalorian fans who believe that Satine Kryze makes Mandalorians give up their armour.

This is a picture of Satine Kryze, Prime Minister Almec, as well as Korkie Kryze in the background. Look at the two people in the middle. See what they’re wearing? These are Mandalorian Royal Guards and they wear armour. New Mandalorians literally had a police unit called the Mandalorian Guards who wore armour, so this is kind of a moot point, showing fanon they are wrong about this. A lot of the Royal Guards were made from the afore mentioned Mandalorian Protectors.

Just because many New Mandalorians chose not to wear armour, doesn’t mean they were not allowed to wear it. One could try and argue that only the police and guards are allowed to wear armour, but the fact of the matter is: there’s still armour for the New Mandalorians. Also, interesting note but all the cadets from The Academy had the Iron Heart, which is a symbol more commonly seen on Mandalorian armour. I think it’s safe to say that is an easy adaption of the culture.

Also in that vein is the ‘self defence’ idea. There’s a lot of belief that the New Mandalorians have no means of defending themselves, that they shun every form of violence. As I’ve just shown, that’s clearly false. They use batons, stun guns, and even hand to hand combat in order to defend themselves. The Royal Guard used force staffs in order to deflect blaster fire, very similar to how the Jedi use their sabers. Even Satine Kryze has used non-lethal weapons of her own:

In the episode mentioned before, The Academy, it is shown that you don’t need guns or lightsabers to defeat your enemies and protect others. Ahsoka didn’t have her lightsaber and yet her and the cadets (including Korkie Kryze) managed to save Satine and uncover the criminal black market on Mandalore. People like to say that New Mandalorians’ creed of ‘no lethal weapons’ means they’re defenceless or ‘erasing culture’, but we’ll get into why this is a misconception with even deeper concerns later.

‘Our tribe’ is easy. The New Mandalorians follow a specific creed of non-violence and they follow that in deference to Satine Kryze, who we can even claim is ‘our leader’ as well. Each creed follows their own leader: the True Mandalorians followed Jaster Mereel and later Jango Fett, Death Watch followed Tor and Pre Vizsla, and the New Mandalorians followed Satine Kryze. All three can claim tribe and leader.

As for ‘our language’, as mentioned, Karen Traviss had originated the spoken language. Mando’a is rarely spoken in the animated series and is more shown in writing. The written language has been sparked once more by season 2 of The Mandalorian. A lot of fanon claims that Satine Kryze erases the language of Mandalore and forces Mandalorians to stop reading or speaking it, a very common cultural genocide against indigenous people. However, this is also false. It’s shown that there’s written forms in several of The Clone Wars episodes, and Satine Kryze herself even speaks it to a Death Watch bomber, click this link for proof and the translations. The written form was actually made by Philip Metschan when asked by George Lucas for Jango Fett, thus there was very little translation into actual Mando’a and why it’s a fan theory that there’s different dialects of it.

(New Mandalorian console from The Academy with written Mando’a.)

Thus, we can safely say that the New Mandalorians do follow a lot of Mandalorian culture that fans say they do not. I’ve also seen many fans say that ‘weapons is their religion’, quoting Din Djarin from The Mandalorian from season 1. However, in season 2, Din is questioning his beliefs as he meets more and more Mandalorians and finding he’s not one of the few remaining. It’s a fascinating study into diaspora and finding one’s culture, but it appears that some people are not also following along. Din has left behind many things he thought were truly Mandalorian - he’s left his people, he’s lost his home, and he’s even removed his helmet in front of others for the love of his child. After he met Bo-Katan Kryze (Satine’s sister who joined Death Watch), he’s been questioning his beliefs and what his place is in the galaxy. We’re finding he’s from a specific zealous sect of Mandalorians, but that doesn’t make him less Mandalorian. He was a foundling (we don’t know if he’s from Mandalorian space), and he’s taken in his own foundling. Mandalorian fans like to say that love of children makes a Mandalorian, so why must weapons and war make one and not love and peace? Mandalorians can love their children and tribe and still be Mandalorian. Weapons and war is what leads to cultural death and that is what the New Mandalorians are trying to prevent.

It’s a bit concerning that this fanon has been so pervasive throughout fandom. It may have originated with Karen Traviss or not, but it has been stated in many fanfic that Satine Kryze is committing ‘cultural genocide’ and has a ‘watered down version’ of Mandalorian culture. It’s so pervasive that people actually believe that Death Watch is better than the New Mandalorians. Death Watch came to be because of the True Mandalorians in Legends and the Mandalorian civil war in canon. In Legends and new canon (via The Mandalorian), Jaster Mereel made the Supercommando Codex, outlining a new structure for Mandalorians to also move past wars. He believed that Mandalorians should become bounty hunters and soldiers for hire instead of fighting amongst themselves. Tor Vizsla took offence to this and created Death Watch who believed in Mandalorian superiority. They wanted to go back to the Mandalorian empire and stoke war amongst the sector. Death Watch repeatedly worked to destabilise the New Mandalorian rule, to the point where Pre Vizsla, Tor Vizsla’s son, was the governor of Concordia, pretending to be an ally to Satine Kryze while he was secretly working with Dooku and the Separatists.

Death Watch committed many atrocities and acts of terrorism. They bombed civilians at a memorial for peace, and after Vizsla was ousted as governor of Concordia for being the Death Watch leader, one of his first acts was to enslave the women of the Ming Po tribe from the planet Carlac. When the men tried to save them and make Death Watch go away, Vizsla ordered the women dead and the town destroyed.

(Satine and Obi-wan witnessing Death Watch’s terrorist bombing.)

(The Ming Po people, who are obviously Asian coded.)

Their entire group of people were based on Asian cultures and it’s uncomfortable as an Asian to see people redeem or idolise Pre Vizsla and Death Watch. He committed mass murder genocide against them after enslaving and terrorising them.

(Carlac, where the Ming Po tribe lived. Note the building structures, the gate which resembles a Japanese torii, and the trees which resemble cherry blossom trees.)

Pre Vizsla and his fanaticism with Death Watch is what directly led to the destabilisation of Mandalore. He teamed with Darth Maul to lead a coup against Satine Kryze and an army to Sundari which led to Satine’s and Pre’s own death. Maul installed Almec as Prime Minister and Mandalore was under civil war once again. This continued until Rebels when Bo-Katan Kryze was given the dark saber by Sabine Wren and she became Mand’alor; unfortunately, the Empire destabilised Mandalore again and that’s what led to the events in The Mandalorian show. Fanon continuously believing that the New Mandalorians’ bids for peace led to cultural genocide is what leads to believing actual genocide is better. Even if people understand Death Watch is bad, there’s a false equivalence saying ‘New Mandalorians and Death Watch are just as bad’ which, again, we’ll get into later.

(Obi-Wan Kenobi arriving on Sundari to save Satine Kryze during the coup.)

Another claim against the cultural genocide argument is the fact that Satine and the New Mandalorians kept artwork of Mandalore’s violent history. They are in no way erasing their past, but instead keeping it as a reminder of what they need to move past.

Murals of Mandalorians killing Jedi and other people. The second is in the Sundari palace where Satine resides. People like to claim this is hypocritical, but it’s meant to show that they are not forgetting their past. That peace is what they must aim for lest they go back to their violent ways.

I have also seen people say that the New Mandalorians are ‘white supremacist’ and that has coloured their beliefs of them. I agree that I recoiled in disgust when I saw the shot of the lackluster New Mandalorians in their full white, blond hair, blue eyed glory. However, that is an animation choice and not the fault of the actual New Mandalorians. Most Death Watch people who are shown are also white with blond hair and blue eyes. In fact, Satine was a politician who often hosted several non-human species and negotiated with them.

(Scenes from TCW episode ‘The Voyage of Temptation’ with Satine Kryze and Obi-wan Kenobi with aliens and humans of various colour and shape. In this episode, Death Watch attacked the ship.)

You do know who did have a problem with aliens? Death Watch. From The Bounty Hunter’s Code, written in part by Jason Fry, there is this:

(Picture taken from the book by a user on discord. Thank you again!)

It states that Mandalorians in Death Watch must have ‘human faces’ and that non humans are ‘outsiders’ and ‘beast species’. Very reminiscent of anti-immigration views and general racism against black and brown people. And yet, there is a general belief that Death Watch is not racist because of the Wren family from Rebels where Sabine Wren is a clear person of colour. Hopefully, readers can tell what an allegory is at this point.

