#Orpheus is singing from his own experience and actually asking HIMSELF those things yet he echoes Hades' own thoughts perfectly

[hurricanes-art]

i am interested in your hades au, would you mind giving some details about it? 👁 it looks really interesting

[This AU is from these drawings!]

*cracks knuckles* Ok! I actually got enough sleep last night so I'm finally feeling up to explaining this au lmao

Also I hope that by “some details” you meant “way way too many” because I am nothing if not long winded. Also @hades-hellsite asked for context too, here you go

The central premise is that, after he dies, Achilles manages to make an arrangement with Hades that allows both him and Patroclus to stay in Elysium together. He's not employed to work at the house and he never becomes Zagreus's combat trainer.

Hades makes a few attempts to find Zagreus a different teacher among the shades of great warriors, but being skilled does not make someone able to teach. And being able to teach one way doesn't mean someone will be good for every student. When Zagreus doesn't learn well with the few mentors Hades tries, which he barely gives a chance to breathe anyway, he's quick to decide that he must have no martial ability and declares Zagreus a failure in that as he has about so many things.

This has two major effects on Zagreus before his escape attempts begin. One, without any chance to actually grow into aptitude in combat, he's left without anything substantial to put his energy into and, more importantly, he's left without anything he feels good at and that gives value to his efforts. Two is that, in Achilles' absence, very few people in the house give him any care and support untwisted by the politics of the house and the judgment of his father. There is Orpheus, kind to him before Hades locks him away for refusing to sing, Hypnos, willing to put the house to sleep so he can find the truth though jumbled up in his own problems, and Nyx.

Nyx is the only one to aid Zagreus when he decides to try to escape. She contacts Olympus and weaves careful lies to win their support and blesses his departure. She's also the only one who believes that Zagreus has the slightest chance of escaping. Already in canon, most everyone tells him there no way he'll make it out, but here, it's so much worse. He doesn't know how to fight, his initial attempts are pitiful and his progress negligible, and near everyone lashes out at him to get back in line and stop making things worse.

He doesn't even have the Infernal Arms. Achilles is the one who brings them to him in canon; here Zagreus takes a simple bronze sword from one of the house's many displays of weapons from wars long past. He thanks the Fates that the Styx restores it the same way it does his body when he dies because he nicks and dulls the edges every time.

Despite all the disadvantages, Zagreus throws himself into escaping with unshakable determination, bone deep stubbornness. He picks up his sword and will figure out how to use it himself. Experience will be his teacher. He dies over and over and he watches his enemies and learns how they move and how he must react, mimicking their attacks for his own use and adjusting and adjusting after each failure. And contrary to Hades' adamant belief, Zagreus is very intelligent and learns brilliantly when allowed to and he grows stronger and stronger.

There's no teacher more savage than experience in something like this, though. The pursuit is agonizing and the cost is enormous and adjusting to this ceaseless violence feels impossible.

Much of my interest in this idea is how the added strain on his circumstances and relationships affects Zagreus and his mental state. At his best, Zag looks a lot like he does in canon, with his laurels unfurled and vibrant, and his feet glowing hot, but he rarely feels his best here. His laurel leaves curl in dry and crisp, muted like the leaves of autumn. Flakes of ash and soot build up over his legs and encase more and more as he suffers. So deep is his feeling of failure and being trapped that it affects him physically.

Not always, though. His flames respond to his emotions, burn brighter in his passion. Enthusiasm, love, fervor, bliss, anger set him glowing.

After a brutally drawn out span of time, Zagreus meets Achilles and Patroclus in Elysium and tbh, the rest of my interest is really in how the altered circumstances change the evolution of their relationships with each other. The pair of warriors were never separated for an extended time and Achilles is less downtrodden and resigned and Patroclus is less bitter and abrasive when Zagreus stumbles upon them.

They don't fight him, which Zagreus counts among his greatest blessings, although Achilles still seems to have an interest. It makes him twitchy and he jumps when Achilles finally lifts his spear and swings it around in his third time in their little glade only to bump the flat of the blade against elbow and tell him to keep it in more towards his body. Zagreus blinks rapidly at him before adjusting his arm.

Achilles helps him here and there, tips and tricks and valuable advice, but he never gives anything near the thorough instruction he did in canon. On one hand, he doesn't need to. Zagreus is a self made fighter and it leaves him with weaknesses but it is also a powerful thing. He is unpredictable and incredibly adaptable and he only continues to improve.

On the other hand, there's no room for it. Achilles is gentle with his guidance, but Zagreus is rubbed raw by all the fighting he's done and all that still depends on it. He doesn't want to always focus on the weapon in his hands. Patroclus notices and curbs Achilles' input when it exceeds its bounds. He sits aside and observers carefully when they spar. Zagreus doesn't need another's direction which is fine by him, who's lost all desire for combat. He gives his aid through his assortment of trinkets that carry Zagreus further to the surface.

