Nobody :

Lou Le Blanc :

Something other than Acotar, Tog and Chain of Gold lol

Louise and ReidfromSerpent & DovebyShelby Mahurin.

find my art.

People are complicated sure

Sometimes it feels like being an arsehole to point out that folks like Magnus Hirschfield or Emmeline Pankhurst and other luminaries were eugenicists. People act like you’re trying to negate the good changes they influenced and so react badly.

The thing of it is, uncritical lionisation of figures is easier with internet virality and that elides complexities and airbrushes charcters and demonises others.

But when we point out, say, the eugenics, it’s a principle of “Yes, And” because, you know what? “Good Important People” can do or believe horrific things.

And this is not some moral calculus, some utilitarian Good Place-ian points system, nor search for Original Sin. No, it’s a reminder that you, me, ordinary people exist within environments and systems that are messy, joyous and awful.

There’s no place of safety, no sterile sanctum of purity, and the ideal that makes you strive towards it is constructed by those with an interest in selling you the idea that the labour of worlding ever ends - that there will be a point when you don’t have to touch and be touched in your turn. That they have the keys to heaven, and can sell you it for the tiny price of of obedience to them and their vision.

And that sanctum you crave, it isn’t real, because the daimonic powers which might make it are messy bastards. They’re filthy and they overflow with strange vitality.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the years, the hero and the monster are inextricably imbricated in a queer, awe-ful. joyous kinship. Idols are covered in smoke, detritus, blood, and other fluidities.

Condemn horror, condemn attrocity, yes. Swear an oath to not let it happen on your watch. But be watchful, look again, and,make sure your scales of morality aren’t pre-weighted by assumptions of what you’ve been soaked in in terms of your notions of moral superiority.

Looking-again is second sight and in doing so, what we encounter thickens, becomes richer, like good dark loam enlivened by luxurious shit and filled with rhizomatic mycorhizal wonders.

Eugenics happened. Eugenics happens. People still think that way, because whether you realise it or not, we are all inculcated with an image of an ideal human.

So fuck the human. Fuck the ideal. Fuck the idea of ranking as method of orientation, spatialisation, and location - as forming “identity”

Break the surface, the veneer of the human as the centre of everything and you begin to intuit something which is incredibly old, something that shows humankind as earth, or trees, or something else entirely. Realise that there’s something beneath the monster-mask, and the heroes’ helm.

Something the human doesn’t want to admit, because it would undermine everything - make oh so many homo sapiens become catastrophically lost, its instinctive grasp for the status quo revealed as a marketing ploy.

No to purity. No to assimilation. No to the human subject.

Yes to to the humus, the dark night soil, the ambiguity of the chthonic, the vasty gulfs, the roaring noise of silence between the stars. Yes to the crip, the crooked, to everything more - to moving beyond and through carceral, cancellative, and punitive dialectics.

Turning a prison into a rewilded garden full of animate life and death, where so-called degeneration, so called decay is seen as what it is - where, with apologies to Auntie Ursula?

The Word For World Is Forest.

dionysia-ta-astika:

You have come to see the divine procession.

Last thing you knew, you were standing in CVS to buy flowers and chocolates for your sweetheart, but then you stepped outside and saw the procession in all its glory, and remembered that thisis what you’re really supposed to be doing. So now you are running towards the parade, running as though you might miss it if you don’t get there fast enough. You take the head off one of the roses and strew its petals on the ground, singing.

You’ve been feeling listless lately, and the arrival of the Mad God is something to look forward to. It is a spectacle. He’s brought through the city streets on a ship that rolls along the ground like a carriage, and he is accompanied by a train of masked revelers: women with sticks and loose dresses, men with ugly masks and dragging leather phalloi between their legs. Leaves and flowers, bright torches, the clash of cymbals and wail of flutes. The screaming has already started.

You have not seen the god before. You do not know what he looks like, but you thought you saw a mask that was intended to be his face. You remember it had a crown of vines, and bovine horns, and a manic expression. You ask the person next to you, “Why is the god mad?” and they turn their head much too slowly. They wear a theatrical satyr mask, with curling horns, and a too-wide mouth that looks like a gaping hole that is laughing at you.