A problem I believe is that there’s a severe lack of understanding on what cultural genocide truly means. It’s defined as ‘acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction.’ As proven, Satine and the New Mandalorians have their own beliefs, but they do not destroy their history; instead they adapt them to what they believe the future is aiming for. They do not suppress nor destroy language, or artwork, or historical propaganda. They cannot be colonisers as they live on Mandalore themselves. They exile people, yes, but the people on Concordia had representation who Satine listened to and trusted before he was revealed to be a terrorist. The Mandalore system is big with multiple planets and habitable moons, and Old Mandalorians were free to build their lives anywhere in the system or galaxy, as long as it wasn’t on the planet Mandalore near the New Mandalorians.

Going back to the ‘Republic installed the New Mandalorians’ take, it is canon that Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians resisted the Republic’s attempts to install a military occupation in Mandalorian space. Vizsla committed terrorist acts and attempted assassinations to murder Satine and he was backed by the CIS to create disorder on Mandalore. Joining the Republic at least peripherally had allowed the New Mandalorians to maintain trade and peace for their people, but when war came, they stuck to their beliefs and created a neutral system. In fact, the Republic cutting off trade, food, and supplies was essentially attempting to blackmail the New Mandalorians to participate in a war. Also, sending the Jedi isn’t a sign of Republic approval; even in The Phantom Menace, the Republic wouldn’t do anything for Naboo and Qui-gon Jinn and Obi-wan Kenobi were only sent as a favour to the then Chancellor Vallorum to investigate what was going on. The Jedi served the galaxy, even if their allegiance and oath was to the Republic, and that includes Mandalorian space.

(Qui-gon Jinn and Obi-wan Kenobi protecting Satine Kryze.)

I do understand why it’s awful to see a group of white people with the same model types to preach about peace and non-violence, especially when the only other known Mandalorian at the time is a brown man. However, that I will fully put on Dave Filoni’s shoulders as he wanted to make the Mandalorians closer to Nordic Vikings (something I believe was mentioned to him by Lucas). The Mandalorians may have been inspired and influenced by other cultures, but for The Clone Wars, it reminds me of and reflects the current state of USA. The USA has a long history of wars, genocide, and violence. It started with white colonists killing and enslaving indigenous people and black people and has continued to be the leader in military and police funding in the world. And yet, whenever people wish to progress past that (for example, enact gun safety laws, defund the military and the police, enact healthcare, remove racist symbols), there are people who claim that they’re trying to ‘take American history away’ or ‘take our rights away’, etc. It’s what has lead to the state the country is in now.

I find it highly disturbing that fandom is hating on New Mandalorians and claiming it’s cultural genocide. It equates to modern times and how people like to claim that ‘liberals’ are trying to ‘take America’s guns’ because we’re tired of war, police brutality, and school shootings. Because we want laws to remove guns from safe spaces and make it harder to obtain weapons. This isn’t cultural genocide. This is progression of society. On January 6th, 2021, we saw an attempted coup where right wingers stormed the American capitol, live fire was shot and a woman killed, where they were actively looking for Democratic congress people to hold them hostage and possibly kill them. I maintain that fiction reflects reality and this is true in this case. The New Mandalorians wish for peace and do not wish for violent weapons in their space and enact laws to do that. However, the galaxy is bigger than America and Old Mandalorians can go anywhere else in the galaxy or even the Mandalorian system. Several countries have enacted anti-gun laws and prevent weapons from being in the hands of violent people. We have labelled white supremacists as domestic terrorists and remove statues of names of slave owners and other awful historical people. I ask you this: how is what the New Mandalorians doing any different? If it’s because you believe the propaganda from Traviss (and Jason Fry, don’t think I don’t see you), then you need to reevaluate your source. It is not a bad thing to see violence and wish to move past that and instead focus your resources to innovation, humanitarian efforts, and, yes, pacifism.

I mentioned earlier that people like to equate Death Watch and the New Mandalorians. It’s generally like how people say ‘Antifa is just the same as fascism’. In fact, I saw a comment on a fic that generally says something similar:

Name removed and the fic will not be mentioned, but it equates the New Mandalorians and Death Watch to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her other POC congresspeople who wish to help people, and literal terrorists. Honestly, there’s a lot to unpack from this singular comment and I’m not sure I have the energy to do so. Death Watch isn’t like ‘Islamic’ terrorists. They’re like the white supremacist terrorists we see in the USA who planted bombs around various political buildings because they wanted violence against the Democratic party. This comment is just shitty victim blaming and promotion of violence. Pacifism isn’t ‘dangerous’. It isn’t ‘suicide’. It’s an ideal we should actively strive for.

I’m tired of seeing writers and fans say that the New Mandalorians commit cultural genocide. I’m tired of the misunderstanding and the attack on pacifism and the refusal to believe that peace is an option. It may not be feasible in the universe of Star Wars, but in that case, it’s not feasible for the USA and our own long history of war and we might as well give up. I ask that you at least do some research on the New Mandalorians before writing them and if you refuse to do so, then at least tag your fic as AUs and not actual canon fact. It’s the same with the Jedi and the propaganda that is passed along for them; you’re believing anti-New Mandalorian authors who aren’t accepted as canon. And for fuck’s sake, every time you praise Death Watch and say that they’re good, or that Pre Vizsla is an alright guy and redeemable, or that Obi-wan Kenobi of all people think that Mandalorians are better off being warmongers, then you’re wasting my time and helping spread bad (and, yes, racist) takes.

EDIT: Since this is still going around, I’m going to add that 1) there are very prominent Maori pacifist groups that are still being oppressed. The Mandos have a lot of Maori influence because of Temuera Morrison and it’s great that he’s bringing his culture to Star Wars, but the greater Mandalorian cultures are *not* based on them. Whether it’s TCW or Karen Traviss, none of the writers had the authority to make Mandos Maori (and Traviss very obviously fetishised them). 2) People keep claiming ‘pacifism is something governments can claim to oppress others!’ and yeah, it can be an excuse, but very often it’s an authoritarian government, *not* a pacifistic government. Do you know what happens to actual pacifistic governments? Groups? They get attacked and genocided. It’s literally what happened to the New Mandos in TCW. They were attacked and killed and their way of life was obliterated thanks to Death Watch and Maul. They weren’t forcing their way of life on the greater Mandalorian population and honestly? Stop acting like *pacifism is bad*. There are legit pacifists out there and people have *constantly* been actively against war all throughout history and they’ve been *murdered* for it. Recall what happened to Vietnam War protestors??? Recall the smear campaign against France for not getting involved in the Iraqi War??? The New Mandos can reflect any point of history in the real world. Acting otherwise is *your problem*. Can pacifism be used poorly? Yes, mostly when you’re ignoring the plights of others around you in the name of pacifism. Are the New Mandos an actual good example of pacifism? No, and no one would claim it would be and I blame that solely on the shit writing of TCW where war is treated like a game half the time. But acting like pacifism as a whole or pacifistic governments or ideals is bad is fucked up and wildly dismissive of the large number of real pacifists.

#star wars #new mandalorians #satine kryze #obi-wan kenobi #mandalorians #mandalore #cw terrorism #cw racism #cw genocide #pre vizsla #death watch #the mandalorian #the clone wars #tcw

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nicanario · 3 years

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this post is a product of its time

tw: discussion of racism, homophobia, misogyny and a short mention of sexual abuse.

ok, this is basically gonna be a very long rambling post about my not fully developed thoughts on the justification many people give to bigotry when talking about the past: "it was a product of its time"

it would be fair to say, with me being a raging SJW socialist scumbag, that I don't think this is a very good argument and is most of the time actually an excuse to not think about the problems inherent to our society, historical or not, and, by extension, the problems with ourselves. but I do think that sometimes, just sometimes, this can be a valid point, or at least one that raises some interesting questions.

I'm going to cite examples from several pieces of media, but fear not, I'll try to make this as accesible as I can.

so, let's take Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as our first case study. this show has, correctly, been called progressive by everyone except for clueless people who don't know much about Star Trek's history, Star Trek's crew, Star Trek's cast, or, frankly, Star Trek. because if you ignore the clear, sometimes in-your-face political history and present of the franchise, I don't think you know much about it at all. I do think you can call yourself a fan if you like it, you may have watched every single episode for all I know. but lots of mental gymnastics are needed to ignore the political progressiveness Star Trek has had since its very beginning.

episodes like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield are obviously anti-racist, at least in their intention. but the episode in question really is "a product of its time," and at the very end fails to uphold its ideals. the episode ends with the two aliens (who are LITERALLY. BLACK ON ONE SIDE. AND WHITE ON THE OTHER. BUT IN THE OPPOSITE SIDES.) fighting each other on their devastated planet, and the crew is like, "oh yeah if they both would give up on their hatred that they both share both of them equally" when it has been firmly established that one is the oppressor and the other one is the oppressed.

and that's a lot of Star Trek, not just TOS. even Discovery, one of the most recent series, has done Bury Your Gays (and Trans) TWICE (though both times literally rectified it, which is cool). there are episodes of the franchise that are overtly racist, or misogynistic, etc. TOS is lauded, mostly justifiably, as very progressive, especially for the standards of the time. they put a woman of colour as one of the senior staff, for fuck's sake. of course, when you analyse that same character, as with most of their intentions at being progressive, you'll see that she was relegated and sometimes even outright mistreated when she had the potential to be much more. but, at that time, it was a lot.

