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longitudinalwaveme · 3 years

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DC Comics’ Portrayal of Mental Illness

As you can probably ascertain from the general contents of this blog, I am a huge fan of DC comics (and, more specifically, of the Flash). I am also a psychology major who is on the autism spectrum and has struggled with Social Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. As such, I have a...complicated relationship with comic books that discuss mental illness.

Of course, of all the comics that deal with mental illness, Batman is undoubtedly the most prominent, and, as such, is the easiest target for criticism. The more a comic book talks about mental illness, the more opportunities it has to get stuff wrong. Since there are literally thousands of Batman comics out there and I don’t have the time to research them all, I will be using a 2001 Batman guidebook to give you a few examples of the things that it gets wrong about mental health (and psychology in general).

To start, let’s talk about Arkham Asylum. Not only is its name anachronistic (virtually no mental heath facilities are called asylums anymore), but its depiction usually is as well: even a psychiatric hospital that doubled as a penal facility probably would not be located in an old Gothic-looking building that looks like it came straight out of a horror movie. It’s also worth noting that Arkham Asylum didn’t exist in the Batman mythos prior to 1974, and that originally, Two-Face and the Joker were the only two villains who went there. Prior to that point, everyone, even the Joker, just went to prison when they were caught (which, as we shall see, is actually probably more accurate for everyone except maaaybe modern Two-Face and the Mad Hatter). My suspicion is that it was introduced to capitalize on the popularity of the 1962 novel (and, once it was released, the 1975 movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which was about a psychiatric institution, but there were probably other factors involved, such as the popularity of works by H.P. Lovecraft (which is where the name Arkham came from). Whatever the reason, though, Arkham Asylum is really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the misrepresentation of mental illness and mental health in Batman fiction.

The introduction of Arkham Asylum led, increasingly, to the idea that all Batman villains were mentally ill, which, in turn, led to some...um....very inaccurate portrayals and depictions of what mental illness is and how it works.

For example, the 2001 guidebook I am using incorrectly describes the Joker as “certifiably psychotic”. He’s not. While there are individual exceptions (we are talking about comic books, after all), in most appearances, the Joker is not psychotic. He has no apparent hallucinations and does not seem to display signs of delusions, either. He is not out of touch with reality in any meaningful way, he’s just horrifically violent. Describing him as “certifiably psychopathic” would have been much more appropriate (although you can’t technically diagnose someone with psychopathy; the condition he would be diagnosed with would be Antisocial Personality Disorder).

In the same book, Two-Face is described as “schizoid” and “schizophrenic”, both of which are not even remotely correct. What the modern Two-Face is supposed to suffer from is Dissociative Identity Disorder (what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder), although it’s not always portrayed terribly accurately. Schizoid Personality Disorder is not DID, and it’s not Schizophrenia, either; it’s a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships-basically people who are extreme loners. Similarly, Schizophrenia is not DID. While it is hypothetically possible for the two conditions to be comorbid, they are not at all the same thing. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder characterized by delusions and hallucinations, which Two-Face almost never displays in fiction. DID is a dissociative disorder. Most people with DID do not experience delusions or hallucinations; their condition is typified by the presence of more than one personality and is thought to usually only occur as a reaction to severe childhood trauma. (Credit where credit is due: modern Two-Face is correctly shown as having experienced trauma as a child.) The fact that the term schizophrenia literally translates into “split mind” is probably the source of some of this confusion, but with schizophrenia, the split is between the mind and reality, not between the mind and itself.

Also from this guidebook, the Riddler is, confusingly, described as having “an obsessive-compulsive desire for attention”, which, from a psychological perspective, is pretty much nonsense. Desire for attention is one thing; obsessive-compulsive disorder is another. The “obsessions” in OCD refer to intrusive, recurring thoughts, not to something that a person strongly desires and spends a lot of time pursuing. Additionally, the Riddler is described as “pondering the unsolvable riddle of his own psychosis”, which is not accurate. The Riddler consistently displays signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and less consistently displays signs of OCD, but neither one of these conditions is a psychotic disorder, as neither involves hallucinations or delusions. When the Riddler says he’s not psychotic, and that he’s perfectly sane, he’s completely right on both counts. He’s never displayed any evidence of a break from reality, so he’s not psychotic, and he’s almost always aware that what he’s doing is a crime, so he’s not insane, either. In fact, with the possible exceptions of the Mad Hatter, Man-Bat, and Two-Face, none of the Batman villains are insane, since they are all aware that what they’re doing is illegal when they do it.

What makes the earlier mistakes in this particular guidebook even more mystifying to me is the fact that their description of Scarecrow, and, more impressively yet, Scarecrow’s fear toxin, is pretty much accurate. They don’t call him psychotic or label him with conditions he doesn’t have and they accurately identify his on-again off-again phobia of bats (Chiropteraphobia). It also describes his fear gas thusly: “a toxic mix of adreno-cortical secretions and strong hallucinogens...it prompts neuromuscular spasms, cardiac arrhythmia, and panic attacks”. This is an astonishingly accurate description of what his fear toxin would need to be made of and what it does to his victims’ bodies. I don’t know who wrote this section, but they deserve some serious credit for doing their homework! (It makes no sense to put the Scarecrow in Arkham. Not only is he neither psychotic nor insane, but putting an evil ex-psychologist in a psychiatric institution is a REALLY bad idea, as he has the know-how to easily manipulate both the doctors and the patients.)

Also from the 2001 Guidebook: The Ventriloquist is described as having multiple personalities, and is NOT described as schizophrenic or schizoid. While the term Multiple Personality Disorder is no longer used by psychologists for diagnosis, it is at least describing the same condition as DID. Modern Firefly is described as a pyromaniac; this is accurate from what I know of the character. Mr. Zsasz is described as a “sociopath”; again, this is mostly accurate.

I also decided to use a few other DC guidebooks and see if there were any other egregious mistakes:

2015 Guidebook:

Haha, “Lenny Snart”. (That has nothing to do with mental illness, I just thought it was funny.)

Dr. Polaris is described as suffering from “a split personality disorder”; they mean DID. It’s also worth noting that most people with DID do not have a “good” alter and an “evil” alter; having DID does not make you Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The Joker is described as “crazy” and “insane”; while the former is up for debate, I can say with confidence that the Joker meets no real-world definition of insanity that I know about.

Riddler is not described as insane, yay!

Two-Face is described as having Multiple Personality Disorder; this should be DID but is otherwise broadly correct. That being said, the idea that getting acid thrown in your face would cause you to develop a split personality, as this book seems to imply, is unlikely. DID doesn’t develop that suddenly.

2016 Guidebook:

While Doctor Polaris may very well have a personality disorder, the emergence of a second personality would indicate the development of DID, not a personality disorder. An adult man couldn’t “develop’ a personality disorder anyway; they’re developed in childhood and are usually lifelong afflictions.

Harley Quinn is a weird case; to call her psychotic isn’t completely inaccurate, as she has displayed signs of hallucinations and delusions in the past. That being said, the way her condition is depicted is inconsistent and confusing, and doesn’t seem to line up perfectly with any actual real-world condition.

Modern Heat Wave is absolutely a pyromaniac; Johns in particular was surprisingly good at writing a realistic case of the condition.

The Joker is not insane. Neither is the modern Joker’s daughter. Both understand what they’re doing is wrong.

Lex Luthor is indeed a sociopath, as is the New 52 version of Mr. Freeze (BTAS Freeze is not).

Two-Face’s condition should be described as DID, not MPD; otherwise things are about as accurate as one can expect from Two-Face.

2008 Guidebook:

Calling Abra Kadabra narcissistic is accurate.

The Black Manta autism thing is icky on multiple levels. Ewww.

The first Cheetah probably would not have suddenly developed a second personality as an adult.

Dr. Polaris. You know the drill. Split personality should be DID. A “good” and “evil” alter are pretty unlikely. Usually DID would show up before adulthood.

Firefly and Heat Wave do both seem to have pyromania. It’s also accurate to describe Heat Wave as cryophobic.

The Joker cannot be “certifiably crazed”; crazed is not an official psychiatric term. And again, he isn’t insane, so he shouldn’t be in Arkham.

Killer Croc has never displayed any noticeable signs of psychosis.

Magenta having DID is actually more realistic than most of the other characters I’ve talked about; she’s got the necessary childhood trauma and her alters developed when she was still quite young. Furthermore, her more violent alter isn’t manically evil.

Whoever wrote the Scarecrow piece in the 2001 Batman Guidebook must’ve also helped to write this one, since the shockingly-accurate fear gas description is the same.

Professor Strange is not insane in the legal sense of the word.

Arnold Wesker has DID; MPD is the condition’s original name but is no longer used by professional psychologists.

Zoom (Hunter Zolomon, not Eobard)... I think there’s an argument to be made that Zolomon actually is psychotic. While he’s never displayed hallucinations, he is clearly delusional in the most literal sense and does seem to have lost touch with reality. As such, this book is not wholly inaccurate in calling him psychotic.

You get the idea....

Looking specifically at the Flash, things improve slightly simply because writers who don’t understand psychology aren’t constantly talking about it. That being said, that doesn’t mean it never gets brought up.

Golden Glider was intended to receive a psychiatric evaluation in the late 1970s. It’s interesting that she actually protested this, pointing out that the male criminals never received psychological evaluations (and indeed, they always went to prison rather than to an institution). She was indeed motivated by something other than profit, and I can understand why they wanted to have her evaluated given her lack of earlier criminal activity, but I don’t know if she was actually mentally ill per se...and she definitely wasn’t insane.

In the early 1980s during the twilight hours of Barry Allen’s first run on the Flash, it seemed that the writers were trying to take a page out of Batman’s book by arguing that Barry’s costumed criminals were insane (even though they usually didn’t display any behavior that would indicate this). As such, Barry stated to imply that his Rogues were mentally ill in some fashion despite the fact that their behavior really hadn’t changed appreciably since their earliest appearances. That being said, the Pied Piper did appear to suffer some sort of nervous breakdown during the “Trial of the Flash” arc; what exactly this was is difficult to explain, since we didn’t get to see a whole lot of him after this point, but he did go to an actual psychiatric hospital (that was referred to as such rather than being called an asylum) and he did recover, relapsed, then recovered again, making this one of the more accurate portrayals of how mental illness works despite the limited information we have about his actual condition. They even showed him slowly deteriorating over a period of time before the actual collapse!

Big Sir, who made his debut in the same storyline, was rather more poorly handled....but at least he was explicitly manipulated into villainy rather than becoming evil simply because of his condition.

Wally West went to therapy early in his run; given the context I’d say it was reasonable that he was suffering from both anxiety and depression (his uncle had just died and he was really struggling to fill his shoes as the new Flash). Going to therapy did actually help him, which was nice to see, and his therapist did not become evil, which was also nice to see. (I’m not going to talk about Heroes in Crisis, as I prefer to pretend that that never happened.) Yay for protagonists discussing their mental health problems in productive ways!

In the early-to-mid 1990s, Mark Waid wrote a story in which Lisa stated that she’d faked insanity in order to be sent to a psychiatric hospital rather than to prison, but the story seemed to be implying that she was actually insane. Not only is successfully being declared not guilty by reason of insanity incredibly difficult, but Lisa displayed no signs of not recognizing that her behavior was wrong, so she wasn’t insane. She was, however, displaying strong signs of paranoia, which could perhaps be attributed to a paranoid delusion of some sort. It’s especailly weird since this was never really a characteristic of hers before or since, and it just kind of came out of nowhere.

The Trickster (specifically the first one, James Jesse) is often mistakenly believed to be mentally ill by casual fans. While he is indeed mentally ill, possibly even psychotic, in the DCAU, and he’s a remorseless psychopath in both live-action Flash shows, in the comics themselves he displays no real signs of mental illness. That being said, I LOVE the interactions between DCAU Wally and DCAU Trickster. They’re made of adorable.

The Pied Piper went through a second bout of mental problems in the mid-to-late 2000s, being tricked into believing that he’d murdered his parents, going to prison, being beaten regularly by the warden, escaping from prison, going through the stress of fighting in the Rogue War, having his mind messed with by the Top, accidentally becoming involved in the murder of Bart Allen (another thing I like to pretend never happened), having to go on the run, watching the Trickster get shot in front of him, having to drag his corpse around a desert, almost dying, getting transported to Apocalypse, blowing it up with Queen music, and then being left basically all alone. He really went through a trauma conga line, so it’s not surprising that he was starting to display some odd behavior. Poor guy probably had PTSD.

And then there’s the Top. Beyond the speculation of @gorogues that he’s on the autism spectrum (a theory I find to be quite persuasive), I also think it’s likely that he suffers from another mental illness (most likely bipolar I disorder, also as suggested by @gorogues). He was clearly mentally ill for most of Geoff Johns’ run, and his behavior in his very first appearance was decidedly odd as well. Intense mania and depression can sometimes induce psychosis (as we seemed to see during Geoff Johns’ run), and his “threatening to blow up half the world to become its ruler while I’m somehow safe on the other side of the planet” plan from his first appearance, which he clearly expected to work perfectly, is so overconfident and over-the-top that it fits well as a particularly exaggerated manic episode. While it’s not conclusive by any means, I think it’s a distinct possibility.

#dc comics #mental illness #flash comics #batman comics #flash rogues

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flambazz · 3 years

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Pantheons: Hermes

Author: Balsam

History: Ancient Mediterranean; Greek Pantheon

Which god in the Greek pantheon do you see the most of in your everyday life? If you had anyone who wasn’t Hermes in mind, you’re wrong. You’ll find images of him just about everywhere from his caduceus carved out of the stone of a hospital, to his head being shown on a car’s logo, to his winged sandals painted onto Goodyear tires. He’s literally everywhere. We even have a planet and a heavy metal, both existing under his Roman name Mercury. But who is he, really, in the scheme of pantheons?

Hermes, known to Rome as Mercury, was the Ancient Greek god of roads/journeys, travelers, merchants, trade/commerce, athletes, thieves, and trickery. His name shows up in Mycenaean scripts like Dionysus’ does, but in the pantheon itself he is rather young. Predominantly, he was recognized as a messenger god, but in a similar sense to Mycenaean Dionysus he was also revered as an underworld god due to being a psychopomp and being responsible for guiding the souls of the dead in addition to being responsible for guiding dreams. In his myths he has a habit of helping out the mortal heroes when they run into issues of some kind. Now, to understand his characterization and historical context, we need to understand where exactly in the realm of Ancient Greek mythology Hermes stands. Let’s get into it.

Hermes is incredibly young in Olympian standards, with Dionysus being the only one canonically younger. Born to the pleiad Maia and the son of Zeus (like just about everyone else), his birthplace is a cave in the mountains of Arcadia. He sets himself apart from other Olympians by getting into trouble literally the day he’s born. According to Homer’s Hymn to Hermes, the first thing to happen after being born was his finding a tortoise and turning its shell into a lyre. He gets hungry and decides the only sane thing to do is steal 50 of Apollo’s sacred cattle, turning their hooves backwards to attempt and prevent Apollo from noticing they’re gone. Stowing the cows, he sacrifices some to the gods and then shows up back in the cave to pretend to be a helpless baby. Maia doesn’t buy his bullsh*t so instead he takes his time and explains to his mom that he’s attempting to get the Olympians to notice him, and that he’s trying to get the respect and honor they deserve instead of being stuck in a cave for the rest of his immortality.

Meanwhile back in Narnia, Apollo can’t find his cows so he plays Sherlock Holmes and finds Hermes back in the cave. While Apollo tries interrogating him, Hermes basically pulls a Miles Morales and says “What cows?” So, Apollo drags him up to Zeus, who’s cackling like a madman and then tells him to show the way to the cows. On the way, Hermes starts playing his lyre and wins Apollo over. Apollo is enchanted by it and promises Hermes will be messenger of the gods, promising he and his mother will be honored among the Olympians. Hermes and Apollo exchange the lyre for the role of herdsman and return to Olympus, where Hermes promises never to steal from him again and gets his caduceus (small staff with two snakes around it; symbol of heralds/messengers). And so, Hermes makes an arrival as a trickster and underdog wrangling an improbable victory via cunning and tricks. One who, despite winning untold power/fame, still comes across as the underdog for multiple centuries following.

Hermes regularly appears in the mythology, playing a support role in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Iliad he is allied with the Achaeans for the majority but protects King Priam when he went to the Achaean camp to retrieve Hector’s body, and in the Odyssey he regularly provides help and advice for Odysseus including how to get Circe to break the enchantment on his men and then later guiding the suitor’s souls to the afterlife. This might have been because Odysseus is actually Hermes’ great-grandson (son of Autolycus). One of Hermes’ most well known accomplishments is killing Argus, a hundred-eyed giant hired to watch over Io after she got turned into a cow. Zeus asks him to free her, so Hermes shows up as a shepherd and bores him asleep with the story of panpipes then cuts his Argus’ off. This is what gave him the epithet of Argeiphontes (slayer of Argus). He’s also got a bunch of other appearances in Greek mythology, frequently helping out heroes like Perseus and Orestes by giving them the means to succeed. This trickery is one of Hermes’ major characteristics as the god of liars, thieves, and the other stuff in his purview. While these seem like things that maybe shouldn’t be attributed to a god, most Greek heroes were underdogs or tricksters in some way and trickery was well respected when used in moderation.

