Thanks @knowitowl For The Tag And I❤ YOUUU

Hey, what do you think about Medea? I know people portray her as a cruel witch but I think she never had someone besides her than her aunt; Circe. She really deserved to be happy, right?

This is the story of the wicked villain’s daughter who whispers in the hero’s ear and teaches him how to overcome every trial. Through her magic she transmutes the most insurmountable labor into triviality, she foils the villain’s pursuit so that her father cannot catch them in their flight.

(she chops her brother into pieces and casts the pieces to the sea, so that her father’s fleet must be hindered dredging up every bloody portion so that their king might bury his son)

She is wise, and she is good, and she is wonderful, filled with wonders, and the story never thinks to ask:

Why, with all her knowledge and her power, in all the years before the hero came, did she do nothing to curb her father’s wickedness?

---

When Medea excoriates Jason for his betrayal, he snaps back in retort:

“You exaggerate your favors,” he sneers. “Should I thank you? Did you act purposefully? Or was it not the shafts of Eros, as Aphrodite willed, that compelled you to save my life?”  

---

Medea loves her children dearly, and she kills them, and in that she is beyond compulsion.

---

We might ask instead what purpose Jason served in the story, if Medea and the Argonauts accomplished all his feats for him. Did Jason on his own slaughter the six-armed Gegenees? Did he know how to withstand the fiery breath of the Kolkhis Bulls? Did he know the dangers of sowing the dragon’s teeth, how to lull the sleepless dragon into sleep?

Could he have outplayed the sirens, killed the bronze man Talos on his own initiative?

What was the point of him, then?

(the answer is: it was his story)

---

When Medea returns to her home of Colchis many years later, after all the unpleasantness with Jason is well and done, she discovers her tyrannical father has been overthrown by his brother Perses, the new king.

Unfortunately for her, this is no happy ending. Perses hopes to purge her father’s bloodline and eliminate all other claimants to the throne.

So, she kills him.

(she is good at that, killing family)

It was said that when the Golden Fleece was removed from Colchis, so too would the king be removed from his throne. Medea returns, years later, and kills her uncle and restores her father to the throne, and the old wrong is finally set right.

.

The dead are all still dead, of course.

---

After Medea kills her brother, the gods demand she must be cleansed.

The Argo sails through storm and hellish steam and darkness, and finally docks at Circe’s island. Circe slits the throat of a piglet, stains their hands with its blood. The hearth fires blaze bright, and many cakes are brought out to be burnt as offerings to Zeus.

“There,” Circe says afterwards. “All done.”

Medea sits next to her on the polished chairs, looking at the thin dark line of pig’s blood still beneath her fingernails. “I don’t know that I can ever be cleansed of this.”

Her aunt smirks. “Too bad,” she says. “Ceremony’s over. You are.”

“I just -” she says, and looks towards the Argo where Jason is waiting, and feels her throat close up with emotion. “I feel like I’m going insane. I don’t know what I’ve done. I feel like I would do anything for him.” 

“The only morality in the world is love,” Circe says. “Everything else is mere ambition. Falling headlong into someone else’s story, and selfishly living out your own.”

“I helped kill him,” Medea says. “I killed my brother.”

“He was hunting you down. They would have killed you both, if they caught you.” Circe looks meditatively into the fire. “The gods have done worse, for worse reasons. Zeus, the Cleanser of Sins, once tried to devour his own daughter.”

They are silent for a time. The fire crackles cozily, and the burnt fragrance of cake hangs in the air. “I don’t deserve any of this,” Medea says.

“Ah, that’s the cruelty of it.” Circe sighs. “You are part mortal and part divine, a truth unto yourself, consequence unmoored from judgement.” She lays a hand over Medea’s. “You don’t deserve a damn thing.”

---

When Medea kills her children, she weeps.

(but she has wept before, and gone on to do more wickedness, and so tears are neither salve nor salvation)

After her children are dead, Helios sends down a golden chariot from the heavens to carry her away, to carry away with her the bodies of her children, so that she might bury them with her own two hands in Hera’s sacred grove, safe from any further indignity or harm.

(as a sign from the gods, this might be taken as approval)

---

This is how Medea’s story goes: Time passes and wounds slowly heal. She falls in love again, and has another child. She falls into old habits and once again tries to kill her lover’s son, but this time is unsuccessful. She is forced to flee, and at last returns to her father’s kingdom. She kills her uncle. More kinblood is shed.