I had a friend (emphasis on "had") who, after I told him about TOS's both progressiveness and constant misogyny, told me something like "imagine feminists trying to complain about a show from the 60s." so, with unearned spite, he was, in some way, trying to make the argument that it was a product of its time.

you could say Star Trek, all of Star Trek, is "a product of its time" in the sense that it's not always perfect. uh, yes, I would agree. but that doesn't mean people have to accept it. well, I mean, the show is kinda over, you have to accept it's that way. but you don't have to accept that it's not wrong just because it was a product of its time.

H. P. Lovecraft, as another example, was a greatly influential writer whose works still shape a lot of people's ideas to this day. I have only ever read like one of his stories, so don't expect me to have an opinion on his works. but I can have an opinion on what I know about him as a person (he did have a life outside his writing, after all). and, yeah, he was a huge asshole. if you want to know more in depth about the subject, please watch Hbomberguy's video on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u8wZ0WvxI

but basically, he was incredibly racist & homophobic. some people might even say, "he was a product of his time." well, there are two possible rebuttals to that. the surface level one, and the one that examines why that argument is wrong to the core.

The Surface Level Response to "it was a product of its time": um, no it wasn't. Lovecraft was more racist than a lot of people even in his time. he wasn't just a guy who carried the racist beliefs of his society like everyone else, he was a reactionary who actively thought and discussed how racist he was, and how right he was for being that way. but that's only applicable to Lovecraft. one can't argue the same for Star Trek: TOS, because TOS did try to be more progressive and more anti-racist than the rest of its society. that leads us to the next response.

The Response that Actually Deals with the Fact that No Matter How Progressive You're Trying to Be, Your Failings Can Still be Criticized: the thing is, trying to excuse Lovecraft's or Star Trek's bigotry because they were "products of their times" misses the fact that racism is still wrong, and some people knew that in those times as well. people from these times weren't all naive or stupid or whatever. they had the capacity for rational thinking. they could stop and think, "hey, maybe what we're doing is wrong." and the fact is, some people did. not perfectly, not to our standars, but they did. everyone could have stopped and think. but most of them didn't, and we can criticize them for it. racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. HURT PEOPLE. horribly. massively.

also, even if you agree with the "it's a product of its time" argument, some people aren't criticising people's or work's bigotry: they're explaining why they don't want to experience it.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a 1977 Doctor Who serial, and it's one of the show's more racist stories. almost all the villains are Chinese, every single Chinese person is a villain. there's yellowface, slurs, stereotypes, the Doctor speaking nonsense words instead of actual Chinese, and a general belittling of Chinese culture.

note that I'm neither Chinese nor of Chinese descent. I have been searching for hours for a few posts I've read a while ago (some by people who are of Asian descent) about this episode and I can't find them. sorry.

suffice it to say, even though I love Jago & Litefoot (the audio series and the characters), it's not an acceptable episode at all. but it's also important to remark that, because of it, some people aren't going to want to watch it. sometimes, people aren't saying "the episode shouldn't be this way," which causes others to answer that it was "a product of its time." sometimes, people are just saying, "this is an episode that attacks real people. I don't want to see it. I don't care if it was common in that era to be racist, i don't want to experience it."

however, there is an interesting point to the "it's a product of its time" argument. after all, everything is influenced by its society, for better or worse. and we can't change it anymore. TOS sometimes didn't quite understand the political themes it wanted to explore. Lovecraft was a horrible bigot. Talons was racist towards Chinese folks. and that's that. I don't think we should change the episodes/stories or anything. edit them in any way. that would be, in a sense, changing history. and we wouldn't learn anything from it, about how we can do better.

I think there are two solutions to this:

1. warnings before starting the text: this was done with The Talons of Weng-Chiang. on Britbox, where you can watch Classic Who, this serial has a content warning before the start. that's good.

2. the removal as a whole of the text from some places: I think before applying this one, there should be a lot of thought put into each case. I don't think removing a whole serial of Doctor Who or Lovecraft's stories from anything would be, well, fair. especially on tv episodes a lot more people worked on those, not just the writers and the directors. Lovecraft's writing influenced thousands. we shouldn't erase them or anything. but sometimes, for some cases, we should.

those in the US might seen a Confederate statue being taken down. that is, in a way, a form of removal of a piece of history.

but that is a good removal. statues glorify. one sees a statue and probably thinks "this was a person worthy of admiration." they should be taken down, maybe even with a permanent mark of why this was done (a plaque that reads "a statue of X was here, but he didn't deserve it because of Y" could be put in place of the statues, for example).

another example is the removal from DVDs of the short episode A Fix with Sontarans, a Sixth Doctor minisode that featured Jimmy Savile, a presenter who was later found out to be sexually abusing children.

the removal of that minisode is good, actually. it's not a full episode (it's not even Doctor Who). some might say that's "erasing history" but, like, you can still find it online or information about it if you want. this minisode deserves removal from DVDs and Blu-Rays and whatever more than content warnings. it's not an important part of the show and it prominently features a horrible person who did horrible things during that time.

so, after all that, I have explained why I don't like the "it's a product of its time" argument. it is an interesting point that deserves to be examined, but it's not very good.

I have had this in Drafts for so long I've probably forgot some of the points I was going to make, but eh, what can you do? hope you enjoyed reading this.

bye

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palmett-hoes · 3 years

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i said in this post that i have original characters and backstories for neil's extended family. it took me,, a really long time to write it all down. it's been a full month since the original post, and this is still just a run through of things, not full prose, which i might be interested in doing one day but not anytime soon

now, some things to note about what i'm writing, why, and how. methodology, basically. this might not have come through yet in my posts, because i just don't post about my half-finished ideas, but i research a LOT. i like to base what i write about on real life, even if it's just headcanons and fanfic

also, i love helping people with research, so if anyone wants help with research for a fic or just their personal headcanons or anything hit me up!!

as a white person who wants to write characters from different ethnic backgrounds, i feel i have a responsibility to really do my due diligence and research as much as possible to consider things from every angle. and part of that for me is making sure that every character of color has a backstory. they don't just appear somewhere, i have to give them a reason for being there and a story for how they got there, even if that's not what i write their STORY about. people, come from places, basically. i follow a lot of demographic census information and population averages, as well as a lot of history, from as general as transatlantic trade in the last 500 years to as specific as the changes in a single city in a certain year

talking to other writers in the fandom i know i'm a little overzealous, but this is what gives me peace of mind to feel like i am putting the effort in to get things right

so anyway, as for what that means here:

i like writing neil as mixed black/jewish. it works well thematically for his character, as well as just what FEELS right for how i visualize him in my head

only, that can't simply come from nowhere. we know who his parents are. they need to also be poc for neil to be one, and they're a complicated pair to handle in that lens

one choice i made about that, for multiple reasons, is that everything about neil's parents' backgrounds should mirror each other. it can't simply be that one if them is black and one is jewish, or even that mary is both and nathan is white, because that says something i don't want to say any way you slice it. additionally, i want both facets of his ethnicity to be important to neil, and i feel as though he would want to ignore the half of himself from his father.

so: they both have to be mixed, giving them a sort of,, ideological equal footing, as it were. that way, i can also write three different experiences, rather than accidentally implying that This is what being black is, or This is what being jewish is, or This is what being mixed is. and that's also important to me, even if it's just in my head or not even directly addressed. it's still a big consideration of mine anytime i write about any of them

now, finally, onto mary and nathan! i'll put it below a cut because this is already long enough, the under-the-cut is much longer, and i don't want to wear out your thumbs if you don't care

mary hatford

canon timeline, neil was born in 1988. as a tentative number let's say mary was around 30 when he was born, meaning she would be born in the 50s. say her parents were roughly the same age, so they were born around the 20s

like i said, what's happening where in history is very important to me for building these backstories, and major historical events tend to have a lot of influence on population shifts. and well,, jews and europeans in the early-to-mid 20th century? there's no getting around involving world war II. nothing explicit, but it is mentioned and part of the story

mary’s paternal family are the hatfords. they're from the british west indies, largely jamaica, but they've been involved with shipping and trade all over the trans-atlantic region for generations.