Before we get into the rest of the history, we have one kind of wacky thing about Hermes: The Herms. The Herms were boundary/border markers commonly found along roadways, usually with a depiction of Hermes’ face and always with a carving of a dong on them. I don’t know why that’s what was non-negotiable either but I wish I did. With Hermes being a god of borders and boundaries, it makes sense that he’d be the one to show up on most of the border markers but it’s also a little weird (not because of the dong). So we’re going to shove that into a corner for a bit and get into the history.

First off, Hermes used to be Pan (not pansexual, the god Pan). Let me explain that. Pan is a mysterious figure due to how old he is. Because of his age, we don’t have much clear information on his origin or development. As he was characterized in Ancient Greece, Pan is the god of the wilderness, shepherds and flocks, nature, mountain wilds, fields/groves/glens, sex and fertility, and theatrical critisism. He was a companion to the nymphs, is responsible for panic (as a concept and word), and he’s literally the legendary dong. His worship was almost exclusively in the mountains of Arcadia, which also happens to be the birthplace of Hermes. Arcadia is known for being inland, mountainous and forested, and extremely old compared to the rest of Ancient Greece.

As a wild god, Pan wasn’t worshipped in manmade structures. He was mostly worshipped in natural caves and only ever had two built temples (one in Peloponnese). In the mythology, Pan is older than the Olympians are, and is credited with giving Artemis her hunting dogs and Apollo the gift of prophecy. Most commonly, he is known for two things that bear his name: panpipes (syrinx) and panic (panikos). He created the syrinx when a nymph he was chasing became reeds to try and escape, and then he turned her into the syrinx so he could put his mouth all over her like a weirdo. As for panic (for people who don’t know what it is), it’s a kind of fear that is intense enough it borders madness. He is credited with it as, supposedly, he would yell in the wood and anyone who heard it would be inflicted with said panic, which could rout entire armies. And while we know some stuff about him, there’s even more that we either don’t know or it’s vague and fuzzy. For example, his parentage is incredibly vague and varied, which suggests he’s very old since that kind of myth takes a long time to drift.

In fact, it’s highly likely that Pan is older than even Mycenaean Greece. Comparative mythology scholars that are working on reconstructing Proto-Indo-European religion that spawned from the Vedic, Norse, and Greek mythologies theorize that Pan is an offshoot from the god PÉH2USōN (no I don’t know how to say it), whose only other offshoot is the Vedic pastoral deity Pushan.

The Rigveda mentions Pushan, and may be as old as 1700 BCE. This means that if Pan is an offshoot from the same deity, he also predates Mycenaean Greece (age started in 1600 BCE). However, due to lack of written sources, we don’t actually know how Pan was characterized at any point before the Mycenaean age, but we can learn by proxy by looking at Pushan.

Pushan is the Vedic god of roads/journeys, marriages, cattle herding/feeding, and the sun as a guardian figure. Like Hermes, Pushan also served as a psychopomp, but is associated with goats and got all his teeth knocked out that one time. So, the generally accepted theory we have is that way, way back before or during the Mycenaean age is when Hermes split from Pan, and before even that, the original Pan was incredibly similar to Pushan, a liminal god of navigating between places like roads, general wilderness, and the journey to the afterlife. When the original Pan got subdivided, current Pan retained the pastoralist and herding connotations, but the roads and journeys stuff went to Hermes and left Pan reduced. It’s worth noting that Hermes also has herding connotations.

Now, this isn’t just based on the fact that Hermes is somewhat similar to a Vedic deity. There are also some other, stranger connections the two have. For one, both of them have an origin in Arcadia along with their centers of worship. In some versions of mythology, Pan is Hermes' son for some reason. Which is a weird connection, but at the same time it does make sense to link them in a reverse way. It’s also surprisingly relevant; Hermes and Pan are both notorious in the mythos for having large dongs (I wish I didn’t have to talk about it but here we are). So, time to go back to the Herms mentioned earlier.

The word itself translates into “piled stones”. So Hermes’ name isn't even a name. But the concept of Herms is an extremely old concept in the region, older than Ancient Greece and Hermes both. Back before Herms were sculpted, roads were marked with large piles of stones. Lack of human features didn't make them less sacred, though, and Herms were revered. Custom was to put another stone on the pile or to anoint it with oil, and messing with them or defacing them was a horrible thing. Pan, as the old god of roads and journeys, was likely the god who was revered through said Herms. Now, remember how I said Hermes had an epithet because of killing Argus? Well he isn’t the only god who had them, in fact most if not all of them did and they described the capacity a god was worshipped in. In Pan’s case, the one I’m going to mention is ‘Pan Hermes’ (although we aren’t really sure) or ‘Pan of the piled boundary stones’. What we do know is that around the time he likely had this epithet, he got split into current Pan and the god Hermes. This happened at a very early time, and so we aren’t quite sure why Pan got separated from his epithet and Hermes got to be his own god.

What’s likely is that old Pan was a fairly specialized deity and so his worship was having issues expanding beyond rustic areas and wild lands. Whatever the reason, we know Hermes shows up in Mycenaean Linear B writing (or a word like Hermes), meaning he split from Pan before proper records. By the time we get to the 800s, Homer is writing epics and Hermes is firmly seated in the Olympians as is shown by his role in the Iliad and Pan is simply a wilderness god.

Oh, and for the people well acquainted with Greek Mythological esoterica or the Percy Jackson books; Pan is (technically) canonically dead. According to Plutarch writing from around 100 CE, a handful of decades earlier during the reign of Tiberius, a divine voice supposedly called out from Paksi to a man named Thamus telling him “The Great god Pan is dead.” Thamus then told everyone and they were reasonably bummed out about it. But for every sense that matters, Pan didn’t actually seem to die since his shines were still frequented and worship of him continued as usual. So what the hell?

Well, it’s likely that this is a big misunderstanding. See, the goddess Ishtar had a dead boyfriend named Tammuz who had a cult that got bright over to Greece. And in the Ancient Greek language, the sentence “Thamus, the Great god Pan is dead” is read as “Thamus panmegas tethneke”, however due to ‘pan’ being both the name of a god and the prefix meaning all, the sentence can also be read as “Tammuz the all-great is dead”. So this whole ‘Pan being dead’ thing might have just been some dude overhearing the cult of Tammuz praising him for his sole achievement and thinking they were talking about the god Pan being dead. So yeah.

Back to Hermes. In early Ancient Greece, Pan and Hermes didn’t look too dissimilar,and between 800 and 500 BCE Hermes was shown as an older man with a beard. But in Classical and Hellenistic Greece, he is shown the way we recognize him now; a young, beardless, mostly naked athlete. Dionysus also underwent a similar change but this isn’t about him. Time to talk about Roman Hermes; Mercury.

Most Roman and Greek deities started as gods in their own right. Mars, who is Ares’ roman counterpart, started as a god of war and as an agricultural deity and was treated notably better than Ares is. And for the most part Rome’s other gods were also fully-fledged deities, though sometimes other gods got mashed together like play-doh. For example, Pluto (Roman Hades) was accidentally the god of wealth, Plutus, and the god of the underworld, Pluton. But Mercury didn’t even exist. The name has sketchy etymology, but likely comes from either the Latin root for ‘merchant’ or a much older word for ‘boundary’. In either case the name is a descriptor of one of Hermes’ divine duties and nothing farther. He did absorb the Roman Dea Lucrii, a handful of minor deities in charge of immoral profit coming from bad sources, but Mercury was basically just Roman Hermes.

During the Roman era, Hermes was extremely popular. And since Rome was the expansion kings, Hermes’ status as a trade and merchants god saw a bunch of use. He showed up on coins, imagery of him is in Pompeii, and he has another quirk making him so popular. Rome had a policy of taking and incorporating the gods of places they conquered into their pantheon in one way or another, finding the Roman god closest to whichever god it was and insisting they’re the same. This happened with the Greeks and the Celts where they likened Mercury to Lugh/Lleu who was a big deal seeing as he was the creator of all arts along with being a warrior-hero-king. Rome saw him as a commerce god and so he was equaled to Mercury. And when Rome dealt with the Germanic peoples, Mercury god likened to Odin, of all people. The Ptolemaic Greeks (oh god) equated Hermes with gods like Thoth and Anubis.

Hermes was all over the place, which is very appropriate, even showing up in Aesop’s fables for some reason. But for being such a versatile deity, why is he so (literally) iconic? We don’t know. Perhaps his mobility and speed resonates with our modern society? Maybe it’s because he’s one of the few of the Olympians to combine likable traits with a lack of distractingly terrible character flaws? Maybe it’s because medicine, communication, and capitalism are central qualities of many societies as well as his character. But his liminal status gets him in most every society and kind of just stays forever, turning up in places centuries later down the line.

If you read all of this, thank you and please reblog so more people can see and learn!

#greek mythology #ancient greek #tw long post #hermes #not story #original post #tw food #flambazz

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angelaiswriting · 5 years

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Listen to Me | Tommy Shelby x reader

[original picture from pinterest]

✏️ Pairing: Tommy Shelby x fem!reader

✏️ Requested by Anonymous: I love that you're doing the Peaky Blinders boys now! I'd very much enjoy some possible fluff and/or smut with an over-protective Tommy?? Or anyone else?? I'm a sucker for a protective boi haha! Love your blog!! 💞

✏️ A/N: thank you sooo much for this request (and the compliment, I’m sobbing)! It made me so excited I was literally trembling and unable to write for a while haha hopefully you’ll enjoy this! It’s not smut yet, but it could be one day. Also, if you want to be added to my brand-new Peaky Blinders tag list, hit me up! Meanwhile, I’m just tagging peeps that could be interested. Also, many thanks to my MB @sweetvengeancee for being my new beta, apparently haha ily 💞

✏️ Warnings: implied illegal activities I guess ? + pre smut, and yet not NSFW ? so at the discretion of the reader

✏️ Word-count: 2,650

PART ONE: LISTEN TO ME | >> part two: kiss me >>

The Garrison was packed, buzzing with life as men, both drunk and sober, chatted and joked the night away.

It was the ordered chaos Thomas Shelby enjoyed, a nice distraction from the upcoming race he was planning on fixing and from that nagging thought that followed him from a distance any time his plan popped up unsolicited in his mind. He was a good horse, Monaghan Boy – black and strong and magnificent, a born winner. But if Tommy wanted to go far, if he wanted to take Kimber’s place, he had to play all his cards and he had to play them right.

Y/N was the only one who knew – she had torn the truth out of him with that sinful mouth of hers, a few days before, in that very private room he had just got out of. She had always had her own way of doing things, ever since John had brought her home one day after school, and it had been her bluntness and utter lack of fear – probably her madness, too – that had never managed to tear her away from her Shelby friends first and the Peaky Blinders later, when they had all outgrown their childhood.

It was exactly her he didn’t expect to see that night at the bar. He had told her many a time he didn’t want her at the Garrison, didn’t want her around the men he so frequently had to deal with – he knew how they were, the things they did and how, exactly, they did them.

And yet, there she was, sitting at a table opposite Polly and with Finn cuddled up in her lap. They were laughing at something his youngest brother was saying, probably one of the crazy stories he made up with his friends, both women sipping on freshly-poured booze.

“For fuck’s sake.” The words punched their way out of his mouth without him being able to stop them as he leaned against the counter. The more he told her what to do, the more she did the opposite. Whether it was her wicked way to wrap him even tighter around her pinkie finger or something she did out of habit, Tommy truly didn’t know.

What he did know, though, was that he didn’t want her here. And as he gestured for the bartender to come, all he wished for, was for her to fucking listen for once.

Harry, ever zealous as he was, was in front of him in a second, a bottle of Irish whiskey raised in mid-air as the silent question lingered in the space between them. It was an almost automatic choice by now, but when the Blinders were involved, he’d rather not make a mistake.

Tommy gave a curt nod of his head as his left hand came up to massage his forehead. It had been a longer day than usual and while he did his best not to pay them too much attention, the worries that floated around Sunday’s race and his plan for success bubbled up in his mind like the bubbles in a glass of champagne.

“Leave the bottle,” he groaned the second before downing the contents of his glass. He was going to need all the whiskey he could get his hands on if he wanted to keep sane. “When did they arrive?”

Even without saying the names, the bartender knew who the question was about. Polly Shelby had put him back to his place when she had marched into his bar with her kid nephew and Y/N by her side and had demanded he gave her and her guests a table. It hadn’t sounded like such a bad idea when he had cleaned a table for those women, and even less when they had ordered their drinks, but as he met Tommy’s gaze now, he found himself wishing he hadn’t given in to their request.

“Don’t know,” he tried to shrug it off. “Must be twenty minutes at most.” It had been double that time, almost as long as the private Shelby meeting in the back room had lasted. There was nothing else he could do, though, as the very Polly Shelby that turned his bones into a quivering mess sent him a glare that could have been translated as behave! at best and I’m going to fucking kill you at worst.

“Fuck.”

Tommy poured himself some more whiskey. He turned around for a moment, met Y/N’s playful gaze as she looked up at him from above Finn’s ruffled hair and wondered, why her. It probably hadn’t been a conscious choice – she hadn’t been a conscious choice.

She had just been there, at the station, when he and his brothers had come back battered and broken from France. She had been there before that, too, and he knew she was still going to be in his family’s life years from now.

She had also been there when the idea of laying eyes on a woman repulsed him, his mind still struggling in the mud of the recently-won war. A friend of John ever since their school days, Tommy had ended up growing attached to her more than he cared to admit. When opium was the only remedy to the gurgling void he carried inside, she was there, her hand on his, shooing the bombings away. He had ended up taking more than she had initially offered and she had ended up taking all he had to give – skin, wounds, Romani words whispered in the semi-darkness of his room as the ricocheting echoes of the nightmares he had found himself living in for four years tumbled down those four walls that always seemed to close in on him, turning everything into a never-ending tunnel.

“Fuck,” he groaned again, unable to help himself.

Her stubbornness had been one of the things that had helped his business stand on its feet while he, Arthur and John had been away, he was sure of that, but now he needed her alive. Needed her safe. Safe from what he knew his life could cause her.

“Have you seen who’s come?” John sounded both happy and tired as he called him from behind before moving to stand by his side. He took a glance at the bottle of whiskey on the counter before pouring himself some into his brother’s tumbler.

Tommy’s answer was a groan.

“Polly will go bonkers when she finds out we had a meeting without her.”

“Oh, she already knows,” Tommy sighed, daring another glance behind his shoulder. “That’s why she’s here. And that’s why she’s brought Y/N.”

“To cause a bigger scene?” John joked, but his chuckle faded into silence when he met nothing but steel in his brother’s eyes.

“You come with me now,” the oldest said, taking a swig from the bottle and relishing in the burning that scratched down his throat. “And you take both Finn and Poll home. Make sure Finn’s in bed before you update her.”

“She won’t listen, you know that, don’t you?” John smirked, turning to glance at his childhood friend. There was no need to specify it was her he was talking about because he was more than sure that his brother knew. “She never does. That’s why I like her: she just doesn’t give a fuck about who we are.” And with a chuckle, he shook his head.

“There was no need to send Finn back home, it’s still early,” Y/N half-heartedly complained when Tommy pushed her into the tranquillity of the Shelbys’ private back room. “He just wanted to hang out around his brothers. You know he admires you.”

He didn’t turn to look at her: he simply walked past her and, unhurried, closed the small window that gave on the counter of the bar, providing them with much-needed privacy in a place like the Garrison. He didn’t need to see those loose hair that had escaped her hairdo and that he found stupidly… cute. Nor did he need to put two and two together and focus on the fact that she was wearing the dress he – he – had given her on her birthday.

Instead, he focused on the table in front of him: he walked up to it, put the bottle of whiskey he had left the counter with down on it and moved the glass ashtray closer to where he was going to sit. “It’s not Finn’s presence that bothers me,” he said eventually.

“Polly’s always-”

“What do I always tell you? This place-”

“If you’re implying that it’s my presence here that bothers you, Tommy Shelby, you can stick it up your-”

“Those are strong words for a lady.” He stared at her as he fixed a cigarette between his lips, lit it and took a first drag. He was trying to keep the ice in his eyes, but it never lasted, not with her. Not when she was the light next to him in the tunnel, not when she was the burning day that dug the French darkness away.

She shrugged, taking a step forward to rest her hands on the seatback of one of the chairs. Freshly manicured nails, painted red, for once – a clear sign that she had spent the day with his sister Ada. “Foolish of you to think, after all the years we’ve known each other, that I am a lady.”

Tommy smirked. “You like to pretend you are one, though.”

For a moment, her only answer was a chuckle as she bent forward to steal the cigarette from his lips. He watched as she took a drag, mere centimetres from his face, her twinkling eyes set on his, before she exhaled the smoke when she moved ever closer and her cheek brushed against his.

She was warm against him, with that perfume of jasmines wrapping her like a bridal veil. “Only with you, Mr. Shelby.”

She straightened her back, then, stood as tall and proud as only she could be in that blue dress of hers. Before he could stop her, she put out the unfinished cigarette in the ashtray.

He sat back, unbothered, and lit himself another cigarette and in the process, he never took his eyes off of her. He looked at her, he truly did, maybe for the first time that night.

She was a dream. A dream and a nightmare all in one, for she was stubborn and headstrong and probably had more balls than many of the men at his service. She never cowered – not under his gaze, not under Arthur’s, and even less under John’s. His men didn’t scare her, his business didn’t scare her, the dark corners of Small Heath didn’t scare her. That was probably the reason why he had taken it upon himself to protect her – from bullets, from secrets, from any bad dream-inducing aspect of his life.

