woollymitts

[woollymitts]

My wife and I are possibly only a handful of people who absolutely adored this painful love story buried amongst all the doom gloom and imminent world ending. When Mitsuki curled up on the surface of the telescope *sob*.

Mitsuki & Hinata

Invasion s01e09

#invasion #invasion apple tv #mitsuki yamato #mitsuki x hinata #rinko kikuchi #hinata #my profile explains why this is catnio to me

[woollymitts]

Nah the posher the boarding school, the crappier the boarding houses. Generally due to shenanigans like bed jumping, throwing balls about inside and randomly kicking things.

Beatrice will have a poster of an RSC production of Twelfth Night on her wall because:

a Nothing is more gayer than Twelfth Night in the whole Shakespearean canon.

b, To cover up the arrow holes in the wall when her dorm-mate Camila picked up the new girl’s compound bow and tried to figure out how it worked.

Ava Silva wouldn’t call the Swiss apartment a crap-hole, but you know who absolutely did? Beatrice.

She’s a nun, she took the vow of poverty, but they’re not in a convent anymore and Beatrice sort of slipped back into her Swiss boarding school self.

Now, Beatrice never really said it out loud, but everyone sort of knew she came from wealth™️. (Horseback riding, Latin, archery, and hunting, her combined hobbies required so much space and so much leisure time, there’s no way she did not have a upper class upbringing.)

So imagine Beatrice in that apartment during the first week, with a faucet that wouldn’t stop dripping, a window that couldn’t be shut all the way, a TV that didn’t work, and the smell of deep-fried food wafting from below every night at seven.

Sister Private Education Type A Perfectionist would’ve totally yelled at their landlord about this crap-hole of a flat on the fourth day.

#mild compared to the shit my wife and best friend got up to a boarding school

[woollymitts]

Ava: I kinda dig Beyoncé

Camila: Whatever floats your boat Ava.

Beatrice: No, that’s buoyancy.

#warrior nun #avatrice #incorrect warrior nun

[woollymitts]

My biggest issue with Warrior Nun is that they portrayed archivists as people who would agonize over the true meaning of God instead of deranged magpies who have seen beyond the Void, grasped its information architecture, and shrugged it off to go work each day among the primary sources that we regularly destroy

Kristian, you can't sit with us at lunch.

#you don’t have to be Catholic but it helps as most of the lower roles have been passed down in families #many of the decent archivists are trained most have PhDs #being a multi linguist helps as the clientele is gloval #how to become a vatican archivist top tips

[woollymitts]

Camilla is filtering the new admissions list for undergrads, when Dr Ava Silva enters her office.

The academic drops her books at the end of her desk and boops the dancing flower on Camilla’s desk so that it starts on its endless repetition of “you are my sunshine” while she bounces on her converse in an approximation of the tempo the flower is conducting.

“I know you bought that for you and not for me.” Cam comments.

“But, Cam, the dancing flower is the all about you; upbeat, smiley and all things perky and luminous.”

Ava bends backwards against the wall of the office and looks surreptitiously down the hall through the half-cracked door to the newbie’s office.

Through the door frame she can see the recent appointee to the Edwards Chair of Palaeography and Diplomatic frowning at the arrangement of her recently unpacked books.

The new professor, Beatrice Young, stands gracefully and elegantly dressed in wide legged woollen high waisted trousers and a grey collarless shirt her fingers wrapped a book in hand. Her hair is tied in a neat bun low on the nape of her neck

Quite the contrast to Dr Silva who has adopted the haphazard dress style of the rest of her colleagues, attired in whatever she has to hand at the bottom of her wardrobe. In Ava’s case a navy shirt adorned with ducks with a forest green wool tank top. Her mustard corduroys finished her eclectic ensemble. Her eye bleeding garments, along with her tendency to literally skip between the dais, board and projector, rouses even the most hungover students to her early morning lectures on the Byzantine Empire.

Cam doesn’t even glance away from her spreadsheet her mouse hand clacking away when she asks.

“How is the new college mate?”

In lieu of an answer, Ava undoes her fiddly brass toggle to her satchel and pulls out a box of eggs.

