closed starter for @citrusfield
“So, my mother called me the other night... and I picked up the phone only because it’s supposed to be late at night back in India, and I was worried that something might have happened, you know, since dad’s been sick for the last few months.” Indira sighed as she spoke up, and leaned back in her seat. “But the reason why she called me was to tell me that she had apparently found some guy to get me married off to. Can you believe it?”
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my ultimate wish for this next era is they finally let Ryan go like they did Andy. I'm so sick of not getting the content we deserve. All the gatekeeping of tour diaries and now the crumbs of concert footage in that "documentary" yesterday. he was working for months on that? that's why we didn't get tour diaries? all that footage just goes in his vault now? Please.
Hello! I'm sorry to hear you felt disappointed by yesterday's special. However, I feel compelled to comment on a few objective points in your ask.
- "Live & Backstage in Amsterdam" was directed by James Tonkin, the same director (and production team, Hangman) they worked with on "The Feeling of Falling Upwards" (and the unreleased "Live in Brixton" special). Ryan was credited as director of the documentary footage and as a contributing editor (1 of 3) but the live footage and overall final program was not his work.
- Regardless of the particular creatives involved here (or in any given project for that matter), the fact remains that any directors, producers, photographers, etc are all hired hands operating with full input and specific direction from the band. The band chose to make this a hybrid concert film/documentary. The band chose to condense the setlist the way they did. The band chose this format over the traditional tour diaries. What happens to the unused footage will be determined by the band. Ryan is a friend but he is first and foremost an employee and the band owns that footage. (Likewise, the MYT diaries are not sitting on Andy Deluca's hard drive because he's "gatekeeping" or too lazy to edit it. If the band wanted them released, they'd be released.) All this to say, of course you don't have to agree with the decisions but it's important to clarify who your complaint is with.
- This concept of the band or their collaborators "gatekeeping" and fans not getting what we "deserve" is, to be blunt, entitled and immature. Being a fan does not make an artist indebted to you. They make music, if you feel so inclined, you listen. That's it. That's the extent of the contract. Anything beyond that is optional for both parties. Any content an artist chooses to release is not out of obligation or generosity, it's part business strategy, part artistic vision. Artists do not owe you anything. This band does not owe you anything.
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Why Athy's coronation is a bigger deal than it seems
Or me overthinking WMMAP's worldbuilding
The narrative of Athy's coronation is so interesting to me. Perhaps it wasn't completely intended by Spoon, but its implications for the world of WMMAP are more than impressive.
What got me thinking about this is that, in real life, the heir to the throne is not "crowned" as crown prince, they are the person expected to succeed since birth. That would be Athy as Claude's only child, so why would she need a coronation? Apart from securing the position that people have been trying to steal from her since she was born. Well, if we look at how royal succession works in real life, until the 20th century crown princesses weren't considered heirs. Being the rulers of their nation by their own right was just not allowed.
They were more often than not the spouse of a crown prince, but even crown princesses by birth wouldn't inherit the throne in a male dominated succession. Which seems to be exactly Obelia's case, despite how its first ruler was a queen, Queen Ambrose, as stated in the novel by Athy. Some interesting events must have happened between Obelia's foundation and the present day for that to change.
We see some subtle signs of this in the manhwa. All the royal portraits only depict male rulers, and Athy mentions how immortal names were only granted by the emperor to his heir, the empress' son, that's why Claude received such a name (meaning "limping"). We aren't told that giving immortal names to the emperor's daughter was outright forbidden, but it's certainly unusual, as -apart from Ambrose- Athy is the only member of Obelia's royal family that we know has a name evocative of immortality. The named emperors, Anastasius, Aevum, Aeternitas, Caelum, were all males.
This makes Diana naming her daughter "Athanasia" incredibly daring. She wasn't the emperor, who has the right to choose an heir, she wasn't even Claude's wife, and yet Diana was the one who gave Athy her name.
So, following Obelia's succession and history, it looks like Athy was never expected to actually rule the empire or exert authority. Sure, she would be the empress, but she wouldn't be looked as an equal to her male predecessors. In the novel, both local and foreign nobles were very invested in who Athy was going to marry, saying that she needed to have a strong and capable husband, like Arlanta's prince Dice, since as a princess she was delicate and weak. Others (Roger) argued that she must marry an obelian nobleman, to maintain the power within the country. This was followed by a hilarious scene of Athy breaking the cutlery and shutting their mouths.