Not that she needed it, but a man could still dream.

“How many times have I told you not to come here at night?” he asked her, puffing out smoke in her direction, twirling the cigarette between his fingers.

The right corner of her lips rose up into a half-smirk as she exhaled from the nose, loudly, trying to keep in the chuckle. “I don’t know,” she answered, drawing her shoulders back a little. “I seldom listen when you talk.”

Tommy resisted the impulse of pinching the bridge of his nose, but not the one that pushed him to close his eyes for a couple of seconds before grunting. “Do you at least know why I ask you the things I do?”

“Tommy Shelby never wants me to have fun, officer!” she drawled out, reminding him more of John than of the serious young woman she knew how to be.

“Stop being foolish and come here.”

She grabbed onto his outstretched hand and let him gently pull her forward until she was standing next to him. A more demanding tug on her arm forced her between his legs before he hoisted her up on the table. “Stop being so serious, Tommy.” She rested her hands on his, still on her hips, and dragged a foot along his thigh. “What’s the answer to that question?”

God, the things he couldn’t tell her!

“The men could get the wrong idea.” It was true, it was a possibility, one very near and always looming over any nice lady that walked through the doors of the Garrison.

She nodded. “I’m not scared of these men.”

“You should be.”

He couldn’t tell her he was doing anything in his power to protect her because she wouldn’t listen and in her haste to prove him wrong, he was sure she would end up proving him right.

“Half of them is too drunk to piss outside their pants and the other half of them is not drunk enough to fight a Shelby. And the ones that don’t know who you are, who this place,” and she gestured vaguely at the walls of the room, “belongs to, don’t scare me because I always have a knife in my boot.”

He wasn’t shocked to hear that revelation. And if he had to be honest, finding out that she walked around unarmed would have left him speechless.

“I still need you to listen to me when I talk to you.” He was slowly pushing the gown of her dress up her legs, exposing the silk of her tights. Hands rough and calloused against her clothed skin, he felt her boot until he found her knife. And smirked.

Tommy Shelby rarely smiled but his smirks were still enough to make Y/N’s heart stop beating for a second before starting to race like a racehorse.

“I’m listening now,” she breathed as he stood between her legs, his hands coming up her shins and pushing the dress over her knees.

“I want you to do the things I tell you to,” he continued.

“I take no orders.”

He leant forward, his lips as light as the touch of a feather against the base of her neck. “If I tell you not to come to the Garrison alone at night, you don’t come.”

“I wasn’t alone.” She was panting, her hands now supporting her weight on the table as he made her lean backwards a little. “I was with Polly. And Finn.”

He didn’t say anything, he let his touches speak for him. His lips kissed up the side of her neck, the tip of his tongue coming out to swipe along her skin every now and then as his hands moved from her knees to her inner thighs and inched closer to her core.

“Tommy…”

“If I say, listen to me, you do,” he whispered in her ear, lips brushing against the lobe before moving to kiss just below it. Her breath shivered against the skin of his cheek as she tilted her head back slightly. “If I want to keep you safe, you better let me.”

“You worry too much.” Her voice was a breath against his lips when he cradled her face in his hands. Lips brushing against lips, she could barely keep her gaze focused on his.

“And you worry too little.”

He kissed her, then. Slow and tender at first, almost innocently, before he let his tongue swipe along her lower lip, tasting the wax of her lipstick, and the kiss deepened. She tasted like whiskey and there was a hint of cigarette from when she had taken a drag from his.

“I’ll make sure you listen this time,” he murmured against the skin of her neck as his hands slid down her sides and back between her legs, fingertips gently tracing a line on her covered core.

“I won’t.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he chuckled, pushing the table back and kneeling down in front of her.

Please, please, please, let me know how this story was. I’m new in this fandom and I’m both excited and terrified haha

Again, if you want to be tagged in my PB stuff, just let me know somehow :)

TAGS (to be added to or to be removed from any list, shoot me an ask)

Everything: @idhrenniel @saibh29 @fuckthatfeeling @aya-fay @pebblesz892 @mblaqgi

People that might be interested: @sweetvengeancee @kind-wolf @flowers-in-your-hayr

#tommy shelby #tommy shelby imagine #tommy shelby x reader #thomas shelby #thomas shelby imagine #peaky blinders #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders x reader #angelaiswriting

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worldbuildingworkshop · 4 years

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Worldbuilding Tutorial #11: Outlining History

Intro I received a request (a long time ago, by this point) to write about how to go about constructing a world’s history. The request is as follows:

Can you write more about how to develop a history for your cultures? And how much is adequate for a good story/campaign? You mentioned time altering things in the last one, and changing empires and migrations can create reasons for the spread of peoples, religions, cultural elements, and political forms. Great series!

Thus, without further ado: history!** **Disclaimer: This is one I might have otherwise waited longer to do, because it can be a bit fiddly compared to a lot of other aspects of world building. If you’re following these tutorials while building your world, you may want to wait on this one ‘til later!

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There are a few ways you can approach writing your world’s history. Which one you pick depends mostly on how much you have written about other parts of your world so far. If you have a lot decided-upon already, you may want to start by working backwards; if you’re still in the process of deciding what you want your world to look like, you may want to work sequentially instead. There are other ways as well, depending on what role history is going to play in your world - I’ll outline them each below.

Working Backwards In most cases, you’ve probably already got a fair amount about your world decided, whether it feels like it or not. Maybe you’ve already got a larger map with the major cities and borders marked out, or you have a sense of the cultural time and place you want parts of your world grounded in (example: the classic Tolkein-esque fantasy setting being medieval western Europe); either way, you’ve got a clear image of what your world looks like and the standards of everyday living. What you want to do is start from there and, well, work backwards to write your history.

The first question when looking backwards is, of course, what do you already know? Look back through your notes. What’s your cosmology - how did the world and its people come into being? Did they come to be slowly over time, evolving from prior species and working through their stone age (or equivalent) and onwards - or were they manifested as they are now, with or without cultural and technological assistance from another source? Consider how long it’s been since your world was populated, where they started from, and where they have ended up. That will give you some sense of the distance that you’re looking to fill.

If you have places that you’ve already established - particularly cities - take a look at those as well. Which one is the oldest? Which one is the newest? What order were they built in, and by who? Are they still controlled by the same cultures that founded them? If not, when did they change hands - and how? This can go for other locations, too: dungeons, the local dragon lair, a major spaceport, a pirate hideout, you name it. You can go through the same process with other things too: a major trading company, a secret order, a ruling bloodline or house, an ancient and powerful being, you name it. Figure out what order everything that exists now came in, and write those out in an outline to get a sense of which things started to come into being during the same time period. Are there any patterns? Jot those down.

The other thing to consider is the question of prerequisite. What needs to have happened in order for things to be the way they are now? If your world has a ruler or government, that had to be founded at some point. If your world is spacefaring, they must have acquired or developed the technology for that at some point. If two countries or cultural groups are enemies, something must have happened to spark that enmity. Consider what the basic prerequisites for your world in the current day are, decide how long ago they happened, and note that down with your locations. As a rule of thumb, for determining age: dynamics that are more settled have been ongoing for longer; and dynamics that are still shifting or subject to change are more recent. This isn’t always the case, but it’s a good “when in doubt”.

Once you have major places and events sorted in order relative to one another, look for clusters - groups of events that all seem like they happened in the same time period. Do they share a history? Did the same thing instigate multiple events? Did one of these events lead directly to one of the others? Trust your gut - if it says yes, then yes; if it says no, leave it be for now. Look also for any big gaps - if there are long periods of time between clusters of events, why? Either decide why nothing of importance happened during that time, or fill them in with the little steps that bridge the point between the older event and the newer one. Continue to fill in the gaps until you’ve got something that looks roughly like you want it to for your world.

Sequential Development If you’re working through a process of building your world from the ground up - perhaps literally - you may want to develop your history sequentially instead. That is to say, starting at the beginning and building out from there, and following that development wherever it leads. This one tends to work less well if you’ve already got a clear idea of what your world looks like right now, although it can still be done even so.

As always, the first question to consider is what you already know. The species and rough cultures you’re working with can be a good place to start, since that influences all that follows. Based on those factors, you’ll want to start with determining early population centers - I’ll write on that more extensively in another tutorial, because that’s a doozy - and working a bit with the development of early civilizations. How fast do they develop? Do any of them get wiped out, through war or disease or natural disaster? Where do the survivors of these fallen civilizations go, and what impact do they have on wherever they end up? Consider all the empty spaces on your map - who’s going to start to reach out to those first? Are the settlers deliberate expansion attempts from a civilization - or dissidents from it? What is their reason for moving into these places? Play with the dynamics of early civilization and see what survives.

Survival is not the only factor to consider: for those civilizations that hang on for long enough, change is a factor as well. Cultures don’t simply stay the way they are for hundreds of years; they change, in a myriad of ways. As they expand, for example, they may need to adopt new ruling structures that suit a larger domain. Or as they develop new technologies or discover new resources, a culture will adapt to and incorporate (or vehemently reject!) those discoveries. As other cultural groups move through the area - the remnants of fallen friends, or invasion from enemy forces - a culture will pick up pieces from other cultures, particularly those most relevant to the point of contact. Is the primary contact between two cultures trade? Then expect that influence to come in the form of aesthetics, transportation, and status. Is the primary contact more like an incorporated population of refugees? Then the influence may come in the form of family structure, religion, or holidays. Consider how that change may ripple out to the larger culture - will it be celebrated? Suspect? Spurned? By whom, and why? What follows, and what changes?

Sequential history development is really a matter of following these questions through to their natural conclusions. Moving from early civilizations into middling ones, there are other factors to consider. What cultural origins are no longer relevant? A culture may have had its origins in herding, but if herding is no longer necessary (or possible), what will creep in to fill its absence? What changes are necessary to accommodate an increase in population, or physical territory, or changes in the landscape and climate itself? There is also the matter of the influence of prior history itself - for example, we would never have had the Italian Renaissance without the efforts of Arabic scholars translating old Ancient Greek works; and Rome always aspired to be Greece, even if its vision of Greece was deeply distorted by its own cultural lenses. What do the people now think of the people who were? What do they even know about them? Do they look down on them, do they idolize them, are they merely confused by them? These questions change culture too.

If you ever find yourself in a place of not being sure where things go next - if there’s not a clear sequence, or your world has become too stable - introduce something radically different. Natural disasters in their many forms are always good candidates; so are plots and conspiracies, sudden deaths of important figures, first contact with a perviously-unknown Other - you get the idea. Something to shake things up a bit, and something that there isn’t an immediate or obvious solution to. History is, ah, exciting (or rather, chaotic), despite historians’ best efforts to paint it in as dull a manner as possible - and full of crazy things and crazy coincides on even the most sane of days.

The last thing to consider as you develop is to think beyond merely events. People are an easy example - who drives these changes? Who will become the important, storied figures of history whose tales and influence survive long past their deaths? Locations, too - what new locations will arise, out of discovery or opportunity or necessity or tragedy? Artifacts is another; what are the important artifacts that come out of this history, and what happens to them? Who owns them, and what do they gain from it? Stories is another good one, especially as civilizations move into ideology as a primary motivator - what stories from their past are these civilizations striving to live up to - or avoid at all costs?

Keep going until you reach the point in your history that you’re ready to settle at, whether for your own story or game or interest; then flesh it out in more detail. And, of course, you can always go back later to fill in more things as necessary.

Spiderwebbing This is a method you may want to use if you already have a few key historical moments in mind - the fall of an empire, the assassination of a political leader, the arrival of a prophet, the theft of some holy jewels, you name it. Spiderwebbing is similar to working backwards, but involves “spidering out” from several key points rather than from simply the current state of your world. With spiderwebbing, you look at each event and then spin your history a little forwards and a little backwards - what had to happen in order for this event to come to pass? What are the consequences from this event, both immediate and long-term? You can then draw the before and after out a little longer and a little longer until you connect the major events of your world into a chain of its history. Once you’ve got the chain, you can build off details as needed to support the chain and fill in the gaps. How did these events impact or affect those who weren’t directly involved? What was going on elsewhere in the world?

Final Considerations If all else fails, consider the factors that motivate changes in history. Need is a big one; people will go to great and even desperate lengths to obtain the things that they need. Want is another big one; people are also willing to go to extraordinary lengths to obtain things that they want, and the more resources they have to do it with, the greater those lengths can be. These things don’t only have to be resources; they can be power, agency, and knowledge can all be needs and wants too. Values is another big one - how do you ensure that you continue to pursue the values of your culture? Do you try to spread your values to others - and if so, how? What do you do if your neighbors practice values directly counter to your own? What if it’s your own people who reject these values? Mystery is another one, particularly if your species is like humans - what is left to be discovered? What remains unknown? What happens if we try x, y, z?

How Much History Do You Need, Anyway? This one harkens back to the fundamentals of world building - which is to say, consider what purpose you’re building your world for. If the story that you’re telling is ultimately one that has little to do with history, there’s no need to go all-out; what you want to develop may resemble a list of historical fun facts more than it does an actual outline, and that’s okay. On the other end of it, if the history of your world is absolutely integral to the story you’re telling now, you’re going to want to go deep. If your world is static - that is to say, not being influenced by anyone besides you - then you can afford to develop a little less now and add more later as you need; but if your world is dynamic - that’s to say, there are others who will influence it as well - you’ll need to make sure you put in just a little more work up-front than you think you’ll actually need. Lastly, of course, there’s the matter of fun; if you’re having fun with it, there’s no reason to stop before you’re tired of it.

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Next tutorial could go in a couple directions. Either it’ll pick up where the last tutorial left off and go into day-to-day aspects of culture, or it will deviate back into the fundamentals of civilization (as per the note towards the beginning of the Sequential Development section up there). Or, as always, if someone has a specific topic request, I’ll happily answer that instead.

#worldbuilding #worldbuilding tutorial #worldbuilding tutorial 12 #history #outlining history #history and culture #cultural development #historical events #historical figures #timeline

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dragoon-of-all-trades · 4 years

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Fanfic Update + Deep Dive:

For faster, more precise updates of my Demiurge x Reader fanfic, ya’ll can head over to my AO3: Oreana

The reason I’ve not been using that penname even if I use it everywhere is because I’ve wanted to escape a few crazy folks from my last writer blog I wrote to. I know if I used it or I wrote or drew to specific fandoms, I’d be found again.

I know that’s a weird thing to say—that I'm hiding to a degree, but eh, the past few fandoms I’ve been in have been rough, one in particular where people started acting like I was the character, and they’d die without me responding to them. I was even asked things like I wrote the damn dude, and whatever I said had to be canon. It was…creepy. I literally had two birthdays a year, my own real one, and the character’s. When my name got populated around, it attracted a lot of different people, all of which stressed me out to a great degree.

I was stolen from constantly. A lot of my ideas were no longer mine and used in other peoples’ stories. Even the original character son I made for the guy in question became a headcanon people accepted and even took my design of him and ran with it without my say so in the process. This was done from even people I considered my friends, and it hurt so much to endure stuff like that. I always hate being the bad guy or telling people no, so I’d sit and cry for hours on end when I felt some of my stuff I worked hard for was no longer mine. Whenever I did reach my wit’s end and talked to them about it, they would act like I was in the wrong for wanting a part of me back or just asking for credit.

If I didn’t want to roleplay people’s fantasies, I was the bad guy. I literally had to have my then at the time French girlfriend tell this other girl in French that I made a promise I had to break because I took on too much being too nice—I figured her hearing it in her native language would be easier than her trying to translate what I was saying to her. The other girl didn’t understand why I was doing it and got angry, thinking it had something to do with the fact I couldn’t understand her too well in English when that wasn’t it at all (I could understand her just fine). I love using my writing no matter what to help others understand English a bit better, but I had like 30 Rpers at the time. *faint* She didn’t want to accept this and tried to use her mental and physical problems to get me to do as she wanted but to no avail, so she left in a huff.

When I started getting death threats and talk of how all my headcanons, ideas, ect sucked for half a year for nearly 3 times a week, I finally had enough and started to tear down a lot of my works after I threatened to expose where these flamers lived. A few people in the fandom had their encounter with these people too and found their IP address, so I knew who they were and where they were located. Their other 2 or so little comrades, not so much, but I knew where the ringleader was.

Their reasonings for being this way: they wanted gay fics with their favorite guy from the series, and we weren’t tailoring our stories to that, so they did everything they could to tear it apart. These people were even attacking folks I wasn’t exactly on the ‘good list with’, but I still would send them messages as a warning that these haters were going after them and advising them on what to do to be safe and sane. These people I was trying to protect hurt me and stole from me, sure, but they didn’t deserve that! Nobody does.

However, upon destroying a lot of my stories to stay sane, I found readers who once adored my works attacking me for destroying something I wrote for free and not keeping it up for their benefit. Side note: I don’t e-suicide at ALL. I’ve been on the net since the early 2000s or so, but I still have fanfics up to this day on other websites dating back to 2004. I don’t see the purpose of removing my footprint unless I think it’s needed. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t stand my stories and ideas being up only to have countless people like bomb the crap out of my stuff, reminding me of the pain and suffering I endured when I was in that fandom, so I started to delete things.

