Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Anonymous asked: so uh this is gonna sound like a loaded question but i'm genuinely curious: how are you okay w the incest in borgias?

Um…you’re correct, that is a loaded question, and ultimately my answer boils down to ‘because I’m confident in my own ability to tell right from wrong in the real world’ but sure, we can do this.

First of all, I don’t have any personal issues centered around incest, which, like, I tend to think is the important part of this?  Obviously, if you’re uncomfortable with a relationship in a piece of media, please choose to take care of yourself and not engage with it.  Ex: I have the show Rick & Morty comprehensively blacklisted because I can’t deal with it.  I don’t have any of those issues with the Borgias so…thus, I watch it.

Second of all, it’s history.  Like, okay, I know this is a pretty fragile argument, but it’s pretty much accepted historical fact that there were some…interesting familial dynamics happening with the Borgia family, as with many of the powerful families in Italy at the time.  And I generally believe that if you’re doing a messy part of history, you need to deal with the fact that it was messy.  

Third of all, I just care a lot more about whether a fictional relationship is interesting than whether it’s the picture of mental health and moral purity.  Like, I’m sorry, I just do.  The Purity Olympics that this blue hellsite likes to get into exhaust me, I have unfollowed people for it when I got too tired of watching the discourse scroll down my dash.  I care infinitely more about how interesting and complicated the relationship and the emotions are.  Even the ships that are genuinely pretty good and harmless, I generally care about them in terms of complications.  Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley is my jam, but I would be WAY less interested if they weren’t both child generals in a war they were born into and victims of possession and traumatized and scared and courageous and forced to fight separately in order to win.  The very first thing I said about Diana/Steve Trevor was “why are we even here if he’s not torturing himself with guilt for staining the purest soul he’s ever known with war”.  I’ve always been someone who loves stories for their messiness, because it makes the characters and their relationships more interesting.  And by far the most interesting available permutation of Cesare Borgia and Lucrezia Borgia’s relationship is the one in the show, where they’re so bent and misshapen by the pressures and demands of their father’s nation-spanning chess game that the only way they really know how to love is with each other.

Fourth and finally, this is the kind of complicated morally graphite stuff I grew up on.  The five other people on the internet who’ve read the Kencyrath know what I’m talking about, but more than that, this is always the kind of story I’ve loved.  For all else that it is, Harry Potter is a story about a profoundly traumatized kid and the grim reality that sometimes there is no one else to fight except for you.  The Hero and the Crown is a story about how sometimes being good at something won’t change the fact that you’re not good at the right thing and you might have to beat that into people.  Jesus Christ, Animorphs brings up the question of whether or not it’s morally okay to commit a war crime.  A lot.  The characters commit war crimes.  A LOT.

Basically, I’m an adult with the ability to make my own decisions about right and wrong who enjoys grim and messy relationships because honestly life is grim and messy.  If you yourself, anon, are not comfortable with the incest in the Borgias, then you are more than welcome to not engage with it.

lashthe2:

I think my favorite part of the Castlevania Netflix series is that everyone agrees that Lisa is the purest cinnamon role and Dracula is perfectly justified in killing everyone.

writterings:

pinkbat99:

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fun fact about american history: george washington was apparently so sexy that when he was 17 he went swimming a river and some girl that had a crush on him stole his clothes and watched as he walked around naked looking for them

aaron burr, the guy who shot alexander hamilton and also the second vice president of the united states, tried to start an empire out in texas

marquis de lafayette literally had to sneak out of france to come aid america and while some versions of the story claim that he disguised himself as a commoner, other versions say he dressed up like a woman

literally all the founding fathers had daddy issues, specifically alexander hamilton who refused to even befriend george washington initially because he didn’t want to grow close to someone who had the potential to become a father like figure to him

thomas jeffereson kept a bust of alexander hamilton in his house at monticello for no reason other than the fact that hamilton was his sworn enemy and he felt as though he needed a very expensive bust of his sworn enemy in his house

I love all of this please keep going.

they didn’t let hamilton try this one course of study at king’s college because it was so intense that it made one student literally get sick and have to go home for months on end and that student was james madison

the marquis de lafayette was such a popular figure in america that ladies wore gloves with his portrait on them, and he would refuse to kiss their hands in greeting because he found it to be excessively narcissistic to kiss himself

(via slyrider)

bonehandledknife:

prokopetz:

myusernameisstolen:

prokopetz:

Random Headcanon: The bit where character A walks into a room and finds character B entangled in some utterly ludicrous situation, and after a long, awkward pause, B calmly states “okay, I can explain” is a popular trope in both human and Vulcan comedy, albeit for totally different reasons.

What would the reason be for Vulcans?

One of the major genres of Vulcan comedy consists of long, complicated explanations or debates establishing that something absurd is, though a series of unlikely contrivances, actually perfectly logical. The moment of comedic catharsis arrives when the audience realises that some seemingly innocuous assumption they’d made about what’s going on is wildly incorrect.

I’m apparently Vulcan.

Anonymous asked: okay, favourite city in alleirat and what the street food is like there

Oh my god, let me talk to you about my very favorite Alleirat city: Dase, the city of stone, called by her own people and all those with sense the jewel of the east.