they have a complicated relationship with the british empire, having both worked for them and against them at various points, sometimes both at once. similarly, they've tried multiple times through the generations to relocate the family to england permanently, but have been turned away or pressured out

they associate england and the british empire with power, and they both disagree with and desire that power in degrees which vary person to person. they do have a general idea between them though that living in england is a sign of status and authenticity, and while they don't want to leave jamaica permanently they do want their center of power to be in england, and there is a deep resentment against the anglos for not allowing them to stay permanently despite their wealth and influence, the fact that their work will always be looked down on and seen as lesser

i did come into building the hatfords with the primary idea of them being black british, and looking into the organized crime connection second. them being jamaican/west indies is a reference to the jamaican posse, who have a large presence in the london crime scene, although that's really the only connection. the hatfords aren't really yardies in any sense

the hatfords' status as organized crime is a little iffy. mostly they skirt the line between legal and illegal, owning legal trading companies and doing plenty of legal shipping. their main business in the criminal underworld is being middlemen moving supplies for other groups. they have a lot of contacts, and they serve an invaluable role in international smuggling, but they rarely get their own hands dirty. they move things from one place to the other and don't question too much what it is, though they don't deal in people

mary's father is named samuel hatford (first name in reference to samuel bellamy, the gentleman pirate king of the early 18th century). he was born in England, raised largely in Jamaica, then moved back to England as a teenager/young man. he's light-hearted and a bit idealistic for someone from a crime family, seeing the best in people even when they're cold and often believing in principle over profit, which at times put him in conflict with what's best for business

he almost enlisted in world war II, but instead convinced the family to work as weapons and supplies runners supporting the Allies and guerilla resistance groups

mary's mother is named cima ben nahman (ladino/judeo-spanish/sephardic names, doesn't really reference anything or anyone in particular). She's is an algerian jew. Born in algeria (city undecided, though algiers had the largest jewish community at the time), she moved to france for a few years as a young woman, probably for education. she joined anti-fascist organizations which became resistance groups once germany invaded

she's stoic, and has a ruthless mind for strategy. like most algerian jews, she's caught between her home country and its colonizer. the french empire played the algerian muslim majority against the jewish minority as a way to create infighting and distract the algerians from uniting and turning against them, but the algerian jews also then became reliant on the french for protection. (it's a really, really complicated situation)

cima sort of hates them both, both algeria and france. her only allegiance is to being jewish

(contrast this to samuel, who feels that he is BOTH british and caribbean, even when those two identities may be in conflict)

cima and samuel met when samuel provided weapons and supplies to cima's militia group. he took particular interest in them and went out of his way to help, above and beyond the other groups the hatfords were supplying

in the waning period of the war, cima was seriously injured, i'm currently thinking a land mine accident. she survived, but her recovery was slow. she lost an arm and had burns across half her torso, neck, and face. samuel brought her to england supported her through her recovery. in the hospital, they spoke a lot about why they each chose to fight, and the ways they did because neither were formal soldiers fighting for a country. samuel was in many ways fighting for an ideal, while cima was fighting for her people. cima also talked to him a lot about judaism and religion during this time, which samuel took an interest in. eventually, cima decided to stay

they got married. samuel converted, which was somewhat controversial with his family. however, cima agreed to join the family business, where she became an integral but sometimes ruthless member. after algerian independence, she brought some of her trusted family and community into the fold as well, some moving to england and others to france

both cima and samuel believed very heavily in responsibility, though what it meant for each of them was different. cima believed in preparedness and follow-through, samuel believed in family and protection, doing what's right outside of the bounds of the law. this contributed a lot to how they raised their children

when they were born, mary and stuart were raised in england (and i like to think they have an oldest brother). the hatfords were a big family, and influential, although careful about balancing the legal and less-legal sides of their business. the ben nahmans were smaller, and most of them were in france so mary and her brothers saw them less often. they were raised very religiously and culturally jewish, though close with the caribbean side of their family too, as well as being the first generation who were born and raised in england. this put them at a cross-section of three very different cultures, and was where mary first learned about changing and blending in with different groups

mary was the youngest and a little bit spoiled by her father, aunties, and uncles. her mother however was much less tolerant of her. clearly very affected by her time in the war, cima became extremely distrustful and suspicious, and tried to instill in her children a similar sentiment of secrecy and self-sufficiency, avoiding attention and casual relationships. she could be harsh on them, especially mary, who was the most resistant to this

growing up, mary was irresponsible and fun-loving, goading her brothers and cousins, getting in trouble, and starting fights. she didn't understand the tenuous balance of being organized crime, and at times put the whole family at risk by overestimating their sway. her mistakes affected the whole family but it was usually her mother who confronted her about them first and most harshly

she resented her mother's control, and didn't understand the reasons behind it. she also couldn't differentiate between the boundaries her mother sets as a result of her own trauma, and the necessary boundaries she set for the safety of the family, viewing them as one and the same, and leading her to hate any kind of control exerted over her

really, a lot of cima's character is just who mary ends up becoming after being married to nathan and being on the run. i like the story of a child becoming the parent they once hated. rather than learn from her mother, both her failures and her successes, mary becomes her, doomed to make the same mistakes. this is also why cima is wounded by a landmine, because mary dies in fire

---

nathan wesninski

nathan was HARD to come up with a story for, mostly because,,, WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS GUY WORK FOR THE JAPANESE YAKUZA

wesninski is a VERY polish name. the japanese-polish connection is,, not super strong

so anyway, working off the idea of the wesninski family being a polish jewish one, WHERE is he going to meet a japanese crimelord to get into a multi-generation debt/business arrangement with?

turns out, the answer is brazil

brazil actually has a large jewish population (roughly 10th largest in the world). it began with its colonization by the portuguese, but the 19th century to modern population largely comes from central and eastern europe. brazil ALSO has the largest japanese population outside of japan

also this story ended up being WAY more detailed and prosaic than samuel&cima's story, which is basically just bullet points. there's no reason for this i love both stories very much just for some reason the words flowed for me here and not there

to avoid having a second jewish story where wwII is prominent, the wesninskis get a page out of my own family's book: nathan's grandfather (neil's great grandfather) came to the americas fleeing the russian pograms around the turn of the 20th century

Wesninski came to brazil (city undecided, have a lot more research to do about individual cities in brazil). he had waardenburg syndrome(a hereditary genetic condition that can affect eyes and hearing) which runs very strongly in his family (his son, nathan, and neil will all inherit it), and he is completely Deaf. while he came to brazil alone, in his new home he connected both with the local jewish community and the local deaf community, and eventually marries another Deaf Jewish woman

eventually they were able to establish a kosher deli and restaurant in the city, one which became a common hangout for the Deaf community. then one day (probably around 1915), a group of japanese men came in, and kept returning

these were the moriyamas, recently arrived from japan, in a place with very few japanese people and businesses. they liked the wesninski deli because they didn't share a language with anyone in there, couldn't even be heard by most of them, and it would also be difficult for the authorities to question them. two layers of protection for a crime family in a vulnerable place

wesninski and the moriyamas were amicable to each other, but as they didn't actually have a way to communicate that was the extent of it. but the moriyamas were polite and payed well and didn't bother the other customers. als, as a jewish establishment, they had a lot of education resources, which were helpful to the moriyamas in learning about brazilian society, including beginning to understand portuguese

now, in japan, the moriyamas were a small yakuza family. they got driven out by their bigger and stronger and more established competition around the time when japanese immigration to brazil was just starting, so that was where they went. though they had little option in where they ended up, they also had little competition in establishing their business

i still have a lot of research to do about the moriyamas. about both how the yakuza operate and about how brazilian organized crime works, and about life in brazil for early japanese immigrants. so a lot of the moriyama details are pretty vague

now the wesninskis had a son, meyer (nathan's father. name in reference to meyer lansky, famous american jewish mobster of polish descent) who was around 14 when the moriyamas arrived. he himself was not fully deaf like his parents, though was hard of hearing and raised in the Deaf community. as he goes through his rebellious teenage years, well, the gangsters are right there

in the early days the moriyamas were still more concerned with mostly the japanese enclaves, but they had aspirations of expanding. meyer wasn't japanese, but he was helpful to the moriyamas who came into the deli to study. he was perceptive and bold, could keep a secret, knew his way around knives from working in the deli, and knew the city. he was a good asset to them, and he was interested in causing some trouble

over the next ten years or so, meyer got increasingly more involved, alongside the moriyamas becoming increasingly more established throughout the city. he goes from someone who helps out occasionally and relays information beyween parties to getting involved with minor shakedowns, bribery, evidence disposal. by the time he's in his 20s he's thoroughly enmeshed

his parents were older when they had him, and his father died relatively young, leaving meyer the store and his mother to take care of. they were vaguely aware of his connections to the moriyamas and didn't approve of what he did with them but he also kept the worst from them, and was always a diligent son, and the only one they had. he assured them no matter how far he went that he wasn't "really" part of the gang

"yakuza have tattoos, and see, ima? no tattoos. i'm still a good jewish son, not a gangster"

now the problem arises when meyer falls for camara da machado, a young Deaf woman who frequents the store