“Open it”

When Camilla lifts the cardboard lid she sees nothing more innocuous than four eggs. On the inside lid, is a post it note. In a neat italic script it simply states, “Thank you for the gift, but I return the remainder as they did not work”. It is signed “B”. Cam turns the box opened back towards her friend. Ava explains,

“Our esteemed colleague and I were in the senior common room for supper on Friday and you know she came from Clare College”

“Yep, undergrad, post grad, post doc the whole nine yards, her CV said. I think that is why Prof Al hired her”

“Well. Clare College is full time catered. She was a tad perturbed by the lack of facilities on the weekend in our non Oxbridge backwater” At this, Cam rolls her eyes but returns to staring at her screen. Ava continues,

“I tried to do her a favour. Pointed out that her rooms had a double hot plate. All she needed was a pan, switch the hot plate on; and with these,”

at this Ava taps the top of the egg box,

“Voila ten minutes later, weekend sustenance sorted”

Cam looks up at Ava who has now settled, if sitting with one leg crossed on the desk opposite twirling a biro in her hand, while continuing to bounce her supporting leg could be counted as settling. Cam makes a mental note to switch off the break room coffee machine at 4pm and gives her friend a puzzled look,

“What did she mean by her note?”

Ava smirks and points to her damp hair.

“I almost missed my 9am lecture cos at 7:30 am the fire brigade were still refusing to let us back into our rooms. As adorable as my flannel PJs are I am sure the powers that be might have a problem with it.”

“It took another hour and a couple of other appliances pitching up to disable the sprinklers. And you know how narrow the staircase in the west tower is.”

Cam had forgotten that Dr Silva was on fourth floor of the neo Gothic Gilbert Scott building. A rackety Victorian elevator that frequently was out of order equated to access. Otherwise she toiled up two sets of spiral staircases that were set apart a narrow corridor.

Ava now had Cam’s full attention. She enunciates slowly,

“Apparently ‘they did not work’ as I failed in my instructions to mention that she might want to put some water in the pan with the eggs.”

Camilla digests the news carefully,

“So, should I share with her my mother’s recipe for nettle tea?”

She ducks before the biro makes its target.

Beatrice can’t cook is the hill I’ll willing die on, and I don’t mean ha ha naur, Beatrice messed up hollandaise sauce type of “can’t cook”.

I want Beatrice started two kitchen fires making boiled eggs kind of disastrous “can’t cook”.

#warrior nun #avatrice #sister beatrice #this made me think of a true story #i kept the setting and the Chair name from nostalgia

[woollymitts]

You HAVE NO IDEA. I was explaining to the guide in Ronda this spring that he is now sitting on a gold mine of warrior Nun tourists. I am back in Malaga region with a couple of my best buds from university. We all did Medieval History as undergrads together and are crushing WN so hard. We have a planned itinerary and everything.

Ava is flirting SO HARD in the attic of that bar. Poor Beatrice.

Man, Spain’s tourism bureau is going to be able to make a trip package consisting of touring convents in scenic places in Spain.

Is Mother Superion using outlook? Is this the modern day version of wearing a hair shirt for penance?

Also, I like how her laptop has a lighted OCS cross on the back. I’m taking this as more evidence that the OCS has a tech ops wing.

[woollymitts]

also

Beatrice: pax sit rebus

Ava: if only I could…

Rest of class: Eheu, amen.

Beatrice’s Latin Class

Beatrice: Now, let’s use the imperfect tense to construct a sentence. Ava, you go first.

Ava: Beatrice, mea mulier, est pulchra. (Beatrice, my girlfriend, is beautiful.)

Beatrice (blushing from head to neck): Thank you, Ava, but you did not use the imperfect tense.

Ava: Well that’s because I wasn’t done yet. Here goes the imperfect tense: (Clears throat) heri vesperi, poteram, poterāmus— (last night, I was able to, we were able to—)

Beatrice: Ava! Knock it off!

Camila, Lilith, Mary, and Yasmin: Poterāmus audīre! (We were able to hear it!)

Beatrice (trying to akido the embarrassment into submission yet failing): Fuck this! I’m rescinding! No more Latin lessons!

#warrior nun #avatrice #sister beatrice #latin gags

[woollymitts]

Hmm ok pick one?

God, you can just see Lilith being overly aggressive while playing field hockey or some other elite private school sport, can’t you?