It was all the same guilt…It was always people trying to be nice just to get me to hand over that one story they really loved, not caring what it would mean or do to me.

It really hurt and nearly made me hate writing in the insert fandom. It was a reason I debated going back to full on OC/Canon just to avoid this horrible treatment. But this world sucks, and it’s sucking more every day, and I feel if there’s one thing I can do is try to write inserts to bring some form of entertainment to people’s lives, so I'm trying to do so again. Not going to surrender the OC/Canon idea. I deserve to be happy and a bit selfish too, I think, so I hope people will allow me to do that.

I will say, being on this blog and having a far lesser follower count than my last makes things not so intimidating. I love feeling free and being allowed to do as I please within reason, and the few of you here for that ride so far, thank you. Just understand I'm skittish and I'm trying to heal a bit mentally from those long, 2 years of hell.

#i put long texts behind cuts so it won't clog your feed #hope tumblr fixed that dumb issue of that on the app #mod speaks #fanfic update #i'll probably upload a part of it here but i have no idea what tumblr accepts

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curiouskrp · 5 years

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“WELCOMING APT 5D TENANT, NO JAESUNG !

INFORMATION

age – 25 pronouns – he/him occupation – noraebang attendant, podcast host moved into treehouse – 6 months ago

PERSONALITY: ESFP, THE ENTERTAINER

positive –

charismatic (excellent people skills) & bold --

jaesung thrives on the attention of others, and everything he does lies on that. it helps, then, that he carries a natural charisma with him, making his presence a comforting one. outgoing (or obnoxious, depending on who you ask), energetic, confident, witty, he’s everything that sounds good on paper until you spend more than an hour with him. he’s easy to be around, has an effect on people that makes it easy to open up, to feel comfortable like he’s an old friend -- but his company can be tiring because he never stops, can’t stand the silence or standing still, both figuratively and literally.

his boldness translates more to impulsiveness, too. irresponsible, even, depending on the situation. if there’s something he wants to do, wants to say, he’ll do it without a second thought, consequences be damned. in the end, it’s a double-edged sword, and maybe that’s what he’s banking on.

negative –

unfocused & mercurial (easily bored)

jaesung’s not afraid of many things, and he’ll be sure to tell you as much. reckless and generally uncaring of his well-being, he’ll do anything at least once. and usually, only once, or for a short period of time because if there is anything he’s afraid of, it’d be commitment. dedicating himself to something is not his strong suit, and it’s why he lives day by day with no plan for the next, why he’s so unreliable, why it’s hard for him to hold down a job for longer than a few months, and why his dedication for his podcast is so surprising.

but even then, he’s sure most people are just waiting for him to get bored with it. it’s what he does, after all. throwing himself wildly into things before dropping it shortly after. when something doesn’t benefit him or his enjoyment anymore, he finds it’s not worth doing. he won’t stick with things hoping for it to get better. for jaesung, if there’s no instant gratification, then what’s the point?

HAUNT

not many things haunt no jaesung.

he tends not to dwell on the past and doesn’t think too hard about the future or how his current actions may affect it.

even the things that go bump in the treehouse excite him more than terrify, though the goosebumps that line his arms on occasion may tell a different story.

point is, things rarely plague jaesung’s mind with haunting regularity.

except, because there’s always a but, for one secret. one accident, one ill-fated night that he can’t escape even in his sleep, nightmares forcing him to relive it over and over until he wakes up with beads of sweat on his forehead. sometimes they end differently, like his wrists in handcuffs, or like the blood on his hands being his closest friend’s instead.

whatever the result, the reality of it remains the same, guilt hanging heavy on his shoulders. all thanks to one winter evening, one party with a few too many drinks clouding his better judgment, his vision, one meaningless fight that he can’t even remember unlike the remainder of the night that he knows too vividly. the mistake of swiping someone’s car keys, slipping out of the party unseen, getting behind the wheel and swerving too far into the wrong side of the road and right into another car.

time slows before it freezes, then everything comes rushing back all at once.

the jolt of intense pain, the high pitched piercing his ears, the large amount of blood he can see on the victim, the eerie stillness of the victim, the face of the victim that is far too familiar, the realization that it’s his best friend’s older brother, the panic, hyperventilation, the hot tears starting to fall down his cheek, the strangled noises forced through his throat when he realizes he can’t stay there any longer.

every inch of his body shakes and aches when he gets out of the car but his panic overrides the physical pain and triggers his flight response, gives him enough strength in his legs to run far, far away.

everything after that passes by in a blur. a police investigation turned cold due to lack of evidence, a funeral with his friend crying on his shoulder, guilt clawing at him so incessantly he sometimes wonders how it hasn’t eaten him alive.

now, six years later, the nightmares haunt him even more regularly. perhaps a side effect of the treehouse, or perhaps thanks to the fact that his friend now lives right next door after years of purposefully putting physical miles and miles between like that might make anything better.

HISTORY

on the edges of a small south jeolla town lies an even smaller sweet potato farm. dirt path aisles line the ground between the plants, and a quaint hanok lies beside it with a worn down sign that reads ‘no sweet potatoes’, hilariously in english (much to the mom of the house’s chagrin).

this is where no jaesung spends his childhood.

the house and farm alike are old, taken care of by a long line of no family farmers, of which jaesung is ostensibly the next generation. it’s a small farm, modest in both physical size and market influence, but it never seems to bother the family too much. after all, they’ve grown accustomed to the simple rural life on the pastoral outskirts over many years, and so jaesung learns to love it too, all while running down the aisles, collecting scrapes on his knees, and dirtying his shoes until it’s time to sleep and start all over again the next day.

there is nothing particularly special about his childhood. when he starts attending school, he makes friends easily, creates bonds that he believes will last his entire life because in this community no one really ever leaves. after all, by six years old he has the farm and he has his two best friends -- so what more does he really need?

he grows into his teenage years like this, reckless and wild, only instead of running the dirt aisles of the farm, he runs down the streets, now. spends all his time outside of school (and even most of the time inside) not studying. there’s no point, after all, when his farming future has been decided for him even before he was conceived. with no dreams to aim for, he spends his teenage years doing whatever his heart desires. and his heart desires a great mixture of things: smoking, drinking, shoplifting, skipping class, vandalizing the warehouse just minutes from home, spending hours at the arcade, and many, many more unadvised things.

for someone with a dead-end future, he lives his life quite well. at fifteen, he discovers youtube. he uploads stupid videos that never go anywhere because they’re poorly made and, well, stupid. he’s long since privated them. at seventeen, his school holds a talent show and jaesung is voted by his peers to be the announcer, not out of merit but out of popularity and the hilariousness of it. turns out, he does pretty well. the crowd laughs at his impromptu jokes and he shines, knows how to fill in the pauses because he’s never really learned to stop talking. at eighteen, he graduates by the skin of his teeth

but at nineteen, everything changes with the accident that haunts him to this day.

blood stains his name, his nightmares, his closest friendship that no longer feels quite so close with this secret looming between them, just waiting to burst.

grief and guilt and anger and fear consume him all at once. hurting more than the measly bruises on his chest he left the car with, the only real ‘evidence’ of his presence that night left behind, unfounded by the police

he survives, but he retreats.

he snaps at people, letting the guilt consume him, locking him in a nightmare. his behavior isn’t considered strange because many people react similarly in this small town. only, he doesn’t go through all the stages of grief, never gets to the final acceptance. instead, he runs. to mandatory military service, then to busan, then to gwangju, then to daegu, then finally to seoul. he pays his way through with multiple part-time jobs and a small podcast he originally starts as a joke after one particularly drunken night.

it grows though, his podcast, into something more. a passion project, one might even say if the man behind it wasn’t no jaesung. whatever it is, it keeps him sane. of course, he’s just a one-man show with no power, no influence, so the podcast doesn’t do nearly enough to sustain him, having to supplement its inconsistent income with a (relatively) stable retail job in the city.

but still it helps. keeps his thoughts on stories to talk about for episodes instead of on the night that haunts him, encourages him to poke around at the spirits of the treehouse for a better reason than hoping redemption will come and take him away.

#cu bio #cu kim taehyung #cu esfp

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wearethegladiators · 5 years

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*SENDS BACK A THOUSAND CHEF’S KISSES*

Ptn I’m so inspired but I’m so busy like!! Pourquoi je m’inscris à 2 forums en même temps aussi

Anyway have you seen Tom Felton’s latest IG posts because CASSIEL FEELINGS ARE STILL GOING STRONG

Visual representation of Wynona by the beginning of Incendio:

Also I guess she’d be sort of middle-ground between Sacha and Nathan?? The dragons are her kids yo, she’s literally in a “the more family I lose the more dragons I will have” sort of shit. BUT at the same my girl likes a good fire…. And so dragons…..

Plus I mean it’s obvious she’s never given up on the Rebellion. She did not want to join originally because of the kids, but she hates so goddamn much this government and like?? The Ryders are muggleborns?? She’s angry as fuck rn.

(The fact that she’s siding with the Muggleborn Resistance is proof of that ofc, but it’s also out of opportunity. She can rebel while doing her own thing, that’s good with her atm. Or so she tries to believe)

Mdrrrr nan c’était pas cringy!! En vrai autant je trouve que certains de mes plots étaient invraisemblables autant j’ai pas été choquée par notre manière d’écrire mdrrrr (bon sauf quelques traits d’humour. Ça, je. Hm. Oui.)

GIVE NATHAN SOME SOLID BROMANCE 2K19 Avec le Charlie Hunnam là, Lily dit pas non :siffle:

Mdrrrr ouais all this pureblood shit is so awkward for her I swear to God. Pretty sure that at one point she showed up in a Sioux outfit and everyone was like “…….. *cricket noises*”

Tbh Emori’s glow-up for the prime thingy is a 100% Wynona showing up to these events (plus they have relatively similar styles au quotidien) YASSS QUEEEEN (still a weird thought yeah mdr) (i thought at some point Luisa would be a good fc for Wyn btw) (and also Indyamarie Jean!! plus she’s like half native american or so) (but your last gifset i mean??)

BON KIERAN IS ON THE LIST

Omg I didn’t think about it (whispering the names before going to sleep) but 100% this is so HER

I mean even though she stopped her terrorist “phase” (IT’S NOT A PHASE MOM) she’s still living by the words of her family. She’s still angry. She’s still about fire. Tbh she’s gonna die in a ring of fire one way or another

SO THE SHEEPS ARE STILL NOT SAFE OK

(mdr Nathan sweetheart btw)

“but they would put her head on a stick so maybe not.” yeah what about trying to avoid that amirite

“did she anger the yaxley family and if so can nathan and her go after rick yaxley like the power couple they are?? just couple things… murder….arson…” well I mean if Rick and Wynona ever sat at the same table to talk about politics…. I don’t think he would really like her…

plus he’s on the list anyway because he hurt Nathan and Nathan is part of The Tribe™ and no one hurts The Tribe™

Mdr can you imagine Wyn literally bringing Rick to Nathan like “woopsie doopsie I think I may have a present for you” :arrow: (MAYBE A SIMPLE TEAMING UP WOULD DO UH) (mdr Rick is a bitch don’t tell me he’s not gonna make girlfriend jokes)

RED. Honestly I thought she’d be dead BUT I actually like to think of her as having survived the shitstorm, being still relatively sane and undyingly loyal to Nathan?? Because that’d be quite a plot twist judging who she is, but it would be interesting to see her as “wiser”, and especially, the ride-or-die lieutenant (ISN’T THAT SUPPOSED TO BE LILY THO OY)

(I mean especially if Red was close to Aron, she’s definitely trying to live up to his memory, so there’s that as well)

Wesh Win is gonna make so much fun of the MacFusty if they didn’t even play the dragons card

NOW I really think Carmen and Win must have teamed up on some terrorist shit. No wonder the world c o l l a p s e d

(yeah yeah, Nathan-Carmen-Wynona is such a bad idea. Let’s not do it. Never ever. *winkwink*)

I mean they could be a trouple. I wouldn’t be incredibly surprised to learn that Win has hooked up with Carmen once or twice tbh :siffle: (WHY IS EVERYONE HAVING SEX WITH EVERYONE)

And meanwhile

My girl Lily

Anyway. NATHAN EXPELLED WYNONA. No wonder there’s some unresolved angst™ (actually, maybe not so much. Wynona is all about justice and she’s going to respect any decision/”trial”. She’s a “I did what I did and I will face the consequences of it” gal.)

I read “try yoga hug” and I’m honestly here for it

“I AM going to be 23 and who am i??? i cry at cute animals videos!!! sometimes i forget to eat!!!” This was so relatable it kinda hurt tbh :////

MDR NATHAN AND LILY LAUGHING ABOUT THE SHIT THEY DID IN THE WAR IS A BIG-ASS MOOD, come on why’s everybody so serious :face:

THE MURPHY GIF

Nathan and Lily are gonna have so much fights omg

RICK GETTING INTO LILY’S HEAD????? …. kinda makes sense….

“how is nathan supposed to RELAX and let lily BE when she’s always in so much trouble?????” TROUBLE USUALLY FINDS ME BITCH. True tho, sorry big bro

“ça me fume” ptn Elo t’es si française jpp j’adore

THE REBELLION AND THE MUGGLEBORN RESISTANCE CLASHING WOULD BE SO DRAMATIC OMG I’m here for it

I don’t even think that would be a trigger for Lily tho tbh because active denial™ BUT there definitely would be people calling her on her bullshit (maybe even Fury??? Who sort of created this whole dynamic, or at least pushed her into that direction)

Gnnn I actually love Fury so much, I’m binge-watching Peaky Blinders rn and I LOVE CILLIAN MURPHY TO DEATH and it just hit me that Fury could be an!! Irish!! Traveler!! THE POTENTIAL. Gypsy magic I’m so so so here for it

(also people probably don’t understand any shit he says so Lily has to translate it all)

(he likes (well, respects) Nathan a lot btw, too bad it’s not réciproque :( probably really likes the Blackbird girl too hihi)

“it’s okay they’ve been busy they just kinda forgot that they’re not JUST the red leader or morrigan or an auderic or a mudblood, they’re also FAMILY” THE TEARS IN MY EYES BITCH THIS IS SO TRUE

They really really really really need to talk it out/hug it out

Lily’s so far deep tho, like even if Nathan calls her out on her bullshit once she’d be like “Idk what you’re talking about, I’m fine, really, SI SI”

BUT she really needs to have this emotional breakdown where she goes like “there HAS TO be a reason why I’m still alive?? I HAVE TO save these people?? My people???”

Omg this moment is 10000% happening when Nathan’s losing his leg

She’d feel so guilty, like she failed to protect him

One thing I’ve always liked about Nathalily’s relationship is how it’s not what it seems like at first glance?? Cause it sounds like Lily is heavily dependent on Nathan’s for protection and Nathan’s needs Lily so much to “protect him emotionally” sort of? And actually Lily needs Nathan so fucking much to stay sane/ALIVE and Nathan needs his baby sister to save his drunken/reckless ass every once in a while :’))) IN MY MIND IT’S WAY CLEARER BUT ANYWAY

FEELS

She’d be there in a SECOND as soon as she hears about Nathan getting hurt

Idk why I have the scene of the Weasley twins after George lost his ear in mind

That’s definitely round 2 of “you’re my family too, I lost sight of that” and “I’M SO PROUD OF YOU BITCH” (mdr the “Nathan doesn’t cry but I sure do” part was so relatable mdrrrr)

Anyway drama drama drama feels feels feels!!

Also I actually don’t want Nathan to lose his leg, he’s already in emotional pain yo :’(((((

Can we talk about how Nathan and Wynona used to be sex-symbols/rock stars/badass athletes and now they’re both CRIPPLED

(I’m sorry but Nathan losing a leg also quite inevitably means Wynona being back into the picture)

Maybe he’s been sent to the Blackbird ranch for recovery :’)))

Makes me think that Lily is actually still… “whole”??? Like she’s got scars and shit but in spite of everything she’s been through she’s physically still ok? (besides the Occlumens thingy)

Interesting how the weaker one is still fully in capacity hé

I mean she’s got that black magic wound thing…. WAIT

WHAT IF IT’S ACTUALLY A CURSE

I always thought this was a progressive thing and this would eventually kill her

Have I already considered having Lily die in the middle of the night because of this when she survived so much shit?? YES YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE CAPABLE OF THIS

But my girl deserves better so

Anyway what if it’s a curse actually related to death and this is why she attracts/is attracted to death so much???? Deatheaters may have done that to make fun of her survivor/Banshee vibes but that would make sense?? (i don’t really appreciate death eaters’ humor yo)

What’s this quote again

“Her presence always signed imminent death, torture, betrayal, or some other horror”

I’m having I D E A S I need to sort this out

‘est-ce que lily va se faire soulever un jour’ MDRRRRR didn’t have a drink but it was TOUT COMME ptn Lily’s MY DAUGHTER j’étais pas prête DU TOUT

En vrai interesting because they’re all screwing each other but Lily… I mean she was supposed to hook up with this one guy on Excidium but besides that?? I honestly don’t think she’s ever been with anyone else since the beginning of the war??

Mdr she had so many boyfriends in Hogwarts and now look at her

But she doesn’t have time for that? And she doesn’t want it? And she wouldn’t be able to take it if she lost that other person too?

ACTUALLY that would do her so much good but she just can’t see that

MAYBE FURY??