This kind of worldbuilding also explains why Roger was so focused on Ijekiel marrying Jennette, he wanted him or their future son to be emperor. As we see in the novel's LP side story, they never wanted Jennette to seize the throne, and she never got a coronation or the title of heir. The same could be said for the manhwa, Anastasius and Aeternitas wanted to use her as a puppet, not make her an empress, and in that way legitimize their accession to the throne.
Athy actually being considered the heir to the throne by her own merits and later crowned as such is pretty extraordinary for a world like Obelia's. Other series have coronation ceremonies for princes and princesses, so maybe Spoon thought it was a real thing, but both analyzed from a real life point of view and from within the narrative, it's an amazing achievement. Claude is obviously not someone that cares for Obelia's traditions, the nobles rescenting him for his origins, so it's even possible that the ceremony was the first of its kind.
Since Athy is Claude's only child, the reader would expect her to be the next ruler by default, but Obelia doesn't seem like a particularly equal society when it comes to both class and gender. This is even more apparent with the misogynistic treatment she received in the novel, or how a noble tried to belittle her in the manhwa. Even more polite nobles mentioned they thought of Athy as little more than "a cute little princess" before she became the emperor's proxy. So it was natural that, with Anastasius suddenly coming back to life, a good portion of the traditional noble faction would back him, despite being an overthrown tyrant.
In summary, Athy being crowned as heir is an extraordinary accomplishment in itself, breaking Obelia's tradition of perhaps centuries. I would dare to say, maybe an unprecedented event since Queen Ambrose's rule. And as the final chapter states, she would become an empress adored by the people and who would live on in history.
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My unpopular opinion is that Im0dna is a great example of "just because someone knows you the longest, doesn't mean they know you the best". They don't really underwater each other like other people in the party already do
Hi anon,
So the ask meme is done but I don't actually know if this was intended as part of that, as I also have the sort of personality that solicits unpopular opinions into my inbox anyway. (Also I am guessing underwater is a very funny autocorrect mishap for understand; I have been there).
Anyway, yeah. I think my favorite meta I've seen is that what Imogen and Laudna actually ask of each other is just to be there - because it is true that they have both lived incredibly lonely lives. For what it's worth I think loneliness/missing someone is perhaps the most common thread among Bells Hells, with a secondary theme being victims of circumstance/irrevocably altered by events beyond their control, and it frustrates me that a lot of framing of the ship ignores that Imogen and Laudna are not uniquely suited to understand this about each other. But it is true they have experienced loneliness that, in my opinion, is at least partially self-inflicted (also not unique) and that their response has been to be there for each other.
But it also means there's little room for change, because change threatens that status quo, and there's therefore no space to delve deeper. It's a little bit of the classic problem of if you start a romantic relationship with a friend and then break up, you might lose both the romantic relationship and the friendship. But it's more than that - Chetney and Imogen have zero romantic interest in each other and aren't even terribly close within the party, but when Chetney asks Imogen if she's okay Imogen is actually able to answer with some amount of honesty without pretending everything will work out, as she's not worried about making sure he feels comfortable. Deanna, who's known Imogen for less than a week, is able to address Imogen's constant use of psychic powers in a way that's not unkind but is in fact the honest sort of thing a best friend should be able to tell you. Or for another example, FCG's tendency to strongly urge people, including Imogen, to confront their pasts isn't always the most skilled, but it usually comes from a place of good intentions, whereas Imogen and Laudna's relationship feels...unconsciously transactional? I think we saw in the gnarlrock fight that they're just absolutely terrified of being in a fight and don't really know how to resolve conflict in a way that actually moves forward rather than smoothing things over. Like, it's not an unfair relationship - they're both getting the same companionship out of it - but there's not really space for one person to be angry at the other or to feel wronged. There's no room to breathe.
Anyway - I think the party split is really illuminating this! Imogen is benefiting immensely from this arc, as it both spotlights her relationships with other party members and gives her some time to process after being the central focus for so long. While I have to admit that Team Wildemount is the one I'm far more interested in for a number of reasons (fantastic guests, all the main PCs have cool plot hooks to explore, I love Uthodurn and Molaesmyr) I do hope that we get to see Laudna similarly have a chance to branch out (pun kind of intended).
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