#sister lilith #warrior nun headcanon #field hockey is brutal #but lacrosse is posher and scarier

[woollymitts]

Oh God, I fear for my children then

God, you can just see Lilith being overly aggressive while playing field hockey or some other elite private school sport, can’t you?

#also at boarding school #boy is rugby and field hockey nut #daughter plays defence in hockey as she likes to chat #she will play lacrosse second term #lambs to slaughter

[woollymitts]

Yipes is field hockey elite? I would see her more as a lacrosse girl.

God, you can just see Lilith being overly aggressive while playing field hockey or some other elite private school sport, can’t you?

#warrior nun #sister lilith

[woollymitts]

edited to fix broken image and also general darkness of pic.

More on WARRIOR NUN and their inspiration in female saints. Battle mode engaged aka Margaret of Antioch demon slayer

The thirteenth century work, The Golden Legend, by Jacobus Voraigne was an accessible collection of saints’ lives. In terms of popularity it only takes second place to the bible in terms of medieval circulation.

Little potted biographies of the saints (its technical name and the study of which is hagiography) were handed down over the ages and retold. In his tome, he has girls who defy their fathers, ignore the husbands and generally are completely badass in the name of God.

Premier among them is Margaret of Antioch, the third century wrestler of dragons.

The martyrdom ascetic is pretty grim folks and Voraigne is nothing if not typically explicit as to how she is treated. When the local provost wants her for a wife she refuses him for his paganism. Despite his threats she said she was willing to undergo any form of violence against her body for her faith:

> “Christ gave Himself over to death for me, and I desire gladly to die for Christ.”

> Then the provost commanded her to be hanged in an instrument to torment the people, and to be cruelly first beaten with rods, and with iron combs to rend and draw her flesh to the bones, insomuch, that the blood ran about out of her body, like as a stream runneth out of a fresh springing well.

Sorry to anyone thinking the fight scenes in WN were much too gory, you clearly haven’t read the original source material. Carding is a particularly barmy form of torture where a rod with a number of sharp hooks or teeth that several inches long are used to flay skin and flesh off the bone. Nice.

Lilith’s search for Vincent where she slashes dozens of guards is pretty much carding on steroids.

As a teen, like Ava, Margaret got her hands dirty and it is told she subjugated a dragon by being swallowed and used the cross she was carrying to explode out of the dragon’s stomach.

I would argue that this is the precursor to the cruciform sword. A powerful relic in the hands of a young woman who can slay the devil in the form of a dragon. And she rises out of evil reborn.

Hilarious side bar. Margaret also happens to be the patron saint of pregnant women and childbirth. Considering she burst out fully formed in a reverse Alien out a dragon’s stomach you can see how skewed clerical ideas were of all things maternal and female.

In another episode Margaret was recorded as getting a demon to the ground in a choke hold,

> She caught him by the head and threw him to the ground and set her foot on his neck, saying: “Lie still, thou fiend, under the feet of a woman.”

So basically saying hah, defeated and by a girl too, how embarrassing for you. This image remind you of any SMOL half Scottish nettle tea drinking nun having a go at demon vanquishing?

In terms of demon slaying the activity is not unusual amongst saints. Sorry I do not have Vauchez’s number crunching book on saints to hand to give specific numbers [relevant aside trying to write this from a phone rather than a library as I broke my leg on a ski slope and this passes the the time until I get repatriated].

Remember what I said about inductive reasoning in the first essay? When you read enough saints lives all the tropes tend to stick out. This is the medieval version of verisimilitude since the monkish reader would (and often did) scribble in the margins of the text, wow this must be true as this happen to this and that saint etc etc. They saw precedent as an endless reassurance of God’s will in action. An army of female and male saints battling the devil and winning was meat and drink to the medieval world view. A means of seeing agency in some select individuals where for most of time people felt shat upon from a very great height.

Addendum request for technical help.

Later in the series I wouldn’t mind digging into a deeper reading of the warrior nun’s journals along with the demonology tome that Beatrice and Father Vincent were reading in series one.

However I am struggling to capture decent screenshot of both pages so if anyone can help, I can furnish you with the benefit of my non private education where I did still learn Latin (Just a lot later than all the annoying kids who were able to translate Virgil off the hoof at tutorials while I spent hours in the library struggling through the vulgate.)