Mdr sorry pls let her have a nice functional guy

(funny how Wynona’s quite openly bisexual when coming from a very close-minded family and I think of Lily and Aron as strictly straight when they come from a much more tolerant background?? Idk)

(anyway yeah the Evans were Christians but at least for the parents it was this whole “RELIGION IS ABOUT LOVE, ALL TYPES OF LOVE” vibe)

(anyway je diverge)

Also she’s still pretty much traumatized by the fact that she lost her first love and learnt about it… almost a year later mdr

She carried the earrings he gave her for SO LONG, she probably lost it by now but still

It’s like the original trauma of the war

(sometimes I think about the toxic aspects of Mily’s relationship but today is not the day)

“do you think nathan will ever see that lily is not a kid anymore or will he always be like “oh yes my little sister she’s like… 15….” even when they’re both 30…40…50 years old lmao” MDR BIG ASS MOOD I LOVE THEM

Wait Edan’s ooooold

Sacha’s breaking my heart pls tell him I’m sending a hug

“SORRY I’M JUST A DRAGON RIDER” WESH

“SORRY I JUST HAVE VOICES IN MY HEAD” :arrow:

Lily probably felt this so much when she first arrived to the Rebellion, she was still a kid and Nathan was overprotective and she wasn’t a great fighter and no one could understand how she had made it??

Just thinking how the rebellion may have tried somehow to exploit Lily’s banshee capacities and how Nathan would not appreciate it :’) but she’d thought it was kind of her only weapon so

Idk but yeah banshee!Lily is canon I guess

Tbh I LIVE for the idea of characters never meeting in Hogwarts even though they were so close?? Idk like Wynona/Nathan, even Sacha/Lily

Or maybe she’d know him vaguely

Lily was quite known as the gnome that will kick anyone’s asses for calling someone a Mudblood so maybe something like that, but not a full-fledged friendship?? Or once again they almost killed each other in Quidditch you know, shit happens

That’d be fun tho if they recognized each other

SACHA AS THE THERAPIST AND PEOPLE THROWING THINGS AT HIM I’M :’((((( we don’t deserve him do we

Meanwhile Wynona

· lmao no one:

· literally no one:

· wynona: hey you want to FIGHT bITCH?

WILLY

Mdrrrr bah Kira avait quand même mis une tarte à Lily (ou l’avait poussé dans un mur aussi je crois) et il était devenu son psy LE CHAOS

(bon et Milo essayait de noyer Lily/lui faisait exploser des bouteilles de bière sur la tête/faisait des rape jokes aussi des fois)

(NOT TODAY ON A DIT)

Anyway: chaotic energy is the least we can say mdrrrr

Mdr I’m here for a weekend d’escapade tbh (NO JOHN DO involved tho)

Mdr Nathan really was a piece of shit on Les AM sometimes :’) can Lily tell him already how she admires that he became a better man at war

I mean she kind of feels it you know

NATHAN AND WYNONA CASUALLY DISCUSSING TRAUMA IS *chef’s kiss* (mdr sorry but this whole part about emo!Nathan made me laugh so much mdrrrr)

They’re definitely gonna fight on their first meeting and I’m here for it

I mean Wyn is NOT hard to trigger and she’d be so mad she may let slip some personal stuff like “SO YOU’RE THE ONE NEVER SHOWING UP TO LITTLE PURIES PARTIES”

Also it’s a fun dynamic bc that means they may know their whole names and faces and sort of family backgrounds when the Rebellion was still all about anonymity at that time?? Mdr she’d feel so threatened she’d probably think “I won’t hesitate to murder this mofo if he becomes creepy yo” but then he’s hot

Wynona leaving him kicking his ass without giving the info

Wynona showing up to the next rebellion meeting without him being aware, grumpy face bras croisés *sigh*

I don’t why I’ve always felt a Dorne vibe with both the Blackbirds and the Shafiqs but ANYWAY they could get along well

Too bad Wyn just wants lands for her kids and dragons

PLOT TWIST: THE WEDDING WE WERE TALKING ABOUT ACTUALLY IS THAT OF WYN AND NATHAN

Mdr now I have that in mind THANKS ELO

I mean…. That we could be a temporary thingy…. We’re trying to heal each other we love each other… until we realize we’re burning each other up too much…. *falls* *dies ensouvelie sous les feels*

Mdr the pureblood reactions

Btw vu que je rame sur mon chapitre JE SPOILE mais en gros je voulais finir sur une base de 2 mangemorts qui discutent de la newbie Blackbird et qui finissent par lâcher un « faudrait peut-être redessiner les plans de table. Manquerait plus qu’elle s’accoquine avec l’Auderic » MDRRRR

Sorry

YDRIA YDRIA

I mean she needs to come to the wedding

PLOT TWIST²: the “bad guys” (Ydria, the Americans) are actually HELPING the rebellion (they’re still scary people tho I’m not sure we should want that)

they’re all originally coming for the wedding

(but!! Native American magic!! Sorry)

PTN NATHAN AND WOLVES JSUIS MORTE PARCE QUE

There are wolves on the Blackbird ranch, we don’t know why they’re from BUT THEY’RE HERE

WYNONA NOT KNOWING AND PROUDLY SHOWING THEM TO NATHAN

(or if they’re still en froid just mentioning it casually thinking it’ll make him happy)

Aron found a dog at some point and it literally ended up being his last true friend/source of joy and this dog MAY VERY WELL HAVE LOOKED LIKE A WOLF

This dog may be following Lily everywhere now?? (Or did she let him go because this was too painful)

Aron had also adopted a kid btw mdr

A kid Lily is now raising :’) Mom!Lily may be rising in the end

ANYWAY THE FEELS FEELS FEELS

Wynona showing up to the battlefields with 2 dragons and Nathan with wolves?? Has anyone ever made fun of our crippled huh????

(I’m here for a pureblood recap thingy bc I actually don’t know enough about them to write about it hihihi)

(merci pour la chrono btw!!!!!)

just seen one of the gifsets you’ve reblogged and is Nathan ever gonna call out Lily on a “THE MORRIGAN? IT’S A STORY FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD” basis??

idk if you can tell but I stopped the 100 for a while, went back to it and I’m having loads of Blake siblings feels zhgfshfslq

I’m also having Nathange feels now. Why can’t Nathan have simple relationships with women

PTN IF RICK IS RESPONSIBLE FOR NATHAN’S LEG I know at least 2 women that will come for him :face: :face: :face:

CARMEN GET IN LOSER you’re also part of the Nathan defense squad amirite

the Morrigan, a child ripper and une ex-tueuse à gages come knocking to your door

PTN BACK TO WYNONA AND SACHA AND GIVING EACH OTHER DRAGONS

Wynona raised one of her dragons. He’s a scary dragon. He’s a threatening dragon. What if the dragon raised by Sacha is goofy af and keeps on making “”jokes”” and Wynona’s always looking at him like “……..” but she secretly loves him/her to death just like Sacha arfhdhsfhqfcq and also she can ride him/her!!!!!

AND WHAT IF THE DRAGON WYN HAS GIVEN TO SACHA IS SO OVERPROTECTIVE

LIKE A MOTHER

And Sacha will never be at peace anymore because this dragon is always watching his ass :’) through his window while he’s sleeping :’) through the ranch while he’s working :’)

CAN MY HEART TAKE ANYMORE FEELS AND CAN THEY BE ABOUT DRAGONS

(I also appreciate Nathan and Wyn together A LOT because they’re both such n e r d s like omg some of the discussions they must be having)

Just saying I’m very excited for Nathan’s story hihihihi!!!!!! It’s been so long since I haven’t read you btw!!!

Alice’s death :’(((

NATHAN ALREADY LOST HIS LEG???? I’m not ready I don’t want this bb :( :(

Ptn je regarde plus TWD depuis des années mais je viens de voir une vidéo sur Carol and NOW I NEED une ex-Auror trop badass, genre Maugrey Fol Œil en féminin, dans la résistance et/ou la rébellion

Et Rosita qui a un bb !! PTN MAINTENANT J’IMAGINE WYN ENCEINTE MAIS

Ecoutez j’ai un train à 7h demain il me semble plus raisonnable d’aller se coucher c’en est trop pour mon cœur

Je sais pas si j’ai dit quoi que ce soit de constructif dans ce post mais yallah bye homies <3

#incendio

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writingthingsisdifficult · 7 years

Text

Shifting perspective

(Horrible title, I know. I suck at naming stuff.) I don’t know what this is. It came to be from my strong wish to have Norwegian swearing in one of my fics (don’t know why. Don’t ask.) Anyway, this is what grew; one OFC called Oline (nicknamed Oli), one pining Sam, and a bunch of asshole shapeshifters. Enjoy.

The translations are in brackets right after the Norwegian, so you don’t have to scroll so much, but most of the translations aren’t literal, partly because of my limited knowledge of the English language, and partly because I tried to make it flow.

For example: Faen is used a lot. It’s a common Norwegian curse word, and it’s quite versatile, kinda like fuck, but the meaning is of religious origin, not sexual. Faen is a shortened version of Fanden, which is another (old) name for the devil (or a demon, depending on where you’re from).

Please let me know what you think, but also keep in mind that English is not my first language.

My tag lists are open, if you want to be included (or if you want to be removed). Just drop me a line.

Word count: 7392 (sorry not sorry)

”Good morning!” Oline came waltzing into the kitchen like she owned the place, wearing a pair of black pyjama pants with cartoon puppies printed along the side, and a light blue t-shirt with a band name no one could determine, because the print was so faded.

Her hair was still wet from the shower, and she hadn’t put any make-up on, but still Sam’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, trying to hide the fact that his body was more awake than his mind was.

She had been on and off hunting with them for almost four years, and lived in the bunker for one and a half of those, but her looks still took his breath away – even looking all dishevelled and tired. It was as if her skin glowed on its own, and her hair… well, Sam would’ve done pretty much anything to run his fingers through it. Quickly, so she wouldn’t catch him staring, he cast his eyes down and kept them focused on the bowl of cereal. “Mrn.”

She didn’t notice the slight breathiness to his voice – or if she did, she was polite enough to not comment on it. Sam smiled into his spoon. She was too nice. If Dean had been there, he would never have heard the end of it.

Daring a glance up, he caught her just as she reached for something on the top shelf; exposing a small line of skin along her hip and back. He could just make out the tips of the points on her anti-possession tattoo, and then decided that he didn’t trust himself enough, so he grabbed his notepad and jotted down a few words just to keep busy.

“Ready for the road?” Her voice sliced through the bubble he’d buried himself in.

“Huh?”

She laughed. “Still not awake, huh? I asked if you’re ready for the road.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess.” He smiled back at her. “Never seen anyone so eager for a shifter job before.”

Oline shrugged. “ They’re not all that common back home. And those that I did come across couldn’t hide their true identity completely. A tail here, patches of green skin there… Or maybe they were just bad at what they did. I don’t know.”

“Tail? Green skin? I don’t think that’s what we call shapeshifters over here?” Sam said, tilting his head and squinting. His earlier embarrassment was forgotten; always eager to learn about new monsters.

“Really? Ooh! Is that coffee?” She snatched his cup and gulped down half of it before he could even blink. “Yeah,” she said, inhaling the word. “Norwegian shapeshifters live underground, or inside the mountains. Most of them have green or blue skin, and at least the females have tails that resembles cows’ tails, but they change to look more human to lure unsuspecting victims to their deaths. They don’t do that here?”

“Wow, no. What we call shapeshifters are humanoid creatures that can take on the appearance and memories of any living person they decide to mimic. Some can even change into animals. We can kill them with silver through the heart. Or even decapitation.”

Oline tilted her head slightly and smiled upside down. “Huh. Interesting. Gotta read up on them before we get there. Everything is so different over here.” Tapping the side of the cup she’d hijacked, she thought for a second. “I’ve been here for what, four years, and still your country is so foreign. You don’t even have proper brown cheese.”

Getting himself a new cup, Sam blew a silent chuckle through his nose. “Technically, you’re the foreign one, you know.”

“You better have coffee in there!” Dean shuffled through the door, looking very much like he just woke up, and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. “Ugh, I’m getting too old for this shit. Who decided we start this early?”

“You did,” both Sam and Oline replied, watching as Dean bumped into the counter with half closed eyes, both grateful that he offered some distraction from the disaster waiting to happen. Some times Sam could’ve sworn Oline looked at him like she wanted to eat him up – now that was an interesting thought, and then the next moment she seemed totally uninterested. To be honest it drove him mad, never knowing which way to interpret her language.

They ate the rest of their breakfast in comfortable silence. Sam continued to scribble on his note pad, Oline stared into the air, dreaming about an alternate reality where she had the guts to tell Sam how she felt with actual words he’d understand, and Dean slowly sipped his coffee, generally regretting his recent life choices.

“Road trip!” Oline suddenly called, getting to her feet and dumping her plate in the sink.

“How can you possibly be this cheerful so early?” Dean asked gruffly after he refilled his cup.

Oline waved her own cup around. “Because coffee,” she replied with a short giggle. “Og fordi han der er spesielt søt når håret stikker ut til alle kanter. [And because that one is incredibly cute when his hair is sticking out like that.]” She said it deliberately not looking at Sam, because her insides squirmed at the thought of him suddenly understanding her.

“Hey, no fair,” Sam protested. “We don’t speak Norwegian.”

She shrugged with a mischievous grin spreading across her face. “Dean lukter som en geit, [Dean smells like a goat]” she teased in a sing-song voice, causing Sam to chuckle. “Men Sam lukter som epler og solskinn. [But Sam smells like apples and sunshine.]”

“Be nice!” Dean replied. “I may not understand the words, but I recognise a non-compliment when I hear one. Would you at least wash your dishes?”

Dancing towards the kitchen door, Oline shook her head. “Sorry, Dean. You know I love you.” She stuck her tongue out and leapt through the doorway. “Meet you by the car in an hour.”

Sam laughed to himself. “Dude.”

“What?”

“I think… she, uh…” He could barely get the words out, laughing so hard. “I think she called you a goat or something. I don’t see the lie, though,” he added, flicking some crumbs at his brother.

“Shut up! You’re… a goat.” There was a moment of silence. “Wait… you know Norwegian?”

Sam ducked his head, his ears turning crimson. “No. Just a couple of words. I’ve been trying to teach myself, but it’s is a friggin’ hard language to learn – I wanted to surprise her.”

Dean stared dumbfounded at him for a few seconds before a big grin cracked over his face. “You’re in love! Oh my god! You are!”

Hiding his face in his hands, Sam shook his head, but he couldn’t hide his own grin. “Shh! I’m… I’m not… shut up.” He got to his feet, grabbing his notebook, and left.

“Great. I live with a couple of slobs,” Dean muttered, grabbing the cereal bowl Sam had left on the table. “We gotta get a maid or something.”

“Good news,” Dean said with a shit-eating grin. “They only had one available room.” He dangled a single key in the air, getting scowls in return. Sam sent him a look that stated: “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I don’t like it.”

Oline groaned. “At least tell me there’s three beds.”

Dean shook his head.

“A sofa? Or a… a chair?”

“Nope. Looks like we’re gonna have to share.”

She rolled her eyes and poked Dean in the chest, lowering her voice. “Du må ikke tro at jeg ikke har gjennomskuet deg! [Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing!]” And then after a brief pause she added: “Fucker!”

Hoisting her bag over her shoulder, she snatched the key from his hand. “Hey, Sam, your brother is disgusting. Mind if I bunk with you?” It was an opportunity after all. She had to make the best of it.

“Sure,” Sam replied with an easy smile, following her inside with his own bag.

When Dean finally got inside, Oline had claimed the bed closest to the window, and she’d already spread her books and papers all over it, and sat cross-legged on the pillows with a pen in her mouth, scrolling down her laptop. Sam had taken his spot on the floor, with his back against the bed, also scrolling on his laptop, but more aware, alert. Like a watchdog. He looked up briefly as Dean closed the door, but seeing no threat, he ignored his brother as best he could.

How these two didn’t realise they belonged together was beyond Dean. He shook his head with a tiny scoff and dumped his duffel onto the other bed. “Got anything yet?”

“Nah. I’m thinking we gotta go government on this. There’s at least one witness who’s sane enough to interview.” Suddenly, Oline dropped her laptop, sending papers rustling to the floor. “Faen! [Shit!]” She breathed the word with her eyes scrunched shut and punched the mattress.

“What is it?” Sam asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”

“Um…” She looked at the Winchesters with utter despair in her eyes. “I forgot my duvet.”

“What?” Dean burst out laughing. “Damn, I thought you’d found something

She grabbed a fistful of the fabric covering the bed. “Your stupid, American motels only have blankets. I’m gonna die of hypothermia.”

She looked so heartbroken even Sam had to laugh. “Relax. It’s like 68 degrees outside.”

“Yeah, but my feet still get cold in the night. And my duvet is so soft,” she pouted, fiddling with her knitted socks.

“Don’t worry,” Dean said once he had dried his eyes. “Sam’s a virtual fire place. He’s gonna keep you warm. Aren’t you, Sammy?”

His brother’s eyes said “Don’t!” but he nodded to Oline. “I’m always hot. And I don’t mind you poking your cold toes on me.” He thought for a second, the stretched and flexed ever so slightly. “Can’t help you with the softness, though.”

“Dude! You’re gross!”

Oline tossed a pillow on Dean. “Hey, he’s no grosser than you. Thank you, Sam.” She smiled and hopped down from the bed. “I’m gonna change into my FBI gear.”