(based on/inspired by/FC yaya dacosta (where the name comes from) and rutina wesley)

she was a Deaf girl born to a hearing family who struggled to give her the support she needed, maybe even just a single mother, and she'd spent a lot of time alone at the deli from a young age (12-ish?). she was shy and quiet and a little bit of a shrinking violet, but the wesninskis became very fond of her. she started tentatively helping them out around the store which became a job. she was often included in family meals and holidays, and always had a bed in their apartment above the deli if she needed one, and more than once had helped patch meyer up after he got in trouble to hide the extent of it from his parents

she was a couple years younger than him but he'd always been sweet on her. and she'd had a crush on him from basically the moment she'd layed eyes on him. they'd known each for years and camara was basically family, and then one day when they were both in their 20s it just suddenly clicked for them

so meyer and camara fell in love. meyer was head of the house, had to keep the deli running, and had his mother, camara, and possibly camara's mother (undecided at this juncture) to worry about and he decided he didn't want to continue working with the moriyamas in case it dragged his family into danger. being a gangster was a fling of youth and he was ready to grow up

when he informed the moriyamas of this though, they,,, did not agree.

while MEYER might not have considered himself part of the gang, THEY didn't think he just got to walk away. he'd worked with them for too long and knew too much. there might even have been a desire to tie him to the family permanently through marriage. and well,, one man against a growing criminal empire can't do much

it was a huge shock to him, and made him truly realize how naive and reckless he'd been. he'd been a dumb kid who wanted to start some trouble, the moriyamas were career criminals. they expected that once you were in, you were in for life, and they did not take kindly to meyer disagreeing with this

he didn't know how to explain this to his family... so he didn't. they'd all told him they wanted him to stop, but he'd meant for the announcement to be a surprise. after learning that he would not be permitted to walk away, he chose to just hide it and continue with business as usual

it worked for a while, maybe a few years, a time during which the moriyamas were getting a lot more brutal as they got more established and increasingly looked to expand, putting them in competition with other gangs and greater law enforcement, until they were a true crime empire spread across whole regions of the country. meyer had lost a lot of esteem in their eyes by asking to leave, leading them to put him under increasing scrutiny and giving him more incriminating tasks, to ensure that he would be incriminated if he ever tried to turn them in. it's during this time that he first had to kill for them

then camara got pregnant

and meyer was terrified. he didn't know how the moriyamas would deal with a kid. the only marriages and children he knew of within the family were endorsed by the boss, many arranged by him, and he knew his wouldn't be approved. yakuza wives were heavily involved with the business too, and he absolutely did not want that for camara

he broke down and told her everything. she's horrified, and furious that he kept it from her, but she didn't want to give up her baby. it would be hard, but she believed they can keep it hidden, and if the moriyamas found out, maybe it wouln't be so bad?

(spoiler: it would)

they have a son, born natan da machado, under his mother's name

meyer and camara never got married. meyer was going to propose after he left the moriyamas but that obviously didn't happen. marriages were supposed to be blessed by the boss, and meyer never dared to ask. they already lived together, anyway

but with natan, they decided that meyer couldn't acknowledge him as his own. in the deli or in the streets, he didn't acknowledge natan. he was camara's bastard son, and meyer didn't want anything to do with him

it was a flimsy disguise at best. natan was mixed, but there was a strong enough resemblance to his father. even if his hair was a darker red or he had brown skin, they had the same eyes

they tried to keep him away from the moriyamas as he grew up, hoping they wouldn't see him and make the connection, but they also kept him very hidden in general, just in case. he spent a lot of time inside, with his grandmothers

and that was how natan grew up, feeling like a secret, his father cold and distant, only acknowledging him in their apartment. cut off from other kids his age. a hearing boy in a Deaf family (natan himself was HoH but still had most of his hearing. meyer and his maternal grandmother could both hear, but they had gotten out of the habit of it and mostly communicated through sign)

natan developed a deep feeling of resentment towards his father and shame about himself from a young age. he felt like a mistake, defective somehow. so wrong he had to be hidden away from everyone

there's only so long that you can hide a child, though, and when natan was around ten the moriyamas found out about him, and they were not happy.

they didn't like split attention or loyalty. they kept children and family under very tight wraps. they should be one hundred percent enmeshed in the moriyama empire, raised to be loyal and helpful in whatever way they were needed. the fact that meyer wanted and was willing to leave for this family, and then hid his son, was a huge betrayal

still, they gave him an opportunity to prove his loyalty: kill camara or the moriyamas would kill them all: her, natan, meyer, and both their mothers

but meyer couldn't do it, and instead he told camara to run and hope they didn't actually care enough to chase her down. and she did. and she couldn't take natan with her. (i haven't fully fleshed out why yet, currently thinking that meyer was given this ultimatium when they already had natan)

so camara left her son, and got away

i built the story of mary's mother as a reflection of mary's story if something had been different, and i built nathan's story the same way. his wife takes her son and runs away with him when the moriyamas try to take him from her. nathan's mother was in the same situation and left him behind

over the next forty years of his belonging to the moriyamas he gets to marinate in that resentment. from the father that ignored to the mother who ran away from him, he internalizes it as being something wrong with him, not the circumstances. the more he's taught to torture and kill and the more he excels at it, the more this belief gets cemented. he's good at killing, he was meant to kill. he's twisted and broken and wrong inside and he always was and his parents always knew

and then when it happens again but differently this time he throws away a decade and millions of dollars and his standing with his boss to hunt down his son and his wife because he didn't get to run away so why should they? why does mary love nathaniel more than camara loved natan?

from here, the exact detail's of nathan's story aren't quite solidified. whether he was raised by his father from then on or by his grandmothers (or whether his grandmothers left with his mother) or whether the moriyamas put him somewhere else entirely, but from then on he lived under the moriyamas' direct supervision, and they taught him how to turn a knife on a man

they took his mother's name from him, though, so he's natan wesninski, not natan da machado, because they own the wesninskis now

and when the moriyamas decided to expand beyond brazil when natan was a young man instead of a child, and settled on the east coast of the US, they renamed him nathan, because it sounded more "american"

---

so that's it. obviously there are still a lot of unfinished details in both stories, but they're strong enough at this point to stand on their own and i haven't changed or rethought a lot of the major details in a long time

i've become extremely attached to these OCs and their stories, and i hope they interest other people too. some day i'd like to write them out in prose properly, along with the story of nathan and mary meeting, but that'll be a while away considering the pace i move at

so until then i just wanted to put this out there

#aftg #tfc #neil josten #nathaniel wesninski #mary hatford #nathan wesninski #txt #my fics #my writing #my posts #black neil josten #jewish neil josten #cw gangs #cw organized crime #cw ww11 #cw wwII #long form post

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harpersplay · 3 years

Note

Genuine non-troll white woman here - you wrote "So I already knew that Good Girls was a white feminism phantasmagoria...But, jesus fucking christ, y'all are just showing your true colours lately. The way you talk about a MOC in relation to a white woman is disgusting." Not asking you to call out specific people or posts or start any kind of flame war but what would be a general example of what you are talking about? I follow a good chunk of people and I'm not seeing this maybe b/c I'm not following the same people, maybe out of willful blindness, maybe I'm not recognizing it - again, b/c of ignorance, etc. Just trying to understand what you mean - and not do it obviously, if I am doing it.

I apologise for taking a longish time to answer this. Honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to get into it. Anyway, I'd first like to say that this is all my opinion. What bothers me might not bother someone else. BIPOC are not a monolith. Even subsections aren't. Not all Mexican trans men are a monolith. Neither are all Japanese lesbians. You get the idea. And that's not even including people like Ben Carson or Caitlyn Jenner—people who support and work for policies that actively harm the marginalised group of which they are a part. Secondly, I know this isn't your intention, but asking POC to tell you what is ok to do and what is not is a slippery slope to "my [blank] friend said this was ok." Finally, the fandom is quite small so it is pretty hard to give general examples. I don't know if it's more trouble to quote specific posts or not, because some will think it is about them anyway. Anything I'm going to mention I've seen on Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit and/or Twitter. But there are definitely popular Tumblr blogs that all push the same narrative. Oh, and one last thing, I haven't seen any of what I'm referring to from people I follow.

Ok, let's go. For a very long time, mainly WOC have pointed out the racial problems within the show and the extremely dismissive attitude about those problems from mainly white women. And while these same women have written thousands (even tens of thousands) or words about Beth (it's always Beth) and her struggles and the amazingness of such a complex female character (ymmv), they brush aside commentary about racism as either nitpicking, not understanding the show is about the 3 women (tell that to all the white men with fleshed-out storylines), or misogyny. The last is especially hostile because they are often talking over Black women and misogynoir is a very real fucking thing that couples the fun of being hated for being a woman with the delight of good old-fashioned racism. They espouse the idea that people having a problem with Beth are all covert & overt misogynists. But talk out the other side of their mouths that they can't possibly be racist even when they support racism in the show or ignore concerns brought up by fans of colour. And that is just the absolute height of hypocrisy. Because by the former they acknowledge that people in a marginalised group (women) can still be anti- that group (a phenomenon with which I agree). But in the latter, suddenly they don't understand that concept.