Zagreus barely knows what to do with himself in the face of their care. He's so unaccustomed to such generous and genuine support, interest devoid of expectation or blame. As familiarity between the three of them grows, their interactions grow warmer, more tender and comfortable. Their care lays on a foundation, not a hinge, and Zagreus grapples with understanding that he really can lean on it. It all leaves him so uncertain yet so desperate because he wants more than anything to have joy and conversation and company with others where he doesn't shoulder heavy guilt from unspoken accusations over his escaping the house and to have a place he feels he belongs without being an intrusion.

He does at first believe he's intruding, though. Intruding on their time together in the peace of Elysium. It takes them time to convince him that they value his presence immeasurably. The opportunity to stay together in the Underworld has been invaluable for Achilles and Patroclus, but the peace of Elysium is a deceptive thing. It wears away and prickles at them, pressing down in odd warping ways. Patroclus is beyond pleased to have the war behind him and that it can never force him to fight again, and despite Achilles retaining an interest in competition and combat, he does feel the same way. Having a cause though, something to believe in and worth devoting their efforts towards... They didn't realize how deeply they missed it until Zagreus. It is revitalizing. They thrive in his genuine, boundless kindness and long to support him.

The drawings of Orpheus arguing with Hades and Zagreus fighting with Nyx is from one of my plot point ideas. Later down the line, together, Hades, Persephone, and Nyx agree to forbid Zagreus from seeing Achilles and Patroclus at Nyx's behest. Similarly to how she talks about Dusa in canon, she sees mortal shades as beneath his station and that it's highly unbecoming for the prince to be consorting with them. Zagreus fights against the idea ferociously and is only smothered by the threat that, if he seeks them out anyway, Hades will void Achilles' agreement and have Patroclus moved to the proper plane of the Underworld.

It crushes Zagreus. He loves them and cares about them so much and being torn apart from them is a wound that cuts so deep. But even more than that, what breaks him open most, is the fact that it came from someone he cared for and trusted most. Nyx was the one person in the House he could depend on most and this betrayal at her hand is devastating. And for such a worthless reason as propriety and godly vanity. It's not her place to force those upon him. It hurts Zagreus to the core.

Orpheus is the only one willing to stick up for him in this, deeply empathetic to the grief of being separated from loved ones and well acquainted with the fact that such punishments will only damage, never correct. After all, his stint of punishment in Erebus didn't revive his desire to sing, it was Zagreus's dedication and vibrancy that did that. One of the many invaluable gifts Zagreus gave him, including reuniting him with Eurydice, making him happier than he'd been since her death. Orpheus can't keep biting his tongue when all these gods refuse to see any of this.

It all comes to a head dramatically and painfully and I've thought of a few variations on how it would play out. I'll leave it for now though, I might draw it or write it later >:3c  Also this got really long lol. Hopefully the idea is at least somewhat interesting!

And here, have the lines from these two drawings because I like the way they look

#hades game #hades supergiant #zagreus #achilles #patroclus #nyx #orpheus #god of ash au #which is a tag i might not use again lol #my art #my writing #i guess #this is so long please forgive me #i had one thought of achilles not working at the house and it drove me to madness #apparently

[tatticstudio55]

Dany, ghosts and mythical figures

Pasting it under the cut because it’s a bit long. I wrote this for a colloquy that’s currently scheduled for the end of May, and I try to be optimist but it’s in France, I live in Canada, all our borders are currently closed and it doesn’t look like things are about to get better anytime soon, so... I though I’d try translating it into english (warning: it might not come off as too polished) and share it here, at the very least 😔. Que sera sera. Aaaaand tagging you @tomakeitbeautifultolive

The term "ghost" used here therefore refers to this role of intermediary, or passer, between the worlds concerned – Cécile Sakai

 The loss, the mourning and the reality of the in-between, or intermediate states, occupy a fundamental place in Daenerys’s story. She was born in mourning, exiled from birth and leads a wandering existence from an early childhood. No matter where she goes, she’s seen as a stranger. She exists, but does not really belong anywhere. Her story is shaped by the reality and experience of the intermediary.

