tragic: mutual puts a fandom poll on your dash begging you to vote for blorbo bleebus but you know in your heart that the other option, blingus blarbo, is the correct choice. on some judas shit. forgive me brother for you have forced my hand.
Unpopular opinion: I think the fact that most pride flags are just colored stripes is a good thing actually. They're far more useful, semiotically, as "color palettes with inherent meaning" than they are as fabric rectangles. Normal laws of vexillological design are not really relevant here when "actual flag" is a low-frequency use case.
This, and also also 'a bunch of horizontal stripes of different colors' inherently meaning some flavor of pride flag is a good thing. Even if the individual flags for less common queer identities aren't necessarily immediately recognizable, they're still recognizable as being a part of the pride flag family.
plus, pride flags are meant to not only be readable as a unit, but also readable when much of the original symbol (flag design) becomes garbled or lost. a homemade flag may not have the exact colors that would match a commercially-produced asexual pride flag, for example, or even the horizontal stripes. but if your pride piece (shirt, flag, sticker, etc.) has some black, gray, white, and purple, it communicates the intended message.
basically: it's got signal strength*.
you can take a single line of pixels and color them roygbv in any order and it looks like a rainbow -- a pride flag. this is a feature, not a bug!!
*my data scientist spouse would say it's error-correcting
Cool, so you want natural fiber costumes with no/nuanced corset slander, people wearing colors, historical hairstyles, people wearing hats or headcoverings and long sleeves outside during the day, no potatoes or pumpkins in pre-columbian Europe, actors with textured skin and wrinkles, minimal makeup, consulting HEMA groups and weapons scholars for all the weapons and fight scenes, a good soundtrack that includes traditional instruments?
Oh, you mean you want 100% white people. Even in crowd scenes in port cities. There's a different word for that.
to be clear to my followers, I always mean the first one. that sounds like heaven, and 100% white people isn't historically accurate in many situations anyway
random thought but i think iron man would be massively improved as a character if he was like. 16. lean into the boy genius trope. make the "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist" thing obvious teenage posturing cringe. the first movie is already pretty much a coming of age narrative
Oooh, hard disagree on this one, and not just because I ship Iron Man with people safely, often, and extremely well. Guilt, redemption, and self-hatred are all quintessential to Iron Man's character. A Tony Stark who doesn't hate himself is... it's not Tony.
The great archetype of Iron Man is the knight: hard outer shell with gooey vulnerability inside. This is as true of Tony's witty and sometimes abrasive personality as it is of the armor itself; they're both covering up tender spots. (It's also why they dialed up his snappiness for the movies. @sineala can always speak more authoritatively on the comics than I can, but I don't think he was that grating in the original Marvel universe. Ults is its own thing.)
Anyway, I think him being 16 only really works if he had a Baby Unibomber phase. Man has to have something to make up for, and being born to rich parents just isn't enough.
i think i'm coming to this from a different perspective: not "who is tony stark" but "what kind of character do i want to watch a movie about". obviously a teenage tony stark would not be the same character in many ways, but in ways that to me make him both more interesting and more sympathetic
that said, teenagers are famously self-hating, and i don't think being younger makes him not have anything to make up for! he still built weapons, he's still an asshole, he still invented the evil ai that tried to take over the world. it would just make him pathetic in a different way which IMO is less obnoxious as a symbol of toxic masculinity
Beshalar all but physically strong-armed the emperor into the carriage, crowding Cala and himself in behind. The coachman clucked to the horses and they rattled off. For ten minutes no one said anything. Beshalar looked like he was reinventing most of Setheris's favourite epithets
Peeling Maia's "everyone hates me" goggles off the situation I think Beshalar is probably terrified.
Beshalar got assigned this job on literally no notice, so he was starting late, he's had this job of protecting the emperor for literally hours, with a partner he's only just met.
Its only been a couple of days since the rest of the line of succession were suddenly died. No one knows exactly what happened yet, or if people are still actively seeking to kill the rest of the royal family. If Maia dies there will be at best a regency and at worst a huge succession crisis and Beshelar will be expected to commit ritual suicide.
And what does Maia decide he urgently needs to do? He wants to go on an unplanned trip, to an unfamiliar location, with no notice or prior arragements, where he'll be surrounded by strangers who are directly connected to the deaths of the imperial family!
sorry for ur notifications lmao but i think about this so often. maia believes for a good half of the book that beshelar absolutely hates him, especially for being a goblin - and why wouldnt he? he hasn't exactly been given reason not to distrust everyone he meets.
but he also views beshelar as a fundamentally safe person. sure, beshelar hates him, but he is also kind and dutiful - maia assesses his personality incredibly accurately within seconds of meeting him.
he believes beshelar hates him, but also trusts him to protect him, to go with him during his ritual.
and its this odd mix of trusting beshelar implictly and feeling at least physically safe with him, and also believing besh hates him (for everything that maia hates about himself) that leads maia to taking his anger and bitterness out on beshelar - mostly internally, occasionally out loud (the argument after the corazhas meeting specifically, in which beshelar is genuinely concerned for him and offering sensible advice, while maia, desperately lonely and out of his depth, interprets it as beshelar treating him like he's stupid and shouts at him.)
maia is deliberately kind, or at least understanding, to almost everyone, even internally, with the notable exception of beshelar. beshelar is like a safe and acceptable conduit for his own self hatred and internalised racism.
all the way up until everybody's favourite beshelar scene, where he reacts with sheer unadulterated rage upon discovering that maia was abused, and straight up yells that the previous emperor was a monster for allowing it to happen. an opinion that could probably get him immediately executed for treason if maia felt so inclined.
and maia, who 'has not expected this reaction from beshelar' is so stunned and shocked and amazed by this - by someone he believed thought very little of him being uncontrollably furious at the thought of him being hurt - that he starts laughing hysterically.
after that, the dynamic shifts, at least internally. maia finally understands that beshelar does not see him as a 'gauche and grubby boy', but in fact cares for him deeply.