#avatrice #sister beatrice #warrior nun

[woollymitts]

More on WARRIOR NUN and their inspiration in female saints. Battle mode engaged aka Margaret of Antioch demon slayer

The thirteenth century work, The Golden Legend, by Jacobus Voraigne was an accessible collection of saints’ lives. In terms of popularity it only takes second place to the bible in terms of medieval circulation.

Little potted biographies of the saints (its technical name and the study of which is hagiography) were handed down over the ages and retold. In his tome, he has girls who defy their fathers, ignore the husbands and generally are completely badass in the name of God.

Premier among them is Margaret of Antioch, the third century wrestler of dragons.

The martyrdom ascetic is pretty grim folks and Voraigne is nothing if not typically explicit as to how she is treated. When the local provost wants her for a wife she refuses him for his paganism. Despite his threats she said she was willing to undergo any form of violence against her body for her faith:

> “Christ gave Himself over to death for me, and I desire gladly to die for Christ.”

> Then the provost commanded her to be hanged in an instrument to torment the people, and to be cruelly first beaten with rods, and with iron combs to rend and draw her flesh to the bones, insomuch, that the blood ran about out of her body, like as a stream runneth out of a fresh springing well.

Sorry to anyone thinking the fight scenes in WN were much too gory, you clearly haven’t read the original source material. Carding is a particularly barmy form of torture where a rod with a number of sharp hooks or teeth that several inches long are used to flay skin and flesh off the bone. Nice.

Lilith’s search for Vincent where she slashes dozens of guards is pretty much carding on steroids.

As a teen, like Ava, Margaret got her hands dirty and it is told she subjugated a dragon by being swallowed and used the cross she was carrying to explode out of the dragon’s stomach.

I would argue that this is the precursor to the cruciform sword. A powerful relic in the hands of a young woman who can slay the devil in the form of a dragon. And she rises out of evil reborn.

Hilarious side bar. Margaret also happens to be the patron saint of pregnant women and childbirth. Considering she burst out fully formed in a reverse Alien out a dragon’s stomach you can see how skewed clerical ideas were of all things maternal and female.

In another episode Margaret was recorded as getting a demon to the ground in a choke hold,

> She caught him by the head and threw him to the ground and set her foot on his neck, saying: “Lie still, thou fiend, under the feet of a woman.”

So basically saying hah, defeated and by a girl too, how embarrassing for you. This image remind you of any SMOL half Scottish nettle tea drinking nun having a go at demon vanquishing?

In terms of demon slaying the activity is not unusual amongst saints. Sorry I do not have Vauchez’s number crunching book on saints to hand to give specific numbers [relevant aside trying to write this from a phone rather than a library as I broke my leg on a ski slope and this passes the the time until I get repatriated].

Remember what I said about inductive reasoning in the first essay? When you read enough saints lives all the tropes tend to stick out. This is the medieval version of verisimilitude since the monkish reader would (and often did) scribble in the margins of the text, wow this must be true as this happen to this and that saint etc etc. They saw precedent as an endless reassurance of God’s will in action. An army of female and male saints battling the devil and winning was meat and drink to the medieval world view. A means of seeing agency in some select individuals where for most of time people felt shat upon from a very great height.

Addendum request for technical help.

Later in the series I wouldn’t mind digging into a deeper reading of the warrior nun’s journals along with the demonology tome that Beatrice and Father Vincent were reading in series one.

However I am struggling to capture decent screenshot of both pages so if anyone can help, I can furnish you with the benefit of my non private education where I did still learn Latin (Just a lot later than all the annoying kids who were able to translate Virgil off the hoof at tutorials while I spent hours in the library struggling through the vulgate.)

#warrior nun #saints #mad hagiographical shit #just my random thoughts #i think i may be high from the drugs for my broken leg #also apparently did not waste eight years of my life on ninja nuns

[woollymitts]

avatrice and jealousy!