The first thing we notice about her, and from her first appearance in the novels, is the way in which the author uses the character's physical appearance to indicate a symbolic proximity to the ghostly, or the surreal: her pallor, her small size, her typical Valyrian features. Even the dress, chosen for her by Illyrio Myopatis, seems to enhances Daenerys’s “immateriality”:

Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her fingers like water. She could not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It frightened her. She pulled her hand away. "Is it really mine?" – AGOT, Dany I

The dress is meant as a reflection of the wearer. Daenerys’s eyes are the same color as the dress, (or a close match – amethyst and plum), her hair the same liquidity (“The girl brushed her hair until it shone like molten silver”), her body the same ethereal characteristics ("She is a vision, Your Grace, a vision," he told her brother. "Drogo will be enraptured." "She's too skinny," Viserys said.). Beyond the matter of the body itself, Daenerys shows some parallels with vampirism, ritually “absorbing” elements which quite clearly symbolize life forces. Pregnant, she eats a stallion's heart "raw and bloody", in accordance with the Dothrake custom that believes it will give the child strength, swiftness and fearlessness. The scene takes place in a nocturnal environment and the text very much emphasize the "bloodiness" of the ceremony. Daenerys later receives, and in more dire circumstances, her first “initiation” to blood magic with Mirri Maz Duur (blood magic resting on the vampirical tenet that only death can pay for life). And when Drogo's funeral pyre burns –

The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. – AGOT, Dany X

Here she appears not quite “human”, glowing and feeding from the fire, whereas the flames are depicted in a very anthropomorphic way. The "dancers" spin, twirl and whirl in a vision that celebrates sensuality and physical vigor. Daenerys merges with the flames and is reborn from them, but her own body is no longer able to give life.

Subsequently, the books bring forefront the foils between the ever-growing physical presence of the dragons and the frail-like body of their mother. Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion fall into every physical extreme: extreme size and strength (getting there), the extreme amount of food they eat and the heat they give off. They "steam" in the cold, at night, while around them the khalasar disintegrate, Daenerys' flesh "falls away" and she becomes "lean and hard as a stick" (ACOK, Dany I). Drogon’s fire saves Daenerys from actual vampirical beings (the Undyings). The foils between mother and dragon(s) reaches a climax in Dany IX, ADWD, when Daenerys confronts an unleashed (and much larger) Drogon in the arena of Daznak:

In the smoldering red pits of Drogon's eyes, Dany saw her own reflection. How small she looked, how weak and frail and scared. – ADWD, Dany IX

Where Drogon is the “body” and Dany the “ghost”, the overwhelming physical presence of the former emphasizes and amplifies the stark opposite of the latter. Dany, like the first dress she was given, is akin to water and keep slipping through people’s fingers: those who hunt her, those who want her dead, those who want to marry her and those who want to use her.

Laughter erupted all around them. Even the old man joined in. "You saw her, then," said the redheaded boy behind them. "You saw the queen. Is she as beautiful as they say?"

I saw a slender girl with silvery hair wrapped in a tokar, he might have told them. Her face was veiled, and I never got close enough for a good look. – ADWD, Tyrion XI

Here, for instance, those who speak are on the hunt for stories, tales and rumors about the queen. Evasive, Tyrion withholds what he knows. At the same time, he is himself in the position of the frustrated chaser (she was veiled, she was too far away). The losses and bereavements already experienced by characters like Jorah Mormont and himself add an additional angle to the matter: Jorah sees Daenerys as a second Lynesse Hightower (the wife he lost) and Tyrion, while on his “grand travel” to Meereen, asks left right and center "Where do whores go?” (in reference to Tysha, the wife he also lost.) They are both haunted by the ghost of beloved women, which Daenerys gradually comes to replaces, as "perfect" and "ideal" as the first ones, but no less out of reach. Her geographical location in ADWD - Meereen is under siege by sea and land, boats no longer pass through Slaver’s Bay - reveals and hides a more metaphysical gap between Daenerys and her "pursuers": Jorah, Tyrion, Aegon, Euron, Victarion. Quentyn Martell is the exception, not that it ends well for him.

Orpheus and Persephone

-Orpheus

Dany is established very early on as a type of “psychopomp” (for lack of a better word) character: a character who passes from one metaphysical space to another (typically the "world of the dead" and the "world of the living"). Despite her belonging to the "living" world, Dany is pushed into spaces that are heavily associated with death, as well as in roles bearing resemblances with at least two psychopomp figures from Greek mythology: Orpheus and Persephone. Her overall narrative has an orphic tone ("If I look back, I am lost"), but the myth first really appears when Dany plea with Mirri Maz Duur to save Drogo's life:

Mirri Maz Duur tossed a red powder onto the coals. It gave the smoke a spicy scent, a pleasant enough smell, yet Eroeh fled sobbing, and Dany was filled with fear. But she had gone too far to turn back now. – AGOT, Dany VIII

The one rule that Orpheus must follow (to not look back at Eurydice) is meant to keep humans from witnessing directly god(s)’s doings. Mirri Maz Duur imposes the same rule on Dany:

"I will stay," Dany said. "The man took me under the stars and gave life to the child inside me. I will not leave him."