Perched on the easternmost coast of the Alleirai continent, Dase (pronounced dah-SEH) is the biggest city in terms of population if not physical size, and presides over the finest harbor in the world (the southern coast, with their sprawling river delta, politely begs to differ, but look, they’re wrong, okay, good talk).  Beyond her size, Dase’s claim to fame is her towering four-hundred-foot coastal cliffs, and the semispherical harbor the ancient citizenry excavated straight into the stone wall with a combination of magic, explosives, and sheer determination.  The harbor is massive, able to comfortably house even the tallest ship without scraping the mast along the ceiling and protect quite a number of vessels in the event of a storm.  The city itself was originally built almost entirely out of the excess stone removed from the harbor, and as further expansions have been executed under the eye of the city stone workers, the buildings have been expanded since then with the same material, either taken from expansions to the harbor or knocked off another part of the cliff.  Dase mostly gets expanded up rather than out, since it’s approximately a half-circle facing against the cliffs on one side and there’s a city wall hemming it in along the curve, but it’s still sizable, about three miles in radius.  It’s also the place where Crispin and Brenneth grew up and lived until things went badly–Brenneth used to own a smithy on the blacksmith’s row that’s still standing, and her old sword is mounted in the audience chamber of the gothkenla (like a city hall crossed with a citadel, literally ‘city center’).

Because I have no impulse control, here’s a brief excerpt of Brenneth and Crispin returning: 

“Welcome back to Dase, the jewel of the East,” Crispin said, switching fluidly back to Alleirai and raising his bound hands as if presenting me a gift.  I turned, and looked, and all my exasperation with Crispin drained away to be replaced by the sun-warm, dizzy ecstasy of being back.

Dase was less beautiful and more striking—all its beauty was in strong lines and hard angles, like the cliffs it commanded. It was tall, about three or four stories on average, and built almost entirely out of the hard silver-grey stone of the cliffs, with wide windows cut into the walls and the sun turning it into a labyrinth of brilliant light and impenetrably dark shadows.  The air smelled of salt at the cliff face, but the city wind itself could change on a dime, bringing the scent of the farmlands from the inland fields.   From our angle were the places where Kal Dase—Dase Below, the subcity of tunnels—could be accessed were invisible, but we could see where the stone was ragged enough to be scaled to the eaves of the roof level. Shadows moved, quick as starlings, overhead, thieves about their business in Lai Dase, Dase Above.  

…From above, the city would look like a ragged half-circle, butting right up against the edge of the cliffs with an absolute disregard for the potential drop on the other side.  At what would be the center of the circle, if it were complete, was the gothkenla, the city center—the citadel building where the gothed lived, received audiences, passed judgement, and completed all their other duties.  City-side of the kenla was a sprawl of empty space that spread all the way to the cliff, serving as the central marketplace and, occasionally, execution grounds.  The ten major streets radiated out from the city square, a nest of alleyways interconnecting them, and led all the way to the city limits. Every sector had its own markets, its own hierarchies and systems—the city in miniature, divided up by class.  The path to the cage, sardonically marked Drop Alley with a wooden sign, butted up against one of the major throughways, the one that ran immediately cliff-side. Unless they had moved everything around rather a lot, which I imagined would be a challenge, the kenla was about an hour walk from where we stood, depending on foot traffic.  

But so, as you might imagine, food in Dase tends toward fish for meat and depends on her protectorate lands for kestho (the main grain grown in Alleirat, a very hardy, adaptable plant that produces dense breads that taste sort of like…rye?) and other farm products.  The ten city sectors often have smaller markets to service day-to-day needs, with the large market outside the gothkenla being a once-or-twice-a-week thing for more variety, but that’s, like, raw cooking material.  

Since street food is generally stuff that can be acquired and cooked with a minimum of effort and expense on the vendor’s part, I’m guessing that smoked meats (maybe venison/other wild-hunted meats in seasons where they’re plentiful and therefore cheaper, chicken/beef if a vendor could get a good deal, most commonly fish) play a big part.  I’m kind of thinking of a kabob-like situation, with chunks of smoked meat served on a skewer with whatever suitable vegetables are in season.  Spices and seasoning would be easy, it’s a trade city and you can make spices last a long time if you know what you’re doing, so please assume that all of these are very flavorful.  

Straight-up fruit vendors are also a pretty common thing, especially in the richer parts of the city where the fruit is nicer and possibly imported (maybe from the west where apples do better, or the south where everything does great, or even the Outrigger Islands where more tropical stuff can be found).  Fruit vendors also do phenomenally well in the hostel district where there are always sailors who miss real fresh stuff and are willing to shell out of their wages accordingly.  Like, the fruit vendors in the hostel district charge more than they maybe ethically should but the sailors don’t care enough to try to change it.  

Oh, and bread stuff, that should fill out the basics.  Since kestho grain doesn’t easily grind down into really fine flour and tends to be very dense, fluffy pastries aren’t really a thing like they are here, but miniature loaves of bread (like, the size of two fists) with various things baked into them are a hit.  You can go with meat/veggies for savory or (often dried) fruits for sweet–they’re often baked as an easily transported ration, too, although not so elaborately.  Kestho loaves with meat and hot Island spices do a booming business on the training grounds and as a traveling ration for the city guard, because they’re quick and easy to eat with protein and carbs for energy and a good kick.  That specific combination is actually called a soldier’s meal, because they were the original kestho loaf cooked by soldiers during the ancient pre-unification wars.

I wrote this on a bus with no dinner in sight and now I’m ravenous and I could murder a soldier’s meal with like some strawberries after, Jesus this was a bad idea.