Welcome to my TED Talk where I talk about Avatrice and how differently they display jealousy! Yes a real post follows, this is not one of these posts that are left unfi-

Okay, before I talk about the differences between them, let me just say how much I love that we got to see both of them be jealous, even though we got to see many scenes with jealous!Bea and only one scene with jealous!Ava. But the fact that we saw jealousy from both sides solidifies in a very subtle way that what is going on between Ava and Bea is 100% mutual. The show wants us to know that these two have feelings for each other. They don’t make it one-sided for the sake of a bigger surprise later on, but instead they’re saying from the beginning of the season that “these two cuties are BOTH falling in love with each other and we’re serving you a slowburn, slow cooking delicious dish”! it’s not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when” they are going to act on it! And as a sapphic viewer I totally appreciate that!

I love the different reactions we get from Ava and Bea, and how these differences align perfectly with their respective personality.

Jealous!Bea is sad and a little bit pessimistic.

As far as Bea knows, Ava has only shown interest in a man before and seeing her talking with Miguel further “proves” to her that Ava would never be interested in her that way. We see a lot of causion towards Miguel, which to be fair is not just because of jealousy, after all they just met the guy, but jealousy is definitely a factor. We see Bea question Ava’s interest in working with him on multiple ocassions, but every single time she tries to do it with discretion because she doesn’t want to allow herself to show her desires. She’s a nun after all and she’s had complicated feelings about her sexuality. What’s also interesting is that what gives Bea away are small things, like her eyes or the short and sharp tone of her voice. The rest of her face usually doesn’t give much away. Another interesting fact is that although Bea is for sure jealous, she doesn’t stop Ava from doing what she has in mind, like for example, going after Miguel to see what he’s up to when she sees him on the street. Bea’s respectful of Ava’s choices and also Bea can’t say no to Ava.

Jealous!Ava on the other hand is so annoyed.

And so “loud” as well. Seeing Bea and that girl talking makes Ava’s blood boil! You can also see a very clear sign of disgust in her face when that other girl makes Beatrice smile. Bea is a person who doesn’t laugh/smile that often, and when she does Ava is probably the reason why. The audacity that this girl has to come and make Bea smile and touch her! Ava probably thinks “hOw DaRE sHe”. Think about Ava, who probably hasn’t talked about her feelings to Bea to give Bea the space and time she needs to come to terms with it. Ava, who sometimes acts without thinking but she’s been doing her best to keep it together and not let it slip her mouth that she has sinful thoughts about Bea. Ava, who’s patiently waiting for the right moment to come, only for some random girl to show up and get Bea’s attention. NO, not on Ava’s shift! 

So Bea’s jealousy is displayed more but for the most part she’s more stoic and reserved, and it also comes from a place of protectiveness of Ava! While with Ava, we only get a glimpse of her jealousy, but hers is a more obvious one, which alignes perfectly with Ava’s impulsivity!

[woollymitts]

Just got to the end of chapter six. YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING SADIST.

Beatrice hangs her head. She imagines the Nishiki Market and how a single step backwards, out of the way of the human tidal wave, would have seen her back at Ava’s side within twelve hours, so help her God. She might have helped with the recovery or become a gleeful distraction.

All she ended up being was continents and universes away.

“Fuck,” she huffs in frustration.

“Babygirl, that may be the best thing I have ever heard you say.”

Mary barks a laugh so abrupt that half the people at the gate turn to look. Beatrice straightens in her seat out of well-worn habit and rolls her eyes.

Chapter 7. Wait On. 

#off to ski a few runs round the Matterhorn as I am so pissed

[woollymitts]

Why WARRIOR NUN is the ultimate homage to Female Sainthood and why you should care

OK this is going to be longish series as I have so many opinions. The show has revived my love for all things female sainthood and relics and all that holy stuff.

As a fantasy series embedded within Roman Catholic Reformation ideas and refracted through the baroque aesthetic, it is deliberately too much. Too hyperbolic. Like adolescent girls losing their shit over their latest crush the TV show is just way way over the top in the very best way.

This is where high and low culture mashes together into a gorgeous multi-layered lasagna of meaning. I love how the show doesn’t give two hoots about cultural hierarchies.

I wrote a PhD about female sainthood way back in the Ice Age. In particular, I loved how some of the brightest and best of these women transgressed, breaking tons of papally sanctioned rules and generally went fuck the status quo and clerical authority.

First, a little primer in how to view the world with a medieval perspective. It is often refracted through lenses we would term as allegorical and fantastical.