"You must. Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will wake powers old and dark. The dead will dance here this night. No living man must look on them." – AGOT, Dany VIII

Like Dany, Mirri is a psychopomp figure with an ambiguous characterization (the author hints more directly of her ties to the supernatural than he does with Dany). The Lhazarean occupies two realms simultaneously, both intertwining and merging in her presence: a mythical realm from an immemorial time/space, and the realm of the ordinary:

Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife appeared in her hand. Dany never saw where it came from. It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with ancient glyphs. - AGOT, Dany VIII

The knife’s unknown origins can be interpreted in two ways. Dany does not know where and when it was made - the only conclusion she can draw is that it must be "very old" – nor does she know how (or where) Mirri managed to conceal the weapon. As a result, Mirri comes off as a symbolic embodiment of the mythical realm that’s intertwining with the “normal” space (the tent):

The tent was aglow with the light of braziers within. Through the blood-spattered sandsilk, she glimpsed shadows moving.

Mirri Maz Duur was dancing, and not alone. – AGOT, Dany VIII

The mythical space, however, ends up overflowing its confines - the walls of the tent - onto the ordinary realm, and effectively swallows it. The scenes inside and outside the tent, “bruised-red sky”, Qotho "dancing”, “arakh dancing with arakh”, the Dothraki shouting; Mirri’s “inhuman wails”, the dancing shadows, the brazier, the "bloody bath" inside, are all in perfect symmetry with each other. Then,

No, she shouted, or perhaps she only thought it, for no whisper of sound escaped her lips. She was being carried. Her eyes opened to gaze up at a flat dead sky, black and bleak and starless. Please, no. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur's voice grew louder, until it filled the world. The shapes! she screamed. The dancers!

Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent. – AGOT, Dany VIII

Here, for instance, the text really insists on the ever-growing presence of the mythical space. The last sentence of the chapter ("Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent") deliberately draws a foil between the reduced space of the tent and the immensity of the sky, somehow making the tent appears much bigger than it really is. And the more it grows, the more it pushes the boundaries of the ordinary space. When Dany open her eyes, the sky itself is remindful of the Asphodels. This is an initiation, i.e., Dany passing from one realm to another for the first time. The "behavior" of the mythical space (the tent) also bring up the question: is Dany the one moving towards said space, or is it the expanding space that’s moving towards her? The tension between the mythical and the ordinary is projected onto its two main actors, Daenerys and Mirri. There’s an underlying, thematic reciprocity established between them, one projecting a distorted reflection of the other, the first even going so far as to assume the role of the second after thanking her for her “lessons". Roles, identities, functions, times and spaces interpenetrate and repel each other, and Dany passes fairly fluidly from one state to another. We talked about how Mirri seemed to have a foot in an ancient, mythical time, but in her next chapter, it is Dany who finds herself trapped in a feverish dream filled with ghosts (her deceased brothers) and mythical figures. The dream is essentially a retelling of Orpheus in the underworld: chased by a cold shadow, Dany runs across a stone hall lined with specters, towards a tiny, faraway red door that’s presumably the only way out. She must reach the door at all costs without looking back, even as the ghosts of loved ones, dead or alive (Drogo, Jorah, Rhaego), appear and vanish before her eyes.

After the tent comes the Red Waste in ACOK, another hardly disguised “underworld” landscape:

“That way lies the red lands, Khaleesi. A grim place and terrible, the riders say."

The rivers they crossed were dry as dead men's bones. Their mounts subsisted on the tough brown devilgrass that grew in clumps at the base of rocks and dead trees.

The Dothraki began to mutter fearfully that the comet had led them to some hell.

The next pool they found was scalding hot and stinking of brimstone. – ACOK, Dany I

Not faring too well, the Khalasar soon turns into a procession of deads (the sick, the starving, the dying and those who died for real). In proper ghost fashion, travel is generally done at night. When they finally reach "Vae Tolorro", Irri ironically worries that the place might be haunted, while in fact they are most likely the “ghosts” there. The place is nicknamed "gardens of the dead", but no one dies there, except for a woman bitten by a scorpion. Coincidentally, Eurydice also died of a poisoned bite.

Seemingly, there’s a pattern with the underworld-coded spaces visited by Dany: each one is larger than the previous one. First a tent, followed by the Red Waste (and a brief “halt” in the HotU), then by Slaver’s Bay. Meereen is a grotesque look-alike of the greek underworld: located in desertic lands, rich in precious stones, with its own brand of Styx ("the slow brown Skahazadhan”), walls topped with “rows of harpy heads with open mouths”, peoples inside worshiping the gods of Ghis with blood sacrifices in the fighting pits. In ADWD, thousands of fleeing astaporian, crippled by hunger and illness, many of them on the brink of death, are crowding under the walls of Meereen. And Dany happens to be this underworld’s queen.