Specific to the post you are responding to, fans that purport to like Brio write about the relationship in ways that reveal how much of their enjoyment comes from Rio being inferior to Beth. It's all about what he can do for her, how he acts against his best interests for her, how he literally denies himself sexual pleasure for her. Those are all meant to show how in love he is with her. But the show never bothers to tell us why. And, no, this is not because the show is so deep. Other romantic relationships they have scenes that are explicit about the characters' feelings. But Rio, after being shot, after being betrayed, after being mocked, is just so in love with Beth....because. (MYSTERIOUS!) And the Beth stans are more than fine with this because they think everyone should be as obsessed with Beth as they are. But it's bad storytelling. And, in this particular case, it gets into very dicey racist tropes. A white women treating her Latino lover like an afterthought is not the same as a white women treating her white lover like an afterthought. It just isn't. And if some of these fans are as smart as they pretend to be, they know that. They just don't care. Much like the showrunners.

There was so much talk defending the drawn-out Boland marriage because why can't we understand how hard it is for Beth—who is, at various times, claimed to be emotionally abused by Dean or staying with him because it is safe and comfortable—and we don't appreciate how difficult it is for her (I may be one of the few divorced people talking about this show on Tumblr, so this has always made me laugh). Yet there was nothing but glee when Rio flipped on his brousin (who was written as both abusive and safe) for Beth. Where was the empathy for Rio and how hard it was for him? Especially because, unlike Beth, he didn't even have one parent? Hadn't the Beth stans used her very tragical history™️ to explain away her every shitty act? idk, not having any parents and going to jail (as a minor?) and being betrayed by your family seems pretty tragic. But I didn't see them all of a sudden excusing Rio's bad behaviour. Because, feminism or something?

What about Beth's feelings? Last season she spent trying to have him killed. This season she spent looking annoyed by him. Throughout both she talked down to him in a specific white woman way that every BIPOC has experienced, even if some of them are cool with it. There were multiple opportunites for Beth to talk about her feelings with Ruby and/or Annie, but the writers made the deliberate choice to always make it about sex (and god, the immature way they had these three grown women talk was fucking obnoxious). She spent the last 2 seasons also wanting him out of her life to the point that a majority of her actions in S4 were motivated by getting to Nevada with her husband and kids. Beth doesn't care about Rio but Rio needs to put Beth above everything because he's just so in love like he's never been before (which is blatant Marcus & Rhea erasure). And anyone who doesn't think Beth would have just as happily been sitting on that bench plotting how to "run the city" (hahahahaha!) with Nick if the situation worked out differently hasn't been paying attention.

So, what do we have? A white woman who is constantly excused (by the loudest portion of the fandom) for all her ill treatment to her Black BFF & her Black husband, her Asian coworker, her Latina "friend," and Rio (among others) because her life is hard and who is not required to even be nice to her supposed "endgame". And a MOC who is expected to accept being treated poorly by the white woman because he loves her.

And, a last thing, this attitude grossly crossed over into talk about real people when the fans—who self-righteously claimed to be above anon sources or talking about the actors—latched on to the narrative and enjoyed blaming the MOC actor for the cancellation of the show, even dragging his insignificant (in terms of influence) Black wife into it. All while conveniently ignoring that the creator/showrunner is a white woman. The star & producer is a white woman. The people making the decisions at NBCU & Netflix were white women. All white women with so much more power than the Latino actor.

Shit, did I answer your question? I know this is a lot. But I could honestly make mulitple posts on each issue I touched on here. Basically, white people ain't slick, be they content creators or fans. We see how & what y'all talk about. We see that Rio not having a last name is not a big deal to you and we know why that is. So we're fucking tired. And we're over a show that had so much potential crapping all over their POC characters to prop up a white woman. And we're repulsed by the white women in the fandom who use their tears to seem oppressed and who toss around the word misogynist because POC dare call a Karen a Karen.

#nbc good girls #good girls nbc #racism in the text #racism in fandom #fragile whiteness #white feminism #what fandom chooses to talk about #and what it chooses to ignore #anon asks

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pleasantanathema · 3 years

Text

Graves into Gardens | Reiner Braun x Reader | Chapter Eight

Chapter 8: The Things We Leave Behind

Pairing: Reiner Braun x Fem!Reader [now with a dash of Erwin x Reader]

Rating: Explicit (18+ Only)

Warnings: Modern AU, spoilers up to season four, slight manga spoilers (only by including characters met later), captivity, mentions of death, violence enemies to lovers, angst

Word Count: 4.7k

Previous Chapter | Masterlist | Next Chapter

Erwin,

I don’t have much time, but it’s me—I’m alive. I’m safe. I don’t know why, but I am. They want something from me here, tried to pry into me for information about The Scouts, but not much else. I’ve given over as little as I can, but enough to keep me alive for now. But it’s strange here, even some of the warriors know something is going on below the surface of what we know. You can probably tell by the email that I’m using that I’ve found a strange semblance of refuge with Reiner. He’s the one who has given me the multitude of files I’ve attached this email. He claims most of this intel he gathered he never gave over to Marleyan officials. He also says he can be of help to Paradis, that Pieck and the others can too. I don’t know how much of that is true. To be fair, I don’t know what’s true at all anymore.

There are files here on Zeke Yeager, apparently put together by warrior members who have become wary of him. Dig into them, figure out what you can. Don’t worry about me, I’ll find a way home. And, for the love of god, please sleep. I know how you get.

Don’t respond to this email. No one knows I have sent it.

Always.

Erwin read the words for what felt like the thousandth time, the black lettering practically bleeding into the screen by this point. His heart had dropped when he sat down in his office this morning to find something sitting in his personal email folder, something branded with the last name of a traitor. His mind had raced into the darkest depths, assuming it was pictures of torture, a letter filled with malacious laughter, an autopsy report. But it was you, you were alive, you’d found a way to reach him.

He had to keep his hand over his mouth as he grinned. You were so capable, so resourceful and rather ingenious. He’d had his doubts, but on the forefront of his mind, and his tongue, he’d said and knew you were alive.

He’d stayed in his office with the door locked for hours in the morning as he poured over the information, brows twisting in both delight and disgust as he began to make sense of the documents crafted by the wary warriors. They were impressive, to say the least, and quite frightening.

Every single urge inside of him was screaming to respond, even as he printed out the rather massive amount of documents you’d attached. He made copy after copy, blue eyes dancing like they were overcome with madness as familiar and unknown faces and information landed into the tray of the printer.

He carefully separated the files by paperclips, prepping for them to be dispersed.

You were so good. So brilliant. He’d have you home soon enough.

The cumbersome stack of papers was too much for him to carry just under one arm. The one he’d lost was burning, itching like it should be able to wrap around the bundle.

Erwin marched out of his office and into the bustling workspace, clearing his throat to the room.

“Scouts! Emergency meeting in the conference hall immediately. Drop everything and meet me there.”

Every head in the room snapped toward him, all chatter silencing. They all stared at him like he had three heads; the last time they’d had every scout in the same room was when he’d pronounced you missing nearly two weeks ago. He knew they were worried that this next announcement was of a death, of war.

“Now!”

The bustle picked up again immediately, every soldier, assistant, and intelligence officer scurrying to make it down the hall.

“Springer,” Erwin caught the young man by the shoulder as he tried to brisk by him, “there’s a stack of papers in my office. Grab it and bring it with you.”

Erwin continued in his stride toward the small auditorium, taking his known place down in front at the white boards. He could hear indiscriminate whispers behind his back as he took his time setting up a display. There was a small cork board off to the side of the room, littered with headshots of the Marleyan warriors. He cursed the face of the girl who took his arm as he pulled it to the front.

“Miche,” he called over his shoulder, knowing the towering blonde would be nearby, “Come help me.”

“Sure thing boss.”

It didn’t take much time to direct, and before long he had all the warriors lined up on the large board in front of the room. He took his own time to place the picture of your face in the center, fingers brushing over the heavy red letters of Missing that were etched over your features.

Levi saddled up next to him, never one to fall into the crowds.

“Erwin, what is all this?”

“I got an email from her this morning.”

Levi didn’t have to ask. If there was ever a “her” in Erwin’s vocabulary, he meant you. You were all over his mind, more so than ever before.

“Care to share? Or was it a love letter?”