“Don’t you know?

“No.”

“Oh.Well, why do you think, then?”

You have not considered this question before. It has something to do with wine, you think, but that can’t be all there is to it. You decide that the god is mad because he wants to be; he’s a god, he can be whatever he wants. So if he didn’t want to be mad, he wouldn’t be.

The boat-carriage is drawn by magnificent leopards with golden pelts. You pet one as it passes, running your hand through its silken fur, and it licks your wrist.

The procession passes, and behind it, in the negative space where it just was, is a swamp.  The swamp is swollen with meltwater. There are half-buried jars of wine in the mud, left open. The whole world is open today, so the dead are here. The god brought them up with him, and they come in their own pale procession, silent. They are thirsty. They are attracted by the blood of the living. You don’t have any blood to give them, so they swarm like insects around the open wine jars half-buried in the swampy ground. They are here not as a menace, but as friends and guests, which is why they get the first of the wine.

You beckon a lost soul towards the jar nearest to you, and it comes like a shy cat to a bowl of milk. “Who did you used to be?” you ask it. It looks up at you with hollow eyes, and does not answer.

You return to the center of the city, and find that the revel is in full swing. You push through the red silk, the incense smoke, the mass of masked faces and writhing bodies. Your ears echo with the cacophony of obscene screams. The architecture of the city is strange, off somehow, though you can’t place it. These buildings look ancient, but not derelict — their ivy-twined columns are still standing, and their walls burnished white.

You don’t know where you’re going, but you arrive at a small perfumed tent draped in red, where someone is dancing in a dim spotlight. It is a young man, dressed like a harem girl in sheer purple scarves, with ribbons and flowers in his hair. His dark hair swirls around him like the smoke, and in a blur of arms he swaps out the masks in front of his face — a comic rictus, an evil grimace, a horned beast, a beautiful woman. Bells tinkle on his ankles as he dances to the eerie flute music. You sit down on a plush purple couch and watch him, mesmerized. Someone throws coins at his feet. He ignores them.

He playfully throws one of his scarves at you, and it lands on your head, draping over your face. Through its translucent fabric, he seems distorted, uncanny. He beckons you to dance with him. Some distant voice in your head tells you that you should not take it, that you will make a mockery of all decency if you dance like that. But the voice is not very powerful, not in comparison to the glint of his leaf-colored eyes. So you step up onto the raised platform. You try to match his slow, sensuous movements, but you can’t make your hips do that serpentine thing that he does. Laughing, he takes your hands in his, and lifts a ceramic cup to your lips. You don’t remember seeing him receive a drink, but now there is a cup pressing your lips apart. You take a sip of whatever’s in the cup — it’s a rich, sweet wine. It almost tastes like honey, and you greedily take a larger gulp of before he pulls the cup away.

Maybe it’s the smoke, or maybe it’s something in the wine, but you are starting to hallucinate. The man has horns. You are certain they aren’t connected to his mask; no, they are thick, curving bovine horns that stretch like branches from the wreath of leaves on his head. Was there an ivy wreath on his head before? You can’t remember.

Dizzy and intoxicated, you lie down on the nearest couch, sinking into red and purple silk. Your brain is starting to blink like fireflies. You grope up at the young man’s mask, like a cat batting at a ball of yarn, and pull it off. The horns do not come away with it. The man has a very pretty, androgynous face, framed by his dark curls that hang down like vines as he leans over you. His cheeks are flushed. “Hi,” he says cheerfully. “I hope you’re having fun.”

“Fun…” you mumble.

“You’ve been so stressed and anxious lately. Life getting to you? I thought you should take a load off. You deserve it.” He smiles a golden-honey grin. “Please don’t ask why. You alwaysask why.”

“Who are you?” you ask.

But you know. You know. Beneath his eyes is swirling, primordial blackness. It calls to you, tugs at you, entices you to dive headfirst into the abyss.

“I can’t stay long,” he whispers. “I’m getting married tonight.”

“Oh… congrats. To whom?”