-Persephone

In ACOK, on the day the Khalasar reaches Vae Tolorro, Jorah Mormont visits Dany in her tent and gives her a peach. Then, at her request, he ends up telling her the sad story of his marriage to Lady Lynesse Hightower:

My home was a great disappointment to Lynesse. It was too cold, too damp, too far away, my castle no more than a wooden longhall. We had no masques, no mummer shows, no balls or fairs. Seasons might pass without a singer ever coming to play for us, and there's not a goldsmith on the island. Even meals became a trial. – ACOK, Dany I

The Hightowers are established in the Reach, the most fertile and greenest region of the Seven Kingdoms, and Jorah meets Lynesse in Lannisport smack in the middle of grand festivities. Lynesse is taken from her “flowery kingdom” to be the lady of a gloomy, dead-looking island. Jorah tries to coax her with various luxuries, including the food (“I lived for her smiles, so I sent all the way to Oldtown for a new cook”), but three seeds of pomegranate won’t do. Every now and then Lynesse must be brought back “up”:

I built a fine ship for her and we sailed to Lannisport and Oldtown for festivals and fairs, and once even to Braavos, where I borrowed heavily from the moneylenders. – ACOK, Dany I

Of course, the money runs out and they’re forced to set sail for Bear Islands. Not that it prevents them from leaving again later:

When I heard that Eddard Stark was coming to Bear Island, I was so lost to honor that rather than stay and face his judgment, I took her with me into exile. Nothing mattered but our love, I told myself. We fled to Lys, where I sold my ship for gold to keep us. – ACOK, Dany I

Their marriage eventually dissolves, but the story starts again with Dany in Lynesse’s position. We get an inkling of it with a simple scene (he brings her a fruit plucked from "in the gardens of the dead"), but which also harbors a predatory tone ("The lion pelt slid off one shoulder and she tugged it back into place. "Was she beautiful?" "Very beautiful." Ser Jorah lifted his eyes from her shoulder to her face. " / “Dany shivered, and pulled the lionskin tight about her. She looked like me. It explained much that she had not truly understood. He wants me, she realized. He loves me as he loved her, not as a knight loves his queen but as a man loves a woman.” – ACOK, Dany I). We spoke above of metaphorical “underworlds” visited, occupied or conquered by Dany: Mirri’s tent, the Red Waste, Slaver’s Bay. Not trivially, it is Jorah who carries her inside the tent, Jorah who advises her to go through the Red Waste, Jorah who persuades her to sail to Slaver’s Bay. Persephone’s myth being anchored in the duality of the fertile seasons (the summer months, when Persephone is reunited with Demeter) and the dead seasons (the winter months, which she must spend with her husband), its underlying presence in Dany’s narrative also evolves accordingly, here in relation to Dany’s fertility, here in her role as “Demeter” in Meereen (when she plants bean crops, olive trees), at a key time where Jorah (Hades) isn’t by her side. Hints pointing to Persephone and Demeter are all the more revealing because there seems to be a direct link between plant fertility, mother / child union and human fertility:

"I am the blood of the dragon," she told the grass, aloud.

Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark.

"Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …" Dany could not recall the child's name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. "I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons." – ADWD, Dany X

This "exchange" takes place in the Dothrake Sea, "paler than she remembered, a wan and sickly green on the verge of going yellow”. Dany, distraught by the death of a little girl, by the conviction that she herself will never conceive, and guilt-ridden for chaining her own "children" in a dark pit (another metaphor of Persephone chained to the underworld during winter), expresses her sorrow at the dying grass. Then, Jorah’s “ghost” returns to her:

Never, said the grass, in the gruff tones of Jorah Mormont. You were warned, Your Grace. Let this city be, I said. Your war is in Westeros, I told you. – ADWD, Dany X

The dying of the grass, crops and vegetation is always presented as the prima facie of the end of summer and the return of Persephone to the underworld. This is why the grass speaks with Jorah’s voice, and why Daenerys mourns her lost, forgotten or dead children in a dying grass sea.

Appearance and resorption of myths

We’ll try to tackle the character's role in a more general context here, because her narrative impact is currently limited to Essos. It’s through Tyrion that Dany and Westeros really intersect for the first time. From the fighting pits, Tyrion sees a veiled, “slender girl with silvery hair wrapped in a tokar” in the tribunes. This is not Jorah or Barristan, or even Quentyn Martell who, although tied to both sides of Planetos, do not play a significant role in what’s currently happening on the West side. Tyrion is another matter. He is the in-narrative eye of Westeros.