It was an unspoken truth that he’d become involved with you within the last year, and given his rather...emotional response to your disappearance, he was sure everyone was now well aware of your entanglement.

“A love letter full of promising information.”

“Tch, sounds about right. Did she give you all that?” Levi tilted his head toward Connie, who was struggling to keep the giant bundle of printed documents from sliding off the podium.

“She did. It’s time to get to work.”

Erwin didn’t even wait for the room to settle. There was no time to waste. He turned toward the confused, anxious crowd, took note of how they were all staring at him like lost children. There weren’t that many left after the attack on Shinganshina all those years ago, his scouts had either been killed off or left the ranks entirely. Recruitment had become more of an issue than it ever had been before as well. There was only a gathering of about thirty before him—the size of a small classroom, all piled into the front seats and awaiting instruction.

“I received word from our missing captain this morning.”

A shocked gasp filled the space, one of the younger girls—last name Blouse or Braus, he never could remember—literally jumping from her seat.

“She’s alive?!”

He held up his hand to calm her, to direct her to sit back down.

“As far as I know, yes. She found a way to email me this morning to let me know of her safety, and also supply us with a vast amount of Marleyan intel. Now, we need to unpack what we know.”

Erwin motioned to Springer again, wrist flicking toward the still unsteady mountain of papers.

“Hand those out, they should be sectioned by paper clips so everyone can have a copy.”

“But, Sir, I—” I just spent all that time wrestling with those papers, is what he knew he wanted to say. Springer did what he was told anyways, scratching at his short hair as he hurriedly began to divvy out the printed intel.

“We’ll start with what we do know.” Erwin took a few long strides back toward the large board, feeling his empty shirt sleeve rustle by his side as he used his remaining arm to point toward the faces that had been lined up for him.

“Of course, we’re all aware that former Scout members Braun, Leonhart, and Hoover were infiltrators sent by Marley to uncover our anti-Marleyan operations. They are members of the Warrior Unit run by this man,” he placed his index finger over the person of interest, “Zeke Yeager. And there are other members of the unit as well, Galliard, Finger, and Grice. There are also candidates for this elite military squad, Udo, Zofia, and the younger Grice and Braun. It is important to note that one of their former members, Marcel Galliard, was killed by none other than our missing captain in question.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know all this!” Kirstein chimed in, “We don’t need the history lesson.”

Erwin couldn’t help but grin.

“It seems a history lesson is exactly what you need. In those files that were sent to me, you’ll learn that all these warrior members and candidates are, historically, from Eldian bloodlines.”

“Eldians? You mean...like us?” Historia tilted her head, thumbing through the pages in her lap.

“Yes. Now if you did pay attention in history class,” he narrowed his eyes at Jean, “you would remember that about four hundred years ago, there was a mass immigration of Eldians into Marley in the face of a mass famine here. However, due to Marley’s very strict borders and even stricter control on their governmental processes, it was never truly known to us what became of the Eldians that marched across their border. We knew they had been separated into internment camps, but it also seems that they have been weaponized and trained into being nearly the entirety of their military ranks. And this unit, The Warriors, are the premiere and elite squadron of the Marleyan military. And their motives toward Paradis have been largely unknown. Until now.”

Erwin took a pause, letting all this information sink in before starting again.

“Now, we know that Zeke Yeager has been working with our elite right below our noses with the hopes of changing the status quo for Eldians in Marley.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

Eren sat forward, elbows on his knees as he stared at all the faces on the board. It was no secret that Zeke Yeager was his long lost step-brother, sired by his father before he escaped the Marleyan border to find a better future in Paradis. As far as Erwin knew, the young man had no connections to his step-sibling, only saw him as an enemy force to be reckoned with.

“Yes, and no. Because, according to the files you’ll find penned by one Pieck Finger, it seems his plan is quite unseemly.”

“I don’t understand all this data and graph shit,” Miche admitted, eyebrows scrunched together as he licked his thumb to continue perusing the pages.

Captain Hange stood then, making her way to the front without Erwin having to beckon her to.

“These are...these are blood samples, DNA testing,” she mused, pencils stuck in her ponytail as she paced the floor before Erwin, “genome analysis, to be specific. Like they were looking for something specific in all these samples.”

“And they were. Did you get my request this morning?”

“Oh yes, of course, sir!” Hange scrambled back up to her seat, pulling out a manila envelope and then returning to hand it to him.

Erwin motioned for Miche to tape these new documents on the board as well, one next to your photo, the other now next to a photo of Historia Reiss. Then Erwin picked up some pictures that would be unfamiliar to his scouts, placing them above your head.

“These are the parents of our missing scout,” he called over his shoulder as he took an unfortunately slow time to place the photos, the lack of two hands starting to become quite bothersome. “They were Military Police members, killed in action about ten years ago. However, the information within the files on Yeager reveal that before Braun and the others infiltrated our ranks, there were other imposters sent on a reconnaissance mission within the MPs. It is cited that those infiltrators killed two people they were targeting, and I believe it to be them.”

He could tell he was losing their focus, quite a few eyes glazed over as they tried to make sense of all the new pieces being added to the growing wall of puzzles. He felt like a madman stringing up red threads, but he was almost certain of his conclusions.

“Why...why do they matter?” It was Armin who spoke this time, normally the quiet one during meetings who soaked up information like a little yellow sponge.

“Historia,” Erwin called, “does the name Fritz mean anything to you?”

The small girl sat to attention, blue eyes shining.

“Of course, they’re another noble family, like mine. Err, or the were, before…”

“Before they were killed about one hundred years ago. However, I’m inclined to believe that our missing scout’s mother was the last remaining of the Fritz line, having donned a new name for safety and falling into government positions to hopefully remain unnoticed.”

He took in a deep breath, once again letting a pregnant pause settle into the heaviness of the room.

“Which is why…” he waved his hand over the graphs next to your face and the photo of Historia on the board, “thismatters. It’s been a long standing belief that elites, that royalty and those that have been elected president in our country, are somehow different. Almost appointed by the gods themselves because of their special blood. You know, it’s the whole issue that many take up on the fact that they see our governmental system as more of a monarchy than a democracy. But the truth of the matter is, you nobles do have different blood and genes than the rest of us. These graphs show that here.”

“Well that’s very elitist of you.” Levi cut in, standing with his arms crossed near the door.

“Perhaps. But I had Hange do a genome map between Historia and…” he sucked on his tongue, still finding a bit of pain to say your name out loud, “...and her. My suspicions are correct. Based on the startlingly similar genetic patterns, our missing captain is of noble heritage, and I’m inclined to believe that Zeke Yeager knows this.”

“And that’s important because it makes her more valuable,” Armin had his face in his hands, “does she...does she know this?”

“As far as I know, no. No she does not.”

“And you of all people would know.”

Erwin wanted to snap back at the snide comment that came from Eren. If he wasn’t such a good soldier, Erwin would have him on fucking patrol duty after this.

“Commander,” Armin looked sweaty, pale, “It says here that Yeager’s plan is to reinstate Eldian supremacy through uh… a means of genetic mutation. Do you know what that means?”

“No, Arlert, I don’t. And I don’t know exactly what his plans are for our scout that’s being held hostage. Which is why you’re all here. From this point forward, every ounce of your time will be spent reviewing these documents and dissecting what it could all mean. As far as I can tell, Pieck Finger hasn’t quite connected all the dots yet either. So now it’s our job to do so.”

All the heads in the room were nodding, everyone undoubtedly becoming antsy from all this news.

Erwin knew there was more to say. He had debated printing out your email as well, but he wanted to keep the knowledge that Braun and some of the warriors were possibly willing to help stop whatever was happening to himself. He knew that if he even breathed the words that traitors were offering aid, too many would be against it, too many wouldn’t believe it. That would have to be something he pondered on his own.

“Where do we begin, sir?”

Mikasa sat up straight and on the edge of her seat, like she was ready to spring into action.

“First, I think we need to dig deeper into just who was planning to meet with the Warrior Unit the day the captain was captured. We still don’t know who they were, or what was happening that warriors actually had to be present for it. Also…” he looked pointedly toward Levi, “we need to do more investigating on the day she was shot. We still don’t know who shot her, or why. It could have been an assassin looking to annihilate that Fritz bloodline.”

Levi nodded, “On it.”

“Everyone else, get to work. Get out the red tape and string if you need to, and all meeting rooms are now open to place questions and findings onto the boards. Nothing is useless; all knowledge about this situation is powerful and paramount. This could be the beginning of a nightmare, but perhaps we can stop it before it happens.”

He watched everyone leave, all with hurried steps and papers shuffling within their hands. Hange stuck around behind him, rather bewitched by the DNA findings taped to the white board.

A little voice cleared their throat next to him, making him look down. Historia stood before him, eyes downcast and her toes pointed together like she was nervous.