“To the queen!” He giggles coquettishly. “She’s waiting for me. But I’ve still got time to play…”

You miss the rest of the sentence, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters right now, except for his presence, which is considerably bigger than his body. It’s like he’s glowing with a warm and seductive radiance that fills the whole tent, that both envelops and penetrates you.

His lips taste like ripe grapes.

You wonder, briefly, if this is what the queen will experience when he comes to her in her ritual chamber for their secret and sacred marriage. You wonder if maybe this isthe ritual chamber. You are dimly aware that the tent is now empty except for you and him, but you can still hear the screams and laughter and music tangling together just outside the tent.

“Life can be delicious you know.” He takes a swig from the same cup as before and smirks at you. “It doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to be painful. It can be all bright colors and heady scents and fine tastes. Voluptuous.”

That’s crazy, you want to say. Of course life is hard. You’d have to be mad to believe otherwise. But you don’t say that. Instead, you start laughing, laughing until your sides split and your face splits. The laughter doesn’t really sound like your own. This can’t be your voice, can it? But still, you feel the rush of catharsis. Whoever told you that life was about suffering? All you’ve ever wanted was to laugh in their face.

This is the real Secret, you think. Not that ‘law of attraction’ bullshit. THIS. Milk and honey, wine and blood. Something older, older, older than human footsteps. This is whythere are gods. Gods are what you see when you pull back the curtain. Are the Mysteries all this obvious? Seized with sudden mania, you start dancing again, and your ecstatic screams rise to join the rest. You don’t remember your own name or who you were before you got here, or what your real face looks like. Maybe this isyour real face.

You are surrounded by people now, though you don’t remember leaving the tent. Their torches sting your eyes. Burning, burning, burning. They bare bright smiles, genuinely joyful, but with sharp and bloody teeth. They have snakes entwined in their hair and draped over their shoulders like scarves. Some have the faces of satyrs, bulls, goats, cats, foxes, bears, owls, moths, dragonflies, bees, kings… Some are alive and some are dead, but you can’t quite tell the ghosts from the living. They surround you in a great ring, joining hands, singing that strange and wild song that you’ve been half-hearing all night. Flowers spring up on the flagstones wherever you step. That bright, blooming energy that you felt before rises within your own chest. It’s in you now, the god is swelling inside you now. You no longer fit in your own skin. You flail, you thrash, you stamp your feet, you keep screaming: “EUOI! EUOI! IO DIONYSOS!”

Sweet is the pleasure the god brings us in the mountains.
when from the running revelers
he falls to the ground clad in his sacred fawnskin. Hunting
the blood of slaughtered goats for the joy of devouring raw flesh
[…]
Hail to the Roaring God, Bromios our leader! Euoi!
The ground flows with milk,
Flows with wine,
Flows with the nectar of bees.
–Euripides,Bacchae.

You are sitting on a swing, your legs pumping you back and forth. You don’t remember why. Something about the god having cursed the city’s women to hang themselves as punishment for having killed his worshippers, unless they swung in atonement and remembrance. But you know that can’t be the real reason — swinging is no punishment, not like this. It’s fun. Your heart swells as the swing arcs towards the sky. You feel like you could lift right off of it and go soaring through the heavens, towards the rising sun, with no wax wings to bring you down. Something about the swing feels so freeing,even if you are locked in place, not moving anywhere. Back and forth, back and forth… it’s lulling, like a song that was sung to you once in your distant childhood, or a dream you once had. When you get off, unsteady on your feet, you feel a burden has been lifted. 

Now the time has come. Now the flowers are here.

okay but coco and beau novel when @ Shelby Mahurin

Gods & Monsters did not let me catch a break, not even once

really thought Shelby would let my babies be happy once Nicholina got out of Lou

》 Serpent and Dove ; Shelby Mahurin

“ What do we do with the evidence?” I wiped my bloody hands on my hem. “We burn it. There’s a furnace downstairs.” My eyes lit up. “Yes! I set a warehouse on fire once. One match, and the whole thing went up like a smokestack.” He stared at me in horror. “You set a building on fire? ”

you’re in his DMs. i’m fighting him at knife-point. we are not the same.