Her son Medus grows up to take the throne, and he is so renowned in conquest that the Aryans rename themselves the Medes, in his and his mother’s name.

He is her darling son. She loves him dearly.  

.

This is a happy ending, perhaps.

Bran Castle - Romania (by Céline Harrand) 

✨stockings✨

Okay, so this made me want to write about stockings, but then I got inspired by that one scene from Brooklyn (2015) and my own grandparents and here we are. 

A 1930s Everlark 🌹:

1938

The only reason Katniss agreed to the Friday night dance was because Prim had promised to do all her Saturday chores if she’d come. “Mama won’t let me go unless you come,” her sister had pleaded, crawling across their shared bed, hands folded together. “Please please please, Katniss?”

“I hate those dances,” she argued, shoving her sister off her notes. “Plus I have an exam next week that I need to study for. Why can’t Mama take you?”

Prim looked aghast at the suggestion. “I can’t take my matka to the dance! I’d be the laughing stock at school! Katniss, please? I’ll do all your Saturday chores and take care of Babcia all night instead. Please?”

She likely would have gone without the promised bribe, but if Prim was offering to batter out dirty rugs and polish their mother’s silver and deal with their strict grandmother for a whole Saturday evening, then Katniss wasn’t going to bypass it. So here she sat in her church’s basement, huddled in the far corner where the girls with no dance partners sat, counting down the minutes until 9 o’clock.

The room was crowded with kids from the neighborhood, excited to congregate together without total parental supervision watching over them, and she saw Prim near the band with some fellow she recognized from church, her head thrown back in laughter. The guy’s face was a bit too close to her sister’s neck, but Prim would never forgive her if she stepped in and played matka. Katniss crossed her arms and sighed, slinking down in her seat.

Sixty-seven minutes to go.

“Not much for dances?” a boy next to her asked, causing her to jump. He hadn’t been there a moment ago.

She frowned. “Am I that obvious?”

“Most girls over here are scoping the dance floor for fellas. You, on the other hand,” he said, eyeing the clock, “keep checking the time. Got a hot date or something?”

Her cheeks flushed at his forwardness. “Gee, you talk to all the girls you’ve just met like that?”

“No,” he smiled, leaning closer to her, “but I think it’s important to make sure I’m not stepping where I shouldn’t be stepping. So is there a lucky fella? Or are you free to dance with me?”

Katniss gave him a hard look, amazed at just how forward this guy was. She hadn’t been asked to dance often, but she’d seen the bashful way boys usually asked Prim and Leevy. They were never as forward! She sniffed the air. “Why would I tell you such a thing? I don’t even know your name.”

“Peeta Mellark,” he said, holding his hand for her to take. Katniss lightly grabbed his fingers, gave a halfhearted shake in greeting, and put her hand back in her lap. “What’s yours?”

“Katniss Everdeen.”

“Everdeen?” he frowned. “That don’t sound Polish. Are you crashing this dance, too?” She tried her best not to notice how his blue eyes seemed to twinkle in the church’s poor lightning when he smiled at that.

“That’s because it isn’t. My mother’s Polish, but my father wasn’t.” She checked the clock and held back another tired sigh. Only five minutes had passed.

“Time would go faster if you danced,” Peeta suggested teasingly, leaning back in his seat. “I’d be happy to fill that time.”

Her fingers drummed on her knees, considering his offer. She still had an hour left of this thing and he wasn’t wrong about time moving faster if she was doing something.

“Okay,” Katniss agreed, holding her hand out. “One dance and you leave me alone for the rest of the night.”

He hurried to stand and grabbed her offered hand, bowing dramatically at the honor. She rolled her eyes and told him to move it along, before she changed her mind.

They walked to the dance floor just as the band was starting a new song. It was a swing tune, one the whole room cheered to as couples started to sway to the rhythm. It took Katniss a moment to pick up the new steps, unfamiliar with this particular dance, but with Peeta’s laughing encouragement, she was soon dancing and laughing along with him. He shook his hands to the side as the gentlemen in the talkies did and spun her around until her head spun. He even convinced her to take center floor with him as they kicked and stepped to the beat, the couples around them cheering around them.