They’re about to unleash lions on Tyrion and Penny. As soon as she hears of it, Dany puts the breaks. Tyrion's memories of her make her akin to an apparition, or a mirage: veiled, indistinct, distant, soaring in a whirlwind of smoke on her dragon. It also happens in a place sharing glaring resemblances with the Red Waste:

“She had seen the fighting pits many times from her terrace. The small ones dotted the face of Meereen like pockmarks; the larger were weeping sores, red and raw.”

“The red sands drank his blood”

“Running, she could feel the sand between her toes, hot and rough.”

“He beat his wings again, sending up a choking storm of scarlet sand. Dany stumbled into the hot red cloud, coughing.”

“Black blood was flowing from the wound where the spear had pierced him, smoking where it dripped onto the scorched sands.”

“The black wings cracked like thunder, and suddenly the scarlet sands were falling away beneath her.” – ADWD, Dany IX

In ACOK, Dany and her Khalasar also encounter a mirage-like city in the desert:

"A city, Khaleesi," they cried. "A city pale as the moon and lovely as a maid. An hour's ride, no more."

When the city appeared before her, its walls and towers shimmering white behind a veil of heat, it looked so beautiful that Dany was certain it must be a mirage. – ACOK, Dany I

Vae Tolorro and Dany are not mirages, however. Vae Tolorro really saved Dany’s Khalasar from a certain death in the desert. Dany really saved Tyrion from the lions. The repercussions of her actions are too real, her physical impact on the story is too great for one to put her among the true "ghost" characters, such as Lynesse or Tysha.

Only, here’s the deal: Daenerys Targaryen is a character of exceptional circumstances, of one-time deals, and exceptional circumstances, 1) do not last, 2) do not happen again, and 3) are not recoverable. Circumstances such as these create myths, and myths are reproduced, or imitated, or preserved as legends, but they will never happen a second time like they happened on the first time. Vae Tolorro did exist once, but withdrew from the story once his function was filled, and Dany will likely never return there. Drogon did appear in the Daznak arena, causing an “unusual” disaster, but the incident is unlikely to happen again. What remains afterward of Vae Tolorro, of Daenerys and Drogon in the arena, are mirages, imitations and imitators. Dany is not at this stage. She is at the archaic stage of the first time (Mircea Eliade, The myth of the eternal return), where the gap between the mythical and the ordinary is the deepest, and where the resorption of the myth is the most brutally felt. Dany, a very human character in and of itself, suffers from these effects more than anyone. Immediately after the birth of her dragons (the mythical event), she must undertake a difficult journey in the desert, that leaves her physically worn out and, in a way, physically diminished (the resorption):

Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick - ACOK, Dany I

And following immediately her first flight on Drogon (the mythical event) she gets lost in the Dothrake sea, which once again takes a physical toll on her –

It was afternoon by the time Dany found the stream she had glimpsed atop the hill. It was a rill, a rivulet, a trickle, no wider than her arm … and her arm had grown thinner every day she spent on Dragonstone. – ADWD, Dany X

- almost to the point of literally being resorbed into the earth:

My flesh will feed the wolves and carrion crows, she thought sadly, and worms will burrow through my womb. – ADWD, Dany X

There are therefore two fundamental elements one should consider with regards to Dany: the authentic myth, and the nostalgia of the lost myth. It’s part of what makes Dany’s narrative so compelling. The authentic myth belongs to an immemorial past. The memory of the myth belongs to the present. And Daenerys belongs to both. Should she reconcile these two parts? If so, is this reconciliation supposed to play a role in the outcome, not only of her own story, but of the entire series? We raise the issue because the myth / memory dichotomy is not exclusive to Dany; see, for example, the "Others" (the myth) and the three-eyed raven (the memory). It all remains to be seen. In any case, I’m intrigued by this tendency to bestow ghost-like characteristic to a character who’s frequently moving from one realm to another, whatever these realms are supposed to be: the world of the dead and the world of the living, the past and the present, the mythical and the real…

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #valyrianscrolls #daenerys targaryen

[awed-frog]

hey, not sure if you talked about this already, but what are your thoughts about Cas's arc so far and what happened in the Empty?

Hi! Thanks for the question! No, I haven’t really discussed this before - to be honest, I don’t exactly know what to make of it all. 

First of all, I know that ‘fighting Death to come back to your lover’ is a tried and tested trope that goes back to - wait, actually, I don’t know when the whole thing started, because in Greek mythology people mostly fought to get themselves inside Hell - Herakles went there a couple of times, Theseus as well (tried to help his mate to kidnap Persephone and ended up with his ass glued to a chair for a few years), and Orpheus, of course - and anyway, it’s very romantic and all but there’s a part of me that doesn’t like it, because it sort of implies that all those other suckers who died - both IRL and in fiction - well, what? Their love wasn’t as strong as Whatshisface’s and bad luck to you?

