There is this kind of Western narration that pisses me off, major time.
The Russian-angle narration.
I listen to some US news in the morning, and what do I hear?
There is a win for Ukraine? Yes. Is it because Ukrainian Army kicks ass? NO. It's because Russian Army is old and badly organised.
A village gets recovered by UA? Yes.
Do we get even a sentence that's NOT related to Russians? NO.
What we DO get? "Put yourself into the shoes of these Russian soldiers, poorly armed, abandoned by the command, running away..."
NO.
There is no fucking way I'm putting myself into some rashist's shoes. I absolutely decline to commiserate, to empathise or to even consider how much their life sucks.
Because you know whose life sucks more? Their victims. The people they klilled, raped, tortured, starved. And yes, maybe someone will shoot one Rusek or another. But it's not like the Ukrainians went to their neighbourhood too look for trouble - the rashists came over to conquer and colonise. It is their fate to get their asses kicked in retaliation.
Why is this narration persistent? Is it because people from the US can only commiserate with an invading army who is on enemy territory, and gets they arses handed to them, but not to someone who is actually DEFENDING THEIR MOTHERLAND?
Is it because all the wars that US of A has waged in the recent memory were fought on someone else's land? And never touched the continental states? Is it why you are unable to form a meaningful empathic connection to a civilian population whose lives have been upended so completely - because this never happened to anyone you know, or to any place that's close enough to home, for you to understand what it means to be INVADED, instead of being the INVADER?
A Cherry Orchard by the House… by Oleksandr Ivakhnenko, 1982
(source)
Unsplash - photography, illustration, & art
Pixabay - same as unsplash
Pexels - stock photos and videos
Getty Images - photography & illustration
Veceezy - vectors and clipart
Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)
StockSnap.io - stock photos
Canva - needs login but has lots of templates
Library of Congress - historical posters and photos
NASA - you guessed it
Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie
Even Adobe has some free images
There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without plagiarizing! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own.
Please add on if you know any more resources for free images <3
Omg, same!!! Somehow Emilia feels completely powerless in the beginning, and then instantly completely open to everything. Like if she just got Mary Sue'd, but for funny times
The are the same picture, oww
Okay, was anybody gonna tell me that The Cruel Prince Collector's Edition finally has photos? Or was I just supposed to find that out for myself while disassociating in the middle of my work day?
And YES I do believe that is Jude in the bloody coronation dress Cardan sent her that you are viewing on the end pages right there. :)
- Beau Taplin
Lady Gaga - Alice
My name isn't Alice
But I keep looking
I keep looking for the Wonderland
reblog w the song lyrics in your head NOW. either stuck in yr head or what yr listening to
Here, you’ll find a compilation of all the works submitted for Jurdan Smut Week 2020. This list will be updated at the end of each day.
Steam Week Masterlist
Enjoy the revel! 💃🏻🔥
Keep reading
that sequence was so delish
You promised.
It is almost five centuries ago, and the girl who will one day be a swordswoman is lying in the red-tinged mud. She can't get up—broken bone? severed tendon? She can't tell. She's yet to cultivate her palate for pain. Her enemy towers over her, a cataphract mailed in screaming steel and poisoned light. His warhammer falls, and it is death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable.
"No," says a part of her. She is not even seventeen years old. Her body is mangled and broken, wound piled upon wound piled upon wound. A dull kitchen knife is her only weapon, though she lost that in the mud the second her grip faltered. Her enemy is no thing of this earth. And yet—
"No. It is not death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable. It is only a hammer, falling. It is only 'an attack.'"
And the girl understood.
~~~
It is the better part of three centuries ago, as best the swordswoman can reckon, and she is beset on all sides by foes. They are not monsters—just mountain bandits, or highland rebels, as one cares to see it. But they outnumber her by dozens, and even an exceptional swordswoman might struggle against but two opponents of lesser skill.
From in front of her, beside her, behind her they advance, striking from every angle with spears and blades and axes. Others fill the air with arrows, sling stones, firepots. It would be effortless, to parry any single blow. It would be impossible, physically impossible, to defend against them all.
"No," says a part of her.
"You are not outnumbered. You do not face 'multiple' foes. It would be impossible to defend against every attack — but there is no 'every' attack. Only one."
"Oh," the swordswoman said. And it was, in fact, effortless.
~~~
It is eighty years ago, or thereabouts. A coiling spire of stony flesh and verdigrised copper throbs like a tumor on the horizon, coaxed from the earth by spell and sacrifice. It is the tower of a sorcerer-prince, and a birthing place of abominations.
Seven locks of rune-etched metal are opened with her single key. Wretched shapeling beasts, grown by sorcery in vitreous nodules, flee wailing from her, absconding before she even draws her blade. Demons sworn to thousand-year pacts of service find the binding provisions of their agreements unexpectedly severed.
These things dissatisfy the sorcerer-prince. He waxes wroth. He makes signs of power and chants incantations. With a flask of godling's blood, he draws the binding sigil inscribed upon the moon's dark face. With cold fire burning in his eyes, he speaks the secret name of Death. It is a king among curses, all-corrupting, all-consuming, and it falls from his lips upon the swordswoman.
"No," she says, and she turns it aside with her blade.
The sorcerer-prince's brow furrows. How did she even do that?
"Parried it."
But—
"With my sword."
No—
"See, like this."
Stop—
"Well," the swordswoman finally says, "I figured that if I just...looked at it right, and thought about it, and construed your curse as a kind of attack...then I could block it."
That's not how it works at all!
"If you insist," says the swordswoman, shrugging, and decapitates him.
~~~
It is now. It is the end. Death couldn't take the swordswoman, not when she'd spent all her life cutting it up. At times, Death might sidle up to one of her friends, or peer down into a grandchild's crib, and she'd just give it a look. That's all it took, by then.
Heartache couldn't take her, either. Bad things happened to her, and they hurt, and she lived in that hurt, but if it was ever more than she could take...she'd just, move her sword in a way that's difficult to describe. And she'd keep going.
Kingdoms fell, and she kept going. Continents crumbled and sank into the sea. Her planet's star faded and froze. She started carrying a lantern. Universes were torn apart and scattered, until all that had been matter was redistributed in thermodynamic equilibrium. With one exception.
But now it is the end. There is no time left; time is already dead. The swordswoman has outlived reality, but there is simply no further she can go. This is not a thing that can be blocked. This is the absence of anything further to block.
"No," says the girl who will one day be a swordswoman. "This isn't the ending. And even if it was, it's not the ending that matters."
The swordswoman looks back at who she was, at the countless selves she's been between them. She looks forward, at the rapidly contracting point that remains of the future. She grasps the all of linear time in her mind, and sees that it is shaped like a spear.