“Dancers. Lima, Peru. 2023.”

occasionally I am struck dumb by the sublime beauty of the world in the small moments, you know?

egg

‘Circuit Board Fossil Series’ (2012) Art: Peter McFarlane

The Dia

Nonbinary priests inspired by a fusion of Indonesian cultures, mainly the Bissu of Bugis societies.

Teeth are bullshit. What do you mean you’re decaying. Get a fucking grip. You’re a bone now act like it. You don’t see my finger bones decaying from jerking it too much now do you

Thinking about an AU where Jiang Yanli's "weak / mediocre cultivation" was caused by a horrific training accident when she was pretty young, in part to explore the tragedy and disability of it all and in part for the humorous "older relative casually drops wild personal lore that changes your entire perception of them" angle.

Like, Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan's firstborn child is a girl, which is not ideal in this deeply sexist world, but the sect motto is "attempt the impossible", right? It's not unheard of for female cultivators to lead sects and Yu Ziyuan wants her daughter to be the first female Jiang sect leader, to show up the cultivation world, and Jiang Fengmian isn't against the idea and wants the best for his daughter (although he probably doesn't want her to be a copy of his wife). So Jiang Yanli starts her cultivation training pretty early. There's a lot of intense pressure, a lot of expectation and projection and some arguments, and it all culminates in this poor child getting badly injured, with permanent damage to both her body and to her cultivation. It's a "no one's fault and everyone's fault" thing.

Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan quietly drop their plans for Yanli to become the sect leader and focus on a very young Jiang Cheng instead, which is easy in part because everyone expects the son to inherit anyway. A young Jiang Yanli is betrothed to the heir of the Jin Sect and this is basically never talked about ever again. General perception is that Jiang Yanli is a mediocre cultivator at best because she was born that way (she's a WOMAN, after all) and/or because her disposition is just too sweet and agreeable, and OF COURSE the son became the heir as soon as the Jiangs had a son. That's just how things work!

So, in an AU where Jiang Yanli (and Jin Zixuan?) lives and teenage Jin Ling is freaking out about some embarrassing and/or dangerous mistake on a night hunt...

Jiang Yanli, patting her son's shoulder: "It's going to be okay. You know, when I was a young child, I permanently injured myself in a training accident and could no longer become the Jiang sect leader, and it felt like the end of the world, letting everyone down, but it all worked out in the end!"

Jin Ling, whose entire 15-year-old worldview just got flipped upside-down: "...Mother?! What?!?!"

the thing abt nirvana in fire is that it’s the show of all time it’s a tragedy it’s a workplace comedy it’s abt how incredibly tense it can be to watch a bunch of people have conversations it’s abt how satisfying it is when a plan comes together it’s abt political corruption and how the role of the government should be to help the people it’s abt how fun it is to see people get what they have coming to them it’s abt how your parents left you with a ruined world and you’re determined to make it better for the people who come after you even if you don’t get to be part of it it’s abt thinking you’ve made yourself unloveable and unrecognizable to everyone who once loved you only to find out that they still recognize you and love you for who you are it’s abt generational trauma and cycles of violence and truth and justice and loyalty and family and betrayal it’s a ghost story it’s a tragedy it’s a triumph and running through all of it it’s abt love it’s literally everything

people always talk about evil clones like oooh a dark mirror oohh what if you saw what a cruel person you were/are capable of becoming. and well yes but what if you were the evil clone. what if you looked in the mirror and what you saw was so bright it blinded you. what if you had to know exactly how good you could have been.

and they were mad scientist buddies who saved each other’s little brothers through ethically dubious means <3

21 April 2024

[image description: the bugs bunny in a tuxedo "I wish all a very pleasant evening" meme edited to say "I wish all of my Jewish followers a very pleasant passover". Next to bugs is a photo of a small stack of matzo and the cup of Elijah. ]

see you at the bitter end

I’m SO glad you called Ned an “enabler”.

Ned gets so much praise (and hate ??) for warning Cersei before wanting to sell her out to her rapist but I disagree with that praise. No one looks at the patriarchal violence lurking beneath. You know exactly the nature of the man you’re dealing with, you saw him slapped Cersei so hard she fell to the floor and threatening to slap her again, and you think giving one flimsy warning will be enough ?? Ned is absolutely a misogynistic fool. When Robert comes back from his hunt he’ll tell Robert the truth and he thinks Cersei will have enough time to flee with her guard and children and retinue ??

“Wherever you go, Robert’s wrath will follow you”, Ned knows that sooner or later (in a few weeks, a few months), Cersei and her children will be slaughtered, he just postponed their deaths. Ned would have received a letter informing him that Robert eventually murdered Cersei and her children and think “how could this have happened ? At least, I wasn’t the one holding the knife so I don’t have their blood on my hands.”

@translannisters and @kristevanstark have much more coherent thoughts about this than me on their very fun deeply excellent asoiaf podcast but yeah in AGOT ned ends up taking this almost wife-like role (stay with me here) with robert where he’s trying to gently guide robert into doing the right thing without ever setting hard boundaries or really flat-out saying no. And ned resents cersei for not being as good at this with her abusive husband as he is. you can really see it in that conversation with cersei where he straight up says well anyone (like me) would’ve been happy to marry robert why couldn’t you have just been better because as a fellow robert baratheon dickrider he refuses to acknowledge that there IS no “doing better” at gently guiding this chaotic abusive man with absolute power into doing the right thing when he does not want to.

ned stark is a HUGE enabler of robert with a big case of “i refuse to see it” syndrome. him watching robert hit cersei and not intervene is like when stannis watched robert hit joffrey and didn’t intervene or all of the standing by as atrocities happened that people like Jaime Lannister and Arthur Dayne did. It’s absolutely an essential part of his character but i think it can be hard to see because we only see him through his wife and children and vassal house’s eyes who still very much see him as a perfect martyr figure.

oops all girls au.

Dragonstone Baela and Vale Rhaena