There are some Italian scholars that hold that all the reports of demons, angels and dragons were due to everyone being basically either drunk or high. Water awash with bacteria was going to kill you. So in the West to make it sterile it was brewed, ecoli being no match for alcohol. Everyone,everywhere, and much of the time, was inebriated.

In particular, the argument goes that the majority of the European population also ate some form of rye bread which was contaminated with fungi that had hallucinogenic properties. In essence, people swallowed the fantastical stories while supping on their daily portion of magic mushroom bread.

I happen to think this is too reductivist. They lived in a world where scientific thinking as we understand was long forgotten and epistemologically remote that it is yet to be discovered. The Enlightenment, Renaissance thinking and scientific discovery were a couple of hundred years off.

Further, all written communication is within the monopoly of the educated religious elite conversing with each other in Latin. The Church dictated terms of reference of life to the rest of the population for about one thousand years. The super highway of thought was copyrighted in its entirety by the Catholic Church.

It was not a con trick. The medieval thinker just approached what they saw and felt through inductive rather than deductive reasoning. Interpretation starts from the premise of where have I seen this before?

The monkish scholars would run to the library and consult works that clued them in on what they observed in the world around them. They applied their scholarship within terms they found familiar and reassuring and therefore real. Remember this: distinguishing between inductive and reductive thinking will help you understand the medieval mindset on its own terms without our modern judgements cluttering up their view of the world.

The second most important thing to remember and something the TV series does so well is that the veil between what is corporeal, ie of this world, and incorporeal, not of this world and sometimes interpreted as spiritual, is wafer thin.

It is a credit to the medieval imagination that they could escape into their minds when the reality of existence is that of subsistence and survival for the vast majority. Let’s take how circumscribed their geographical limits are as an example.

In a short lifetime of 30 years, if you are lucky, the distance travelled and your world in probably about a days walk. We are talking 15 miles max. If you have a horse a bit further. In practical terms, that meant your home, the land you worked, where you paid your tithe to the local lord and the market place which was extra exciting on high days and holy days.

So in this landscape apart from the local lord’s manor or barns the largest edifices on the landscape was the churches. Unlike your wattle and daub shitty house, it was made from the latest materials of dressed stone and vaulted in tufa. The spire dominated the landscape. Its bell regulated your day. On a Sunday you would sit in the nave staring at the judgement fresco showing heaven and hell while a priest intoned something magical in a language that was incomprehensible as a sign of who was spiritually and materially dominant.

Areala, Ava, Lilith and all the halo bearers are not merely a fictional exaggeration to the medieval populace. They come out of a cosmography of sainthood and female communities that are insanely muscular in ambition compared to our expectations of what women can achieve. Current girl power and ambition is anaemic compared to what those women wanted then.

Hey, girl, in the twenty first century you can be whatever you want- a CEO, a doctor, an anodyne influencer of your fellow tik tok addicts; the president of the US (oh hang on that one is still buffering)

The saints’ lives are a written cornucopia of all the slayers of dragons in powerful men. Women who wanted and got so much more and were written up in lore. Statues were erected in their honour. Communities were founded in their name. And little men who overawed and slightly freaked out tried to keep up and tell their stories in a more palatable manner.

There are literally thousands of examples recorded and collected by the Catholic church. So far as ten thousand and counting. The project in earnest began three centuries ago when the church’s response to the Protestant Reformation was to double down on the stuff for which they were excoriated by their more pious and puritanical critics.

- preposterous claims of ability of items of dubious provenance to cure ills ie relic collection and pilgrimage.

- the miracles performed by the elite of the church ie those proposed as saints in an attempt to assert the dominance of the spiritual over the material world.

The church came out of the closet on this. Actually it sashayed down the religious runway of hyperbolic campery in all its baroque finery. The Roman Catholic church were telling their opponents that their worship was just so much cooler than the pared down asceticism currently doing the rounds. And they used and promoted their saints to provide a techni-coloured ultra saturated with spiritual dynamite exemplars.

As a preview I want to pick a few female examples from this rich tapestry and discuss how they relate to all things Warrior Nun. The ones we can do some more in depth analysis on are

Margaret of Antioch Slayer of Dragons. Enough said

Hildegarde of Bingen. I give you the ultimate Medieval Renaissance woman. Medic, composer, mystic, scholar, abbess, counsellor to kings and popes. Worked out how blood ciculated through the body five hundred years before a dude took credit for it. She came line of women who liked telling the pope off starting with Mary Magdalene and including Catherine of Siena

Joan of Arc; proto Ripley taking on the alien English for the namby pamby Dauphin.