(That said, I liked how the Empty was set up because it was very similar to the Homeric vision of the underworld, and you can never go wrong with Homer.)

As for Cas, his arc, and how it ties in with the Empty - that’s a wide-ranging question, my friend. I’d say that Cas is a puzzling character - someone who knows what he’s running from, but not what he’s running towards - and I think that the simplest metaphor for this very dominant aspect of his personality is how he loved humanity so much, and yet never bothered to read even a single book, or learn anything about our music and our art. I’m not sure whether this is a case of wanderlust, and how many of us build imagined versions of ideal countries, prospective partners and future selves in our minds without looking at them too closely (maybe because we know, or fear, that none of that will ever come to pass) or if it’s something to do with him being an angel, and a subconscious need to just keep quiet and obey orders. Whatever the truth, we know that before Dean crashed into his life, Cas hadn’t seriously tried to change anything about his own (and we know that because when he truly committed himself to it, he succeeded - basically severed his ties with Heaven and all that, and even the occasional bouts torture and brain-washing weren’t enough to keep him from Dean). So, well - from the very beginning, Cas has been this restless alien unhappy with his own culture but unable to change anything for himself and in this sense, Dean was as much of a trigger for him as Cas himself was for Dean - it’s because of how infuriatingly fascinating he found Dean that Cas kept coming back, and it’s because he finally allowed himself to love Dean that Cas finally chose to stay and fight for him and with him.

(As a side note, I’ve always wondered about that whole ‘saving from Hell’ thing - what angel in their right mind sent Cas down there? Cas? The unpredictable troublemaker, the faulty seraph, the one who, more than anyone else, was likely to do something stupid for a random human? And, I mean, beside the convoluted answer I explored during last year’s DCBB, all I can think of is that either they wanted Cas to die in there, or that Dean chose him in some way, that they established a connection before they even met, which would be weird and unprecedented, since Dean is not Cas’ vessel, but Michael’s.)

So anyway, as far as I can see, Cas’ journey has gone through three stages so far, all of them interrupted and pervaded by his growing feelings for Dean. 

First, Cas had to rebel against Heaven; secondly, he tried to atone for his sins, or his crimes, or whatever you want to call them (for instance, he tried leading the angels, he killed Raphael, and he took an interest in Claire) and now - now all of that is done, and Cas should figure out who he is and what he wants. And this is debatable, of course, but you could argue this third phase began at the end of S11, after God showed up and made clear the angels didn’t owe Him anything - not loyalty, not love - because He Himself didn’t give a damn about them. At the time, I was annoyed by the fact Cas never got his five minutes with God, and I still think it was not a deliberate choice, but something no one could figure out a way to make happen and in the end it was decided it was not that important and whatever (and, uhm - wrong) - but now I’m letting that go, because that complete estrangement between Cas and God - that was closure. Bad closure, but closure nonetheless. And from what we’ve seen in S12, Cas hasn’t made much progress in his personal journey so far - but he finally made explicit, to himself and others, that his role as ‘the Winchesters’ guardian’ has little to do with mission and duty and more with an emotional and affective bond (“I love you. I love all of you.”) and coming from a creature who’s learning to experience and express feelings for the very first time, that was significant.

The problem now, of course, is that Cas is used to one-sided relationships. He’s a soldier taking orders, a seraph singing the glory of an uncaring and distant God, a protector for humans who can’t even see him true face. This is the reality Cas knows, and no amount of shoulder pats and subtle hints will change that - someone needs to come out and say that he doesn’t need to be useful in order to be loved, and neither Dean nor Sam have done enough in that department. And, of course, it’s Dean Cas is watching more closely, and it’s Dean Cas is modeling himself after, and that’s dangerous and counterproductive and heartbreaking, because Dean is also a product of unrequited love - the son of a mother who never put his happiness first, the cadet of a soldier-father who always wanted him to be different, the caretaker of a brother who never quite understood what it was, exactly, that Dean was giving up for him, and, of course, the sexy one-night stand for a long string of women who didn’t bother (or were not allowed) to get to know him and the saviour of people who, quite naturally, would always be a mixture of desperate, grateful, demanding and ‘thank you, but now please get out of my life because I need to forget this ever happened’. But Dean, of course, is human, and he knows there’s a different way to do things (the gentle, romantic, open and caring way he sees in his beloved chick flicks), and Cas - Cas can probably feel his longing to be different, to fit in, and interprets it in his own seraphic way - because Cas’ experience is not movies promoting the ‘be yourself and the right guy will come along’ message, but the certainty that you’re respected and accepted when you do everything right - he did belong to an army for millions of years, after all. So, well - I think the narrative’s been quite clear about this - Cas’ hinted several times that he’d like to stay on Earth as an angel, but he still doesn’t think he’s good enough, because he’s seen the lives Sam and Dean lead - if he can’t hunt or he can’t fight or he gets stuff wrong, then he’s a burden to them, that’s how his reasoning goes. And what he fears, we know that as well, because it’s been a blinking light of distress and text and subtext since the very beginning, is that in order to be truly welcomed he’ll need to give in and function in a human way (ie, allow himself to have emotions and act on them), but at the same time he knows that doing that will make him weaker, that love and anger and fear will (and did) damage his judgement, his fighting skills, even his ability to go out there and just - do things. 