“Commander… I…do you have a moment?”

“Of course, what’s on your mind?”

He watched her glance toward Hange, then toward the door, and back to him.

“Would you like to grab a cup of coffee and speak alone?”

“Yes,” she quickly breathed, happy that he picked up on the fact that whatever she had to say, it must need to stay quiet.

━━━─── • ───━━━

It seemed that Historia’s nerves were still getting the better of her as she sat in front of his desk. Erwin had always been told he was rather imposing, so he hoped she wasn’t apprehensive to just be speaking with him alone. Her hands were clenched around a mug of coffee, knee bouncing in her seat.

He’d poured himself a cup as well in the break room, having already drank it before even reaching his office. Your worries had been correct: he wasn’t sleeping much, and after what you’d sent him today, he didn’t know how you ever expected him to sleep again without knowing the truth of what was happening.

“Commander…” she took the deepest breath, eyes closing for a moment, “do you...you don’t believe in myths, do you?”

It was an odd question, one that had him pressing his lips together as he looked for an answer.

“I suppose not. Though, it would also depend on the myth; some of them hold truth to them, as they were stories attempting to cope with the unknown.”

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” she scoffed, looking everywhere in the room but at him.

“Why? Are you here to give me a mythology lesson?”

“Have you heard the one about Ymir? And the nine titans?”

“That old tale?” He chuckled, remembering pictures in books he’d read as a child of towering beasts, “The one about how there used to be giant people, titans that roamed the lands before humanity came along?”

Historia twisted her lips, looking down at the floor.

“Yeah. That one. Did you ever know her full name?”

“Her? As in Ymir? No, she was just the goddess Ymir in all the books, gods don’t normally have last names.”

“Well, she did. Because she was human. Her last name was Fritz.”

Fritz. Like your possible ancestors. Historia had earned his attention now. He sat up behind his desk, fist unknowingly clenched in his lap.

“Commander, I don’t know if this is true, but when I was a little girl, my older sister, Freida, she used to tell me all these stories about titans and how we, nobility, are descendants of gods and of...of titans.”

Erwin was trying to read her face, but the young woman just seemed full of fear, trepidation.

“Historia, I’ve heard all the propaganda about the noble families being descendants from gods. And if I offended you with my remarks in the meeting then I apolo—”

“No, no,” she cut him off, “no, that’s not what I meant. I know that my family...that the other nobles and elites have twisted all these myths to give themselves power, but what I’m saying is that it’s true. At least, I think it is. We have all these books back home in my estate that explain this true history about how people used to live in a world of titans thousands of years ago, that there were mindless titans, but also titans controlled by humans… humans that were titans. And I’m just saying, if this was true…”

He was starting to put the pieces together now. The genetic mutation. The bloodlines. No wonder her thoughts had led her to this conclusion.

“You’re worried Zeke Yeager believes in these old stories, that his plan is to bring back titans?” He posed it as a question, wanting her to finish her thoughts instead of him imposing on her.

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know how, but if there was some way to do it, our missing captain, if she’s actually of royal blood, like me, he might want to…” she set down her cup of coffee, finally looking up at him with eyes that shone with wisdom he’d never acknowledged before, “Zeke might want to experiment on her. Or maybe reveal her heritage and try to bargain her back to the elites. I don’t know, I just didn’t want to say this in front of everyone because they might think I’m…”

“Crazy?”

“Yeah,” she huffed, “thanks.”

“Thank you, Historia. You’ve given me something to think about.”

“But you think I’m crazy.”

He dared not to insult her outloud, but it was the side he was erring on.

“I appreciate you being willing to tell me this. It seems I have some mythology to study up on. Actually, if you ever get the chance to get your hands on one of those books you spoke about, I would like to see it.”

She stood then, leaving her coffee abandoned on his desk.

“Of course, Commander.”

He could tell her spirits were defeated as she left his office. But, nonetheless, he took the coffee she left behind as his own, settling back in to continue reading into the files you’d sent to him.

But his mind couldn’t even register the words anymore. He was so tired, and now, knowing that you were indeed alive, he was filled with nothing but thoughts on how to get you home. It would be a suicide mission to try to send a squad into Marley to rescue you. He also knew that asking the elites, even the President, to act on his behalf would probably be met with a negative outcome since they were in connection to Zeke Yeager himself. It all seemed hopeless, but he knew you were working to get back as well. Between the two of you attempting to reach the same goal, he knew, eventually, he’d have you back again.

━━━─── • ───━━━

His home was quite lonely without you.

He felt the emptiness of not having you at the Scout Headquarters, but more so he felt it when he finally drug his tired body to the apartment he lived in across the city.

It felt like a small cataclysm erupted whenever he opened his front door, all the emotions he kept at bay suddenly budding to the surface of his composure. Your shoes were still by the door, so small next to the ones he took off.

Signs of you, of your absence, were everywhere. Your coat on the back of a chair. Your favorite books still spread open and marked to forgotten pages in the cozy chair in the living room. Wine only you liked still remained chilled in the fridge, your body wash and shampoo still lined the edges of his shower. He hadn’t even washed his sheets since you left, hadn’t dared to touch the side of the bed you slept on, like the mattress was still full of your ghost when he reached out for you at night.

Even though you had your own apartment, he couldn’t remember a night he’d spent without you in the last few months. You’d become inseparable, seeking refuge in each other’s bodies against the cruelty this world had dealt you. You accepted him for who he was, even when he felt like half a man.

There were still words he wanted to say to you; there were still echoes of your voice all around the apartment, your laughter ringing in the support beams, the sounds of your moans still staining his headboard.

There were so many things you left behind, him included.

Erwin poured himself a drink before settling into the couch, not even bothering to undress from his work clothes. He needed medicine for his mind, needed to try to drink and find clarity in the too many thoughts thumping in his head.

You were noble. Of all fucking things.

He took a very long sip at that realization, almost reveling in the burn the whiskey left behind in his mouth. He could still taste you on his tongue sometimes, still feel the pressure of your lips against his if he closed his eyes. All those times he thought he was kissing something divine, perhaps he was, if Historia Reiss had any merit to her little bedtime stories.

The thought made him laugh. Titans. Mythological creatures. If there was one thing he knew, his enemies weren’t trying to bring things that never existed back to life. Historia was right about one thing though: you could be a powerful bargaining chip for Zeke. If the elites were holding out on something, all he had to do was dangle a pretty, royal plaything in front of their noses as bait.

He pulled your email back up on his phone, eyes scanning over all the words you sent.

You’d found a strange semblance of refuge with Reiner. Of all people. Erwin could still remember how much the two of you would fight when you were both soldiers, how you were adamant to take on the hulking man yourself when it came to battle.

But he also remembered how startlingly well the two of you worked together. It had been the two of you who had stopped Marcel Galliard, it had been Reiner who was the first to appear at the hospital steps when news of your potentially fatal injury had been called over the radio. The man had been panting, Bertholdt too, both of them having run as fast possible from their patrol circuit to check in on your status.

Erwin always assumed it was because Reiner was sweet on you. Boys had always been taught to tease the girls they liked when they were younger, perhaps he’d just carried that on into adulthood, practically throwing stones at you to get your attention.

Not that he could blame him. Erwin had always wanted your attention, but had kept himself restrained for professional reasons. But after Shinganshina, after Zeke showed the true force of the Warrior Unit as a warning, Erwin had quickly pulled you from the front lines. He claimed it was because your cleverness would be better served in intelligence work. Truth of the matter was that he wanted you safe. He wanted you working with him, in his sight, every day.

And now you had completely slipped through his fingers.

He’d cursed out loud when the scouts returned and revealed that you’d been captured. He even unfairly chewed out Jean for being reckless enough to get his vertical movement gear tangled with yours, but he knew the fault rested in his hands. You’d offered to go, and he’d let you.

He let you go, and now he was reeling in the ash and smoke of the damage left behind.

With a finished drink, he let his mind wander to that place he tried to keep it from. He was wondering where you were, wondering exactly what you were doing. Until tonight, he imagined you were left under lock and key, but now he knew you’d gotten yourself into some situation in order to access Reiner’s email. Perhaps he truly was helping you.

Some of your words ran through his brain again: I don’t know what’s true at all anymore.

Erwin honestly didn’t know what was true anymore either. In a matter of hours, he’d pieced together information the intelligence unit had been trying to uncover for years. He was steps closer to figuring out whatever truth there was Zeke Yeager’s madness. He was steps closer to keeping the whole country safe from a disaster its own elites had their fingers in.

But he still felt so far away, so far away from you, from himself. He felt like he’d never actually fit the puzzle together, felt like he’d let you down.

All he still knew was that he loved you, even if he never actually spoke the words to you. He loved you, and he had some kind of dying hope that you felt the same.

Next Chapter

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