Benedetta Carlini. The poor Florentine scribes seriously lost their shit over her. The church authorities were investigating in the seventeenth century for potential beatification In a series of interviews, her doings in the abbey with her companion cause so much scandal. It had them reversing that process so fast everyone got monastic whiplash. Ignore the Verhoeven version; it is shit and doesn’t do her justice on any level.

#warrior nun #sister lilith #sister beatrice #ava silva #saints #nuns

[woollymitts]

Ok I can see how Catherine would be an excellent choice for over achieving Catholic parents. I would have thought the saintly inspiration for choosing the name would be Catherine of Siena who got promoted up to the status of Doctor of the Church.

I can also see them thinking but also too popular as in my convent school we literally had five Catherines and five Claires in my class of thirty. So they might also have followed it up with Julian after Julian of Norwich, one of the most famous of the English mystics. Only other hoity toity mega high Catholics and those in orders would get the reference. That would suit them as they could get to pontificate to the incognescenti their snotty middle name choice if people misheard it for Julia.

Elizabeth would remind them too much of the Reformation and destruction of the Catholic church under the Tudors. (I can see them holding a grudge for half of a millenia).

Now interestingly since the chosen name for ordination is carefully considered, I can see how our over thinking Beatrice would have enjoyed the intellectual pun of Beatrice which is from Latin adjective “beatus-a-um” and means “blessed”.

The name choice is so revealing. In her new life she sees the act of ordination, taking on the clothes, life and name as a transformation of a sinner to becoming blessed by God’s grace. There is something so sweetly earnest in the choice. Also incredibly sad as she has internalised her parents’ disapproval. But quietly optimistic blessed Beatrice was able to at least pick a name that is a step towards self-validation.

“What do you think is Beatrice’s name then?”

First of all, even if her birth name isn’t Beatrice, she can just stay Beatrice, since she did get this name assigned to her (or perhaps she was baptized a Beatrice) when she entered novitiate, so like, this is her name now. 

But in the rare case that neither of her names, given and confirmation, is Beatrice and that she wants to go back to the name her parents gave her instead of keeping the one that Ava (and the rest of her chosen fam) knows her as, I think she’d be something like a Catherine or perhaps a Rebecca.

While I do have a particularly soft spot for the name Alexandra, I don’t think her conservative, ship-daughter-to-the-convent type parents would choose that. So yeah, I’m headcanoning her as either a Catherine Elizabeth (you seriously cannot get more Catholic and British than this), or a Rebecca Charlotte (good, middle ground type name that’s posh-ish but without the asshole energy attached to it) (I am looking at you, Felicity Rosamund.)

#warrior nun #sister beatrice #warrior nun headcanon #avatrice #i wanted beatrix as my daughter’s name #but my non Catholic wife so nixed it for weirdness #so Felicity it was because that wee poppet is such a source of happiness and followed up with Eleanor cos Eleanor Rooselvelt #and Eleanor of Acquitsine obvs

[woollymitts]

I vote for “Bae Bea” as Ava wouldn’t be able to resist the nun pun.

my hot takes and no i will not change my mind:

going to meet KTY halfway and say that ava calls bea “boo-boo” as a joke in public sometimes or amongst their friends.

bea definitely calls ava “love”— “hey love,” “there’s my love,” “love, can you pass me the tea?”

she also uses “darling” as KTY said, but there’s 2 kinds. a kind of casual, teasing one—“darling… what are you talking about?” and “what has my darling gotten into now?”—and in quiet moments together “my sweet darling” and “i’ve missed you darling” always followed by a kiss to the middle of ava’s palms or the corners of ava’s closed eyes.

ava calls bea “babe” and “baby” because it just comes out so easily. but she also uses the occasional “hon” and “honey.” but in their quiet moments, its “my bea” and just her name. she says beatrice’s name with such devotion—ava doesn’t believe in some church’s god, but she believes in bea and the unending love she offers—far more love than whatever god has ever granted.