Now, if you’re asking what kind of impact did the Empty have on all of this - again, I wasn’t a fan of that particular plotline, and it wasn’t even clear, in a way, why all those people had to die at the end of S12 - if it was a question of NoHomo mirrors, of forcing us to care about Mary or what - but for once Cas’ death wasn’t his fault, or a direct consequence of something he did - it just - happened, in the same way death happens to humans just because we’re human. And this, to me, is an important distinction, because the first two times Cas died, he deliberately chose to die - he stayed behind to protect Chuck knowing he would get killed, and he went with Dean to the graveyard knowing neither of them would walk out again - and then the third time, he lost control of a dangerous experiment he’d decided to risk, and the fourth time, again, trusting anyone at that point was the stupid gamble of a lost and exhausted man who never knew what being a man even meant, but this final thing with Lucifer - I don’t think Cas had thought of dying at all - he bought the Winchesters five minutes and - miscalculated. He was unlucky, and that makes a big difference for guessing at his state of mind and what will come next. And as for the Empty - I’ve seen a lot of hilarity on how Cas basically annoyed a timeless entity into letting him go, but I haven’t read a lot about that startling declaration in the middle of their squabbling: “Kiddo, save yourself,” the guardian says, to which Cas replies: “I am already saved”. That’s astonishing and meaningful and what did Cas mean, exactly? Very recently (and even more recently for an immortal creature who surely perceives time in a much different way), Cas was lost and depressed and unable to leave the Bunker, and next he was listless and all he could think was how he was a joke and a failure, and he also basically went from ‘I’ll not involve Dean because he doesn’t get it’ to a mixture of ‘I’ll not involve Dean because I want him to be safe’ and ‘I’ll not involve Dean because I need him to be proud of me’ - and that’s the development of a sense of self, right there, of making stupid-ass decisions to avoid embarrassing yourself in front of someone you desperately care about. 

“I am already saved” - as much as I want that to be about Dean, I think Cas was referring to Jack here - this creature who’d given him so much hope, someone he perceives as good and untainted, someone who’s not angry about Cas letting him down literally since birth but instead is calling him back - Jack wants him back, which means he knows about Cas, which means Sam and Dean have told him (because anyone else, angel or demon, would have no reason to), which means whatever Sam and Dean said, it was enough for Jack to need him back with such certainty that it woke Cas up in a place of death and shadows, which means Cas’ plan worked and Dean saw that - he saw Jack was good - he saw Cas was right - and that’s a win, right there, and it’s not everything, but it’s something Cas can work with. 

(And if we want to be generous, that’s why it was Jack’s voice, not Dean’s that woke Cas up.)

So, I don’t know. Cas is like Dean, because he’s learning from Dean, which means that maybe what he needed all this time was something to push against, not someone to offer him the kind of support Cas didn’t feel worthy of. And the more the guardian of the Empty taunted him, the more Cas got his grit back, in a spectacularly Dean way, ‘cause you shut your mouth, goddammit, and there’s people who love me, and they brought me back from that edge and my father was an obsessed bastard and even I didn’t deserve it - I didn’t deserve to die. And all we can hope is that Cas’ victory against the darkest part of himself (and that’s what it was, because this scene - 

- well, it was a direct parallel of this scene -

- and the Empty guy didn’t say anything Cas wasn’t already thinking himself), well - in an ideal world, this victory would be cathartic enough for Cas to say Fuck it and just be who he wants to be - Dean Winchester’s seraph boyfriend, an uncomplicated, long-awaited role he’s been gravitating towards for years and years and something only his own self-doubt and self-loathing has prevented him from achieving, but - but that would make it GAY, of course, which means we’ll get more made-up conflict that’ll keep them both busy until the very end, and then - then we’ll see.

#ask #spn meta #cas meta #cas #castiel #spn 13x04 #the empty #parallels #dean and cas #destiel #man can you believe this character #what a beauty