“Smooth,” Dean nodded appreciatively once the bathroom door closed.

“You set this up, didn’t you?” Sam growled through gritted teeth.

“Maybe…”

“Just… just stay out of this, okay? I really don’t want to screw up our friendship.”

“Well, maybe that’s just what you need to do,” Dean grinned and ducked just in time to avoid a second, zooming pillow.

It took two days of investigating and interviewing more or less willing people to figure out where the shapeshifters were hiding. There were four of them, and as far as Oline could see, the shifters were young and inexperienced, filled with new ideas and not too bright on how to pull it off. But still: shifters were dangerous no matter what, and the three of them went through the safety check behind the Impala.

“Silver knife?”

“Check.” Both Sam and Oline held up theirs.

“Shifter gankin’ bullets?”

“Yup.”

“Alright, let’s go.”

“Wait, wait. What’s the plan?”

“The plan?” Dean resembled a big question mark.

“Yeah, dumbass. The plan. There’s four of them and three of us. We can’t just barge in like we normally do.” Oline winked at him, making Sam snort and turn away so Dean wouldn’t see him laugh.

Dean rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You want a plan, børk børk?”

“Yeah. And the chef is Swedish, by the way.”

“Oh, Sor-ry! I didn’t mean to step on your toes. Not my fault that it’s practically impossible to see the difference.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute, Winchester. Else I’d have to kick your butt.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s how it is. And you know I could do it. Sure, you’re a bit stronger than me, but I’m almost as tall as you –“

“Yeah, and those years spent trudging through the snow,” Sam added with a wink, “means her endurance is high.”

Oline blushed. “Thanks, Sam. But I’m not too fond of the snow. I can’t ski to save my life. But I climbed a lot of trees when I was younger. And I’m faster than you.”

“Not likely,” Dean growled, crouching down to pounce on her.

She squealed and ran to hide behind Sam. “Save me!”

With her hands on Sam’s hips, he almost forgot how to breathe. “Alright you two. You can fight it out later. We’ve got a case here. Remember?”

“Sorry, boss,” Oline said in mock regret, turning to Dean. “Truce?”

“Truce. Let’s do this. And quietly.”

The moment they were inside, they split up. Dean took to the right, through the kitchen. Sam went left, heading for the living room, while Oline took the stairs, slowly sneaking along the wall.

She peered around the corner and spotted a shifter. He clearly hadn’t understood the danger yet, so she tip-toed up behind him, ready to stab him, but just as she raised her knife, he turned. Faster than she expected, he leapt to his feet and rushed past her, knocking her over in the process.

Another shifter appeared above her, and she kicked out, hitting him in the ankles. He landed crookedly on a chair, and it broke with a loud crash. It wasn’t enough to take out the shifter, of course, and a couple of seconds later he got to his feet and charged. But that was all it took for Oline to get ready, and with a massive exertion and a loud groan, the knife pierced through the ribs and into the creature’s heart.

The shifter fell heavily to the ground and Oline listened to the air rasp through the punctured lung to make sure she got him properly.

Sam managed to sneak up on the shapeshifter without being discovered, and swiftly and soundlessly drove his silver knife into the creature’s chest. Unfortunately the ruckus made by the dying shifter attracted another one, who hit Sam over the head, then ran away. He staggered back and forth, seeing double from the impact, but as soon as his vision normalised, Sam ran after him, raising his gun in defence.

The sound of Dean’s gun rang through the house, and Oline mentally counted the kills. Dean had one, she had one, and Sam probably had one going by the sound of it. One left, then, and this one had escaped downstairs, unless there was a secret doorway somewhere.

At the bottom of the stairs, she bumped into Dean. “One left,” they said simultaneously.

“Yeah,” Oline panted. “He got past me and ran downstairs before I could get him.”

“I’ll go,” Dean began, but she stopped him.

“No, I got this. He owes me the satisfaction of dying. Besides, Sam’s still there. Two of us: one of him. Piece of cake. Go get the shovels. “

“Anything to get some alone time with my brother, huh?” Dean replied, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Dean! Don’t make me slap you. I’m more than capable of kicking your ass. I wasn’t kidding earlier.”

“Alright, alright. Calm down. Go help Sam or whatever. I’ll be back in a few.”

When Sam skidded through the doorway he came face to face with Oline, and lowered his gun. “We got them all?”

She grinned widely and took a few steps towards him, but just then he heard her yell “Duck!” somewhere behind him, before something shiny zoomed past him, lodging itself in Oline’s chest. She collapsed on the floor, lifeless and cold, and Sam cried out, dropping to his knees. He was interrupted by Oline’s arms around his shoulders.

“I’m me,” she said calmly. When he didn’t answer right away, she moved around him, pointed to the blood soaked pile of human remains on the floor and said “Shapeshifter!” then at herself and grinned: “Oli.”

His eyes narrowed, and he remained still.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said, reaching out to him again. When he recoiled, she wanted to scream. To see him unsure and almost afraid of her hurt more than anything else she’d experienced since she came to the US, but she swallowed the grief, telling herself she would probably react the same way.

“It really is me. I promise.” She pulled the knife from the body on the floor, wiped it on her jeans, and ran the edge over her arm. The blood was dark red against her pale skin. “See? It’s me.”

Sam took a few moments to react, so Oline decided to try another approach. “Remember when we got drunk in Seattle and I kissed your eyelid better after you got in a fight with that douche. Over… over… what was it?”

“He insulted your accent,” Sam replied with a smile, neglecting to mention that a shapeshifter would’ve had access to her memories; he was satisfied that she was the Oline he knew. To be honest he just wanted to hold her close. “We laughed so much on the way back from the bar…” He could still feel her lips on his skin, and the memory woke the slumbering butterflies in his stomach.

“Heh, yeah. We must have looked like lunatics.” She thought back to that intensely intimate moment, and felt her ears burn. She’d managed to blame it on the alcohol, but she knew that was just an excuse.

Taking her outstretched hand, Sam pulled himself from the floor. “Come on. Let’s go help Dean.”

“He’s gone to get the shovels,” Oline grinned. “We’re done here.”

He marvelled how quickly she could change; from gentle and caring one moment to bubbly and cheerful the next. And now he had that eyelid kiss stuck in the front of his brain. He wondered if it was possible to love someone more than he did Oline. He doubted it, but still he said nothing.

She let go of Sam’s hand the moment they were outside. More than anything she wanted to keep him close, but with the recently surfaced memory from Seattle, she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t say or do something stupid. There was no way Sam felt the same way, and she didn’t want to risk heartbreak.

When she let go of his hand, Sam breathed out slowly, both in relief and disappointment. The electricity and heat spreading from her hand made him dizzy, but it felt good. And the lack of contact made him feel cold, but it made it easier not to do or say anything stupid.

They buried the bodies in shallow graves in the field behind the house, salting them for good measure. It was starting to get dark when Dean dropped the last shovel of dirt onto the very last grave, patting it a couple of extra times before kicking a layer of grass and sticks and leaves over it.

“Whooo!” Oline yelled and pumped her fist in the air, making Dean jump in surprise. “Who’s awesome? Oh yes, we are!”

Sam couldn’t help but smile too: her enthusiasm and joy was contagious.

“Damn straight we are,” Dean replied, and they high-fived, causing Sam to groan loudly.

“Really, how old are you?”

“Aw, Sam, you jealous?” she pouted, offering her hand up. “Come on then, don’t leave me hanging. I’ve been told it’s rude.”

“Fine.” He slapped her hand, and she laughed, mostly to drown the squeal that built in her throat every time they touched.

Her laughter rippled through Sam’s body like waves of pure sunlight, and he suspected he could probably live on that feeling alone for the rest of his days. To mask his urge to pull her into a bone-crushing hug, he grumbled a little extra, muttering about acting like teenagers, before throwing the shovel over his shoulder and setting course for the Impala.

“Hey, gimme a break. I never had an American childhood. This is all still pretty new and shiny to me. We typically never touch each other back home. Let me have my moments of physical contact?” She wiped sweat and dirt from her face before following Sam. “We are the champions,” she sang, high-fiving Dean again on her way past him. “Gotta celebrate this. What do you say, huh? The three of us and a pile of beer bottles?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Dean grinned. “Remind me why I haven’t married you yet?”

She faked a gag. “Um, because that would be gross and considered wildly inappropriate, Winchester. You’re not my type.”

Dean laughed loudly. “Oh yeah, there’s that.”

Her eyes flicked over to Sam, and the short gesture wasn’t lost on Dean, but he said nothing this time: he’d tried to push her before, and that nearly ended with a black eye, so he kept to light teasing and inside jokes now and then.

Sam, however, was completely oblivious to the look he’d just received – lost in his own thoughts.

“You in, Sammy?” Dean clapped him on the shoulder.

“Hm?”

“Beer, burgers, babes… Celebrate our success. Come on, bro. Have a little fun. Even you can’t be boring all the time.”

“Yeah, I’m up for a few beers,” Sam said eventually. “But I’d like to wash off this gunk, though.” He wiped the blood from his hands on his jeans.

“Oh yeah,” Oline nodded enthusiastically. “Shower. Definitely.”

The bathroom door opened, and Sam emerged like he was in a cheesy rom-com. Steam billowed around him, and he wore nothing but a pair of jeans.

Oline stopped mid-scrolling. Her brain lost all function, she lost the ability to speak; she just stared with her hand hovering over the mouse pad on her laptop.

When her brain regained consciousness, she quickly averted her eyes and swore silently. “Faen. Skulle tro du gjorde det med vilje. Hvis du fortsetter sånn, kommer jeg til å selvantenne – eller drukne! [Fuck. I could almost think you’re doing it on purpose. If you continue like that I’ll spontaneously combust – or drown!]”

“What was that? He looked up, still with the towel in his hand.

“Uh… nothing,” she lied quickly, rubbing the embarrassment from the back of her neck. “Hope you left some hot water for me.”

They found a table close to the exit and plopped down on the chairs, ignoring their slight stickiness. And after the first sip of beer, Oline sighed happily. “Nothing like a good beer after a hunt,” she smiled, gazing around the crowded room to hide her frequent looks in Sam’s direction.

“Never met anyone who enjoys her beer more than you,” Dean grinned, clinking his bottle against hers.

“Well, how can I not? I mean, beer is so cheap here. It’s like… $4 for a bottle? It’s crazy! Back home you’re lucky if you find one under $10.”

“I’m drinking to that.” Lifting his bottle, Dean toasted the air. “Hey, you never said why you left. Don’t you ever miss home?”

She nodded and smiled sadly into her glass. “I do. But I can never go back. I’ll tell you sometime. Another time. Let’s talk about something else?”

“Sorry.” Dean fell silent, and they all sat just listening to the music and sipping their drinks for a while.

But after a few minutes, Sam put his hand on Oline’s knee. “Hey, you okay?” He’d caught her sighing deeply. She nodded, blinking rapidly a couple of times, and he could have sworn he saw tears glittering in her eyes, but they disappeared so fast he wasn’t completely sure.

Her answer came as a whisper, and it hit him in the gut. “Yeah. I just miss my family. It hurts that I’ll never see them again.”

“I’m here if you want to talk,” he replied, rubbing his thumb back and forth over her knee. “When you’re ready.”

“Thank you, Sam. It means a lot.”

Dean looked up, studying Oline’s face, but said nothing.

After a long silence, she dragged her hand across her face and leaned back in her seat. “I first decided to leave when it became clear to me that I couldn’t stay without killing them – my parents, I mean,” she began. Hesitantly, fearing shock and judgement in the brothers’ faces.

Dean frowned slightly, but kept quiet: she could see the dozens of questions bubbling on his tongue, and how he swallowed them down. Sam’s gaze softened, and he squeezed her knee gently, giving her courage and strength to continue.

When they didn’t show any signs of wanting to run away, she grimaced what could have been an uncertain smile, and spoke again: “…six years ago I think it was, when my parents were bitten and changed. And they embraced their new lives with delight. Soon the small hunting community we were a part of demanded I’d take care of them. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it: even knowing the chaos and destruction they brought. I just couldn’t. My guess is they’re dead now anyway. I don’t know.”

She sighed and breathed out a short laugh. “Pathetic, I know. Running away from my responsibilities like that, but I… so I left. Got away. Travelled for a bit. Eventually I got on a plane and landed in Boston. Did a bit of sightseeing, but the hunter’s life never lets you go, yeah? Hunting new monsters over here became sort of a healing process, I guess. Then I ran into you guys. Best coincidence in my life.”

The three of them fell silent, before Oline spoke up again. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to deflate the balloon like that. Let’s talk about something else. Like that woman over there,” she said after looking around the room searching for a topic. “She’s been ogling you since we got here, Dean.”

Picking up on her intentions right away, Dean sat up straighter. “Who?”

“The one over there with the bouncy, red curls. Don’t look now. I’ll let you know when…”

And so the next few hours flew by in a fog of discussing old and new conquests, women – and a few men, alcohol, music, and even more alcohol. Eventually Dean decided to go say hello to the redhead, bringing her over to the table, and making Oline and Sam uncomfortable.

“I’m gonna get another drink,” Oline declared after a few minutes of being forced to watch Dean’s moves, standing up faster than she ought to, knocking over her chair. “You want anything, handsome?”

“No thanks,” Dean replied, quickly ducking from her hand swatting the back of his head.

She swayed slightly. “How ‘bout you, Sam? Another?”

He measured what was left in his glass and shook his head. “I’m good.”

“Suit yourself,” Oline replied defiantly and made her way over to the bar.

Sam followed her with his eyes, memorising how she moved; still elegant, even now when she was drunk and had to use other people as support to not wobble too much.

“Dude!” Dean said, punching his brother in the arm.

“Ow! What?” Rubbing the forming bruise, Sam scowled back.

“That girl’s got it bad for you,” the redhead said, earning a nod and affirmative grunt from Dean.

“Shut up!” Sam looked back at Oline, who was talking to a guy at the bar. She was laughing and leaning close to him, and he recognised the look in the guy’s eyes: stars and dark lust – he’d hit jackpot.

Once again Sam failed to notice the longing look Oline gave him before she turned around and unleashed her smile on the gentleman next to her. But he did see the effect she had on the stranger. Within a minute of talking to him, he was completely under her spell. And it made Sam feel nauseous.

“I’m… gonna head back to the motel,” he muttered. “Don’t feel too good.”

Looking up from the woman sitting in his lap, Dean raised an eyebrow. “You sure? Need me to come with you?”

Sam shook his head and downed the rest of his drink. “Nah. I’ll be fine. You have fun now.” He nodded once to the woman and left the bar.

When Oline turned back to look at Sam again, she was devastated to find him gone. Devastated, but not surprised. He was bound to find a lady to spend the night with – half the bar practically threw themselves at his feet when they entered, but it hurt nonetheless. She so wanted to be the one he took home.

It wasn’t until Dean slammed the bathroom door and shook his wet hair over him that Sam woke up. Flopping sleepily, he rolled over on the side and pulled the blanket over his face. Silence reigned for a few seconds before he warily emerged from his cocoon. “Ugh. What time is it?”

“Good morning, little brother.” Dean was positively beaming. “It’s…” He checked this watch. “6.15 – and I just got back! Oh man! You missed out last night. Daisy, you remember Daisy? She had a friend, and since you weren’t there, I was feeling generous…”

And with that he launched into a monologue so filled with confidence and smugness that Sam couldn’t wait for Oline to finish in the shower so he could get away. He only hoped she left some hot… water… There was no water running and the door was cracked open.

“Hey, Dean?”

“…and let me tell you: she wasn’t shy. Oh no –“

“Dean. Did Oli –“

“Neither of them were, if you know what I mean –“

“Dean! Will you shut up for a goddamned minute?” Sam almost yelled, causing Dean to smack his mouth shut with a betrayed look on his face. “Thank you. Did Oli leave to get breakfast?” Best to play it casual.

“Don’t think so,” Dean replied with a slight shrug. “Looks to me like she didn’t come back here last night. Her stuff is untouched.”

Sam sniffed her pillow, concealed as a yawn. It still smelled like the motel’s detergent. She definitely hadn’t slept there, but he patted it just to make sure. It was cold. “You’re right,” he muttered.

“Good for her. She needed a good lay. Not surprised she took off when she faced a night in bed with you.”

“Screw you!” Sam grabbed his phone. No messages. Good morning. Will you be long? Dean’s going to get breakfast. What’cha want? We’re rolling in a couple hours. He sent it more to calm the growing unease in his stomach, then got out of bed and into the shower, letting the running water massage his sore muscles.

The first thing he did when he got out was to check for a reply. Nothing. Hey, sleepyhead. Time to head north again. Still nothing. Oli? You OK?

“Dean, I don’t feel too good about this. Oli’s not answering my texts.”

“So she’s busy. I wouldn’t answer your clingy ass if I was in the middle of a good time either.” When Dean put a hand on his shoulder, Sam looked up: seeking some sort of comfort in his brother’s face. He got none. Instead, Dean asked: “I’m getting us something to eat. Want coffee?”

“Please. And a bagel.” Sam didn’t really feel hungry, but he needed some time to think.

Dean nodded. “And don’t worry about Oli. She’ll be fine.”

“Mhm.” Sam automatically glanced down on his phone, then flung it on the bed, picking up his laptop instead. Didn’t take long before he reached for his phone again. Still nothing. Sam sighed.