"We do not know his story," Csevet said. "We know only that he abdicated his prelacy and traveled to the court to live."
I am consumed with curiousity as to how Csevet's initial meeting with Thara would have gone. Given that Thara is, as I'm about to dissect in appalling detail, very overtly unwell and by Thara's later description he has spent the last several months staring at the wall and that Csevet would have either had to go through Csoru or find away to get into her household without her knowing I can't imagine it went well for anyone involved.
#...I think this might be an occasion upon which csevet comes very close to lying to maia
#it's worded in a way he could defend (he doesn't KNOW what Celehar's perspective is / the truth it's all rumour he only KNOWS the facts)
#but like. if anyone is going to know what happened surely it's the couriers
#not only because they always know but also because it's implied they're a bit of a hub for marnei subculture of sorts
#this would be of... interest to them
#two things are true 1. csevet possibly has form with obstructing maia from hearing abt marnei scandals (reshema)
#2. csevet occasionally tries to test maia's opinions on marnei but bc maia doesn't have any it never works#(the bit where he talks about csethiro running in scholarly women's circles and maia's like '? ok' is loaded)
#I can't help but think getting celehar involved was very layered on csevet's part
#it is unlikely that celehar is the only clerical witness at court but he is the only one without real allegiances which is convenient
#maia is pious and likes underdogs so it's a winner really. and as we later hear from celehar's end the job probably saved his life
#BUT if we also consider that csevet was litmus testing maia's opinions on marnei again...... it's a bit of a cold blooded gamble
#he didn't KNOW celehar was going to tell maia everything but he must have known there was a risk he would
#and neither of them knew how maia was going to react to it
#so lobbing celehar directly into maia's path is risky as fuck for BOTH of them but he did it anyway
#but then if it Does work out... csevet is also sort of in the clear if he ever gets outed
#maybe this is me reading way too hard into it but. hmmmmmmmmm
#tge
Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.
have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.
and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.
black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.
if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.
This is Juneteenth.
white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
—
I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
random thought but i think iron man would be massively improved as a character if he was like. 16. lean into the boy genius trope. make the "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist" thing obvious teenage posturing cringe. the first movie is already pretty much a coming of age narrative
Used to the Darkness — Des Rocs
Would you pray before you twist the knife?
Would you take my hand and take a life?
Things We Lost in the Fire — Bastille
I read them all one day when loneliness came and you were away
Oh they told me nothing new, but I love to read the words you used
Devil on My Shoulder — Faith Marie
Lost in a life full of mistakes
We do what feels right then fall with no grace
You're Gonna Go Far, Kid — The Offspring
When you walk away, nothing more to say
See the lightning in your eyes
See 'em running for their lives
Never Let You Down — Barnes Courtney
Bible Black, sing alone put the shake in your bones
We'll be damned, whatever we do
We run the city 'cause I'll never let you down
Beautiful Crime — Tamer
I gave you everything
And it's a beautiful crime
"The Take Over, the Break's Over" — Fall Out Boy
We do it in the dark
With smiles on our faces
Everybody Wants to Rule the World — Tears for Fears
Acting on your best behaviour
Turn your back on Mother Nature
Everybody wants to rule the world
Blood // Water — Grandson
You thought you could go free
But the system is done for
If you listen real closely
There's a knock at your front door
Blood On My Name — The Brothers Bright
When the fires, when the fires are consuming you
And your sacred stars won't be guiding you
I've got blood on my name
Kill Our Way to Heaven — Michl
We would sell anything just to buy who we're not
Any cost, oh, we kill our way to Heaven
when people hate on modern aus because they think it's not possible for them to be in-character i always feel like. maybe YOU can't write a modern version of this character that feels true. skill issue methinks
On impulse, when the captain greeted him with a mumbled "Serenity" at the foot of the mooring mast, Maia stopped and said quietly, "We have nothing but confidence in you and your crew." The captain was startled into looking up; Maia met his eyes and smiled at him. After a moment, the captain's ears came up, and he bowed again, more deeply. "Serenity," he said in a clear and far stronger voice.
...
Maia leaned forward when the prince had given his vow and said, very low, "Neither blame nor guilt belongs to you so do not hold them so closely." The prince seemed more startled than reassured, but his look quickly became thoughtful, and he was still frowning slightly, his eyes distant, when the princes filed out.
Maia reminded himself that glee was unbefitting an emperor, and thought soberly as the crewwoman opened the narrow door at the front of the cabin, I must not acquire a taste for this pleasure. It was heady, but he knew it was poison.
...
"We are most grateful, gentlemen. We will remember this always as the beginning of our reign." Much better this than that confused and frightened awakening in darkness, his own glassy, sharp-edged panic, Setheris's drunken viciousness.
One of Maia's really under-rated virtues (admittedly, he has many) is that he has this incredible capacity to redirect himself. There's a lot of examples through the book of him doing this thing where he decides a certain line of thought is not helpful and then, simply does not pursue that line of thought any further. Its one of the subtler skills that make him a good emperor. But the fact he's so generally good at it makes the times he can't do it much more glaring, and much more clearly evidence that he hasn't got out of his childhood unscathed.
"Serenity," Csevet said, bowing. "The Lord Chancellor has been so good as to intimate that he will second us to your service, if it would be pleasing to you."
Did he though? Did he really?
What do we think about Csevet's level of honesty here:
What did Chavar really say?
Chavar really did say Csevet could go work for Maia (probably not nicely)
Chavar said something that could be interpreted that way (with creativity)
Chavar literally did not say anything of the sort Csevet is just lying.
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