Before Katniss knew it, they had danced four more times together. He didn’t ask if she wanted to stop after that first one and she didn’t bother to deny him as he kept pulling her back for more. Her hair was a bit disheveled now, her curls coming loose due to the room’s humidity and her own movements, and her feet hurt in her heels, but it’d been awhile since she’d had this much fun. Prim was never going to let her live this down.

Finally, the priest announced the band would be playing one last song, even though it was past 9 now, because they’d all been such a great group tonight. It surprised her, how fast time really did go by when she wasn’t sitting in the corner, pleading with the clock to move faster.

The band started one last time, crooning a slow ballad. Couples paired up and she saw her sister on the other side of the room with the same guy as earlier. Were they serious, she wondered, Prim and this guy? Peeta’s hand on her lower back pulled her back to them, their bodies pressed together now. She rested one hand on his shoulder, realizing just how tall he was as she looked up at him, his smile causing something in her to flutter, and she smiled back. Peeta smelled nice, she noticed, pressed against him so close now. Like fresh baked bread and a seasoning she couldn’t place. Dill maybe? His body felt warm against hers, but she welcomed it, despite how hot she was after all the dancing.Their hands laced together as the music swept through the room, couples spinning slowly to the tune.

“This is nice,” he said near her ear. “Glad you said yes, Katniss Everdeen.”

“It is,” she agreed, deciding it wouldn’t be a bad thing to rest her head on his chest. The other girls were doing it and well, Prim always said these dances were for meeting fellas.

“Hey, Peeta?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Hey, Katniss?” he asked in return, that smile of his still there, looking down at her.

“What’d you mean when you asked if I was crashing this dance?” It’d been bothering her since about their second dance. “Are you crashing?”

He laughed and spun them around. “Does Mellark sound Polish to you?”

“Well, no,” she frowned, not even thinking of that when he introduced himself. “I guess I just figured you were like me.” She couldn’t be sure, but it felt like he pulled her closer. Not that she was complaining about that.

“Both parents are German,” he said, his cheek pressed on top of her head. “As hard German as you can make them, really strict, you know?”

“So what were you doing at a Polish dance, then? Don’t the Germans have their own dances?”

“Oh yeah” Peeta said, laughing, “We do, but I like coming to your dances. They’re more fun and well, I really like Polish girls.”

Katniss tucked her face into his shirt to hide her blush. “German boys aren’t so bad, either.” If it was at all possible, his smile grew.

“I’ll take you to one, if you’d like,” he promised. “You can see for yourself how much more fun your dances are.”

“Are you asking me out on a date, Peeta?”

“Would you say yes if I was?”

Katniss bit her bottom lip. “I would, yes.”

He spun them around one last time before the song ended, resting his forehead on hers. The music had stopped, the couples around them breaking apart, but Katniss and Peeta stood there, still holding on to each other. “When can I take you out?” he asked. “Please say soon?”

Glancing over at Prim, who had clearly noticed where she was and giving thumbs up in approval, Katniss smiled. “You free tomorrow night?”

The Rings of Saturn Observed by the Voyager 2 Space Probe as it Zoomed Past the Planet in 1981. 

Main Beliefs Chart

Chart of  Main Beliefs

High Power - There is no high power in buddhism because they dont believe in a god, but they believe in things that the Buddha teaches or studys . Those things are called the  , Dharma and Sangha.Since Budda was a teacher Dharma was the things he taught were called Dharma. The Sangha being the students that the Buddha taught who are mostly monks , nuns that dedicated all there energy of there life’s to conserve the teaching and available to use in the future.

Rules and goals-

Worship  And ritual-

Spirit And  After Life -the Buddhism would believe that  the spirits mean when  a person will die and become ghost. Then the afterlife would mean that a person  would die and it will depend on there lifestyle that whether they will  come back to life as a good animal or a bad animal for example if you had a bad lifestyle you will come out to  be a rat or if your lifestyle was good probably turn out to  be a beautiful bird or something.

Religious Hierarchy - Buddhism doesn’t really have  a caste system  or a class system unlike Hinduism . They have these kind of people that people follow or try to be like. They don’t have a organize group of people like a type of government. They are important figures in Buddhism and they are the Monks , for men , and for women called Nuns and then of course the Buddha . 

“Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can’t get any better, it can.”

— Nicholas Sparks (via perfectquote)

Ragnarok!

i’m survivin