“Listen, if this bothers you so much, why don’t you talk to her? Tell her –“

“Yeah, alright, Dean. Thank you. Get out of here.” He had a point. But Sam just didn’t know how to begin. And the what ifs were piling high in his brain. This was not how he imagined it though. Sure, he’d been annoyed as hell when Dean conned them into sharing a bed, but it was an opportunity he just had to take. But now he realised he was too late. What if she had found someone? What if she decided to leave the life? He couldn’t blame her. Once he would’ve abandoned everything for a shot at a normal, boring life too.

When Dean came back thirty minutes later, Sam had worked himself so up he was convinced that Oline had already eloped to get married to some random dude. And it didn’t help that Dean thought it was hilarious.

“She’ll waltz in here in an hour, glowing and smiling shyly, and then we’ll carry on like usual.”

The hour came and went. Sam became more and more nervous. Even Dean was becoming a little antsy. “Maybe she just needs some alone time,” Dean said. “Remember when we first met her? I was convinced she didn’t like me, ‘cause she was so hard to get to know. Besides, Oline’s basically a Viking. She can take care of herself.”

“Yeah,” Sam replied with a grimace. “But I still think it’s weird she hasn’t replied to my texts.”

Ping. Sam’s phone chimed happily, but he snatched it with force, staring at the message on the screen.

Dean grinned. “See? She probably just woke up a bit late.”

“No text,” Sam replied silently. “Only this.” He held out his phone. The message was just a link to a video. Nothing more.

Dean cocked his head. “Huh. What –“

Sam groaned. “What if she… what if she says she wants out? That she doesn’t want … I mean, she’s been gone since last night.”

“Come on,” Dean said with a reassuring smile. “Oli would never do that. She’s probably just, I don’t know, lost track of time or something. It happens,” he added with a grin.

Not the answer Sam wanted, and he glared at his brother. “Not helping.”

“Just doing my duty. Let’s see what she has to say before you panic, okay?” He grabbed the phone and opened the link.

The video was dark at first. They could barely make out a dark figure in the middle of the shot, but nothing else. Occasionally shadows flitted across the screen and they heard soft feet pitter-pattering over concrete floor. Somewhere out of the shot they heard running water.

“What the hell?” Dean began, but Sam interrupted him.

“Shhh! Something’s happening.” His stomach felt like he’d swallowed a rock.

Suddenly the light was switched on, and Sam felt like throwing up. If Dean hadn’t been holding the phone too he would’ve dropped it: the dark figure was Y/N. Slumped over in a chair, she looked bruised and beaten, and her jeans were stained dark red.

“Wakey wakey,” a coarse voice said from behind the camera.

Oline groaned and stirred, slowly lifting her head, to reveal a swollen, bloody face, and a split lip.

“Oli,” Sam breathed, gripping the blanked he was sitting on tightly. Dean growled in agreement.

It took a few minutes before she regained full consciousness, blinking and swallowing; wincing when her skin stretched and moved. Then, as if the floodgates had opened, she started yelling. Her voice was raw and somewhat diminished, but her meaning was clear enough. “I helvete?! Hva faen er det dere driver med? Kom her din jævla feige kukskalle, så skal jeg faen steike meg sparke deg så hardt i ballene at du kjenner smaken av dem i halsen! Din forbannade forpulte pikk! Slipp meg løs for faen! Jeg skal faen meg gi deg deng, din helsikes forbannade demonjævel! [What the hell? What the fuck are you doing? Come here you fucking cowardly dickhead; I’ll fucking kick you so hard in the nuts you’ll taste them in your throat. You damned, fucking cock! Let me fucking go! I’ll fucking kick your ass, you goddamn fucking demon bastard!]”

She continued to yell, both while exhaling and inhaling, making Sam’s mouth twitch. At least she still had her wits. But the fuckers were gonna pay for what they’d done. He looked over at Dean who just stared at the screen. Sonofabitch!

“Wow. Didn’t expect such language from a lady.”

Both men whipped around, drawing their guns in fluid motions, but when they realised the intruder was a minor threat, they relaxed somewhat.

“What are you doing here, Crowley?” Sam asked, slouching back on the bed.

“I’ve missed you too,” Crowley replied with an air kiss. “Can’t a King check on his favourite nightmare subjects?”

Sam scoffed. “We’re not your… argh! Forget it!” He grabbed his phone and leaned on the headboard, flicking the phone back and forth between his hands.

“I’m not too proud to admit it: Hell bores me. So I came up to see if you had something exciting going on. What’s up with Samantha? I haven’t had a welcome this icy since I came for Prince Albert. Victoria could be quite stern when she wanted to. Makes me feel all sorts of nostalgic.”

Dean clenched his jaw and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oli’s been kidnapped.”

“Ah,” Crowley nodded, “that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Sam’s dread – seriously, the stench fills the whole room – and Oline’s colourful phrasing. She got quite the razor tongue when she’s pissed.”

“Wait, you understand this?” Sam gestured with the phone.

“I’m the king of Hell, you moron. It’s in my job description. Wouldn’t be much of a King if all it took was a foreign language to keep secrets from me. Now what did I miss?” He held out his hand and Sam handed him the phone.

With the video playing in the background, Crowley started translating. “Well, they certainly aren’t my demons. In fact I rather think they’re something else entirely.” He tossed the phone on the bed, where it bounced a couple of times before settling. “I think I’ve seen enough. Shall we?”

“Shall we, what?”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Go rescue the damsel in distress, of course. Get her safely home so Sam can go back to pining after her. Really! How thick are you?”

Squinting, Sam got to his feet. “You’re just gonna help us like that? Out of the kindness of your heart?”

“I’m nice like that,” Crowley smirked. “All I want in return –“ He paused dramatically to think, “– is your undying gratitude and a couple of favours to cash in when –“ Sam looked like he was ready to launch himself at the demon. “Alright, I’ll help you for a bottle of whisky; the good stuff, not that gut-rot you usually poison yourself with.”

“Done,” Sam said quickly.

“…and you have to address me as Your Majesty until we get her.”

“Eat shit, Crowley!” Dean spat, looking like someone had suggested painting his beloved Impala neon pink. “You… that’s… you...”

“Appappapp! What are you forgetting?”

Sam looked at Dean, and they both pursed their lips. “It’s a deal,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let’s go.”

“It’s a deal…?”

“Ugh, for the love of… It’s a deal, Your Majesty,” Sam added, apparently struggling to speak without self-combusting.

Crowley clapped enthusiastically before catching himself and reverting back to his dignified, solemn self. “Oh, I gotta get this on tape,” he giggled. “This is going to be the most fun I’ve had in ages.”

“So… your… Your Majesty, gonna tell us what we’re dealing with? Ugh! Do I really have to call you … that?”

“I fully intend to enjoy this as long as I can, yes,” Crowley replied with a nod. “It’s not every day you two morons show me the respect I deserve.”

“Oh, come on!”

“As for who has Oline,” he continued, ignoring Dean’s outburst, “look.” He paused the video and pointed to two tiny, but very distinct flares on the screen.

“Shifters,” Dean muttered.

“But we got everyone,” Sam began.

“Then you did a poor job, because there’s most definitely some left. And they look pissed. I would be too,” Crowley added with a shrug, “if some half-wit hunter burst through my front door and killed most of my family.”

Dean drove like a maniac, more so than usual. Normally Sam would’ve told him to calm down, but now he sat in silence, with a murderous look on his face. In the backseat sat Crowley, starting to feel a bit green around the eyes. He seriously debated whether or not he should just teleport to the hideout, but then he’d miss the opportunity to bother the boys, so he bit his teeth together and focused on the road ahead.

“Well, that was tense,” he said after the Impala screeched to a halt outside the large building. He stretched his legs and gulped down the cool evening air. “This is where you screwed up last night?”

Sam’s lips were straight and his eyes almost shot lightning bolts. “Shut it, Crowl – Your Majesty. Let’s just find these bitches. My patience is wearing thin.”

It didn’t take long to take care of the last two shifters. Although pissed and strong, they were no match for Crowley, who seemed to find it relaxing and therapeutic to kill. By the time the second one hit the floor, he was grinning from ear to ear. “Ah,” he sighed. “There’s nothing like a little bloodshed in the evening. Pity there weren’t more of them.”

Oline didn’t even look up when he started to untie her; just flexed her jaw and furrowed her eyebrows. “Få de jævla hendene dine vekk fra meg! Jeg sverger: når jeg kommer meg løs hefra så er du en død mann! [Get those fucking hands off of me! I swear: when I get out of this, you’re a dead man!]”

Crowley chuckled and ran a hand through her hair. “You’re not gonna kill anyone, darling. There’s no one left TO kill. But I’m sure there’s other ways for you to use all that pent up rage and energy.”

“Crowley? Du er ikke virkelig. Bare en drøm. Faen… [You’re not real. Just a dream. Fuck…]”

“Some people have been known to call me a dream, yes, and I do travel with a pair of plaid nightmares –“

Sam pushed past Crowley and sank to his knees in front of the chair. “Oli, sweetie, look at me. Can you do that for me, please?” He lifted her chin up with his fingers, and smiled softly when her eyes slowly opened.

“Sam? Is it really you? It’s not just an illusion?”

He sighed, sniffing the tear that slid down the edge of his nose. “No, sweetie, it’s really me. And Dean is here too. Even Crowley.”

“I knew you’d come for me. Just hoped it would be before it was too late.”

“Of course we came for you. It’s not the same without you.” He swallowed. He had to lighten the weight on his chest. “I don’t know what I’d do if you – I’m crazy about you.”

Dean coughed and grabbed Crowley’s sleeve. “Let’s give them a few minutes. Help me bury the bodies.” Crowley raised his eyebrows, making Dean sigh loudly. “Alright. Help me bury the bodies, Your Majesty. But this is the last one, I swear!”

“I’m gonna miss it,” Crowley sniggered, but he followed Dean outside.

Oline looked from the door to Sam.

“I know,” he replied to her silent question. “It’s a long story, but a small price to pay, really.” He took her hands in his, rubbing the cold from them. “I’m sorry, Oli. I really am.”

“For what?” Her voice cracked as she let out a short, nervous breath.

“That it took something like this to make me say something. I mean… with the life we lead, you’d think we’d understand how fragile that balance can be. But I’d like to… I mean… Can we try to…”

“Yes! I’m… I’m crazy about you too. Just didn’t know how to…” She reached up and put her arms around Sam’s neck, and he swooped her up, giggling like a teenager.

Carefully Oline pressed her lips against his, but withdrew quickly with a hiss. “Ow! Stupid monsters ruining my dream even when they’re dead.”

“Your dream, huh? Well, luckily this isn’t a dream you have to wake up from. There’s plenty of time to live it.” He searched her face for an unharmed spot, and kissed it tenderly.

“Aww… Aren’t you cute?” Crowley cooed from the doorway.

Oline leaned on Sam’s chest, and he rested his head on her shoulder. “Should think so yeah,” she grinned. “I’m adorable and he’s only the most handsome man in the world.”

Dean stuck his head around the corner and grimaced. “Ew, come on, Crowley. Oli clearly got hit on the head or something.”

Tagging these magnificent people:

@aiaranradnay @awesomeahwu @brynleewolfe @funwithfanfics @babeinthebowtie @savingapplepie-eatingthings @winchesterprincessbride @savvythedork @littlegreenplasticsoldier @youtubehelpsmesurvive @blackcherrywhiskey @mrswhozeewhatsis @schwarzwaelder-kirschtorte @iamreadinginsecret

#sam x ofc #sam x oline #sam winchester #supernatural fanfiction #spn #fanfic #norwegian ofc #writing is hard #shapeshifters

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thephoboss · 7 years

Text

Czech dubbing of TST

Once more it is proved that dubbing is a horrible thing, lowering quality of the show extremely - but here I am, so desperate to understand this episode that I watched it anyway...

It’s always difficult to know what was or wasn’t just a simple mistake in translation, especially with Czech being so very unlike English and trying to keep the meaning of every sentence can be real tricky + my personal input could be altering meanings of some things as well, but anyway here’s what was different enough to catch my attention:

-Sherrinford: when Mycroft is speaking about “the other one”, he refers to this other sibling as a male. BUT at the end, when he makes the phone call from his kitchen, he is clearly using the name as female, he wants to speak to a woman called Sherrinford (presuming Sherrinford is indeed a person, not like a code name of a place or an institution or whatever).

-Small child singing: in the Czech version, it’s (most likely) a girl’s voice, but with children it’s sometimes hard to tell. Also the lyrics are super hard to catch - I believe it’s roughly (and this is my literal translation back into Eng.) “Oh where am I, I have no idea. Oh who will save me now?”

-Toby: in English, Mary describes John as “handy and loyal”. She could be describing the dog with these words, which is basically the joke between herself and Sherlock, but even for a man this would be an acceptable description (would it? Eng. not my 1st language).

But in the Czech translation, she uses literaly the words “clever and obedient”, both of which are specifically used for actual dogs (”clever boy”, right?). Now, I know that ain’t much of a difference from the original version, but in Czech it sounded positively degrading to describe John Watson as fucking obedient. This joke, remotely funny in English, turned plain hummilating in Czech.

-VAMPIRE: okay now this was a game-changer for me. Because when John texted the word “Night owl?” - “Sova?”, the reply was in En. “Vampire”, but in Cz. the reply was “Upírka” - a FEMALE VAMPIRE (upír would be male, upírka is female). If the person texting meant themselves, it would have to be a woman - and if it was a codeword, it doesn’t matter.

-SOLIDARNOST: no idea if this actually means anything at all, but this word is written in black on the white wall which Mary is driving past on her bike when she’s on the run. I might be wrong, but this shot is still in Sweden, isn’t it? Well anyway, it caught my eye cause it’s a Czech word and it means solidarity. Probs just a coincidence, huh?

Oh my, this got a bit too long... Just organizing my thoughts here, but since The Czech Republic got so much attention in the Sherlock fandom in this past month, I reckon posting this wouldn’t be so bad.

Now, let’s stay sane until the next two trains of episodes hit us!

#cesky dabing #je peklo #sherlock cesky #hezky česky #sherlock #s4 #t6t

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farsiforeplayfuture · 7 years

Text

The New Barbarians: A Declaration of Poetic Disobedience from the New Border, by Guillermo Gómez-Peña

(2004-Ongoing)

1. To the Masterminds of Paranoid Nationalism

I say, we say:

‘We,’ the Other people

We, the migrants, exiles, nomads & wetbacks

in permanent process of voluntary deportation

We, the transient orphans of dying nation-states

la otra America; l’autre Europe

We, the citizens of the outer limits and crevasses

of ‘Western civilization’

We, who have no government;

no flag or national anthem

We, the New Barbarians

We, in constant flux,

from Patagonia to Alaska,

from Juarez to Ramalla,

todos somos mojados

We, the seventh generation, the fourth world, the third country

We millions abound,

defying your fraudulent polls & statistics

We continue to talk back & make art

[Shamanic tongues]

2. To those up there who make dangerous decisions for mankind

I say, we say:

We, the homeless, faceless vatos aquellos

in the great American metropolis

little Mexico, little Cambodia, little purgatory

We, the West Bank & Gaza strip of Gringolandia

We, the unemployed & subemployed who work so pinche hard

so you don’t have to work that much

We, whose taxes send your CEOs & armies

on vacation to the South

We, evicted from your gardens & beaches

We, fingerprinted, imprisoned, under surveillance

We, within your system, without your mercy

We, without health or car insurance,

without bank accounts & credit cards,

We, scared shitless at ground level,

but only at ground level

like a pack of hungry wolves

exploring the ruins of an empty mall

we continue to be… together

[Shamanic tongues]

3. To the lords of fear and intolerance

I say, we say:

We, mud people, snake people, tar people

We, bohemians walking on millennial thin ice

Our bodies pierced, tattooed, martyred, scarred

Our skin covered with hieroglyphs & flaming questions

We, the witches who transform trash into wearable art

We, Living Museum of Modern Oddities & Sacred Monsters

We, vatos cromados y chucas neo-barrocas

We, indomitable drag queens, transcendental putas

waiting for love and better conditions in the shade

We, bad boy & bad girls over 50

We, lusting for otherness

We, todos somos putos

We, ‘subject matter’ of fringe documentaries

We, the Hollywood refuseniks,

the greaser bandits & holy outlaws

of advanced Capitalism

We, without guns, without Bibles

We, who never pray to the police or to the army

We, who never kissed the hand of a bishop or a curator

We, who barter and exchange favors & talismans

We, who still believe in community, another community,

a much stranger and wider community

We, community of illness, madness & dissent

community of horny angels & tender demons

We, scotch, mescal and bleeding saliva

We, frail and defiant; permanently outraged but always tender

We shape your desire while you contract our services

to postpone the real discussion

We are waiting, still waiting for you to go to sleep

so, we can continue the party

[Shamanic tongues]

4. To the Lords of Censorship

I say, we say:

We, the artists & intellectuals who still don’t wish to comply

We, who talk back in rarefied symbols & metaphors

against the corruption of formalized religion & art

We, critical brain mass

spoken word profética, sintética

We, bastard children of two humongous nuns:

‘Heterodoxia’ e ‘Iconoclastia’

We, the urban monks who pray in tongues & rap in Esperanto

We, who put on masks, penachos & wigs to shout

‘you just can’t take my art away’

We, who dance against the rhythms of the times

We, who suddenly freeze!

[pause]

Standing still in our underwear

right in the center of the stage

with the words carved on our chests:

‘Performance artist: will bleed for food’

‘Obsessive artist: will die for one idea’

We, critical brain mass

fuga inminente de cerebros y hormonas

spoken word profética, sintética

We continue to talk back… talk back… talk back…

[Shamanic tongues]

5. To those who are as afraid of us as we are of them

I say, we say:

We, who have no name whatsoever in the news

We, edited out, pixelated, censored, postponed

We, beyond the video frame, behind the caution tape

We, tabloid subject matter par excellence

We, involuntary actors of ‘The Best of Cops’

eternally stalking mythical blonds in the parking lot,

We, mistaken identities in your computer memory

We, generic brown & black males who fit all

taxonomic descriptions

We, black & brown nude bodies in the morgue,

taxidermied bodies in the Museum of Mankind

We, prime targets of ethnic profiling & capital punishment

We, one strike & we’re out

We, prisoners of consciousness without a trial

We, of the turban, burka, sombrero, bandana, leather pants

We surround your neon architecture

While you call the Office of ‘Homeland Security’

[pause]

Yes, we are equally scared of one another

[Shamanic tongues]

6. To the share-holders of mono-culture

I say, we say:

We, Americans with foreign accents & purple tongues

We, bilingual, polylingual, cunnilingual,

We, los otros del mas allá

del otro lado de la línea y el puente

We, lingua poluta et disoluta,

rapeando border mystery; a broader history

We, mistranslated señorita, eternally mispronounced

We, lost and found in the translation

lost & found between the layers of my words

We, interracial lovers,

children of interracial lovers, ad infinitum

We, Americans in the largest sense of the term

(from the many other Americas)

We, from Patagonia to Alaska

From Sao Paolo to New York

We, in cahoots with the original Americans

who speak hundreds of beautiful languages

incomprehensible to you

We [Shamanic tongues]

We, in cahoots with dozens of millions of displaced

Latinos, Arabs, blacks & Asians

who live so far away from their land

We, trapped between ICE and organized crime

[Shamanic tongues]

We all speak in unison therefore you cease to be

even if only for a moment

behind the curtain of language

I am, US, you sir, no ser

Nosotros seremos

Nosotros, we stand

not united

We, matriots not patriots

& when we talk back,

you become tongue-tied pendejos

[Shamanic tongues]

the people you call ‘aliens’

are the original inhabitants of this earth

7. To the masters and apologists of war

I say, we say:

We, matriots not patriots again

We, rebels, not mercenaries like you

We, labeled ‘extremists’ for merely disagreeing with you

We, caught in the crossfire,

between Christian fear & Muslim rage,

We, a thinking majority against unilateral stupidity

against preemptive strikes & premature ejaculation

We reject your arms sales & oil deals

We distrust your orange alert & your white privilege

We oppose the Patriot Act patrioticamente hablando

the largest surveillance system ever,

the biggest prison complex to date

We, whose opinions are never on the front page

of your morning paper

We, who are never polled by Fox News

who never get to debate those TV pundits

We did not vote for you,

do not support your wars,

do not believe in your violent gods

do not respect your immigration laws

Standing scared but firm

We demand your total, TOTAL withdrawal

from our minds and bodies ipso facto

[Shamanic tongues]

And when we speak in tongues, you disappear

8. Finale:

[Finally facing/addressing the audience]

We, baaaad poetry, baaad art!

We, techno-pirates, Region 4

We, the shamans exorcising Enron

los brujos against Microsoft

poetas solitarios contra Wal-Mart

We, dervishes under the arches of McDonalds

radical clowns confronting the global police

immigrant teens torching the cars of the wealthy

We, los indignados y desterrados

El Movimiento Sin Tierra

Paracaidistas en Wall Street

The Other ‘99%’

We, the ghosts of the past

in cahoots with the future warriors

in cahoots with all innocent civilians killed

on both sides of the useless War on Terror

We, nosotros, going crazy to remain sane

literally dying for new ideas

performing against all odds

dancing on the edge of a crater

We, witnesses & willing victims of the End of Empire

We, Western World imploding disfunctionalia

history’s final chapter… colapso total!

Tabula Rasa; take 2:

We, mapping,

mapping the immediate future

so you and I can walk on it

without falling inside the great faults of history.

You & I,

verbally walking together;

you & I,

ephemeral community;

you & I,

a tiny little nation-state;

you & I,

a one-hour-long utopia

titled ‘You & I,’

alone on stage,

fighting together

the World Bank, the WTO & the G-8;

fighting avant-garde desire & the Patriot Act;

tu y yo, juntitos, bien abrazados,

fucking suavecito

fighting isolation & isolationism….

And art is our battlefield,

que otra?

And if we fall

we are caught in mid-air by a total stranger.

copied from: https://migrare.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/the-new-barbarians-a-declaration-of-poetic-disobedience-from-the-new-border-by-guillermo-gomez-pena/

video sample: http://www.vdb.org/titles/declaration-poetic-disobediance

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survivor-marianas-trench · 7 years

Text

“How Am I Supposed To Sit On My Fat *ss And Do Nothing If There’s No Tribal Immunity?” - EPISODE 1

i wont say names bc if these get released at the end i know the psycho wont leave me alone but theres a certain someone that never leaves another certain someone alone and theyre actually so annoying and they look like a balding foot and if i have to be in the same tribe with them i will definitely end up fighting them

so...cole walking on day 1? because he didn't want to be in a game with Julia wow. I am shook to the core.

1st off why are there 30 people here! 2nd off why are we all in a chat together! And 3rdly at least someone already took themselves out of the game. I didn't get last!!! I know setting the bar high. I'm very excited to play everyone is super nice and also I think my tribe is great. I got Sam and Liana on my tribe whom I played with during Atlantis. Sam and I were in an alliance but obviously it wasn't super tight...since I voted her off. But I love her dearly and hope we can work together again. Also excited for Liana because I always remember that she was good in challenges and she has already told me she won't want to throw any challenges this time. Haha. I already appreciate her so much. She is so sweet! Carson k is also on my tribe. Carson k is also a sweetheart and I'm sad that I didn't trust him much during Malibu and I hope that it can change here. Hopefully there is a survivor trivia challenge because he is so good with survivor trivia. Everyone else on the tribe seems really cool too as we aren't involved in the drama of the one world chat. Haha we have all of our members still and we are ready to win some challenges! #YouWishYouWereATasi also. Kait is here!!!! Omggggg I'm not ready. She messaged me last night and I was like oh god how do I talk to kait????? Like ugh ahhhh scared. No. Nothing against kait she just scares me! And I feel like she can tell....*gulp* but billy is also here and I love billy too. And Luke!!! Honestly so many amazing people who hopefully won't vote me off. Everyone in the community has been so supportive of me and has really helped relive some of the anxiety I've been having. But queen kait is here so I don't know how long it will last.

what the fuck am i doing i don't even know if im making a confessional for the right game....like i'm in a 3 survivor games and a big brother game and i've never wanted to kill myself more i was talkin with kait and i was like "omg i love karen!!" and KAREN ISN'T EVEN ON OUR FUCKING TRIBE. SHE'S DEADASS IN ANOTHER GAME. omg and this ninjohn bitch cracks me tf up so yeah thats about all i've done bye

tbh! what is going on in this game!!! The only people that I know and want to work with are Sam G, Dan, Amanda, Billy and Christine tbqh! I don't know anybody on my tribe except Billy so we're gonna be a cute duo. I think the twist is kind of fun, it's gonna make people need to be on their toes 24/7 and not get too comfortable hiding behind tribal wins because they just don't exist. Uh first boot from my tribe? Idk,...maybe me> maybe chrisssa? who knows!

On 3/6/17, at 9:54 PM, veronica [ hoenn host ] wrote: > how am i supposed to sit on my fat ass and do nothing like nicholas did if theres no tribe immunity >.> but also i really like the cast in this game and i know its gonna be lit this is like one of my fave survivors already and im in like 4 rn

set my soul on fire pls

YES MA'AM! This is Kelsey Mikaelson, representing BBCAN and Vampire Diaries, checking into Mariana Trench Survivor, is you good? Is you happy? Because I's wants to know, ok. Entering this competition was a quick shock. The tribe I was on is very friendly and we all got along quick and I'm living, I seem to get along well. Obviously, I'm the loud one, but I think that overall, I'm not too much which is good! You know what is too much though? Literally both other tribes OTHER than Tasi. Seeing how crazy they are during the One World makes us seem a lot more mellow which makes me seem a lot more quiet which is absolutely a great factor for my game. Anyways, next twist: triple elimination each week. Girl...I came here for a fresh new game that would be welcoming to newbies. This is literally death. I'm literally dead. *sigh*...Whatever. There are people in my tribe I've clicked with early on. Carson, Liana, Sam, Shea and Seamus have all been rather nice to me. However, one person that I have definitely gotten along with thus far is Lilly. She's so explosive and she's also so logical in everything she tells me, she's a great counterpart to me in this competition. I would say I trust Lilly the most, yes, I would. And going into this first tribal, I'm interested to see how our relationship will translate into gameplay. Hopefully, in a positive way~! Now to the challenge...I want to remain a team player, an innocent virgin, an airhead with nothing but loyalty with everyone. I don't want to manipulate, I want to slay. So, I'm going to put a rather safe score for myself. As long as I'm not on the bottom end of the powers, I'm fine. I just hope that this first tribal doesn't eat me alive...against my gut instinct, I'm not bringing strategy up for these first days. I just hope that people actually come to me like I'm expecting...otherwise, I gotta start making them moves, mama! Wish me the best of luck! From Canada with Love, -The ORIGINAL...Kelsey Mikaelson, muah!

I'm so nervous. I feel like knowing that you're going to tribal no matter what makes this all more nerve wracking. I'm trying to feel out who people want to go and what they want to do without making anyone feel like I'm jumping the gun or being too forward. Plus I think Darian is probably gunning for me, since I know he doesn't like me. I really don't wanna be first to go, but I feel like it's too risky to just immediately go after him. I'm hoping someone is inactive or will give us a reason to vote them out so that this first one is an easy one.

http://youtu.be/PTJUoasIy_Y

...moments later

If i learned anything from Rakiura, it's that I need to make a list or something of peoples' point values and possible advantages since people will forget about them come merge and then the person with all the advantages will win the season. :)

I'll call them out!

https://youtu.be/gK_YU4BaKyc

WHAT THE FUCK IS EVEN MY TRIBE

So like this is a weird position to be in. I like everyone on my tribe????? Like how the fuck am I supposed to vote one of these hoes out when I like them? I'm clearly the prettiest, but like I love them all. This is a tragedy because if it was a normal damn game, I would be able to slay with my tribe. My plan so far is to just be super social and find the majority. I don't know how to play one world because usually the world revolves around me so.

So this season hasn't been that exciting at all so far for our tribe due to Cole's, not surprising, quit. I want to try harder than the last few skype/Tumblr games I've played since I definitely was inactive in the last few. I'm trying to socialize and need to expand my social surroundings since I haven't approached many yet. I have been talking to Luke however but he's terrible at responding. I don't mind if you're busy and can't respond quickly but when you message in the main chat and have the online symbol by your name you might want to respond back to a tribemate. That doesn't bode well for track records.

Things are weird. What do I do. Who do I talk to. Where am I. Okay now that I've gotten that off my chest I just tribes are weird. We aren't even really a tribe. I know we will have to just keep voting people off of our tribe. So what do we do? I have no leads. Except I kinda want a girls alliance so I would prefer a guy out this week just to play it safe. I feel like I could talk to Liana and Sam about this but also nervous. Idk. I'll do something soon but this is a lot to process. I also hope that not too many voting things will affect tribal. I'm not ready for it. That is all. Good day.

Hello!!! Alright so this first week has just been....a mess. Like, y'all really put me in a group with 30 people...with one world in play...I'm gonna go insane. Although it's not entirely a bad thing. I have my Queens Kait and Jenn to keep me sane. I had Cole......for like 2 hours until he left WHICH I'M STILL BITTER ABOUT. I love him so much it's not even funny. Anyways for the people on my tribe, I absolutely adore Dan so I can definitely see us working together. Sam G. is here as well and WHEW. A Queen. I love her so much. If I had a dream alliance within this tribe it'd probably be Dan, Sam, Kelsey, Lily, Carson and myself. I haven't gotten the chance to talk to Seamus or Liana and trying to start a conversation with Shea is a bit like pulling teeth so far so...yeah, that's how things are looking right about now I'm so scared for this tribal cause I don't know what to expect??? Like I probably should've just went all in for immunity but I didn't cause I didn't wanna go overboard...so much for that huh. Wish me luck for now I guess!

...30 minutes later...

I'm screaming apparently Shea's already brought my name up to people but suddenly changed it to Carson when I started talking to them??? Something smells fishy here and I'm not here for it. I've got my eye on Shea, that's for sure. In all honesty I'd rather target Shea than Carson cause Carson's actually chill while Shea's probably gonna get a little messy along the way which makes me nervous but Dan trusts him for now so I guess I just gotta go with the flow for now...

Hi Ricky! Super excited to be safe this round, just gotta sit here and look cute!

the furrys are on the prowl, yiff yiff. there are quite a few furrys in this game lmao. so basically on my tribe i really like veronica and am teaming with her. shea really likes me and veronica so we r gonna try and work with them. i think i want to vote for sam this round bc like i like everyone else and the noobs in our tribe seem kinda easy to push around so im excited!

My tribe is so BORINGGGGG tbh no one talks in the chat anyways here's an analysis i promised Ricky <3 When something more happens youll get more out of me but literally nothings going on OH I HAVE AN ALLIANCE WITH DAN AND LUKE BUT YOU BUT US ALL ON DIFFERENT TRIBES WHICH IS GROSS The end. heres my analysis of my tribe woo Andie - Love him we've been friends for a while and he wants to work together so thats cute af Daisy - Super nice we've talked quite a bit so far. I like her Darian - He seems super nice to me and we talked a bit but ive heard he's a shitshow and ive been warned so i know to tread lightly Emma - I'm not gonna like when i saw Emma was on my tribe I was about to beat someones ass because I felt like she hated my guts last time i was around her and it was a rough experience but she like came to me and apologized and shit saying she was having a rough time and idk if that was just to cover her ass for this game or what but im gonna forgive but not forget at this point...or at least until swap/merge lmao Kait - i fucking love Kait she's super straight to the point which is great when everyone else sugar coats the hell out of everything. We seem to work well in PI so here's to hoping it works out this time and we can be a dynamic duo lolol Rhea - Last Week in another game she said she didnt like playing with me and my friends...im not really with my close friends in this game so idk if itll be different but like we've played together a ton and i dont think we ever worked together. She's the nicest person in the world but we like never click together so i wouldnt be surprised if she wanted my ass gone Rob - I dont think we've talked? oops lmfao Sam R. - Hes so chill. We played Myanmar together and we worked together while also targeting eachother? it was so fucking complicated ahahaha but i love him as a person so i hope we're okay in this game??? idk yet tbh Steven - We've talked a bit in the past. He's chill but we arent super close. I dont think he'd target me though so thats a plus

Wooo! I guess taking -10,030 points was worth it! I won immunity from the raffle and I also have the 30% advantage! Couldn't be more happy about the outcome of this challenge. I honeslty don't know who to vote for and I sure as hell won't be scrambling. I know it's not me and that's all I care about

i am gad we were safe week 1 thanks to Cole quitting again it's insane that he did that but i am glad it gave us safety this week. I hope i can stay longer because immunity wins aren't relying on everyone to win together so if i am bad they won't think i am a threat..

well! tasi WAS peaceful, until little shea decided to target me ONCE again in a game. id like to see him try, because i am NOT going premerge. and, if i have anything to say about it, his ass is GRASS!

So, everyone this tribal has said they are voting Carson, which I have no problems with. I feel like the blame is being put on me for this vote which I don't want. If people flip and I go home, so be it.

Daisy seems to be the first target and I don't want her to leave. I'm going to see if we can get the votes back on Amanda.

http://prntscr.com/ehnjlj

So, tonight is making me super nervous and I don't know what to do.... I feel like this twist fucks me and that's not good. I have played sooo many PI seasons that I feel like I am an easy target. Also this one world twist is legit making this game THAT much harder and I honestly don't like this shit. I don't know what the fuck I am going to do, and it sucks so much. I feel like I am a mess and it sucks more so than anything. I just want to make it past this tribal, and I am not sure that I willl.

Whew I need to write a confessional but also I'm watching Survivor! I am really nervous for this vote! Everyone has been so quiet and I haven't talked to that many people. The plan is supposed to be for Carson. Lily, Liana, Dan, Christine, and I were supposed to create an alliance but we haven't. I'm hoping we will later and no one is actually trying to vote me out. Seamus did say 'Christine or Sam' but he meant Carson? Okay sure hopefully he did!

Sooo, this has been a wild round, and im not even gonna get into the cole thing other than to say, I'm glad you and your negative bitch ass is gone, and maybe come for me with more accurate shit next time :))). But since this "lovely" soul quit, I didn't have to go to tribal, and I also beat him AHAHAH. BUT I've been chit-chatting with Gabriel alot and I love Gabriel they are soooo chill tbh. And I also am kinda lucky since I know so many people know this season whew. Okay bye

#deeperdarkerdanger

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